BACKGROUND: Recurrent acute otitis media occurs during the early years of life in approximately 20 to 30% of the pediatric population. A clinical challenge closely related to recurrent otitis media is persistent otitis media, manifested by persistence during antimicrobial therapy of symptoms and signs of middle ear infection and relapse of acute otitis media within 1 month of completion of antibiotic therapy. Recurrent acute otitis media is often associated with morbidity, temporary hearing loss, and financial costs. The aim of this study was to study the effect of Toftness chiropractic adjustment for acute otitis media in children. METHODS: Twenty-two children who had acute otitis media and received no prophylaxis were treated with Toftness chiropractic adjustment. RESULTS: Among the 21 children, 9 were females and 12 were males, ranging in age from 9 month to 9 years old. Examination revealed consistent findings of acute inflammation in the inner ear with red and bulging tympanic membrane and an increased mean oral temperature of >100 o F. After the Toftness chiropractic adjustment, the red and bulging tympanic membrane returned to normal in 95% of the children and a decrease in average oral temperature to 98.6F ± 0.774. CONCLUSIONS: The consistency of the results provides evidence that patients with otitis media may benefit from the Toftness chiropractic adjustment. The small number of subjects and the cohort study design limit the conclusions that can be made from this data. However, this data is clearly strong enough to justify a larger, more well-controlled clinical trial to determine the extent of efficacy of Toftness chiropractic adjustment at treating this widespread childhood condition. Key Indexing Terms: Toftness; Chiropractic; Otitis media, Subluxation


This work demonstrates the efficiency of using iterative ensemble smoothers to estimate the parameters of an SEIR model. We have extended a standard SEIR model with age-classes and compartments of sick, hospitalized, and dead. The data conditioned on are the daily numbers of accumulated deaths and the number of hospitalized. Also, it is possible to condition the model on the number of cases obtained from testing. We start from a wide prior distribution for the model parameters; then, the ensemble conditioning leads to a posterior ensemble of estimated parameters yielding model predictions in close agreement with the observations. The updated ensemble of model simulations has predictive capabilities and include uncertainty estimates. In
particular, we estimate the effective reproductive number as a function of time, and we can assess the impact of different intervention measures. By starting from the updated set of model parameters, we can make accurate short-term predictions of the epidemic development assuming
knowledge of the future effective reproductive number. Also, the model system allows for the computation of long-term scenarios of the epidemic under different assumptions. We have applied the model system on data sets from several countries, i.e., the four European countries Norway, England, The Netherlands, and France; the province of Quebec in Canada; the South American countries Argentina and Brazil; and the four US states Alabama, North Carolina, California, and New York. These countries and states all have vastly different developments of the epidemic, and we could accurately model the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in all of them. We realize that more complex models, e.g., with regional compartments, may be desirable, and we suggest that the approach used here should be applicable also for these models.


The United States has long embraced the concept of regulatory litigation, whereby individual litigants, often termed "private attorneys general," are allowed to enforce certain public laws as a matter of institutional design. Although several types of regulatory litigation exist, the U.S. class action is often considered the paradigmatic model for this type of private regulation.For years, the United States appeared to be the sole proponent of both regulatory litigation and large-scale litigation. However, in February 2012, the European Union dramatically reversed its existing policies toward mass claims resolution when the European Parliament adopted a resolution proposing to create a coherent European approach to cross-border collective redress. Given certain conceptual similarities between cross-border collective redress and global class actions, the question logically arises as to whether the European Union is in the process of embracing a form of regulatory litigation. This issue is of great importance not only to European audiences who may have to recalibrate their thinking about what constitutes "regulation" within the European sphere, but also to American audiences who will have to consider how the new European procedures affect the ability of U.S. courts to bring European parties into global class actions. Although many of the issues may appear to be procedural in nature, the more interesting – and challenging – analyses arise as a matter of regulatory law. This Article is the first to consider the European resolution from a regulatory perspective, using a combination of new governance theory and equivalence functionalism to determine whether the European Union has adopted or is in the process of adopting a form of regulatory litigation. In so doing, the Article considers a number of issues, including the basic definition of regulatory litigation, how class and collective relief can act as a regulatory mechanism and the special problems that arise when regulatory litigation is used in the transnational context. The Article also includes a normative element, providing a number of suggestions on how European authorities – who are still in the early stages of drafting the relevant procedures – can better achieve the regulatory and other objectives set forth in the resolution. Through these means, the Article makes a significant contribution not only to the domestic understanding of regulatory law, but also to the increasingly important field of transnational regulation. Audiences in both the United States and the European Union, as well as readers from other countries, can benefit greatly from this analysis.


Gravitational waves are an important prediction of Einstein's General theory of Relativity. Derived as a solution to the Einstein field equations, they are predicted to be produced in systems where there is an asymmetric acceleration of matter, and exist as a time varying quadrupolar distortion in spacetime.

Due to the rich variety of scientifically interesting astrophysical sources predicted to be producing gravitational radiation, there is significant international effort directed towards their detection. A large network of ground based interferometric detectors is in operation, with upgrades to increase sensitivity already in progress. They operate on the principle of measuring the time varying displacement in the interferometer path length an incident gravitational wave will induce. However, the predicted amplitude of gravitational waves requires the measurement to be made over several kilometres with a displacement sensitivity of less than 10^-18m/sqrt(Hz).

Ground based detectors operate in the ~10-10000 Hz region, and are fundamentally limited at the low frequency end by the noisy gravitational environment of the Earth. To enable detection of low frequency sources, LISA - the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna - is a planned mission to place an interferometric gravitational wave detector in space, sensitive to gravitational waves in the 0.1-1000 mHz region. Consisting of a triangular constellation of three spacecraft, LISA will aim to detect gravitational waves by monitoring the fluctuation in the separation between free-falling test masses over a baseline of 5 million kilometres with an accuracy of around 10pm/sqrt(Hz).

To demonstrate that LISA technology, such as the ability to place test masses into a suitably quiet gravitational free-fall, is viable, a precursor mission - LISA Pathfinder - will launch in the next few years. LISA Pathfinder will monitor the relative displacement between two free-falling inertial test masses using an interferometer, with the goal of verifying that the required quality of free-fall is achievable in LISA. This work presented in this thesis relates to the development of interferometry for LISA Pathfinder and LISA, the construction of the LISA Pathfinder flight model interferometer, and initial work on developing the interferometer for LISA.

The interferometers required for LISA and LISA Pathfinder must be constructed to be durable enough to survive launch and stable enough to measure displacements of a few picometres at frequencies down to a few mHz. Further, to help minimise noise from sources such as residual jitter of the test masses, the beams which probe the test masses must be aligned to within ±25 micrometers of the nominal reflection point. Using ultra low expansion substrates like Zerodur, and attaching optical components with hydroxide catalysis bonding offers one solution which can provide the durability and stability required.

To achieve the accuracy of beam positioning, a system which allows measurement of absolute propagation direction of a laser beam was developed. Combined with a coordinate measuring machine, this allows the absolute position of a mm-scale laser beam to be measured with an accuracy of around ±5 micrometers and ±20 microradians. This system can operate in two modes: first as a measurement system allowing measurement of an existing beam; and secondly as a target, where it can be positioned to a desired theoretical (such as the nominal reflection point of a test mass) and a beam can be aligned onto it. Combined with a method of precision adjusting optical components at the sub-micron and microradian level prior to hydroxide catalysis bonding, it enables absolute alignment of ultra-stable interferometers to micron level.

Using these techniques, the flight model interferometer for LISA Pathfinder was successfully constructed to meet the alignment and performance requirements. The control system that will maintain the test masses in near free-fall requires a very accurate measure of the attitude of the test masses. This measurement will be provided by the interferometer using differential wavefront sensing (DWS). The flight model interferometer was calibrated to establish the coupling factors between the DWS read-out and the attitude of the test mass to ensure maximum performance of the control system.

Building upon the experience gained in developing and building the LISA Pathfinder interferometer, a prototype of the LISA optical bench is in development. The LISA interferometer is significantly more complicated than that of LISA Pathfinder. Some of its features include: imaging systems to minimise coupling of beam tilt to displacement noise; a precision beam expander to generate a beam appropriate for the telescope; a redundant fibre injector system, creating two beams collinear to within a few microns and 10-20 microradians; and polarisation optics for beam steering. The development and current state of the design for the prototype optical bench is presented, along with an overview of its features.


