Sexual imprinting is one of several known non - genetical, yet social factors which influence mate preferences and might play a role in the evolution of novel traits. We introduced a red bill as a novel trait in a monomorphic estrildid finch, the Javanese mannikin Lonchura leucogastroides . We established three different imprinting groups in which the father only, the mother only or none of the parents had a red bill. After reaching maturity we tested the offspring in double choice tests for a response to birds of the opposite sex with a naturally coloured black bill or with an artificially coloured red bill. Neither males nor females showed a preference for potential mates with a red bill. Males and females raised by a red bill father showed even a strong rejection to conspecifics of the opposite sex with a red bill. This is in contrast to a previous imprinting study in the Javanese mannikin under similar conditions (Witte et al ., 2000) in which males and females became sexually imprinted on conspecifics adorned with a red feather on the forehead. It seems that not all kinds of novel traits birds can be sexually imprinted on. We could show in the present study that the red bill is a meaningful trait in female mate choice, i.e. females responded to males with and without a red bill in a similar way as do females imprinted on natural type parents to males with and without other artificial adornments (Witte & Curio, 1999). We could confirm an interaction between the red bill and the natural attractiveness of males as found in a previous study (Witte & Curio, 1999). Our study opens up questions about what traits are really learned and why some traits are not learned during imprinting.


This paper presents some of the results of a cross-sectional study conducted in Mexico City in 2015–2016. The approach has been the application of a questionnaire to a sample size of n = 1489. Six high schools participated in the study that are located within the seismic zones of the city. Some of the results and conclusions are given below: (a) 95% of the students have experienced an earthquake and 71% considered that earthquakes cannot be predicted; however, 29% did not know this fact; (b) 82.2% of students were all aware of the likelihood of an earthquake occurrence sometime in the future. (c) One of the key conclusions is associated with the need to educate the residents of the capital city on a more realistic scale of the size of an earthquake; this could be the "Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale" or similar. (d) More generally, the residents of the city should be educated with urgency on these basic concepts. The more effective is the communication on risks and consequences, the better may be their preparedness to earthquakes.


In recent years geographic mental maps have made a comeback into the spotlight of scholarly inquiry in the area of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). While never disappearing completely from scholarly examination, geographic mental maps were side-lined in most geographic and international relations (IR) research agendas. While geographers had long acknowledged the importance of mental maps in the study of international politics, few studies centred on the influence of geographic cognition on foreign policy. Only with the cognitive revolution in IR did geographic mental maps find space to develop conceptually and empirically with regards to international politics. Beginning with Henrikson's initial conceptualisation over three decades ago the mental map research agenda has adopted several different theoretical and methodological approaches which will be analysed in the current article.


"Who are the landed poor?" That is the question asked at the beginning of this brief. The authors describe the different "faces" of the landed poor and then take up the issue of strengthening the property rights of these groups, offering guidelines for tenure reform. Institutionalizing these tenure reforms is essential. The author concludes that "strengthening the property rights of the poor is a complex project. The landed poor are a heterogeneous group who hold rights to their landed assets in diverse and complicated ways. Efforts to increase the security of their tenure need to be sensitive to the specific circumstances that characterize each case, the existing legal conditions, the strength or weakness of available financial and property registration systems, the needs of each group of stakeholders, and the possibilities of unintended consequences. Common property rights must also be protected." from Text.


The first conference in a transatlantic dialogue on privacy and cyber security, held in November 2017 at HIIG in Berlin, brought together an eminent transdisciplinary group of experts from academia, administration, business and civil society from both sides of the Atlantic. It was carried by the hope to find a deeper understanding of the issues at stake and common approaches allowing the internet and digitalisation in general, to develop in the interest of all, across the Atlantic and perhaps worldwide. This edited volume presents the outcome of this first conference, both to the interested public and for the preparation of the second conference in October 2018 in New York.


Distributed learning paradigms such as federated learning often involve transmission of model updates, or gradients, over a network, thereby avoiding transmission of private data. However, it is possible for sensitive information about the training data to be revealed from such gradients. Prior works have demonstrated that labels can be revealed analytically from the last layer of certain models (e.g., ResNet), or they can be reconstructed jointly with model inputs by using Gradients Matching [Zhu et al'19] with additional knowledge about the current state of the model. In this work, we propose a method to discover the set of labels of training samples from only the gradient of the last layer and the id to label mapping. Our method is applicable to a wide variety of model architectures across multiple domains. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method for model training in two domains - image classification, and automatic speech recognition. Furthermore, we show that existing reconstruction techniques improve their efficacy when used in conjunction with our method. Conversely, we demonstrate that gradient quantization and sparsification can significantly reduce the success of the attack.


This study was conducted to determine the presence of mycoplasma
infections in village chickens in Malaysia. This study comprised the isolation
and characterisation of Mycoplasma gallinarum and its pathogenicity in village
chickens.
The occurrence of M. gallinarum in fresh eggs, infertile and/or early
dead germs, dead-in-shell and/or pipped embryos was investigated. For
mycoplasma isolation , samples were taken from the vitelline membrane, yolk,
and yolk sac. M. gallinarum was not present in all the eggs and embryos
sampled. Day-old-village chicken chicks and adult village chickens were
swabbed at the choanal cleft region , an alternative site for mycoplasma
isolation. M. gallinarum was not present in the day-old-chicks. However, of
the 550 adult birds sampled , 294 were carriers of mycoplasma. The
isolation rate varied from 26 . 3 to 73 per cent. The mycoplasma species isolated from village chicken was identified as
M. gallinarum based on biochemical and serological tests. The indirect
immunoperoxidase test was easy to perform and results easy to read.
The morphological studies of the M. gallinarum isolates were studied by
scanning electron and transmission electron microscopy and the result showed
that morphologically M. gallinarum from village chicken was similar to that of
earlier reports.
M. gallinarum remains viable in drinking water for up to a 48 hr period
when the inoculum size is 108 colony forming units but not at 102 colony
forming units.
The effect of M. gallinarum isolated from village chicken on
embryonated village chicken eggs was investigated. Seven-, ten-, twelve- and
eighteen-day-old embryos were inoculated with medium containing 106 colony
forming units of M. gallinarum or uninfected medium and incubated at 37°C
until hatched. No significant difference was observed between the infected
embryos which failed to hatch and those which hatched or between them and the
group inoculated with medium only. A much higher percentage of the eggs
inoculated as 18-day-old embryos hatched than those inoculated at seven, ten
and twelve days intervals.
In another pathogenicity study, mixed infection with M. gallinarum and
Newcastle disease virus was examined. Day-old village chicken chicks were vaccinated intranasally with F strain of Newcastle disease virus and inoculated
intratracheally with M. gallinarum simultaneously and changes on the tracheal
epithelium were observed by scanning electron microscopy. At day 3 postvaccination/
infection, major alterations of the epithelial surface were visible
and the epithelial surface were apparently normal by day 7.
This study has successfully achieved its objectives by isolating ,
characterising and conducting pathogenicity studies of M. gallinarum in village
chicken . Pathogenicity studies show that M. gallinarum is mildly virulent and
the overall impact of M. gallinarum infection in village chickens needs further
investigation .


This text is a survey on the general theory of stochastic processes,
with a view towards random times and enlargements of filtrations.
The first five chapters present standard materials, which where
developed by the French probability school and which are usually
written in French. The material presented in the last three chapters
is less standard and takes into account some recent developments.


Natural language is an intuitive medium for a human
to communicate with a robot. Additionally, there are many tasks in
areas such as manufacturing, military, and disaster response where
communication is limited among the agents performing these tasks.
Due to this limited communication, we focus on a protocol where
most of the communication is done before and after the mission
execution. As a first step in analyzing the effectiveness of this
protocol, this thesis presents a two-phased approach to parsing
natural language into an arbitrary formal logic. In the first
phase, we aim to learn the generic structure of the logical
expression associated with a natural language utterance. For
example, if the sentence "Approach the target from the west" were
to be parsed into the expression Approach(target;west), then the
first phase would output a generic structure such as f(c0; c1),
where f, c0, and c1 are placeholders for the actual values
Approach, target, and west, respectively. In the second phase, we
aim the learn how to assign the intended values to these
placeholders. The method developed in this thesis is able to
achieve an accuracy of 46% and 78% for the first and second phase
of our natural language parser, respectively. With the help of our
natural language parser, we can use the outputted logical
expressions in future work to help in the analysis of the mission
execution's success or failure.


This paper examines the representations of the objects brought by the Aegean emissaries depicted in the foreigners' procession scene in the tomb of Senenmut (TT 71). Through comparison of the depicted objects with the ones found in the Aegean it is argued that not only is it possible to find close analogies for single objects but also for the whole assemblage. The assemblage depicted in the tomb of Senenmut is found in elite burials of the Late Bronze Age I Aegean, and it can be interpreted as a diplomatic gift. The very fact that the same assemblage is found both in the Aegean princely burials and depicted in Senenmut's tomb, as a gift to the Egyptian king, is of great importance for the discussion on historicity behind this scene. The paper also discusses the transformation of the Aegean gift assemblage after its arrival in Egypt.


