The adaptation of a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) aims to transfer a pre-trained GAN to a target domain with limited training data. In this paper, we focus on the one-shot case, which is more challenging and rarely explored in previous works. We consider that the adaptation from a source domain to a target domain can be decoupled into two parts: the transfer of global style like texture and color, and the emergence of new entities that do not belong to the source domain. While previous works mainly focus on style transfer, we propose a novel and concise framework to address the \textit{generalized one-shot adaptation} task for both style and entity transfer, in which a reference image and its binary entity mask are provided. Our core idea is to constrain the gap between the internal distributions of the reference and syntheses by sliced Wasserstein distance. To better achieve it, style fixation is used at first to roughly obtain the exemplary style, and an auxiliary network is introduced to the generator to disentangle entity and style transfer. Besides, to realize cross-domain correspondence, we propose the variational Laplacian regularization to constrain the smoothness of the adapted generator. Both quantitative and qualitative experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in various scenarios. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/zhangzc21/Generalized-One-shot-GAN-adaptation}.


We report the detection of variable emission from Sgr A* in almost all wavelength bands (i.e., centimeter, millimeter, submillimeter, near-IR, and X-rays) during a multi-wavelength observing campaign. Three new moderate flares are detected simultaneously in both near-IR and X-ray bands. The ratio of X-ray to near-IR flux in the flares is consistent with inverse Compton scattering of near-IR photons by submillimeter emitting relativistic particles which follow scaling relations obtained from size measurements of Sgr A*. We also find that the flare statistics in near-IR wavelengths is consistent with the probability of flare emission being inversely proportional to the flux. At millimeter wavelengths, the presence of flare emission at 43 GHz (7 mm) using the Very Long Baseline Array with milliarcsecond spatial resolution indicates the first direct evidence that hourly timescale flares are localized within the inner 30 × 70 Schwarzschild radii of Sgr A*. We also show several cross-correlation plots between near-IR, millimeter, and submillimeter light curves that collectively demonstrate the presence of time delays between the peaks of emission up to 5 hr. The evidence for time delays at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths are consistent with the source of emission initially being optically thick followed by a transition to an optically thin regime. In particular, there is an intriguing correlation between the optically thin near-IR and X-ray flare and optically thick radio flare at 43 GHz that occurred on 2007 April 4. This would be the first evidence of a radio flare emission at 43 GHz delayed with respect to the near-IR and X-ray flare emission. The time delay measurements support the expansion of hot self-absorbed synchrotron plasma blob and weaken the hot spot model of flare emission. In addition, a simultaneous fit to 43 and 84 GHz light curves, using an adiabatic expansion model of hot plasma, appears to support a power law rather than a relativistic Maxwellian distribution of particles.


Background Adults with serious mental illness (SMI) often experience gaps in access to needed health care compared with other populations. Such disparities may be even more pronounced between certain groups of patients with SMI, differing by race, ethnicity, gender, economic disadvantage (including housing stability) and socioeconomic status, and geographic location (chiefly, rural versus urban residence); disparities arise as well for individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and those who have difficulty communicating in English (because it is a second language). Purpose The primary goal of this Technical Brief is to describe and review the effectiveness of interventions that address disparities among adult patients with SMI in these important groups. Methods We reviewed the published and gray literature and interviewed Key Informants (KIs) to address four Guiding Questions (GQs). The four refined GQs for this Technical Brief focus on the critical areas of concern in relation to mental health treatment disparities—access to health insurance with appropriate coverage for these SMI conditions, accurate diagnostic evaluations, receipt of necessary and appropriate therapeutic services, quality of the health services, adherence to treatment over the long term, and various outcomes of care. The principal focus for the first three GQs is a description of the interventions (GQ 1), the context in which they are implemented (GQ 2), and a description of the evidence about the effectiveness of the interventions (GQ 3); GQ 4 presents conclusions, examines the gaps in the knowledge base, and identifies high-priority needs for future research. We include interventions addressing diagnosis, access to, and quality of treatment and support services among disparity groups of adults with SMI. Findings We identified 42 descriptive articles meeting inclusion criteria for GQs 1, 2, and 4, plus 37 articles measuring intervention effectiveness reporting on 26 unique studies (GQ 3). For GQ 1, the goals of each intervention were related to the specific diagnosis and disparity group that the intervention was targeting. Increased service use and treatment adherence were the most common intervention goals. For GQ 2, settings involved primarily mental health specialists being colocated in nonpsychiatric locations. These were usually primary care, but sometimes they were obstetrics-gynecology clinics, perinatal health care settings, and community mental health entities. For GQ 3, most interventions tested adding enhanced services to usual available care, including culturally adapted collaborative care or other therapies, integrated services, case management and telemedicine. We found no studies of interventions for individuals identifying as LGBT or focusing only on English as a second language, addressing access to health care coverage, or addressing diagnostic accuracy. We found one study of the elderly, a group that can be predicted to have a larger number of physical comorbidities and difficulties obtaining necessary care because of their SMI. Conclusions Future research should identify interventions that are effective in reducing disparities all along the health care continuum and determine whether such interventions are equally effective for particular groups within the SMI population. Many promising interventions focused on disadvantaged individuals, including homeless individuals and racial or ethnic minority disparity groups. Future research can include comparative findings between minority and majority group patients and subgroup analyses to evaluate effectiveness among different disparity groups. Most interventions targeted depressive and psychotic disorders. The use of collaborative care, intensive case management approaches, such as the Critical Time Intervention (CTI) and Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), and specific culturally adapted therapies, including those involving families of individuals with SMI, were the most noticeable modifications to interventions, but were not widely applied across groups. Gaps persist both in terms of the diversity of disparity groups included in studies (particularly individuals who identify as LGBT and the elderly) and approaches considered.


Permian to Triassic igneous rocks cropping out in the Coastal and Frontal cordilleras in northern Chile between 28o00'S and 30o15'S have long been interpreted to represent products of magmatism related to an extensional tectonic setting, either as the result of crustal anatexis or asthenospheric mantle decompression melting, in a passive continental margin. Eighty-six samples of plutonic (61) and volcanic (25) rocks from this region are characterized petrographically and geochemically. They are Permian to Early Jurassic in age, but the majority of the studied rocks correspond to the Lower to Middle Triassic Chollay Plutonic Complex, the volumetrically most important unit in the area. The rock samples have features typical of magmas derived from flux-induced melting of a depleted mantle such as: broad range of petrographic composition with predominance of intermediate to acid members, highly porphyrytic volcanic rocks, magnetite as the Fe-Ti oxide mineral phase, enrichment in LILE over HFSE, marked depletion in Nb, Ta, Ti, and P and moderate to no negative Eu anomalies. Few of the studied rock samples (<10%) have alkaline signature and trace element contents representative of anorogenic magmatism. In this work, we propose that subduction of an oceanic plate beneath the South American continent is responsible for the evolution of the margin from the Permian to Early Jurassic, at the studied latitudes. A preliminary interpretation of the margin architecture of the Andean margin from the Permian to the Triassic would be that the Chanchoquin and Chollay plutonic complexes represent the roots of a magmatic arc developed from the Permian to the Middle or early Late Triassic, whereas the Guanaco Sonso and Pastos Blancos formations would be the shallower parts of such arc. The La Totora Formation and some volumetrically minor Upper Triassic intrusive units represent magmatic products with alkaline signatures, which developed immediately before the establishment of the magmatic arc in the present-day Coastal Cordillera (during the Rhaetian to Early Jurassic).


Title: BULGARIA'S MACEDONIA: NATION-BUILDING AND STATE BUILDING, CENTRALIZATION AND AUTONOMY IN PIRIN MACEDONIA, 1903-1952 James Frusetta, Ph.D., 2006 Directed By: Professor John R. Lampe, Department of History This dissertation explores the intersection between rival forms of consciousness in Pirin Macedonia: national and local, from the anti-Ottoman Ilinden Uprising in Macedonia in 1903 to the end of the Communist "Macedonianization" campaign in 1952. Bulgarian, Macedonian and English-language historiographies have each portrayed this period as one in which a centralized state extended its power into the region and codified a Bulgarian national consciousness among its inhabitants. This dissertation finds that a rival, local consciousness existed through this period as well. The inability of the Bulgarian state in 1878 to secure the annexation of all geographic Macedonia, however, had led in the late nineteenth century to the emergence of a local paramilitary organization, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). VMRO is generally portrayed as a nationalist organization. But in leading Macedonians within a struggle against first the Ottoman Empire, then against Greece, Serbia (later, Yugoslavia) and even factions within Bulgaria, it provided an alternative experience of mobilization. The Organization took on functions of the state, able to do this as the Bulgarian state was weakened by internal crises and external enemies. This period thus saw a lengthy struggle between VMRO and the central state to consolidate control over Pirin, a conflict that continued between local elites and the state even after the paramilitary organization was driven underground in 1934. The "Macedonian Question" has been portrayed as a wedge issue by which external actors — particularly the Communist International, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany — could seek to divide Southeastern Europe. This dissertation goes farther in arguing that Macedonia was a divisive issue within national politics as well. Even in the post-1934 Zveno and royal dictatorships, then the Communist-dominated regime after 1944, Pirin remained a divisive issue and one in which a weak central state was forced to find compromise with local interests. The "Macedonianization" campaign that followed the Second World War was the vehicle by which Pirin was subordinated to the Bulgarian state. As such, the campaign appears less as a Soviet-directed campaign for the benefit of Yugoslavia, and more as a means by which Sofia was able to establish control over the


The practice of extra tuition is a phenomenon which has prevailed in Kenyan secondary schools despite the repeated ban by the government. The purpose of the study was to establish the perceived effect of extra tuition by teachers and students on academic performance in public secondary schools in Machakos County, Kenya. Descriptive survey design was used for the study. The target population was all public secondary schools' teachers and students in Machakos County. Ten (10) schools were randomly sampled and a total of 200 respondents including 40 teachers and 160 students participated. Questionnaires were used for data collection. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data.  The null hypothesis was tested using the t-test for independence of means at a 0.05 level of significance. Study findings were that extra tuition is widely practiced and that both students and teachers supported extra tuition. Some reasons advanced for the support were that extra tuition helps in early coverage of syllabus, revision, and boosts the performance of individual students. Observed t value indicated that perception scores of teachers and students were t (198) = -0.767, p=0.444. This means that there was no significant difference between the perception scores of students and teachers concerning extra tuition on academic performance. The study recommends among others that there is need to reduce syllabus content to manageable levels. Keywords: Perception, teachers and students, extra tuition, academic performance.


