This paper provides a review of the modern finance literature examining how liquidity affects the private sector demand for real assets and financial securities. This literature shows that when firms evaluate risky investments they distinguish fundamental earnings risk and liquidity risks, and choose discount rates that link the discount rates they use to the liquidity and structure of their balance sheets. The government can mimic their behaviour by adopting a procedure that (i) ranks projects by discounting their expected costs and benefits by a low 'fundamental earnings' discount rate, perhaps 4 – 5 percent; and (ii) imposes a second 'liquidity' discount based on the government's balance sheet structure and debt objectives that simultaneously determines the quantity of investments. By more closely copying private sector practice, this approach will directly link the quantity of investments that a government makes to the discount rates it uses. It will also enable the New Zealand government to reduce the discount rates it uses to evaluate long horizon investments without compromising its aim of ensuring the public and private sectors adopt a common method of evaluating investment projects.


This article introduces a random particle-based traceability tag for textiles. The proposed tag not only act as a unique signature for the corresponding textile product but also possess the features such as easy to manufacture and hard to copy. It seeks applications in brand authentication and traceability in textile and clothing (T&C) supply chain. A prototype has been developed by screen printing process, in which micron-scale particles were mixed with the printing paste and printed on cotton fabrics to attain required randomness. To encode the randomness, the image of the developed tag was taken and analyzed using image processing. The randomness of the particles acts as a product key or unique signature which is required to decode the tag. Finally, washing and abrasion resistance tests were conducted to check the durability of the printed tag.


Traditionally, the function of the hippocampus (HPC) has been viewed in unitary terms, but there is growing evidence that the HPC is functionally differentiated along its septotemporal axis. Lesion studies in rodents and functional brain imaging in humans suggest a preferential role for the septal HPC in spatial learning and a preferential role for the temporal HPC in anxiety. To better enable cross‐species comparison, we present an in vivo amperometric technique that measures changes in brain tissue oxygen at high temporal resolution in freely‐moving rats. We recorded simultaneously from the dorsal (septal; dHPC) and ventral (temporal; vHPC) HPC during two anxiety tasks and two spatial tasks on the radial maze. We found a double‐dissociation of function in the HPC, with increased vHPC signals during anxiety and increased dHPC signals during spatial processing. In addition, dHPC signals were modulated by spatial memory demands. These results add a new dimension to the growing consensus for a differentiation of HPC function, and highlight tissue oxygen amperometry as a valuable tool to aid translation between animal and human research.


The literature survey has shown that not much work has been reported on the interaction mechanism of ionic liquids (ILs) with sulfur in model oil system. In recently published work, the interaction was predicted using COSMO-RS where the strength of hydrogen bond of anion should be reduced in order to increase thiophene extraction capacity. On the other hand, the same researchers also found that the smaller sized cations would lead to higher selectivity, which could lower the capacity and vice versa. While others have reported that the absorption capacity of sulfur compounds in ILs are strongly dependent on the chemical structures, physical properties and compactness between the cation and the anion of the ILs. However, these conclusions lead to a broad selection of ILs for extractive desulphurization process.


I graduated from medical school in 1957. I first went into hospital practice for 3½; years, and then went to Africa for 5 years before returning to Holland to resume practicing as a Family Physician. I have also participated in the postgraduate training and education for family doctors in Amsterdam, Currently, there are approximately 2,300 patients in my practice, about average for a Dutch physi- cian. Ten percent of those patients are over the age of 65.


Pulmonary embolism (PE) affects 0.5–1 per 1000 people in the general population each year, and is one of the most common preventable causes of death among hospitalised patients. The clinical diagnosis of PE is unreliable and must be confirmed objectively with ventilation perfusion scanning or computed tomography pulmonary angiography. The diagnosis of PE can be reliably excluded, without the need for diagnostic imaging, if the clinical pretest probability for PE is low and the D‐dimer assay result is negative. The initial treatment of PE is low‐molecular‐weight heparin or unfractionated heparin for at least 5 days, followed by warfarin (target international normalised ratio [INR], 2.0–3.0) for at least 3–6 months. Patients with a high clinical pretest probability of PE should commence treatment immediately while awaiting the results of the diagnostic work‐up. Thrombolysis is indicated for patients with objectively confirmed PE who are haemodynamically unstable. Percutaneous transcatheter or surgical embolectomy may be life‐saving in patients ineligible for, or unresponsive to, thrombolytic therapy. Unresolved issues in the management of venous thromboembolism include the roles of thrombophilia testing, thrombolysis for the treatment of stable PE patients who present with right ventricular dysfunction, and new anticoagulants; and the duration of anticoagulation for first unprovoked venous thromboembolism.


In statistics, many commonly encountered quantities take the form of density weighted integrals. This paper treats their numerical estimation within the Chebyshev approximation framework. In particular, we discuss how a generic one dimensional density function can be incorporated into the construction of Clenshaw-Curtis type quadrature rules, either through an adjustment of the quadrature weights or by generating a set of quadrature nodes that satisfies the optimal spacing property in terms of the density-weighted uniform error. We consider a variety of density functions, including those that are piecewise continuous, or have unbounded support. The accompanying numerical experiments illustrate the behavior and performance of the resulting quadrature rules and offer a comparison with a variety of existing approaches for estimating density weighted integrals.


This study investigates the relationship between R&D investment, patent filings and financial success for firms. Firms which have high degrees of R&D investment and large numbers of patents are referred to as "high innovation energy corporations†. This study investigates the financial performance of such firms among a sample of Taiwanese high-tech companies from 2000 to 2011. Findings indicate that the lag between R&D expense and benefit, and the lead periods for patents (i.e., the duration of the application process) significantly affect stock returns. Moreover, these delays and a firm's R&D expense rate also impact net sales. In other words, firms with a high level of innovative energy have better stock returns and net sales, but such firms do not have an advantage in terms of operating income. Empirical results indicate that higher R&D expenses increase operating costs which, in turn, decreases operating income despite increased net sales.


Détente as well as economic cooperation between East and West have been fundamentally challenged. But economic relations became a source of tension between East and West and among NATO-allies long before the Polish government imposed martial law in 1981. It is argued that trade can still provide one of the few channels of interaction at a time of highly dangerous rivalry. At the same time, however, the opposing view on the future direction of East-West trade between the United States and Western Europe has become a source of serious tension within NATO. Considering the different roles the United States and Western European countries play in the military, political, and economic world, it is hardly surprising that East-West trade produces frictions. In order to shed light on the background of today's all too obvious reversal of the economic (and political) cooperation with the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and to understand the often panicky and confrontational policy statements (especially by the U. S. government), this article (1) tries to categorize different trade policy approaches and options, (2) presents empirical data on the development of trade during the period of détente, (3) examines connotations which are attached to terms like trade dependency and economic vulnerability and (4) analyzes in two case studies the effects and purposes of economic sanctions and the diverging interests regarding the West European-Siberian gas pipeline deal which have surfaced. Experience with economic warfare, embargoes, sanctions etc. suggests the limits of this type of activity as a foreign policy tool. Even though embargoes and economic sanctions might not have the desired effect in the target country, they will nevertheless probably be imposed to serve ideological goals, since they are considered useful to declare a government's position as regards internal and external publics (voters and allies). Whether economic trade with the East is seen as an instrument for disciplining the adversary or as a means for improving political relations depends much more on the political and economic stakes involved than on objective possibilities for success.


OBJECTIVES
Determine the viable yield of screening electronic Veterans Health Administration (VHA) records to identify patients who stop taking a long-term medication for reasons that might be addressed by healthcare providers.

STUDY DESIGN
Prospectively screened cohort with mailed follow-up of positive screens.

METHODS
Electronic healthcare records were screened to identify patients receiving care in a Veterans Administration (VA) Health Care System who became past due for resupply of medication (statin) prescribed to reduce cholesterol and risks of adverse cardiovascular events. Subsequently, administrative data were used to classify and characterize patients as true or false positive screens. A follow-up survey mailed to the first 1000 positive screens asked them if they were still taking a statin provided by the VHA, and if not, why?

RESULTS
From February to July 2010, 1000 (4.6%) of the statin-recipient cohort of 21,935 became past due for a resupply. Subsequently 824 (3.8%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.5%-4.0%) were classified as true positives (positive predictive value 82%; 95% CI 80%-85%), and 176 (0.8%; 95% CI 0.7%-0.9%) as false positives. However, the 824 true positives included 95 deceased, 17 long-term care residents, 302 who reported good reasons for no longer getting the statin, and 208 who eventually got another supply. The overall yield of good candidates for efforts to reinstate long-term use of statins was only 20%.

CONCLUSIONS
The viable yield from electronically screening VA healthcare records to find patients who stopped taking statins was low. More complete records and sophisticated screening programs are needed to improve the yield.


The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption in the lives of millions of people, including children and adolescents. Youth out-of-school time (OST) programs are essential ecological assets and their disruption during the pandemic may have a major impact on youth developmental pathways. Youth programs are one of the primary ways to promote positive youth development (PYD) and, in turn, develop healthy and thriving young adults who contribute positively to society. The pandemic raises the question of how to sustain developmentally oriented forms of youth leisure in times of crisis and, especially, how to support youth with few resources. Although there is considerable scientific evidence regarding the promotion of PYD through OST programs (e.g., sport, clubs, youth groups), public health initiatives to control the pandemic also curtail the delivery of such programs. Nevertheless, research on youth programs can be applied to help support PYD during the pandemic. In this commentary, we review key elements contributing to the effectiveness of youth development programs and provide ideas for how to sustain, adapt, and create these elements and bring them into unstructured leisure settings in the face of the pandemic. In doing so, we highlight particular challenges to implementation, surmise who may be most at risk, and present potential opportunities afforded by the unique situation. Throughout, we highlight innovative examples of adaptation exhibited in affected communities. We conclude with a call to action for researchers and practitioners to unite efforts to support PYD through leisure even in the face of crisis.