Historical document images are subject to intrinsic distortions such as background noise and bleed-through interference due to aging and extrinsic distortions such as displacement, uneven surfaces introduced during image acquisition procedure. In this paper, we propose a fully automatic restoration framework that corrects bleed-through distortion on double-sided handwritten historical document images. First, the two sides of a document are registered with corresponding control points which are selected by inspecting the images' gradient maps and minimizing a predefined dissimilarity measure. The established correspondences are refined by median filters and consistency checking. Piecewise linear mapping function is chosen to represent the spatial relationship between the two images. Based on the estimated transform model, backward re-sampling strategy and bi-cubic spline interpolation are adopted to obtain final registered images. Once the two sides of a page have been registered, enhancement/smearing feature images are extracted and iterative wavelet decomposition/construction is performed to restore the degraded images. Experiments on the real documents from the National Archives of Singapore demonstrate a completely automatic framework to the restoration of historical document images.


Systems software of very large scales are being heavily used today in various important scenarios such as online retail, banking, content services, web search and social networks. As the scale of functionality and complexity grows in these software, managing the implementations becomes a considerable challenge for developers, designers and maintainers. Software needs to be constantly monitored and tuned for optimal efficiency and user satisfaction. With large scale, these systems incorporate significant degrees of asynchrony, parallelism and distributed executions, reducing the manageability of software including performance management. Adding to the complexity, developers are under pressure between developing new functionality for customers and maintaining existing programs. This dissertation argues that the manual effort currently required to manage performance of these systems is very high, and can be automated to both reduce the likelihood of problems and quickly fix them once identified. The execution logs from these systems are easily available and provide rich information about the internals at runtime for diagnosis purposes, but the volume of logs is simply too large for today's techniques. Developers hence spend many human hours observing and investigating executions of their systems during development and diagnosis of software, for performance management. This dissertation proposes the application of machine learning techniques to automatically analyze logs from executions, to challenging tasks in different phases of the software lifecycle. It is shown that the careful application of statistical techniques to features extracted from instrumentation, can distill the rich log data into easily comprehensible forms for the developers.


The impact of mortgage fraud on the United States financial and economic system during the past twenty years has been severe and enduring. Nothing illustrates this fact better than the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Scholars and policymakers are convinced that the explosion in so-called liar's loans, which were securitized and sold to investors, played a key role in either causing or ex-acerbating the housing bubble and financial meltdown that led to the Great Recession.

Unfortunately, efforts to understand and address the problem of mortgage fraud are undermined by fundamental confusion regarding the nature of mortgage fraud as a federal criminal offense. Some of this confusion is due to the fact that there is no single federal mortgage fraud statute. Thus, almost every legal actor relies on the FBI's definition of mortgage fraud. Surprisingly, however, the influential FBI definition is plainly inconsistent in key respects with elements of the federal criminal statutes most often used to punish mortgage fraud. We should be concerned that the FBI, which investigates mortgage fraud, cannot get the basic definition of the crime of mortgage fraud right — and that scholars and commentators uncritically accept and use that problematic definition.

This Article provides scholars and lawmakers with an understanding of the meaning of mortgage fraud as a federal crime. In particular, it makes three practical contributions to public policy discourse regarding mortgage fraud. First, this Article distinguishes mortgage origination fraud from securities fraud involving mortgage-backed securities and other financial crimes related to the housing market. Second, this Article urges care in the use of the term "fraud." Not every misstatement in a mortgage application is fraud. Scholars who write about fraudulent mortgage loans must acknowledge that loan documents cannot have mens rea and that not all mortgage application falsehoods warrant the imposition of criminal liability. Most importantly, this Article demonstrates why scholars and policymakers should take great care before using the FBI's deeply flawed definition of mortgage fraud.


This study uses an approach of grounded theory with mixed methods and sources. The aim is to start and inform the debate about psychological influences on risk reporting in public sector companies and develop some reform proposals for risk reporting which can also inform the debate about Corporate Governance Code. The part of this work devoted to cognitive theory explores psychological impacts on managers' risk reporting, specifically in times of stress. It considers cognitive influences on compliance or non-compliance with management contracts with regard to risk reporting in risky situations, and so provides insights into the impact of important factors which have so far been largely neglected.By taking a psychological and situational approach it highlights the relevance of normal cognitive structures for managers' reporting practices during times of crisis, and therefore informs current corporate governance debates focusing on pecuniary incentives to enforce managers' best practice risk reporting.The research focus was drawn from the author's work experience as a manager in public-sector firms, and is concerned with risk reporting specifically in the public sector. This is distinguished from the private sector mainly by the almost total "absence" of the owner, i.e. the citizens. Instead, public firms are characterized by multiple agent relations, persons contracted for specific tasks, namely public managers, public shareholders, boards, and auditors. This constellation increases the possibilities of non-compliance with tasks - in this case delay or distortion of risk reporting - because even if this type of behaviour might contribute to firms being financially harmed, the agents will not lose their own money as they are not the owner of public firms.These specific features of public firms are as yet under-researched - especially the psychological influences on risk reporting in public sector companies - had not been researched before at all.Because of the lack of sources, in accordance with grounded theory new data was generated through interviews with managers of public real estate firms in Berlin as well as public shareholders, high-level board members, and auditors, providing information on their viewpoints on risk reporting and its control as well as main issues encountered. This interview outcomes from different viewpoints were triangulated with each other, with relevant literature and analysis of the company corporate disclosure.The combination of field research with new approaches from Behavioural Economics contributes to a more thorough understanding of practices of risk reporting, the psychological impacts and control. By taking resilient psychological issues into account reforms can be reviewed to find more practical solutions to deal with the remaining challenges.


A major limitation of conventional web sites is their unorganized and isolated contents, which is created mainly for human consumption. This limitation can be addressed by organizing and publishing data, using powerful formats that add structure and meaning to the content of web pages and link related data to one another. Computers can "understand" such data better, which can be useful for task automation. The web sites that provide semantics (meaning) to software agents form the Semantic Web, the Artificial Intelligence extension of the World Wide Web. In contrast to the conventional Web (the "Web of Documents"), the Semantic Web includes the "Web of Data", which connects "things" (representing real-world humans and objects) rather than documents meaningless to computers. Mastering Structured Data on the Semantic Web explains the practical aspects and the theory behind the Semantic Web and how structured data, such as HTML5 Microdata and JSON-LD, can be used to improve your sites performance on next-generation Search Engine Result Pages and be displayed on Google Knowledge Panels. You will learn how to represent arbitrary fields of human knowledge in a machine-interpretable form using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the cornerstone of the Semantic Web. You will see how to store and manipulate RDF data in purpose-built graph databases such as triplestores and quadstores, that are exploited in Internet marketing, social media, and data mining, in the form of Big Data applications such as the Google Knowledge Graph, Wikidata, or Facebooks Social Graph. With the constantly increasing user expectations in web services and applications, Semantic Web standards gain more popularity. This book will familiarize you with the leading controlled vocabularies and ontologies and explain how to represent your own concepts. After learning the principles of Linked Data, the five-star deployment scheme, and the Open Data concept, you will be able to create and interlink five-star Linked Open Data, and merge your RDF graphs to the LOD Cloud. The book also covers the most important tools for generating, storing, extracting, and visualizing RDF data, including, but not limited to, Protg, TopBraid Composer, Sindice, Apache Marmotta, Callimachus, and Tabulator. You will learn to implement Apache Jena and Sesame in popular IDEs such as Eclipse and NetBeans, and use these APIs for rapid Semantic Web application development. Mastering Structured Data on the Semantic Web demonstrates how to represent and connect structured data to reach a wider audience, encourage data reuse, and provide content that can be automatically processed with full certainty. As a result, your web contents will be integral parts of the next revolution of the Web. What youll learn Extend your markup with machine-readable annotations and get your data to the Google Knowledge Graph Represent real-world objects and persons with machine-interpretable code Develop Semantic Web applications in JavaReuse and interlink structured data and create LOD datasets Who this book is for The book is intended for web developers and SEO experts who want to learn state-of-the-art Search Engine Optimization methods using machine-readable annotations and machine-interpretable Linked Data definitions. The book will also benefit researchers interested in automatic knowledge discovery. As a textbook on Semantic Web standards powered by graph theory and mathematical logic, the book could also be used as a reference work for computer science graduates and Semantic Web researchers.


Objective: Antioxidants from plants were known to reduce the oxidative stress by scavenging free radicals, chelating metal ions and reducing inflammation. As increased oxidative stress was implicated in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic neuronal loss in Parkinson's disease (PD), we have assessed whether the plant extracts protects the nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons in the animal model of PD. Methods: Male adult Sprague-Dawley rats were treated orally between 10am–11am each day with the extracts from tangerine peel, grape seeds, cocoa and red clover for four days. One hour after the final dosing, the left medial forebrain bundle was lesioned by infusing the dopaminergic neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA; 12μg) under anaesthesia. Seven days post-lesion, the number of dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra pars compacta and the levels of dopamine and its metabolites 3, 4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) and homovanillic acid (HVA) in the striata were quantified and compared with the vehicle-treated groups. Results: Compared to the unlesioned side, 6-OHDA lesions significantly reduced the number of dopaminergic cells and the levels of dopamine and its metabolites DOPAC and HVA in the vehicle-treated animals. Pretreatment of animals with extracts of tangerine peel (rich in polymethoxylated flavones; 35 mg/kg/day), cocoa-2 (rich in procyanidins; 100 mg/kg/day) and red clover (rich in isoflavones; 200 mg/kg/day) significantly attenuated the 6-OHDA-induced dopaminergic loss. However, no significant protection was seen in animals supplemented with red and white grape seeds (rich in catechins; 100 mg/kg/day), and cocoa-1 (rich in catechins; 100 mg/kg/day). Conclusions: Pre-treatment of plant extracts rich in polymethoxylated flavones, procyanidins and isoflavones but not catechins protected the nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons in the rat model of PD.


