Preface. List of contributors. 1. Genotyping methods and disease gene identification (Ramon Kucharzak and Ivo Glynne Gut). 1.1 Introduction. 1.2 Genotyping of single-nucleotide polymorphisms. 1.3 Methods for interrogating SNPs. 1.4 Analysis formats. 1.5 The current generation of methods for SNP genotyping. 1.6 The next generation. 1.7 Classical HLA typing. 1.8 MHC haplotypes. 1.9 Molecular haplotyping. 1.10 Microhaplotyping. 1.11 MHC and disease association. 1.12 Conclusions. 2. Glycomics and the Sugar Code: Primer to their Structural Basis and Functionality (Hans-Joachim Gabius). 2.1 Introduction. 2.2 Lectins as effectors in functional glycomics. 2.3 Galectins: structural principles and intrafamily diversity. 2.4 Ligand-dependent levels of affinity regulation. 2.5 Perspectives for galectin-dependent medical applications. 2.6 Conclusions. 3. Proteomics in Clinical Research: Perspectives and Expectations (Ivan Lefkovits, Thomas Grussenmeyer, Peter Matt, Martin Grapow, Michael Lefkovits and Hans-Reinhard Zerkowski). 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 Proteomics: tools and projects. 3.3 Discussion. 3.4 Concluding remarks. 4. Chemical genomics: bridging the gap between novel targets and small molecule drug candidates. Contribution to immunology (Gyorgy Dorman, Takenori Tomohiro, Yasumaru Hatanaka and Ferenc Darvas). 4.1 Introduction of chemical genomics: definitions. 4.2 Chemical microarrays. 4.3 Small molecule and peptide probes for studying binding interactions through creating a covalent bond. 4.4 Photochemical proteomics. 4.5 General aspects of photoaffinity labelling. 4.6 Summary. 5. Genomic and proteomic analysis of activated human monocytes (Ameesha Batheja, George Ho, Xiaoyao Xiao, Xiwei Wang and David Uhlinger). 5.1 Primary human monocytes, as a model system. 5.2 Transcriptional profiling of activated monocytes. 5.3 Functional genomics. 5.4 Proteomic analysis of activated human monocytes. 6. Bioinformatics as a problem of knowlege representation: applications to some aspects of immunoregulation (Sandor Pongor and Andras Falus). 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 Sequences and languages. 6.3 Three-dimensional models. 6.4 Genomes, proteomes, networks. 6.5 Computational tools. 6.6 Information processing in the immune system. 6.7 Concluding remarks 7. Immune responsiveness of human tumours (Ena Wang and Francesco M. Marincola). 7.1 Introduction. 7.2 Defining tumour immune responsiveness. 7.3 Studying immune responsiveness in human tumours. 7.4 Immune responsiveness in the context of therapy. 7.5 The spatial dimension in the quest for the target. 7.6 Studying the receiving end - tumour as an elusive target for immune recognition. 7.7 The role of the host in determining immune responsiveness. 7.8 Concluding remarks. 8. Chemokines regulate leukocyte trafficking and organ-specific metastasis (Andor Pivarcsi, Anja Mueller and Bernhard Homey). 8.1 Chemokines and chemokine receptors. 8.2 Chemokine receptors in the organ-specific recruitment of tumour cells. 8.3 Cancer therapy using chemokine receptor inhibitors. 8.4 Conclusions. 9. Towards a unified approach to new target discovery in breast cancer: combining the power of genomics, proteomics and immunology (Laszlo G. Radvanyi, Bryan Hennessy, Kurt Gish, Gordon Mills and Neil Berinstein). 9.1 Introduction. 9.2 The use of CGH and DNA microarray-based transcriptional profiling for new target discovery in breast cancer. 9.3 The challenge of new tumour marker/target validation: traditional techniques meet new proteomics tools. 9.4 Immunological validation of new target genes in breast cancer: the emerging concept of the cancer 'immunome'. 9.5 Future prospects: combining target discovery approaches in unified publicly accessible databases. 10. Genomics and Functional Differences of Dendritic Cell Subsets (Peter Gogolak and Eva Rajnavolgyi). 10.1 Introduction. 10.2 Origin, differentiation and function of human dendritic cell subsets. 10.3 Tissue localization of dendritic cell subsets. 10.4 Antigen uptake by dentritic cells. 10.5 Antigen processing and presentation by dendritic cells. 10.6 Activation and polarization of dendritic cells. 10.7 Enhancement of inflammatory responses by NK cells. 10.8 Suppression of inflammatory responses by natural regulatory T cells. 10.9 The role of dendritic cells and T-lymphocytes in tumour-specific immune responses. 11. Systemic lupus erythematosus: new ideas for diagnosis and treatment (Sandeep Krishnan and George C. Tsokos). 11.1 Introduction. 11.2 Strategies for identifying diagnostic markers. 