This research was carried out in a Pinus elliottii plantation, established in 1984, with 47.16 m 2 .ha –1 of basal area, located in the Rio Negro Forest Research Station, owned by the Parana Federal University, Parana State, southern Brazil. The research objectives were to analyze the correlations between the FMA and FMA + fire danger indices and the fine fuel moisture, and develop mathematical models to estimate the fuel moisture based on those indices. The meteorological variables were obtained from the SIMEPAR weather station, located 50km away, and from a pluviograph and a thermo-hygrograph installed in the study area. The dead forest fuels were collected from 30x30cm plots, between 12 noon and 2:00PM, and classified as: AA – surface layer; AB – intermediate layer; AC – lower layer; and B – woody material with 0.7 to 2.5cm diameter. The average fuel layer thickness ranged from 14.8 to 15.3cm. The total fuel load varied from 3185.50 to 4266.01g.m –2 . The fire danger indices were calculated daily and the values obtained on the fuel collecting days were used to calculate the correlations. The correlation coefficients between relative humidity and fuel classes were 0.42, 0.36, 0.32, and 0.41 for the AA, AB, AC, and B classes, respectively. The correlation coefficients between precipitation and fuel classes were 0.57, 0.38, 0.34, and 0.15 for the AA, AB, AC, and B classes, respectively. Higher correlation coefficients were obtained between fuel moisture and fire danger indices. The correlation coefficients between the fuel classes and the FMA + were -0.53, -0.56, -0.63, and 0.81 for the classes B, AB, AA, and AC,


Whither or wither literature?
The question arose sharply last year, at least for me, when I was teaching an English Studies Honours class. No common ground here, I heard myself muttering, on which to build an advanced, however slightly advanced, study of literature. No core of works which all the students have read and to which I can refer. More pointedly, no common understanding of what might constitute the literary work, whether canonical - several had not encountered Shakespeare since their matric year - or an expression of the culture, say, the TV soap.
The literary theory class - the module having been completed in the previous semester - had not introduced its students to the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy. There had been no introduction to the major historical and/or aesthetic ways in which literature has traditionally been conceived: for example, work to world (Aristotelian mimesis); affect or pleasure; the genius of Romantic creativity; Eliotian or Modernist autonomy; later, the New Critical well-wrought urn. The literary theory class, instead, offered philosophically unsophisticated generalities - these were literary students, after all, not philosophy students - from Marx and Nietzsche, from Foucault and Derrida, or a catalogue of postcolonial terms about subalterns, others, migrants and diasporas. In a module entitled "Renaissance and Its Continuing Significance," I posed a question that I had encountered soon after taking up my first lecturing post: "Beneath his black skin Othello is one of us. Discuss."


I have used the term "artists" in my title, but I have added the term "expert practitioner" in order to raise the issue of expertise in the experienced performance-maker. I have often indicated that the theorisation of practitioner expertise, from a practitioner-centric perspective, continues to be singularly absent from the larger body of Performance Studies writing produced over recent decades, despite the fact that an engagement with precisely that expertise tends to be implicit in academic judgements of practitioners' work that is considered to be of interest. While a research enquiry into training for performance has emerged over recent years, I find it curious in its limitations: it stops short of expertise and how one might acquire, develop and evaluate it, and its theorisation still tends to take an anonymous "the performer" as its object, rather than the performance-maker as researching subject. Meanwhile a research-focused account of the creative processes specific to named, "signature" practitioners continues to be relatively rare, in part, as far as I can tell, because some of us, in the university, fail to acknowledge the research-methodological rationale for such an enquiry in all of its detail. Signature practices, where those practices are effectively inseparable from the engagement and the person and the sensibility of a named practitioner, aspire to a singularity that social sciences-influenced theoretical writing finds hard to contemplate.
I want to attempt to set up and pursue a number of lines of enquiry today, one of which, plainly, has to do with the currently fashionable and relatively under-theorised time and times (in comparison with many writers' engagement with the strongly visual spaces, places, bodies and faces of performance). I propose to show you two short professionally produced pieces of performance work. Both clearly "have something to do with" the contemporary real: in the first, Rosemary Butcher's Six Frames: Memories of Two Women, the piece was made in a research as well as a professional framework, as a result of an outside commission. The second, a staging to camera of Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children, was made in what emerges as a relatively curious professional context – i.e. by the daily newspaper The Guardian. Churchill's piece has the curious distinction of being the dramatic work most recently banned by the BBC. I want to show you, in addition, a few recently published examples of visual art practice, by cartoonist Steve Bell, each of which is professionally and one might say almost urgently embedded in the everyday. I want to look at the ways this particular and popular artist figures the political real, while also intruding explicitly, into that figuration, those semiotic complexities that an onlooker might interpret, in everyday terms, as indices of or pointers to attitude, ethos, political position, and critical intervention through an everyday mode of cultural production.


The process of digitalization of cultural and historical heritage often requires methods which involve construction of three-dimensional (3D) computer models and their rendering onto computer displays. Algorithms which are used for this purpose demand intense computations. This makes them time-consuming, even with the computing power available on contemporary computers. One of possible solutions for this problem is to distribute computations over multiple computer systems. For the purpose of distributed generation of video contents based on 3D scenes, we apply Autodesk Backburner and perform a comparative analysis of this method and traditional local rendering. We study characteristics of the local and distributed rendering processes in terms of computation times. We measure the influence of scene complexity, determined by the number of polygons, size of textures, and settings of the ray-tracing system, on the run-time of computations. Based on these experiments, we offer several conclusions in the form of recommendations. Besides the complexity of processed scenes, these recommendations are formulated by taking into account the characteristics of used distributed systems, such as network throughput. We believe that the presented information can be useful for practitioners dealing with 3D scenes of different complexity in diverse computing environments.


OBJECTIVES--To assess the effect of hyperventilation and mental stress on coronary blood flow and symptom production in patients with syndrome X. DESIGN--A prospective study. Hyperventilation and mental stress tests were performed on the ward and were repeated in the cardiac catheter laboratory where coronary blood flow velocity was also measured with an intracoronary Doppler catheter in the left anterior descending coronary artery. Oesophageal manometry studies were also performed. PATIENTS--29 patients with syndrome X (typical anginal chest pain, a positive exercise test, and normal coronary angiogram). SETTING--A regional cardiothoracic centre. RESULTS--Hyperventilation produced typical chest pain in 16 patients on the ward. 13 patients experienced their typical chest pain with mental stress test 5. Ten patients experienced chest pain with both hyperventilation and mental stress tests. This pattern was reproduced exactly when the tests were repeated in the cardiac catheter laboratory. Hyperventilation produced a significant increase in the rate-pressure product during ward and laboratory testing. There was, however, no significant change in the rate-pressure product on mental stress tests. The mean (SEM) coronary flow velocity decreased significantly on hyperventilation in the catheter laboratory from 10.0 (0.92) cm/s to 5.9 (0.72) cm/s (p < 0.001). There was also a significant reduction in the mean (SEM) coronary blood flow velocity on mental stress tests from 9.8 (0.86) cm/s to 7.4 (0.6) cm/s (p < 0.001). This reduction in flow velocity occurred in the absence of any changes in diameter of the left anterior descending artery. Further analysis showed that the coronary flow velocity was reduced significantly in only that group of patients in which hyperventilation and mental stress provoked chest pain. There was a significant increase in the arterial concentrations of noradrenaline on both hyperventilation and mental stress testing. Oesophageal manometry showed abnormalities in 17% of patients. CONCLUSIONS--Both hyperventilation and mental stress can produce chest pain in patients with syndrome X and this is associated with a reduction in coronary blood flow velocity. The results of this study suggests that this reduction in coronary flow occurs as a result of increased microvascular resistance.


Despite rapid economic growth, undernutrition rates in South Asia remain among the highest in the world. It is also seen that both rural and urban populations in developing countries are increasingly dependent on markets for food. This makes examining the potential of different agri‑food models to deliver nutritious foods relevant. This article examines the value chains of two fortified foods manufactured by private sector business in India using the conceptual framework in Maestre, Poole and Henson (2017), to understand their potential to reach economically poor households. We find that both value chains have potential but are unsuccessful in reaching nutritionally vulnerable populations. In both cases, a favourable institutional environment can enable them to have a pro‑nutrition and pro-poor focus. A proactive state role and regulation are called for to provide the necessary institutional environment to ensure that private business-led value chains focus on enhanced intake of nutritious food by low-income households.


PURPOSE
To investigate whether the tear film thinning between blinks is caused by evaporation or by tangential flow of the tear film along the surface of the cornea. Tangential flow was studied by measuring the movement of the lipid layer.

METHODS
Four video recordings of the lipid layer of the tear film were made from 16 normal subjects, with the subjects keeping their eyes open for up to 30 seconds after a blink. To assess vertical and horizontal stretching of the lipid layer and underlying aqueous layer, lipid movement was analyzed at five positions, a middle position 1 mm below the corneal center, and four positions respectively 1 mm above, below, nasal, and temporal to this middle position. In addition, in 13 subjects, the thinning of the tear film after a blink was measured.

RESULTS
The total upward movement could be fitted by the sum of an exponential decay plus a slow steady drift; this drift was upward in 14 of 16 subjects (P = 0.002). Areas of thick lipid were seen to expand causing upward or downward drift or horizontal movement. The velocity of the initial rapid upward movement and the time constant of upward movement were found to correlate significantly with tear film thickness but not with tear-thinning rate.

CONCLUSIONS
Analysis indicated that the observed movement of the lipid layer was too slow to explain the observed thinning rate of the tear film. In the Appendix, it is shown that flow under a stationary lipid layer cannot explain the observed thinning rate. It is concluded that most of the observed tear thinning between blinks is due to evaporation.