With a focus on the creation and distribution of packaged holidays, this text covers the fundamentals of business and the relationship between tour operators and destinations. With particular reference to the sustainability of both parties, it reviews the impacts and influences of tour operations and practices on destinations within the overriding context of tour operator responsibility. It addresses the entirety of this key component of the tourism sector, and reflects the shift in recent years from traditional 'sun, sea and sand' holiday to more bespoke packages. Taking into account tour operators as a growing factor among the major emergent economies of the world, this book is: - The first textbook to provide such in-depth content of tour operators and operations. - Written by authors with industry, research and teaching experience. - A wealth of information regarding popular eco, nature and adventure trips, as well as myriad niche and special interest products. Full of international and highly topical case studies, exercises and discussion questions, Tour Operators and Operations: Development, Management and Responsibility is a fundamental text for students of tourism.


We measured chlorophyll a (chl a) fluxes between San Francisco Bay and the coastal ocean for 2 d in March 2002, October and November 2002, and June 2003; 1 d during neap tide and 1 d during spring tide. We applied harmonic analysis to velocity and chl a data to model scalar and velocity fields during a spring-neap cycle. We then integrated these data over the fortnightly period to calculate net dispersive fluxes. The net flux consisted of an advective and dispersive component. Dispersive flux was decomposed into physical mechanisms such as tidal pumping, steady circulation and unsteady circulation. Net flux was large and directed out of San Francisco Bay during spring, large and into the estuary during summer, and effectively zero during fall surveys. The direction of advective flux was always out of the estuary and the magnitude depended on advective speed and mean chl a concentration. Dispersive flux was of a similar magnitude to advective flux each season and changed direction seasonally. Based on historical records and simultaneous observations, we conclude the reversal of the dispersive flux is most likely due to difference in phytoplankton growth conditions (or difference in timing of blooms) in the coastal ocean and estuary. During the spring, phytoplankton bloom in the estuary, creating a net seaward flux. In summer, during upwelling, phytoplankton bloom in the coastal ocean, driving a net flux into the estuary. Tidal pumping accounted for 79% of spring, 63% of fall and 93% of summer dispersive flux. Steady fluxes were about 1 order of magnitude smaller than tidal pumping, and unsteady fluxes yet another 1 order of magnitude smaller. The dominance of tidal pumping implies that seasonal variability of ocean- estuary exchange is set almost entirely by variation in the gradient of chl a concentrations between the ocean and the estuary such that the variability of ocean-estuary exchange is set by variation in the occurrence of estuarine and oceanic blooms.


Archaeology is a powerful tool for the provision of a cultural identity to a population. This same power often makes it also the target of manipulation by a state in the process of nation-building. This paper will study the darker political nature of archaeology by examining the effects of state-control over archaeological resources and research, in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The aim of this paper is to highlight the dangers posed to the public world- view of a nation in which the only accepted interpretation of the classical past is that of the Party.


Poor Indonesian households spend most of their monthly income on food (62.72%) (BPS, 2016).
Their average food consumption is dominated by rice (62.14%) and lacks protein, legumes, fruits
and vegetables, which are needed for a nutritional diet (BKP Kementan RI, 2018).

High food prices contribute to the inability to purchase more nutritious food in Indonesia. They
also reduce the effectiveness of the Non-Cash Food Subsidy (BPNT) program, which aims to
increase nutritious food intake through a grant to purchase rice and eggs. Vegetables, legumes
and fruit were added to the program in 2020. In 2019, BPNT kiosks (e-warong) in Kupang, East
Nusa Tenggara purchased their rice and eggs from wholesalers in Makassar and Surabaya,
making the prices dependent on those charged in these cities.

An experimental simulation by CIPS conducted with women on Sumba Island found that:
• price increases led to lower food purchases and a fall in monthly household
consumption by 1.78 kilogram of rice and 3.73 eggs;

• the BPNT program increased average household rice and egg consumption by 21.4
kilogram and 33.79 eggs, respectively.

• when the BPNT program met with a price increase scenario, egg consumption
fell by 1.2 eggs per person while rice consumption increased by another 1.46
kilogram compared to the consumption before the price change. Price spikes made
households sacrifice protein intake.

Positive nutritional effects of the BPNT program are being reduced by high rice and egg prices
in Indonesia. The government should complement the BPNT program with policy reforms that
reduce food prices in the country. Price interventions have not kept prices within the set range
for these food commodities. Instead, Bulog's medium-quality rice import monopoly (Presidential
Instruction No. 5/2015) and the policy of setting rice import quotas through inter-ministerial
coordination meetings (MOT Regulation No. 1/2018) should be reevaluated. Maize imports should
also increase, since maize is an important ingredient of chicken feed and affects the price of
eggs.


: Backchanneling behaviors on a robot, such as nodding, can make talking to a robot feel more natural and engaging by giving a sense that the robot is actively listening. For backchanneling to be effective, it is important that the timing of such cues is appropriate given the humans' conversational behaviors. Recent progress has shown that these behaviors can be learned from datasets of human-human conversations. However, recent data-driven methods tend to overfit to the human speakers that are seen in training data and fail to generalize well to previously unseen speakers. In this paper, we explore the use of data augmentation for effective nodding behavior in a robot. We show that, by augmenting the input speech and visual features, we can produce data-driven models that are more robust to unseen features without collecting additional data. We analyze the efficacy of data-driven backchanneling in a realistic human-robot conversational setting with a user study, showing that users perceived the data-driven model to be better at listening as compared to rule-based and random baselines.


Previously, we identified macrophage-stimulating protein (MSP) as being expressed during hamster lung injury induced by nitrosamine carcinogens. Transient, generalized epithelial-cell hyperplasia during the preneoplastic period, and eventually nonneuroendocrine (non-NE) lung tumors, are known to develop in these nitrosamine-treated hamsters. We wished to test the hypothesis that MSP and its tyrosine kinase receptor, RON, might represent an autocrine/paracrine system involved in the pathogenesis of human nonneuroendocrine lung tumors, the non-small-cell carcinomas (NSCLCs). We found that this occurred in a paracrine fashion in three of eight primary human NSCLCs that expressed messenger RNA (mRNA) for MSP at high levels in histologically normal lung adjacent to the tumor, but not in the primary tumor, together with mRNA for RON in both normal and tumor tissue. MSP and RON could also constitute an autocrine/paracrine system in human NSCLC cell lines: five of 16 cell lines (squamous and adenosquamous) expressed both MSP and RON; and an additional five of 16 cell lines expressed RON without detectable MSP. Although three cases of primary squamous-cell carcinomas expressed MSP (two of three in the tumor and one of three in nonneoplastic lung), mRNA for RON was not detectable in these cases. RON was functional in all tested RON mRNA-positive cell lines, with exogenous MSP inducing RON-mediated tyrosine phosphorylation. Treatment of a RON-positive adenosquamous carcinoma cell line with MSP additionally resulted in increased motility in a cell-migration assay, suggesting that MSP might promote cell migration of some NSCLCs. In conclusion, MSP and RON might represent an autocrine/paracrine system involved in the pathogenesis of lung cancer, although the nature of the biologic responses in different cell types might vary considerably.


Stephen Jay Gould [3] studied snail fossils and worked at Harvard University [4] in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the latter half of the twentieth century. He contributed to philosophical, historical, and scientific ideas in paleontology, evolutionary theory, and developmental biology. Gould, with Niles Eldredge, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium, a view of evolution [5] by which species undergo long periods of stasis followed by rapid changes over relatively short periods instead of continually accumulating slow changes over millions of years. In his 1977 book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny [6], Gould reconstructed a history of developmental biology and stressed the importance of development to evolutionary biology. In a 1979 paper coauthored with Richard Lewontin, Gould and Lewonitn criticized many evolutionary biologists for relying solely on adaptive evolution [5] as an explanation for morphological change, and for failing to consider other explanations, such as developmental constraints.