Background: Stand-up paddle boarding (SUP) is a recreational activity and sport that has grown exponentially, with participation increasing from 1.1 million in 2010 to 2.8 million in 2014 in the United States alone. Despite this growth in participation, SUP remains underresearched with regard to injury epidemiology. Purpose: To investigate injury epidemiology (severity, location, type, mechanism) in SUP. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study. Methods: An open-source online survey was administered to active SUP participants internationally. The survey captured information relevant to demographics, participation, and injury history over the past 12 months. Results: Of 240 participants included in the data analysis, 67.1% were males, and 54.6% were involved in competition. Participants spent a mean 192.6 ± 179.5 hours participating in SUP per year, most commonly for fun and fitness (43.3%) at the beach or bay (63.0%). A total of 95 participants had sustained at least 1 injury. A total of 161 injuries were recorded, resulting in an injury rate of 3.63 (95% CI, 3.04-4.16) per 1000 hours of SUP. The shoulder/upper arm was the most frequently injured body location, accounting for 32.9% of all injuries, followed by the lower back (14.3%) and the elbow/forearm (11.8%). The most common injury types were to muscle/tendon (50.4%), joint/ligament (22.6%), and skin (14.2%). Endurance paddling was the most frequently reported mechanism of injury (34.5%), followed by contact with a paddler's own board (20.1%) and sprint paddling (9.3%). Key risk factors for sustaining an injury were age >46 years, competitive status, and participating for >4.8 hours/week, as well as using SUP for racing. Conclusion: This is the first study to report injury epidemiology for SUP. It is evident that both sexes participate in SUP for fun, fitness, and competition. With regard to injuries, the shoulder, lower back, and elbow are the most injury prone; older age, competitive status, and longer hours of participation all influenced the chance of injury. Findings from this study provide the foundation for injury prevention strategies.


INTRODUCTION
The first widely-available dry-land training machines for swimmers were introduced about 40 years ago. They were designed so that swimmers could perform resistance exercise whilst more-closely replicating the movements of swimming, than when using other gymnasium-based resistance training machines. These machines were subsequently adapted and used as measurement tools (ergometers) in an array swimming research studies. This narrative review categorises and summarises what has been shown by the research studies that have utilised this laboratory-based ergometry.

EVIDENCE ACQUISITION
A search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Scopus (1970-2018) and relevant publications were included. Publications were grouped into 4 main areas of research: (i) physiological responses to exercise, (ii) functional evaluation of swimmers, (iii) monitoring of training, and (iv) muscular work output of swimmers.

EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS
Significant differences were showed between swim bench exercise and real swimming, especially in regard to the muscles involved. The difficulties of accurate reproduction of the movements and coordinated dynamic actions of swimming have not been overcome. Nevertheless, the literature shows that the use of these devices has provided a valuable contribution to swimming physiology, while overcoming difficulties presented by attempting to make physiological measurements in the water.

CONCLUSIONS
In spite of its limitations, laboratory-based ergometry has allowed a valuable contribution to the understanding of the physiology, effects of training and efficiency of swimming.


A common phenomenon in Francis turbines is draft tube surge. In these fixed-bladed machines, a strong runner outlet swirl can develop under off-design conditions. The action of the diffuser, and in particular the draft tube elbow, on the rotating flow field induces synchronous pressure and discharge fluctuations. These low frequency disturbances are of special interest, because they can easily propagate throughout the whole hydraulic system. The dynamic response of the system to the natural excitations can inhibit the normal usage of the powerplant. If the natural excitation occurs at frequencies close to an eigenfrequency of the hydraulic system, an important amplification of the hydraulic fluctuations can be expected. Passive measures, such as air admission or minor design modifications, are commonly taken as a last resort to try to reduce these phenomena. This work explores an active control approach to alleviate the problem. It is shown that the hydroacoustic fluctuations in a hydraulic installation can strongly be reduced by "injecting" the inverse signal of the turbine's natural excitation. While the main theme is the application of the active control approach to improve the operation stability of Francis turbines, the scope of this study is larger and addresses the following scientific topics: Modeling of an hydroelectric installation The dynamic behavior of an installation is studied based on an one-dimensional model. A compilation of the basic modeling tools was done. Using these tools, the dynamic model of a hydraulic installation and an external hydroacoustical source is presented. It is used to explain how the overall hydroacoustic fluctuations can be reduced using a hydraulic exciter mounted in the wall of a draft tube's cone. Improving the operation stability by active control The hydraulic fluctuations associated with off-design operating conditions of Francis turbines are often very periodic and characterized by the presence of a dominant frequency component. The aim is to cancel out this component for which the amplitudes are often excessive. An active control system, composed of a hydraulic exciter and its controller, has been developed for a Francis turbine. The exciter employs a pulsed flow injection in the draft tube to generate an antiexcitation at a given frequency, which is then synchronized with the turbine's natural excitation. A self-tuning extremum control algorithm optimizes the operating parameters of the exciter to minimize the overall fluctuations in the hydraulic installation. Laboratory tests show the efficiency of the active control system. The amplitude of the pressure and discharge fluctuations at the dominant frequency component are reduced to background noise levels. Multiple configurations of the exciter have been tested. A spectral analysis of the pressure fluctuations is presented, the system's energy balance has been performed and the control algorithm of the system is analysed. The energy balance is very encouraging: the exciter system needed only about 1 percent of the hydraulic power of the Francis turbine. Prediction of the operation stability of turbines based on model tests Laboratory tests on a scale model, homologous to the turbine, are an indispensable step in the development of a hydroelectric powerplant. Unlike the static characteristics, the dynamic behavior of a turbine installation is difficult to predict. An original identification method of the dynamic characteristics of a model turbine is proposed. The method is verified on a theoretical case study and experimentally tested. It constitutes the basis of the prediction of the operation stability of the powerplant based on model tests.


Because the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis is recognized as a prominent journal in applied behavior analysis, a description of authorship trends may be important for discerning developments in the discipline. The analyses reported herein address trends from 1975 through 1997 in the publication of articles by new authors and the appearance of articles authored by frequent contributors. The data reveal a trend away from the appearance of new authors with an increase in the publication of works by frequent contributors. These trends are shown to be more conspicuous than in comparison data from the American Journal on Mental Retardation.


The author considers the question: what if a member of an IEEE SA Working Group either has a granted or pending essential patent (or personally knows that his/her employer owns such a patent), and keeps that information secret despite the regular "calls for essential patents" made at the start of each Working Group meeting? The brief answer in the IEEEs case is that such deviant behavior is grounds for suspension or expulsion from the IEEE-SA for an individual, a representative of an entity or the entity itself depending on how widespread the deception itself. The case can also be referred by PatCom with a recommendation to the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board for appropriate action. Si2, another standards setting organization (SSO), has a different way of handling such a case, which the author describes using a flow chart of its patent policy flow. It is seen that any Si2 member that tried to subvert the system by not disclosing an necessary patent claim until after an Si2 standard was approved and published, will have necessary already agreed to issue a "Reasonable and Nondiscriminatory" (RAND) license on the necessary patents.


Less Than Angels follows the loves, works and hopes of a group of young anthropologists. Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome anthropologist Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has a fondness for wearing African masks. Added to this love triangle are the activities of Deirdre's fellow students and their attempts to win the competition for a research grant. The course of true love or academia never did run smooth.


Both accelerated and suppressed bone remodelling can lead to the development of a stress fracture injury. A stress fracture injury can threaten an athlete's performance by causing months of missed training time if a stress fracture is sustained during a crucial phase of the season. This thesis presents a series of studies that investigated bone metabolism in endurance athletes and potential ways to improve bone health and reduce the risk of stress fracture injury.

Triathletes are endurance athletes that anecdotally have a high incidence of stress fracture injury, but there is limited research into bone health in these athletes. Therefore, the first two studies in this thesis investigated bone metabolism in a group of elite British triathletes during off-season and pre-competition training. The results showed that elite triathletes had elevated bone turnover at both phases of the season, although this was highest during off-season training. The high bone turnover may be related to large training volumes, low energy intakes and high dermal calcium losses in the sweat.

