Background: intracranial bleeding is often associated with a large variety of cardiac derangements, ranging from mild regional wall motion abnormalities to frank cardiac insufficiency. There are well known associations between severe SAH and acute ischemic stroke with new occurred cardiac insufficiency. Some authors report cardiac abnormalities in major head trauma with intracranial bleeding. Method: we conducted a prospective study during 2012 with all intracranial bleeding presented to our department and subjected to surgery, but with no prior history of cardiac disease. cTNt and NT-proBNP were measured preand postoperatively and we also recorded electrical changes on a 12 lead ECG, and echocardiographic changes (regional wall motion abnormalities and left ventricular ejection fraction). Results: from 82 patients submitted to emergency surgery for intracranial bleeding, 37 had a cTN I>0.3 ng/ml (45%), 57 (69.5%) had a significant increase of >200 pg/ml in NT-proBNPover normal values as reported by hardware manufacturer and these levels were incrementally related to SAH severity (Hunt and Hess scale and Fisher scale), to GCS and midline shifts for intracranial hematoma. Numerous patients with increased cardiac troponin had also ECG abnormalities (QT prolongation, various arrhythmias) decrease under 50 % of ejection fraction and ventricular wall motion abnormalities as noted on echocardiography. Conclusion: Cardiac injury is incrementally worse with increasing intracranial bleeding severity and associated with persistent QTc prolongation and ventricular arrhythmias. Regional wall motion abnormalities and depressed ejection fraction were recorded early in the course of disease and persist to some degree in the majority of those affected. RÉSUMÉ


Tens of millions of people receive vital humanitarian aid every year, but millions more suffer without adequate help and protection, and their number is relentlessly rising. Far too often their suffering is because their governments cannot, or intentionally will not, ensure their citizens' access to aid and protection. This paper looks at how we can improve the humanitarian system and calls for a shift of power and resources from international actors to local actors.


What is the relationship between saving behavior in capitalist economies and their macroeconomic performance? In addressing this question, this volume poses three more basic questions: What is the relationship between saving and investment? What is the role of financial structures in mediating this relationship? And what are the most appropriate ways of measuring saving, investment, and related concepts in the context of the substantive issues of concern?The contributors draw substantially from heterodox traditions in economics, including post-Keynsianism, neo-Marxism, and structuralism, in pursuing these issues. As such, the contributions give unusual attention to how factors such as investment uncertainty, financial structure, income distribution, and the evolution of institutions affect growth, cyclical fluctuations, and in particular the role of saving in macroeconomic performance. At the same time, the essays are technically and empirically oriented, thus engaging more orthodox approaches to these themes on their own terms.A unique feature of the volume is that formal comments are offered by leading mainstream thinkers as well as by distinguished heterodox authors. This has generated an unusually lively, fruitful, and by no means bipolar interchange. Authors include David M. Gordon, Robert Blecker, Dean Baker, Ilene Grabel, and Robert Pollin; contributing discussants are James Tobin, James Galbraith, Stanley Fischer, Steven Fazzari, Benjamin Friedman, James Crotty, Tamim Bayoumi, Steven Marglin, Alan Auerbach, and Gerald Epstein.Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics, University of California, Riverside.


The linear carbon chain radicals HC5S, HC6S, HC7S, and HC8S and the asymmetric top chains H2C4S, H2C5S, H2C6S, and H2C7S have been detected in a supersonic molecular beam by Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy. Like the shorter HCnS chains, the electronic ground states of the four longer chains here alternate with even and odd number of carbon atoms: HC5S and HC7S have 2Π1/2 ground states, while HC6S and HC8S have 2Π3/2 ground states. Each of the four new thiocumulene chains possesses a rotational spectrum characteristic of a molecule with C2v symmetry, in agreement with that observed for the two shorter chains H2C2S and H2C3S. The microwave spectra of all eight chains have been fully characterized, and spectroscopic constants, including fine and hyperfine structure constants where applicable, have been determined to high precision. The eight new chains are probably all highly polar and all are plausible candidates for astronomical detection. For the radical chains, the spectroscopic constants determined from the present work allow the astronomically most relevant lines to be calculated with an uncertainty of less than 1 km s-1 up to 40 GHz; for the asymmetric top chains, the same transitions can be calculated with an uncertainty of less than 0.5 km s-1 up to 55 GHz.


A secreted factor promotes the development of stomata in leaf epidermis. Stomata are pores in leaf epidermis that allow the exchange of gases and water vapor between plant cells and the environment. Inhibitors of stomatal development have been identified and include EPIDERMAL PATTERNING FACTOR 1 (EPF1) and EPF2, both of which bind to the receptor-like protein TOO MANY MOUTHS (TMM). Sugano et al. have identified stomagen as a factor that promotes stomatal development in Arabidopsis thaliana. Stomatal density was increased by overexpression of STOMAGEN and decreased by RNA interference (RNAi) directed against STOMAGEN. The abundance of STOMAGEN was higher in immature leaves, stems, and buds compared with their mature counterparts. STOMAGEN was present in mesophyll tissues (where photosynthesis occurs), a distribution that contrasts with that of other factors that regulate stomatal development, which are typically found in epidermal tissues (where stomata are located). Fluorescently tagged STOMAGEN was present outside cells, suggesting that STOMAGEN is secreted from mesophyll tissues. STOMAGEN was processed from a 102–amino acid precursor to a 45–amino acid peptide (which the authors referred to as stomagen), which increased stomatal density when overexpressed or when externally applied. The ability of STOMAGEN to promote stomatal development required the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor SPEECHLESS and the receptor-like protein TMM. The authors propose that stomagen may compete with EPF1 and EPF2 for binding to TMM and that stomagen provides a mechanism by which photosynthetic tissues can enhance stomatal development in the epidermis. S. S. Sugano, T. Shimada, Y. Imai, K. Okawa, A. Tamai, M. Mori, I. Hara-Nishimura, Stomagen positively regulates stomatal density in Arabidopsis. Nature 463, 241–244 (2010). [PubMed]


For many years a tension has existed between the law of the European Union governing motor vehicle insurance and the UK's transposition, interpretation and application of its national law. Cases including Delaney v Pickett & Tradewise [2011] EWCA Civ 1532 and EUI v Bristol Alliance Partnership[2012] EWCA Civ 1267 have demonstrated the UK's misunderstanding of its legal obligations in this area and has led to the award of damages to affected individuals against the UK. On 5 December 2016 the Court of Appeal issued its judgment in the case Sahin v Havard and Riverstone Insurance (UK) Ltd [2016] EWCA Civ 1202. The Court was tasked to apply provisions of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to a victim of an unauthorised driver in a claim against the policyholder and the insurer. It is argued here that the Court has misunderstood and misapplied the EU parent law in its application of national law. The case may ultimately be determined by the Supreme Court but it is a ruling of sufficient significance in its lack of adherence to EU law and, given the notoriety of cases demonstrating the inconsistencies of the Court of Appeal's decisions in motor vehicle insurance law, it is worrying that these judgments seemingly have been ignored. The ruling also has important implications for the consequences that Brexit will have on motor vehicle insurance. This is particularly if, as is expected, the UK pursues a 'hard Brexit' without access to the single market and the need to comply with the free movement principles through which the motor vehicle insurance directives are based. The UK would therefore be freed of the compatibility issues demonstrated in Sahin, but this will likely leave third party victims in a weaker position.


Many believe intellectual property has overreached, and that policymakers must respond. In this essay, I argue that the critique may have merit, but private parties are in some cases taking matters into their own hands. Firms and individuals are increasingly injecting information into the public domain with the explicit goal of preempting or undermining the potential property rights of economic adversaries. Biotechnology firms invest millions of dollars in public domain gene sequence databases, to prevent hold-ups by firms with patents on short gene sequences. Major software firms fight entrenched rivals by investing millions of dollars, contributing to open source operating systems. In both cases, property-preempting investments (PPI's) are made to offset the effects of competitors' property rights. Individuals and nonprofits are joining in too, with initiatives such as the Creative Commons project. All of these major private investments in the public domain reveal a self-correcting feature of the intellectual property system that has been overlooked until now, and signal that public lawmaking is not the only arena in which the excesses of intellectual property may be addressed.


Background Lebanon currently hosts around one million Syrian refugees. There has been an increasing interest in integrating eHealth and mHealth technologies into the provision of primary health care to refugees and Lebanese citizens. Objective We aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the potential for technology integration in primary health care provision in the context of the protracted Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon. Methods A total of 17 face-to-face semistructured interviews were conducted with key informants (n=8) and health care providers (n=9) involved in the provision of health care to the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon. Interviews were audio recorded and directly translated and transcribed from Arabic to English. Thematic analysis was conducted. Results Study participants indicated that varying resources, primarily time and the availability of technologies at primary health care centers, were the main challenges for integrating technologies for the provision of health care services for refugees. This challenge is compounded by refugees being viewed by participants as a mobile population thus making primary health care centers less willing to invest in refugee health technologies. Lastly, participant views regarding the health and technology literacies of refugees varied and that was considered to be a challenge that needs to be addressed for the successful integration of refugee health technologies. Conclusions Our findings indicate that in the context of integrating technology into the provision of health care for refugees in a low or middle income country such as Lebanon, some barriers for technology integration related to the availability of resources are similar to those found elsewhere. However, we identified participant views of refugees' health and technology literacies to be a challenge specific to the context of this refugee crisis. These challenges need to be addressed when considering refugee health technologies. This could be done by increasing the visibility of refugee capabilities and configuring refugee health technologies so that they may create spaces in which refugees are empowered within the health care system and can work toward debunking the views discovered in this study.