11.3 Strategies for gene therapy for SLE. 11.4 Conclusion and future direction. 12. Immunogenetics of experimentally induced arthritis (Tibor T. Glant and Vyacheslav A. Adarichev). 12.1 Rheumatoid arthritis in humans and murine proteoglycan-induced arthritis: introduction. 12.2 Genetic linkage analysis of PGIA. 12.3 Transcriptome picture of the disease: gene expression during initiation and progression of joint inflammation. 12.4 Conclusions. 13. Synovial activation in rheumatoid arthiritis (Lars C. Huber, Renate E. Gay and Steffen Gay). 13.1 Introduction. 13.2 Synovial activation in rheumatoid arthritis. 13.3 Conclusions/perspectives. 14. T cell epitope hierarchy in experimental autoimmune models (Edit Buzas). 14.1 Introduction. 14.2 Immunodominance and crypticity. 14.3 Epitope spreading (endogenous self-priming). 14.4 Degenerate T cell epitope recognition. 14.5 The self-reactive TCR repertoire. 14.6 Thymic antigen presentation. 14.7 Peripheral antigen presentation. 14.8 Epitope hierarchy in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. 14.9 Epitope hierarchy in aggrecan-induced murine arthritis. 14.10 Summary. 15. Gene-gene interactions in immunology as exemplified by studies on autoantibodies against 60 kDa heat-shock protein (Zoltan Prohaszka). 15.1 Introduction. 15.2 Basic features of gene-gene interactions. 15.3 How to detect epistasis. 15.4 Autoimmunity to heat-shock proteins. 15.5 Epistatic effect in the regulation of anti-HSP6 autoantibody levels. 15.6 Conclusions. 16. Histamine genomics and metabolomics (Andras Falus, Hargita Hegyesi, Susan Darvas, Zoltan Pos and Peter Igaz). 16.1 Introduction. 16.2 Chemistry. 16.3 Biosynthesis and biotransformation. 16.4 Histidine decarboxylase gene and protein. 16.5 Catabolic pathways of histamine. 16.6 Histamine receptors. 16.7 Histamine and cytokines, relation to the T cell polarization of the immune response. 16.8 Histamine and tumour growth. 16.9 Histamine research: an insight into metabolomics, lessons from HDC-deficient mice. 16.10 Histamine genomics on databases. 17. The histamine H4 receptor: drug discovery in the post-genomic era(Niall O'Donnell, Paul J. Dunford and Robin L. Thurmond). 17.1 Introduction. 17.2 Cloning of H3R and H4R. 17.3 Generation of H4R-specific antagonists. 17.4 High-throughput screening. 17.5 Functional studies. 17.6 Future prospects. 18. Application of microarray technology to bronchial asthma (Kenji Izuhara, Kazuhiko Arima, Sachiko Kanaji, Kiyonari Masumoto and Taisuke Kanaji). 18.1 Introduction. 18.2 Lung tissue as 'source'. 18.3 Particular cell as 'source'. 18.4 Conclusions. 19. Genomic investigation of asthma in human and animal models (Csaba Szalai). 19.1 Introduction. 19.2 Methods for localization of asthma susceptibility genes. 19.3 Results of the association studies and genome-wide screens in humans. 19.4 Animal models of asthma. 19.5 Concluding remarks. 20. Primary immunodeficiencies: genotype-phenotype correlations (Mauno Vihinen and Anne Durandy). 20.1 Introduction. 20.2 Immunodeficiency data services. 20.3 Genotype-phenotype correlations. 20.4 ADA deficiency. 20.5 RAG1 and RAG2 deficiency. 20.6 AID deficiency. 20.7 WAS. 20.8 XLA. 20.9 Why GP correlations are not more common. 21. Transcriptional profiling of dentritic cells in response to pathogens (Maria Foti, Francesca Granucci, Mattia Pelizzola, Norman Pavelka, Ottavio Beretta, Caterina Vizzardelli, Matteo Urbano, Ivan Zanoni, Giusy Capuano, Francesca Mingozzi and Paola Ricciardi-Castagnoli). 21.1 Transcriptional profiling to study the complexity of the immune system. 21.2 DC subsets and functional studies. 21.3 DC at the intersection between innate and adaptive immunity. 21.4 DC and infectious diseases. 21.5 DC and bacteria interaction. 21.6 DC and virus interaction. 21.7 DC and parasite interaction. 21.8 Leishmania mexicana molecular signature. 21.9 Conclusions. 22. Parallel biology: a systematic approach to drug target and biomarker discovery in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (Laszlo Takacs). 22.1 Introduction. 22.2 Genome research is a specific application of parallel biology often regarded as systems biology. 22.3 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. 22.4 Goals of the study. 22.5 Methods. 22.6 Results. 23. Mycobacterial granulomas: a genomic approach (Laura H. Hogan, Dominic O. Co and Matyas Sandor). 23.1 Introduction. 23.2 Initial infection of macrophage. 23.3 Mycobacterial gene expression in the host. 23.4 Host genes important to granuloma formation. 23.5 Granulomatous inflammation as an ecological system. Index.