Given the potential contribution of high dermal calcium losses to the disruption of calcium homeostasis and the different rates of losses in different types of training sessions, the timing of calcium ingestion around training sessions may be more important than total calcium intakes throughout the day. As such, the third study in this thesis investigated the mechanism and timeframe of Parathyroid hormone (PTH) and calcium regulation during exercise and recovery. The results showed that PTH secretion was controlled by a combination of changes in ionised calcium (Ca2+) and phosphate (PO4) and that the mechanism might be different during exercise and recovery. Taken together these results advocate the use of pre-exercise calcium supplementation, which may prevent the disruption of calcium homeostasis and attenuate the PTH and bone resorption response to intense exercise, although further research is required before this can be implemented in elite triathletes.

The large training volumes performed by elite triathletes, meant that daily energy expenditures and energy requirements were high, although consuming almost 6,000 kcal.d-1 was difficult when three or four training sessions were regularly performed each day. Therefore, a practical nutritional intervention was needed to help triathletes ingest some of the required nutrients. The fourth study in this thesis investigated the effect of a post-exercise carbohydrate and protein (CHO+PRO) recovery solution on the bone metabolism response to an intense running bout. The results showed that consuming a CHO+PRO recovery solution immediately after exercise created a more positive bone turnover balance in the acute recovery period from exercise, by suppressing bone resorption and increasing bone formation. Further research is required to explore the long-term effects of post-exercise suppression of bone resorption.

This thesis had direct impact on elite British triathletes, by influencing athlete behaviour and nutritional practices in the daily training environment. The research has also influenced British Triathlon coaches and sports science and medicine staff by increasing the importance placed on bone health and by providing information that will allow training and nutritional practices to be improved or altered to promote a more anabolic environment for bone.


This article examines doctrines governing extraterritorial jurisdiction and their evolution in response to the forces of globalization. These doctrines were shaped in this century first by the shift from private law to public power that attended the rise of the regulatory state, and then by a particular concern with the rise of American power. The emergence of a globalized economy poses a new set of challenges and temptations likely to require a rethinking of the fundamental bases of extraterritorial jurisdiction. This article does not undertake that task, but examines the current state of US law on extraterritorial jurisdiction and discovery with an eye to future trends. It proposes that a number of current judicial decisions are best analyzed not as definitive assertions of government power but rather as interim efforts to ascertain the nature and intensity of a foreign government s preferences. Further, it examines the temptation to use courts as tools of foreign policy, insisting on the need to distinguish between unilateral foreign policy objectives and cooperative or coordinated transnational legal solutions to global problems. Finally, it argues that globalization poses a problem of deciding when national actors can legitimately escape national regulatory obligations by moving offshore. Efforts to address this issue may portend a synthesis of the doctrinal tests applicable to ascertain the scope of regulatory jurisdiction with respect both to foreign entities acting in or with an effect on national territory and domestic entities acting abroad.


A target-induced cyclic strategy for DNAzyme formation was proposed to achieve simple, sensitive and universal detection of protein biomarkers with convenient colorimetric or chemiluminescence imaging readout. In the assay, the target protein was recognized by a pair of DNA-labeled antibodies (Ab1-DNA1 and Ab2-DNA2) to form a proximate complex, which could hybridize with the conjugate DNA3/DNA4 to release the guanine-rich DNA4 and thus formed G-quadruplex/hemin horseradish peroxidase-mimicking DNAzyme. The process could be further recycled with Exonuclease III by cleaving DNA3 to free the proximate complex, resulting in the cyclic formation of DNAzyme. The G-quadruplex/hemin DNAzyme could catalyze the H2O2-mediated oxidation of 3,3,5,5-tetramethylbenzidine to produce the color change from colorless to blue or enhance the chemiluminescence of a luminol-H2O2 system. Thus the signal could be read out with the naked eye, and by colorimetry and chemiluminescence imaging. Using a carcinoembryonic antigen as a model target, the proposed assay showed a detection range of 4 orders of magnitude along with detection limits of 170 and 16 pg mL-1 for colorimetric and chemiluminescence imaging assays respectively. This assay had the advantages of easy operation, sensitive detection, target flexibility and diversified signal readout, providing a great opportunity for commercial application.


We consider a class of generalized planning problems based on the idea of quantifying over sets of similar objects. We show how we can adapt fully observable nondeterministic planning techniques to produce generalized solutions that are easy to instantiate over particular problem instances. We also describe how we can reformulate a classical planning problem into a quantified one. The reformulation allows us to solve the original planning task without grounding every action with respect to all objects in the problem, and a single solution can be applied to a possibly infinite set of related classical planning tasks. We report experimental results that show our approach is a practical and promising technique for solving an interesting class of problems.


Bacterial leaf blight, the disease caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo), a seedborne pathogen, has been known to reduce rice yield by 50%. In this study, two consecutive experiments were conducted in order to investigate the effect of various biological seed treatments applied on rice seeds artifi cially infected by Xoo on seed quality and seedling growth. Laboratory experiment was arranged in a completely randomized design while greenhouse experiment was arranged in a completely randomized block design. In both experiments, 12 seed treatments were applied: un-infected seeds (negative control) without seed treatment, Xoo infected seeds (positive control) without seed treatment, infected seeds soaked in bactericide Agrept 0.2%, infected seeds soaked in biological agent suspension isolate A6, infected seeds soaked in A54 isolate, infected seeds soaked in 5/B isolate, infected seeds soaked in 11/C isolate, infected seeds matriconditioned + A6 isolate, infected seeds matriconditioned + A54 isolate, infected seeds matriconditioned + 5/B isolate, and infected seeds matriconditioned + 11/C isolate. Soaking seeds either in Agrept 0.2% or in biological agent suspension was conducted for 30 h. Matriconditioning was conducted using ratio of seeds to carrier (burned rice hull 32 mesh) to biological agent suspension or bactericide solution of 1.0 (g) :0.8 (g): 1.2 (mL) for 30 h in air-conditioned room ca. 25 oC. Results of experiments showed that all biological seed treatments could suppress Xoo in rice seeds. Matriconditioning plus biological agent (isolate A6), biopriming with isolate A6 or isolate A54 were the best seed treatments to improve seed viability and vigor. In greenhouse experiment, matriconditioning plus isolate A54 was the best seed treatment to increase seedling growth. Keywords: biopriming, matriconditioning, rhizobacteria, seed health, viability


For more than sixty years, the Internal Revenue Service has employed a methodology test in determining whether a nonprofit organization's advocacy of a particular viewpoint is sufficiently educational to warrant its designation as a public charity. The test's focus is not upon the viewpoint advocated, but upon the method used by the organization to communicate its viewpoint to others. Consistent with this purpose, the Service has identified four factors that are indicative of a noneducational methodology. The Service's application of the test, however, suggests the existence of an additional, previously undisclosed factor. This factor regards a refusal to present opposing viewpoints as indicative of a noneducational methodology.This article concludes that the methodology test is unconstitutional for three reasons. First, the test is void for vagueness because it does not disclose one of the factors considered by the Service in evaluating whether an advocacy organization may be said to employ an educational methodology. Second, the test violates the compelled speech doctrine by requiring advocacy organizations to accommodate the very speech they are organized to oppose. Third, the test imposes an unconstitutional condition by conditioning advocacy organizations' eligibility to receive tax-deductible contributions on the absolute forfeiture of their First Amendment rights.


Background:
The elderly account for an increasing proportion of the population and have a high prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD). Therefore, elderly patients represent an increasing proportion of those presenting for investigation and treatment of CAD. Management of CAD is undertaken to relieve the signs and symptoms of myocardial ischaemia, making quality of life (QoL) a critical consideration in clinical decision making. CAD is associated with both chronological and biological ageing processes. However, conflicting evidence exists as to whether leucocyte telomere length (LTL) is an appropriate biomarker of ageing in CAD.

Methods:
The thesis comprised four complementary studies. Firstly, secondary data analysis of the Scottish Coronary Revascularisation Register was used to undertake two retrospective cohort studies of patients attending for coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary revascularization. The aim was to compare case mix and outcomes of elderly versus younger patients. A prospective cohort study of 437 patients was then undertaken to assess QoL before, and three months after, PCI and to compare QoL changes in elderly versus younger patients. Finally a cross sectional study was used to investigate the association between LTL (T/S ratio -relative ratio of repeat to single copy number) measured using qPCR and CAD (presence and severity) in 1,846 patients attending a regional cardiovascular centre for coronary angiography.

