BACKGROUND
Chemoradiotherapy is an established strategy for organ preservation in head-neck cancer. These protocols are associated with added toxicity and need support infrastructure. Practice setup and availability of resources vary at the community level in developing countries.

AIM
To evaluate the feasibility of organ-preservation strategies in different settings in developing countries.

SETTINGS AND DESIGN
Survey.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
In a questionnaire-based study, questions were directed to clinicians with varied practice setups to gather information regarding infrastructure, finance, and feasibility of organ-preservation protocols and their current practice trends.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Descriptive.

RESULTS
Responses from 100 clinicians with focused practice in head-neck oncology were analyzed. Sixty-one percent clinicians were practicing organ preservation for advanced head-neck cancers in their practice. However, 65% centers lacked sufficient infrastructure to support organ-preservation protocols. Forty percent patients were treated on cobalt-radiotherapy machine. Fifty-nine percent of clinicians suggested that less than third of their patients were fit to undergo chemoradiation and 67% believed that adherence to treatment protocol was observed in less than two-thirds of cases. Based on their experience 82% clinicians felt that only one-third patients requiring salvage would actually undergo treatment. The majority of the patients (68%) used personal funds for treatment and less than one-third of the patients could afford complete treatment.

CONCLUSIONS
The infrastructure needed to support organ-preservation protocols varies significantly between centers in developing countries. It may not be feasible to perform organ-preservation strategies in certain centers and feasibility guidelines should be made for their judicious use in developing countries.


Minimum equity capital requirements are a key part of bank regulation. But there is little agreement about the right way to measure regulatory capital. One of the key debates is the extent to which capital ratios should be based on current market values rather than historical ?accrual? values of assets and liabilities. In a new research paper, we investigate the effects of a recent regulatory change that ties regulatory capital directly to the market value of the securities portfolio for some banks.


We propose a unified framework for adaptive connection sampling in graph neural networks (GNNs) that generalizes existing stochastic regularization methods for training GNNs. The proposed framework not only alleviates over-smoothing and over-fitting tendencies of deep GNNs, but also enables learning with uncertainty in graph analytic tasks with GNNs. Instead of using fixed sampling rates or hand-tuning them as model hyperparameters in existing stochastic regularization methods, our adaptive connection sampling can be trained jointly with GNN model parameters in both global and local fashions. GNN training with adaptive connection sampling is shown to be mathematically equivalent to an efficient approximation of training Bayesian GNNs. Experimental results with ablation studies on benchmark datasets validate that adaptively learning the sampling rate given graph training data is the key to boost the performance of GNNs in semi-supervised node classification, less prone to over-smoothing and over-fitting with more robust prediction.


This study investigates the antecedents of information management and its effect on formalization and joint planning as drivers of the marketing-sales functions perceived relationship effectiveness during the formalized process of new product deployment (NPD). We examine the effect of communication as perceived by the marketing and sales functions based on two components: communication amount/frequency (CA) and communication quality (CQ). Finally, we investigate how process formalization and joint planning affect the perceived relationship effectiveness of marketing and sales during the NPD process. The quantitative study uses 152 matched responses from top-level managers, responsible for the innovation deployment of six South American subsidiaries of a global consumer packaged goods company. The qualitative research, via in-depth interviews, confirms the importance of various behaviors of sales and marketing staff during the process of new product launches in the market. While numerous studies have researched the drivers of innovation process, this is the first chapter that studies the NPD implementation process based on the cross-functional relationship between marketing and sales. These drivers can help managers implement effective team processes to enhance innovation deployment results.


Fertilizer treatments consisting of cyanobacteria blue-green algae (BGA, Anabaena sp.) combined with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium were compared with untreated control rice variety Chainat 1 in greenhouse and field experiments from December 2011 to March 2012. In the greenhouse experiment, application of BGA resulted in significantly higher phosphorus and potassium in seeds compared with the untreated control. BGA significantly increased seed weight, and the difference was 16% compared to 47% between application of NPK 16-16-8+NPK 460-0 (125 kg/ha) of chemical fertilizer and untreated control. In field experiments, the differences between BGA and untreated control for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in seeds and straws were not significant, and application of NPK 16-16-8+NPK 46-0-0 of chemical fertilizer was highest for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in seeds and straws. Application of NPK 16-16-8+NPK 46-0-0 of chemical fertilizer gave the highest straw dry weight, total dry weight, and seed weight, but the treatments gave similar 1000-seed weight. Application of BGA clearly increased growth and yield of rice in a greenhouse, but the effects were not clear in the field. This information is useful for organic rice production.


Introduction: Malaria is the leading cause of death in Angola, followed by road accidents, and represents about 20% of hospitalizations in health facilities and about 35% of the demand for curative care. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of social and clinical conditions on the variation of blood pressure in hospitalized Angolans with malaria. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted as a cross sectional and quantitative approach. Results: Of the 333 patients followed, 28% of the patients were normotensive, 50% with moderate hypertension (HTN.1) and 20% with severe hypertension, in the first 48 hours of hospitalization. These data changed after 4 days, where in the last 48 hours before the end of the study, 33% of patients were normotensive, 56% were moderate hypertensive (HTN.2) and 11% were severe hypertensive and the average age of the patients was 27 years old (standard deviation = 9) and the female/male ratio was 153/180, mostly from urban areas in Luanda (76%) and moderate and severe hypertension was more frequent in students, unemployed and business people (72% ). In the first 48 hours, the number of patients with low parasitemia was 42%, with moderate and high parasitemia was 58%. In the last 48 hours before the end of the study, patients with moderate and high parasitemia accounted for only 11% and patients with low parasitemia accounted for 89%, where patients treated with artemether were 90% of the study population and showed significant changes in pressure levels when compared with patients treated with artesunate (10%), the mortality rate was 6%, a large group of them remained hospitalized (63%) and 31% were discharged. Conclusion: In general, many patients with malaria had high blood pressure during hospital admission, and throughout the hospitalization period, in some cases, there was a significant reduction depending on social conditions, parasitemics, and medical and medication treatment.


Generating videos from text has proven to be a significant challenge for existing generative models. We tackle this problem by training a conditional generative model to extract both static and dynamic information from text. This is manifested in a hybrid framework, employing a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) and a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). The static features, called "gist," are used to sketch text-conditioned background color and object layout structure. Dynamic features are considered by transforming input text into an image filter. To obtain a large amount of data for training the deep-learning model, we develop a method to automatically create a matched text-video corpus from publicly available online videos. Experimental results show that the proposed framework generates plausible and diverse short-duration smooth videos, while accurately reflecting the input text information. It significantly outperforms baseline models that directly adapt text-to-image generation procedures to produce videos. Performance is evaluated both visually and by adapting the inception score used to evaluate image generation in GANs.


This paper responds to an argument against a kind of anthropology. According to the argument, if the aim of anthropology is to describe the different worldviews of different groups, then anthropologists should only refer to material artefacts in order to illustrate a worldview; but the interest of artefacts to anthropology goes beyond mere illustration. This argument has been endorsed by key members of the ontological movement in anthropology, who found at least one of its premises in Marilyn Strathern's writing.


Tunisia is one of the most important olive growing countries in the Mediterranean basin and it is classified in fourth rank on world scale in terms of olive oil production. Since the emergence of the modern oliviculture, the identification, the evaluation and conservation of the local genetic resources have been considered as a priority in countries like Tunisia. Molecular studies for genetic characterization allowed to enhance knowledge about the autochtonous olive germplasm, but currently it lacks a systematic and extensive work to compare and validate Tunisian olive varieties. This work focused on the molecular characterization and identification of 21 olive accessions grown mainly in the South East of Tunisia using a set of 16 microsatellite molecular markers. An extent of authentication process was also carried out by comparison with molecular profiles from Tunisian cultivars already characterized from official collections obtained from a set of 12 commonly shared macrosatellite markers by different authors. Population structure analysis of the Tunisian olive germplasm was also conducted using structure software. The results highlighted that no correlation between geographical and genetic origin occurred. New alleles were individuated, and two new genotypes were characterized contributing to enhance the Tunisian germplasm biodiversity. This work allowed to individuate a few olive accessions that should be considered as reference cultivar in the authentication process and contributed to clarify the genetic pattern of the Tunisian germplasm