Cancer can be conceptualized as arising from somatic mutations resulting in a single renegade cell escaping from the constraints of multicellularity. Thus, the era of precision medicine has led to intense focus on the cancer cell to target these mutations that result in oncogenic signaling and sustain malignancy. However, in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) there are only four abundantly common driver mutations (KRAS, CDKN2A, TP53, and SMAD4), which are not currently actionable. Thus, precision therapy for PDAC must look beyond the cancer cell. In fact, PDAC is more than a collection of renegade cells, instead representing an extensive, supportive ecosystem, having developed over several years, and consisting of numerous interactions between the cancer cells, normal mesenchymal cells, immune cells, and the dense extracellular matrix. In this issue, Huang and colleagues demonstrate how elucidation of these complex relationships within the tumor microenvironment (TME) can be exploited for therapeutic intervention in PDAC. They identify in a subset of PDAC with mutations in TGFβ signaling, that a paracrine signaling axis can be abrogated to modulate the TME and improve outcomes.


A Service oriented system emerges from composition of services. Dynamically composed reactive Web services form a special class of service oriented system, where the delays associated with communication, unreliability and unavailability of services, and competition for resources from multiple service requesters are dominant concerns. As complexity of services increase, an abstract design language for the specification of services and interaction between them is desired. In this paper, we present ASDL (Abstract Service Design Language), a wide spectrum language for modelling Web services. We initially provide an informal description of our computational model for service oriented systems. We then present ASDL along with its specification oriented semantics defined in Interval Temporal Logic (ITL): a sound formalism for specifying and reasoning about temporal properties of systems. The objective of ASDL is to provide a notation for the design of service composition and interaction protocols at an abstract level.


This paper analyzed the inside and outside malfunction and corresponding protection of the capacitor,and exactly defined the installation principle of the present capacitor protects.Imbalance relay protection of capacitor has been analyzed and compared,which in terms of the primary and secondary device coordination,and provided the selecting type technological principle of this kind of protection.