1. Costa-Cabral, M., et al. (2013). "Snowpack and runoff response to climate change in Owens Valley and Mono Lake watersheds." Climatic Change 116(1): 97-109. Precipitation from the Eastern Sierra Nevada watersheds of Owens Lake and Mono Lake is one of the main water sources for Los Angeles' over 4 million people, and plays a major role in the ecology of Mono Lake and of these watersheds. We use the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model at daily time scale, forced by climate projections from 16 global climate models under greenhouse gas emissions scenarios B1 and A2, to evaluate likely hydrologic responses in these watersheds for 1950-2099. Comparing climate in the latter half of the 20th Century to projections for 2070-2099, we find that all projections indicate continued temperature increases, by 2-5 A degrees C, but differ on precipitation changes, ranging from-24 % to +56 %. As a result, the fraction of precipitation falling as rain is projected to increase, from a historical 0.19 to a range of 0.26-0.52 (depending on the GCM and emission scenario), leading to earlier timing of the annual hydrograph's center, by a range of 9-37 days. Snowpack accumulation depends on temperature and even more strongly on precipitation due to the high elevation of these watersheds (reaching 4,000 m), and projected changes for April 1 snow water equivalent range from-67 % to +9 %. We characterize the watershed's hydrologic response using variables integrated in space over the entire simulated area and aggregated in time over 30-year periods. We show that from the complex dynamics acting at fine time scales (seasonal and sub-seasonal) simple dynamics emerge at this multi-year time scale. Of particular interest are the dynamic effects of temperature. Warming anticipates hydrograph timing, by raising the fraction of precipitation falling as rain, reducing the volume of snowmelt, and initiating snowmelt earlier. This timing shift results in the depletion of soil moisture in summer, when potential evapotranspiration is highest. Summer evapotranspiration losses are limited by soil moisture availability, and as a result the watershed's water balance at the annual and longer scales is insensitive to warming. Mean annual runoff changes at base-of-mountain stations are thus strongly determined by precipitation changes. This article applies formal detection and attribution techniques to investigate the nature of observed shifts in the timing of streamflow in the western United States. Previous studies have shown that the snow hydrology of the western United States …


There is evidence to suggest that the p120 GAP (GAP), originally described as an inhibitor of p21ras, may also serve as a downstream effector of ras-regulated signal transduction. To determine whether GAP expression is required for the growth of human normal and leukemic hematopoietic cells, we used GAP antisense oligodeoxynucleotides to inhibit it and analyzed the effects of this inhibition on the colony- forming ability of nonadherent, T lymphocyte-depleted mononuclear cells and of highly purified progenitors (CD34+ MNC) obtained from the bone marrow and peripheral blood of healthy volunteers or chronic myeloid leukemia (CML, bcr-abl-positive) patients. The acute myelogenous leukemia cell line MO7, the Philadelphia BV173 cell line, and the acute promyelocytic leukemia NB4 and HL-60 cell lines were similarly examined. GAP antisense treatment inhibited colony formation from normal myelo-, erythro-, and megakaryopoietic progenitor cells as well as from CML progenitor cells. Proliferation of MO7 (growth factor- dependent) and BV173 (bcr-abl-dependent) cells, but not that of NB4 and HL-60 (growth factor-independent) cells, was also inhibited, even though a specific downregulation of GAP was observed in each cell line, as analyzed by either or both mRNA and protein expression. Stimulation of MO7 cells with hematopoietic growth factors increased the expression of GAP as well as the levels of active GTP-bound p21ras. Stimulation of GAP expression was inhibited upon GAP antisense treatment. These data indicate that p120 GAP is involved in human normal and leukemic hemopoiesis and strongly suggest that GAP is not only a p21ras inhibitor (signal terminator), but also a positive signal transducer.


The objective of the present study was to estimate growth curve parameters of length and weight in whitefish Chirostoma estor (EE), blacknose silverside Chirostoma promelas (PP) and their reciprocal hybrids (EP and PE) up to 300 days of age from a complete diallel cross under culture conditions in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico. The length was measured monthly from hatching, while the weight was measured monthly from 120 days of age. The total number of each observation (samples) was analyzed for length 1006 (26), 771 (22), 513 (22) and 421 (21) for groups EP, PE, PP and EE, respectively. Total number of observations (samples) was analyzed for weight 630 (16), 521 (14), 263 (13) and 256 (13) for groups EP, PE, PP and EE, respectively. The growth curves for weight and length were estimated using nonlinear regression models. The group EE reached an estimated weight of 7.89 g at 300 days of age, 65% higher than the PP (4.78 g) and 57 % higher than the average of their hybrids (P < 0.01); EE had a length of 9.31 cm (14%) larger than PP (7.97 cm) and 13% larger than the average of their hybrids (P < 0.01). The four groups showed a positive allometric growth with values of 3.20 to 3.3 (P < 0.05). The results of this study are the first comparative estimates of growth characteristics up to 300 days of age for these species and their hybrids in captivity.


Although algorithmic auditing has emerged as a key strategy to expose systematic biases embedded in software platforms, we struggle to understand the real-world impact of these audits, as scholarship on the impact of algorithmic audits on increasing algorithmic fairness and transparency in commercial systems is nascent. To analyze the impact of publicly naming and disclosing performance results of biased AI systems, we investigate the commercial impact of Gender Shades, the first algorithmic audit of gender and skin type performance disparities in commercial facial analysis models. This paper 1) outlines the audit design and structured disclosure procedure used in the Gender Shades study, 2) presents new performance metrics from targeted companies IBM, Microsoft and Megvii (Face++) on the Pilot Parliaments Benchmark (PPB) as of August 2018, 3) provides performance results on PPB by non-target companies Amazon and Kairos and, 4) explores differences in company responses as shared through corporate communications that contextualize differences in performance on PPB. Within 7 months of the original audit, we find that all three targets released new API versions. All targets reduced accuracy disparities between males and females and darker and lighter-skinned subgroups, with the most significant update occurring for the darker-skinned female subgroup, that underwent a 17.7% - 30.4% reduction in error between audit periods. Minimizing these disparities led to a 5.72% to 8.3% reduction in overall error on the Pilot Parliaments Benchmark (PPB) for target corporation APIs. The overall performance of non-targets Amazon and Kairos lags significantly behind that of the targets, with error rates of 8.66% and 6.60% overall, and error rates of 31.37% and 22.50% for the darker female subgroup, respectively.


In December 2008, broker-dealer CEO Bernard Madoff confessed to a massive Ponzi scheme. Days later, he was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the United States Attorney for, among other things, securities fraud. The theory of prosecution proceeded on the premise that Madoff's illicit investment advisory activities (which stemmed from his reputation in the industry) operated wholly apart from his broker-dealer activities. Subsequently, both the SEC and FINRA (the industry's largest self-regulator) concluded studies affirming that no securities transactions took place at the broker-dealer – for years, the man with the famous investment firm and his employees had simply spent the cash. Nonetheless, in remedy, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation commenced the process of marshalling all of Madoff's broker-dealer assets for reimbursement of his Ponzi scheme victims. Accordingly, this Article examines two crucial, related determinations made in the aftermath of the Madoff scandal: 1) the decision to charge a Ponzi scheme as a violation of SEC Rule 10b-5, and 2) the decision to reimburse certain investors in the Ponzi scheme with SIPC funds. Those determinations are at best debatable given the "pooled fund" nature of the fraud, the complete absence of investment activity, and the near-complete absence of brokerage-house custody of most of the fraud's assets. Specifically, while case law from certain Circuits supports the notion that, under certain circumstances, a non-purchase of a security can equate with a purchase/sale for purposes of Rule 10b-5, such an expansive reading of the anti-fraud prohibition seems to greatly expand upon the Supreme Court's reasoning whence last taking up the cause. And while can SIPC reimbursement under the Securities Investor Protection Act is somewhat discretionary, the decision to reimburse Madoff investors and not those of a contemporaneous billion dollar fraud conducted by another brokerage house chief seems dangerously incongruent.In conclusion, the Article posits that future SEC rulemaking should remove all uncertainty surrounding the application of Rule 10b-5 to Ponzi schemes driven by the promoter's reputation. In turn, such certainty (along with reforms to the investment advisory custodial process) should solidify both expectations and remedies when there is a lack of actual investment. In short, with some tweaking, the rules can better support the decision to reimburse those unfortunate investors who entrust funds with industry "players" who are later revealed to be to be merely market mascots.


Abstract. Seismic profiles of Far East Russian Lake El'gygytgyn, formed by a meteorite impact some 3.6 million years ago, show a stratified sediment succession that can be separated into subunits Ia and Ib at approximately 167 m below lake floor (=~3.17 Ma). The upper (Ia) is well-stratified, while the lower is acoustically more massive and discontinuous. The sediments are intercalated with frequent mass movement deposits mainly in the proximal areas, while the distal region is almost free of such deposits at least in the upper part. In spring 2009, a long core drilled in the lake center within the framework of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) penetrated the entire lacustrine sediment succession down to ~320 m below lake floor and about 200 m farther into the meteorite-impact-related bedrock. Downhole logging data down to 390 m below lake floor show that the bedrock and the lacustrine part differ significantly in their petrophysical characteristics. The contact between the bedrock and the lacustrine sediments is not abrupt, but rather transitional with a variable mixture of impact-altered bedrock clasts in a lacustrine matrix. Physical and chemical proxies measured on the cores can be used to divide the lacustrine part into five different statistical clusters. These can be plotted in a redox-condition vs. input-type diagram, with total organic carbon content and magnetic susceptibility values indicating anoxic or oxic conditions and with the Si / Ti ratio representing more clastic or more biogenic input. Plotting the clusters in this diagram allows identifying clusters that represent glacial phases (cluster I), super interglacials (cluster II), and interglacial phases (clusters III and IV).