Pesticide use and off-site risk assessment: a case study of glyphosate fate in Chinese Loess soil Xiaomei Yang Abstract: Repeated applications of pesticide may contaminate the soil and water, threatening their quality within the environmental system and beyond it through water erosion related processes and leaching. Taking into account the situation of intense farming, pesticide use and erosion in China, and in the loess area in particular, this study aims to further the science of pesticide risk assessment by increasing the understanding of the fate of glyphosate and its main metabolite AMPA while also assessing their risks related to soil erosion in Chinese loess soil. Four main objectives are conducted: 1)  Assessment of farmers' knowledge and awareness of pesticide use in the Wei River catchment In this study, we presented the information for the knowledge and awareness of pesticide risks via face-to-face interview among farmers (209) and retailers (20) in two rural regions (Qianyang County (S1) and Chencang County (S2)) of the Wei River catchment in China where the modes of farming and the state of erosion are very different. The results showed that farmers learned about the use and risk related to of pesticide use mainly by oral communication (p 70%) was the most common mode of personal hygiene after spraying, comparing to wearing masks, showering, and changing clothes. Regarding to dealing with the packages or containers of pesticide, farmers dumped them directly onto the land or into water, and over 85% of farmers claimed to use illegal pesticides. Compared to farmers, pesticide retailers were well-informed and highly conscious of their responsibility for the safe use of pesticides. Educational programmes targeted to age groups, proper disposal of pesticide waste, and sufficient supervision from authorities should consequently be considered for improving the levels of knowledge and awareness of the dangers of pesticides to human health and environmental pollution in the Wei River catchment, China. 2)  Investigation of off-site transport of glyphosate and AMPA by runoff and erosion in Chinese loess soil In this study, we assessed the short-term transport (1h duration, 1 mm min-1 rainfall) of glyphosate and its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) related to erosion and runoff on bare loess soil with different slopes (10° and 20°)and application rates (3.6 kg ha-1 and 7.2 kg ha-1) in hydraulic flumes. Significant power and exponent function described a significantly negative relation between rainfall duration and the content of glyphosate and AMPA (p<0.01) in runoff and suspended load, respectively. The transport rate of glyphosate (including AMPA) by runoff and suspended load was approximately 4% and 10% of the applied amount, respectively indicating that it mainly underlies particulate transport. The glyphosate and AMPA content in the flume soil at the end of the experiment (after 1h) decreased significantly with depth (p<0.05), and 72, 2, and 3% of the applied glyphosate (including AMPA) remained in the 0-2, 2-5, and 5-10 cm soil layers, respectively. Thus, the risk of leaching was low. In view of loss of 14 % of the initially applied glyphosate after 1 h, "buffer zone", referred as the protection area for ecosystem discharge between farming land and public rivers, is strongly recommended, especially in regions where rain-induced soil erosion is common. 3)  Investigation of the on-site fate of glyphosate and AMPA formation in Chinese loess soil In this study, we observed glyphosate decay, erosion and runoff related transport of glyphosate and AMPA at different slopes (10° and 20°) and application rates (3.6 kg ha-1 and 7.2 kg ha-1) under field condition during 35 d, September-October in 2012 (16.8±2.1°C with 35 mm rainfall in total) and July-August in 2013 (27 ± 2.3°C with 74 mm rainfall in total). The initial glyphosate decayed rapidly (half-life of 3.5 d) in the upper 2 cm of soil following a first-order rate of decay. AMPA content in the 0-2 cm soil layer correspondingly peaked 3 d after glyphosate application and then gradually decreased. The residues of glyphosate and AMPA decreased significantly with soil depth (p<0.05) independently of the slope inclination and application rate. About 0.36% of the glyphosate initially applied was transported off-site plots after one erosive rain 2 days after the application. Glyphosate and AMPA concentration in runoff were low while the contents in the sediment was much higher than in the upper 2 cm of the soil. This suggested that even though the transported glyphosate is limited, the off-site risk of glyphosate and AMPA is high. Consequently, a realistic erosion-pesticide model should be developed that can simulate the particulate-facilitated transport of glyphosate and its off-site risks involving decay processes. 4)  Off-site risk assessment of particle-facilitated pesticide transport related to erosion In this study, we have developed a parsimonious integrative model of pesticide displacement by runoff and erosion that explicitly accounts for water infiltration, erosion, runoff, and pesticide transport and degradation in soil. The conceptual framework was based on broadly accepted assumptions such as the convection-dispersion equation and lognormal distributions of soil properties associated with transport, sorption, degradation, and erosion. To illustrate the concept, a few assumptions are made with regard to runoff in relatively flat agricultural fields: dispersion is ignored and erosion is modelled by a functional relationship. A sensitivity analysis indicated that the total mass of pesticide associated with soil eroded by water scouring increased with slope, rain intensity, and water field capacity of the soil. The mass of transported pesticide decreased as the micro-topography of the soil surface became more distinct. The timing of pesticide spraying and rate of degradation before erosion negatively affected the total amount of transported pesticide. The mechanisms involved in pesticide displacement, such as runoff, infiltration, soil erosion, and pesticide transport and decay in the topsoil, were all explicitly accounted for, so the mathematical complexity of their description can be high, depending on the situation. Overall, the outcome of this study indicates that it is urgent to improve farmers knowledge and awareness on pesticide use in order to reduce pesticide risks before they are applied  in environmental system. The rapid decay of glyphosate to AMPA in loess soil suggests that on-site risks of glyphosate is mainly related to AMPA, especially under warmer climatic conditions. The off-site transport of glyphosate in our study was about 14% of the applied dose after 1 h of rainfall indicating that the off-site risks of glyphosate should be taken into account in regions highly prone to soil erosion. The concept of particulate transport elaborated in objective 4 should be incorporated in existing erosion models, such as LISEM, to predict off-site effects of glyphosate applications.


Epidemiologic and clinical studies have shown that nut consumption is associated with favorable plasma lipid profiles and reduced cardiovascular risk. These effects may result from their high monounsaturated fat (MUFA) content but nuts contain constituents other than fatty acids that might be cardioprotective. We conducted a study to compare the effects of whole-almond vs. almond oil consumption on plasma lipids and LDL oxidation in healthy men and women. Using a randomized crossover trial design, 22 normolipemic men and women replaced half of their habitual fat ( 14% of 29% energy) with either whole almonds (WA) or almond oil (AO) for 6-wk periods. Compliance was ascertained by monitoring dietary intake via biweekly 5-d food records, return of empty almond product packages and weekly meetings with a registered dietitian. Fat replacement with either WA and AO resulted in a 54% increase in percentage of energy as MUFA with declines in both saturated fat and cholesterol intake and no significant changes in total energy, total or polyunsaturated fat intake. The effects of WA and AO on plasma lipids did not differ compared with baseline; plasma triglyceride, total and LDL cholesterol significantly decreased, 14, 4 and 6% respectively, whereas HDL cholesterol increased 6%. Neither treatment affected in vitro LDL oxidizability. We conclude that WA and AO do not differ in their beneficial effects on the plasma lipid variables measured and that this suggests that the favorable effect of almonds is mediated by components in the oil fraction of these nuts. J. Nutr. 132: 703–707, 2002.


Local protein structure representations that incorporate long‐range contacts between residues are often considered in protein structure comparison but have found relatively little use in structure prediction where assembly from single backbone fragments dominates. Here, we introduce the concept of local descriptors of protein structure to characterize local neighborhoods of amino acids including short‐ and long‐range interactions. We build a library of recurring local descriptors and show that this library is general enough to allow assembly of unseen protein structures. The library could on average re‐assemble 83% of 119 unseen structures, and showed little or no performance decrease between homologous targets and targets with folds not represented among domains used to build it. We then systematically evaluate the descriptor library to establish the level of the sequence signal in sets of protein fragments of similar geometrical conformation. In particular, we test whether that signal is strong enough to facilitate correct assignment and alignment of these local geometries to new sequences. We use the signal to assign descriptors to a test set of 479 sequences with less than 40% sequence identity to any domain used to build the library, and show that on average more than 50% of the backbone fragments constituting descriptors can be correctly aligned. We also use the assigned descriptors to infer SCOP folds, and show that correct predictions can be made in many of the 151 cases where PSI‐BLAST was unable to detect significant sequence similarity to proteins in the library. Although the combinatorial problem of simultaneously aligning several fragments to sequence is a major bottleneck compared with single fragment methods, the advantage of the current approach is that correct alignments imply correct long range distance constraints. The lack of these constraints is most likely the major reason why structure prediction methods fail to consistently produce adequate models when good templates are unavailable or undetectable. Thus, we believe that the current study offers new and valuable insight into the prediction of sequence‐structure relationships in proteins. Proteins 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


This chapter examines the demarcation of compounds and derivative items. It is argued that the two types of constructions belong to word-formation, and intermingle in such a way that only the same grammatical domain could handle them properly. This domain is considered to be morphology, and claims and proposals are exemplified with data drawn from Standard Modern Greek and its dialects.The following issues are tackled:a. The order of application of the two processes. It is shown that there are cases which advocate a non-linear order between the two.b. The existence of a specific constraint, which demonstrates the close interaction of the two processes, since the structure of derivative items seems to be accessible to compounding and affected by its application.c. A peculiar borderline case, according to which a free lexical item in Standard Modern Greek has acquired a fuzzy categorial status in one dialect, but has become a pure prefix into another. To this end, the chapter focuses on the crucial role of dialectal evidence.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the cardiac and sympathetic baroreflex sensitivities within healthy, young humans. The sensitivities of the cardiac and sympathetic baroreflexes were compared in 53 normotensive individuals (28 men and 25 women; age: 24.0±0.9 years; body mass index: 24.0±0.3 cm/kg2, mean±SEM). Heart rate, arterial blood pressure, and peroneal muscle sympathetic nerve activity were recorded under resting conditions (heart rate: 58±1 bpm; systolic blood pressure: 126±2 mm Hg; diastolic blood pressure: 72±1 mm Hg; mean arterial blood pressure: 89±1 mm Hg; muscle sympathetic nerve activity: 18±1 bursts per min) and during rapid changes in blood pressure induced by sequential boluses of nitroprusside and phenylephrine. Cardiac and sympathetic baroreflex sensitivities were analyzed using the slopes of the linear portions of the muscle sympathetic nerve activity-diastolic blood pressure and R-R interval-systolic blood pressure relationships, respectively. When individual cardiac baroreflex sensitivity was compared with sympathetic baroreflex sensitivity, no correlation (R-R interval: r=−0.13; heart rate: r=0.21) was observed when studied as a group. Analysis by sex unveiled a correlation in women between the cardiac and sympathetic baroreflex sensitivities (R-R interval: r=−0.54; P=0.01; no correlation with hazard ratio: r=0.29). No relationship was found in men (R-R interval: r=0.17; heart rate: r=0.12). These results indicate that, although both cardiac and sympathetic efferents function in baroreflex control of arterial pressure, there is no correlation in their sensitivities within healthy normotensive humans. However, sex-stratified data indicate that sex-based differential correlations might exist.