The study described within this thesis encompassed a series of cross-sectional case studies
that were completed over a number of chemistry units offered at the University of Tasmania,
Australia. This investigation aimed to compare three teaching approaches applied within the
chemistry-teaching laboratory; the teaching approaches chosen being Expository, Guided
Inquiry, and Problem Solving. Prior to this investigation, the prevalent laboratory teaching
approach at the University of Tasmania most closely resembled the Expository approach.
Through comparison of these teaching approaches it was intended to explore the advantages
and/or disadvantages with respect to the level of chemistry and the type of experiments
considered. A broad variety of experiments were selected from units offered within
foundation, first, second, and third year level chemistry units. Through modification of these
pre-existing experiments, a representative version of the selected experiments for each
teaching approach was produced.
To analyse these different teaching methods, three perspectives were considered. Firstly, a
student and demonstrator completed survey. Secondly, a post-experimental quiz targeting the
students' understanding of the concepts and techniques within the laboratory. Finally, a
demonstrator assigned grade of the students' performance and understanding throughout the
laboratory was supplied. All data collected was de-identified and voluntary, as per the ethics
approval (H0012564) procedure, upon completion of each experiment. Statistical analysis of
quantitative data was completed using a one-way between groups ANOVA with post-hocs
tests using SPSS. Qualitative data was analysed through common themes analysis.
The intended aims of this project can be separated into local and global aims. At the local level
it was intended to improve the student experience of the chemistry laboratories for both
those students undertaking chemistry as their focus of study and those undertaking chemistry
as an elective or prerequisite. The measures of this improvement would be an increase in the
engagement and enjoyment of students, greater development of chemistry specific knowledge,
and the development of a broader skill set including problem-solving skills and critical thinking.
For the global implications of this study, two outcomes are intended. Firstly, the
methodologies and outcomes observed from this practical could be utilised by other institutes.
Secondly, the comparison of these teaching approaches provides insight into the interactions
between alternative teaching approaches and the experiments commonly used within
chemistry teaching laboratories.
Analysis of the data collected throughout these study indicated that statistically significant
differences were mostly limited to the perceptions of students provided through the student completed
surveys. Of interest was the finding that at the foundation chemistry level, those
students who have not undertaken chemistry before university, a gradual increase of the
student ownership over the course of the semester was of most benefit. The results for the
first year chemistry comparison indicated however, that the teaching approaches were
independently suited to different experiments with no pattern observed. The second and third
year units did not result in any definitive outcomes. Of most value from this project are the
methodologies used, in addition to the benefits observed for the local development of the
laboratories at the University of Tasmania.


This thesis describes the examination and characterisation of semiconductor silicon by the various methods of X-Ray Diffraction Topography. A brief introduction is given to the dynamical theory of X-ray diffraction and its relevance to the formation of contrast in X-ray topographs. The experimental methods used and contrast formation mechanisms are introduced. The design and construction of an inexpensive Automated Bragg Angle Controller (ABAC) is described, based around a microcomputer and using many of the existing features of the Lang camera. This enables Lang topographs of the whole of distorted crystals to be taken. Using the ABAC, the contrast of defects in Lang topographs of cylindrically bent silicon wafers is explored. A comparison is made between this data and images in Hirst topographs and contrast differences between the techniques are attributed to the presence of an inhomogeneous bending moment. The change in contrast in section and Lang topographs upon homogeneous bending for asymmetric reflections is also investigated and mechanisms for the contrast changes are suggested. A bipolar device wafer is examined with double crystal topography using synchrotron radiation and a highly asymmetric reflection with a glancing angle of incidence. By exploiting the wavelength tuneability of the synchrotron radiation, the depth penetration of the X-rays is varied and the optimum experimental conditions for observing both defects and devices determined. Using this technique it is possible to image both devices and process related defects to a high resolution and contrast. The Lang, section and glancing angle double crystal topography techniques are compared for the examination of a CMOS device wafer. The relative strengths and weaknesses of each technique are highlighted and many defects are imaged and characterised. Finally, results showing the appearance of fringes in the double crystal topographs for low angles of incidence are presented. These are attributed to the' presence of along range strain, and the dependence of the fringes upon curvature is explored for moderate bending conditions (R ~35m) .


Margaret Hoskins, Mary E. Murphy's Contributions to Accountancy (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994, 374 pp., $63). Reviewed by Leslie S. Oakes University of Alberta Margaret Hoskins' biography of Mary E. Murphy provides a comprehensive review of Murphy's contributions to accounting as both a profession and an area of academic interest. There is no doubt that Mary Murphy warrants such a biography. As Hoskins notes: During her career, she published over 100 journal articles, authored or collaborated on at least twenty books, and wrote several book reviews. During the years 1946 through 1965 she published more articles in the Accounting Review than any other author. During the year 1926 through 1985 she was the fourth most published author in this journal exceeded only by A.C. Littleton, Harold Bierman, and Robert Mautz p. 99 . In addition, Murphy was the first Fullbright Professor of Accounting. Her writings on international accounting and accounting history foreshadowed much of the work being done today. She recognized the important interactions between business organizations and their cultural, political, and legal environments, and she studied these interactions holistically. Not coincidentally, Murphy was also the first female CPA in Iowa, and when she completed her Ph.D. at the London School of Economics she became the second female Ph.D. in Accounting in the United States. As with most biographies, it is just this characterization of Murphy as "unique" that creates the book's tension and interest. In addition to the inherent difficulty of understanding the contributions of individuals to history, Margaret Hoskins must deal with the issues of gender and identity which raise inevitable questions about Murphy's life and contributions. The question that most permeates this book concerns Murphy's relative obscurity as an accounting authority. Why do we know so little about one of the most published accounting scholars of this century? Furthermore, why did such a prolific researcher spend most of her career at California State University (then College), a relatively small and unknown school? Hoskins deals with these questions in several ways. First, she acknowledges the unequal status of women in both accounting and academia, and she explores the impact of these inequalities on Murphy's professional life. Hoskins notes that women were largely discouraged from becoming accountants during the first half of the century, and there were few University teaching positions for women outside women's colleges. The book includes explicitly biased comments from colleagues including one that begins "Whilst I personally share your preference for a man, Dr. Mary E. Murphy is no mean scholar" p. 68 . There are also subtle reminders that men and women were judged by different standards. Murphy is described both by acquaintances and by the author as being "agreeable," "pleasing and charming," and as being "helpful" p. 85 . One colleague wrote critically that "she tended to 'adopt' the accounting faculty both from a professional as well as a personal point of view" p. 84 . One wonders if these terms would have been used to describe a male colleague, and whether these terms would have carried the same evaluative connotation for a man. Hoskins also deals with Murphy's obscurity by attempting to carefully evaluate the substance of her writings. Hoskins quantifies the topics of Murphy's research and notes where each article was published. Each area of research is summarized and diagrammed. These efforts seem to be an attempt to objectively evaluate Murphy's work, and there is an anxiety that underlies this portion of the book. …


Purpose
Emotions of school leaders influence school culture and structure. Understanding emotions is under-researched and under-theorized in non-western contexts, especially during educational change. The purpose of this paper is to understand the nature of the leadership team's (LT's) emotional responses to change, their coping strategies and conditions that maintain their commitment to change.

Design/methodology/approach
The study used intrinsic case study research, drawing on data from interviews and a focus group that illuminated perceptions of the LT in a school. The data set was analyzed following the general inductive approach.

Findings
The LT's experienced three critical incidents (CI) of educational change that provoked a range of intense negative and positive emotions, a national curriculum reform. Despite the team's attempt to cope with the national curriculum reform (i.e. CI1), negative emotions and unsupportive conditions challenged their commitment to change. In CI2, supportive conditions and effective personal coping strategies helped elicit positive emotions, which led to sustained commitment to change. Emotions experienced during the capacity-building program (i.e. CI3) were predominantly positive due to support from the school principal and coaches, resulting in sustained commitment to change.

Research limitations/implications
Findings from this small-scale case study in Lebanon are not generalizable to other contexts. The time lag could have affected the recollection of experiences. All participants were female, and their experiences might not reflect those of other school members affected by the changes.

Practical implications
Examining emotions during change uncovers insight into school leaders' subjective experience, facilitates a more nuanced understanding of change, and supports change implementation. Considering emotions during change informs the development of tailored interventions that provide effective support.

Originality/value
This study examines how emotions affect the success of educational change. Contrary to common understanding, change does not always generate negative emotions that impede implementation. School-based improvement creates structural and cultural conditions for effective change as it considers practitioners' socio-emotional needs, eliciting positive emotions.


The small red brocket deer Mazama bororo is one of the most endangered deer in the Neotropics. The great morphological similarities with three other sympatric brocket deer species, coupled with the fact that they inhabit densely forested habitats complicate detection and prevent the use of traditional methodologies for accurate identification of species. The ability to determine the presence of this endangered species in an area is crucial for estimating its distribution range, and is critical for establishing conservation management strategies. Here we describe a fast and reliable noninvasive genetic method for species identification of Mazama species from faeces. We designed a primer set that amplifies a short 224‐bp fragment of the cytochrome b and demonstrate its effectiveness in successful amplification of DNA isolated from both tissue and faecal samples. This fragment contains a BSTNI/ECORII digestion site that is unique to the endangered M. bororo. The digested polymerase chain reaction products yielded a 160‐bp fragment that is clearly visible in a 2% agarose gel. Two other diagnostic sites were identified to differentiate the other three sympatric species, SspI (M. gouazoubira) and AflIII (M. americana, and M. nana).