Results:
The number and proportion of elderly patients undergoing coronary angiography increased from 669 (8.7%) in 2001 to 1,945 (16.8%) in 2010. Among the elderly (>= 75 years old), symptoms were more severe and disease more extensive compared to patients aged <75 years. Peri-procedural complications were infrequent irrespective of age: 2.0% of elderly patients suffered complications, compared with 1.6% of young patients (p<0.001). Thirty-day MACCE were more common in elderly compared with younger patients (2.0% vs 1.6%, p<0.001). Elderly patients with evidence of stenosis were less likely to proceed to revascularisation (adjusted OR 0.68, 95% CI 0.65–0.71, p<0.001) within one year of angiography, irrespective of disease severity.
There was an increase in the number and percentage of PCIs undertaken in elderly patients, from 196 (8.7%) in 2000 to 752 (13.9%) in 2007. Compared with younger patients, the elderly were more likely to have multivessel disease, multiple comorbidity, and a history of myocardial infarction or coronary artery bypass grafting (χ2 tests, all p<0.001). The elderly had a higher risk of MACE within 30 days of PCI (4.5% versus 2.7%, χ2 test p<0.001)
Following PCI, mean QoL improved in both elderly and younger patients. Elderly participants had higher baseline mental component score (MCS) but lower physical component score (PCS). After adjusting for baseline differences, QoL (both physical and mental components) in elderly patients improved as much as younger patients, following PCI (SF-12 v2 MCS 50.0(SD 10.4) to 53.0(SD 11.9) vs 46.7(SD 11.1) to 49.7(SD 11.1), p=0.652; and SF-12 v2 PCS 37.6(SD 10.1) to 41.9(SD 10.1) vs 39.7(SD 10.0) to 45.6(SD 10.8), p=0.373).
An inverse relationship was found between LTL (T/S ratio) and age. No statistically significant difference was found in mean T/S ratio between those with and without CAD (0.87(SD 0.21) vs 0.89(SD 0.21), p=0.091), even after adjusting for baseline characteristics. In addition, there was no statistically significant difference in relative T/S length by severity of disease in those found to have stenosis on cardiac angiography: 0.875 (SD 0.211) vs 0.875 (SD 0.212) vs 0.860 (SD 0.203) vs 0.867 (SD 0.200), p=0.670.

Conclusions:
This thesis has demonstrated that, in Scotland, elderly patients account for an increasing number and proportion of diagnostic coronary angiograms and PCIs. However, the threshold for investigation and subsequent intervention appears to be higher among the elderly, even after adjusting for co-morbidities. While elderly patients have a higher risk of early complications than younger patients, their absolute risk is, nonetheless, low. This suggests that coronary angiography and PCI are safe procedures to perform in the elderly. Following PCI, the QoL of elderly patients improves at least as much as in younger patients.

A recognized risk factor for CAD is chronological age, and there is increasing interest in whether biological age contributes to the development and progression of disease and can explain socioeconomic inequalities in health. However, the current thesis found no association between LTL and either the occurrence or severity of CAD, or its severity on cross-sectional study. While LTL is considered a useful biomarker of ageing, these findings suggest that LTL may not be as useful in CAD.
Although findings suggest that coronary angiography and PCI are safe procedures in the elderly, results of this thesis suggest an age-based inequality in access to coronary artery investigation and intervention that is not explained by differences in demographic trends, levels of need, potential risk or potential benefit. These findings have significant implications for the delivery of cardiovascular clinical services to an increasing elderly population. Further investigation should be undertaken upstream of these studies, on patients referred for investigation rather than just those receiving it to determine the extent to which there are inequalities in referral threshold as well as procedure threshold. Further research is also required to identify those elderly patients who would most benefit from earlier investigation and management. There is also a need for longitudinal studies to assess the usefulness of LTL as a biomarker of ageing in CAD and to investigate whether LTL is associated with adverse outcomes in patients diagnosed with CAD.


My lab bench was strewn with tubes and pipettes—remnants of an experiment that had refused to work for several weeks. I was slouched against the bench, deep in despair. It was a far cry from how I had felt just a few months earlier, when I started my master's research project. At that point, I thought I had cracked the code to academic success. After years of excelling in the classroom thanks to intensive studying, the idea that I would be rewarded if I worked hard enough was deeply rooted in me. So I spent long hours in the lab, steadily filled pages in my notebook, and was praised for my diligence. When my experiments didn't produce the exciting results they were supposed to, I thought I just needed to work more.

![Figure][1]

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

Yet here I was, working harder than ever—but not getting anywhere. I didn't know what to do.

It was late in the evening. One other person was still in the lab: A postdoc, who noticed my distress, came over and gently asked how I was doing. I told him about my struggles with the experiment. I didn't tell him that I was also wondering what was wrong with me and that I felt like a failure. After we talked through the experiment, the postdoc said, "I think it's time to go home and get some sleep." He added with a smile, "Taking a break is also hard work, you know?"

Those comments planted the seed of a new approach. Previously, when my nonresearch friends questioned whether the "always working" ethos that is common among academics was normal or healthy, I had brushed off their concerns. Now, I realized that they were on to something. I started to go easier on myself, to try to make being in the lab from early morning to late evening the exception rather than the norm. Pushing back against the belief that long working hours are the hallmark of a good researcher was hard, and I slipped back into my old routine more than once. But things got a little better. I felt less stressed and my research started to progress. Yet, in the back of my head I still felt guilty for not working "enough." I hadn't fully understood what the postdoc was trying to tell me.

A few years later, during my Ph.D., the penny dropped the rest of the way. My adviser and I were at a cafe, discussing a hurdle facing our field of nanomedicine and many other biomedical fields: that research rarely translates to improved clinical outcomes. As he finished his coffee and rubbed his forehead, he said, "We need to work smarter, not harder." I had never heard that mantra before, although I now know it is common, and it resonated with me. It also helped me see how academia is often set up around the opposite premise: Working harder and longer is seen as a virtue, regardless of how "smart" that work is.

That conversation helped me understand that exciting, novel ideas do not come from a mind constantly under pressure. My best ideas and "aha" moments almost always come after I allow my mind to relax, to drift—whether that's playing video games with my brother, cooking a nice dinner, or going on long hikes with my wife. Part of working smarter, I realized, can be taking a break. Fighting academia's norm of overwork to detach for a while and fully experience something else is an effort—but one worth making.

Today, a decade after that eye-opening evening in the lab, I try to pass this mindset on to my own students. Not too long ago, in the lab one night, I walked by one of my students slumped over her bench. I gently asked how she was doing. With a defeated look, she responded that the protocol refused to work, again, despite many attempts. I couldn't help but see myself all those years ago. We talked for a while about academic life and what it means to be a researcher. I asked her why we do what we do. Often it comes down to pursuing curiosity and passion.

How can we nurture that spirit? The answer does not include working ourselves to exhaustion. Work-life balance is not a detriment to excellent research, or an optional bonus, but an integral part of it.

 [1]: pending:yes


The Currawong massive sulphide deposit is one of two known deposits at Benambra,
eastern Victoria. The deposit occurs near the base of the Gibsons Folly Formation
which is a deep water, basin centre facies association of the Late Silurian Cowombat
Rift (Allen, 1992).

Coherent volcanic units of the Gibsons Folly Formation comprise andesite and
plagioclase-phyric rhyodacite. These are predominantly shallow sills with
margins of sediment-matrix hyaloclastite. The rhyodacite also forms cryptodome-like
intrusions which have penecontemporaneously deformed the sequence. These and the
sills were emplaced into a relatively unlithified sequence of mudstone (interbedded
with thin, fine sandstone turbidites) and andesitic volcaniclastic units prior to the
mineralising event. Units of strongly flow-banded and/or brecciated rhyodacite in the
footwall sequence may be lavas but textures are equivocal.
Quartz-plagioclase-phyric rhyolite (the Currawong Porphyry) is a sill which
intruded relatively lithified rocks at the base of the Gibsons Folly Formation.
Geochemical evidence indicates that it represents on-going silicic volcanism of the
Middle-Upper Silurian Thorkidaan Volcanics.
A sequence of andesitic scoriaceous breccia and plagioclase-quartz-bearing
altered rocks comprises several depositional units separated by thin mudstone units.
These are ambiguous rocks but several features suggest that they are lava-derived
mass-flow deposits. They are lithologically and geochemically distinctive and host the
mineralisation at Currawong.

Ti, Zr, Nb and Y have behaved essentially in an immobile manner during hydrothermal
alteration and subsequent metamorphism of the volcanic rocks at Currawong. Volcanic
lithologies are best distinguished using the plots Zr/TiO2 vs Nb/Y (after Winchester
and Floyd, 1977) and Nb vs Zr. The coherent volcanic units of this sequence form a
fairly continuous geochemical magmatic evolution trend but coherent andesite and
andesitic volcaniclastic rocks show a broad range of compositions. Some of the
andesitic units contain xenocrystic-quartz and volcaniclastic rocks of andesitic
composition also contain silicic volcanic clasts. Together these suggest that the
andesitic rocks are the result of magmatic differentiation combined with mixing of
andesitic and quartz-phyric silicic magmas.
The Currawong deposit is interpreted as a subsea-floor replacement style volcanic
hosted massive sulphide deposit. Massive pyritic mineralisation is intercalated with,
and laterally equivalent to, strongly altered volcanic units which carry variable
disseminated or vein mineralisation. Alteration and mineralisation show a strong
stratigraphic control related to primary permeability of the host sequence. Quartzxenocrystic,
andesitic scoriaceous volcaniclastic rocks were the locus of the strongest
mineralisation at Currawong, and possibly at the nearby Wilga deposit. These should
be a primary target for future exploration at Benambra.


In this new study of desire in Late Imperial China, Martin W. Huang argues that the development of traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre was closely related to changes in conceptions of the fundamental nature of desire. He further suggests that the rise of vernacular fiction during the late Ming dynasty should be studied in the context of contemporary debates on desire, along with the new and complex views that emerged from those debates. Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late China shows that the obsession of authors with individual desire is an essential quality that defines traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre. Thus the maturation of the genre can best be appreciated in terms of its increasingly sophisticated exploration of the phenomenon of desire.