Abstract. In this study a photoacoustic spectrometer (PA), a laser-induced incandescence instrument system (LII) and an Aerosol Mass Spectrometer were operated in parallel for in-situ measurements of black carbon (BC) light absorption enhancement. Results of a thermodenuder experiment using ambient particles in Toronto are presented first to show that LII measurements of BC are not influenced by the presence of non-refractory material thus providing true atmospheric BC mass concentrations. In contrast, the PA response is enhanced when the non-refractory material is internally mixed with the BC particles. Through concurrent measurements using the LII and PA the specific absorption cross-section (SAC) can be quantified with high time resolution (1 min). Comparisons of ambient PA and LII measurements from four different locations (suburban Toronto; a street canyon with diesel bus traffic in Ottawa; adjacent to a commuter highway in Ottawa and; regional background air in and around Windsor, Ontario), show that different impacts from emission sources and/or atmospheric processes result in different particle light absorption enhancements and hence variations in the SAC. The diversity of measurements obtained, including those with the thermodenuder, demonstrated that it is possible to identify measurements where the presence of externally-mixed non-refractory particles obscures direct observation of the effect of coating material on the SAC, thus allowing this effect to be measured with more confidence. Depending upon the time and location of measurement (urban, rural, close to and within a lake breeze frontal zone), 30 min average SAC varies between 9 ± 2 and 43 ± 4 m 2 g −1 . Causes of this variation, which were determined through the use of meteorological and gaseous measurements (CO, SO 2 , O 3 ), include the particle emission source, airmass source region, the degree of atmospheric processing. Observations from this study also show that the active surface area of the BC aggregate, which is measured by the LII as the PPS, is an important parameter for inferring the degree of particle collapse of a BC particle. In addition, PPS could be a useful measurement for indicating the importance of recently emitted BC (e.g. from gasoline or diesel engines) relative to the total measured BC in the atmosphere.


As in many other industries, artificial intelligence ("AI") is poised to drastically transform the legal services landscape. "Bots," automated expert systems, and predictive analytics are already changing the way consumers seek, and lawyers provide, legal services. Among other impacts, AI has the potential to increase access to justice in the self-help, individual, and corporate law firm markets by lowering costs and expanding services to untapped markets. A prominent question in early literature on AI in law is whether these services constitute the unauthorized practice of law. Threshold questions of whether and by whom such services should be regulated are important, but will likely not be answered (or even answerable) until AI's impact on the profession is more cognizable. In the meantime, there is currently no comprehensive guidance for attorneys on how AI should be developed, adopted, and used in ways that conform to a lawyer's ethical obligations. Without such guidance, law firms and third-party services risk designing and adopting AI-driven tools that fail to provide effective client-centered services, inhibit wide-spread access to justice, and undermine lawyers' ethical obligations to current and former clients, including the obligations to practice competently, maintain confidentiality, effectively supervise third parties, communicate with clients, and exercise independent judgment and render candid advice. This Article initiates this critical dialogue by exploring the types of AI being implemented in the profession, and identifying characteristics of these emerging services that will present ethical tensions and challenges. It rigorously examines existing guidance from the ABA and state bar authorities concerning new technology in practice, and identifies areas where this guidance is not sufficient to confront the unique ethical issues presented by AI. This article does not attempt to provide detailed or prescriptive guidance on these issues, but rather identifies the imminent challenges not currently being addressed in the literature on AI and legal ethics, or by bar authorities. The concluding recommendations will set the stage for and inform future scholarship and discussions concerning legal ethics, access to justice, and unauthorized practice of law in the age of AI.


Abstract This study focused on 21 educators who have been meditating for an average of 4 years. These educators, who were mostly teachers, had been introduced to meditation in a graduate course in education. They chose to continue meditation after the class was completed. The study examined the nature of their meditation practice, and the effects that the participants perceived in their personal and professional lives. Almost all the participants indicated that they felt meditation had made a significant difference in their lives. The most cited benefit was feeling calmer and more centred. Four of the teachers had also introduced meditation to their students. The study indicated that holistic approaches to learning can be successfully introduced in a traditional academic setting


Objective To determine whether people with insulindependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) were compromised in their access to insurance. Research Design and Methods A case-control study of 158 people with IDDM and 158 nondiabetic siblings matched for age and sex was conducted to evaluate the health, life, and automobile insurance characteristics and history of people with IDDM. Results Health insurance coverage (yes/no) among the IDDM and sibling control subjects was similar. More than 90% of the IDDM and control respondents had insurance through a private third-party source, and this insurance did not differ by type of plan, coverage, or premium. However, Medicare coverage was more common among the IDDM subjects and was associated with the presence of severe diabetic complications. IDDM subjects were also more likely to have been denied a health insurance policy by an insurer than were the control subjects (23 vs. 1%, P < 0.001). Similarly, there was no difference between the IDDM and sibling control subjects in the number who had a life or automobile insurance policy. However, life and automobile insurance refusal was much more frequent among the IDDM respondents, more so for life (55 vs. 0%, P < 0.001) than for automobile (12 vs. 4%, P < 0.05) insurance. Conclusions These results suggest that access to insurance is severely compromised for people with IDDM. Although most of those with IDDM are able to find some form of insurance, it is evident that on average they must go to extra lengths to find it. These data and a changing insurance environmentemphasize the need to reexamine, as a society, the importance of insurance for people with chronic disease, particularly IDDM.


This paper puts forth a view of graph transformation systems as a useful way to organize the construction activities involved in design – be it the design of engineering artifacts or of any creative endeavor. While the concept of graph grammars has existed for nearly 40 years in an esoteric corner of artificial intelligence research [1], researchers in design automation have realized their worth in encapsulating knowledge and heuristics of a particular problem domain. In this paper, the fundamental challenges for graph transformations are studied especially in the context of design. In particular, the activities of recognizing, choosing, and applying rules are studied and two engineering examples are provided to illustrate the power of this approach in design automation.


Lake level change in the Tibetan Plateau is an important indicator for regional and global climate changes. We use altimeter data from Cryosat-2, SARAL, ICESat, and Jason-2 to detect lake level changes at different spatial and temporal resolutions over 2003 2017 (Jason-3 data in 2017 for validation). Cryosat-2's SARIn mode provides precise water level time series over 59 lakes. SARAL's waveforms are retracked to generate near monthly, high-quality measurements at 31 lakes. Jason-2 provides a reference for removing inter-altimeter biases, enabling coherent records over lakes with Jason-2 passes. After a decade of rise since the ICESat record of 2003, the lake levels of Nam Co, Selin Co, Ngangzi Co, and Chibuzhang Co became flat in 2014 2016 and started to fluctuate or decline after 2016. Such positive-flat-negative trends are consistent with the trend variations of mass change from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). SARAL detected persistent lake level declines over 2013 2016 in southern Tibet that may signify the onset of decadal reduced flows of the Yarlung Tsangpo and Brahmaputra River that could affect the water supply for their downstream regions in India and Bangladesh. Cryosat-2 and Jason-2 detected sudden lake level rises and falls around Zhuonai, Kusai, and Salt Lake associated with a 2011 lake outburst, which is confirmed by lake volume changes from two Landsat-7 images. With a careful processing and calibration, multiple altimeters allow for determining and cross-validating long-term and episodic lake level changes unachievable by a single altimeter. Article history: Received 26 February 2018


This contribution outlines two theoretical frameworks – behaviorist and reflexive– for considering the discursive interaction between states and internationalorganizations within treaty monitoring (a process of assessing states' compliancewith international treaties). Monitoring is seen as a communicative process,aimed at building and sustaining the interlocutors' public images and constitutedby a series of multi-directed follow-ups. This definition emphasizes the importanceof anticipation and silence in pre-structured diplomatic communication.The two suggested frameworks lie across the ontological divide. The behavioristframework relies on an actor/speaker-oriented view of social interaction, conceivesof actors as rational, strategizing beings performing cost-benefit calculationsto define their discursive choices, and conceptualizes the participants'concern with their public image in terms of 'face wants'. The reflexive frameworklooks at how states and international organizations (IOs) use the monitoringexchange to (re)construct their relationship while projecting a specific imageinto the public sphere. Continuity of the interaction, intensity and regularity ofthe exchange within treaty monitoring provide IOs with sources of power andthus allow rebalancing the initially asymmetrical set-up. The frameworks areillustrated using the example of the monitoring mechanism of the Council ofEurope's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.


Moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) is a process in which attached growth is utilized for wastewater treatment. This process does not require sludge recycling or backwash. Activated sludge processes can be promoted to an MBBR by adding media to an aeration tank. Rapid sand filter is a physical method for the removal of total suspended solids (TSS) in advanced wastewater treatment. The purpose of this study was the evaluation of effluent reuse feasibility of MBBR and rapid sand filter in agricultural irrigation. Results showed TSS, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD 5 ), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentrations in effluent were 10, 7.7, and 85.75 mg/l, respectively. Removal efficiency of TSS, BOD 5 , and COD was 98%, 98.8%, and 94.6%, respectively. Furthermore, the value of chemical parameters was less than the standard limitations. Average removal efficiency of total coliform, fecal coliform, and nematode was 100%. Total dissolved solids (TDS) and electrical conductivity (EC) in effluent were 960.5 mg/l and 1200.63 μs/cm, respectively. The Wilcox diagram showed that effluent was in the C3-S1 class, which means effluent quality was appropriate for irrigation. The results showed that effluent quality was completely compatible with the national standards in agricultural irrigation.