Disciplining the New Pragmatism is both a tribute and a corrective to the neopragmatist perspective in American literary studies. It sets out to give a detailed account of the contemporary pragmatists' views, but it also goes beyond those views to tender a new vision of the discipline of literary studies and to forge a new rhetoric, largely crafted out of tropes borrowed from their writings, which could be of service to literary scholars. Its primary objective is to argue that, despite their claims to the contrary, Richard Rorty, Walter Benn Michaels, Stanley Fish and the other latter-day antifoundationalists and neopragmatists make a difference to what is going on in the literature department. Consequently, the author argues that the neopragmatist positition may be made foar more effective and resonant than the neopragmatists themselves recognise in their writings. To this end, he offers his own category of a neosophistic pragmatism, which serves as an example of what may result from bringing the New Pragmatist insights into a sharper disciplinary focus.


The current epidemic of artemisinin resistant Plasmodium falciparum in Southeast Asia is the result of a soft selective sweep involving at least 20 independent kelch13 mutations. In a large global survey, we find that kelch13 mutations which cause resistance in Southeast Asia are present at low frequency in Africa. We show that African kelch13 mutations have originated locally, and that kelch13 shows a normal variation pattern relative to other genes in Africa, whereas in Southeast Asia there is a great excess of non-synonymous mutations, many of which cause radical amino-acid changes. Thus, kelch13 is not currently undergoing strong selection in Africa, despite a deep reservoir of variations that could potentially allow resistance to emerge rapidly. The practical implications are that public health surveillance for artemisinin resistance should not rely on kelch13 data alone, and interventions to prevent resistance must account for local evolutionary conditions, shown by genomic epidemiology to differ greatly between geographical regions. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.08714.001


Ban-the-box laws, which delay an employer's inquiry into an applicant's criminal record until later in the hiring process, are gaining remarkable traction at the local, state, and even federal levels. But the assumption that employers will be more likely to hire ex-offenders if forced to evaluate their qualifications before discovering their criminal record has gone largely untested. Empirical uncertainty has given rise to various criticisms of ban-the-box laws, chiefly that they merely postpone the inevitable decision not to hire the ex-offender—often at considerable cost to both the employer and applicant—and, worse yet, that they may actually harm racial minorities by prompting employers to assume all minority applicants have a criminal record in light of their much higher arrest and incarceration rates, and eliminate them from consideration on that basis.

This Article reports the findings of a field experiment I conducted to test both of these criticisms. The experiment entailed applying to food-service job openings in Chicago, which bans the box, and Dallas, which does not, using a fictitious ex-offender applicant profile. One-third of the applications in each city used a black-sounding name, one-third used a Latino-sounding name, and the other third used a white-sounding name. I tracked each application to determine whether it elicited an employer callback (i.e., a request for an interview or additional information) and then used multiple regression modeling to analyze callback differentials between cities and across races. The results refute the contention that ban-the-box laws do not increase employment opportunities for ex-offenders, as applicants were 27 percent more likely to receive a callback in Chicago than in Dallas. The results likewise contradict the claim that banning the box harms racial minorities. All three applicants had higher callback rates when the box was banned, with the black applicant experiencing the largest increase. Still, the black applicant had much lower callback rates than the white and Latino applicants in both Chicago and Dallas, indicating race remains a formidable barrier to employment, regardless of whether an employer is aware of a candidate's criminal record.

In light of these key findings that banning the box increases an ex-offender's odds of employment without harming racial minorities, this Article considers the potential costs and benefits of ban-the-box laws, both standing alone and as part of broader efforts to successfully reintegrate ex-offenders into society. Although banning the box may prove helpful in improving ex-offenders' job prospects, it is hardly sufficient; more is required to ensure that upon release, an ex-offender's prison sentence does not become a life sentence.


Recently, the model of adoption of technology in households (MATH) was developed and tested in the context of household personal computer (PC) adoption. In this study, we apply MATH to predict personal computer (PC) use. We conducted a nationwide survey including 370 households that owned at least one PC. Results indicate that attitudinal beliefs are extremely important in determining use of a PC in the household. In contrast to previous work examining adopters, normative and control beliefs were not significant in predicting use. Furthermore, several determinants of adoption that were important at different stages of the household life cycle were found nonsignificant in predicting use for the same stages of the household life cycle. Overall, the results demonstrate that the belief structure for household PC use is different from that of household PC adoption. Further, the results provide additional evidence regarding the importance of including household life cycle in studies of household technology adoption and use.


Two-dimensional (2D) superconductors have attracted great attention in recent years due to the possibility of new phenomena in lower dimensions. With many bulk transition metal carbides being well-known conventional superconductors, here we perform first-principles calculations to evaluate the possible superconductivity in a 2D monolayer Mo2C. Three candidate structures (monolayer alpha-Mo2C, 1T MXene-Mo2C, and 2H MXene-Mo2C) are considered and the most stable form is found to be 2H MXene-Mo2C. Electronic structure calculations indicate that both unpassivated and passivated 2H forms exhibit metallic properties. We obtain phonon frequencies and electron–phonon couplings using density-functional perturbation theory, and based on the BCS theory and the McMillan equation, estimate the critical temperatures to be in the ∼0–13 K range, depending on the species of surface termination (O, H and OH). The optimal termination group is H, which can increase the electron–phonon coupling and bring the critical temperature to 13 K. This shows a rather high critical temperature, tunable by surface termination, making this 2D carbide an interesting test bed for low-dimensional superconductivity.


Political economists point to the levels of economic development, poverty, and income inequality as the most important determinants of political regimes. The authors present empirical evidence suggesting a robust and negative correlation between the presence of a sizable natural resource sector and the level of democracy in Africa. They argue that resource abundance not only is an important determinant of democratic transition but also partially determines the success of democratic consolidation in Africa. The results illuminate the fact that post-Cold War democratic reforms have been successful only in resource-poor countries such as Benin, Mali, and Madagascar. The authors argue that resource-rich countries such as Nigeria and Gabon can become democratic only if they introduce strong mechanisms of vertical and horizontal accountability within the state.


We examine the impact of management practices on firm performance among SMEs in Britain over the period 2011-2014, using a unique dataset which links survey data on management practices with firm performance data from the UK's official business register. We find that SMEs are less likely to use formal management practices than larger firms, but that such practices have demonstrable benefits for those who use them, helping firms to grow and increasing their productivity. The returns are most apparent for those SMEs that invest in human resource management practices, such as training and performance-related pay, and those that set formal performance targets.


As the shale revolution is adjusting to the realities of the new market and lower oil prices, the operators' focus is shifting towards unconventional reservoirs and increasing hydrocarbon production efficiencies. The oil and gas operators' demands are transforming our paradigm of reservoir characterization, forecasting, and monitoring. As such, heterogeneity of an unconventional reservoir is one of the main factors impacting well productivity. Well performance is driven by the size and efficiency of the interconnected fracture 'plumbing system' which is influenced by the presence of natural fractures and the process of multistage hydraulic fracturing. A complex, interconnected natural fracture network can significantly increase the size of the stimulated reservoir volume, provide additional surface area contact and enhance permeability. However, the interaction of the natural fracture networks and the completions-induced fractures is complex and can be affected by multiple factors, such as present-day maximum horizontal stress orientation, character of pre-existing natural fractures, presence of faults, lithology types that the horizontal well is being drilled through, as well as the well completions design itself.
With a trend of unconventional resource plays' development, the Niobrara Formation has become a focus of interest for operators. Recent advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic reservoir stimulation have allowed for economic development of tight resource plays. In the presence of heterogeneity optimal well placement, orientation, and spacing are especially important. Natural fractures are expected to significantly influence the completions' efficiency and have the potential to contribute to SRV (stimulated reservoir volume) and drainage volume. Hydraulic fracturing with evenly-spaced frac stages may not be the most successful stimulation method or yield the greatest production.
In the given circumstances the process of reservoir monitoring is essential for accurate assessment of the produced reservoir volume (PRV) and for our understanding of how effectively the target formation is being stimulated. Microseismic data is being called upon with ever increasing frequency to satisfy the industry's reservoir monitoring needs. In this study we take a look at one of the major unconventional resource plays in the US. The research was designed to conduct dynamic reservoir characterization and to test the strengths and limitations of microseismic monitoring. The study integrated 3D seismic data, microseismic data, geophysical well log and formation image log data, and
core and outcrop data within the focal area. One of the goals of the study is to analyse factors capable of affecting the distribution of microseismic events. An important question to be answered:
'Will microseismic data, taken alone, prove to be a sufficiently representative source of information when evaluating the reservoir response and estimating success of completion strategies?'