The increasing cost of cloud services and the need for decentralization of servers has led to a rise of interest in edge computing. In recent years, edge computing has become a popular choice for latency-sensitive applications like facial recognition and augmented reality because it is closer to the end users compared to the cloud. However, the presence of multiple edge servers adversely affects the reliability due to difficulty in maintenance of heterogeneous servers. In this thesis, we first evaluate the performance of various server configuration models in edge computing using EdgeCloudSim, a popular simulator for edge computing. The performance is evaluated in terms of service time and percentage of failed tasks for an Augmented Reality application. We evaluated the performance of the following edge computing models, Exclusive: Mobile only, Edge only, Cloud only; and Hybrid: Edge & Cloud hybrid with load-balancing on the Edge, and Mobile & Edge hybrid. We analyzed the impact of variation of different parameters such as WAN bandwidth, cost of cloud resources, heterogeneity of edge servers, etc., on the performance of the edge computing mod- els. We show that due to variation in the above parameters, the exclusive models are not sufficient for computational requirements and there is a need for hybrid edge computing models. Next, we introduce a novel edge computing model called unmanaged edge computing and propose an orchestration scheme in this scenario. Although infrastructure providers are working toward creating managed edge networks, personal devices such as laptops, desktops, and tablets, which are widely available and are underutilized, can also be used as potential edge devices. We call such devices Unmanaged Edge Devices (UEDs). Scheduling application tasks on such an unmanaged edge system is not straightforward because of three fundamental reasons—heterogeneity in the computational capacity of the UEDs, uncertainty in the availability of the UEDs (due to the devices leaving the system), and interference among multiple tasks sharing a UED. In this work, we present I-BOT, an interference-based orchestration scheme for latency sensitive tasks on an Unmanaged Edge Platform (UEP). It minimizes the completion time of applications and is bandwidth efficient. I-BOT brings forth three innovations. First, it profiles and predicts the interference patterns of the tasks to make scheduling decisions. Second, it uses a feedback mechanism to adjust for changes in the computational capacity of the UEDs and a prediction mechanism to handle their sporadic exits, both of which are fundamental characteristics of a UEP. Third, it accounts for input dependence of tasks in its scheduling decision (such as, two tasks requiring the same input data). To demonstrate the effectiveness of I-BOT, we run real-world unit experiments on UEDs to collect data to drive our simulations. We then run end-to-end simulations with applications representing autonomous driv- ing, composed of multiple tasks. We compare to two basic baselines (random and round-robin) and two state-of-the-arts, Lavea [SEC-2017] and Petrel [MSN-2018] for scheduling these applications on varying-sized UEPs. Compared to these baselines, I-BOT significantly reduces the average service time of application tasks. This reduction is more pronounced in dynamic heterogeneous environments, which would be the case in a UEP.


This paper examines the effect of intergovernmental fiscal transfers on the fiscal behaviour of local governments in Ethiopia for the period 2004-2018. The empirical findings suggest that central government grants bolster state-level employment and expenditure. However, grants from the central government to states do not crowd out state-level revenue collection. Hence, this paper argues that fiscal decentralisation in Ethiopia has mostly, at least in theory, taken the form of devolution of the power to tax and spend public money. However, on average state-level revenue can only finance up to 26 per cent of their annual expenditure. As a result, fiscal federalism in Ethiopia appears to be a form of delegation of spending responsibilities. It has to be considered in the context of a decentralised tax system, but with a transfer scheme and political hierarchy. The results are found to be robust to alternative econometric estimation techniques.


Ask someone what comes to mind when you say, "Christian film." If your experience is anything like mine, the one word you'll hear more than any other is "Cheezy" (along with an eye roll to back it up). My film students and I prefer not to make "Christian" films. We prefer films that are made by Christians. We are Christians. We are film makers. We make films that draw from our perspective and world view and those views strongly shape subject matter and treatment, but we also understand that we are making films, not writing and preaching sermons. So often, "Christian film" fails to see the distinction between preaching and storytelling through the medium of film. When one medium of communication is forced into the other, the result is ... cheezy. Dordt College is a Christian, mid-sized, four-year college in Iowa. Dordt's college-based production company, Prairie Grass Productions, had the "cheezy" issue in mind when we began production on a feature-length documentary film about slums and the more-than one billion people who inhabit them. Our film, "The Fourth World," goes past statistics like "one in six of us lives in a slum," and "most live on $2 a day or less" and allows an audience to actually meet some of these "statistics" in a very personal way. In the process, the audience quickly realizes that these people have names, jobs, a place to live, and hope for a brighter future. The vision for this film was born from our faith, from Scripture's commands to help the poor, and from a very deep-seated outrage over the way things are. Our good God never intended for mankind—the crowing jewel of His creation—to live in deplorable squalor, disease and hunger. The corrupting influence of sin and all that goes with it, means generations of people spend their entire lives in survival mode, never able to explore their God-given gifts and contribute to Kingdom growth. Our goal was to tell an entertaining story about this topic in a way that Christians and non-Christians could enjoy and benefit from. If we told it correctly, we could start a global dialogue about this. If we didn't tell it correctly, the film would gather dust and the discussion we longed for would never happen. We knew from day one that if we made a "Christian film," our audience would be severely limited and our financial return would be almost nil. We set a goal to produce a film made by Christians and see how much of the world we could get to see it. "The Fourth World" has screened at film festivals around the world and taken many top prizes. El Jazeera Worldwide purchased the rights to it for broadcast across the Middle East. As of this writing, we are in negotiations with Discovery Channel Worldwide. The film is regularly downloaded from iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Hulu and YouTube. In my presentation, I'll discuss the "Christian Film/Film by a Christian" difference and why it is important. Using "The Fourth World" as our example, we'll discuss what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we'll do differently next time. One absolute non-negotiable for Christians who want their work seen outside the Christian bubble is extensive pre-marketing before the film ever gets into production. Consciously determining audience, message and treatment in advance can create opportunities for penetration into the secular marketplace. Networking and cross-marketing with organizations—both secular and Christian—can be huge advantages to the savvy marketer that wants his story not just told, but seen and heard. Three key marketing strategies—International distribution, digital aggregation and the festival circuit—will also be considered. This conference presentation is available at Digital Collections @ Dordt: http://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/faculty_work/83 With the right planning, subject matter and treatment, Christian filmmakers can avoid the deadly stigma of having a cheezy film, and broadcast their "film made by a Christian" in one of the most Muslim parts of the world.


Background: The reliability of the MicroFET 3 has not previously been reported in the literature. The aim of this study was to evaluate intra-tester and inter-tester reliability of the MicroFET3 hand-held dynamometer (HHD) in three lower limb muscle groups. Methods: Maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) of hip extension, knee extension and ankle plantarflexion were measured in 38 healthy participants (males=18, females= 20) by two testers on separate days using the MicroFET3 HHD. The reliability analysis was carried out using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) to measure association and Band and Altman plots to demonstrate agreement. Results: The results showed that intra-tester reliability was moderate to excellent; with associations ranging from ICC 0.56 0.92 and higher agreement for knee and ankle than hip measurements was shown. Inter-tester reliability was lower, with hip and knee associations ranging from ICC 0.60 0.66. Ankle measurements intertester associations were particularly low (ICC 0.23 and 0.15). These values would not be considered acceptable for clinical use. Bland and Altman plots used to demonstrate agreement between testers displayed a considerable lack of agreement with discrepancies of up to 150N noted in measurements. Conclusion: The results suggest that the MicroFET3 HHD displayed moderate to excellent intra-tester reliability and poor to moderate inter-tester reliability and agreement with discrepancies noted between muscle groups. While use of this instrument can be recommended when consistently used by a single tester, further reliability analysis should be carried out before this instrument could be recommended for use by different testers in the clinical setting.


Abstract In this paper, we introduce a three-dimensional lattice-based computational model in which every lattice point can be occupied by an agent of various types (e.g. cancer cell, blood vessel cell or extracellular matrix). The behavior of agents can be associated to different chemical compounds that obey mass-transfer laws such as diffusion and decay in the surrounding environment. Furthermore, agents are also able to produce and consume chemical compounds. After a detailed description, the capabilities of the model are demonstrated by presenting and discussing a simulation of a biological experiment available in the literature.


In general, promotion is the basic prominent in ensure each new firms penetrate market and keep sustaining growth for existing firms. However, after all this while, the New Straits Times (NST) had used almost all their strategies to promote Newspaper in Education (NiE) to the public especially teachers and students, but then it still does not show any positive results. Without knowing where the weakness point, the objectives of promotions cannot be achieved or targeted. Thus, the study is undertaken to examine what are the promotional strategies effectiveness level and pertinent factors that lead to the existing problem. The objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness level of the limited promotional strategies used by the New Straits Times in promoting NiE, to identify any relationship between promotional strategies that had been used in promoting NiE with level of effectiveness, to identify the most attractive promotional strategies that influence the level of effectiveness in promoting NiE, and lastly to determine which NiE activity that the respondents are interested to get involve in. The findings shows that, from all the 5 major New Straits Times (NST) promotional strategies in promoting NiE, classes have the highest effectiveness level of promotional strategy that had been used by NST in promoting NiE. The results also shows that majority of the respondents answered that classes, website (NiEXUS) and School Sponsorship Program (SSP) have the relationship with the level of effectiveness and expect the firm to use it in promoting NiE. And from the hypothesis testing, it shows that only 3 have a signifIcant relationship with the P value < 0.05.