Abstract Courts are becoming major players in the political landscape of Southeast Asia. This paper seeks to examine the causes and consequences of this new trend with particular reference to Thailand. Our study primarily analyzes the behavior of the Thai Constitutional Court during the political crisis in 2006–2008; the findings suggest that recent judicial activism and assertiveness in political matters, while partly explained by the interests of judges themselves and by the constitutional rules guiding their activities, is best understood as a direct consequence of the intervention of the monarchy, to which the judiciary has traditionally been closely aligned. Accordingly, the Thai case not only provides new evidence about what may be driving the new judicialization trend, it also draws attention to problematic aspects of this trend, namely the gradual politicization of the Thai judiciary and with it the erosion of the rule of law in Thailand and its replacement with rule by law. Our findings may also illuminate some larger issues at the intersection of politics and the courts throughout the region in ways that advance the theoretical understanding of both.


Single-trace attacks are a considerable threat to implementations of classic public-key schemes, and their implications on newer lattice-based schemes are still not well understood. Two recent works have presented successful single-trace attacks targeting the Number Theoretic Transform (NTT), which is at the heart of many lattice-based schemes. However, these attacks either require a quite powerful side-channel adversary or are restricted to specific scenarios such as the encryption of ephemeral secrets. It is still an open question if such attacks can be performed by simpler adversaries while targeting more common public-key scenarios. In this paper, we answer this question positively. First, we present a method for crafting ring/module-LWE ciphertexts that result in sparse polynomials at the input of inverse NTT computations, independent of the used private key. We then demonstrate how this sparseness can be incorporated into a side-channel attack, thereby significantly improving noise resistance of the attack compared to previous works. The effectiveness of our attack is shown on the use-case of CCA2 secure Kyber k-module-LWE, where k ∈ {2, 3, 4}. Our k-trace attack on the long-term secret can handle noise up to a σ ≤ 1.2 in the noisy Hamming weight leakage model, also for masked implementations. A 2k-trace variant for Kyber1024 even allows noise σ ≤ 2.2 also in the masked case, with more traces allowing us to recover keys up to σ ≤ 2.7. Single-trace attack variants have a noise tolerance depending on the Kyber parameter set, ranging from σ ≤ 0.5 to σ ≤ 0.7. As a comparison, similar previous attacks in the masked setting were only successful with σ ≤ 0.5.


Engineered nanomaterials have been proposed for a range of subsurface applications including groundwater remediation, treatment of contaminated soils, and characterization of flow. The ability to accurately predict nanoparticle (NP) mobility in the environment is critical for assessing NP performance and designing subsurface applications. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of a numerical simulator that accounts for the influence of varying electrolyte and NP concentrations to predict experimental observations of polymer-coated magnetite nanoparticle (nMag) transport and retention in a heterogeneous, multi-dimensional flow cell (0.64 m length × 0.38 m height × 1.4 cm internal thickness, referred to as "2.5-dimensional" or "2.5D" due to the internal thickness width). A series of column experiments was performed to independently determine model input parameters, including the maximum NP retention capacity and attachment rate. Localized injection of nMag into the heterogeneous flow cell demonstrated preferential flow around a lower permeability lens and the downward migration of higher density nMag suspensions. Numerical simulations successfully captured the observed flow path of the nMag pulse injections, and provided close fits to spatially distributed aqueous and solid-phase nMag measurements obtained within the heterogeneous flow field. Experimental and modeling results demonstrated that relatively small contrasts in fluid density (e.g., 0.01 g mL−1) can result in flow instabilities and downward migration of nMag. This work provides the first direct comparison between model simulations and experimental observations of NP transport and retention in a 2.5D heterogeneous flow domain and demonstrates the importance of accounting for relevant physical and chemical properties in order to accurately describe NP fate and transport.


In ancient Egypt, words had magical power. Inscribed on tombs and temple walls, coffins and statues, or inked onto papyri, hieroglyphs give us a unique insight into the life of the Egyptian mind. For this remarkable new collection, Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson has freshly translated a rich and diverse range of ancient Egyptian writings into modern English, including tales of shipwreck and wonder, first-hand accounts of battles and natural disasters, obelisk inscriptions, mortuary spells, funeral hymns, songs, satires and advice on life from a pharaoh to his son. Spanning over two millennia, with many pieces appearing in a general anthology for the first time, this is the essential guide to a complex, sophisticated culture.

Translated with an introduction by Toby Wilkinson


Selecting a clustering algorithm is a perplexing task. Yet since different algorithms may yield dramatically different outputs on the same data, the choice of algorithm is crucial. When selecting a clustering algorithm, users tend to focus on cost-related considerations (software purchasing costs, running times, etc). Differences concerning the output of the algorithms are not usually considered. Recently, a formal approach for selecting a clustering algorithm has been proposed [2]. The approach involves distilling abstract properties of the input-output behavior of different clustering paradigms and classifying algorithms based on these properties.

In this paper, we extend the approach in [2] into the hierarchical setting. The class of linkage-based algorithms is perhaps the most popular class of hierarchical algorithms. We identify two properties of hierarchical algorithms, and prove that linkage-based algorithms are the only ones that satisfy both of these properties.

Our characterization clearly delineates the difference between linkage-based algorithms and other hierarchical algorithms. We formulate an intuitive notion of locality of a hierarchical algorithm that distinguishes between linkage-based and "global" hierarchical algorithms like bisecting k-means, and prove that popular divisive hierarchical algorithms produce clusterings that cannot be produced by any linkage-based algorithm.


Commentary on: Cohen L, Curhan G, Forman J. Association of sweetened beverage intake with incident hypertension. J Gen Intern Med 201227:1127–34.

Hypertension is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, rates of hypertension among the adult population in the USA increased from 24% in 1988–1994 to 29% in 2007 to 2008.1 Several lifestyle factors that could influence blood pressure have been suggested. The consumption of soft drinks has increased dramatically during the last centuries. Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) have been related to several diseases, particularly obesity and diabetes. However, the evidence of an association between SSB and hypertension is limited.

Cohen and colleagues use data from three US-based prospective cohort studies: Nurses' Health Study I, Nurses' Health Study II and the Health Professionals' …


OBJECTIVE
To determine the efficacy of the National Athletic Trainers' Association Board of Certification (NATABOC) clinical experience requirements and individual student characteristics to predict candidate outcomes on the NATABOC certification examination.

DESIGN AND SETTING
For all subjects, we gathered survey information and examination scores. The survey information included age, sex, route to certification, previous athletic training and allied health experience, and clinical education experiences.

SUBJECTS
A total of 269 subjects, 22.25% of all first-time candidates for the June and November 1993 NATABOC examinations, were included in this study.

MEASUREMENTS
Data were analyzed for standard descriptive statistics and parametric linear regression and correlational relationships.

RESULTS
Total clinical hours, high-risk sport experiences, and previous athletic training experience were not predictive of examination outcomes. Although our results indicated a relationship between previous allied health experience and both outcome on the written section of the examination and age and outcome on the oral/practical section, these characteristics also were not predictive of examination outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS
Gaining clinical experience hours in excess of 400 hours beyond the 800-or 1500-hour requirement may yield no greater benefit for an entry-level professional than less time. The quality, rather than the quantity, of clinical experiences should be evaluated. More emphasis should be placed on the achievement of an entry level of clinical competency, rather than on total hour collection. Also, because high-risk sport experiences did not predict outcomes on the NATABOC examination, the emphasis of clinical education should be on students' receiving a more structured clinical experience, in which they are progressively required to assume greater responsibilities integrating both cognitive and psychomotor skills, while working under the supervision of a certified athletic trainer.


Although seismic attenuation measurements have great potential to enhance our knowledge of physical conditions and rock properties, their application is limited because robust methods for improving both the resolution and accuracy of attenuation estimates have not yet been established. In general, it is difficult to improve both the resolution and accuracy of attenuation estimates because there is a relationship of trade-off between them. Thus, the development of a robust method for improving both the resolution and accuracy of attenuation estimates is important. A zero-offset VSP measurement is considered to be best suited for attenuation studies as it enables sampling of the downgoing wavefield at various known depths because the downgoing waveform in a zero-offset VSP data set provides direct observations of the changing nature of the source wavelet as it propagates through the Earth. We propose attenuation estimation methods for zero-offset vertical seismic profile (VSP) data by combining seismic interferometry (SI) and the modified median frequency shift (MMFS) method developed for attenuation estimation using sonic waveform data. One important advantage of the application of SI to seismic exploration is that it allows flexibility of the source and receiver configurations. For example, this means that by applying SI to two different seismic traces recorded at different receivers, a new seismic trace with one receiver acting as a source (virtual source) and the other acting as a receiver can be created. The configuration of zero-offset VSP data is redatumed to that of the sonic logging measurement by adopting two types of SI: deconvolution interferometry (DCI) and crosscorrelation interferometry (CCI). Then, we can apply the MMFS method to the redatumed VSP data. Although the amplitude information estimated from CCI is biased, we propose a correction method for this bias to correctly estimate attenuation. First, to investigate the performance both in resolution and accuracy, we apply different trace separations to synthetic data with random noise at different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels. Second, we estimate the influence of residual reflection events after wavefield separation on attenuation estimation. The proposed methods provide more stable attenuation estimates in comparison with the spectral ratio (SR) method because the mean-median procedure suppresses random events and characteristic features caused by residual reflection events in spectral domain. Our numerical experiments also demonstrate that the MMFS methods identify impulsive attenuation values caused by transmission loss due to reflection at an interface while such impulsive values are not observed in SR methods. This is because the SR method derives attenuation estimates based on frequency component change between two receiver depths while the MMFS method uses the amplitude variation, implying that the proposed methods can estimate scattering attenuation values from amplitude information even if frequency components are not changed between the two receiver depths. By preliminarily applying the proposed methods to field VSP data, we find some differences in the depth resolution and stability of attenuation values between the proposed method and the SR method, demonstrating that the proposed methods are more stable than the SR method especially in the shortest receiver separation. The responses of attenuation results obtained by applying different attenuation estimation methods to field data at different receiver separations correlate with those in our numerical experiments. To further verify and extend the applicability of the proposed method, one of future works should focus on validation of obtained attenuation results by comparing a seismic trace or its spectrum before and after attenuation compensation by inverse Q filtering. In our case, a component of attenuation due to scattering effects is also included in the obtained attenuation estimates and thus such scattering effects should be taken into account in attenuation compensation. SSS11-P06 JpGU-AGU Joint Meeting 2017