Traffic speed prediction is a long-standing and critically important topic in the area of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Recent years have witnessed the encouraging potentials of deep neural networks for real-life applications of various domains. Traffic speed prediction, however, is still in its initial stage without making full use of spatio-temporal traffic information. In light of this, in this paper, we propose a deep learning method with an Error-feedback Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network structure (eRCNN) for continuous traffic speed prediction. By integrating the spatio-temporal traffic speeds of contiguous road segments as an input matrix, eRCNN explicitly leverages the implicit correlations among nearby segments to improve the predictive accuracy. By further introducing separate error feedback neurons to the recurrent layer, eRCNN learns from prediction errors so as to meet predictive challenges rising from abrupt traffic events such as morning peaks and traffic accidents. Extensive experiments on real-life speed data of taxis running on the 2nd and 3rd ring roads of Beijing city demonstrate the strong predictive power of eRCNN in comparison to some state-of-the-art competitors. The necessity of weight pre-training using a transfer learning notion has also been testified. More interestingly, we design a novel influence function based on the deep learning model, and showcase how to leverage it to recognize the congestion sources of the ring roads in Beijing.


BACKGROUND
Smoking has carcinogenic effects, and possibly antiestrogenic effects as well, but it has not been found to be a risk factor for breast cancer in women in the general population. However, hereditary breast cancer is primarily a disease of premenopausal women, and interactions between genes and hormonal and environmental risk factors may be particularly important in this subgroup.

METHODS
We conducted a matched case-control study of breast cancer among women who have been identified to be carriers of a deleterious mutation in either the BRCA1 or the BRCA2 gene. These women were assessed for genetic risk at one of several genetic counseling programs for cancer in North America. Information about lifetime smoking history was derived from a questionnaire routinely administered to women who were found to carry a mutation in either gene. Smoking histories of case subjects with breast cancer and age-matched healthy control subjects were compared. Odds ratios for developing breast cancer were determined for smokers versus nonsmokers by use of conditional logistic regression for matched sets after adjustment for other known risk factors.

RESULTS
Subjects with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations and breast cancer were significantly more likely to have been nonsmokers than were subjects with mutations and without breast cancer (two-sided P = .007). In a multivariate analysis, subjects with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations who had smoked cigarettes for more than 4 pack-years (i.e., number of packs per day multiplied by the number of years of smoking) were found to have a lower breast cancer risk (odds ratio = 0.46, 95% confidence interval = 0.27-0.80; two-sided P = .006) than subjects with mutations who never smoked.

CONCLUSIONS
This study raises the possibility that smoking reduces the risk of breast cancer in carriers of BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations.


We present both theoretical and experimental results of an ultracompact waveguide coupler that is capable of highly efficient coupling of light from strip waveguides to slot waveguides, and vice versa. By optimizing the geometrical parameters, it is possible to achieve extremely low-loss coupling. A coupling efficiency of 97% has been obtained experimentally while keeping the overall size down to the range below 10 mum. Further analysis shows that the proposed coupler has relatively high tolerance to fabrication errors and is wavelength insensitive.


Four bacterial strains were isolated from two different colony sources of the wax moth Galleria mellonella. They were characterized by a polyphasic approach including 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, core-genome analysis, average nucleotide identity (ANI) analysis, digital DNA–DNA hybridization (dDDH), determination of G+C content, screening of antibiotic resistance genes, and various phenotypic analyses. Initial analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequence identities indicated that strain GAL7T was potentially very closely related to Enterococcus casseliflavus and Enterococcus gallinarum , having 99.5–99.9 % sequence similarity. However, further analysis of whole genome sequences revealed a genome size of 3.69 Mb, DNA G+C content of 42.35 mol%, and low dDDH and ANI values between the genomes of strain GAL7T and closest phylogenetic relative E. casseliflavus NBRC 100478T of 59.0 and 94.5 %, respectively, indicating identification of a putative new Enterococcus species. In addition, all novel strains encoded the atypical vancomycin-resistance gene vanC-4. Results of phylogenomic, physiological and phenotypic characterization confirmed that strain GAL7T represented a novel species within the genus Enterococcus , for which the name Enterococcus innesii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is GAL7T (=DSM 112306T=NCTC 14608T).


The mandibular molars are more prone to aberrations of canals. They include bifurcation and trifurcation of canals, fusion of roots, extreme canal curvatures and c shaped canals which makes it difficult to diagnose and manage. The failure to treat them leads to reinfection and persistence of infection in the tooth. Hence, it is of utmost importance for the clinician to know the morphologic variations. The present case report is aimed to give a clinical insight of such aberrations. The two cases presents with mandibular second molar with "c" shaped root canal system, which was diagnosed with CBCT. Both the cases were treated endodontically and successfully managed.


The written portion of my thesis explores the personal ideas, historical background, and creative context for a body of abstract paintings created for my MFA thesis exhibition at the Weatherspoon Art Museum. This body of work comes from an investigation into the language of painting, the differences between the image and the painting object, consciousness and illusion, the relationship of pleasure to viewing, and how much of a painting's communication comes from its history and context. The paintings are objects made from wood, canvas, acrylic, enamel, and epoxy resin. Their meaning comes from the tensions between painting as a material object, as a way of creating illusionist space, and as an experience of the artist and viewer's visual thinking.


Myelin is a lipid rich membrane produced by oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system. During development, oligodendrocyte precursor cells find their target axons and start to wrap their processes around axons, thereby creating a multilayered insulating sheath. Those sheaths are regularly distributed along the axon with small, intersecting gaps called Nodes of Ranvier. This insulation results in increase in signaling conduction velocity. Furthermore, recent publications suggest that myelin is a dynamic structure that can adapt to environmental changes.
I investigated the epigenetic control of oligodendrocytes during motor skill learning, since it was suggested in literature, that myelin is necessary for complex learning. Mice were subjected to a complex running wheel and the corpus callosum, a region with high myelin density, were collected for batch isolation of tissue specific methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (Bits-meDIP), before and several days after complex learning. Thereby i could not identify changes of differentially methylated regions or genes.

Myelin plasticity is also visible during development, where the formation of the myelin sheath is accompanied by myelin outfoldings, which are normally linked to disease pathology. Here, I investigated the ultrastructural changes of myelin by 2D and 3D electron microscopy during optic nerve development. Thus, I could see degenerated myelin debris additional to outfoldings in wild type optic nerves. Interestingly, degenerated myelin was not only seen in the extracellular space, but also still attached to otherwise normal looking myelin sheath. Additionally, microglia were found to be associated with myelin outfoldings and phagocytose degenerated myelin. This phenomenon has already been described for demyelinating disease models, however not yet for normal myelin development. Activation of microglia during that time seemed to be dependent on triggering receptor on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) signaling, since TREM2 deficient animals showed less expression of the activation markers. Despite that RNA sequencing of white and grey matter microglia at 14 and 60 days after birth did not show an increase in genes usually expressed in disease-associated microglia (DAM) – a microglial subtype which arises in a Trem2-dependent manner. Pathway analysis showed that P14 microglia in cortex and corpus callosum expressed genes related to extracellular matrix interaction, cytokine signaling, focal adhesion and protein digestion, when compared to P60 microglia. Hence, redundant myelin during development is unlikely to be sufficient to trigger severe disease related gene expression.


The focus of my dissertation is recent U.S. magical realism, more precisely, the cultural-ideological role the magic plays as a technique or effect fiction writers use to describe particular transformations characters undergo. Since critics have repeatedly identified the magic within the broader zone of postmodern and postcolonial writing, a first step will involve reexamining the complex relationships of magical realism with the postmodern and the postcolonial in American and international context. Coming to terms with the dynamic of the three terms and related literary-cultural practices will help understanding why and how American writers of the past decades have been using magical realism to suggest how human beings go through a restructuring process wherein beliefs they hold are reassessed and reformed, that is, how the magic acts as a cultural agent. Indeed, as my project will show, not only does the magic open up new possibilities and worlds for the characters; it also allows for the reformation of longstanding beliefs. Through this process, we see characters wrestle with and adopt new ideologies, often gaining strength as a result.


AIM
To respectively evaluate macular morphological features and functional parameters by using spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and macular integrity assessment (MAIA) in patients with diabetic macular edema (DME).

METHODS
This prospective, non-controlled, open study included 61 eyes of 38 consecutive patients with DME. All patients underwent best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) measurement, MAIA microperimetry, and SD-OCT. DME morphology, including central retinal thickness (CRT) and central retinal volume (CRV); integrity of the external limiting membrane (ELM) and photoreceptor inner segment/outer segment (IS/OS) junction; and the deposition of hard macular exudates were assessed within a 1000-µm central subfield area. MAIA microperimetry parameters evaluated were average threshold (AT)-retinal sensitivity, macular integrity index (MI), fixation points within a circle of radius 1° (P1) and 2° (P2), and bivariate contour ellipse area considering 63% and 95% of the fixation points (A63 and A95, respectively).