We increasingly hear that empowering women and placing them in positions of leadership will lead to a safer, more prosperous world. The UN Security Council's groundbreaking resolutions on Women Peace, and Security (WPS) — and U.S. law implementing these commitments — rest on the assumption that women's participation in peace and security matters will lead to more sustainable peace, because women presumably "perform" in ways that reduce conflict, violence, and extremism. This idea is of heightened importance today because women are still vastly underrepresented in positions of leadership in the peace and security field, having yet to "shatter that highest and hardest glass ceiling" as Commander-in-Chief in the United States or rise to the role of Secretary-General in the United Nations. Before her own historic race to become the first woman Commander in Chief, Hillary Clinton had prominently made the claim we increasingly hear that women's empowerment is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do for global and economic security. Such claims raise fundamental questions for international law, equality theory, and feminism. Assertions that the world would be a better — more peaceful, more prosperous — place, if women assumed leadership positions in peace and security matters are unapologetically instrumentalist and reinforce essentialist views of women. At the same time, evidence suggests that these claims are to some extent accurate. Thus, these assertions should be carefully examined. Reviewing new research, this Article argues that while some evidence supports these claims, the statistical evidence supporting these claims suffers from methodological flaws. Moreover, the forms of gender performance reflected in the data — which international law has organized itself around — are based on the socially constructed roles women play as caregivers, nurturers, and collaborators, not necessarily on their inherent biological roles. Yet, international law reifies these roles and the stereotypes that surround them, even as it tries to open up opportunities for women beyond traditional sex-segregated positions that have long relegated women around the world to the pink ghetto of economic inequality and inferior political and social status. Having to maneuver around formal equality, on the one hand, and instrumentalist claims that women will "save" the world, on the other, means that the category of "woman" can restrict even as it liberates. After all, not all women are "peace-loving," particularly in a world where the women who succeed are often those who can succeed on terms defined by men.Two prevailing theoretical frameworks — antisubordination and securitization—shape the current debate about WPS, but each ultimately falls short. This Article identifies democratic legitimacy as a novel third approach missing from the existing debate. As an alternative view, the democratic legitimacy account effectively reframes the WPS debate as one concerning inclusive security — emphasizing that women's participation enhances the representativeness, democracy, and fairness of the process as a whole — rather than privileging the "special interests" of a particular group (as the antisubordination approach is accused of doing) or reinforcing gender essentialism (as the securitization approach does). Notably, a democratic legitimation paradigm is grounded in a model of inclusion that can be applied to vectors of inequality beyond gender, as well as to inequality at the intersection of various forms of inequality. Moreover, by emphasizing democratic representation, this approach insists on local ownership and bottom-up solutions, thereby emphasizing participation and leadership by women in conflict zones, rather than female global elites. Under a democratic legitimacy paradigm, women can still "save" the world, but in a different way than the predominant discourse would have us believe.


Widespread use of prescription opioids has been a major
public health concern since 1999. Many consequences are associated with the
problem, such as opioid misuse, abuse, and drug overdose deaths. Opioids are
not the only medications involved with drug overdose deaths. Due to stricter
control of prescription opioids, those who misused opioids are associated with
initiation of another illicit drug abuse. This results in increased drug
overdose death involving heroin and semisynthetic/synthetic opioids. Another
risk factor for increased overdose death is concurrent use of opioids with
other central nervous system (CNS) depressants and some anticonvulsants.
Concurrent use of opioids and benzodiazepine, z-drugs (zolpidem and zaleplon),
gabapentin, and/or pregabalin is associated with increased risk of respiratory
depression and drug overdose death. To combat problematic opioid use, many
mitigation strategies were introduced. However, opioid-related problems remain.


Business schools and others interested in management education and development have vigorously debated how best to teach strategy to future leaders. Some experts have questioned whether the topic should be taught at all ? or at least whether it should be taught to managers. Often missing from the debate, however, has been any in-depth discussion of how individuals learn to think strategically in the first place. What specific experiences are important and how do they contribute? Moreover, what are the different ways in which people absorb those experiences to develop the ability to think strategically?

To answer these and other questions, the author conducted a study that identified executives who were considered the top strategic thinkers in their industry. The study then investigated the totality of experiences (educational, job related or other) that contributed to the high ability of those individuals. In addition, the research investigated the different ways in which the executives acquired their expertise in strategic thinking ? a process that typically took more than a decade The data showed that strategic thinking arises from 10 specific types of experiences ? for instance, spearheading a major growth initiative or dealing with a threat to organizational survival. Moreover, executives appear to gain their expertise in strategic thinking through one of three developmental patterns. These findings help demystify the process by which strategic thinking is learned, offering important implications for management development and the practice of strategy.


Objectives: This study aimed to compare the outcomes of vaginal hysterectomy (VH) and twoand three-dimensional total laparoscopic hysterectomy (2D TLH, 3D TLH) in women with benign uterine diseases. Methods: A retrospective, randomized study was conducted at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Bagcilar Training and Research Hospital between 2010 and 2012. Overall, 99 women underwent VH, 68 underwent 2D TLH, and 41 underwent 3D TLH. Patients' ages, parities, uterine weights, preand postoperative hemoglobin (Hb) and hematocrit (Htc) values, operating times, complication rates, and hospitalization duration were compared. Results: A statistically significant difference was found among the groups in terms of patients' ages, parities, uterine weights, operating times, and hospitalization duration (p<0.05). Patients who underwent 3D TLH were younger and had lesser parities, greater uterine weights, and shorter operating times. The hospitalization duration was similar between the 2D and 3D TLH groups (average, 2 days; min, 1 day; and max, 8–10 days); however, it was shorter than the VH group (average, 3 days; min, 3 days; and max, 8 days). No statistically significant difference was observed among the groups in terms of the preand postoperative Hb/Htc values and complication rates (p>0.05). Conclusion: VH still remains the preferred procedure for patients with uterine prolapse and patients who require pelvic repair. 3D TLH offers quick operation with less complication rates and morbidity and reduces the hospitalization duration. Because of more favorable outcomes, we presume that 3D TLH may replace 2D TLH in the near future.


Abstract Whey protein concentrate and a new fermented whey protein concentrate were used to replace the milk SNF in from yogurt. Fermented whey protein concentrate was manufactured by fermenting liquid whey protein concentrate with a commercial culture of Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus salivarius ssp. thermophilus . Frozen yogurt mix contained 6% milk fat, 10.5% whey protein concentrate (100% SNF replacement), 11% sucrose, 3% corn syrup solids, .3% stabilizer and emulsifier blend, and 30.8% total solids. The mix was pasteurized (72°C for 30min) and cooled to 4°C. Fermented whey protein concentrate (3.1% by weight of mix) was then added for a final titratable acidity of .43%. Frozen yogurt mix was divided into three equal batches, which were manufactured into vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate frozen yogurt. The frozen yogurts were evaluated from questionnaires filled out by 1005 attendees of the Meeker County Fair in Litchfield, MN. Those surveyed were 43.5% males and 56.5% females, ranging in age from 6 to 89 yr. Overall, 87.8% (83.5% of the males and 91.5% of the females) liked the test product, and 81.2% (72.4% of the males and 88.2% of the females) said they would buy this product if it were priced the same as ice cream. Results indicate that an acceptable frozen yogurt can be produced when 100% of the milk SNF is replaced with whey protein concentrate and fermented whey protein concentrate.


In the 1960's, the Supreme Court famously imposed the one person, one vote requirement on federal, state and local legislatures. The doctrine triggered a reapportionment revolution that rapidly resolved the problem of malapportioned districts. Within just a few years, legislatures across the nation were reapportioned to equalize the population between districts. Sadly, however, the national commitment to equal-population districts has led directly to the current crisis of political gerrymandering. The boundaries of equal-population districts must be redrawn every ten years to maintain population equality. Even with rigid adherence to population requirements, district boundaries are easily manipulated to secure incumbent seats and advance partisan interests. Redistricting is rightly condemned for allowing politicians to pick their voters, rather than the other way around. At the local level, however, one group of municipalities avoids redistricting by incorporating weighted voting into their apportionment plans. While scholars have studied other variations in municipal apportionment, they have failed to examine the nuances of weighted voting apportionment plans. This Article begins to fill that void, demonstrating that weighted voting dramatically increases the options for legislative apportionment and arguing that weighted voting could serve as a model for the next reapportionment revolution. As this Article explains, weighted voting eliminates the need for strict population equality. It can be used alone to preserve representation for whole political units, such as towns on the county board. It can also be incorporated into multimember districts, equal-population districts, or both, to equalize the mathematic weight of each vote across unequal population districts. Weighted voting thus enables the formation of districts that reflect priorities other than population equality, including districts that correspond to political subdivisions and prevent gerrymandering.