After centuries of neglect, the ethics of food are back with a vengeance. Justice for food workers and small farmers has joined the rising tide of concern over the impact of industrial agriculture on food animals and the broader environment, all while a global epidemic of obesity-related diseases threatens to overwhelm modern health systems. An emerging worldwide social movement has turned to local and organic foods, and struggles to exploit widespread concern over the next wave of genetic engineering or nanotechnologies applied to food. Paul B. Thompson's book applies the rigor of philosophy to key topics in the first comprehensive study explore interconnections hidden deep within this welter of issues. Bringing more than thirty years of experience working closely with farmers, agricultural researchers and food system activists to the topic, he explores the eclipse of food ethics during the rise of nutritional science, and examines the reasons for its sudden re-emergence in the era of diet-based disease. Thompson discusses social injustice in the food systems of developed economies and shows how we have missed the key insights for understanding food ethics in the developing world. His discussions of animal production and the environmental impact of agriculture breaks new ground where most philosophers would least expect it. By emphasizing the integration of these issues, Thompson not only brings a comprehensive philosophical approach to moral issues in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food -- he introduces a fresh way to think about practical ethics that will have implications in other areas of applied philosophy. Available in OSO:


As a competitive alternative to the Markowitz mean-variance portfolio, the Kelly growth optimal portfolio has drawn sufficient attention in investment science. While the growth optimal portfolio is theoretically guaranteed to dominate any other portfolio with probability 1 in the long run, it practically tends to be highly risky in the short term. Moreover, empirical analysis and performance enhancement studies under practical settings are surprisingly short. In particular, how to handle the challenging but realistic condition with insufficient training data has barely been investigated. In order to fill voids, especially grappling with the difficulty from small samples, in this paper, we propose a growth optimal portfolio strategy equipped with ensemble learning. We synergically leverage the bootstrap aggregating algorithm and the random subspace method into portfolio construction to mitigate estimation error. We analyze the behavior and hyperparameter selection of the proposed strategy by simulation, and then corroborate its effectiveness by comparing its out-of-sample performance with those of 10 competing strategies on four datasets. Experimental results lucidly confirm that the new strategy has superiority in extensive evaluation criteria.


In 1984 the Video Recordings Act (VRA) was introduced and it effectively criminalised the sale or rental of 72 videos that had been released by what turned out to be, largely independent distributors. Most histories frame these distributors as 'merchants of menace', and suggest that they were actively courting the controversy that led to the introduction of the VRA, through the lurid artwork used to promote the videos. Historically, discussion around the 'video nasties' has quite rightly foregrounded debates around 'harm' and censorship. While these debates are essential in our understanding of the period and the implications that this rhetoric may have upon future 'moral panics', they have often been at the expense of a deeper industrial analysis – preferring to depict the distributor as a comic book villain, preying on children with their debased product. This paper seeks to demonstrate some of the difficulties inherent in approaching a revisionist history, and will present some of the problems encountered both from a practical and a methodological perspective.


In this paper we study the associations between educational policies, distributions of educational attainments and income distributions. By matching inequality measures on test scores, years of education and labour earnings by country, birth cohorts and gender, we show that inequality in education (measured both at quality and quantity levels) affect earnings inequality. We then consider potential endogeneity of educational distributions and we resort to instrumental estimation using information on government reforming activity in the field of education. By controlling for country-specific and time fixed effects, and by separating age and cohorts effects, we prove that educational inequality respond to educational reforms, identifying educational policies (like later entry into compulsory education or introduction of standardised tests) capable to reduce income inequalities thirty years later.


Size-selective grazing by Cyclidium sp., isolated as a dominant ciliate bacterivore from the Řimov Reservoir (South Bohemia), was examined using fluorescent labelled bacteria (FLB) produced from natural bacterioplankton or pure bacterial cultures. Sizes of ingested bacteria in food vacuoles were measured directly. Three experimental arrangements were used: (1) Ciliates were grown on the pure culture of Alcaligenes xylosoxidans and fed with various proportions of 'large' and 'small' FLB (mean biovolume, 0.377 and 0.202 μm3, respectively) prepared from the same bacterial species. Results clearly showed significant selection of larger bacteria. (2) Ciliates were grown on natural bacterioplankton from the reservoir and subsequently fed on FLB prepared from the reservoir bacterioplankton (mean biovolume, 0.065 μm3). Independent of either prey or predator abundance, larger FLB (> 0.100 μm3, and especially those > 0.200 μm3) were ingested with much higher frequency than their occurrence i the natural assemblage. (3) Ciliates were grown on the reservoir baterioplankton and fed by FLB prepared from the culture of Pseudomonas sp. In contrast with previous results, no size selection of the ciliate was found when FLB were different from the bacterial food used to grow the ciliate. Ecological impacts of size-selective bacterivory are suggested.


Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the agent of TB, is one of the deadliest human pathogens, infecting one third of the global population. Establishment of infection by mycobacteria relies on complex interactions with host innate immune cells, especially macrophages. Once engulfed by macrophages, mycobacteria "usurp" the host cell machineries to facilitate dissemination and to establish an intracellular niche for survival and replication. To investigate how mycobacteria force the immune cells to support infection, we explored the chemokine pathway, best known for its capability to induce cell migration. To dissect the interplay between immune cells and the pathogen, we modelled human TB using the zebrafish-Mycobacterium marinum natural host-pathogen pair, which is attractive for the excellent optical accessibility of the zebrafish larvae and the possibility to apply genetic tools to impair the chemokine signaling. We show that depletion of either CXCR3 or CXCR4 axes are beneficial to the host. Exploitation of CXCR3 signaling leads to macrophage recruitment and to transcriptional changes in macrophages that make them more permissive for mycobacterial intracellular persistence. Activating CXCR4 signaling triggers instead vascularization of the nascent tuberculous granulomas, which in turn supports expansion of the infection. Therefore, inhibitions of these pathways represent promising host-directed therapeutic avenues to counteract mycobacterial diseases.


Neutropenia is the primary dose-limiting toxicity in patients treated with myelosuppressive chemotherapy, leading in some cases to substantial morbidity and early mortality, and disrupting treatment with potentially curative regimens. The use of granulocyte colony-stimulating factors (G-CSFs) such as filgrastim (Neupogen) and pegfilgrastim (Neulasta), as primary prophylaxis starting in the first cycle of chemotherapy, has been shown to reduce the rates of febrile neutropenia (FN) and of FN-related hospitalization, as well as the use of intravenous anti-infectives. A recent meta-analysis has shown significantly lower infection-related mortality with the first-cycle use of G-CSFs. Both filgrastim and pegfilgrastim were originally approved on the basis of their effectiveness in patients treated with chemotherapy regimens that are associated with a 40% or greater risk of FN. Pegfilgrastim, which is given once per cycle, has been shown to reduce the risk of FN by 94% in breast cancer patients treated with docetaxel (Taxotere). In addition, a recent cost-minimization analysis has shown that first-cycle use of pegfilgrastim may be cost-neutral in patients in whom the predicted risk of FN is less than 20%. These findings have important implications for clinical guidelines for preventing chemotherapy-induced neutropenia and FN.


This week, 30 research papers, including six in Nature and additional papers published online by Science , sound the death knell for the idea that our DNA is mostly littered with useless bases. A decade-long project, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), has found that 80% of the human genome serves some purpose, biochemically speaking. Beyond defining proteins, the DNA bases highlighted by ENCODE specify landing spots for proteins that influence gene activity, strands of RNA with myriad roles, or simply places where chemical modifications serve to silence stretches of our chromosomes.


This thesis investigates the impact of volute design on the performance of a mixed flow turbine. Both computational and experimental methods were used to assess performance. All computational work as conducted in CFX under both steady state and unsteady pulsating conditions with the models including inlet, volute, rotor and outlet volumes. Both the mixing plane and sliding mesh approaches were implemented and the results compared. The k-w SST turbulence model was implemented throughout this thesis with the exceptions of chapters 8 and 9 where the SAS SST model was used in an attempt to accurately capture secondary flows. Further SBES simulations were included for flow validation.

It was found that pulse shape had a significant impact on the instantaneous performance while the cycle averaged performance remained largely insensitive to the changes. Further thorough analysis showed, under a range of pulse frequencies, loads and amplitudes, significant variations in LE incidence over the pulse cycle. Furthermore, the spanwise distribution of the incidence also changed considerably over the pulse due to volute secondary flow development.

As result of the initial analysis both volute tilt and aspect ratio (and a combination of the two) were assessed. A new tilted volute was introduced which resulted in a performance improvement of up to 2.356% in cycle averaged rotor efficiency and 2.171% improvement in cycle average stage efficiency. This improvement reduced when volute A/r was reduced. The impact of volute aspect ratio showed that the MFP varied by up to 4.3%. Furthermore, volute secondary flows were significantly impacted by aspect ratio with smaller aspect ratios resulting in strong vortices that persisted around the volute. Increasing the aspect ratio removed these vortices. However, the span-wise distribution of LE incidence was only slightly improved with increasing aspect ratio. The maximum efficiency improvement measured over the aspect ratio range was 1.47% for the turbine stage. Combining both tilt and aspect ratio showed a maximum performance variation between the worst performing design, radial AR=0.5 and the best performing design tilted AR=2 of 3.00% in the rotor region and 2.87% over the entire stage.