Material design is the process by which artists specify the reflectance properties of a surface, such as its diffuse color and specular roughness. We present a user study to evaluate the relative benefits of different material design interfaces, focusing on novice users since they stand to gain the most from intuitive interfaces. Specifically, we investigate the editing of the parameters of analytic bidirectional distribution functions (BRDFs) using three interface paradigms: physical sliders by which users set the parameters of analytic BRDF models, such as diffuse albedo and specular roughness; perceptual sliders by which users set perceptually-inspired parameters, such as diffuse luminance and gloss contrast; and image navigation by which material variations are displayed in arrays of image thumbnails and users make edits by selecting them. We investigate two design tasks: precise adjustment and artistic exploration. We collect objective and subjective data, finding that subjects can perform equally well with physical and perceptual sliders as long as the interface responds interactively. Image navigation performs worse than the other interfaces on precise adjustment tasks, but excels at aiding in artistic exploration. We find that given enough time, novices can perform relatively complex material editing tasks with little training, and most novices work similarly to one another.


ABSTRACT The high-resolution genotyping method of amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis was used to study the genetic relationships between Campylobacter jejuni strains infecting chickens (n = 54) and those causing gastroenteritis in humans (n = 53). In addition,C. jejuni strains associated with the development of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) (n = 14) and Miller Fisher syndrome (MFS) (n = 4), two related acute paralytic syndromes in human, were included. Strains were isolated between 1989 and 1998 in The Netherlands. The AFLP banding patterns were analyzed with correlation-based and band-based similarity coefficients and UPGMA (unweighted pair group method using average linkages) cluster analysis. All C. jejuni strains showed highly heterogeneous fingerprints, and no fingerprints exclusive for chicken strains or for human strains were obtained. All strains were separated in two distinct genetic groups. In group A the percentage of human strains was significantly higher and may be an indication that genotypes of this group are more frequently associated with human diseases. We conclude that C. jejuni from chickens cannot be distinguished from human strains and that GBS or MFS related strains do not belong to a distinct genetic group.


The challenge to the Affordable Care Act was waged on two fronts. The first front was the constitutionalist front. Challengers claimed that it was unprecedented for Congress to compel people to engage in commerce, and purchase health insurance. However, the second front in this battle is much less appreciated. Underneath these constitutionalist positions were popular constitutionalist social movements. This essay, part of a symposium issue of Public Affairs Quarterly, analyzes the movement through the lens of popular constitutionalism, from its conception, to its growth, to its strengthening counter-movement, and finally to its inevitable conclusion at the Supreme Court of the United States.First, I explore notions of popular constitutionalism, and how the will of the people impacts how the courts construe our most fundamental laws. Second, I trace how the argument against the Affordable Care Act evolved from a simple idea to a popular constitutionalist movement, brewed by groups such as the Tea Party. Third, I discuss how a progressive countermovement formed to combat the challengers, and aimed to maintain the status quo of constitutional law. I conclude by considering how the courts received these competing social movements. The dynamics of popular constitutionalism were fully unleashed in NIFB v. Sebelius. Not only was this case unprecedented, but the challenge to it was also unprecedented.


Small-scale farming in Ecuador's highlands is associated with excessive soil erosion, degradation of soil health, and agricultural productivity loss. Conservation agriculture (CA) offers promise in these areas. Minimum disruption of soil and maintenance of permanent groundcover, two CA pillars, reduce erosion and can increase soil health and productivity. Despite its promise, CA has not been widely adopted by Andean region farmers, and factors such as uncertainty about CA benefits, risk aversion, and high discount rates have been offered as explanations for lagging adoption. This paper combines an analysis of CA trial data from farmer fields and an analysis of two farm-household surveys to measure potential benefits from adoption and identify correlates of adoption. The analysis reveals actions to promote more widespread adoption of CA. Data are from a unique five-year research project in Bolivar Province, Ecuador. Yield and cost of production data from on-farm trials are used to estimate costs and benefits of CA, household data are used to analyze the determinants of CA adoption, and data from a choice experiment help estimate willingness to pay for CA attributes, such as increased yield and reduced erosion. We find that CA practices yield more and cost slightly less (over five years) than conventional practices, but differences are not large. The adoption analysis shows that farm size and labor access are not associated with adoption, but farmers who perceive soil loss on their farm to be severe are much more likely to adopt. This aversion to soil loss is examined in the choice experiment, which finds that farmers are most interested in economic considerations, such as increasing yields and saving increasingly costly labor. CA holds promise in such systems, but diffusion efforts must be carefully tailored to address farmer needs.


The concept of public health in Nepal is not new for this period but the government initiation in the areas of public health is still dearth due to the lack of public health act and its low priority. The health status is measured in terms of the disease indicators in both public and private sectors but should be measured in the perspective of positive health indicators. Country had gained the dramatic progress in the health issues but the rapid civilization and globalization process the country is becoming the victim of triple burden diseases as a consequence of the epidemiological alteration, lifestyle and climatic condition as well as social environment, and there is the opportunity and challenges of new federalism to address the those issues. The government should create space to the public health professionals in every federal structure as a focal person for planning, executing and evaluation of the public health programs and activities for the significant progress to overcome the health issues. The policies, plans, programs, activities and infrastructure establishment should be oriented to maintain and promote the health status before the disease condition (rather than treatment). The future action of nation is to take the public health in a high priority as a collaborative approach and fill the human resource gap, emphasis on political accountability and good governance, tackle the inequalities and improve the access of quality care specially remote area, promotion and improvement in infrastructure, water supply and sanitation as well as innovation and research.


Structural and electronic properties and chemical fate of free radicals generated from hydroxyurea (HU) and its methylated analogues N-methylhydroxyurea (NMHU) and O-methylhydroxyurea (OMHU) are of utmost importance for their biological and pharmacological effects. In this work the cis/trans conformational processes, tautomerizations, and intramolecular hydrogen and methyl migrations in hydroxyurea-derived radicals have been considered. Potential energy profiles for these reactions have been calculated using two DFT functionals (BP86 and B3LYP) and two composite models (G3(MP2)RAD and G3B3). Solvation effects have been included both implicitly (CPCM) and explicitly. It has been shown that calculated energy barriers for free radical rearrangements are significantly reduced when a single water molecule is included in calculations. In the case of HU-derived open-shell species, a number of oxygen-, nitrogen-, and carbon-centered radicals have been located, but only the O-centered radicals (e1 and z1) fit to experimental isomeric hyperfine coupling constants (hfccs) from EPR spectra. The reduction of NMHU and OMHU produces O-centered and N-centered radicals, respectively, with the former being more stable by ca. 60 kJ mol(-1). The NMHU-derived radical e4 undergoes rearrangements, which can result in formation of several conceivable products. The calculated hfccs have been successfully used to interpret the experimental EPR spectra of the most probable rearranged product 10. Reduction potentials of hydroxyureas, radical stabilization energy (RSE) and bond disocciation energy (BDE) values have been calculated to compare stabilities and reactivities of different subclasses of free radicals. It has been concluded, in agreement with experiment, that reductions of biologically relevant tyrosyl radicals by HU and NMHU are thermochemically favorable processes, and that the order of reactivity of hydroxyureas follows the experimentally observed trend NMHU > HU > OMHU.


It's significantly meaningful for improving information transmission in social network site(SNS) to detect the most influential nodes. The key nodes who occupy structural holes are easier to acquire information benefits and control benefits from their relationship network. This study summarizes the existing structural holes measuring methods based on Burt's structural holes theory, and provides a new improved method according to the features of SNS, which considers the degree of nodes and the topological structure of their neighbor nodes. In addition, to evaluate the accuracy of those measuring methods, the susceptible-infected-recovered(SIR) model is used to simulate experiment in four real data sets of social network. The experimental result shows that our method has a better accuracy and applicability. This paper comes up with a new idea and method for detecting key nodes who occupy structural holes in SNS.


OVERVIEW: In the year since the fall of Communism, Russia has revised its patent, trademark and computer software law to meet generally-accepted international standards. Copyright and trade secret legislation still falls short of international standards, but should be revised by 1994. Companies selling or developing technology in Russia need to comply with the registration formalities of Russian legislation or risk losing their parent and trademark rights. Furthermore, they must ensure that all their Russian employees sign written contracts assigning intellectual property rights and agreeing to respect trade secrets. With its great natural resources, wealth of scientific talent, and improving legislation, Russia is promising, both as a market for and a source of new technology. No country has the combination of large numbers of brilliant scientists and low salaries that Russia has today. This combination makes attractive the idea of investing in high-technology projects in Russia, where a large research team and its laboratory can be hired for the price of a single researcher in the United States, Germany or Japan. Although coordination of efforts at a distance is a problem, most Russian scientists know English and have access to quick and reliable electronic mail communication. Russia also can be a major market for advanced technology. Despite current economic difficulties, it remains one of the world's largest producers of industrial goods. Companies developing new technologies must take steps now to protect that technology under Russian intellectual property law or risk losing the Russian market to competitors. Companies considering starting advanced technology projects in Russia, or marketing their technology there, are probably aware that Soviet law, as it existed in the late 1980s, did not provide adequate protection for intellectual property. Some types of intellectual property were not protected at all (e.g., computer programs, trade secrets), or were protected at too low a level to provide necessary incentives (inventions, copyrightable works). Major improvements were made in Soviet intellectual property law in 1991, but the law still fell short of world standards. When Russia attained full sovereignty with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, intellectual property protection unexpectedly achieved high priority among law-making activities. Intellectual property legislation was a key element of plans for transition to a market economy. Furthermore, by moving to world standards of intellectual property protection, Russia could show its good faith to prospective international trading partners. Legislation recently adopted by Russia's Parliament will, on paper at least, bring Russia up fully to international standards of protection of patents, computer software, computer chip designs, and trademarks. However, to take full advantage of this legislation, foreign business partners will need to comply with the formalities of Russian law and to negotiate appropriate contracts with their Russian partners. The following discussion considers six areas of intellectual property law: Patent law; protection of integrated circuit designs; protection of computer programs and databases; trademark law; copyright law; trade secret law. Legislation to modernize the first four of these areas was passed in the spring of 1992, but was vetoed by President Yeltsin on the basis of technical objections. (The laws failed to take into account the rights of the constituent units within the Russian Federation.) Parliament amended the legislation to meet President Yeltsin's objections and passed it again in September 1992. Modernization of copyright and trade secret law is on the legislative agenda, but will probably not occur until sometime in 1993 or 1994. CHANGES IN PATENT LAW The new patent legislation introduces two important changes in patent law. First, it expands the coverage of patent law to cover such important areas as pharmaceuticals and products of genetic engineering. …