Experimental results on flow-field statistics are presented for turbulent oscillatory flow in a circular pipe for the range of Reynolds numbers Reδ = U0δ/ν (U0 = amplitude of cross-sectional mean velocity, δ = (2ν/ω)½) = Stokes layer thickness) from 550 to 2000 and Stokes parameters Λ = R/δ (R = radius of the pipe) from 5 to 10. Axial and radial velocity components were measured simultaneously using a two-colour laser-Doppler anemometer, providing information on ensemble-averaged velocity profiles as well as various turbulence statistics for different phases during the cycle. In all flows studied, turbulence appeared explosively towards the end of the acceleration phase of the cycle and was sustained throughout the deceleration phase. During the turbulent portion of the cycle, production of turbulence was restricted to the wall region of the pipe and was the result of turbulent bursts. The statistics of the resulting turbulent flow showed a great deal of similarity to results for steady turbulent pipe flows; in particular the three-layer description of the flow consisting of a viscous sublayer, a logarithmic layer (with von Kármán constant = 0.4) and an outer wake could be identified at each phase if the corresponding ensemble-averaged wall-friction velocities were used for normalization. Consideration of similarity laws for these flows reveals that the existence of a logarithmic layer is a dimensional necessity whenever at least two of the scales R, u*/ω and ν/u* are widely separated; with the exact structure of the flow being dependent upon the parameters u*/Rω and u2*/ων. During the initial part of the acceleration phase, production of turbulence as well as turbulent Reynolds stresses were reduced to very low levels and the velocity profiles were in agreement with laminar theory. Nevertheless, the fluctuations retained a small but finite energy. In Part 2 of this paper, the major features observed in these experiments are used as a guideline, in conjunction with direct numerical simulations of the 'perturbed' Navier–Stokes equations for oscillatory flow in a channel, to identify the nature of the instability that is most likely to be responsible for transition in this class of flows.


SiC Schottky diode varactors with a high breakdown voltage, a high tuning ratio, and a low series resistance have been designed and fabricated. These characteristics are particularly necessary for the dynamic load modulation of high power amplifiers (PAs), which is an attractive alternative to other efficiency enhancement techniques. For a SiC Schottky diode varactor with a 50- radius fabricated by using a graded doping profile, a breakdown voltage of 40 V, a tuning range of 5.6, and a series resistance of 0.9 were achieved. The results show the great potential of this type of varactors for the use in the dynamic load modulation of high power amplifiers.


The correct compilation of block diagram languages like Lustre, Scade, and a discrete subset of Simulink is important since they are used to program critical embedded control software. We describe the specification and verification in an Interactive Theorem Prover of a compilation chain that treats the key aspects of Lustre: sampling, nodes, and delays. Building on CompCert, we show that repeated execution of the generated assembly code faithfully implements the dataflow semantics of source programs. We resolve two key technical challenges. The first is the change from a synchronous dataflow semantics, where programs manipulate streams of values, to an imperative one, where computations manipulate memory sequentially. The second is the verified compilation of an imperative language with encapsulated state to C code where the state is realized by nested records. We also treat a standard control optimization that eliminates unnecessary conditional statements.


OBJECTIVES
Increased vulnerability to stress has been suggested as a possible mechanism behind medically unexplained conditions such as sensitivity to electricity and common smells. This study examined whether subjective environmental annoyance among the general population is associated with increased physiological reactivity or subjective stress scores.

METHODS
Four groups were studied (N=141): an electrically annoyed (N=17), a smell-annoyed (N=29), and a generally annoyed group (N=39) and a reference group matched for age, gender, and socioeconomic status (N=56). Over 5 days, the participants collected saliva for cortisol determination at awakening, 30 minutes after awakening, 8 hours after awakening, and at 9 o'clock in the evening. On the evening preceding the fifth day, the participants ingested a 0.5-mg dexamethasone tablet so that possible differential suppression of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis could be assessed. Each day, the participants also rated their subjective stress and health complaints.

RESULTS
No significant differences were found between the groups regarding cortisol secretion over 5 days. The dexamethasone suppression test showed inhibited cortisol secretion in all four groups. No associations were found between the cortisol concentrations and the self-reported stress scores or subjective health complaints.

CONCLUSIONS
Although the environmentally annoyed groups showed no signs of increased HPA-axis activation, being annoyed by both electrical devices and smells seems to be related to increased psychological activation in terms of self-reported stress. Because the participants were otherwise healthy and recruited from the general population, the results imply that subtle psychological stress processes may be important in the early development of environmental annoyance.


Glycoprotein CD44 and alternative splice variants are overexpressed in many cancers and cancer stem cells. Binding of hyaluronic acid to CD44 activates cell signaling pathways, inducing cell proliferation, cell survival, and invasion. As such, CD44 is regarded as an excellent target for cancer therapy when this interaction can be blocked. In this study, we developed a CD44-specific antibody fragment and evaluated it for imaging CD44-positive cancers using PET. Methods: A human single-chain fragment variable (scFv) was generated by phage display, using the extracellular domain of recombinant human CD44. The specificity and affinity of the scFv-CD44 were evaluated using recombinant and tumor cell–expressed CD44. Epitope mapping of the putative CD44 binding site was performed via overlapping peptide microarray. The scFv-CD44 was reformatted into a bivalent scFv-Fc-CD44, based on human IgG1–fragment crystallizable (Fc). The scFv-Fc-CD44 was radiolabeled with 64Cu and 89Zr. The purified reagents were injected into athymic nude mice bearing CD44-positive human tumors (MDA-MB-231, breast cancer, triple-negative). Biodistribution studies were performed at different times after injection of [64Cu]Cu-NOTA-scFv-Fc-CD44 or [89Zr]Zr-DFO-scFv-Fc-CD44. PET/CT imaging was conducted with [89Zr]Zr-DFO-scFv-Fc-CD44 on days 1 and 7 after injection and compared with a scFv-Fc control antibody construct targeting glycophorin A. Results: Epitope mapping of the scFv binding site revealed a linear epitope within the extracellular domain of human CD44, capable of blocking binding to native hyaluronic acid. Switching from a monovalent scFv to a bivalent scFv-Fc format improved its binding affinity toward native CD44 on human breast cancer cells by nearly 200-fold. In vivo biodistribution data showed the highest tumor uptake and tumor-to-blood ratios for [89Zr]Zr-DFO-scFv-Fc-CD44 between days 5 and 7. PET imaging confirmed excellent tumor specificity for [89Zr]Zr-DFO-scFv-Fc-CD44 when compared with the control scFv-Fc. Conclusion: We developed a CD44-specific scFv-Fc construct that binds with nanomolar affinity to human CD44. When radiolabeled with 64Cu or 89Zr, it demonstrated specific uptake in CD44-expressing MDA-MB-231 tumors. The high tumor uptake (∼56% injected dose/g) warrants clinical investigation of [89Zr]Zr-DFO-scFv-Fc-CD44 as a versatile PET imaging agent for patients with CD44-positive tumors.


In medical matters it is surprising how often the law, in Mr Bumble's words, proves to be "an ass," as two recent prominent cases demonstrate.

The first was a claim against manufacturers of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. As long ago as 1994 legal aid was granted to a group of parents who were opposed to immunisation (and who were strong believers in homoeopathy), for an action claiming that MMR causes brain damage, epilepsy, arthritis, and autoimmune disease. After Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet article ( Lancet 1998;351: 637), the number of plaintiffs was expanded and the claim concentrated on the allegation that MMR causes autism. Legal aid for the claim was eventually withdrawn in September 2003 on the grounds that the action was unlikely to succeed. By then it had cost the taxpayer £15m.

> This team was quite clearly not adequately qualified to investigate possible causes of autism

Legal aid in claims for damages for personal injury, which is granted by …


Summary In Guatemalan villages people commonly rear pigs, and both hosts may be infected with Ascaris. This study was designed to ask whether both humans and pigs are potential hosts in a single parasite transmission cycle in such villages, or alternatively, if there are two separate transmission cycles, one involving pigs and one involving human hosts. Parasites were collected from both host species from locations in the north and south of Guatemala. Allelic variation in the nuclear genome of Ascaris was measured using enzyme electrophoresis, while mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence variation was quantified using restriction mapping. Low levels of enzyme polymorphism were found in Ascaris, but allele frequencies at two loci, mannose phosphate isomerase and esterase, suggest that there is little gene exchange between parasite populations from humans and pigs. MtDNA haplotypes fall into two distinct clusters which differ in sequence by 3–4%; the two clusters broadly correspond to worms collected from humans and those collected from pigs. However, some parasites collected from humans have mtDNA characteristic of the 'pig Ascaris' haplotype cluster, while some parasites collected from pigs have mtDNA characteristic of the ' haplotype cluster. These shared haplotypes are unlikely to represent contemporary cross-infection events. Patterns of phylogenetic similarity and geographical distribution of these haplotypes suggest, instead, that they are the result of two historical introgressions of mtDNA between the two host-associated Ascaris populations. The results clearly demonstrate that Ascaris from humans and pigs are involved in separate transmission cycles in Guatemala.


This research study will investigate community music engagement by both Chinese-Australians and Chinese older people at two different older people's organizations with the aim of exploring the affects of music engagement on older people. The study seeks to explore cultural differences between Chinese-Australian older people and Chinese older people as they relate to their music engagement. The research contentions were that (1) active music engagement can enhance the quality of the life of older people and (2) music engagement offers particular benefits for maintaining and sharing cultural identity. This research will compare the data of two groups of older people who are either Chinese-Australian or Chinese in China to share their understandings about music engagement later in life. This discussion will be contextualized by a description of the Chinese community in Australia and an introduction to society in mainland China. This study will include an exploration of Chinese society, education and music in China as all participants live in China or lived there before migration. This phenomenological qualitative research approach allows an investigation of participants' understandings and experiences of community music engagement later in life. Phenomenological research seeks understanding through description of lived experience using personal history, culture and society, identifying the true nature or 'essence' of human experiences (Husserl, 1969). This research utilized a case study design. The data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), which aims to 'explore in detail how participants are making sense of their personal and social world, and the main currency for an IPA study is the meanings particular experiences, events, states hold for participants' (Smith & Osborn, 2003, p. 53). Four data collection strategies, semi-structured interviews, observations, documents and artifacts, and a researcher journal, were employed in this phenomenological case study. Active music participation offers a way that music can be used in the lives of older people to sustain well-being and health. This research explores the issues and concerns regarding music engagement, music learning and cultural influences among Chinese-Australian and Chinese older people. By exploring the affects of music in Chinese-Australian older people and Chinese older people's lives, four broad themes were identified from the data: Emotional well-being, connections with the past, shared interests and mental and physical well-being. Each of these themes is explored in the research through the words and experiences of the participants.