Extensive experimental testing under steady state and pulsating flows was conducted at Imperial College, London to validate the computational work. It was observed that the tilted volute resulted in pulsating efficiency improvements at 48krpm and 56krpm. This trend was found to increase as pulse frequency increased. However, steady state testing only showed efficiency improvements at 30krpm for the tilted volute.


Filopodia are slender actin-rich protrusions that are most often associated with activation of the guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) Cdc42 and the actin regulatory proteins, the ARP2/3 complex, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (WASP), and proteins of the Ena/VASP family. An alternate mechanism involving the GTPase Rif and the mDia2 protein, instead of Cdc42 and ARP2/3, has also been reported. Sigal et al. provide evidence for yet another mechanism by which filopodia may be formed. When they overexpressed lipid-phosphatase-related protein 1 (LPR1) in Cos7 or HeLa cells, they noted an increase in the formation of filopodia along the cell periphery and dorsal surface. However, LPR1-induced filopodia formed even when dominant-negative Cdc42, or peptide inhibitors of Cdc42 or ARP2/3, or dominant-negative Rif were coexpressed with LPR1 in the cells. Colocalization studies suggested that the actin structures in the LPR1-induced filopodia had a unique composition and did not include components of focal adhesion complexes characteristic of Cdc42-stimulated filopodia or VASP or two VASP homologs. The actin-bundling protein fascin was present along the shafts of the LPR1-induced filopodia, and myosin X was found in the tips of the filopodia. In MVD7 cells, which are engineered to lack all three members of the VASP family, LPR1 stimulated filopodia formation. RNAi experiments in a human ovary surface epithelial cell line, SK-OV-3, which is an invasive and motile cell line, showed that there was a substantial decrease in the formation of filopodia when LPR1 abundance was decreased. LPR1 is predicted to have six transmembrane domains, but the putative catalytic region lacks certain conserved residues that are required for activity in other members of the lipid phosphatase and phosphotransferase (LPT) family. When expressed in Sf9 cells, which natively have low lipid phosphatase and phosphotransferase activity, detergent extracts of the LPR1-expressing cells showed no phosphatase activity against any of the four common substrates of the LPT family. However, mutation of residues in the pseudocatalytic region disrupted the filopodia-stimulating activity of LPR1; thus, lipid interactions may still be important for the function of LPR1. Y. J. Sigal, O. A. Quintero, R. E. Cheney, A. J. Morris, Cdc42 and ARP2/3-independent regulation of filopodia by an integral membrane lipid-phosphatase-related protein. J. Cell Sci. 120, 340-352 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The Romanian Black Sea coasts are studied inadequately in comparison with Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, and Bulgarian coasts. Abundant data have been collected in the Danube delta. The total length of Romanian Black Sea coast from Mosura bay to the area north of Sivriburun Cape is 246 km or 5.6 % of the entire coast. Romanian coasts are subdivided into two sections. The first incorporates deltaic coast. The total area of the delta is 5640 sq. km, 4400 sq. km or 78% of which belong to Romania. The shoreline length is 145 km, or 59%. Most deltaic coasts are retreating. Coast is accreting mostly near the Sulina and Gheorghe river mouths. Maximal rate of accretion is 8 m/y, retreat rate being 7 m/y. Another section of Romanian coast lies to the South of Buhaza river mouth (Vadu). Its length is 101 km (41%). Active cliffs (2 to 40 m high) composed of Anthropogene and neogene loess, clay, and limestone are located here. Average abrasion rates are 1-2 m/y, maximal rates being 7 m/y. Accumulative forms are represented by lake barriers. These barriers, as well as beaches are composed of sand. In contrast to the northern coast, Southern Romanian coast is subject to intensive anthropogenic impact.


This research work examined the effect of public debt on Nigeria Economy by specifically determining the relationship between public debt and Economic growth of Nigeria. This study examined the impact of public debt on economic development of Nigeria using annual time series data spanning. Nigeria had her external demand to the major creditors amounted to 36.2 billion US dollars in the year 2011 at the exchange rate #135 to a US dollar and the total domestic was estimated as 23.9 billion US dollars in 2011. Presently as at May 2018 the US dollar is #361 to one US dollar. The effect of this on the economy called for investigation. Time series data were sought on CBN Statistical Bulletin Edition, world Development Indicators (WDI) and economic and financial books of vital importance. It is therefore concluded based in the findings of this study that external debt of Nigeria has only a short run positive effect on some aspects of the economy and an in significant negative effect the entire economy. Government needs to be more transparent and committed to the course of the masses by putting borrowed money into highly productive sectors that will improve the productive capacity of the economy or else government should find other sources of financing their budget deficit other than through public debt. Based on key findings of this study, the study recommends that the Nigeria Debt Management Office should lay down healthy guideline for public loans, outlining the purpose, time frame, moratorium necessities and commitments, negotiation fees, and so forth as well as the conditions in which the administration can admit and guarantee loans particularly for external debt. In addition, new and superior technique to assign fixed interest payment and unstable amortization systems must be employed. However, new and modern economic policies that will save the country from total collapse economically should also be employed. Keywords—Public debt, Balance of Payment, Central Bank Of Nigeria, Commercial Banks, Debt Servicing , Debtor country, Deficit expenditure, Exchange rate, Private Sector, Public Sector, Economic growth and development, Gross domestic product, Monetary value, Multi-national financial institution, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Monetary Fund, Cancellation of debt, Reschedulement of foreign debt


The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the crucial role of pathologists in the health care system at a time of significant decline in the number of US medical students matching to pathology residency positions. To understand this decline, a national survey of fourth-year US allopathic medical students was conducted to assess experiences, knowledge, and attitudes of pathology and factors that impact specialty choice. Participating in a separate pathology course did not increase the probability of choosing pathology. Experiences significantly associated with choosing pathology included clinical or research opportunities in pathology during the last 2 years of medical school, autopsy observation/participation, and participation in pathology interest groups. Many respondents felt they were not sufficiently exposed to pathology to consider it as a specialty. Those who considered pathology but did not choose it were less likely to report understanding the activities of pathologists and being recruited by pathology faculty and more likely to express a preference for more direct patient contact as compared to those entering pathology. In general, respondents agreed that pathology has a good work–life balance and a satisfying degree of intellectual challenge. On the other hand, respondents generally agreed that information on social media and perception of the pathology job market do not seem to be positive and few agreed that pathology is a highly regarded specialty. We identify steps to address these issues and increase the number of US medical students choosing pathology as a specialty crucial to the future of medicine and public health.


Background and aims Low birth weight infants are at high risk of perinatal complications and death to normal or large infants. Umbilical cord abnormalities are associated with this group of infants due to chronic aggravation of umbilical blood flow. We want to establish the anatomical features of umbilical cord who can predict the outcome of newborn. Materials and methods Analytical study of low birth weight newborns, with a duration of 3 years conducted in National Institute of Mother and Child Health 'Alessandrescu-Rusescu', Neonatology Clinic. Were monitored type of conception and delivery, umbilical cord anatomic features, Apgar score, need for invasive resuscitation at birth (oxygen – positive pressure ventilation, achieving PEEP with T piece resuscitator, intubation), outcome of newborns. Results Low birth weight infants studied came from 90% investigated preganat women, multigestation 62,5% and primiparous 67,5%; naturally conceived in 78,3% cases and 21,6% in vitro fertilisation; equal proportion by gender; 43% term newborn, 8,3% between 33–36 weeks of gestation, 39,1% between 28–32 weeks of gestation and 9,1% under 27 weeks of gestational age; number of days oh hospitalisation were above normal in most cases. Cord appearance in this group was normal in 79,1% of cases, lin 9,1%, hypertrophic 10,8%, excess Wharton jelly in 5,8% of cases, meconium stained 3,8%. In the series with meconium stained umbilical cord, maternal hystory was infectious type in 75% of cases, 50% under 27 weeks gestational age, 75% with Apgar score under 1 at 1 minut after birth, and all newborns required resuscitation at birth; those with excess Wharton's jelly came in 86% of cases from primiparous, 42,8% concevied by in vitro fertilisation and multipe fetuses, all at 28–32 weeks gestational age, need for resuscitation at birth 43%; hypertrophic cord was associated with maternal pathology like placenta praevia 25% and pregnancy hypertenison 25%, all naturally concieved, 50% with gestational weeks between 28 and 32, hospitalisation over one month; lin umbilical cord was associated with 72,7% multigestation of wich 37,5% primiparous, without significant pathology, naturally concevied, 63,6% between 33 and 36 weeks gestational age, 45,1% with Apgar score 5–7 and need for resuscitation at birth. Conclusions In this situation, we have the confirmation that the features of umbilical cord can be the first clinical exam of low birth weight newborns who could oriented the action of neonatal team and treatment for infants.


Water is the scarcest of all natural resources. It is a global challenge to develop, produce and deploy technologies, systems and products for sustainable water consumption. The model for this approach is the world leader GROHE, which has been working for some time in the field of ecological solutions for water resources. The GROHE idea is not simply to deal with the economical and functional side of water supply but also to consider the pleasurable aspects of water and to reflect that consideration with the high design requirements of many architects. This volume presents buildings of different typologies with GROHE water technology solutions. The book also features interviews and essays by experts who explain the current state of sustainable water use water developments as well as the interaction of water technology and design.