Background Elevated plasma concentrations of the endogenous nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitor asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) have been observed in respiratory conditions such as asthma and cystic fibrosis. Since oxidative stress has been shown to increase the activity of arginine methylating enzymes, hence increased ADMA synthesis, and to reduce ADMA degrading enzymes, hence increased ADMA concentrations, we assessed methylated arginines concentrations in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a disease characterized by increased oxidative stress. Methods Plasma arginine, ADMA and symmetric dimethylarginine (SDMA), oxidative stress markers (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, TBARS, and plasma proteins SH, PSH) and antioxidants (taurine and paraoxonase 1, PON1, activity) were measured in 43 COPD patients with mild (n = 29) or moderate (n = 14) disease and 43 age- and sex-matched controls. Results TBARS significantly increased with COPD presence and severity (median 2.93 vs 3.18 vs 3.64 μmol/L, respectively in controls, mild and moderate group, p<0.0001 by ANOVA) whereas PSH decreased (6.69±1.15 vs 6.04±0.85 vs 5.33±0.96 μmol/gr prot, p<0.0001 by ANOVA). Increased ADMA/arginine ratio, primarily due to reduced arginine concentrations, was also observed with COPD presence and severity (median 0.0067 vs 0.0075 vs 0.0100, p<0.0001 by ANOVA). In multiple logistic regression analysis, only TBARS (OR 0.44, 95% CI 0.25–0.77; p = 0.0045) and ADMA/Arginine ratio (OR 1.72, 95% CI 2.27–13.05; p = 0.02) were independently associated with COPD severity. Conclusion COPD presence and severity are associated with increased oxidative stress and alterations in arginine metabolism. The reduced arginine concentrations in COPD may offer a new target for therapeutic interventions increasing arginine availability.


Although endothelin A receptor (ETA) antagonists are approved for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension, their clinical utility in other diseases has been limited by fluid retention. ETA blocker-induced fluid retention could be attributed to inhibition of ETA in the heart, vasculature, and/or kidney. Mice were generated with the absence of ETA, specifically in cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle, the nephron, or the collecting duct. Administration of ETA antagonists caused fluid retention in control mice on a high salt diet and in mice with heart ETA knockout. In contrast, mice with smooth muscle ETA knockout had reduced fluid retention, andmicewith nephron or collecting duct ETA disruption had no fluid retention after ETA blockade. These findings suggest that ETA antagonist-induced fluid retention is attributed to a direct effect on the collecting duct and partially related to their vascular action.


Aims To compare the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR) in people of various ethnic groups with diabetes in the United Kingdom (UK). Methods The Diabetic Retinopathy In Various Ethnic groups in UK (DRIVE UK) Study is a cross-sectional study on the ethnic variations of the prevalence of DR and visual impairment in two multi-racial cohorts in the UK. People on the diabetes register in West Yorkshire and South East London who were screened, treated or monitored between April 2008 to July 2009 (London) or August 2009 (West Yorkshire) were included in the study. Data included age, sex, ethnic group, type of diabetes, presenting visual acuity and the results of grading of diabetic retinopathy. Prevalence estimates for the ethnic groups were age-standardised to the white European population for comparison purposes. Results Out of 57,144 people on the two diabetic registers, data were available on 50,285 individuals (88.0%), of these 3,323 had type 1 and 46,962 had type 2 diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, the prevalence of any DR was 38.0% (95% confidence interval(CI) 37.4% to 38.5%) in white Europeans compared to 52.4% (51.2% to 53.6%) in African/Afro-Caribbeans and 42.3% (40.3% to 44.2%) in South Asians. Similarly, sight threatening DR was also significantly more prevalent in Afro-Caribbeans (11.5%, 95% CI 10.7% to 12.3%) and South Asians (10.3%, 9.0% to 11.5%) compared to white Europeans (5.5%, 5.3% to 5.8%). Differences observed in Type 1 diabetes did not achieve conventional levels of statistical significance, but there were lower numbers for these analyses. Conclusions Minority ethnic communities with type 2 diabetes in the UK are more prone to diabetic retinopathy, including sight-threatening retinopathy and maculopathy compared to white Europeans.


This dissertation pursues a study of independent film, from 1980 to 1999, as an emergent system of representation. Independent American and non- American films distributed in the United States have evolved into a distinct cultural site, formulated as points of intersection between principles of mainstream popular film and the traditions of the avant-garde. Contemporary independent film's identity as a commodity stresses its differences from Hollywood's output; the independent industry is not ruled by the same economic, political, aesthetic and historical imperatives as Hollywood cinema. Arguably, this creates an autonomous filmic enterprise able to represent alternative political views and aesthetic perspectives. But simultaneously, the independent industry is driven by familiar marketplace demands and competition for consumers. My study focuses on films released theatrically in the U.S. by nonstudio distributors, such as Miramax, Fine Line, Goldwyn, October, and so on. The films considered will have received some measure of widespread play, permitting an analysis of how these specific texts, their distribution, and their reception conform to and diverge from the institutional and discursive practices of a dominant Hollywood industry. The dissertation analyses both the material, concrete aspects and the discursive dimensions of independent film. For instance, under the purview of the independent industry a division exists between 'art films' and 'political films'. A frequent attribute of work in the art category is formal experimentation. Political films tend to be those made by representatives of subcultural groups and marketed as such to their 'specialised audiences'. They may or may not exhibit formal experimentation. On the one hand, in a kind of tyranny of the formal, art films continue to be defined by their aesthetic variations without a corollary questioning of whether they are indeed 'alternative' at the level of narrative signification. On the other hand, political films are promoted as an acknowledgment to underrepresented communities --- what the industry should be providing --- and as a marketing strategy for product-starved audiences to whom these films often sell well. In other words, political films may be chosen for their subject matter or for the audiences they specifically address, but they remain specialised, without the 'universal' appeal of films accorded the label of art. This investigation traces the extent to which and how independent films represent the stories, perspectives, and experiences of a pluralistic, multicultural society. This research project develops a discursively-based methodology in which films are analysed as the functions of multiple, simultaneous, layered, and interacting discourses: representational, institutional, interpretive, and cultural/historical. The study offers a contribution to the field in its exploration of contemporary independent film as a distinct cultural formation, in its expansion of theoretical work on narrativity and the representation of subcultural groups, in its development of discursive analytical procedures, and in its integrated approach towards cultural theory, cultural politics, and cultural production.


The purpose of this article is to give an insight into current trends of immunosuppression in heart transplantation. Presently available classes of drugs: steroids, antimetabolites, polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies, calcineurin inhibitors, proliferation signal inhibitors have been described closely. These drugs are in use either in a prophylactic manner or as the part of the maintenance immunosuppressive regimen. Induction therapy provides immune suppression as key point to induce graft tolerance. The backbone of immunosuppression in organ transplant recipient: cyclosporine A and tacrolimus have been widely used as maintenance therapy in combination with adjunctive immunosuppressant. We also mentioned the immunosuppressive agents in development: lymphocyte modulation therapy, tolerance induction drugs, gene therapy possibilities and xenotransplantation as option to overcome the organ shortage. After heart transplantation immunosuppressive medications are used to reduce the risk of donor`s organ rejection. The focus is to prevent graft rejection, since host immune system is programmed to attack foreign antigens which could cause injuries and lifethreatening conditions. The possibility of rejection is everlasting, which inevitably demands the use of immunosuppressive drugs and raise the risk of unwanted side effects. Post-operative complications include hyper acute, acute or chronic rejection, as well as post-transplant lymphoprolipherative disorders, and permanent susceptibility to various infections. Unfortunately, some recipients developed the renal failure or malignant diseases due to the aggressive immunosuppression. Immunosuppressant agents differ not only in mechanism of action but also in undesirable side effects. This offers an opportunity to combine drugs with synergistic actions and chance to successfully tailor anti-rejection therapy after heart transplantation.


Human fungal pathogens are a deadly and underappreciated risk to global health that most severely affect immunocompromised individuals. A virulence attribute shared by some of the most clinically relevant fungal species is their ability to survive inside macrophages and escape from these immune cells. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms behind intracellular survival and elaborate how escape is mediated by lytic and non-lytic pathways as well as strategies to induce programmed host cell death. We also discuss persistence as an alternative to rapid host cell exit. In the end, we address the consequences of fungal escape for the host immune response and provide future perspectives for research and development of targeted therapies.


Epidemiological vigilance in Navarre covers 34 transmissible diseases, whose notification is compulsory, and epidemic outbreaks of any aetiology. Notification is carried out on a weekly basis by the doctors from paediatrics, primary and specialised level who suspect or diagnose any of these diseases. In 2003, 75.0% of all the possible notification reports (a weekly report for each doctor) were received, a percentage that has improved in the last five year period. In 2003, Influenza reached a rate of 48.9 cases per 1,000 inhabitants (Epidemic Index, EI: 0.91), showing an epidemic peak in January and another in November. The rate of respiratory tuberculosis was 11.76 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and the rate of non-respiratory tuberculosis was 1.90, with a continuous trend to decrease in both cases. Five cases of tuberculosis occurred in two small family outbreaks. Thirty percent of the cases were produced in immigrants. The cases coinfected with HIV have fallen from 21% in 1996 to 2.5% in 2003. Fifteen cases of meningococcal disease were reported, (2.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants), appearing in a sporadic form. Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B was isolated in 10 cases, and serogroup C in 5 cases. Eighty percent appeared in the form of sepsis, and death occurred in one case (6.7%). All of the cases younger than six years of age were vaccinated and belonged to serogroup B. The incidence of Legionnaire's disease was 3.8 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (EI: 0.92), without any epidemiological relation between them. There were 7 cases of malaria, all imported. The incidence of food borne infections has fallen (EI: 0.71).