This paper reviews productive development policies (PDPs) in Guatemala, focusing on the alleged justification of existing programs in terms of the market or government failures they are meant to address. An effort is made to identify how the different instruments complement or contradict each other and how these situations came to be. The main hypothesis throughout the paper is that there are non-trivial contradictions within the set of PDPs and its implementation framework that render policy instruments ineffective or inefficient, with evidence from several case studies. On this basis and in light of international practices, the study develops a broad set of recommendations for improving the design and implementation of Guatemala's PDPs.


An attempt is made to distinguish logical from all other kinds of knowledge, especially mathematics. The tradition of stressing forms of proposition is revived, imitating the theory of moments in phenomenology from which it follows that logic is intrinsically dependent on the setting in which it is used. Sites are sought also for several topics that overlap with both logic and foundational branches of mathematics; they include set theory, model theory, axiomatisation and metamathematics. Logic is held exhibit structuralism in a way that mathematics does not. Both logic and its neighbouring topics manifest self-reference, which is an exceptionally ubiquitous but perplexing moment.


The prevalence and increased frequency of high-magnitude Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) in the Chilean and Argentinean Andes suggests this region will be prone to similar events in the future as glaciers continue to retreat and thin under a warming climate. Despite this situation, monitoring of glacial lake development in this region has been limited, with past investigations only covering relatively small regions of Patagonia. This study presents new glacial lake inventories for 1986, 2000 and 2016, covering the Central Andes, Northern Patagonia and Southern Patagonia. Our aim was to characterise the physical attributes, spatial distribution and temporal development of glacial lakes in these three sub-regions using Landsat satellite imagery and image datasets available in Google Earth and Bing Maps. Glacial lake water volume was also estimated using an empirical areavolume scaling approach. Results reveal that glacial lakes across the study area have increased in number (43%) and areal extent (7%) between 1986 and 2016. Such changes equate to a glacial lake water volume increase of 65 km during the 30-year observation period. However, glacial lake growth and emergence was shown to vary sub-regionally according to localised topography, meteorology, climate change, rate of glacier change and the availability of low gradient ice areas. These and other factors are likely to influence the occurrence of GLOFs in the future. This analysis represents the first large-scale census of glacial lakes in Chile and Argentina and will allow for a better understanding of lake development in this region, as well as, providing a basis for future GLOF


Introduction : Absence of students from classes can reduce the quality of education and increase the failure rate. The present study aims to assess the reasons of absence from classes in basic sciences from the viewpoints of medical students of Semnan University of Medical Sciences in 2011. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed using a questionnaire with the participation of medical students who undertook basic sciences' course and BSc. students who studied in year two of the course. A questionnaire containing demographic data and factors influencing on students' absence including teacher, student, educational processing and physical conditions of classrooms was designed. Students completed the questionnaire before starting of lectures in classrooms. Results: The results showed that 39% of students were absent two hours and 22.4% were absent for four hours per course credit and 38.6% said they were not aim to be absent except in emergency situation. at all. Inappropriate teaching was identified as the main reason for absence (3.53 / 4±1.1) followed by inadequate sleep the night before the class (3.45 / 4±1.33) lack of scholarship in teaching (3.43 / 4±1.21) and lack of self-interest to the field (1.76 / 4±1.13). Conclusion: Education planners should consider factors influencing on absence of students. In faculty recruitment, academic proficiency and scholarship of teaching should also be considered. Moreover, emotional status of students should be noticed.


It is a truism to say that conventional international humanitarian law (IHL) regulates international armed conflict (IAC) far more extensively than non-international armed conflict (NIAC). In IAC, conventional IHL authorizes both targeting and detention and carefully circumscribes their use. In NIAC, by contrast, conventional IHL is silent on the authorization for targeting and detention and imposes only rudimentary limits on when individuals may be targeted or detained.Like nature, however, international law abhors a vacuum. Many of the gaps in the conventional IHL of NIAC have been slowly filled by custom; the ICRC has concluded that 138 of the 161 customary rules of IHL now apply in both IAC and NIAC – nearly 86%. As a result, it is now common for scholars to claim that, with the notorious exceptions of the combatant's privilege and POW status, very few critical differences remain between IAC and NIAC concerning the applicable rules of IHL.From a positivist perspective, the gradual harmonization of IAC and NIAC through convention and custom is unproblematic, because both are formal sources of international law. Since 9/11, however, the United States has consistently taken the position that certain IAC-based rules of IHL can be applied in NIAC via a third method: analogy. The U.S. has argued, for example, that it can target members of any organized armed group that would qualify under IAC rules as a "co-belligerent" of al-Qaeda.In assessing the legitimacy of such analogies, it is tempting to focus on whether it makes sense to apply a particular IAC rule in NIAC. Is the Haqqani Network's relationship with al-Qaeda really equivalent to Italy's relationship with Nazi Germany? Emphasizing the substantive "fit" between IAC and NIAC, however, simply obscures a more fundamental question: where does the U.S.'s authority to analogize between IAC and NIAC come from?That is a critical question, for two reasons. First, targeting and detention potentially violate the human rights of the individuals they affect. As the International Law Commission has noted, it is not enough for targeting or detention to qualify as a legitimate act of self-defence under Art. 51 of the UN Charter; that targeting or detention must also be consistent with either IHL or international human rights law (IHRL), depending on which legal regime applies. Second, because all of the targeting and detention activities that occur in the NIAC between the U.S. and al-Qaeda take place extraterritorially, each U.S. use of force and each capture operation potentially violates the sovereignty of the state on whose territory it takes place. Put more simply, by relying on analogized rules of IHL to justify expanded targeting and detention of al-Qaeda, the U.S. potentially runs afoul of a number of prohibitive rules of international law: the principle of non-intervention; the prohibition on the use of force; and IHRL prohibitions on the arbitrary deprivation of life and liberty. What, then, is the legal basis for those analogies?This chapter's answer is straightforward: nothing. There is no basis in international law for taking rules of IHL that exist as a matter of convention and custom only in IAC and applying them in NIAC by analogy – which means that the U.S. is systematically violating international law by relying on those analogized rules to target and detain extraterritorially.


Bringing a sustainable population of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) back into the Rhine, after the species became extinct in the 1950s, is an important environmental ambition with efforts made both by governments and civil society. Our analysis finds a significant risk of failure of salmon reintroduction because of projected increases in water temperatures in a changing climate. This suggests a need to rethink the current salmon reintroduction ambitions or to start developing adaptive action. The paper shows that the moment at which salmon reintroduction may fail due to climate change can only be approximated because of inherent uncertainties in the interaction between salmon and its environment. The added value of the assessment presented in this paper is that it provides researchers with a set of questions that are useful from a policy perspective (by focusing on the feasibility of a concrete policy ambition under climate change). Thus, it offers opportunities to supply policy makers with practical insight in the relevance of climate change.


A novel colliding-enhanced Cr:LiSAF broad-band phase-conjugate resonator (PCR) has been investigated theoretically and experimentally. This kind of PCR is a low initiating threshold resonator. It can produce self-Q-switching narrow pulse with about 35 ns duration (FWHM), efficiently correct intracavity phase aberrations, and severalfold improve output laser beam quality.


Introduction: Cross-contamination and cross-infection can occur by direct contact with micro-organisms, indirect contact with contaminated objects, droplet transmission, and inhalation of airborne pathogens. In dentistry, operatory surfaces can routinely become contaminated with patient saliva, blood, and other fluids during treatment. Aims and Objectives: This review is aimed to identify cross-contamination and spread of infection by various means and the appropriate preventive measures to be implemented. This review will also highlight the various aspects that are neglected in various dental schools/dental practice or any dental set up that potentiate cross-contamination ultimately affecting the dentist, dental team and the patients. Materials and Methods: A review of the dental literature concerning cross-contamination was performed. Material appearing in the literature before 1996 was reviewed as exhaustively as possible and materials after 1996 were reviewed electronically. In Medline, key words like cross-contamination, sterilization, asepsis, infection, infection control, prevention were used in various combinations to obtain a potential reference for review. A total of 2245 English Language titles were found, many were repeated due to recurring searches. The headings were shortlisted and reviewed for detailed examination. Results: A comprehensive review to evaluate the methods of preventing cross-contamination in dentistry involving various aspects and challenges encountered in a dental set up was constructed which was missing in the references of the review. Conclusions: Awareness and the necessary precautions play a pivotal role in preventing the occurrence of cross-contamination. It is the responsibility of the entire dental team to work in unison to prevent the menace of cross-contamination and spread of infection.