In most cultures the dead and their living relatives are held in a dialogic relationship. The dead have made it clear, while living, what they expect from their descendants. The living, for their part, wish to honour the tombs of their ancestors; at the least, to keep the graves of the recent dead from disrepair. Despite the strictures, the living can fail their responsibilities, for example, by migration to foreign countries. The peripatetic Chinese are one of the few cultures able to overcome the dilemma of the wanderer or the exile. With the help of a priest, an Australian Chinese migrant may summon the soul of an ancestor from an Asian grave to a Melbourne temple, where the spirit, though removed from its earthly vessel, will rest and remain at peace. Amongst cultures in which such practices are not culturally appropriate, to fail to honour the family dead can be exquisitely painful. Violence is the cause of most failure.


This Working Paper constitutes Chapter 5 of the book manuscript, Understanding Population-Development-Environment Interactions: A Case Study on Mauritius. The Mauritius case study was carried out by IIASA in scientific collaboration with the University of Mauritius and funded by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). This paper identifies long-term social, economic, and political processes that shaped natural resources and various ecological systems of Mauritius. The environmental history of the island demonstrates how various human activities transferred the landscape, fauna, and flora over the centuries. The balance of direct, local causes behind these interventions as opposed to remote and often indirect driving forces kept changing over time, but the analysis shows overall dominance of the second group. Even in the position of ful l political sovereignty, remote economic, political, and increasingly, environmental processes and forces tend to shape local structures. This is the main reason behind my confidence that the island's environmental history has useful lessons for the future in Mauritius and perhaps many other small islands. The analysis shows that during the 400 years history of Mauritius, various forms of natural resource exploitation and environmental transformation were to a large extent results of fluctuating opportunities in international trade, changes in economic policies of the colonial power and other important trading partners, various forms of technological change, institutional transformation, and political changes. The dynamic combination of these factors conditioned the aspirations and behaviors of various economic and social actors in Mauritius over the centuries which, in turn, profoundly transformed all components of the natural environment in Mauritius. It is possible to tell the environmental history of Mauritius and the story of the Dodo without considering the external factors, but it is impossible to understand them. It is hoped that this paper provides some of the missing explanations.


The objectives of this study were to determine the sample size (i.e., number of plants) required to accurately estimate the average of morphological traits of pigeonpea ( Cajanus cajan L.) and to check for variability in sample size between evaluation periods and seasons. Two uniformity trials (i.e., experiments without treatment) were conducted for two growing seasons. In the first season (2011/2012), the seeds were sown by broadcast seeding, and in the second season (2012/2013), the seeds were sown in rows spaced 0.50 m apart. The ground area in each experiment was 1,848 m2, and 360 plants were marked in the central area, in a 2 m × 2 m grid. Three morphological traits (e.g., number of nodes, plant height and stem diameter) were evaluated 13 times during the first season and 22 times in the second season. Measurements for all three morphological traits were normally distributed and confirmed through the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Randomness was confirmed using the Run Test , and the descriptive statistics were calculated. For each trait, the sample size (n) was calculated for the semiamplitudes of the confidence interval (i.e., estimation error) equal to 2, 4, 6, ..., 20% of the estimated mean with a confidence coefficient (1-?) of 95%. Subsequently, n was fixed at 360 plants, and the estimation error of the estimated percentage of the average for each trait was calculated. Variability of the sample size for the pigeonpea culture was observed between the morphological traits evaluated, among the evaluation periods and between seasons. Therefore, to assess with an accuracy of 6% of the estimated average, at least 136 plants must be evaluated throughout the pigeonpea crop cycle to determine the sample size for the traits (e.g., number of nodes, plant height and stem diameter) in the different evaluation periods and between seasons.


BACKGROUND: The objective of this study was to investigate the association between alcohol use by adolescents and relationships with parents and parenting practices in Ukraine. For this analysis, the nested case-control study design was used with pooled data from 1999, 2003, and 2007 surveys of repeated cross-sectional study "European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs".METHODS: A nationally representative sample of classes in Ukrainian secondary schools was used. The target population consisted of all 15-16-year-old students in Ukraine. Complete data were available for 10,494 participants. Main exposures were perceptions of the relationships with one's mother and father, rule-setting, control, and support provided by parents. Outcome measures were: regular use of alcohol, drinking to the point of intoxication, and age when students start consuming alcohol. Associations between the determinants and outcome measures were analyzed using multivariate binary logistic regression analysis.RESULTS: Adolescents who were not so satisfied with the relationships with their mothers were nearly twice as likely (OR=1.7; 95%CI=1.2-2.5) to have used alcohol 10 or more times during the last 30 days. Adolescents who were not at all satisfied with their relationships with father were at risk of drinking to the point of intoxication at least once during last year (OR=1.4, 95%CI=1.2-1.8).Adolescents whose parents never know whom he/she spends evenings with were nearly twice as likely (OR=1.8, 95%CI =1.3-2.4) to have used alcohol 10 or more times during the last 30 days. However, the relationships between rule-setting by parents, perceived support and alcohol use were not consistent.CONCLUSION(s): This study supports the hypothesis that the dissatisfaction with the relationships with one's mother, unlike the dissatisfaction with the relations with one's father, may be a risk factor for regular alcohol use among adolescents. Besides, our results denote the negative association of parental support and control with adolescent alcohol use. KEYWORDS: adolescents, alcohol use, risk factors, parenting style.


Tectonic forcing of stratigraphic architecture is likely in foreland basins. Tectonic driving forces are increasingly being invoked to explain stratigraphic patterns in the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway Basin of North America, yet the evidence is largely circumstantial, and the details of driving forces remain elusive. In this paper I show direct stratigraphic evidence for syndepositional growth of a structural arch with at least 50 m of relief during accumulation of the upper Turonian Ferron Sandstone in south-central Utah, United States. Progressive growth of the arch was superimposed on several high-frequency stratal cycles that were driven by a more regionally extensive process (geodynamic or eustatic) and that produced laterally amalgamated sandstone bodies in a depositional strike-parallel orientation (north-south). All of this stratigraphy was then truncated by a more or less planar erosion surface (sequence boundary) that can be traced physically over at least 67 km north-south. This surface was later tilted northward, such that the upper member of the Ferron Sandstone thins progressively southward from 50 to 10 m over 67 km. The facies juxtapositions revealed by the Ferron Sandstone could, if seen in exposure of limited lateral extent, be wrongly interpreted as recording regionally extensive relative sea-level drops and potentially used in error as evidence for substantial eustatic sea-level falls during the Turonian. The folding and tilting documented in this study can be clearly attributed to geodynamic and/or tectonic driving forces, likely related to migration of a forebulge.


In this article we discuss the integration of international security assistance and rule of law promotion within larger state-building projects. Going beyond the widespread claim that both approaches should be closely linked within overarching security sector reform (SSR) efforts, this article inquires more systematically into their relationship both at a conceptual level and at the level of state-building practices. It argues that the creation of effective security institutions cannot be easily reconciled with programmes that promote mechanisms of legitimate political control as one dimension of the rule of law. Rationales behind security and rule of law support diverge: the former aims to strengthen a state's enforcement capacities, while the latter seeks to restrict them. The case of security and rule of law support to the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank illustrates the tensions that can result. The article shows that in the Palestinian case, selectivity, fragmentation and timing issues have impeded the coherence of international assistance.


As a kind of highly effective, low‐cost, and stable photocatalysts, TiO2 has received substantial public and scientific attention. However, it can only be activated under ultraviolet light irradiation due to its wide bandgap, high recombination, and weak separation efficiency of carriers. Doping is an effective method to extend the light absorption to the visible light region. In this chapter, we will address the importance of doping, different doping modes, preparation method, and photocatalytic mechanism in TiO2 photocatalysts. Thereafter, we will concentrate on Ti3+ self‐doping, nonmetal doping, metal doping, and codoping. Examples of progress can be given for each one of these four doping modes. The influencing factors of preparation method and doping modes on photocatalytic performance (spectrum response, carrier transport, interfacial electron transfer reaction, surface active sites, etc.) are summed up. The main objective is to study the photocatalytic processes, to elucidate the mechanistic models for a better understand‐ ing the photocatalytic reactions, and to find a method of enhancing photocatalytic activities.