Twentieth-century Los Angeles has been the focus of one of the most profound and complex interactions between variant cultures in American history. Yet this study is among the first to examine the relationship between ethnicity and identity among the largest immigrant group to that city. By focusing on Mexican immigrants to Los Angeles from 1900 to 1945, George J. Sanchez explores the process by which temporary sojourners altered their orientation to that of permanent residents, thereby laying the foundation for a new Mexican-American culture. Analysing not only formal programs aimed at these newcomers by the United States and Mexico, but also the world created by these immigrants through family networks, religious practice, musical entertainment, and work ethics, Sanchez uncovers the creative ways Mexicans adapted their culture to life in the United States. When a formal repatriation campaign pushed thousands to return to Mexico, those remaining in Los Angeles launched new campaigns to gain civil rights as ethnic Americans through labor unions and New Deal politics. The immigrant generation, therefore, laid the groundwork for the emerging Mexican-American identity of their children.


Katla in Iceland is
one of the famous volcanoes of the world for the ferocity of the eruptions and
associated jokulhlaups. The major potential hazards are the jokulhlaup floods
that can hit three different floodplains, an associated tsunami that can harass
the south coast of Iceland and a volcanic ash cloud that endangers civil
aviation on an unknown scale. The eruption probabilities in Katla and the two
others known eruption sectors of the Myrdalsjokull glacier are reassessed and a
2013 risk curve for the next eruption in Katla is found. The probability of
tsunami heights is estimated and the risk from other tsunami sources in the
Atlantic Ocean is included. For the danger to aviation, two classes of eruption
are defined: an EYF (EYjaFjallajokull) eruption
class that does not produce
volcanic plumes that are dangerous for air traffic in Europe, and another stronger class, the KAT (KATla) class,
producing plumes that most likely are dangerous for air traffic in Europe. Overall probabilities for an EYF
class eruption in next year and a KAT class eruption in the next 5 years are
estimated.


In this paper we generalize the concept of uniquely $K_r$-saturated graphs to hypergraphs. Let $K_r^{(k)}$ denote the complete $k$-uniform hypergraph on $r$ vertices. For integers $k,r,n$ such that $2\leqslant k <r<n$, a $k$-uniform hypergraph $H$ with $n$ vertices is uniquely $K_r^{(k)}$-saturated if $H$ does not contain $K_r^{(k)}$ but adding to $H$ any $k$-set that is not a hyperedge of $H$ results in exactly one copy of $K_r^{(k)}$. Among uniquely $K_r^{(k)}$-saturated hypergraphs, the interesting ones are the primitive ones that do not have a dominating vertex—a vertex belonging to all possible ${n-1\choose k-1}$ edges. Translating the concept to the complements of these hypergraphs, we obtain a natural restriction of $\tau$-critical hypergraphs: a hypergraph $H$ is uniquely $\tau$-critical if for every edge $e$, $\tau(H-e)=\tau(H)-1$ and $H-e$ has a unique transversal of size $\tau(H)-1$.We have two constructions for primitive uniquely $K_r^{(k)}$-saturated hypergraphs. One shows that for $k$ and $r$ where $4\leqslant k<r\leqslant 2k-3$, there exists such a hypergraph for every $n>r$. This is in contrast to the case $k=2$ and $r=3$ where only the Moore graphs of diameter two have this property. Our other construction keeps $n-r$ fixed; in this case we show that for any fixed $k\ge 2$ there can only be finitely many examples. We give a range for $n$ where these hypergraphs exist. For $n-r=1$ the range is completely determined: $k+1\leqslant n \leqslant {(k+2)^2\over 4}$. For larger values of $n-r$ the upper end of our range reaches approximately half of its upper bound. The lower end depends on the chromatic number of certain Johnson graphs.


Bioenergy is an important renewable energy option worldwide, but the industry is susceptible to a myriad of risks including biomass supply, of which drought plays a role. Crops yields decrease during drought, increasing year-to-year risk for the agricultural industry. For the renewable energy industry, in particular, the effect of drought on crops is substantial and complex. This chapter discusses the current state of knowledge regarding how drought affects biomass destined for renewable energy as it relates to dry biomass yields and chemistry, the latter of which heavily impacts cost of production and final product yields. Advanced supply systems are one option for reducing biomass supply risk. These systems lead to higher, less variable crop yields during uncontrollable events like drought; however, the quality of material supplied in a drought year may still vary as drought impacts plant chemistry. This chapter provides analysis for chemical composition of four bioenergy crops observing that both carbohydrates and lignin decrease during a drought year compared to a year with minimal to no drought. These chemical changes can impact biochemical conversion through inhibitor formation and altering degradability during pretreatment.