The odd-even effect in numerical processing has been explained as the easier processing of even numbers compared with odd numbers. We investigated this effect in Sudoku puzzles, a reasoning problem that uses numbers but does not require arithmetic operations. Specifically, we asked whether the odd-even effect occurred with Sudoku puzzles and whether individual differences in working memory (WM), aging, and experience with Sudoku modulated this effect. We manipulated the presence of odd and even numbers in Sudoku puzzles, measured WM with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and backward digit span task, tested older and younger adults, and collected Sudoku experience frequency. Performance on Sudoku was more accurate for even puzzles than odd ones. Younger, experienced, and higher-WM participants were more accurate on Sudoku, but these individual difference variables did not interact with the odd-even effect. Odd numbers may impose more cognitive load than even numbers, but future research is needed to examine how age, experience, or WM may influence the odd-even effect.


Almost all plants live in interactions with fungi, where they express different lifestyles ranging from mutualism (beneficial for both partners) through commensalism (beneficial for the microbe, while the host species is neither positively nor negatively affected) to parasitism (the host is noticeably harmed or deprived at the expense of the fungus). Mutualism represents a balanced stage of plant/microbe interactions. However, depending on the partner combination, the genetic constitutions of both partners, the developmental stage and the life-history of the symbiosis, the physiological status of both partners, the colonization pattern of the host, the ability of the microbe to produce toxins and of the host to defend them, the evolutionary status of the symbiosis, environmental and habitat-specific conditions and the stress situation, a mutualistic inter-action can become unstable and shift towards commensalism or parasitism. Genetic studies with mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi discovered genes which are crucial for determining a beneficial symbiotic stage. Recent progress in this field is summarized in this review. In addition, the interaction of the endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica with Arabidopsis as a novel model system in this field is introduced.


Chemotherapy for brain tumours has been limited because of difficulty in achieving adequate exposure to the tumour without systemic toxicity. We have developed a method for local sustained release of chemotherapeutic agents by their incorporation into biodegradable polymers. Implantation of the drug-impregnated polymer at the tumour site allows prolonged local exposure with minimal systemic exposure. We conducted a randomised, placebo-controlled, prospective study to evaluate the effectiveness of biodegradable polymers impregnated with carmustine to treat recurrent malignant gliomas. In 27 medical centres, 222 patients with recurrent malignant brain tumours requiring re-operation were randomly assigned to receive surgically implanted biodegradable polymer discs with or without 3.85% carmustine. Randomisation balanced the treatment groups for all of the prognostic factors examined. Median survival of the 110 patients who received carmustine polymers was 31 weeks compared with 23 weeks for the 112 patients who received only placebo polymers (hazard ratio = 0.67, p = 0.006, after accounting for the effects of prognostic factors). Among patients with glioblastoma, 6-month survival in those treated with carmustine-polymer discs was 50% greater than in those treated with placebo (mortality = 32 of 72 [44%] vs 47 of 73 [64%], p = 0.02). There were no clinically important adverse reactions related to the carmustine polymer, either in the brain or systemically. Interstitial chemotherapy delivered with polymers directly to brain tumours at the time of surgery seems to be a safe and effective treatment for recurrent malignant gliomas.


Although device therapy is increasingly a subspecialty in its own right, permanent pacemaker (PPM) implantation remains one of the core skills of cardiologists. Most trainees will require at least basic skills in PPM implantation and the aim of this article (in two parts) is to provide a guide to the steps involved, and some of the fundamentals of technique. No article on this subject can be totally comprehensive and cover all the subtle nuances of technique used by different operators. Furthermore, like any practical skill it is only possible to give a flavour of the methodology in writing, and nothing can replace the practical tuition of an experienced implanter in the pacing theatre during a number of PPM implants. That having been said, before outlining some of the practical aspects of PPM implantation, the first step is to identify whether a patient needs a PPM. This may be straightforward, but there can be some complex cases. For this information the reader is referred to the various guidelines widely available.1–3 When it comes to the actual implant the following provides a step-by-step account.

For any patient undergoing PPM implantation, appropriate informed consent should first be obtained. This includes the indication for implantation (often to prevent syncope secondary to bradycardia) and the risks associated with the procedure (table 1), which may be tailored to one's own practice/institutional figures; also it is increasingly important to document other important information given to the patient—for example, rules regarding driving.4 Placement of an intravenous cannula is routine for administration of prophylactic antibiotics, administration of intravenous analgesia/sedation, and potentially to perform venography (see section on central venous access techniques). For this latter reason it is the author's practice to make this at least a 20 G cannula in the left antecubital fossa (assuming …


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
Determine the impact of a 16-week supportive nursing intervention on caregivers of patients with newly diagnosed cancer.

DESIGN
Randomized clinical trial.

SETTING
Two midwestern cancer treatment sites.

SAMPLE
Caregivers of newly diagnosed patients. Patients' mean age was 55.73 years; 55% had breast cancer, and 76% were female. Caregivers' mean age was 52.44 years, and 50% were female. 125 dyads consented to participate; 89 dyads completed the study.

METHODS
A nursing intervention was delivered to the experimental group that emphasized symptom monitoring/management, education, emotional support, coordination of services, and caregiver preparation to care. Nurses made a total of nine contacts, five in person and four by telephone, over 16 weeks. Centers for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) and a symptom inventory were used. Medical record audits were conducted retrospectively.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Patient and caregiver depression scores and patient symptom experience.

FINDINGS
Baseline caregiver depression and the number of patient symptoms at baseline, 9, and 24 weeks were significant predictors of caregiver depression at 9 and 24 weeks. However, no main effect of the experimental condition existed on caregiver depression. At the final observation, a nonsignificant inverse relationship was found between the number of interventions and depression scores for caregivers.

CONCLUSIONS
The intervention appeared to be more effective in slowing the rate of deterioration of depressive symptoms than in decreasing levels of depression in this sample of caregivers. Determining the effectiveness of this intervention in decreasing caregiver depression was difficult because caregivers with higher levels of depression were more likely to withdraw from the study.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE
Nurses must be vigilant in monitoring caregivers for signs of depression and must intervene to provide emotional support and make appropriate referrals for follow-up care to promote positive outcomes for patients and caregivers.


Accurate, practical Excel predictive analysis: powerful smoothing techniques for serious data crunchers! In More Predictive Analytics, Microsoft Excel MVP Conrad Carlberg shows how to use intuitive smoothing techniques to make remarkably accurate predictions. You wont have to write a line of code--all you need is Excel and this all-new, crystal-clear tutorial. Carlberg goes beyond his highly-praised Predictive Analytics, introducing proven methods for creating more specific, actionable forecasts. Youll learn how to predict what customers will spend on a given product next year project how many patients your hospital will admit next quarter tease out the effects of seasonality (or patterns that recur over a day, year, or any other period) distinguish real trends from mere noise. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience, Carlberg helps you master powerful techniques such as autocorrelation, differencing, Holt-Winters, backcasting, polynomial regression, exponential smoothing, and multiplicative modeling. Step by step, youll learn how to make the most of built-in Excel tools to gain far deeper insights from your data. To help you get better results faster, Carlberg provides downloadable Excel workbooks you can easily adapt for your own projects. If youre ready to make better forecasts for better decision-making, youre ready for More Predictive Analytics. Discover when and how to use smoothing instead of regression Test your data for trends and seasonality Compare sets of observations with the autocorrelation function Analyze trended time series with Excels Solver and Analysis ToolPak Use Holt's linear exponential smoothing to forecast the next level and trend, and extend forecasts further into the future Initialize your forecasts with a solid baseline Improve your initial forecasts with backcasting and optimization Fully reflect simple or complex seasonal patterns in your forecasts Account for sudden, unexpected changes in trends, from fads to new viral infections Use range names to control complex forecasting models more easily Compare additive and multiplicative models, and use the right model for each task


The fastest ever 11.25Gb/s real-time FPGA-based optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OOFDM) transceivers utilizing 64-QAM encoding/decoding and significantly improved variable power loading are experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, incorporating advanced functionalities of on-line performance monitoring, live system parameter optimization and channel estimation. Real-time end-to-end transmission of an 11.25Gb/s 64-QAM-encoded OOFDM signal with a high spectral efficiency of 5.625 bit/s/Hz over 25km of standard and MetroCor™ single-mode fibres is successfully achieved with respective power penalties of 0.3dB and −0.2dB at a BER of 1.0×10−3 in a directly modulated DFB laser-based intensity modulation and direct detection system without in-line optical amplification and chromatic dispersion compensation. The impacts of variable power loading as well as electrical and optical components on the transmission performance of the demonstrated transceivers are experimentally explored in detail. In addition, numerical simulations also show that variable power loading is an extremely effective means of escalating system performance to its maximum potential.


OBJECTIVE
The Institute of Medicine identified emergency department (ED) crowding as a critical threat to patient safety. We assess the association between changes in publicly reported ED length of stay (LOS) and changes in quality-of-care measures in a national cohort of hospitals.