Abstract. Based on a snow depth (SD) dataset retrieved from meteorological stations, this experiment explored snow indices including SD, snow covered days (SCDs), and snow phenology variations in China from 1952 to 2012. The results indicated that the snow in China exhibits regional differences, and the snow cover is mainly concentrated in three snow cover areas in Northeast China, northern Xinjiang and the Tibetan Plateau. In China, the annual average SD showed an increasing trend, and the increases in the average snow depth (SDaverage), cumulative snow depth (SDoverall) and maximum snow depth (SDmax) reached 0.04 cm, 0.05 cm and 0.07 cm per decade, respectively. The significant increases were mainly concentrated in areas higher than 40° N latitude, especially in Northeast China. The SDaverage, SDoveralland SDmax jump points are mainly in 1956, 1957, 1978, and 1987. In the first main period, the SDoverall oscillation in China is relatively stable, and its average period is approximately 13 years. The SCDs showed an increasing trend, with an increase of 0.5 days per decade. The significant increases in SCDs were also concentrated in areas higher than 40° N latitude, especially in Northeast China.However, in the Tibetan Plateau, the decrease in the SCDs reached 0.1 days per decade. In snow phenology, the snow duration days (SDDs) of China decreased, and 17.4 % of the meteorological stations showed significant decreasing trends. This result is mainly caused by the postponement of the snow onset date (SOD) and the advancement of the snow end date (SED). Geographical factors, including latitude, longitude and altitude, affect snow cover distribution directly and indirectly. The squared multiple correlations of SDDs and SCDs are greater than 0.9. Among the effects of SDDs and SCDs, the largest standardized total effect is from altitude on the SDDs, and the effect reaches 0.8.


The toll of HIV/AIDS and drug abuse on economically disadvantaged women of color in the United States is a public health problem of epidemic proportions. Malnutrition, believed to be pervasive in this population, exacerbates the devastating health effects of addiction and HIV. This study documented dietary deficiencies in this population and examined factors influencing the food choices and eating patterns of marginally housed and homeless African American HIV-positive substance abusing women. Data were collected from 28 women ages 19–55 using two 24-hour dietary recalls and a semi-structured interview guide. Data revealed multiple nutritional intake hazards including skipped meals, substitution of carbohydrate-laden foods for dairy foods rich in animal fat and proteins, and an absence of raw fruits and vegetables indicative of deficiencies in key macro- and micronutrients. Food risks were increased for homeless women who were more likely to lack public assistance, have difficulty accessing free food service, and frequently eating food from dumpsters. Qualitative data analysis of interviews generated three major themes describing the context in which nutritional deficiencies emerged: (1) diet-disease and food-safety misconceptions; (2) socio-cultural and lifestyle barriers; and (3) lack of personal resources and neighborhood food availability and affordability. The relevance of these findings to nutrition intervention programs for this population is discussed.


In this thesis, I discuss engineering colloidal particles to have specific, isotropic interactions and studying their cluster geometries in equilibrium. I discuss light scattering experiments showing that a highly specific protein, Dscam, is unstable against thermal aggregation. This result lead me to use DNA instead to control interparticle specificity. I coated 1-micron diameter polystyrene particles uniformly with DNA. I used fluorescence microscopy with oxygen-scavenging enzymes to observe these particles self-assembling in clusters. These experiments show that a packing of 6 spheres that is rarely seen in a single-component system is observed very often in an optimized 3-species system. Then I show experiments using the same 3 species but 9 total particles, finding that the equilibrium yields of the most likely cluster relative to other stable clusters are lower than at 6 particles. I conclude from these experiments that optimizing the assembly of an otherwise unlikely configuration may require nearly as many species as particles. Finally, I investigate the scalability of self-assembly of particles with isotropic and specific interactions theoretically. I use both exact and approximate partition functions to show that spheres with specific interactions can have energy landscapes with thermodynamically large numbers of strictly local minima relative to the number of their ground states. Compared to single-component systems, these systems of many different species may spend much more time in kinetic traps and never reach their ground states. Finally, I discuss briefly some directions for further study, including questions of how the results in this thesis may be related to protein folding and complex formation.


The paper analyzes the data of the sociologic and demographic survey to show what attitudes towards marriage life can be observed among the people in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). We found that there are generations' differences in their attitudes towards the gist, forms and principles of marriage, as well as the reasons and motives of family conflicts and divorces. In respondents' opinions - regardless their marriage and family status - any marriage conflict happens due to a number of reasons connected with each other, and their impact acquires a character of a chain reaction - a primary reason induces a chain of disagreement eventually demonstrating the vulnerability of marriage relationship.


THE EFFECT OF STEROID EXTRACTS OF SEA CUCUMBER (Holothuria scabra) AND 17α METHYLTESTOSTERONE AT DIFFERENT TEMPERATURE ON JUVENIL FRESH WATER CRAYFISH (Cherax quadricarinatus) By Fadhli Dzil Ikrom Red claw (Cherax quadricarinatus) is one kind of fresh water cray fish with high economic value which encourages farmers to increase their production. However, there are several obstacles where the growth of female individuals is faster than male. To overcome this problem, it is important to undergo a monosex (single gender) cultivation. The aim of this research is to find out the effect of sea cucumber's steroid extract and 17α methyltestosterone at different temperature to sex reversal to males on juvenile freshwater crayfish, Cherax quadricarinatus. This research was designed using Factorial Complete Random Design Method. The treatments were observed at temperatures of 27° C and 31oC as follows: 50 mg/kg of sea cucumber's steroid extracts at temperatures of 27°C and 31oC, and 50 mg/kg of 17α methyltestosterone at temperatures of 27 ° C and 31 ° C. The results showed that the most effective use of steroid extracts of sea cucumber and 17α methyltestosterone was at 27°C to increase the male percentage of 75.16% and 73.79% respectively and gave a significant effect on female genital decrease, total length, daily weight gain and biomass. While giving the steroid hormone did not make a significant effect on survival rate, intersex percentage and feed conversion of juvenile freshwater crayfish.


Abstract In the last decade, extensive reading (ER) had been incorporated into English as a foreign language (EFL) education in various Japanese institutions. It restored the once broken balance of accuracy and fluency in traditional English education, and assisted reluctant EFL learners to start reading. However, ER required rather longer term for elementary learners to enjoy its benefits and the learners needed an extra encouragement to continue ER for the longer term. Book-talk was such an activity to encourage learners to read voluntary and to improve their language skills additionally. In a book-talk, several learners sat around a table, introduced the books they had read during the week, and accepted questions and comments from the others in turn. It also fitted well in lessons because 3-minute talks and 2-minute Q&A of six members took only 30 minutes. We will report how the activity motivated elder students, who had three or more years' experience of ER, to continue their reading outside the class, and how it encouraged autonomous ER of adult EFL learners, who were reading English books borrowing from the college library. A combination of few talks and many readings worked well in EFL settings.


Reena Patel, Working the Night Shift: Women in India's Call Center Industry. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. 208 pp. It is fitting to write about Patel's Working the Night Shiftfor Anthropological Quarterly. The study of women and work in South Asia owes a lot to the field of Anthropology in particular. Feminist Anthropology of South Asia has a long history with scholars like Hannah Papanek, Johanna Lessinger, Ursula Sharma, etc., while scholars in Patel's field of Geography (as well as my own field of Sociology) have been less interested. Anthropologists were pioneers in addressing the complexities of enclosure, movement, and mobility on women's (mostly rural) lives. Patel's book takes up where they leave off, addressing Indian gender and labor dynamics in the global information and communication technology industry at the beginning of the 21st century. Working the Night Shiftfocuses on the urban experiences of female call center workers in Mumbai, India. It illuminates an important development over the last decade: the emergence of the transnational outsourcing industry in India. With the advancement of fiber optic cables, satellites, and the Internet, a variety of information and communication services can be sent from the Global North to South. In turn, new sources of employment have flourished in India, including customer service phone centers. What has accompanied this process, however, is a "reversal of work time" (Poster 2007a). Employees in India are shifting their lives entirely to the night in order to be available during the daylight hours of their US and UK based customers (among others). With these dynamics, Indian women have been pulled for the first time into nighttime jobs on a wide scale. Patel reveals a paradox in that, just at the moment when women are entering the public sphere and nocturnal urban spaces, their movements are becoming more heavily controlled. As they gain higher levels of education and earn their own incomes, they simultaneously face new kinds of surveillance and restriction. Patel draws attention to the downsides and upsides for women of the global information workforce. Against a call center literature that has been dominated by surveys, Patel offers some rare ethnographic, insider views of this phenomenon. She actually lived as a night-time woman in Mumbai, observing firsthand what the call center workers go through. She goes inside peoples' homes, rides the taxis, hangs out in the malls, cafes, bars, etc. She also interviewed 96 people, ran focus groups, and conducted participant observation. This monograph describes an important phenomenon in lively detail. Her argument, as outlined in Chapter 1, is about "recodifying women's mobility" in the contemporary era (24). Reminiscent of feminist geographers like McDowell (1999) and Wright (2006), Patel crafts her analysis around issues of gender and space. She explains how the narrative of protecting women's safety and morality has legitimated a number of temporal and mobility barriers. She then interweaves this framework with captivating stories of women's agency in disrupting those regimes and how they take advantage of freedoms to work and move at night. The first half of the book spotlights the implications for women's mobility outside the workplace. Chapter 3 discusses the role of the police and "nosy neighbors" in enforcing restrictions on women's time and place. The discussion of the way in which mobile phones keep women tied to the house virtually while they are physically in public is fascinating. Chapter 4 points out the contradictions of employee shuttles, which enable women to get to work at night but also trap them inside new zones of harassment by drivers and "security" guards. Women's connections to their families are addressed in the second half of the book. In Chapter 6, we see how the fundamental gendered divisions of labor within the household (with both parents and husbands) remain surprisingly intact, even if they are rearranged somewhat by women's shifting schedules. …


A critical, but largely unexamined assumption in the debate over reform policy design, concerns the complementarity or substitutability of market competition and private ownership in increasing firm efficiency. We analyse a simple Cournot model that distinguishes two aspects of privatization interacting with market opening: privatization of a firm and privatization of its competitors. Under plausible conditions, the model implies that privatizing a firm is a substitute for exposing it to competitive markets, but privatizing its competitors is complementary. Our empirical analysis uses augmented 3-factor translog production functions estimated on 1992-99 panel data for 13,288 Russian manufacturing enterprises. We find that nonstate ownership of a firm reduces the marginal efficiency impact from product market dispersion, but the share of its competitors that are nonstate increases this marginal impact. Disaggregating nonstate ownership, we find that the shares of competitors in all three nonstate types are complementary with dispersed market structure, where the strongest complementarity involves foreign ownership. The evidence suggests that an important indirect impact of private ownership may be the intensification of market competition, and thus that competition only among state-owned enterprises may be ineffectual in stimulating them to increase efficiency.