Building off several prior working meetings which mapped and considered the implications of the new and rapidly evolving ecosystem of networked technology being used with education ("ed tech"), the Berkman Center for Internet & Society's Student Privacy Initiative convened a conversation in May 2015 among multiple stakeholders, including, but not limited to, K-12 educators, district administrators, academics, policy makers, and industry representatives. This working meeting was envisioned as one in a series of conversations which deepens our understanding of emerging and future privacy issues in K-12 learning environments, both formal and informal. Future conversations may focus on specific topics within the broader spectrum of issues relating to student privacy; this particular working meeting prioritized practicality over theoretical discussion, emphasizing the evolving experiences of K-12 administrators, educators, and students.In order to evaluate the challenges and opportunities fostered by the next generation of ed tech, participants were asked to consider the following four layers of the ed tech ecosystem, each of which informs the others in myriad ways: Technological Infrastructure: What kind of technology can be considered "ed tech"? This layer encompasses cloud infrastructure, the Internet of Things, sensor networks, and other new technologies that facilitate connected learning environments (which transcend the traditional classroom set-up, disturb hierarchies, and foster peer-to-peer interactions) and other educational innovations within brick and mortar classrooms, thereby shaping the collection and use of student/educational data. Data: What kinds of data are being collected, and how/by whom are they being used? This layer includes the opportunities afforded by learning analytics (the aggregation of data about learners, offering the potential benefit of individualized learning trajectories and the potential challenge of limiting or discriminatory "tracking"), as well as other uses by educators, administrators, and other stakeholders of individual and cohort-wide student data previously unimaginable in both its breadth and depth. Organizational Structures: Where does learning take place today? This layer maps the institutional forms of current and future educational institutions, from traditional schoolhouses to informal learning environments, which can be situated within the context of schools, cities, libraries, and elsewhere -- and are perhaps best understood as part of the connected learning ecosystem. Norms and values: How do we want ed tech to be used in the classroom, and what are our expectations for/desires of privacy? This layer reflects those principles, policies, pedagogies, and practices that do or should animate the goals, implementation, and stakeholder experiences of twenty-first century digital education in its various iterations.Keeping these layers in mind, discussion ranged widely across numerous themes, reflecting the participants' diverse backgrounds and perspectives. This report seeks to summarize the conversation's main themes and highlight suggestions for future action. In the following section, the main themes and observations are considered, including issues dealt with explicitly and at length, in addition to those that more quietly (and perhaps implicitly) surfaced at multiple points during the day. And although the third section concerns suggested areas for moving forward, these are meant to be understood as key highlights, and not a comprehensive summary.


Significance The radionuclide results in this report represent the first systematic study, to our knowledge, of the arrival of the Fukushima radioactivity signal in continental waters off North America. The present time series results are critical to an understanding of the circulation of Fukushima tracers in the eastern North Pacific and to the tuning and validation of ocean circulation models that are being used to predict the future evolution of this signal. They are also important for informing the public of the magnitude of the Fukushima radioactivity signal in North American continental waters and enabling a science-based assessment of the significance of its potential effects on human health and the environment. The large discharge of radioactivity into the northwest Pacific Ocean from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor accident has generated considerable concern about the spread of this material across the ocean to North America. We report here the first systematic study to our knowledge of the transport of the Fukushima marine radioactivity signal to the eastern North Pacific. Time series measurements of 134Cs and 137Cs in seawater revealed the initial arrival of the Fukushima signal by ocean current transport at a location 1,500 km west of British Columbia, Canada, in June 2012, about 1.3 y after the accident. By June 2013, the Fukushima signal had spread onto the Canadian continental shelf, and by February 2014, it had increased to a value of 2 Bq/m3 throughout the upper 150 m of the water column, resulting in an overall doubling of the fallout background from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. Ocean circulation model estimates that are in reasonable agreement with our measured values indicate that future total levels of 137Cs (Fukushima-derived plus fallout 137Cs) off the North American coast will likely attain maximum values in the 3–5 Bq/m3 range by 2015–2016 before declining to levels closer to the fallout background of about 1 Bq/m3 by 2021. The increase in 137Cs levels in the eastern North Pacific from Fukushima inputs will probably return eastern North Pacific concentrations to the fallout levels that prevailed during the 1980s but does not represent a threat to human health or the environment.