RESULTS
MI was significantly higher in eyes with disrupted ELM or IS/OS, compared with eyes with intact ELM and IS/OS. Values of BCVA (logMAR), total AT, AT within 1000-µm diameter, P2, A63, A95, and CRT were significantly worse in eyes with disrupted IS/OS, compared with eyes with intact IS/OS. The values of BCVA (logMAR), AT within 1000-µm diameter, and CRT were significantly worse in eyes with disrupted ELM, compared with eyes with intact ELM. These parameters were not significantly different between eyes with or without hard macular exudate deposition. CRV was not significantly different in the presence or absence of the integrity of ELM, IS/OS, or deposition of hard macular exudates. At the center, nasal and temporal sectors of the fovea, significant negative correlations were observed between retinal thickness and AT of the corresponding area. At the inferior and superior sectors of the fovea, no correlations were observed between retinal thickness and AT of the corresponding area. In the intact IS/OS group, significant negative correlations were observed between CRT and central AT. There was no correlation between retinal sensitivity and thickness when the IS/OS layer was disrupted. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that IS/OS integrity was an independent factor affecting MI.

CONCLUSION
Functional (BCVA and visual field) and morphological parameters (retinal thickness) were significantly associated with an intact IS/OS. Local photoreceptor integrity was a strong predictor of local visual function throughout the retina. MI revealed the functional status in DME, reflecting the IS/OS juction status in the macula.


Background. Therapeutic ultrasound (US) is an electrophysical therapy that is commonly used by sports physiotherapists, but its mechanism of action is unclear. There is little evidence that US therapy is more effective than sham US therapy, and any clinical benefits may be due to a placebo effect. Objective. To investigate whether US has a specific effect that renders it effective in its own right, or whether its effect is placebo driven. Methods. In a double-blind controlled trial, delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) was experimentally induced in both bicep muscles of 15 females. Sham US was applied to one bicep (n=15 biceps) and pulsed active US to the other bicep (n=15 biceps) of each participant, 48 and 72 h after induction of DOMS. Primary and secondary outcomes were pain reported on the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) and range of movement (ROM) (elbow extension) measured by goniometry, respectively. Results. Results showed significant improvements in pain and ROM over the intervention periods, but there was no difference between interventions. Conclusion. US and sham US therapy improve pain equally when treating DOMS of the biceps in the context of a therapeutic encounter. This analgesic effect is placebo driven. Clinicians can influence the analgesic effect of US by managing the therapeutic context. Management of patients' anxiety may also boost the analgesic effect of US.


Abstract In this study, biodiversity patterns of free-living marine nematode communities were assessed in the Yangtze River estuary and its adjacent waters by certain diversity measures. The studied area exhibited spatial variation in nematode biodiversity patterns. According to habitat heterogeneity, two station groups, shallow water near shore area and shallow water continental shelf area, were observed in the Yangtze River estuary and its adjacent waters. In general, nematode abundance and species diversity in the near shore area were significantly lower than the continental shelf area. Salinity, sediment Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and Phaeophytin-a (Phaeo-a) concentrations were responsible for the discrimination of species diversity measures. They reflect the reverin influence to nematode species diversity. By contrast, our results showed that the average taxonomic distinctness with presence/absence data (Δ+), and the variation in taxonomic distinctness (Λ+) were not influenced by natural environmental variability, nor pollutant and anthropogenic disturbances. The funnel plots for Δ+ and Λ+ also indicate none of the studied stations were subjected to environmental stress and perturbation. Possibly because of nematodes' strong resistance to environmental stress, the taxonomic indices did not discriminate perturbed from unperturbed conditions in the present study. We should be cautious to regard the taxonomic distinctness indices as surrogates for other traditional indices such as the number of species or Shannon diversity.


The appearance and rapid adoption of genetically modified (GM) foods and the strong growth in organic foods are two of the major trends that have influenced the food system over the past several years. The purpose of this research was to determine consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for non-GM and organic foods relative to conventional foods and to see if WTP differences between the three categories vary between fresh and processed food products. Experimental auctions with 133 subjects from three states (Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania) were conducted. Tobit models were run with the bids as functions of demographic and knowledge and attitude variables. Results suggest an untapped market exists for non-GM products at a substantial premium over conventional, yet less than organic. This segment may be difficult to identify though as attitude variables were more important explainers of bids than demographics.


The machining of large dimension part presents issues of accuracy and of part handling. Machine-tools of large capacity are classically used, but they are very expensive. The paper investigates original solutions with mobile milling machines. A comparative study of a machining robot and of a portable milling machine is performed. Instrumented experiments of face milling operation were carried out and the resulting quality was analyzed. Finally, the manufacturable precision for the large part is assessed by the tolerance stacking model that is proposed.


This paper presents a new embedded search engine designed for smart objects. Such devices are generally equipped with extremely low RAM and large Flash storage capacity. To tackle these conflicting hardware constraints, conventional search engines privilege either insertion or query scalability but cannot meet both requirements at the same time. Moreover, very few solutions support document deletions and updates in this context. In this paper, we introduce three design principles, namely Write-Once Partitioning, Linear Pipelining and Background Linear Merging, and show how they can be combined to produce an embedded search engine reconciling high insert/delete/update rate and query scalability. We have implemented our search engine on a development board having a hardware configuration representative for smart objects and have conducted extensive experiments using two representative datasets. The experimental results demonstrate the scalability of the approach and its superiority compared to state of the art methods.


Solid-state lighting is a rapidly growing area of research and applications, due to the reliability and predicted high efficiency of these devices. The white LED sources that are typically used for general illumination can also be used for data transmission, and Visible Light Communications (VLC) is a rapidly growing area of research. One of the key challenges is the limited modulation bandwidth of sources, typically several MHz. However, as a room or coverage space would typically be illuminated by an array of LEDs there is the potential for parallel data transmission, and using optical MIMO techniques is potentially attractive for achieving high data rates. In this paper we investigate non-imaging and imaging MIMO approaches: a non-imaging optical MIMO system does not perform properly at all receiver positions due to symmetry, but an imaging based system can operate under all foreseeable circumstances. Simulations show such systems can operate at several hundred Mbit/s, and up to Gbit/s in many circumstances.


Because of working in a constant and iterative position, injuries occur in shoulders, necks, backs, and lower extremities of sewing machine operators. Holding the left upper arm up, bending the body and the head and ankle and knee at non-optimum angles causes these injuries or makes the situation more serious. This study aims at determining the anthropometric measurements related to the workplace design for female workers employed in large numbers in the textiles sector working in Denizli. In order to do this, a total of 18 anthropometric measures were collected at sitting (9) and standing positions (9) from 407 female workers in separate clothing plants, using the Harpenden type Anthropometer. The measurements taken in the sitting position are related to the aim to discover the optimum design of the workstation of the sewing machine whereas the measures at standing position were taken with the aim of determining the optimum height of the quality control and ironing units. In the study the descriptive and percentile values were calculated. Considering the anthropometric measurements required, suggestions related to workplace design were proposed.


The Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU (January-June 2013) faced numerous challenges, not least of which was to negotiate the financial framework for the period 2014-2020 and the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy with the European Parliament, as well as the pressure to advance the banking agenda. Moreover, the fact that it was the start of a new Trio Presidency, the small size of the Irish administration and its fragile financial situation gave rise to some doubts as to how much it could achieve. Nevertheless, this post mortem on the Irish presidency finds that the Irish government approached the task with realism and optimism, a firm focus on results and the strong conviction that a good performance would enhance its reputation at home and in the EU. It is now for Lithuania and subsequently Greece, in the first half of 2014, to continue to tackle the remaining formidable challenges.


The impact history of the Moon has significant implications that go far beyond simply excavating the surface of a dry and lifeless world. The age distribution of lunar impact breccias inspired the idea of a catastrophic influx of asteroids and comets about 4 billion years ago and motivated new models of planetary dynamics. A late bombardment may have regulated environmental conditions on the early Earth and Mars and influenced the course of biologic evolution. The cataclysm hypothesis is controversial, however, and far from proven. Lunar explorers face the difficult task of establishing absolute ages of ancient impact basins and the sources for the impactors.


Since 2008, the Taiwanese business group Want Want, having made a fortune in China, has returned to Taiwan to buy a major media group and attempt to exert political influence on Taiwanese society. This paper analyses the rise and rationale of this new type of media investor in the light of the business-government relationship under China's model of state capitalism. According to the analysis developed in this paper, when China needed foreign investment in the early 1990s, Taiwanese investors were warmly welcomed by the Chinese government, which provided Taiwanese businesses with tax incentives at that time. After 2000, however, when not only domestic Chinese entrepreneurs emerged but also more non-Chinese investors entered the Chinese markets, Taiwanese businesses realised that the investment environment had become much more competitive, so they had to work hard on building ties with Chinese officials. Under these circumstances, Want Want bought into media in Taiwan as an asset to be used in order to build social ties with the Chinese government, but in doing so, Want Want has also triggered resistance from Taiwanese civil society. Future researchers and regulators can continue to watch and define this new type of investment, which has become increasingly significant in this region.


This doctoral dissertation describes a research study that examined the effectiveness of an experimental Supplemental Instruction (SI) program that utilized computer-mediated communication (CMC) rather than traditional SI review sessions. During the Spring 1999 semester, six sections of an introductory computer course were offered via the Internet by a suburban community college district in Texas. Using Campbell and Stanley's Nonequivalent Control Group model, the online SI program was randomly assigned to four of the course sections with the two remaining sections serving as the control group. The students hired to lead the online review sessions participated in the traditional SI training programs at their colleges, and received training conducted by the researcher related to their roles as online discussion moderators.

Following recommendations from Congos and Schoeps, the internal validity of the groups was confirmed by conducting independent t-tests comparing the students' cumulative credit hours, grade point averages, college entrance test scores, and first exam scores. The study's four null hypotheses were tested using multiple linear regression equations with alpha levels set at .01.