We demonstrate a system for capturing multi-thousand frame-per-second (fps) video using a dense array of cheap 30 fps CMOS image sensors. A benefit of using a camera array to capture high-speed video is that we can scale to higher speeds by simply adding more cameras. Even at extremely high frame rates, our array architecture supports continuous streaming to disk from all of the cameras. This allows us to record unpredictable events, in which nothing occurs before the event of interest that could be used to trigger the beginning of recording. Synthesizing one high-speed video sequence using images from an array of cameras requires methods to calibrate and correct those cameras' varying radiometric and geometric properties. We assume that our scene is either relatively planar or is very far away from the camera and that the images can therefore be aligned using projective transforms. We analyze the errors from this assumption and present methods to make them less visually objectionable. We also present a new method to automatically color match our sensors. Finally, we demonstrate how to compensate for spatial and temporal distortions caused by the electronic rolling shutter, a common feature of low-end CMOS sensors.


Large-scale distributed training of deep acoustic models plays an important role in today's high-performance automatic speech recognition (ASR). In this paper we investigate a variety of asynchronous decentralized distributed training strategies based on data parallel stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to show their superior performance over the commonly-used synchronous distributed training via allreduce, especially when dealing with large batch sizes. Specifically, we study three variants of asynchronous decentralized parallel SGD (ADPSGD), namely, fixed and randomized communication patterns on a ring as well as a delay-by-one scheme. We introduce a mathematical model of ADPSGD, give its theoretical convergence rate, and compare the empirical convergence behavior and straggler resilience properties of the three variants. Experiments are carried out on an IBM supercomputer for training deep long short-term memory (LSTM) acoustic models on the 2000-hour Switchboard dataset. Recognition and speedup performance of the proposed strategies are evaluated under various training configurations. We show that ADPSGD with fixed and randomized communication patterns cope well with slow learners. When learners are equally fast, ADPSGD with the delay-by-one strategy has the fastest convergence with large batches. In particular, using the delay-by-one strategy, we can train the acoustic model in less than 2 hours using 128 V100 GPUs with competitive word error rates.


ABSTRACT This article will enhance the understanding of Zakat's contribution to social welfare provision in the changing social welfare landscape of Europe. It will contribute to the understanding of emerging Zakat within the framework of the welfare regimes in Europe in relation to the more established forms of Caritas and Diaconia. Data was gathered from the Welfare and Value (WaVe) research program in 13 cities and 12 countries 2005–2009. The research was conducted through observation and in-depth research with a descriptive approach to the complexity of majority–minority relations in each town, followed by an analytical phase which addressed various factors in relation to social cohesion, values, minorities, and gender. In this article, the data from the WaVe study was coded and analyzed, mainly to explore the way Zakat is implemented in the European context and within the framework of different contextual welfare regimes using Esping-Andersen typology and Van der Ven institutional model on religious & social identity. The results confirm the dominant role of Caritas and Diaconia but with emerging & innovative Zakat in some countries and a marginal role in mainly Eastern Europe. Zakat is also becoming and alternative & complimentary welfare provision model in Germany, France, and Croatia.


This article considers the evolving role of information and communication technology within the modern liberal state. Most of the literature focuses on e-government projects, usually seen as opportunities to innovate the business processes of government in close alignment with ideas drawn from New Public Management (NPM). This article argues that the adoption of such a view of e-government overlooks the opportunity to pursue wider innovation in state governance to create more democratic forms of governance. It outlines alternative models for e-government and illustrates them with successful cases of projects based on such models.


This article explores the role of history as a predicting factor in the cases of the Polish Catholic Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church, and the East Germany Protestant churches. By examining the role of the Christian church in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, this research suggests that the historical role that the Polish Catholic Church and the Romanian Orthodox Church each played foreshadowed the role that each would play under their respective communist regimes and then in the fall of those regimes. The case of the East Germany Protestant churches however seems, on the surface, to offer a contradiction to historical precedent. The Polish Catholic Church was in opposition to the imposed precommunist governments in Poland, opposed the communists when they were in power, and played a significant role in causing the downfall of the communist regime. The Romanian Orthodox Church submitted to the temporal authorities before World War II, while the communists were in power, and during the downfall of the communist regime. In contrast, the German Protestant churches, with their history of submission to secular regional authorities and submission to an all-German church under the Nazis seemed to alter their historical approach by standing in opposition to the East German communist regime and aiding in its downfall. This research postulates that the apparent divergent case of the East German Protestant churches was consistent with historical precedent: after WWII both the tradition of regionalism and submission to an all-German ecclesiastical authority converged but the communist authorities were outside both traditions, so the East German Protestant churches felt free to stand in opposition to this government. History as a predicting factor for Church institutional behavior is useful in all three case studies, but the East German case illustrates the complexity that one can encounter when using past behavior to predict future behavior. There may be more than one historical pattern acting on the events of the present. Other possibly divergent factors, such as church organizational structure and influence of individual church leaders, in fact actually served to enhance the influence of historical patterns in all three cases. It is well documented (see for example Echikson, 1990; Von Der Heydt, 1993; Ramet, 1991) that Christian institutions played a significant role in the East Central European revolutions of 1989. But the global Christian Church is not a monolithic institution and, just as the revolutions of 1989 were different for each of the former communist countries, so the role that the Christian Church played varied from state to state. This can be a substantial help to understanding the complex relations between church and state. Do an institution's historical patterns of behavior necessarily predict how that organization will act in the present and the future? Do organizations rich in historic traditions alter their behavior after decades or even centuries of behaving one way in society? This article will compare the seemingly historically consistent cases of the role of the Polish Roman Catholic (1) Church and the role of the Romanian Orthodox Church with the Protestant churches in Eastern Germany (united first under the Evangelical Church in Germany and then under the Kirchenbund). (2) What this research hopes to illumine is the nature of the East German case and the factors that cause the Protestant churches' behavior toward the state to appear to drastically change over time. Research on this subject suggests two distinct roles that a church body can play with regard to a secular government. A church can become a collaborator with the regime (Ramet, 1998) or it can become an oppositional force in society (Levine, 1992). Although it can be extrapolated that each of the examined churches fit into both categories at various times, depending on the situation, there is generally one category that stands out for each. …


Rapid cooling of the brain in the first minutes following the onset of cerebral ischemia is a potentially attractive preservation method. This computer modeling study was undertaken to examine brain-cooling profiles in response to various external cooling methods and protocols, in order to guide the development of clinical cooling devices. The criterion of successful cooling is the attainment of a 33.0°C average brain temperature within 30 minutes of treatment. Comparison of the finite element model results with a formal mathematical solution, give confidence that the simulation methods are sound. The cooling simulations considered to date all indicate that no one means of external cooling of the head or neck is sufficient to cool the brain in a reasonable period of time (30 minutes). Neither ice packs applied to head or neck, or cooling helmets can satisfy the 33.0°C target temperature specification. This central conclusion of insubstantial cooling is supported by the modest enhancements reported in experimental investigations of externally applied cooling. The key problem is overcoming the protective effect of warm blood perfusion, which reaches the brain via the uncooled carotid arterial supply and effectively blocks the external cooling wave from advancing to the core of the brain. This suggests that other cooling means should be explored requiring a realistic simulation of cooling of other pertinent parts of the human anatomy.Copyright © 2002 by ASME