As manufacturing-firm strategies move from product-centric towards those in which a higher degree of service is associated with the product a company's business ecosystem ‒ the collaborative network needed to build value for the customer ‒ often becomes more complex. When considering the collaborative possibilities, firms can find it challenging to identify and compare the potential value created by alternative strategic actions such as radical new partnerships and partnering arrangements. To support capability development, strategic thinking is shifting to include a broader approach to understanding and conceptualizing business ecosystems. The Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) and IfM Education and Consultancy Services Ltd. are applying a novel way to allow managers to visualize and understand their firm's external complexity, which we refer to as business ecosystem value mapping. The technique has been used in strategic workshops with industry partners. This paper includes a case study of one such workshop, focusing on how the industry partner deepened their understanding of value exchange in their business ecosystem. This understanding was critical to the workshop purpose: to decide whether and how to proceed with a tender offering. From an inauspicious starting point ‒ the firm considered itself relatively uncompetitive in relation to the tender ‒ the workshop led to the identification of eight new value creation opportunities from which four propositions were selected to form the basis of an offering. The partner's subsequent tender offering was successful. Following acceptance, the partner cited a number of these propositions as the reasons why the offering was chosen. The paper seeks to illuminate how the two-day workshop process, built on strong preparation to ensure that the right strategic questions were addressed, developed understanding and application of value creation and exchange in offerings based on collaborative ecosystems. We then suggest some implications for further work.


A passionate plea to preserve and renew public education, The Death and Life of the Great American School System is a radical change of heart from one of America's best-known education experts. Diane Ravitch-former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum-examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today's most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril. Ravitch includes clear prescriptions for improving America's schools: * leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or businessmen * devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning * expect charter schools to educate the kids who need help the most, not to compete with public schools * pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not "merit pay" based on deeply flawed and unreliable test scores * encourage family involvement in education from an early age The Death and Life of the Great American School System is more than just an analysis of the state of play of the American education system. It is a must-read for any stakeholder in the future of American schooling.


Over the years, scientific applications have become more complex and more data intensive. Although through the use of distributed resources the institutions and organizations gain access to the resources needed for their large-scale applications, complex middleware is required to orchestrate the use of these storage and network resources between collaborating parties, and to manage the end-to-end processing of data. We present a new data scheduling paradigm with advance reservation and provisioning. Our methodology provides a basis for provisioning end-to-end high performance data transfers which require integration between system, storage and network resources, and coordination between reservation managers and data transfer nodes. This allows researchers/users and higher level meta-schedulers to use data placement as a service where they can plan ahead and reserve time and resources for their data movement operations. We present a novel approach for evaluating timedependent structures with bandwidth guaranteed paths. We present a practical online scheduling model using advance reservation in dynamic network with time constraints. In addition, we report a new polynomial algorithm presenting possible reservation options and alternatives for earliest completion and shortest transfer duration. We enhance the advance network reservation system by extending the underlying mechanism to provide a new service in which users submit their constraints and the system suggests possible reservation requests satisfying users' requirements. We have studied scheduling data transfer operation with resource and time conflicts. We have developed a new scheduling methodology considering resource allocation in client sites and bandwidth allocation on network link connecting resources. Some other major contributions of our study include enhanced reliability, adaptability, and performance optimization of distributed data placement tasks. While designing this new data scheduling architecture, we also developed other important methodologies such as early error detection, failure awareness, job aggregation, and dynamic adaptation of distributed data placement tasks. The adaptive tuning includes dynamically setting data transfer parameters and controlling utilization of available network capacity. Our research aims to provide a middleware to improve the data bottleneck in high performance computing systems.


Geology and petrography of the volcanic sequence exposed along the Moscarello escarpment, lower eastern slope of Mount Etna: evidence for a migration of the eruptive centres. In the course of investigations on the earliest subaerial alkalic products of the Etnean activity, an unconformity within the "Timpe di Moscarello" volcanic succession was recognised. This succession was formerly related (Romano, 1982) to the activity of eruptive centres of the "Trifoglietto Unit" (Tr, 80-35 ka BP, Gillot et alii, 1994); the unconformity however allows a lower lithostratigraphic unit (defined as Timpe di Moscarello lavas), here referred to the "Ancient Alkaline Centres" (AAC; 225-120 ka BP, Gillot et alii, 1994), to be distinguished from an upper one (Praino lavas), referred to Tr on the grounds of field data and petrologic characters (Busa et alii, 1999). The succession is extensively covered by products of the "Mongibello Unit". The Timpe are escarpments actually related to important faults, trending NNW-SSE, that belong to the northerly extension of Iblean-Maltese system, and are cut by deep gulleys connected to a minor fault system, trending WNW-ESE (fig. 2). In detail, the outcrops of the AAC volcanic strata, continuously exposed at the base of the "Timpe", show dips varying from place to place, in a way showing that several eruptive centres existed aligned parallel to the fault escarpment (fig. 2). In this part of the sequence lavas are chiefly hawaiites, and "high P" and "low P" varieties were distinguished among them, by their petrographic and geochemical features, in accordance to earlier references (Cristofolini et alii, 1991a; Finoc-Chiaro, 1995). The "high P" and "low P" levels are interlayered, suggesting that at least two distinct parent magmas, originated by different melting degrees of mantle sources, might have been alternatively involved in feeding the eruptive activity (Busa et alii. 1999). In the upper part of the sequence the lava flows range from sub-horizontal to slightly dipping to the east, and appear as coming from eruptive centres, located west of the escarpment. As these lavas are dominantly Ti-depleted mugearites to benmoreites, as are the typical Tr products, they are here referred to this unit. They are associated with rare hawaiites very similar to the "high P" members of the AAC succession, and chemical data (fig. 7) show that the Tr benmoreites might well have originated by differentiation from a magma with this composition (Busa et alii, 1999, 2001). The westerly displacement of the eruptive activity apparently produced then a shift toward an uprise and differentiation of melts from only the "high P" magma source.


A new intrinsically-relativistic kinetic mechanism for
generation of nonisotropic relativistic kinetic equilibria in
collisionless N-body systems is pointed out. The theory is
developed in the framework of the covariant Vlasov statistical
description. The new effect is based on the constraints placed
by the conservation laws of neutral single-particle dynamics in
prescribed background curved-spacetimes demonstrating existence
of Killing tensors. As an illustration, the particular case of
the Kerr spacetime admitting the so-called Carter constant for
the particle geodesic motion is considered. The general
functional form of the equilibrium kinetic distribution
function (KDF) is determined and an explicit realization in
terms of Gaussian-like distributions is provided. It is shown
that, due to the Carter constant, these equilibrium KDFs
exhibit an anisotropic phase-space functional dependence in
terms of the single-particle 4-velocity components, giving rise
to corresponding nonisotropic continuum fluid fields. The
qualitative properties of the equilibrium stress-energy tensor
associated with these systems are discussed, with a particular
emphasis on the related occurrence of temperature anisotropy
effects. The theory is susceptible of astrophysical
applications, including in particular the statistical
properties of dark matter (DM) halos around stellar-mass or
galactic-center black holes.


A previous study of a novel technique to design a band-reject UWB monopole antenna by using patch loading is extended. Frequency-domain measurements have confirmed that the antenna designed using this technique rejects the interfering signal at the two intended narrowband frequency ranges. Moreover, the antenna radiation pattern distortion is negligible except at the notched bands. A study of time-domain characteristics based on the antenna pulse response and system fidelity factor is presented. The time performance has been extracted from frequency-domain measurements using a standard method. The obtained time-domain results promise the suitability of the proposed technique to design band-reject antennas useful for future UWB system applications.