We studied the role of neural transmission from hypermetabolic peripheral tissues in the regulation of cardiac output and pulmonary ventilation in chloralose-anesthetized dogs. Cross-circulation techniques with femoral-femoral or femoral-aortic anastomoses were used to produce a vascularly isolated, but normally innervated, hindlimb or lower half-body. 2,4-Dinitrophenol (DNP) was infused into the arterial side of the perfusion circuit to triple oxygen consumption and to increase lactate production by the cross-perfused area. After infusion of DNP, cardiac output and mean systemic arterial blood pressure increased, but neither heart rate nor pulmonary artery wedge pressure changed significantly. Pulmonary minute ventilation and arterial pH also increased, while arterial Pco2 fell. These changes were abolished when the nerve connections between the perfused limb and its parent body were severed. Normal saline, when administered in a similar manner, did not increase either ventilation or cardiac output, and simple denervation without previous infusions of DNP also had no effect. These results indicate that there are receptors sensitive to metabolic changes in the tissue, and that neural transmission is an important afferent link in regulating the cardiopulmonary responses to increased tissue metabolism.


Chronic noncommunicable diseases (CNCDs), which include cardiovascular disease, some cancers, for example, colon cancer, breast cancer, and type 2 diabetes, are reaching epidemic proportions worldwide. It has now become clear that low-grade chronic inflammation is a key player in the pathogenesis of most CNCDs. Given that regular exercise offers protection against all causes of mortality, primarily by protection against atherosclerosis and insulin resistance, we suggest that exercise may exert some of its beneficial health effects by inducing anti-inflammatory actions. Recently, IL-6 was introduced as the first myokine, defined as a cytokine, which is produced and released by contracting skeletal muscle fibres, exerting its effects in other organs of the body. We suggest that skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ and that myokines may be involved in mediating the beneficial effects against CNCDs associated with low-grade inflammation.


Accuracy at reporting a second-target (T2) is reduced if it is presented within approximately 500 ms of the first target (T1) – an attentional blink (AB). Early models explained the AB in terms of attentional limitations creating a processing bottleneck such that T2 processing would be impaired while T1 processing was ongoing. Theoretical models of the AB have more recently been expanded to include the role of cognitive control. In this dissertation I propose that cognitive control, defined as the optimization of information processing in order to achieve goals, is maladapted to the dual-task conditions of the AB task in that cognitive control optimizes the T1 goal, due to its temporal proximity, at the cost of T2. I start with the concept that the role of cognitive control is to serve goals, and that how goals are conceived of and the degree of motivation associated with those goals will determine whether cognitive control will create the condition that cause the AB. This leads to the hypothesis that electrophysiological measures of cognitive control and the degree of attentional investment resulting from cognitive control modulate the AB and explain individual differences in the AB. In a series of four studies feedback-related N2 amplitude, (reflecting individual differences in the strength of cognitive control), and event-related and resting alpha frequency oscillatory activity (reflecting degree of attentional investment), are used to explain both intraand inter-individual variability in performance on the AB task. Results supported the hypothesis that stronger cognitive control and greater attentional investment are associated with larger AB magnitudes. Attentional investment, as measured by alpha frequency oscillations, and cognitive control, as measured by the feedback-related N2, did not relate to each other as hypothesized. It is proposed that instead of a measure of attentional investment alone, alpha frequency oscillatory activity actually reflects control over information processing over time, in other words the timing of attention. With this conceptualization, various aspects of cognitive control, either related to the management of goals (feedback-related N2) or the management of attention over time to meet goals, explain variability in the AB.