Overgrazing by sea urchins on temperate reefs can effect a phase shift from macroalgal beds to sea urchin 'barrens' habitat largely devoid of seaweeds. Existing models of barrens formation are derived largely from observations of strongylocentrotid urchins, which typically show a behavioural shift from cryptic feeding to exposed grazing fronts that move through and 'mow down' macroalgal beds. Foraging by the temperate diadematid urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii triggers a similar transition from intact macroalgal bed to widespread barren grounds, but does not appear to involve a behavioural shift. Fine‐scale foraging movements were observed using time‐lapse photography across the urchin's range‐extension region and described with respect to a random walk model. Foraging was highly nocturnal, with individuals homing strongly to available crevices. In situ monitoring of tagged individuals suggests strong fidelity to and thus high stability of barren patches, while similar behavioural patterns across habitat types representing a gradient of foraging intensities indicate no behavioural shift associated with overgrazing. Laboratory experiments showed that C. rodgersii lacks a directional chemosensory response to either macroalgae or conspecifics. Combined evidence suggests a model of barrens formation fundamentally different to the well‐established 'feeding front' model, with formation of widespread barrens by C. rodgersii occurring from the 'inside‐out' via growth and coalescence of small barrens patches that form within macroalgal beds as a result of additive localised grazing radiating from crevice shelter. Regulation of urchin density at the spatial scale of individual barrens patches is proposed as a viable option to manage the formation of widespread barrens habitat within the urchin's recent range‐extension to eastern Tasmania. FRDC 2007 / 045 Managing reefs in eastern Tasmania to rebuild resilience ... Page | 190


First paragraphs: The nonprofit Cooperative Development Services (CDS), a cooperative that offers business consulting services to co-ops, just released an incisive report showing how co-op groceries in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area grew over the past 40 years into a US$180-million commercial cluster (Stockinger & Gutknecht, 2014). This is strong growth for an upstart sector amidst established competitors in an often-hostile economic climate. While they still represent only two percent of the region's grocery trade, food co-ops have built a solid membership base. Their stores define the cutting edge of grocery retailing in the Twin Cities (where I live), and have had a profound influence on the ways groceries are sold here. The growth of this co-op sector offers important insights into collective impact — an approach that advances the notion that even discrete steps taken by a given initiative will have importance across sectors, creating synergy and larger impacts over time — now widely in use by food initiatives across the U.S. Let's start with some basic facts from the CDS report. Today there are 15 food co-ops operating 17 stores in the Twin Cities region (with plans underway for adding three new outlets). These co-ops have enlisted 91,000 members and attract an estimated 50,000 additional shoppers annually. Combined, the stores offer food items from more than 300 farmers located within 250 miles (400 km) of the metro region, who earn an estimated US$31 million of farmgate revenue by selling to the co-ops through various channels. About 60 percent of this revenue was earned by selling directly to each co-op store.. ..


Designated driver programs aim to reduce alcohol related crashes by encouraging and facilitating a safe means of transport for those who have been drinking and by influencing attitudes and knowledge. This review discusses the use and effectiveness of designated driver programs in preventing drink driving and ultimately reducing alcohol related road trauma. The limitations of studies examining designated driver programs and recommendations for further research are also discussed. The available evidence suggests that while designated driver campaigns can successfully increase the awareness and use of designated drivers, it is less clear whether these programs lead to a reduction in drink driving and/or alcohol related crashes. Differences in the way that designated driver programs have historically been implemented may account for the inconsistent evidence for their effectiveness in reducing drink driving. There are also a variety of methodological problems relating to the evaluation of designated driver programs which need to be addressed by future research.


Maryland has a long-held reputation as a regional and national leader in environmental protection. But in some areas, especially enforcement, that reputation warrants scrutiny. For example, Maryland charges less than Pennsylvania and Virginia for some pollutant discharge permits, and the state does not assess permit fees for municipalities despite the resources required to administer those permits. The penalties for violating the Clean Water Act have remained chronically below the level allowed under federal law. Maryland law does not require MDE to penalize polluters for the full amount of the economic gain they achieved by flouting the law, unlike laws in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Together, these shortcomings may effectively dilute the power of deterrent effect of environmental laws across the state. This briefing paper identifies four key steps that Maryland should take to affirm its reputation as a regional and national leader in protecting the environment. The General Assembly should (1) increase permit fees to accurately reflect the cost of developing permits, monitoring and regulating facilities with permits, and managing pollutant discharges; (2) ensure that the statutory penalty maximum for a violation of the Clean Water Act keeps pace with inflation and the federal maximum; (3) restore the full deterrent effect of a penalty by adopting a statutory mandate to recover any economic benefit from noncompliance that a violator receives; and (4) establish a clear, mandatory minimum penalty requirement for violations of the environmental laws that protect the land, water, air, and other natural resources of Maryland.


The Alternate Methods of Avalanche Control project has been funded by the Washington State Highway Commission since August 1974 in order to develop simple, reliable and repeatable methods of triggering avalanche release which are free from the storage, handling and availability problems of explosives and artillery shells and which can readily be applied to avalanche paths typical of the many smaller ones causing frequent hazards for highways. The research involved tests in both Washington and Colorado to permit evaluation of the control methods in diverse climates and snow conditions, leading to more generally applicable results than could be obtained at a single site. The technical and scientific aspects of the work in Colorado were coordinated by the San Juan Avalanche Project of the University of Colorado. Field work in Washington state and the general supervision of the program and the engineering design were carried out by the University of Washington Geophysics Program. The U.S. Forest Service at Alta, Utah, also joined in a cooperative test of our methods and equipment. This final report describes the 1977/78 tests and summarizes the results of the entire project.


1.Advances in root ecology have revealed that root standing biomass is higher in species-rich plant communities than in species-poor communities. Currently, we do not know whether this below-ground diversity effect is the result of enhanced root production or reduced root mortality or both, which is essential information to understand ecosystem functioning, as it determines C sequestration and N dynamics in soil. 2.Minirhizotron observations were combined with root coring in five different plant communities (four monocultures and the respective mixture). Molecular markers were used to quantitatively determine species abundance in mixed root biomass samples in order to track shifts in below-ground species composition. In addition, a litterbag experiment was performed to study root decomposition independent of root mortality. 3.Root length production was greater and root length loss was lower in the mixture than expected from monocultures in all years. Simulations suggest that at least two species must have had reduced losses in mixture compared to monoculture. However, the diversity effects on root mortality may partially be explained by selection effects as the species with the longest root life span became dominant in the mixtures. Root length loss from minirhizotrons was very low; the combination of minirhizotron length measurements with root biomass estimates from coring suggested underestimation of root loss in minirhizotrons over time. Root decomposition was not affected by diversity. 4.Diversity enhanced root length production and decreased root loss, resulting in below-ground overyielding. With decomposition unaffected, our results suggest that root mortality is reduced with increasing diversity. Future studies have to reveal the generality of our observations in larger scale biodiversity experiments by using species having a wider variety of root traits.


I develop a model of the financial sector in which endogenous intermediation among debt financed banks generates excessive systemic risk. Financial institutions have incentives to capture intermediation spreads through strategic borrowing and lending decisions. By doing so, they tilt the division of surplus along an intermediation chain in their favor, while at the same time reducing aggregate surplus. I show that a core-periphery network -- few highly interconnected and many sparsely connected banks -- endogenously emerges in my model. The network is inefficient relative to a constrained efficient benchmark since banks who make risky investments "overconnect", exposing themselves to excessive counterparty risk, while banks who mainly provide funding end up with too few connections. The predictions of the model are consistent with empirical evidence in the literature.