Group work, especially where it is assessed, can be of great benefit for student engagement, in terms of the valuable interpersonal and organisational skills it develops, and the quality of collaborative work which it enables them to produce (Boud, Cohen, & Sampson, 1999); but it can also be a cause of dissatisfaction and disengagement for students (Davies, 2009), especially if the specific skills required to negotiate groupwork successfully are not taught, enabled and supported within the module or programme (McAllister, 1995; Vik, 2001).
Drawing on both the educational literature, and the presenter's experience in teaching collaborative film-making, this paper briefly examines groupwork as a key factor in success (or otherwise) in nurturing student engagement, especially with their peers (Analoui, Sambrook, & Doloriert, 2014; Weaver & Esposto, 2012).
In 2014 the presenter created an online community at www.groupwork.ning.com as an interactive hub to enable colleagues to share guidelines for good practice, and their personal experiences of group work, as well as to enter into discussion about those experiences through a forum and blog. The site also includes a resource and repository of academic literature on the subject, to enable visitors to browse journal articles that could inform their own individual practice.
The paper introduces this community, describes its creation, and examines the potential role of such an online community as a modern means of contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Boyer, in coining the term 'scholarship of teaching', looked towards a 'community of scholars' and identified that "A campus-wide, collaborative effort around teaching would be mutually enriching" (1990). Trigwell et al commented that the aim of scholarly teaching was "to make transparent how we have made learning possible. For this to happen, university teachers must be informed of the theoretical perspectives and literature of teaching and learning in their discipline, and be able to collect and present rigorous evidence of their effectiveness, from these perspectives, as teachers." (Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin, & Prosser, 2000). While an online community does all this, Witman & Richlin (2007) remind us that scholarly teaching is not the same as the scholarship of teaching, suggesting that the 'teaching tips' of an online community may lack the investigative rigour required to meet that definition. The paper concludes by arguing that such an online community challenges existing conventions of dissemination and peer review, but can indeed contribute to such a scholarship, enhance staff practice, and thereby improve student engagement through group work.


This article reviews literature on disfigurement, the body and dress in order to better understand the relationship between dress - including mainstream clothing ('fashion'), clinical clothing (such as pressure garments, prescribed glasses and prescribed footwear), and accessories - and its social and symbolic status for individuals living with a visible difference. We assess the state of the field through an interdisciplinary lens, collating literature from disciplines including but not limited to Geography, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Health. We review literature pertaining to living with a disfigurement and managing stigma, with an emphasis on dress and the disfigured body. In bringing this scholarship together we speak to the geographies of the body (see Longhurst, 1995; Hubbard, 2002) and literature on the body and dress (Hansen, 2007; Harvey, 2007), considering the dressed body as both subject in, and object of, dress practice (see Hansen, 2004). We suggest that a new substantive focus on disfigurement could help to broaden and invigorate existing fields of inquiry at the intersection of social, health and cultural geographies. In concluding, we highlight thematic directions for future study, including exploring the spaces and places in which decisions relating to disfigurement and dress are made, and the complex processes of negotiating marginalisation by those with a disfigurement.


We study Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with diminishing step sizes for convex objective functions. We introduce a definitional framework and theory that defines and characterizes a core property, called curvature, of convex objective functions. In terms of curvature we can derive a new inequality that can be used to compute an optimal sequence of diminishing step sizes by solving a differential equation. Our exact solutions confirm known results in literature and allows us to fully characterize a new regularizer with its corresponding expected convergence rates.


Examiners use range-of-motion (ROM) testing to help calculate the physical examination modifier when they use the diagnosis-based impairment (DBI) method in the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), Sixth Edition. DBI is the preferred method for calculating upper and lower extremity ratings, but, in instances specified by the regional grid, the evaluator may choose to use the ROM method, typically because it yields a higher impairment rating relative to the DBI method. In rare lower-limb cases when the injury is not fully articulated by the regional grid (eg, severe crushes, burns, and scarring), ROM may be used instead of diagnosis. In cases of amputation, ROM may be used for the remaining portion of the limb and combined with amputation rating as explained in sections of Chapter 15. Note that, in the AMA Guides, the extended anatomic position is 0° rather than 180°, and evaluators can consult the detailed diagrams of the planes of the thumbs, fingers, wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Invalid results are declared if, after three consecutive efforts, the three measurements for a given plane of motion vary more than 10° from the mean (average) of these three measurements. The article also discusses adjustments for functional history when the ROM method does not adequately capture the full impairment.


Context: Skull base venous anatomy. Aims: While prior studies have focused on the efficacy of conventional fluoroscopic venography and multidetector computed tomography venography to evaluate the inferior petrosal sinus (IPS) before image-guided intervention (such as dural venous sinus sampling), we believe that routine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may provide reliable structural information helpful for planning without the need for further imaging. Settings and Design: Retrospective review of brain MRI. Materials and Methods: Retrospective analysis was carried out on IPSs on contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MR images. Qualitative measurements were made regarding the grade of patency of the IPS, variation in IPS drainage pattern, and grading of the ipsilateral transverse and sigmoid sinuses (TS and SS). Statistical Analysis Used: Pearson's product-moment correlation. Results: Evaluation of a total of 148 IPSs revealed that 91% of cases were grade 3 or grade 2 (either fully or mostly visualized), with 65% of cases demonstrating "typical" (type A) drainage directly into the internal jugular vein and no statistically significant correlation between the patency of the IPS and the dominance of the ipsilateral TS/SS. A bilateral concordance rate of 77% was also observed. Conclusions: Our analysis indicates that routine thin-slice contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MRI can provide sufficient anatomic detail to identify typical drainage pattern of the IPS in a majority of cases. In cases where routine drainage was not identified, spatial resolution was not sufficient to further delineate complex drainage anatomy. No correlation was observed between the TS/SS dominance and patency of the ipsilateral IPS.


African horse sickness is one of the most deadly infectious diseases of horses. The disease is caused by African horse sickness virus (AHSV), an arbovirus transmitted by culicoides midges. AHSV is classified within the genus Orbivirus, family Reovirdae. The AHSV genome is composed by ten segments of double stranded RNA (dsRNA) encoding seven structural and at least four non-structural (NS) proteins.
AHSV shares structural and functional similarities with Bluetongue virus, the 'prototype' species of the genus Orbivirus. An alternative open reading frame (ORF), overlapping the main ORF encoding the VP6, has been identified in segment 9 in both AHSV and BTV. This additional ORF encodes the non-structural protein NS4. The BTV NS4 localises in the nucleoli of the infected cells. NS4 is an interferon antagonist and a determinant of virus virulence.
In this thesis, I aimed to characterise the AHSV NS4. Unlike the BTV NS4, the AHSV NS4 are relatively variable mong different virus strains. I have divided these proteins into four different subtypes: NS4I, NS4-IIα, -IIβ, and IIγ based upon their sequence similarity and on the presence of N-terminal or C-terminal truncations. In contrast to BTV, all four of these NS4 types localise in the cytoplasm of either transfected or infected cells. In addition, in transient transfection assays all the NS4 types show the ability to hamper gene expression, with NS4-IIβ being the most efficient.
In order to further understand the biological significance of the AHSV NS4 we used reverse genetics to generate viruses expressing the four types of NS4 (AHSV-NS4-I, AHSV-NS4-IIα, AHSV-NS4-IIβ, AHSV-NS4-IIγ) and the corresponding NS4 deletion mutants (AHSV-ΔNS4-I etc.).
Deletion of NS4 did not affect virus replication kinetics in either KC cells or interferon incompetent cells such as the BSR cell line. Similarly, both AHSV-NS4-IIβ and the corresponding ΔNS4 mutant showed similar replication kinetics in the interferon competent E. Derm cell line and in primary horse endothelial cells. In contrast, AHSV-NS4-I, AHSV-NS4-IIα, and AHSV-NS4-IIγ replicated more efficiently than the corresponding ΔNS4 viruses in these horse cells. Interestingly, the defects in replication of the NS4 viruses were removed after treatment with an inhibitor of the JAK/STAT pathway. Indeed, we observed that primary horse cells infected with the NS4 mutants released higher levels of type I interferon (IFN) than cells infected with the corresponding NS4 expressing viruses. In addition, we found the NS4 to be a determinant of virus virulence in vivo in NIH-Swiss mice infected with the viruses described above.
Collectively, the data described in this thesis suggest that the NS4 is one of the proteins used by AHSV to modulate the IFN response.


In this article, two unexplored trends in European electoral politics are highlighted. Using newly collected data the article tracks the politicisation of corruption in electoral campaigns from 1981 to 2011, an electoral strategy that has been increasing over time in most European countries. It then empirically tests two aspects of this campaign strategy. First, what are the factors that are systematically associated with a party's decision to politicise corruption? Second, what are the electoral effects in terms of relative vote share for parties that politicise corruption? Using an original data-set that employs multi-level data (parties nested in countries) the results demonstrate first that politicisation of corruption occurs systematically more often among established parties from the main opposition, new parties and parties on the political right, and occurs as a function of country-level corruption, district magnitude and public party financing. Second, it is found that the main opposition and new parties that use such a campaign strategy make significant electoral gains relative to the previous election compared to parties that do not politicise corruption. Yet gains are offset in low-corruption countries. The findings demonstrate salient implications for research on party systems, corruption studies and democratic legitimacy, among other areas of investigation.