METHODS
Longitudinal analysis of 2012 and 2013 data from the American Hospital Association (AHA) Survey, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Cost Reports, and CMS Hospital Compare. We included hospitals reporting Hospital Compare timeliness measure of LOS for admitted patients. We used AHA and CMS data to incorporate hospital predictors of interest. We used the method of first differences to test for relationships in the change over time between timeliness measures and six hospital-level measures.

RESULTS
The cohort consisted of 2,619 hospitals. Each additional hour of ED LOS was associated with a 0.7% decrease in proportion of patients giving a top satisfaction rating, a 0.7% decrease in proportion of patients who would "definitely recommend" the hospital, and a 6-minute increase in time to pain management for long bone fracture (p < 0.01 for all). A 1-hour increase in ED LOS is associated with a 44% increase in the odds of having an increase in left without being seen (95% confidence interval = 25% to 68%). ED LOS was not associated with hospital readmissions (p = 0.14) or time to percutaneous coronary intervention (p = 0.14).

CONCLUSION
In this longitudinal study of hospitals across the United States, improvements in ED timeliness measures are associated with improvements in the patient experience.


Research shows that Americans who hold strongly to a myth about America's Christian heritage—what is called "Christian nationalism"—tend to draw rigid boundaries around ethnic and national group membership. Incorporating theories connecting ethnic boundaries, prejudice, and perceived threat with a tendency to justify harsher penalties, bias, or excessive force against racial minorities, the authors examine how Christian nationalist ideology shapes Americans' views about police treatment of black Americans. Analyses of 2017 data from a national probability sample show that adherence to Christian nationalism predicts that Americans will be more likely to believe that police treat blacks the same as whites and that police shoot blacks more often because blacks are more violent than whites. These effects are robust even when including controls for respondents' religious and political characteristics, indicating that Christian nationalism influences Americans' attitudes over and above the independent influences of political conservatism or religious parochialism. In fact, the authors find that religiosity influences policing attitudes in the opposite direction. Moreover, observed patterns do not differ by race, suggesting that Christian nationalism provides a cultural framework that can bolster antiblack prejudice among people of color as well as whites. The authors argue that Christian nationalism solidifies ethnic boundaries around national identity such that Americans are less willing to acknowledge police discrimination and more likely to victim-blame, even appealing to more overtly racist notions of blacks' purportedly violent tendencies to justify police shootings. The authors outline the implications of these findings for understanding the current racial-political climate leading up to and during the Trump presidency.


Marvel Cooke: An African-American Woman Journalist Who Agitated for Racial ReformFrederick Douglass, the most important African-American leader of the nineteenth century, insisted that there was only one way for members of his race to secure their rights as human beings. He stated, directly and simply: "Agitation is the life blood of all Reforms."(2)During the first half of this century, Marvel Cooke broke through the double barriers of racism and sexism to agitate for reform. And she should be recognized, during her own lifetime, as a force in social change and political protest.That Cooke became the first African-American woman in this country's history to report fulltime for a mainstream newspaper is enough to assure her a place in journalism history,(3) even though that recognition has not yet been granted to her.(4) Cooke, who still lives in Harlem, was part of the Harlem Renaissance(5) and knew and worked with such prominent Black leaders as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Adam Clayton Powell. But Cooke did not sit passively in the shadows of these great men. Instead, she crusaded, through journalism, for a better way of life for members of her race. Cooke said: "Handling words and thoughts, handling ideas and putting them into words was, to me, very exciting. It came naturally to me. It was very easy for me. So I liked it. I liked the field."(6)Between 1926 and 1952, Cooke worked for four publications in New York City. The Crisis was a national monthly magazine that showcased the best in African-American writing. The Amsterdam News was, and still is, a leading Black newspaper. The People's Voice was a forum Adam Clayton Powell created to advocate civil rights. The Daily Compass was a liberal, white-owned daily that covered the New York metropolitan area.This article, by examining Cooke's work for these four publications while also describing her personal life and motivations, traces four activist themes to which she was committed. First, Cooke's unique reporting style exposed injustice, thereby expanding how the newspapers for which she worked covered the fight for civil rights. In addition, Cooke emphasized the central role that the arts play in the African-American culture and sought to foster the arts as a means of developing a national Black identity and pride. What is more, Cooke recognized that the growing American labor movement could make positive impact on the struggle for civil rights. An early advocate of the American Newspaper Guild, Cooke helped establish a local bargaining unit at the Amsterdam News and then helped lead a strike there, creating the country's first labor action by Black employees against a Black-owned business. Finally, the most controversial theme in Cooke's life has been her half-century association with the Communist Party. Convinced that the communist philosophy could lead African-Americans toward a better way of life, she joined the party, subsequently coming under the attack of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.While pursuing the various themes that defined her life and career, Marvel Cooke received unwavering finanacial and emotional support from her husband. She married Cecil Cooke in 1929, soon after he had received a master's degree from Columbia University. He later worked for the New York City Recreation Department, advancing to the position of recreation director for the Bronx. He died in 1978.(7) Injuries Marvel Cooke suffered during an automobile accident prevented her from bearing children.(8)EARLY YEARSMarvel Jackson was born April 4, 1903, in Mankato, Minnesota. The Jackson family was securely in the upper middle class. Madison Jackson, the son of an Ohio farmer, earned a law degree from Ohio State University and became the first Black member of the South Dakota bar, but he could not build a law practice because white citizens refused to hire a Black attorney.(9) Amy Wood Jackson worked as a cook and cooking teacher on an Indian reservation in South Dakota until she became so distressed by the mistreatment of the native Americans that she left the job. …


ABSTRACT. The pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis) is a secretive, obligate sagebrush-steppe resident of the Intermountain West and is one of two rabbits in North America that digs its own burrows. Although the pygmy rabbit has a recorded home range of 0.21–67.9 ha in relatively high sagebrush cover (21%–36%), they spend much of their time within 30–100 m of a burrow system. Due to big sagebrush cover in preferred habitat and the secretive behavior of pygmy rabbits, it is often difficult to study this leporid through direct observation. We used remote cameras to document pygmy rabbit activity at burrow systems in south central Utah from 2006 to 2008. We analyzed photographs from remote cameras for daily and seasonal patterns of activity. Our results suggested that time of day and season were important influences on activity level, while year and site were less so. Pygmy rabbits were active during all time periods of the day, but the greatest activity occurred in the morning, except during winter. Numerous other species were recorded by remote cameras, including other leporids, birds, rodents, reptiles, and terrestrial predators. Remote cameras are a valuable tool in understanding pygmy rabbit behavior, in addition to confirming rabbit presence in areas of interest.


Abstract In this article, I am going to analyze the concept of "gendered space" as it appears in select post-1970s US-American road narratives produced by women writers of various ethnic and social backgrounds. Drawing on recent re-mappings in cultural geography, I will cross disciplinary boundaries and argue that for female literary protagonists, the "open road" appears as a dangerous frontier--in which women's physical and emotional well-being is always at perilous stake--rather than as an adventurous playground. In women's road stories, the American highway does not maintain its mythical, iconic status, signifying freedom and the heroic quest for identity, which has been ascribed to it at least since the legendary accounts of the flight from domesticity by Jack Kerouac and his fellow (anti-)heroes of the Beat generation. Female protagonists, too, it will be shown, feel the luring of the road, or see cross-country travel as a way out of the ideology of separate spheres--and, from a socio-historical perspective, they indeed have much more reason for doing so than their male counterparts. However, more often than not, women come to realize that they are "prisoners of the white lines of the freeway" (as Joni Mitchell puts it in her famous road-song "Coyote"), and as such are not liberated by mere motion, but confronted with spatial limitations not much different from those encountered at the hearth. Nevertheless, by embracing these multiple confrontations for the challenges they present, and by deliberately transgressing gendered boundaries of public vs. private and cultural vs. natural space, the itinerant protagonists of the texts under discussion eventually re-appropriate their share of the road. Keywords US-American road narrative, public/private space, frontier Ever since I was a kid, I'd tried to live vicariously through the hocker-in-the-wind adventures of Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, and Henry Miller. But I could never finish any of the books. Maybe because I just couldn't identify with the fact that they were guys who had women around to make the coffee and wash the skid marks out of their shorts while they complained, called themselves angry young men, and screwed each other with their existential penises. --Erika Lopez, Flaming Iguanas Introduction In literary and cultural criticism, the analysis of gender relations and constructions is, by now, a more or less established approach to works of literature, film, music, and other cultural texts. (2) The concept of gendered space, as developed in cultural geography, (3) on the other hand, is addressed rather rarely in these analyses, perhaps because space is not a traditional lens through which cultural articulations are looked at in critical discourse. (4) Like race/ethnicity, class, and gender, however, space has the potential to function as such a lens, though it probably does not focus as much on the subject (and thus on issues of identity) as on a certain socio-political and cultural system of subjectivity (patriarchal societies, for example, order space around certain principles that sustain these societies' status quo along with the lines of hegemonic constructions of subjectivity). Thus, I would like to argue for the general integration of a spatial analysis into literary and cultural studies in this article. In this context, the notion of the gendered-ness of various spaces provides a rewarding theoretical device for the study of women's literature in general and of women's road-narratives in particular. Any such analysis rests upon the intersections and cross-cuttings of all kinds of spaces: textual and contextual space (i.e., fictional/imaginary and social space), the physical space of embodiment, as well as the mental space of textual characters and readers. In cultural texts, these spatial webs intersect; they create and potentially restrict each other; exterior(ized) and interior(ized) spaces appear in various configurations, sometimes dissolving into each other, sometimes affirming separation. …


This paper analyzes the relevance of external factors in average quarterly GDP growth for 1990-2006 in the seven largest Latin American countries (LAC7). Modeling the relationship between LAC7 GDP and several external factors, it is found that those factors account for a significant share of variance in LAC7 GDP growth, and that external shocks produce significant responses. Likewise, a significant share of recent LAC7 growth performance can be explained by an external factor "tailwind. " Also evaluated is the impact of deterioration in external financial conditions. Finally, the relevance of these findings for policy evaluation is emphasized. Growth performance, the strength or weakness of macroeconomic fundamentals and the impact of domestic macro and micro policies on growth can only be properly appraised by first filtering out the effects of external factors.