Results indicated that the SI participants earned better course grades even though they had acquired fewer academic credits and had, on average, scored lower on their first course exams. Both the control group and the non-SI participants had average course grades of 2.0 on a 4.0 scale. The students who participated in at least one SI session had an average final course grade of 2.5, exceeding their previous grade point average of 2.15. Participation in one SI session using CMC was linked to a one-fourth letter grade improvement in students' final course grades. Although not statistically significant, on the average, SI participants had slightly better course retention, marginally increased course satisfaction, and fewer student-initiated contacts with their instructors.


This thesis explores how assistive technology (AT) and choice are interpreted in contemporary disability rights, and how these rights are implemented in Australian policy. AT comprises products and services that are used to improve the ease and effectiveness of performance in a range of tasks and roles. People with disability use AT to enable participation in society by mediating the effects of impairment and environmental barriers. Effective use of AT facilitates inclusion, but access to and outcomes from AT have often been inequitable or inconsistent due to fragmented systems and limited involvement of AT users in decision-making. This thesis explores how the concepts of disability, AT and choice are understood by people who develop and implement policy, and by affected citizens including service providers and consumers.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) protects and promotes the civil, cultural, economic and social rights of people with disability. This thesis investigates Australia's policy reforms since ratifying the CRPD in 2008 through an interpretive policy analysis of AT provision, focusing on the National Disability Strategy (NDS) and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). It argues that the meanings ascribed shape the ways in which disability rights are progressively implemented in policy and how choice is constructed in AT provision. The research aims to capture progress at a single point in time to influence future debate and further policy development.
The interpretive policy analysis was approached systematically, incorporating multiple data sources and qualitative analysis methods. This involved identifying artefacts (data sources) and individuals and communities relevant to AT provision and Australia's policy reforms in disability services. Key documents produced since Australia ratified the CRPD were investigated through the process of category analysis, to reveal interpretations of disability, AT and choice from the perspectives of policymakers (government), implementers (government agencies) and affected citizens (service providers and consumers). To ensure that under-represented groups' interpretations were heard, five individuals from the affected citizens' community were interviewed about their experiences of AT provision and choice in different contexts. The participants' accounts were explored in detail using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to identify patterns in the emergent themes.
The findings in this thesis suggest that many people in Australia are still operating in an old paradigm that conflates disability with impairment, and considers disability a health issue. Policy implementers have interpreted assistive technology as products only, and choice as a means to improve efficiency, relying on technological innovation and market mechanisms as solutions instead of addressing the issues of access to AT and quality of services as identified by affected citizens. The ambiguity of choice as a policy principle means that it aligns with both liberal ideals that adopt market competition in public services and the human rights agenda, though these adopt different mechanisms and appear to deliver different outcomes.
This thesis concludes by considering alternative conceptualisations and approaches for policy development and the cultural change required to realise disability rights and improve AT provision. Australia's policies can evolve to support AT provision practices that facilitate the ongoing self-management of AT users by prioritising collaborative relationships. Re-framing choice as both a means and an end is consistent with a capabilities approach that aims to boost people's opportunities in life through individual and collective resources. Understanding that AT is a process as well as products, and that AT provision is often a pre-requisite for participation, may reorient policies toward building and sustaining social capital rather than stimulating market competition. Considering impairment as another dimension of diversity instead of a specialist health issue may enable mainstreaming in policy through a universal design (UD) approach.
This thesis contributes to the theoretical and practical challenge of realising the CRPD's vision for an inclusive society. It argues that this requires an understanding of the universality of impairment and a culture that embraces diversity and understands the role and value of AT.


A new method to obtain linear polarization operation by Brewster's angle-polished fiber end is demonstrated. By using the special polarization operation technique together with introducing a narrow-linewidth fiber grating into the laser cavity, a cladding-pumped linear polarization and single-transverse-mode (M2<1.1) Yb-doped fiber laser with narrow linewidth whose full-width at half-maximm (FWHM) is less than 0.2 nm, is obtained in a simple configuration. The output power is up to 10 W which is continuouswave output at 1085 nm, and the slope eciency is 63% with respect to the coupled pump power and 75% with respect to the absorbed pump power, respectively. The measured 21-dB polarization extinction ratio does not degrade with the output power. The simplicity of such an approach is highly beneficial for a number of applications, including the use of a fiber laser for the nonlinear wavelength conversion (especially for the intracavity frequency doubling) and for the coherent and spectral beam combination.


Gayo is an Austronesian language spoken by some 260,000 people in the central highlands of the Indonesian province of Aceh, at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. Gayo belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family of languages (Ross 1995, Blust 1999). Nothofer (1994) places Gayo along with Nias, Mentawai, Enggano and the various Batak languages in a North-West Sumatra/Barrier Islands subgroup. Five distinct but mutually intelligible dialects are recognised within Gayo: Bukit, Dëret, Cik, Serbejadi and Lues.


Abstract The recent PRISMED II geophysical survey has documented various styles of salt tectonics in and around the Nile deep-sea fan (Eastern Mediterranean Sea). The first main type of salt-related structures comprises listric normal growth faults and grabens, trending roughly perpendicular to the slope line of the Nile Cone. These faults and associated salt structures result from thin-skinned extension, driven by gravity gliding and spreading as a result of sediment loading of the Plio-Quaternary overburden above the Messinian evaporites, which acted as a décollement layer. The second major type of salt structures consists of lineaments that obliquely intersect the continental slope of the Nile deep-sea fan. These structures may have had some strike-slip movement, and salt diapirs grew reactively or were deformed by fault-block movement. In the western distal part of the Nile deep-sea fan, compressional tectonics of the adjacent Mediterranean Ridge caused the formation of a series of salt-cored folds and reverse faults above the Messinian evaporites. In the eastern distal part of the Nile Cone, sediment progradation progressively expelled salt northward, first forming small folds and tight diapirs, then a scarp of 400 m height around the Eratosthenes Seamount, corresponding to the basinward limit of salt deformation.


What can a local, scholarly journal, like SAJAA offer its authors and readers that high-impact international journals cannot? This is a very challenging and exciting question that many scholarly journals in South Africa face. In particular, there is enormous pressure from public higher education institutions to publish in international journals that carry a high-impact factor and which are Medline and ISI listed. Is it sufficient to be accredited with the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and indexed in Scopus? DHET will pay the subsidy for peer-reviewed articles published in journals listed in ISI, Medline and with respect to the South African list of journals accredited by DHET (and ASSAf). Clearly we would like to aim higher, and with this edition we will be embarking on this journey.


Diversity has become one of the new doctrines of city planners, urban designers, and architects. This paper calls for a fresh look at urban diversity by arguing that while it continues to be at the center of recent urban debates, little is known on how urban space diversity can be achieved. Concomitantly, it attempts to offer answers to these questions: Can planned public urban spaces produce social diversity? What are the aspects of genuine diversity that can be planned for and what are the others that can be attained only spontaneously? With the goal of unveiling lessons learned on urban diversity from the decision making processes and the resulting public urban spaces, the purpose of this paper encompasses several objectives. It aims at providing a conceptualization of urban diversity and elaborating its underlying contents and mechanisms by exploring the variety of meanings adopted in the urban literature. Resulting from such a conceptualization, the paper establishes a model for discerning urban space diversity. In turn, the model is mapped on two celebrated projects in order to verify its validity. The two projects are Cairo's Al Azhar Park and Melbourne's Federation Square. The methodology adopted in this paper is based on inductive analysis of the urban literature developed by urban designers, planners, and sociologists. It focuses on contrasting the 1960s and 1970s literature with the more recent arguments. This procedure fosters the establishment of a theoretical base for conceptualizing diversity which contextualizes its intellectual and practical aspects. Deduced from such an analysis a model is conceived to understand diversity and outlines its underlying aspects. Mapping the model on Al Azhar Park and Federation Square projects is a necessary step to verify its validity. Notably, while discussing the two projects involves a descriptive analysis, mapping the model is based on tracing diversity aspects in the published literature on the projects as well as onsite observations. Conclusions are drawn to frame up lessons on how diversity is achieved in different contexts based on the sociopolitical environment within which projects are created, to recognize whether planners, urban designers, and architects can actually achieve diversity, to highlight and define aspects of urban diversity that can be planned for while articulating other factors that acquire meaning overtime based on the spontaneous use of urban spaces.


Non-governmental organisations set different goals than
 for-profit corporations. However, they need to be advertised in order to keep
 working. One of the basic means NGOs use in order to attract volunteers and
 donators is their website. Although the English language is considered as the
 lingua franca of the internet it seems to be inadequate
 when a global audience is aimed at. NGOs seem to have realized the need to
 communicate with potential donators or volunteers in their native language and
 have started providing localized versions of their websites. In this paper we
 are going to examine the persuasive discourse adopted by NGOs in their English,
 French and Greek website versions. According to Aristotle (Rhetoric, 1356a) (2002) the three persuasive techniques used to
 change the audience's beliefs are (a) pathos, which appeals to
 the audience's emotions, (b) ethos, which establishes the good
 "character" and credibility of the author and (c) logos, which
 uses logic and evidence to convince the audience. Our aim is to examine both the
 use and the multisemiotic realization of the above mentioned techniques in
 different cultural contexts. For the needs of our analysis we will adopt
 methodological tools from the field of social semiotics (image and text
 relation (Barthes 2007) and the grammar of visual design
 and of colours (Kress and Van
 Leeuwen 1996, 2002).
 Translational theories such as Skopos theory (Reiss and Vermeer 1984; Nord 1997) will provide the theoretical framework for
 the study of the adaptation techniques and strategies adopted when the Greek
 audience is addressed.