A study carried out as part of the FEP research program (Future Energy Program) has developed an online interface that combines satellite, geographical and demographic data to represent the progress of electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa from 2014 to date. Through satellite data it is possible to observe lighting during daylight hours, and especially at night, and to identify the areas where populations without access to the electricity grid or to autonomous generation solutions are concentrated. Since the satellite data are constantly updated over time, the interface allows tracking of the evolution of the electrification process, including the demographic dynamics. The high resolution of the data makes it possible to understand more effectively the geographical areas with or without access to electricity in the Sub-Saharan area. The dataset supports the policymakers involved in energy planning aimed at achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 7 of the 2030 Agenda for universal access to modern and sustainable energy.


To assess the influences of age and sex on regional changes in 1 repetition maximum (1RM) strength, 10 young men (20–30 years), 8 young women (20–30 years), 11 older men (65–75 years), and 10 older women (65–75 years) were studied before and after a 24-week whole-body strength training program. Changes in 1RM strength were analyzed for each individual exercise, as well as by calculating a total body score (TBS), an upper body score (UBS), and a lower body score (LBS). The effect of age and sex on changes in 1RM strength was analyzed using a repeated measures analysis of variance. When changes in strength for individual exercises were analyzed, the chest press, lat pulldown, shoulder press, and triceps pushdown were affected by both age (p > 0.05) and sex (p > 0.05), while the biceps curls were only influenced by age (p > 0.05). For the lower body, the leg press changes in 1RM strength were influenced by age (p > 0.0001), while leg extension was influenced by sex (p > 0.05). Total body score, UBS, and LBS showed significant increases with 24 weeks of ST (p > 0.001, all). Changes in TBS and UBS were affected by age (p > 0.001, both) and sex (p > 0.05 and p > 0.001, respectively). Younger subjects showed a greater increase in strength than older subjects, and men showed a greater increase in strength compared with women. Changes in LBS were affected by age (p > 0.001), with younger subjects showing a greater increase in strength compared with the older subjects, but not by sex (p = 0.464). These data indicate that regional increases in strength are differentially affected by age and sex.


This dissertation investigates statistical optimization of acoustic models in speech recognition. Two new optimization methods are proposed for phonetic decision tree search and (HMM) modeling---the knowledge-based adaptive PDT algorithm and the HMM gradient boosting algorithm.
Investigations are conducted to applying both methods to improve word error rate of the state-of-the-art speech recognition system. However, these two methods are developed in a general machine learning background and their applications are not limited to speech recognition.
The HMM gradient boosting method is based on a function approximation scheme from the perspective of optimization in function space rather than the parameter space, based on the fact that the Gaussian mixture model in each HMM state is an additive model of homogeneous functions (Gaussians). It provides a new scheme which can jointly optimize model structure and parameters. Experiments are conducted on the World Street Journal (WSJ) task and good improvements on word error rate are observed.
The knowledge-based adaptive PDT algorithm is developed under a trend toward knowledge-based systems and aims at optimizing the mapping from contextual phones to articulatory states by maximizing implicit usage of the phonological and phonetic information, which is presumed to be contained in large data corpus. A computational efficient algorithm is developed to incorporate this prior knowledge in PDT construction. This algorithm is evaluated on the Telehealth conversational speech recognition and significant improvement on system performance is achieved.


The fine structure of mucocartilage, a tissue unique to larval lampreys, was examined in Petromyzon marinus L. This tissue is surrounded by a perichondrium of vascularized, dense connective tissue composed of fibroblasts, collagen fibrils, and elastic-like microfibrils, but it is avascular itself and consists of elastic-like microfibrils, ground substance, and a few diffusely scattered fibroblasts. Fibroblasts possess rough endoplasmic reticulum, may free ribosomes, a well-developed Golgi apparatus, a tubulo-vesicular network, and a number of secondary lysosomes containing crystalline material. The appearance of the organelles suggests the involvement of the cell in the synthesis and secretion of the ground substance and microfibrils. Tubular microfibrils, 11-13 nm in diameter, comprise the major portion of the matrix, and they are similar to those described in developing mammalian elastic tissue (Ross and Bornstein, 1969). The retention of the microfibrils may represent either a primitive form of elastic fiber in this "primitive" vertebrate or reflect the larval condition of the lampreys under examination. Scattered spherical to polyhedral-shaped mitrix granules and intergranular filaments make up the remainder of the matrix. It was concluded that mucocartilage in larval lampreys is not a conventional type of vertebrate connective tissue.


We investigate the lasing modes in large-Fresnel-number laser systems with astigmatism effects. Experimental results reveal that numerous lasing modes are concentrated on exotic patterns corresponding to intriguing geometries. We theoretically use the quantum operator algebra to construct the wave representation for manifesting the origin of the localized wave patterns.


With contributions by Sarah Cartwright, Jessie McNab, J. Kenneth Moore, Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, Wendy Thompson, and Jeremy Warren Many famous Italian Renaissance artworks were made to celebrate love and marriage. They were the pinnacles of a tradition---dating from the early Renaissance---of commemorating betrothal, marriage, and the birth of a child by commissioning extraordinary objects or exchanging them as gifts. This important volume is the first to examine the entire range of works to which Renaissance rituals of love and marriage gave rise and makes a major contribution to our understanding of Renaissance art in its broader cultural context. Some 140 works of art, dating from about 1400 to 1600, are discussed by a distinguished group of scholars and are reproduced in full color. Marriage and childbirth gifts are the point of departure. These range from maiolica, glassware, and jewelry to birth trays, musical instruments, and nuptial portraits. Bonds of love of another sort were represented in erotic drawings and prints. From these precedents, an increasingly inventive approach to subjects of love and marriage culminated in paintings by some of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, including Giulio Romano, Lorenzo Lotto, and Titian.


When a lesbian created family dissolves because the mothers end their relationship, the non-legal parent often does not get visitation or custody of the children that she has nurtured and loved. This article addresses visitation, custody, and child-support issues that are raised when lesbian couples plan for and create a family together, and then subsequently separate. While arguments on behalf of non-legal parents have been raised based on statutory interpretation or equitable principles, very few have argued for non-legal parent visitation or custody based on constitutional interpretation. The article proposes three new constitutionally based models for custody, visitation, and child support disputes in dissolved lesbian-parented families. The theoretical framework of these models is rooted in Professor Martha Fineman's concept of the "sexual family." The focus on the sexual affiliation between the man and the woman in the "sexual family" has resulted in the deflection of social attention and consideration away from children. The focus should instead be on the parent-child relationship, making it easier for the courts and society to recognize the constitutional rights of the child and the non-legal lesbian parent. Under the first model, the Parental Status Model, the Supreme Court should recognize that the non-legal parent has a constitutional right to maintain a parental relationship with her child, and that this right should transform the non-legal parent into a legal parent. The second model, the Constitutional Interest Model, is less ambitious, but more realistic in its chances of Supreme Court acceptance. This model proposes that the non-legal lesbian parent's constitutional rights and interests (along with the liberty interests of the child) should be balanced against the legal parent's constitutional rights and interests. Finally, the Equal Protection Model comes from the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The article compares the situation of children of lesbian parents with the situation of children of heterosexual, unmarried parents. The Supreme Court has established that statutory discrimination against children born out of wedlock is subject to intermediate scrutiny. This same level of scrutiny should apply to discrimination toward children of lesbian-parented families, thereby providing children of lesbian-parented families important protection in the dissolution context. There are various disadvantages of relying on legislation, instead of seeking constitutional rights, to protect lesbian parental rights. Recognition of constitutional rights, along with the models for weighing those rights, should be the goal of advocates before, or at least simultaneously with, the pursuit of legislation. While the recognition of these constitutional interests is an aspirational goal, it is not impossible. The Supreme Court's plurality opinion in Troxel v. Granville opens doors by stating that there are other forms of family besides the traditional, heterosexual married family. Advocating for these constitutional rights and interests represents a step toward legally protected rights for the legal mother, the non-legal mother, and the children in a lesbian created family.


The intracellular deposition of fibrillar aggregates of alpha-synuclein is a characteristic feature of Parkinson disease. Alternatively, as a result of its unusual conformational plasticity, alpha-synuclein may fold into an amphipathic helix upon contact with a lipid-water interface. Using spin label ESR and fluorescence spectroscopy, we show here that alpha-synuclein affects the lipid packing in small unilamellar vesicles. The ESR hyperfine splittings of spin-labeled phospholipid probes revealed that alpha-synuclein induces chain ordering at carbon 14 of the acyl chains below the chain melting phase transition temperature but not in the liquid crystalline state of electroneutral vesicle membranes. Binding of alpha-synuclein leads to an increase in the temperature and cooperativity of the phase transition according to the fluorescence anisotropy of the hydrophobic polyene 1,6-diphenylhexatriene and of the fluorescence emission maxima of the amphiphilic probe 6-dodecanoyl-2-dimethylaminonaphthalene. Binding parameters were obtained from the fluorescence anisotropy measurements in combination with our previous determinations by titration calorimetry (Nuscher, B., Kamp, F., Mehnert, T., Odoy, S., Haass, C., Kahle, P. J., and Beyer, K. (2004) J. Biol. Chem. 279, 21966-21975). We also show that alpha-synuclein interacts with vesicle membranes containing sphingomyelin and cholesterol. We propose that the protein is capable of annealing defects in curved vesicle membranes, which may prevent synaptic vesicles from premature fusion.