Theta functions play a major role in many current researches and are powerful tools for studying integrable systems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a short and quick exposition of some aspects of meromorphic theta functions for compact Riemann surfaces. The study of theta functions will be done via an analytical approach using meromorphic functions in the framework of Mumford. Some interesting examples will be given : the classical Kirchhoff equations in the cases of Clebsch and Lyapunov-Steklov, the Landau-Lifshitz equation and the sine-Gordon equation.


We investigated whether there is an association between autistic traits in the broader phenotype and the ability to compute scalar implicatures. Previous studies found that the frequency of autistic traits is higher in students of science than of humanities. Here we recorded the frequency of rejection of underinformative scalar items in students enrolled either in a science or in a humanities curriculum and assessed their autistic traits using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient questionnaire. We found that rejections were less frequent in science curricula students than in humanities curricula students. Moreover, rejections were associated negatively with autistic traits and positively with performance on Theory-of-Mind tasks. These findings suggest that autism cognitive phenotype is negatively associated with a propensity to spontaneously derive scalar implicatures.


We are pleased to present the Proceedings of the 7th International Scientific Conference "Rural Development 2015: Towards the Transfer of Knowledge, Innovations and Social Progress". The Conference took place in Academia, Kaunas district, Lithuania at the Aleksandras Stulginskis University, November 19–20, 2015. The 7th International Scientific Conference "Rural Development 2015" was the most effective bi-annual platform for the interdisciplinary scientific discussions and the presentations of new ideas for sustainable rural development in the context of Knowledge, Innovations and Social Progress. The Conference brings together scientists, practitioners, policy makers and actors from private sector around the world to share their experience helping countries to provide their citizens with a more competitive economy, more and better jobs and a better quality of life. The topic of the Conference has allowed for the exploration of different aspects of four main areas: • Biosystems Engineering and Environment • Agro-innovations and Food Technologies • Multifunctional Approach for Sustainable Use of Natural Resource • Social Innovations for Rural Development The topic "Towards the Transfer of Knowledge, Innovations and Social Progress" chosen for the 7th International Scientific Conference sparked strong interest among the professional and scientific community and elicited great response to the call for papers. The Proceedings include 130 peer-reviewed papers and contributions from 362 authors. In total we received 248 submissions for the Conference. We want to thank the contributors and the reviewers who made this issue possible. We also thank the Aleksandras Stulginskis University, Lithuanian Ministry of Agriculture, and Research Council of Lithuania for the generous financial support that made the Conference possible.


Deep chlorophyll maxima (DCM) represent high accumulations of algal biomass in the microaerobic metalimnion of mesotrophic lakes characterised by a few algal species which persist in time. We studied the accumulation of bacteria, protozoans and the mesozooplankton associated with the DCM of mesotrophic Grosser Vatersee in northern Germany over a three year period and related our findings to the pattern found in the epilimnion and the hypolimnion. More than 20 % of the bacterial and protozoan biomass was concentrated in the narrow layer of the DCM, which comprised less than 10% of the whole water column. Between 16 and 36% of the rotifers and 12-31% of the juvenile cyclopoid copepods inhabited the DCM permanently on a day/night time scale, while calanoid copepods and adult cyclopoid copepods concentrated in the upper metalimnion and migrated into the DCM occasionally. Although bacteria and flagellates were generally larger in the DCM than in the epilimnion, ratios between bacterial and protozoan biomass were similar in both lake compartments. Our findings confirm a uniform community structure in the DCM of ciliates (Dexiotricha spp. and Strobilidium spp. comprised on average 70% of ciliate biomass) and, to a lesser extent, of mesozooplankton (rotifers and juvenile cyclopoid copepods dominated in the DCM). In contrast seasonal and interannual patterns of bacterial and protozoan biomass and cell size imply variation in the effects of predation.


Genomics is the study of whole genomes of organisms, and incorporates elements from genetics. Genomics uses a combination of recombinant DNA, DNA sequencing methods, and bioinformatics to sequence, assemble, and analyse the structure and function of genomes. It differs from 'classical genetics' in that it considers an organism's full complement of hereditary material, rather than one gene or one gene product at a time. Moreover, genomics focuses on interactions between loci and alleles within the genome and other interactions such as epistasis [2], pleiotropy [3] and heterosis [4](Figure 1.1). Genomics harnesses the availability of complete DNA sequences for entire organisms and was made possible by both the pioneering work of Fred Sanger [5] and the more recent nextgeneration sequencing technology.


This thesis consists of two parts. Part I describes the Challenge Lab method,which is a method developed for students to find a thesis research question to support transition into a sustainable society. The Challenge Lab method was carried out by 12 students during Spring 2014 and contains methodologies,tools, perspectives, theories and frameworks for students to work with complex problems related to sustainable development. This years' work include backcasting,self-leadership, multi-level perspective, systems theory, systems transition,design-thinking, etc. Part II addresses the uncertainties of the barriers and drivers for development,diffusion and use of biodiesel fuel in Sweden and as well as the networks and key
stakeholders connected to biodiesel fuels. In Sweden, biodiesel fuels have the biggest market share among the biofuels, 53.4%, but only hold a small market share out of the total vehicle fuels, 4.3% (based on energy content). The aim of this report is to increase awareness and encourage development, diffusion and use of biodiesel fuels (FAME, HVO and DME). The barriers and drivers were identified with the methodology of Functions of Innovation Systems and key stakeholders were identified through Social Network Analysis. The research method was semi-structured interviews with stakeholders as well as literature studies. The the main identified drivers are i) HVO commercialisation and, ii)EU policy on emission standards; and the main identified barriers are i) high production costs of biodiesels compared to fossil diesels, ii) limited state aid (mainly tax exemption) that lacks future oriented vision, iii) low visibility of biodiesels, iv) weak market for biodiesel fuels in a high-blend form, v) petition
on regulatory change for HVO, vi) environmental concerns associated with biofuels, vii) feedstock limitations and viii) lack of strong advocacy coalitions. Furthermore, important stakeholders in the Swedish biodiesel market are Preem,Volvo Group and policy makers on national level.


50 years after the first basic idea of Peierls, a review is made on the different aspects of friction forces in metals and alloys. Different approachs are compared, and it is shown that all lead to similar results, corresponding to different behaviours in two stress ranges. Experimental results in BCC, HCP, and FCC metals, are in good agreement with these theoretical developments. In a second part, an extension of the Peierls model, called locking-unlocking, is developed on the basis of experimental results in the prismatic planes of beryllium. It applies to many other situations, such as prismatic glide in magnesium and titanium, cube and octahedral glide in LI2 nickel-based ordered alloys, and possibly some BCC metals. The relation between locking-unlocking and Peierls mechanisms is discussed, as the role of locking-unlocking in the formation of strength anomalies.


People living in high background radiation area (HBRA) possibly developed the radioadaptive response (RAR) phenomena. Mamuju area in West Sulawesi Indonesia also known as the HBRA in Indonesia due to high natural uranium contents. It is possible that RAR was developed in Mamuju inhabitants. To prove this hypothesis, here in this study evaluation of the individual radiosensitivity in Takandeang Village, Mamuju inhabitants using G 2 micronucleus (MN) assay was conducted. Association between blood groups and TP53 Arg72Pro polymorphism with individual radiosensitivity also evaluated in this study. Using G 2 MN assay we assessed the individual radiosensitivity of Takandeang Village inhabitants and control samples. For each sample, three parameters were calculated. The spontaneous (baseline) MN number, MN number after 0.5 Gy in vitro irradiation and radiation induced MN were calculated to predict the individual radiosensitivity. The radiation induced MN was defined by subtracting the spontaneous MN number from the MN number after irradiation. The mean and SD of the number of micronucleus induced by radiation found in control group (CG) was set as the cut-off value to determine the individual radiosensitivity in all samples. The radiation induced MN higher than the mean CG + 1SD CS was scored as 1, indicating a milder radiosensitive phenotype, whereas a result higher than the mean CG + 2SD CG was scored as 2, and indicated a more severe radiosensitive phenotype. When the individual value was lower than the mean CG + 1SD CG, a score of 0 was attributed to the tested subject. Results showed that four individuals in Takandeang Village inhabitants were having a milder radiosensitive phenotype, whilst the other was categorized as normal radiosensitive. The similar finding also found in control samples. Our study failed to find a correlation between radiosensitivity and blood group also the TP53 Arg72Pro polymorphism. Overall our study revealed the possibility of RAR phenomena in Takandeang Village inhabitants. Further investigation using a different point of radiation dose value and larger sample number should be performed to validate this study results.