A paradigm is set of shared ideas, assumptions and rules, including values and cultural beliefs, by which we understand and progress research on scientific problems. Paradigms enable scientific advances through carefully positioned questions within the paradigm, and research that advances our knowledge of the paradigm and its boundaries and assumptions. Paradigmatic conflicts reveal failings of the paradigm and drive the search for a better theory that matches empirical data. For mental healthcare, this means learning about improving people's positive experiences of living, protection against harms and adversity, reducing emotional distress, and discovery of new treatments for mental illnesses.* Therapies and treatments are often formulated within paradigmatic boundaries, but given the lack of a major paradigm shift in the care of the mentally ill, policy makers, commissioners, providers and practitioners are all still searching for the new paradigm. Perhaps we already have all the sub-unit paradigms we can hope to discover, and rather we should now better derive a meta-paradigm that links these to produce overall theories about the genesis of emotional distress and mental illnesses, and pathways for recovery and treatment. A revolution in neurosciences is attracting investment, and offers hope and optimism for discovery of new treatments for mental illnesses. The ambition is that a better understanding of neurobiological mechanisms of symptom production offers more effective models of intervention. For example, Fouche et al (pp. 67–74) and Peters et al (pp. 75–82) show how striatal connections might explain symptoms of, respectively, obsessive– compulsive disorder and psychoses. At the same time there is a challenge to reductionism that emphasises neuroscience (as opposed to socio-cultural and health systems research) as a natural science that can uniquely herald a fundamental shift of paradigms to understand, prevent and treat mental illnesses. A rapidly emerging new paradigm is 'cultural neuroscience'. This asserts the co-evolution of genetic, biological, neural, social and cultural affordances, that improve the human capacity to communicate, cooperate, survive and adapt. It is through interpretive processes of communication and sharing of meanings and perspectives that people experience their place in the social world and in relationships and roles. This is culture as a process. The assertion is that the biological and neuroscientific basis of health and the affordances offered are closely aligned with the social and cultural adaptations needed for healthy living; these adaptations lead to optimal patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication, including the use of imitation and identification through play and ritual, leading to shared imagined worlds, leading to trust and cooperative relationships. Communication without this cultural context becomes empty and open to misinterpretation and distrust. Thus, whatever the neuroscientific basis of a therapy, the impact might be enhanced or diminished by shared meanings and intentions (cultures) in which people exist and experience the world. It is through culture that people relate and communicate with each other, organise their collective and individual agency. People use these shared belief–action transactions to draw on powerful sources of motivation and emotional strength in order to cope and to overcome adversity, or to protest about exclusion and isolation. Other emerging methods, which need harnessing into a paradigm of research and clinical care, include genetic epidemiology deploying Mendelian randomisation, now promoted as perhaps the only way that epidemiological studies can avoid bias and confounding and reverse causality; Mendelian randomisation also allows for tests of causality where randomised controlled trials are untenable. This powerful methodology is applied in this month's BJPsych: Wium-Andersen et al (pp. 31–38) suggest the association of depression with short telomere length previously reported in cross-sectional analysis is not verified in prospective or causal genetic analyses. Sequeira et al (pp. 39–46) show that early menarche is causally associated with depression at age 14, but not at a later age. Brain connectivity studies may also reveal new mechanisms of symptom generation that afford protective interventions. Three studies attempt to deploy new paradigms of causality to find better treatments for mania (Bartoli et al, pp. 10–15), residual depression (Alda et al, pp. 54–60) and early Alzheimer's disease (Huntley et al, pp. 61–66). Alternative foci for investigation are social structures and status, and health systems. For example, Burns and Baggaley (pp. 6–9) debate the pros and cons of a functional split between in-patient and out-patient care, relevant perhaps for high-income countries with these service models, but perhaps less applicable to other country contexts. The biopsychosocial paradigm originally introduced by Engel is yet to be fully adopted and advanced in mental healthcare, yet it holds much potential for improving outcomes and research benefits. Editorials by Davies & Roache (pp. 3–5) and Daly (pp. 1–2) recommend more focus on the biopsychosocial, and on premature mortality and chronic disease, rather than risk assessment, given the science suggesting that risk assessment is too imprecise. Indeed, long-term conditions are associated with greater intensity of care and poorer outcomes after high-intensity therapy (Delgadillo et al, pp. 47–53). The importance of context, political and social, is highlighted by a review of trials with and without pharmaceutical company sponsorship, showing superiority over psychological therapies only for sponsored trials (Cristea et al, pp. 16–23). The use of guidelines aims to improve outcomes, resources and overall provider performance, but Girlanda et al (pp. 24–30) show that these improve patient outcomes, but not provider performance. These might all be understood as cultures of care and research, in which the paradigms shape what we see as important and relevant to immediate care practices, rather than the longer-term evolutionary advantages proposed by cultural neurosciences. These astronomically different vistas of research and clinical care must be drawn together if we are to discover the meta-paradigm.


A Multimodal Analysis of Picture Books for Children goes beyond the relation between the representation of reality and language alone; instead, it aims to analyze the intersemiosis between verbal and visual elements in a sample of nine picture books. The chapters included in this book take the most relevant systemic-functional and visual social semiotic theories a step further from previous studies and apply them to the genre of children's tales. Within the frameworks of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics and Kress and van Leeuwen's Visual Social Semiotics, the aim is to identify the verbal and visual strategies available to the writer and illustrator (i) to convey representational meanings, (ii) to set up interpersonal relationships within the tale itself, as well as external relationships between writer and reader and, finally, (iii) to create coherent tales. This is achieved by analyzing and identifying the ideational, interpersonal and textual choices available to the writer to make meaning in picture books, and comparing them with the corresponding representational, interactive and compositional choices made by the illustrator. The analysis reveals how the verbal and visual modalities contribute to each other's meaning and makes the potential of combining verbal and non-verbal language in picture books evident.


OBJECTIVE
Pain represents one of the most important predictors of quality of life in patients with osteoarthritis (OA). Prior studies were conducted in hospital settings and/or failed to control important factors such as depression, obesity, or physical activity. Therefore, the aim of the study was to determine factors associated with pain intensity in a large sample of OA patients in primary care.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional survey with a questionnaire containing sociodemographic data, the short form of the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scale (AIMS2-SF), and the Patient Health questionnaire, to assess concomitant depression. A hierarchical stepwise multiple regression analysis with the AIMS2-SF dimension "symptom" reflecting patients' pain intensity as the dependent variable was performed.

PATIENTS
1,021 patients form 75 primary care practices.

RESULTS
In the regression model four factors remained, explaining 46.5% of the variation in the dependent variable (P < 0.001): Severity of depression reflected in the PHQ-9 score showed the strongest association with pain intensity (beta = 0.459, P < 0.001). Functional disability of the lower limb achieved a beta of 0.427 (P = 0.003). A low educational level was associated with increased pain scores (beta = -0.321; P = 0.034), as well as a weak social network, (beta = 0.211; P = 0.042).

CONCLUSIONS
A variety of physical and psychological factors were associated with pain intensity. Appropriate pain treatment of OA patients in primary care should consider as many of these factors as possible. Further research is needed to assess if a more comprehensive and proactive approach will result in less pain and in increased quality of life.


Jus cogens are peremptory norms of international law. No treaty between states can violate them. They are based on fundamental moral precepts and are supposed to reflect a global consensus. As a result, the views of the people of the world – not just states and courts and international lawyers – ought to be assessed as part of that. Direct democratic input into what should be considered jus cogens can be promoted by convening Global Citizens' Juries on the norms under discussion. Deliberations in small groups of people drawn from many nations can provide robust indicators of what world opinion would be, if everyone had access to similar information and discussions. Where broad consensus emerges across several such Global Citizens' Juries, countries, courts and others ought to take that into account in deciding what to treat as peremptory norms of international law. Such a process would mark a significant contribution to improving the democratic deficit that currently prevails in making and implementing international law.


Stanley Kauffmann has been active in criticism since 1958. At that time he became the film critic of The New Republic, the journal he has been associated with ever since, except for an eight-month period in 1966 when he was the theater critic of The New York Times. From 1969 to 1979 he served as both film and theater critic of The New Republic. He continues as film critic but wrote theater criticism for the Saturday Review for five years, from 1979 to 1985. In 1974 Mr. Kauffmann was given the annual George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and in 1982 he received the George Polk Award for his film criticism. Mr. Kauffmann has published five collections of film cnticism: A WorUon Film (1966), Figures of Light (1971), Living Images (1975), Before My Eyes (1980), and Field of View (1986). He is editor (with Bruce Henstell) of the anthology American Film Criticism: From the Beginnings to "Citizen Kane" (1972). And he has published two collections of theater miicism, Persons of the Drama (1976) and Theater Criticisms (1983). At seventy-one, Stanley Kauffmann is the dean of American film and drama critics. Perhaps no other writer in American history has brought as much learning, style, and wit to the practice of regular reviewing. Without question, no other writer has ever iudged the "popular" arts of film and theater by higher standards. The following interview took place in Mr. Kauffmann's New York apartment on July 29, 1987. Bert Cardullo University of Richmond QUESTION: I'd like first to address the insistent criticism over the years that your film reviews have a literary bent. I understand why people make this criticism of you, but I don't agree with it. And I'd like you to comment on this subject, if you would. KAUFFMANN: Well, I've always been amused, because my critics don't know what my chief defect is. Or was. I hope I've amended it in the course of time, but it was certainly there when I began. My defect wasn't that I had been writing novels or had been in publishing. I think I had published seven novels before I ever wrote film criticism-six, and the seventh came out later. It was that I approached films from the theatrical point of view, not from the literary one. I was educated for the theater. I worked for ten years in a repertory company, I'd written plays, I'd done some other work around the theater. Through these years I had always been going to films and loving them, but I had always thought of them as secondary. QUESTION: As something a stage actor did when he couldn't get a New York theater job. KAUFFMANN: Yes, when he, or a director or a writer, couldn't get work in the theater. I thought that it was wonderful to have films around, but they were like the vegetables around the roast: the roast was what mattered. And through a series of accidents, I became a film critic. And when I look back at some of those early reviews of mine, what I see is a theater person going to films. QUESTION: Your theater background is certainly clear in your analysis and criticism of acting. KAUFFMANN: I hope that's true; I've wanted it to be. I hope that element hasn't diminished. But I hope also that, through the years, I've learned more about film and about film values as such. I'm very anti the auteur theory, but I owe the auteur theory a debt. It made me look at films as films. And the auteur critics helped me to make the examination of purely filmic values part-not by any means the primary part, as it is with them, but certainly a part-of my criticism. QUESTION: It's interesting that you say you're against the auteur theory. I'm against it and for it because, on the one hand, as you suggest, it is good to look at film as an autonomous, unique art form . Please explicate the other side. KAUFFMANN: The other side is summed up in the one word, priorities. I can't be expected, I as an individual, can't be expected to leave at the door of the film theater all my experience of life and art and concentrate only on what the film has to offer me in cinema stylistics. …