The performance artist Joanna Frueh has emerged over the past twenty-five years as a wildly original voice in feminist art. Her uninhibited performances are celebrations of beauty, sensuality, eroticism, and pleasure. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) , which features eighteen of her essential performance texts, is a celebration of this remarkable artist and her work. Arranged chronologically, from The Concupiscent Critic (1979) through Ambrosia (2004), the pieces reveal Frueh's evolution as an artist and intellectual over the course of her career. Many of these texts have never before been published; others have not been readily available until now. Among the sixteen color photographs in this richly illustrated book are pictures of Frueh performing and images from Joanna in the Desert , a 2006 collaboration between Frueh and the artist and scholar Jill O'Bryan.

Frueh's performances are unabashedly autobiographical, as likely to reflect her scholarship as a feminist art historian as her love affairs or childhood memories. For Frueh, eros and self-love are part of a revolutionary feminist strategy; her work exemplifies the physicality and embrace of pleasure that she finds wanting in contemporary feminist theory. Scholarly and rigorous yet playful in tone, her performances are joyful, filled with eroticism, flowers, sexy costumes, and beautiful colors, textures, and scents. Recurring themes include Frueh's passionate attachment to the desert landscape and the idea of transformation: a continual reaching for clarity of thought and feeling.

In an afterword as lyrical and breathless as her performance pieces, Frueh explores her identification with the desert and its influence on her art. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) includes a detailed chronology of Frueh's performances.


Ion and electron temperatures of up to 5 keV have been obtained within 10 cm of the last closed flux surface (LCFS) in hot ion H-modes with 18 MW of neutral beam heating. The ion temperature profiles appear to have 'pedestals' which scale with power per particle, Ti(a) ⪅ P(a)/ne(0.9a) [keV, MW/1019 m−3], in H-modes. In L-modes the pedestal temperatures are an order of magnitude lower. This difference can be explained by the one order of magnitude difference in particle residence time in the two confinement modes. In H-modes, the resulting pressure 'pedestals' contribute typically 40% (up to 5 MJ) to the plasma stored energy, accounting for about half of the confinement improvement compared with the L-mode. The remaining improvement occurs across the entire plasma, but most notably in the periphery. There is ample evidence that ions with energies in the keV range escape to and beyond the LCFS and account for most of the loss power in the ion channel. This evidence includes results from energy discriminating probes in the scrape-off layer and the analysis of the characteristics of the heat strike zones in the X-point configuration. The observed boundary ion temperatures have far reaching implications for fusion reactivity, power handling, wall erosion and impurity production in reactor conditions. They suggest that it is possible to bring the entire volume of a reactor plasma to thermonuclear temperatures, with a considerable boost to the overall thermonuclear reactivity.


In this paper, we study Censored Semi-Bandits, a novel variant of the semi-bandits problem. The learner is assumed to have a fixed amount of resources, which it allocates to the arms at each time step. The loss observed from an arm is random and depends on the amount of resources allocated to it. More specifically, the loss equals zero if the allocation for the arm exceeds a constant (but unknown) threshold that can be dependent on the arm. Our goal is to learn a feasible allocation that minimizes the expected loss. The problem is challenging because the loss distribution and threshold value of each arm are unknown. We study this novel setting by establishing its `equivalence' to Multiple-Play Multi-Armed Bandits (MP-MAB) and Combinatorial Semi-Bandits. Exploiting these equivalences, we derive optimal algorithms for our setting using existing algorithms for MP-MAB and Combinatorial Semi-Bandits. Experiments on synthetically generated data validate performance guarantees of the proposed algorithms.


In this essay, I document shifts in the political mediascape of the United States during the past fifteen years, focusing on the rise of partisan television networks and radio shows of the Left and the Right and the rise of alternative media and social networking that provided a wide diversity of opinion and critique of the dominant political and corporate order. I argue that this shift in the US mediascape helped elect Barack Obama, which in turn intensified contestation for and against Obama and the Democrats within contemporary US politics. I then indicate how Barack Obama used the media and media spectacle to successfully win the 2008 and 2012 US presidential elections. I conclude with a discussion of how new and alternative media can help to promote genuine democratic debate and help disseminate the full range of information and ideas necessary to have a robustly democratic social order.


Despite the multi-systemic effects of influenza A/H1N1 virus, the occurrence of hepatic injury during the natural course of the infection remains a matter of debate. We performed a review of the published clinical studies which assess the above mentioned relationship, reviewing the studies published in PubMed database (English literature), using the key words "H1N1", "influenza A" and "liver". We excluded case reports and clinical studies that referred to pediatric and transplanted patients, pregnants and patients with known history of chronic liver diseases. From a total of 96 results, a total of 78 papers met one or more of the exclusion criteria set. Evaluating the remaining 18 published papers, 14 more were excluded as they did not provide any sufficient data, relevant to the subject of our review. Although the analysis of the remaining studies revealed the existence of conflicting results concerning the exact degree and the potential mechanisms of liver injury in H1N1 positive patients, it can be assumed that influenza A/H1N1 virus is -or at least could be- a hepatotropic virus.


Teachers with less than five years teaching experience have a high attrition rate. This high rate has financial, organizational and instructional consequences, such as school divisions that must recruit and train replacements, and students who lose the value of being taught by teachers who have gained experience in the profession. Self-care is a factor that curbs attrition, however, little is known about the personal and professional strategies of self-care for teachers. The Delphi method was used to identify and understand the self-care strategies used by Saskatchewan schoolteachers. Fourteen participants with five or more years of teaching experience and from nine different school divisions in Saskatchewan contributed to the study. Each participant responded through two rounds of online questionnaires about his or her self-care practices. Self-care is associated with well-being and it is the individual teacher that can take steps to cultivate and maintain personal health. Data were analyzed using SurveyMonkey and NVIVo 9 qualitative analysis software programs, and Skovholt's theoretical model of self; strategies and themes were identified. A visual representation of participant's responses was developed. The most common self-care strategies identified were talking with friends and family, healthy eating, discussing events from the classroom with support system at school, drinking water, and volunteering. The findings are described alongside implications for teachers and other helping professionals as well as future research.


There are many visions that touch on the future of human computer interaction from a trans-human future to a post-technological UI. However visions related to the progress of technology are not new. Creative and insightful visionaries from Denis Diderot to Vannevar Bush have been postulating visions of possible futures or technology for centuries. Some idealised views end up discredited with advances in knowledge, while others now appear remarkably prescient. The question is, do visions and the process of creating them have a place in CHI, or are they simply flights of fancy? This SIG meeting provides a forum for visionaries; researchers and practitioners looking to consider the place and importance of visions within CHI. Can visions, the process of visioning and forming new visions help us refine, advance or develop new research or forms of interaction. And if visions are important to us, then are they part of the regular academic process? If so, should CHI provide venues for publishing new visions?


It is becoming more important to the space community that spacecraft be developed in direct support of responsive missions, which implies that spacecraft need to be "built to inventory", constructed from off-the-shelf components based on varying mission needs, and/or integrated rapidly with payloads as they are identified and available. Microcosm, in conjunction with HRP Systems, under several SBIRs from AFRL/VSSE, has developed a rapid prototype implementation of Plug-and-Play (PnP) components and generic core algorithms that are focused on a guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) application for spacecraft scheduled for demonstration on the AFRL PnPSat. This paper will address architectural issues that drive a PnP implementation of the GN&C function, with an emphasis on identifying and understanding all of the pros and cons associated with this implementation path. Additionally, the paper will examine the Microcosm/HRP Systems approach to GN&C design, including software partitioning, algorithm development, and performance testing.


This thesis examines various aspects of the market microstructure around three important corporate events. These important corporate events are stock splits, corporate acquisitions and earnings announcements. The second chapter (first essay) investigates the microstructure effects of stock splits. We find that the price range theory explains the stock splits of high price stocks and information plays an essential role in the explanation of stock splits for low price stocks. While global liquidity decreases post-split, trading activity as measured by the number of trades increases. The temporary component of the spread increases while the directional change for the permanent component is indeterminate. Uninformed traders intensify their trading activities relatively more than informed traders after stock splits. While the probability of new information arrival remains unchanged, the probability of a bad event and of informed trading decreases after stock splits. In addition, temporary volatility increases while true price volatility decreases post-split. Consistent with the extant literature, stock splits attract small or uninformed traders. Whether attracted by the lower per-share price, the newly promoted stock or the decrease in the probability of informed trading, uninformed traders are the essential cause of the increase in trading activity, trading cost and return volatility after stock splits. The third chapter (second essay) investigates the microstructure effects of acquisitions. The intensification of trading activity upon announcement of such offers is more dramatic for targets than for bidders. Investors are more inclined to sell targets upon announcement using direct market orders against ask limit orders when the tender offers involve cash due to portfolio rebalancing and profit realization motives. Liquidity improves for targets with a fall in trading costs, and with an increase in quoted dollar and share depth. Both trading costs and quoted depth fall continuously over the tender offer cycle to successful completion for the acquirers. Increased trading causes the temporary trading cost to fall farther for targets than for acquirers. Permanent trading costs decline over the tender offer cycle, and especially for targets for cash tender offers and for acquirers for share tender offers. These findings based on method of payment are related to the good and bad news, respectively, that are revealed by the announcement and realization of the tender offer, respectively. The fourth chapter (third essay) analyzes trading on the various trading venues for Canadian firms that are cross-listed on the main US trading venues around earning announcement dates. We first show that the Canadian trading venues lost their trade advantage in terms of trade cost compared to their US counterparts for trading Canadian cross-listed shares. However, the Canadian market still retains the dominant part of trade volume and Canadian dealers offer greater market depth. There is also no preference ordering among the top three US listing venues for Canadian shares based on trade cost. Both trading legs have similar proportions of informed trading during off-announcement days. They both react simultaneously to earnings news. However, on announcement day, most informed traders trade on the domestic Canadian market. We claim that the domestic Canadian market is much more informative during announcement dates than its US competitors


We characterize asset return linkages during periods of stress by an extremal dependence measure. Contrary to correlation analysis, this nonparametric measure is not predisposed toward the normal distribution and can allow for nonlinear relationships. Our estimates for the G-5 countries suggest that simultaneous crashes between stock markets are much more likely than between bond markets. However, for the assessment of financial system stability the widely disregarded cross-asset perspective is particularly important. For example, our data show that stock-bond contagion is approximately as frequent as flight to quality from stocks into bonds. Extreme cross-border linkages are surprisingly similar to national linkages, illustrating a potential downside to international financial integration.