Author(s): Zhi, Deng; Chang, Zhao Wu | Abstract: Efficacy data of a gas cartridge are reported. The gas cartridge contains 50 g of potassium nitrate (27.5 g, 55%) mixed with sawdust (22.5 g, 45%). When ignited, it generates large amounts of carbon monoxide (avg. 23.46%) and carbon dioxide (avg. 26.26%). A mimic field trial was carried out on a winter day. The air temperature averaged 1.2°C, ranging from -3.3°C to +5°C. Sixteen adult albino rats were killed within 3 minutes exposure in a man-made burrow system, 200 cm long, with an inside diameter of 8 cm. Field trials were conducted in different parts of China, and there were no survivors in the 108 burrows treated. Upon excavation 144 dead rodents were recovered. The first test was carried out in Zhengding, Hebei Province. (The site was along a sunning ground where cereals are dried.) Each of 53 burrows was treated with a 50-g gas cartridge. When the burrow systems were excavated, 81 dead rodents were found: Cricetulus barabensis, 38 (46.9%); C. triton, 28 (34.6%); Mus musculus, 14 (17.3%); and Apodemus agrarius, 1 (1.2%). The second trial was carried out in a sugarcane field near a ditch in Zhangjiang, Guangdong Province. Fifty-five dead rodents were dug out of the 50 burrows treated: Rattus flavipectus, 26 (47.3%); Bandicota indica, 18 (32.7%); R. losea, 7 (12.7%); and Suncus murinus (Insectivore), 4 (7.3%). The third trial was conducted in a high mountain grassland pasture above 3500 m in Qinghae Province. Five marmot burrows were each treated with a dose of 600 g of gas cartridges per burrow. Eight dead Marmota hymalayana were found near the burrow entrance.


We present the results of a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of the motion of a sphere on an inclined flexible beam. A theoretical model based on Euler–Bernoulli beam theory is developed to describe the dynamics, and in the limit where the beam reacts instantaneously to the loading, we obtain exact solutions for the load trajectory and descent time. For the case of an initially horizontal beam, we calculate the period of the resulting oscillations. Theoretical predictions compare favourably with our experimental observations in this quasi-static regime. The time taken for descent along an elastic beam, the elastochrone, is shown to exceed the classical brachistochrone, the shortest time between two points in a gravitational field.


Virtualization of computing resources enables multiple virtual machines to run on a physical machine. When many virtual machines are deployed on a cluster of PCs, some physical machines will inevitably experience overload while others are under-utilized over time due to varying computational demands. This computational imbalance across the cluster undermines the very purpose of maximizing resource utilization through virtualization. To solve this imbalance problem, virtual machine migration has been introduced, where a virtual machine on a heavily loaded physical machine is selected and moved to a lightly loaded physical machine. The selection of the source virtual machine and the destination physical machine is based on a single fixed threshold value. Key to such threshold-based VM migration is to determine when to move which VM to what physical machine, since wrong or inadequate decisions can cause unnecessary migrations that would adversely affect the overall performance. The fixed threshold may not necessarily work for different computing infrastructures. Finding the optimal threshold is critical.
In this research, a virtual machine migration framework is presented that autonomously finds and adjusts variable thresholds at runtime for different computing requirements to improve and maximize the utilization of computing resources. Central to this approach is the previous history of migrations and their effects before and after each migration in terms of standard deviation of utilization. To broaden this research, a proactive learning methodology is introduced that not only accumulates the past history of computing patterns and resulting migration decisions but more importantly searches all possibilities for the most suitable decisions.
This research demonstrates through experimental results that the learning approach autonomously finds thresholds close to the optimal ones for different computing scenarios and that such varying thresholds yield an optimal number of VM migrations for maximizing resource utilization. The proposed framework is set up on a cluster of 8 and 16 PCs, each of which has multiple User-Mode Linux (UML)-based virtual machines. An extensive set of benchmark programs is deployed to closely resemble a real-world computing environment.
Experimental results indicate that the proposed framework indeed autonomously finds thresholds close to the optimal ones for different computing scenarios, balances the load across the cluster through autonomous VM migration, and improves the overall performance of the dynamically changing computing environment.


As the Internet has evolved over time, the interconnection patterns of the members of this "network of networks" have changed. Can we characterize those changes? Have those changes been good or bad? What does "good" mean in this context? Has market power been centralizing or decentralizing? How certain can we be of our answer? What are the limitations of our data? These are the questions which motivate this dissertation. In this dissertation, we answer these questions and more by carefully taking a long-term quantitative study of the evolution of the topology of the Internet's AS graph. In order to do this study, we spend most of the dissertation developing methods of data processing and data analysis all informed by ideas from networking, data mining, graph theory, and statistics. The contributions are both theoretical and practical. The theoretical contributions include an in-depth analysis of the complexity of AS graph measurement as well as of the difficulty of reconstructing the AS graph from available data. The practical contributions include the design of graph metrics to capture properties of interest, usable approximation algorithms for several AS graph analysis methods, and an analysis of the evolution of the AS graph over time.
It is our hope that these methods may prove useful in other domains, and that the conclusions about the evolution of the Internet topology prove useful for Internet operators, network researchers, policy makers, and others.


Abstract Projects dealing with future reactors based on new fuels and able to incinerate nuclear waste require good knowledge of numerous cross sections. In order to resolve nuclear database discrepancies, capture cross-section profiles between 0.1 eV and 30 keV have been measured for different materials using a lead-slowing-down-time spectrometer in association with a pulsed neutron generator. The measurement of the neutron flux with a 233U fission detector and a 3He counter, and careful analysis of the E-t correlation compared to very precise Monte Carlo simulations, brought new information on the lead scattering cross section. Capture profiles for reference materials (gold, tantalum, indium, and silver), core materials (thorium and technetium), and structure materials (manganese and nickel) were measured with a CeF3 scintillator and photomultiplier for different thicknesses. Areas of agreement and disagreement between experimental results and simulations using different databases have been determined with a precision of 5%. Correction tables are given for some elements. This method opens an efficient way for revisiting (n, γ) databases, and it allows rapid error evaluation and sensitivity studies.


We conducted a series of field experiments to assess whether cool-season grasses were important in maintaining populations of the Russian wheat aphid, Diuraphisnoxia (Mordvilko), between the summer harvest and fall sowing of winter cereals. All six grass species in a common garden in northern Utah supported aphid population growth from May to September 1991, although aphid densities were unusually low on mature foliage in July. Under conditions of little or no plant competition, each grass species produced at least a few fall tillers before mature shoots had senesced completely and hence provided a continuous source of food for aphids. Indian ricegrass was a consistently good host and bluebunch wheatgrass was a consistently poor one, but the relative suitabilities of the six hosts varied considerably over the season. Neither plant water content nor total nitrogen was correlated with differences in aphid performance among hosts. We conducted a greenhouse experiment to compare estimates of plant quality under field and greenhouse conditions. Differences in aphid perfornlance among hosts in the greenhouse resembled those observed in the field early in the season, but not during the critical "oversummering" period.


Turnout among young adults has declined steadily in various advanced industrial democracies in recent decades. At the same time, as a consequence of delayed transitions to adulthood, many life-cycle events considered important for the development of electoral participation are experienced later in life. These combined trends call for a revaluation of the political life-cycle model and the way in which it explains voter turnout among young adults. More specifically, in this paper it is argued that variation in the timing of life events has been overlooked as an explanatory factor of generational differences in young adults' propensity to turn out to vote. With accumulating evidence that the decision to vote is to some extent habitual, a lack of life experiences may cause young adults to form the habit to abstain rather than to vote. If the mechanisms of the life-cycle model are indeed correct, later maturation should at least partially explain why young adults these days are less inclined to vote than their parents or grandparents in their younger years. Based on the British Election Studies from 1964 to 2010, the findings of this study confirm generally observed patterns of a delayed assumption of adult roles by young citizens. This trend toward later maturation negatively affects turnout levels of young citizens. If maturation levels had remained at pre-war levels, the average turnout among Britain's post-seventies generation would have been no less than 12 percentage points higher.


. Analyses of climate adaptation seldom rely on the conceptual toolbox of institutional economics. Yet articles addressing institutions make up a large portion of the climate adaptation literature. With a wealth of institutionally relevant knowledge in the adaptation literature, organizing such knowledge in institutionally meaningful ways can advance the present understanding of the link between institutions and adaptation. Knowing which aspects of this link are well researched, and where in contrast research gaps lie, can provide guidance to institutional economists interested in adaptation. We contribute to this through a systematic review of the adaptation literature, assessing the consideration adaptation scholars give to different elements of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Results show a strong focus on collective choice and on adaptation by public actors, with an emphasis on rules in use, social interactions and, to a lesser extent, attributes of the community. Research gaps rather encompass operational and constitutional choice, private adaptation, physical interactions and biophysical conditions.


Although between-laminae parameter variations in sediments have been studied in the past, measured parameters were generally limited to grain-size distribution and total porosity. The magnitude and directional characteristics of physical properties of laminated sediments also depend on the shape and orientation of particles, packing, pore-size characteristics, and properties of the pore network. Leaving out a complete characterization of granular sediment in models of physical properties could result in a systematic mismatch between modeled and measured values. However, tools for high-resolution quantification of these spatial variable parameters are not readily available. In order to provide such a tool, an image-analysis procedure is presented based on digital images of thin sections. The procedure defines a sequence of rectangular measurement windows, with their long sides oriented parallel to stratification, and measures the sediment characteristics for each window. Logs of parameters values, oriented perpendicular to stratification, are thus created. After verification of the image-analysis procedure using comparative laboratory measurements, the procedure is applied to two thin-section images of unconsolidated fine-grained, laminated sands. The quantitative variations observed in the logs of grain and pore characteristics correlate well with bedding observed on the original images. Overall, the image-analysis procedure proved to be a useful and versatile tool for quantifying variations of textural characteristics on sub-lamina scale.