We describe a smartphone application that helps people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cope with anxiety attacks. Our prototype provides a one-touch interface for indicating a panic level. The device's response - to instruct, soothe, and/or contact carers - is sensitive to the user's context, consisting of time, location, ambient noise, and nearby friends. Formative evaluation unearths a critical challenge to building assistive technologies for ASD sufferers: can regimented interfaces foster flexible behaviour? Our observations suggest that a delicate balance of design goals is required for a viable assistive technology.


There has been controversy over the number and timing of orogenies in the Precambrian Moine block in the Scottish Caledonides since the earliest radiometric dating in the 1960s. This work challenges a recent hypothesis, that this sector of the Laurentian margin was subjected to continuous crustal extension between >900 and 470 Ma. U–Pb dating (thermal ionization mass spectrometry) of titanite from a calc-silicate pod in the Moine (Morar Group) of the western Highlands gives an age of 737 ± 5 Ma. The titanite grew from Fe–Ti-bearing detrital minerals during the main progressive, syn-D2, amphibolite-facies (sillimanite zone) regional metamorphism, thus demonstrating that a Neoproterozoic contractional tectonothermal event (Knoydartian orogeny) affected the Moine block following the rift-related emplacement of the West Highland granite gneiss at 873 Ma. We conclude that the Sgurr Beag Thrust, a major tectonic break separating the Morar and Glenfinnan groups of the Moine, is mainly of Neoproterozoic, not Caledonian, age. The early tectonothermal event was succeeded by the Grampian Phase (Caledonian orogeny) at 460–470 Ma.


Temperature profoundly influences physiological responses in animals, primarily due to the effects on biochemical reaction rates. Since physiological responses are often exemplified by their rate dependency (e.g., rate of blood flow, rate of metabolism, rate of heat production, and rate of ion pumping), the study of temperature adaptations has a long history in comparative and evolutionary physiology. Animals may either defend a fairly constant temperature by recruiting biochemical mechanisms of heat production and utilizing physiological responses geared toward modifying heat loss and heat gain from the environment, or utilize biochemical modifications to allow for physiological adjustments to temperature. Biochemical adaptations to temperature involve alterations in protein structure that compromise the effects of increased temperatures on improving catalytic enzyme function with the detrimental influences of higher temperature on protein stability. Temperature has acted to shape the responses of animal proteins in manners that generally preserve turnover rates at animals' normal, or optimal, body temperatures. Physiological responses to cold and warmth differ depending on whether animals maintain elevated body temperatures (endothermic) or exhibit minimal internal heat production (ectothermic). In both cases, however, these mechanisms involve regulated neural and hormonal over heat flow to the body or heat flow within the body. Examples of biochemical responses to temperature in endotherms involve metabolic uncoupling mechanisms that decrease metabolic efficiency with the outcome of producing heat, whereas ectothermic adaptations to temperature are best exemplified by the numerous mechanisms that allow for the tolerance or avoidance of ice crystal formation at temperatures below 0°C.


Neonatal seizures are the most frequent neurological disorder in the neonatal period. The incidence is reported to be higher than at any other period in life. Because of the unique nature of neonatal brain anatomy, connections and the paradoxical nature of neurotransmitters, seizures in this age group vary in semiology from those in older children. They may cause irreversible changes to the synapses in the immature brain and progress to epilepsy. The aim of the study was to analyse laboratory, clinical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging risk factors for epilepsy in a group of children who experienced seizures in the neonatal period. A retrospective study of 176 newborns admitted to the Department of Neonatology, University Children's Hospital Ljubljana, due to seizures, was performed. Metabolic disorders and hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy were the most frequent aetiological factors associated with seizures. Epilepsy rate in the group was 18%. Pathological cardiotocography, reanimation after delivery, myoclonic type of seizures, more than one type of seizures, severely abnormal electroencephalography, abnormal neurological examination and neuroimaging, treatment with more than one antiepileptic drug and duration of treatment more than one month constituted statistically significant independent predictive factors for epilepsy (p< 0.05). The results of our study further elucidate risk factors for epilepsy after neonatal seizures.


A novel multi-effect membrane distillation (MEMD) process has been implemented to treat water containing four different inorganic solutes. The 4-stage MEMD module was developed based on the air-gap configuration. The influence of operating parameters like concentration, feed temperature, flow rate and operating time on permeate fluxes of zinc sulfate, sodium fluoride, magnesium chloride and sodium carbonate solutions was observed. Concentration had negligible effect on the MEMD9s permeate flux, while its performance increased with increasing feed temperature and flow rate. Its separation efficiency was stable at more than99.91% throughout the experiment. In addition, its specific energy consumption after the recovery of the latent heat of vaporization and sensible heat of brine was measured at different component concentrations and found to be independent of the type of component.


Perceptibility and acceptability are the most often used threshold units in
 the field of color science. The former refers to a just perceptible difference and
 the latter evokes a tolerable color difference. Such thresholds can be very
 significant to color quality control processes in the printing industry and should
 be defined in quality measure units. Optical density (OD) and color difference
 models are usually utilized as color quality measures and have been provided in a
 considerable number of commercial measuring devices such as spectrophotometers.
 However, their merits and traits are far less understood in the literature. The
 present study intends to evaluate performance of those color quality measures
 including the OD and widely known color difference models, e.g.
 ΔE*ab
 ΔECMC(l:c) and
 ΔE*00. A set of psychophysical assessments
 were carried out in order to accumulate the perceptibility and acceptability
 thresholds data, and their central trend was compared with the color quality measure
 estimates.


With the start of the LHC operations at at center of mass energy of 7 TeV a large sample of low energy photons, mostly coming from the decay of neutral mesons, have been collected with the ATLAS detector. Due to the large amount of material upstream the electromagnetic (EM) calorimeter, about 50% of these photons will convert before reaching it. The converted photons are used as a tool to map the material of the ATLAS tracker in front of the EM calorimeter. The results of the material measurements relative to an accurately measured reference volume inside the tracker, together with an estimate of the most important sources of systematic uncertainties will be shown. The effect of the energy loss due to bremsstrahlung on the conversion vertex reconstruction precision is also discussed. The results from using the extremely pure electron sample provided by the converted photons to study the particle identification capabilities of the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT), are presented. Furthermore, the measurement of the energy flow in the electromagnetic calorimeter (EM) is typically used to spot early detector problems, but it is also sensitive to the (radially integrated) amount of material in front of the electromagnetic calorimeter. Using the LHC collision data collected at a centre of mass energy of 7 TeV, the two dimensional (eta versus phi) occupancy maps of the EM calorimeter for each longitudinal layer have been extracted. Such a method provides a cross check of the total amount of material in front of the calorimeter and it is complementary to others only sensitive to the amount of material in the tracker. The measurement accuracy will be dominated by the systematic uncertainties and the ultimate accuracy is expected to be about 5% of the material upstream.


Humans are typically able to infer how many objects their environment contains and to recognize when the same object is encountered twice. We present a simple statistical model that helps to explain these abilities and evaluate it in three behavioral experiments. Our first experiment suggests that humans rely on prior knowledge when deciding whether an object token has been previously encountered. Our second and third experiments suggest that humans can infer how many objects they have seen and can learn about categories and their properties even when they are uncertain about which tokens are instances of the same object.


Abstract. This is a translation of the Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus published by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1839 in the Resultate aus den Beobachtungen des Magnetischen Vereins im Jahre 1838. The current translation is based on an earlier translation by Elizabeth Juliana Sabine published in 1841. This earlier translation has been revised, corrected, and extended. Numerous biographical comments on the scientists named in the original text have been added as well as further information on the observational material used by Carl Friedrich Gauss. An attempt is made to provide a readable text to a wider scientific community, a text laying the foundation of today's understanding of planetary magnetic fields.


In this dissertation, normal form (NF) theory is used to characterize and quantify nonlinear modal interaction near critical equilibria. The research focus is on the analysis of second-order modal interaction and the study of nonlinear aspects of system behavior of interest to the design and location of system controllers. A systematic approach to derive second-order NF representations in the neighborhood of equilibrium points is presented. Nonlinear interaction measures based on this model are then obtained to assess the extent and distribution of nonlinearity in the system. Finally, analytical criteria are developed to predict the existence of nonlinear modal interactions that significantly affect system dynamic performance. A nonlinear analysis framework based on normal form (NF) theory and center manifold reduction is proposed to most effectively select generating units which should be equipped with power system stabilizers (PSS). The effect of control action on nonlinear behavior is approximated via suitable modification of initial conditions in the nonlinear coordinate transformations that relate the physical system to the NF coordinates. Using this representation, nonlinear PSS sensitivity indices are then proposed to determine the optimum sites at which to locate PSS. The technique can predict aspects of a system's nonlinear behavior not obtainable from linear approaches and can therefore result in improved placement of system controllers. Test cases developed on standard test systems are presented to demonstrate the effect of nonlinear interaction and to estimate the controllers' effects on system dynamic performance. The efficacy and accuracy of the method is demonstrated through comparison with conventional analysis techniques.