This document presents the conceptual design and analysis of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
system based on geosynchronous satellites (GEOSAR) working at Ka-band. These satellites,
apparently orbiting in a fixed position relative to the Earth, are affected by slight perturbations of the
perfectly geostationary orbits (small inclinations and non zero eccentricities) that may be used to
generate a synthetic aperture radar for Earth Observation. The main advantage of GEOSAR is to
obtain short revisit pass (daily or less) with local coverage, thus complementary to typical Low Earth
Orbit SAR that achieve global coverage but with weekly or monthly revisit times. A further advantage
is the look direction, mainly South-North, that is truly complementary to the LEO satellites looking at
East-West. The LEO long revisit times prevent the observation of fast dynamic scenarios like natural
hazards, disasters, atmosphere, etc.
The GEOSAR main characteristics are presented and different configurations are proposed. Some
geosynchronous orbit considerations are shown to understand the particularities in the GEOSAR
geometry. The compromises between spatial resolution and sensitivity are obtained together with
basic operation parameters like Doppler Analysis, power link budget and ambiguities.


Catastrophe bonds offer a way for entities located in natural disaster prone regions to safely and efficiently transfer the risk of insuring property to the financial markets and subsequently, create a financially attractive environment for insurers and investors. The opportunity for investors to utilize modeled loss analytical platforms such as those created by AIR, Risk Management Solutions, and EQECAT, could be used to bridge the growing gap in emerging economies between economic losses created by natural disasters and insured losses. Bridging this insurance gap in emerging economies could have positive global implications for the insurance industry, global trade, foreign direct investment, and the average humanitarian aid spent on natural disaster recovery and resistance. Apart from the additional profits that could be generated from increased underwriting in emerging economies, introducing catastrophe and property insurance to emerging economies could create a roadmap for other emerging economies who are struggling to balance economic development with disaster financing. Experience from sovereigns which have experimented with this method of risk transfer, such as Haiti and Mexico offer a basis for understanding the advantages and difficulties associated with developing a country specific modelled loss analytical platform for measuring natural hazard risks.


This paper demonstrates how people deceive themselves into thinking of themselves as altruistic. I present a lab experiment in which subjects need to decide whether to behave altruistically or selfishly in an ambiguous environment. Due to the nature of ambiguity in this environment, those who are pessimistic have a legitimate reason to behave selfishly, even if they are inherently altruistic. For people who are inherently selfish but like to think of themselves as altruistic, this environment can serve as a scapegoat for selfish behavior. That is, by falsely claiming to be pessimistic, individuals can behave selfishly without damaging their self-image of being altruistic. Through two seemingly unrelated experimental tasks, I elicit subjects' adopted beliefs and true beliefs about the same probability. I find that selfish subjects adopt beliefs that are systematically more pessimistic beliefs than their true beliefs, whereas altruistic subjects adopt beliefs that are in alignment with their true beliefs. The most plausible explanation for why only selfish subjects manipulate their beliefs is that selfish behavior damages their self-image and belief manipulation helps them mitigate that damage; altruistic subjects, by contrast, have no such need for belief manipulation because their behavior does not damage their self-image.


The flanker task, introduced by Eriksen and Eriksen [Eriksen, B. A., & Eriksen, C. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 143-149], provides a means to selectively manipulate the presence or absence of response competition while keeping other task demands constant. We measured brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance of the flanker task. In accordance with previous behavioral studies, trials in which the flanking stimuli indicated a different response than the central stimulus were performed significantly more slowly than trials in which all the stimuli indicated the same response. This reaction time effect was accompanied by increases in activity in four regions: the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the supplementary motor area, the left superior parietal lobe, and the left anterior parietal cortex. The increases were not due to changes in stimulus complexity or the need to overcome previously learned associations between stimuli and responses. Correspondences between this study and other experiments manipulating response interference suggest that the frontal foci may be related to response inhibition processes whereas the posterior foci may be related to the activation of representations of the inappropriate responses.


In today's world, the number of vehicles is increasing rapidly in developing countries and China and remains stable in all other countries, while road infrastructure mostly remains unchanged, causing congestion problems in many cities. Urban Traffic Control systems can be helpful in counteracting congestion if they receive accurate information on traffic flow. So far, these data are collected by sensors on roads, such as Inductive Loops, which are rather expensive to install and maintain. A less expensive approach could be to use a limited number of sensors combined with Artificial Intelligence to forecast the intensity of traffic at any point in a city. In this paper, we propose a simple yet accurate short-term urban traffic forecasting solution applying supervised window-based regression analysis using Deep Learning algorithm. Experimental results show that is it possible to forecast the intensity of traffic with good accuracy just monitoring its intensity in the last few minutes. The most significant result, in our opinion, is that the machine can generate accurate predictions even with no knowledge of the current time, the day of the week or the type of the day (holiday, weekday, etc).


Today, countries that have experienced damages caused by wars, pay special attentions to passive defense in their defense strategies to protect their national properties and vital resources. To this end, observing passive defense considerations in urban development and design has a great impact on reducing the vulnerability of cities, financial losses, and casualties as well as increasing citizens' tolerance threshold which can facilitate urban crisis management. The article analyzes the macro models of urban patterns and their strengths and weaknesses. In this regard, some of the obligations necessary for improving sustainable resistance of these forms under war conditions are proposed. The micro scale form-based considerations as well as the effects of specific small-scale urban design arrangements and requirements such as parcel size, arrangement and layout of structural parts, etc., which can reduce the damages resulting from attacks on cities, have been discussed as well. This study is an original research and upon on the purpose of the paper it is based on applied one. Due to the complexity of the morphology design and passive defense, the combination of exploratory and descriptive-analytical research is used as the methodology.


Paleocarpological studies carried out on the Bykovsky Peninsula situated in the southeast of the Lena delta document a species-rich tundra-steppe like vegetation, existing during the Late Pleistocene. The investigated exposure Mamontovy Khayata consists of so-called ice complex deposits, rich in well-preserved organic matter. The carpological results, obtained from several selected horizons, reflect typical Late Pleistocene biocoenoses. The species composition dominated by typical tundra plants is supplemented by steppe and mountain steppe elements. Among the still occuring tundra plants, there predominated mainly pioneer plants, like Potentilla sp. and diverse Caryophyllaceae preferring rather well-drained habitats. Nevertheless, a mosaic-like distribution of both dry and wet locations is evidenced by the appearence of the aquatic plants Potamogeton sp. and Batrachium sp. besides the above mentioned steppe species. The flora distinctly reflects the continental climatic character during the investigated time span, which correlates with the Middle Weichselian. Hence, the paleocarpological data confirm the results of geological studies concerning an emerged Laptev shelf in Pleistocene times. The species-rich flora of the investigated section is promising concerning the reconstruction of Late Pleistocene environmental conditions.


Datura is known as a medicinal plant and plant hallucinogen all over the world. Datura has a very special place in Ayurveda since all parts of the plant namely leaves, flowers, seeds, roots, have been used for a wide range of medication such as treatment of leprosy, rabies, insanity, etc. The extract of Datura, however, is a potent poison and its indiscriminate use may lead to delirium and acute poisoning that may lead to death. The active constituents in Datura include scopolamine, atropine, hyoscyamine, withanolides (lactones) and other tropanes. Recently, withanolide compounds have shown significant antitumor, cytotoxic, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, hepatoprotective, sedative, cytostatic and immunosuppressive activity. The present review includes phytochemical investigations and biological activities of various Datura species wherein several novel compounds have been isolated, characterized and screened for their biological activities.

 Key words: Datura, chemical constituents, alkaloids, biological activities, therapeutic usage.


Acoustic startle responses (ASR) were studied in 12 young Wistar albino and in 15 hooded rats of both genders. The six week old animals were first exposed to a 6.9 kHz tone pair of 2 ms pulses of 120 db intensity with the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) between 2 and 11 ms. ASR amplitudes and latencies as a function of the ISI, animal strain and gender were recorded and analyzed for ten consecutive weeks. No differences in the ASR amplitude between Wistar and hooded rats were found. ASR amplitude increased during the experimental period and followed body weight increase. Significant differences were also observed between male and female rats in their startle responses to acoustic stimuli. Generally, male subjects responded with a greater ASR amplitude than females, and the changes may be attributed to the difference in neuromuscular development between genders. This experiment sets a background for further developmental studies.