Loss of Fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) leads to Fragile X syndrome (FXS), the most common form of inherited intellectual disability and autism. Although the functions of FMRP and its homologs FXR1P and FXR2P are well studied in the somatodendritic domain, recent evidence suggests that this family of RNA binding proteins also plays a role in the axonal and presynaptic compartments. Fragile X granules (FXGs) are morphologically and genetically defined structures containing Fragile X proteins that are expressed axonally and presynaptically in a subset of circuits. To further understand the role of presynaptic Fragile X proteins in the brain, we systematically mapped the FXG distribution in the mouse central nervous system. This analysis revealed both the circuits and the neuronal types that express FXGs. FXGs are enriched in circuits that mediate sensory processing and motor planning—functions that are particularly perturbed in FXS patients. Analysis of FXG expression in the hippocampus suggests that CA3 pyramidal neurons use presynaptic Fragile X proteins to modulate recurrent but not feedforward processing. Neuron‐specific FMRP mutants revealed a requirement for neuronal FMRP in the regulation of FXGs. Finally, conditional FMRP ablation demonstrated that FXGs are expressed in axons of thalamic relay nuclei that innervate cortex, but not in axons of thalamic reticular nuclei, striatal nuclei, or cortical neurons that innervate thalamus. Together, these findings support the proposal that dysregulation of axonal and presynaptic Fragile X proteins contribute to the neurological symptoms of FXS. J. Comp. Neurol. 520:3687–3706, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


This essay advances a close reading of Mina Loy's Songs to Joannes , a sequence of poems dedicated to her failed relationship with the futurist Giovanni Papini and published in 1917. Through a close analysis of the typographical complexities by which Songs to Joannes is characterized, I attempt to draw explicit connections between Loy's radical approach to physical existence and sexual activity in the poems, and her equally radical departure from the conventions of poetic form. In the systematic tension between form and content, then, I illuminate the ways in which Loy's poetry redefines the familiar concept of the 'body of the text' through a re-evaluation of two acts of reading: a 'horizontal' reading and a 'vertical' one. Drawing on the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure, I argue that Songs to Joannes – as both a long poem composed of various fragments, and a self-standing unit – might be placed in the position of the 'sign'. In support of this, I read Songs 'horizontally', drawing attention to the narrative and generic aspects of the poems as they unfold in time, and in succession. I then propose a 'vertical' approach to the Songs , in which theories of lexical semantics play a pivotal role. Finally, I consider the metonymical aspect of the Songs , making particular reference to the ways in which they problematize the concept of the 'sign'. Given that the term 'feminism' is now applied to a multitude of contradictory theoretical and socio-political positions, a special effort will also be made to define Loy's own peculiar brand of feminist thought, and to identify the nature of its influence upon her creative praxis.


As well as learning from each other's existing systems, US and UK researchers have potential for collaborative research into improving health care

Almost a century ago, the UK and US health systems diverged in a dramatic way. In the United Kingdom, parliament legislated on health insurance; subsequent seminal governmental reports and actions, such as the Dawson report on primary care after the first world war and the enactment of the NHS, set the stage for the current health services system. Despite several notable attempts at reform in the United States, particularly in the early 1930s, mid-1960s, and early 1990s, the US healthcare system remains much like it was a century ago, mired in a market oriented private system with private financing. The system makes only a nod towards public responsibility, mainly in the form of guaranteed financial access for elderly people (Medicare) and a fragmented and unstable system of financing and direct service for care of poor people (Medicaid and community health centres, respectively).

As a result, the United States lacks system-wide health policy making. By contrast, the NHS assumes responsibility for national health policy, the quality of care (for example, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence), and banning direct to consumer advertising of prescription medicines. The United Kingdom has a national director for primary care who, besides being responsible for policy in various aspects of primary care, is the country's official representative in international deliberations on primary care. The United States has no comparable position.

Despite these enormous differences between the two health systems, there remain possibilities for two-way learning. These fall into several groups: the importance of primary care as the infrastructure of a health system; information technologies for health services; quality of services; and equity in the attainment of health of populations.

World Health Organization documents on …


From the theory of 'deliberative democracy' to the politics of the 'third way', the present Zeitgeist is characterized by attempts to deny what Chantal Mouffe contends is the inherently conflictual nature of democratic politics. Far from being signs of progress, such ideas constitute a serious threat to democratic institutions. Taking issue with John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas on one side, and the political tenets of Blair, Clinton and Schroder on the other, Mouffe brings to the fore the paradoxical nature of modern liberal democracy in which the category of the 'adversary' plays a central role. She draws on the work of Wittgenstein, Derrida, and the provocative theses of Carl Schmitt, to propose a new understanding of democracy which acknowledges the ineradicability of antagonism in its workings.


Teaching is often assumed to be a relatively stressful occupation and occupational stress among teachers has been linked to poor mental health, attrition from the profession, and decreased effectiveness in the classroom. Despite widespread concern about teachers' mental health, however, little empirical evidence exists on long-run trends in teachers' mental health or the prevalence of mental health problems in teaching relative to other professions. We address this gap in the literature using nationally representative data from the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). In the 1979 cohort, women who become teachers have similar mental health to non-teachers prior to teaching but enjoy better mental health than their non-teaching peers, on average, while working as teachers. However, in the 1997 cohort teachers self-report worse mental health, on average, than the 1979 cohort and fare no better than their non-teaching professional peers while teaching. Overall, teachers seem to enjoy mental health outcomes that are as good or better than their peers in other professions.


State rescaling may take a variety of shapes although scant research has been carried out into the mechanisms and economic incentives that underpin rescaling processes. Recent literature in economics, economic sociology and political economy has identified at least two broad rescaling mechanisms, namely the development of regional identity - operating at the cultural level and proxing preference heterogeneity-, and the heterogeneity in levels of economic development, which influence the extent of regional redistribution. This paper empirically examines the mechanisms of vertical state rescaling by drawing upon empirical evidence from Catalonia and the Basque Country, to explore the evolution of sub-state identity and the rise of inter-territorial fiscal grievances - weakening intraregional economic solidarity. Findings corroborate the idea that the combination of widening sub-national identity raises the costs of managing heterogeneous spatial identities and strengthens support for vertical state downscaling. Similarly, ending regional fiscal solidarity it is found to increase the average income of Catalonia by 37% and even 17% in the Basque Country. However, the effect of regional identity exceeds that of regional redistribution in explaining state rescaling support in the magnitude of one to seven. These findings speak to the debate on the formation of Europe, in that they reveal limits to regional redistribution and highlight the importance of a common spatial identity.


ABSTRACT This paper reflects on the experiences of using photovoice to examine maternal health in Wakiso district, Uganda. The project involved 10 youth aged 18–29 years old, who were diverse in education, occupation, and marital status and identified by community leaders with researchers. By taking photos and sharing images and experiences in monthly meetings over five months, youth reported becoming more knowledgeable. They realised that they had common experiences but also reflected on and reinterpreted their circumstances. While they acquired self-confidence and enhanced their communication skills, they also initially faced community resistance regarding consent and lack of trust in their motives. Ethical practice in photovoice goes beyond institutional approval and individual consent. It includes extensively discussing the project with community members and building relationships with them. In certain instances, photos needed not to identify community members, or not be taken at all. Through these relationships and with improved capacity, youth engaged in individual instances of health education and advocacy, as well as spurred further local action through community dialogues. Researchers supporting photovoice must be open to learning alongside participants, flexible regarding study focus and processes, sustain interest and manage logistics, all while being reflective about the balance of power in such partnerships.


The undifferentiated clonal cell line, H9c2, derived from left ventricular rat heart tissue, has been extensively used in cardiovascular research. In the present study, 2 independent laboratories aimed to investigate the cells' capacity to differentiate into distinct cardiac-like cells. Undifferentiated H9c2 cells were supplemented daily for a period of 6 - 12 days, with varying concentrations of retinoic acid (RA) (10nM, 30nM and 1μM), in standard cell culture medium containing either 1% foetal bovine, or horse serum, in order to stimulate differentiation of the cells into a more cardiac-specific phenotype. Light microscopy confirmed some degree of morphological change associated with differentiation, and a significant increase in oxidative phosphorylation following RA treatment was observed. However, Western blot probing for the cardiac-specific markers Cardiac Troponin T (cTnT) and Myosin Light Chain-2v (MLC2v) indicated little to no differentiation, although immunocytochemistry indicated the presence of cTnT expression. Thus, it was found that the differentiation protocol induced differentiation in some, but not all cells, thereby generating a heterogeneous cell population. Our findings suggest that the H9c2 cell line may display some degree of resistance to differentiation. This should be kept in mind when considering to use this model for cardiovascular research.


Observations and numerical modeling experiments provide evidence for links between variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and global climate patterns. Reduction in the strength of the overturning circulation is thought to have played a key role in rapid climate change in the past and may have the potential to significantly influence climate change in the future, as noted in the last two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports (Houghton et al.; Solomon et al.). Both IPCC reports also highlighted the significant uncertainties that exist regarding the future behavior of the AMOC under global warming. Model results suggest that changes in the AMOC can impact surface air temperature, precipitation patterns, and sea level, particularly in areas bordering the North Atlantic, thus affecting human populations. Here, the current understanding of past, present, and future changes in the AMOC and the effects of such changes on climate are reviewed. The focus is on observations of the AMOC, how the AMOC influences climate, and in what way the AMOC is likely to change over the next few decades and the twenty-first century. The potential for decadal prediction of the AMOC is also discussed. Finally, the outstanding challenges and possible future directions for AMOC research are outlined.


We study the eigenvalues of the vibrating clamped plate problem. We have made improvements on the bounds of the ratios of the eigenvalues of the biharmonic operator (clamped plate) using the methods of Payne, Polya, and Weinberger. The difference in our proof lies mainly with the trial functions and the orthogonality arguments. While Payne, Polya, and Weinberger and Hile and Yeh project away components along u1, u2,..., uk to meet the orthogonality conditions,we use a translation/rotation argument to meet these conditions.