Introduction: The need for interprofessional education (IPE) is driven by the recognition that one of the major focuses of the Australian health care system is the promotion of effective interprofessional learning and collaboration with the aim of providing optimal patient/client care. The objective of this study was to explore the attitudes towards readiness for interprofessional learning among a group of undergraduate health science students studying at Monash University. Method: A cross-sectional study of students across all undergraduate years from Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Emergency Health - Paramedic/Nursing, Nutrition and Dietetics, Emergency Health - Paramedic, Physiotherapy, and Midwifery was completed. Participants were asked to complete the 19-item paper-based Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS). Results: A total of 418 students participated in the study with most students from Nursing (25%) followed by Paramedics (20%). The majority of students were under 25 years of age (83%) and female (80%). Findings suggest that students support the notion of interprofessional collaboration in terms of teamwork, learning, and communication. The following items produced high mean scores: "patients would ultimately benefit if health care students worked together" (M=4.33, SD+0.68), and "learning with other students will make me a more effective member of a health care team" (M=4.38, SD+0.59). The item "shared learning will help me understand my own professional limitations" also produced significant findings F (6, 411)= 7.1, p < 0.001. Subscale scores ranged from 37.34 (SD+4.34) to 4.88 (SD+1.68). Conclusion: Overall, the study has revealed a generally positive attitude towards shared learning and the value of teamwork though the strength of optimism varies among professional groups of students. This study also adds to the emerging body of knowledge surrounding interprofessional learning and provides important data regarding students' perceptions and readiness for interprofessional learning from an Australian context.


Rockfall is a significant phenomenon that is present in many slopes throughout the world. Despite the fact that rock boulders are usually characterized by relatively small size, they travel at high speeds (ranging from few to tens of meters per second), while their path may be sliding, rolling or even bouncing. As human activities expand to rocky areas, a rockfall may affect structures and infrastructures, such as pipelines. In the case of a non buried pipeline, the impact of a rockfall is direct, and then the use of protection measures (e.g. nets or barriers) is the only solution. On the other hand, in the case of a buried pipeline, the rock boulder may damage the pipeline either by penetrating it through the cover soil or by breaking the pipeline by excessive impact stress. This paper presents a simple procedure for calculating rockfall penetration in order to estimate the optimum pipeline burial depth, since great burial depths are usually prohibited by constraints of the cost and of the construction process. Moreover, a parametric analysis involving mass of rock boulder that will be landed on a buried pipeline and its initial vertical impact velocity is also presented. Additionally, indicative case studies with buried pipelines designed against rockfall are illustrated.


In this article, the author offers a critical review of government and corporate responses to the iPhone shock in Korea. The iPhone brings with it enormous challenges to the mobile service operators, handset manufacturers, software developers, policymakers, and general users. It may not be farfetched to argue that the future of mobile telecommunications in Korea depends on lessons learned from the iPhone shock and the actions taken in response. Although numerous reports on the iPhone and the smartphone in general have been published by the government agencies, telecom firms and their research arms, and other economic institutions notably since 2008, they are more or less summary reports by nature and substance. What is conspicuously lacking in these reports is a critical self-examination of the existing mobile telecom ecosystem, which has long been plagued by corporate and regulatory rigidity. Unless this issue is properly addressed and resolved, the iPhone shock would end up being a storm in a teacup and the much-talked-about power shift in the telecom ecosystem resulting from it would lead to nothing more than a cosmetic change in Korea.


Abstract Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive method of activating or deactivating focal areas of the human brain. Repetitive TMS (rTMS) applied over the temporoparietal cortex has been reported to show therapeutic effects on tinnitus. We compared the effects of 1 Hz rTMS delivered either contralaterally or ipsilaterally to the symptomatic ear in patients with unilateral tinnitus. Forty patients with asymmetric hearing loss and non-pulsatile tinnitus localized to poorer ear of 6 months in duration or greater who were refractory to medication were enrolled in this study. Patients were assigned randomly to one of two treatment groups: with 1 Hz stimulation applied the temporoparietal junction either ipsilaterally (n = 21) or contralaterally (n = 19) to the symptomatic ear. The patients were given 600 pulses per session daily for 5 d. Changes in the tinnitus handicap inventory (THI) and self-rating visual analog scores (VAS) for loudness, awareness and annoyance were analyzed before, immediately after and 1 month after treatment. There was no significant difference in the rate of patients with marked improvement between ipsilateral and contralateral stimulation groups. In addition, there were no significant differences in the amount of decreases in THI scores and VAS between the two groups immediately or 1 month after rTMS. Finally, significant decreases in THI scores and most VAS were observed 1 month after rTMS in both groups compared to pretreatment. Daily treatment with 1 Hz rTMS ipsilaterally and contralaterally to the side of tinnitus both had significant beneficial effects. The laterality of stimulation with 1 Hz rTMS is not the decisive factor in relieving symptoms.


In the Philippines and parts of Southeast Asia, Asian corn borer (Ostrinia furnacalis) is a serious pest of maize, and injury from this insect often is associated with the occurrence of bacterial stalk and ear rot (caused by Erwinia chrysanthemi pv. zeae). The effect of transgenic insect protection on the incidence of bacterial stalk and ear rot was studied in the Philippines with seven field trials in Mindanao and two trials in Laguna. Three transgenic hybrids (expressing Bt protein Cry1Ab) and their conventional near-isogenic counterparts were included in Mindanao, and one transgenic/conventional hybrid pair was used in Laguna (Los Banos). In the Mindanao trials, bacterial stalk rot was rated on a 1 to 9 scale approximately 2 weeks before harvest, while in Laguna, bacterial rot mortality and bacterial ear rot incidence were assessed 10 days before and at harvest, respectively. In all trials, the number of Asian corn borer tunnels was assessed by splitting stalks at harvest. Results of the trials showed significant differences between the transgenic hybrids and their conventional counterparts in terms of bacterial stalk and ear rot incidence, number of Asian corn borer tunnels, and yield. Transgenic hybrids invariably showed significantly lower bacterial stalk rot mortality and ear rot incidence, no Asian corn borer infestation, and higher yield compared with their conventional counterparts. Average yield advantage of transgenic hybrids ranged from 1.2 to 5.1 t/ha. Results confirm the important role of Asian corn borer in the initiation and spread of bacterial stalk and ear rot in maize; hence, the use of transgenic insect-resistant hybrids will have an added value in areas where this disease is prevalent.


Wetlands are increasingly being used as final treatment systems for industrial and domestic wastewater effluent discharges and stormwater runoff discharges. Hydrological monitoring and management of wetlands can enhance the treatment performance of the wetlands. In this study, water budgets were determined from field monitoring data to describe the hydrology of two wetland treatment systems in east Orange County, Florida. The water budget developed for each wetland treatment system is compared with a regional steady-state water budget using a ground water flow model. The location of the subject wetland treatment systems and the areal extent of the regional groundwater flow model are presented. The hydrology of the wetland treatment systems are characterized in terms of evapotranspiration, surface water outflow, groundwater outflow, hydraulic gradients and storage volumes.


This new book examines past experience and future directions in the management of so-called 'wicked' environmental problems - those characterized by large-scale, long-term policy dilemmas and contentious political stalemates. Most importantly, the book reviews current thinking on the way forward, focusing on the implementation of 'learning networks,' in which public managers, technical experts, and public stakeholders collaborate in decision-making processes that are analytic, iterative, and deliberative. "Wicked Environmental Problems" offers new approaches for managing environmental conflicts and shows how managers could apply these approaches within common, real-world statutory decision-making frameworks. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with managing environmental problems.


The purpose of the study is to analyse the relationship between the capitalist hegemonic order and the mass media, with the latter restricted to two elite newspapers (Swedish DN and Slovenian Delo) and the selection of news materials from three bodies of international media coverage: NATO's military intervention in former Yugoslavia, 1999, the political demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank in Prague, 2000, and 9/11, 2001. There are two sub-purposes, one theoretical-methodological and one political-democratic. The first sub-purpose is to accomplish an integrative kind of media analysis (Williams 1977) in which the approaches of political economy (emphasising the economic/material) and cultural studies/discourse analysis (emphasising the symbolic/discursive) are supposed to interact. The hypothesis is that such a 'third way' approach is possible to achieve through the qualitative analysis of journalistic modes of writing. The second sub-purpose (the political-democratic one) takes an interest in the modes' political dimensions. In what manners do the identified modes counter-act, or co-produce, miscellaneous political struggles? In addition, the purpose of the study also includes a more practical dimension. In the light of the results, how should one nowadays imagine an emancipating kind of journalism that tries to explain, unmask, or even counteract the mechanisms of the contemporary global capitalist system?The news media material consists of 438 items (articles, photos etc.), which are analysed by means of a cultural materialist CDA (critical discourse analysis). An identified journalistic mode is analysed as: (1) a practice with certain cognitive, discursive and linguistic characteristics, (2) a structural product (as constituted by underlying social and material structures), and (3) a dialectical force, being a potentially active part of an ongoing mode of production (the capitalist or another mode). The last analytical moment is the central one.Two categories of journalistic modes are identified. To begin with, the modes of de-permanence (The Remote control mode, Differentiation, Semiotic compression), which comprises modes that are part of the 'new economy', of reflexivity, individualism, consumption, mobility, and flexibility. The political dimension of these modes is that they counteract radical (leftist) politics by reducing emancipation, freedom, justice etc. to a matter of individualism and privatisation. The second category is the modes of permanence (Disconnection, Cognitive recycling), which involves an opposing structural dimension of the capitalist system: the production of reification, i.e. the repression of the complex nature of reality – how seemingly autonomous 'things' (spaces, objects etc.) are de facto interwoven with a 'complex whole' of various social, material, cultural, economic relations that are in constant motion. More precisely, the here identified modes reify and eternalise an explanatory structure (the modern division of explanatory labour), a particular power (the US) and a particular territory (the nation state), generating the impression that social reality works 'as usual' while repressing the complex network-like development of global capitalism and its impact on our lives. By sustaining these increasingly archaic structures, what is politically counteracted is the emergence of 'the new': transnational politics and democracy (Beck 1998).The analysis of modes (in total 8) furthermore demonstrates that Swedish DN is more integrated with the capitalist system than Slovenian Delo. The study emphasises the democratic importance of creating new journalistic modes endowed with a transnational journalistic epistemology that decisively include the reality of global capitalism in everyday (local) news reporting when covering and explaining social, political, cultural etc. issues.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this literature review was to analyze international scientific papers published on the physiology of swallowing fluids in the oral and pharyngeal phases. The employed methodology involved the formulation of a question, the location and selection of studies, and a critical assessment of the manuscripts according to the concepts of the Cochrane Handbook. We identified 185 articles, of which 141 were excluded for not being directly related to the theme. Twenty-nine studies were analyzed. The researchers were strongly focused on ways to identify dysphagia and not on the features offered by swallowing various consistencies. Regarding the methodology employed in the reviewed articles, it was observed that there were no control groups in most studies. The studied groups were heterogeneous, especially when considering individuals with neurological disorders. In addition, the subjects were not paired by age. Thus, the findings of this review indicate that clinicians face great difficulty in applying these scientific findings in their daily practices, which, in turn, limits the use of evidence-based practice.