In this paper, a data collection program developed for wetland restoration projects in Southern California is described. The program will include itemized parameters in a checklist-type approach to determine and prioritize the data requirements for each stage or phase of a complete restoration project. These data include hydrology, geotechnical conditions, water and sediment quality, vegetation and habitat characteristics, land ownership and easements, and local regulatory guidelines. The program will identify significant data gaps and at what stage of the design process these data will be necessary. Further field investigation and additional studies can then be planned and incorporated into a comprehensive timeline for the wetland restoration project. The paper utilizes data, reports, and studies prepared for the Batiquitos Lagoon Enhancement Project in Carlsbad, California.


Drawing upon the analytical tools defined in the inception paper1 for Work package 5 of the EL-CSID project, this paper assesses the willingness, capacity and acceptance sustaining EU broadly-defined Cultural Diplomacy (CD) in the MENA region. The resulting qualitative mapping focuses on policies and initiatives which foster regional cooperation, both around the Mediterranean and among southern countries. The use of cultural tools in EU relations with the Arab world and Israel has received widespread commitment, based on its potential to foster peaceful relations, create opportunities for development and possibly lead towards a convergence of civilisations. The EU and its partners have started to create the conditions for CD initiatives to take place within most regional and inter-regional fora for cooperation with the MENA. This is true within the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, although resources are still insufficient and rely on short-termed instruments. Even more needs to be done to endow the recent political commitment to EU-GCC, EU-Maghreb and EU-LAS cultural cooperation with actual tools for action. Post-Arab Springs MENA countries constitute a fertile ground for EU CD initiatives, despite the difficulties presented in some of them by non-cooperative stances of national authorities and restrictive cultural policies. In this context, the EU is adopting an approach valuing capacity building, intercultural dialogue and people-to-people contacts instead of pure display of European culture(s), but it still needs to clearly define what the use of the term Cultural Diplomacy means in its particular case. More specifically, a regional strategy for Cultural Diplomacy in the MENA is still missing.


The purpose of this study was to shed light on the relationship between perceived self-efficacy and regret. I measured regret by its two subcomponents, cognitive regret and affective regret . I hypothesized first that as perceived self-efficacy increases, so too would the experience of cognitive regret. Second, I predicted that as perceived self-efficacy decreases, the experience of affective regret would increase. I expected that people with more perceived self-efficacy, believing themselves more capable globally, would be more likely to reflect on and learn from their mistakes. In contrast, I thought people with less perceived self-efficacy would tend to focus on the emotional distress that accompanies regret, feeling less able to have modified their past decisions. However, my hypotheses were not supported by the data. Although my predictions were not supported, the goal of promoting the most functional regret experience possible remains. Future research could establish a causal relationship between perceived self-efficacy, both general and specific, and regret.


World Wide Web has gained its dominant status in the cyber information and services delivery world in recent years. But how to specify website usability requirements and how to evaluate and improve website usability according to its usability requirements specification are still big issues to all the stakeholders. To help solve this problem, we propose a website usability requirements specification and usability evaluation methodology that features a structured use-centered quantitative full life-cycle method.
A validation experiment has been designed and conducted to prove the validity of the proposed methodology, QUEST (Quantitative Usability Equations SeT). Its principle is to prove that QUEST has stronger website usability evaluation capability than the most typical existing usability evaluation methods. Apparently, if QUEST's website usability evaluation capability is established, then its usability metrics can be used to quantitatively specify upfront user usability requirements for websites.
In the validation experiment, 7 usability experts and 20 student subjects were recruited to perform 4 tasks on 2 open source calendar websites, WebCalendar 1.0.5 and VCalendar 22.214.171.124; 4 sets of usability data had been collected, which were corresponding to the following 4 usability evaluation methods respectively: expert usability review, traditional user usability testing, SUS (System Usability Scale), and QUEST.
According to the experiment results: both the expert usability review and the traditional user usability testing were inconclusive on which of the 2 target websites had better usability; although SUS rated the overall usability of WebCalendar 1.0.5 at 66.00 and VCalendar 126.96.36.199 at 61.75, it was subjective and vague on usability problems; in contrast, QUEST not only rated the overall usability of WebCalendar 1.0.5 at 56.59 and VCalendar 220.127.116.11 at 35.97, but also revealed where the usability problems were and how severe each usability problem was in a quantitative manner. In conclusion, it clearly can be stated that QUEST has stronger website usability evaluation capability than all other 3 most typical existing usability evaluation methods. So, the proposed methodology has been validated by the experiment results.


In the span of just three decades, scientific understanding of the formation of embryos has undergone a major revolution. The implications of these new research findings have an immediate bearing on human health and future therapies, yet most nonscientists remain quite unaware of the exciting news. In this engaging book, a distinguished geneticist offers a clear, jargon-free overview of the field of developmental biology. Benny Shilo transforms complicated scientific paradigms into understandable ideas, employing an array of photographic images to demonstrate analogies between the cells of an embryo and human society. Shilo's innovative approach highlights important concepts in a way that will be intuitive and resonant with readers' own experiences. The author explains what is now known about the mechanisms of embryonic development and the commanding role of genes. For each paradigm under discussion, he provides both a scientific image and a photograph he has taken in the human world. These pairs of images imply powerful metaphors, such as the similarities between communication among cells and among human beings, or between rules embedded in the genome and laws that govern human society. The book concludes with a glimpse of promising future possibilities, including the generation of tissues and organs for use as "spare parts."


I investigate the relative importance of social-signaling versus self-signaling in driving giving. I derive specific qualitative predictions about how the response of an image-motivated dictator to a change in the probability that her choice will be implemented depends crucially on the information available to the relevant observer. A probabilistic dictator-game experiment tests the joint, relative, and independent effects of self-signaling and social-signaling. The results provide little evidence of self-signaling, but stronger evidence of social-signaling, particularly in a large subsample that excludes likely `selfish types'.


Since its inception, online gambling legalization has been a controversial and contentious subject among governments worldwide. Residents in these jurisdictions face an uncertain future regarding the liberty to gamble online. This study seeks to identify which demographic, economic, technological, and sociological determinants contribute a government's decision to allow their citizens to gamble online. A seemingly unrelated bivariate probit regression analysis revealed that national population, government revenues as a percentage of GDP, the Hofstede Uncertainty Avoidance Index, number of Internet users, and a country's Christianity proportion contributed significantly to the observed distribution of online gambling legality in 47 countries.


FIMR has been utilizing the Radarsat-1 ScanSAR data inoperational sea ice monitoring for several years. The surfacescattering dominates the backscattering at C-band, but itis still possible to estimate ice thickness based on this surfaceroughness visible in SAR data in some areas of the Baltic Sea,because typical Baltic Sea drift ice becomes more and moredeformed as it gets older and thicker, i.e. there is correlationbetween Baltic Sea ice surface roughness and thickness.For ship navigation in the Baltic Sea ice ridging is anotherimportant ice parameter, in addition to ice thickness. However,it is impossible to detect single ridges from our operationalSAR data, Radarsat-1 ScanSAR Wide images in 100 mresolution. One ice parameter closely related to ridging is theequivalent deformed ice thickness (Tdef ). The total (mean overan area) ice thickness (T) is the sum of the level ice thickness(Tlev) and equivalent deformed ice thickness:T = Tlev + Tdef . (1)In this paper we study estimating of Tdef from our operationalRadarsat-1 data, and also make some comparisons to Electromagneticinduction (EM) based ice thickness measurements.


A real-coded genetic algorithm (RGA) for fiber Bragg grating (FBG) distributed sensing is presented. The distributed strain fields along the fiber Bragg grating sensor (FBGS) are real coded into genes, and the concept of elitism and simulated annealing are also included in this algorithm. Compared with the binary coded genetic algorithm, this method is more simple and efficient. Only with the reflect spectrum of distributed FBGS, the strain fields distribution can be exactly demodulated even in the regions with significant strain gradients. The algorithm is a promising method for demodulating the distributed FBGS, which can be used for structural failure analysis and structural damage identification.


[1] Mechanical properties of rocks are characterized by their notable dependence on the applied deformation rate. However, little is known about the strain rate dependence of fluid flow properties since most laboratory tests are conducted using a single, high strain rate. We have investigated the effect of loading rate on the permeability of porous sandstones by carrying out triaxial compression tests at four different temperatures and strain rates with continuous monitoring of permeability, acoustic emission (AE), and pore fluid chemistry. All tests are characterized by an initial permeability decrease due to inferred compaction of favorably oriented cracks. The amount of initial permeability reduction increases with decreasing strain rate, thus implying a more efficient initial compaction at slower strain rates. At a later stage of loading, permeability correlates with stress, ion concentration, or AE damage depending on the strain rate used. High strain rate tests are characterized by a positive power law or logarithmic correlation between permeability and AE damage. At slow strain rates, permeabilities decrease exponentially with mean effective stress and axial strain for the Locharbriggs sandstone. The Clashach sandstone exhibits a linear correlation between permeability and exit pore fluid concentrations (Si, Mg, Fe, Al) if a slow strain rate is used. These observations have important implications for the applicability of room temperature, high strain rate laboratory data to the conditions that prevail in the Earth's crust.