Abstract The Simple Temporal Network (STN) is a widely used framework for reasoning about quantitative temporal constraints over variables with continuous or discrete domains. The inference tasks of determining consistency and deriving the minimal network are traditionally achieved by graph algorithms (e.g. Floyd-Warshall, Johnson) or by iteration of narrowing operators (e.g. ΔSTP). None of these methods exploits effectively the tree-decomposition structure of the constraint graph of an STN. Methods based on variable elimination (e.g. adaptive consistency) can exploit this structure, but have not been applied to STNs as far as they could, in part because it is unclear how to efficiently pass the 'messages' over continuous domains. We show that for an STN, these messages can be represented compactly as sub-STNs. We then present an efficient message-passing scheme for computing the minimal constraints of an STN. Analysis of this algorithm, Prop-STP, brings formal explanation of the performance of the existing STN solvers ΔSTP and SR-PC. Empirical results validate the efficiency of Prop-STP, demonstrating performance comparable to ΔSTP, in cases where the constraint graph is known to have small tree width, such as those that arise during Hierarchical Task Network planning.


Single-step green synthesis of zinc blende ZnSe quantum dots (QDs) is performed using sodium selenide and zinc stearate. The present method is non-toxic and is considered reasonably green route where stearate ions released during the reaction act as surfactant. The size quantisation effect is revealed by blue shifted absorption bands with a band-gap energy of ~2.9 eV with respect to bulk ZnSe band-gap of 2.7 eV. Photoluminescence measurement with FWHM <80 nm revealed trap state emission. Broadened XRD pattern confirmed cubic (zinc blende) crystal structure of ZnSe. The particle size was estimated to be about 5 nm from the XRD line broadening, which matched well with TEM analysis.


A novel optical sensor based on spectroscopic measurement of the plasmon absorption of a colloidal gold submonolayer immobilized upon a planar waveguide has been developed for label-free detection of biomolecular interactions at the sensor's surface. We fabricated the sensor by locally modifying a 50-microm-thick glass plate with hemoglobin (Hb) and then self-assembling gold colloids from the aqueous solution onto the Hb-modified area of the glass plate. Polychromatic light from a xenon-arc lamp was launched into the thin-film glass plate by use of a broadband fiber-coupling method. With the use of a CCD detector to monitor the light beam emitted from an end face of the glass plate, the plasmon absorption spectrum of the colloidal gold submonolayer was determined to depend on the polarization states of the guided light and to change with the refractive index of the medium in contact with the colloids. In addition to simplicity of fabrication and the ease of use, the sensor yields a larger absorbance sensitivity than the normal transmission measurement.


Whilst ageing in place is considered important for a healthier and a better quality of life for older people, there is yet a dearth of evidence on how older people with dementia negotiate and experience the wider community. The aim of the present study is therefore to explore experiences of social and spatial engagement in the wider community for people living with dementia in order to advance understandings of how their interactions in and with community settings impact on their health and wellbeing. Drawing on the theoretical framework of therapeutic landscapes and a sensory ethnographic methodology, I provide social, embodied and symbolic accounts of people's everyday experiences and pursuits of health and wellbeing within their neighbourhood and beyond. An in-depth examination of socio-spatial interactions of nine people with dementia, seven of whom participated with family carers, is conducted by use of innovative interview methods (including photo-elicitation and walking interviews), participant observations and participant 'diaries' (kept for a period of four weeks). The thesis presents three broad themes relating to participants' interactions with and experiences of places beyond the home- the diverse and changing nature of people's personal circumstances and conceptions of health and wellbeing; the interrelationship between people's changing health needs, lifestyle choices and geographical area of activities and finally the social, physical and symbolic processes through which people maintain a sense of normality and stay connected. Together these themes illustrate the significance of a variety of places to the lives of people with dementia. The 'shrinking world' analogy associated with experiences of dementia is thereby considered through a more focused discussion on the active role people with dementia play in shaping their life worlds and their everyday interactions to meet their health and wellbeing needs. Further, by applying the concept of therapeutic landscape to experiences of people with dementia in the wider community, this thesis makes an important contribution to dementia research whilst also suggesting new directions for the therapeutic landscape scholarship.


This literature review addresses and informs the hypothesis that 'a culture of trust enhances performance' in schools. Drawing on an environmental scan of research and policy literature, the authors explore the definition of trust and the ways in which trust is linked to performance in schools and organisations more broadly. The review synthesises literature exploring the relationships between trust and various measures of school improvement. It also offers a discussion of the relationship between trust and school governance. The review concludes that there is ample evidence to support the hypothesis that 'a culture of trust enhances performance in schools'. It notes that while there is surprisingly little research in the Australian setting, the evidence summarised in the review is international in scope and there is no reason why it ought not to apply to Australia. The authors note that trust does not stand alone as a discrete capacity, rather it is the lifeblood of success in virtually every structure and process that involves the principal and other school leaders. Also, while a key finding is that the quality of relationships is central to the creation of trust, the extent of that quality is influenced by many factors, including the competence of the leader: trust will be lost very quickly if a leader is perceived to be incompetent. It is therefore important to build strength in and draw on intellectual or professional capital in establishing relational trust.


Summary Polymer flooding is a well-known enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique, commonly deployed after water flooding as tertiary recovery. Management of the water produced is an important aspect in production operations, particularly in terms of flow assurance. There has been a great deal of attention to impact of water cycle in production facilities, in terms of inorganic mineral scale deposition, hydrate formation and corrosion. However, the interaction of the water produced and the injected EOR chemicals has not been as thoroughly studied, despite the fact of the significant impact on surface production facilities. Fouling in heat-exchangers is not commonly considered in polymer flooding EOR strategies at the front end engineering and design (FEED) stage. The structure of EOR polymers makes them susceptible to multiple factors within a reservoir environment, such as thermal hydrolysis and the presence of divalent ions the produced water. Polymers in the presence of divalent cations precipitate, known as cloud point, where compatibility reduces with temperature. Therefore, fouling in heat exchangers is expected, when polymer breaks through, and as a consequence the rate of heat transfer decreases. Although, the exact mechanism is extremely complex, due to the numerous chemical and physical phenomena, it depends mainly on the nature of the crude oil and the composition of the produced brine, particularly the concentration of divalent ions. In this study, the impact of fouling in the production facilities is described by the Fouling Index (FI), which is the product of divalent ions concentration in the produced water and the produced polymer concentration. The purpose of this manuscript is to identify optimum polymer flooding strategies in a five-spot pattern heterogeneous synthetic reservoir model, minimizing the level of fouling in the heat exchangers, by minimizing FI. Fouling in heat exchangers prevent the efficient production of hydrocarbons; with the corresponding halt in production and loss of revenue. The optimization results identified the optimum injection polymer concentration and optimum injection water salinity. The results highlighted that reducing the salinity around 50% of the original value, the project net present value (NPV) was optimized, minimizing FI and therefore achieving an optimum oil production. The reduction of salinity can be achieved economically using nano-filtration at the lowest level of rejection, 60%. In conclusion, the results identified optimum polymer flooding strategies, where oil recovery and NPV is maximized, fouling is minimized, aiming for the most efficient continuous oil production.