A 50-foot giant mechanical spider invades Liverpool for five days in September 2008. From rehearsals to the final apotheosis (half a million people, an orchestra on forklifts, the Mersey Tunnel and a lot of fire and water) this unique documentary is on the inside of this astonishing performance event by the French group La Machine. Working closely with event producers Artichoke, director John Wyver was granted exclusive filming access across 8 days -- and as well as capturing each stage of the amazing performances, we secured interviews with the project's designers and performers, all on glorious HD.

Contributors include Artichoke's Nicky Webb and Helen Marriage, and the central figures behind the event in Liverpool, including Liverpool Culture Company board member Phil Redmond and Assistant Chief Constable Helen King, as well as the key three creatives – director Francois Delaroziere, composer Dominique Malan and the special effects genius Thierry Loridant -- from La Machine. Crucially, too, this is a film about the new Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008, a city that has undergone an extraordinary period of regeneration but still an edgy, exciting urban world that is the essential backdrop to the events as they unfold.

The documentary features extensive elements of the performances across Liverpool. These sequences are strongly visual, led by images and music, with audience reaction but only minimal interview elements. Around these central sequences the film provides context and explanation together with thoughts about the effects of an event like this, including how it can change the way people see and understand their city. There is no narration; all of the spoken elements are contributed by the participants.


Gas chromatographic patterns of cuticular hydrocarbon composition were analyzed for 9 sandfly species, including Phlebotomus (Larroussius) aculeatus Lewis, Minter & Ashford [syn. P. (L.) elgonensis Ngoka, Madel & Mutinga], P. (sensu stricto) duboscqi Neveu-Lemaire, P. (Synphlebotomus) martini Parrot, P. pedifer (Larroussius) Lewis, Mutinga & Ashford, Sergentomiya (Parrotomyia) africanus Newstead, S. (Sergentomyia) antennatus Newstead, S. (Spelacomyia) garnhami Heisch, Giggisberg & Teedale, S. (Rondanomyia) ingrami Newstead, and S. (Sergentomyia) schwetzi Adler, Theodor & Parrot, collected in the field in Kenya or reared in the laboratory. The patterns showed both quantitative and qualitative differences among species. Discriminant analysis of easily identified peaks (expressed as percentages of total peak area) confirmed the uniqueness of the pattern for each species. Species identifications of field-collected flies revealed an excellent correspondence between morphometric criteria and gas chromatography for all species, except P. duboscqi. These results indicated that the morphological criteria for the identification of P. duboscqi should be reexamined. Chromatograms of females and males showed slight quantitative differences.


Finding a new job is not the only problem the unemployed face. How to manage the loss of income, status and identity can also be a serious consideration for those in between jobs. In-depth qualitative interviews reveal that family, friends and wider networks are important mainstays in helping jobseekers back into work but in different ways and for a variety of reasons. By examining the job seeking strategies in terms of drawing on (a) family connections and (b) friends and wider social networks this investigation sheds some light on the extent to which social connectedness matters for jobseekers in contemporary Britain.


Two methods are described for reducing or eliminating the background of single-beam spectra obtained by Fourier transform spectrometers incorporating analog data-reduction systems. One method simply involves increasing the amplifier gain so that the central spike of the interferogram is clipped. The second method involves the use of an electronic device which eliminates the central part of the interferogram. Both methods lead to spectra having flat backgrounds, but distortion of the spectrum may also be caused.


Facing the different approaches to process activation and global termination detection on distributed systems, this paper performs a practical comparison between the mainly opposed centralized and distributed models. Firstly, they were implemented to solve both the activation and termination detection problems. Based on processing performance and communication overhead metrics, both systems were evaluated running on various parametrized environments. As a result, we present the values obtained and the final conclusions. The overall design was made following an object oriented methodology, which was coded using C++. The inter-process communication was carried out using the PVM libraries.


Lysosomal storage diseases are inborn errors of metabolism that arise due to loss of function mutations in genes encoding lysosomal enzymes, protein co-factors or lysosomal membrane proteins. As a consequence of the genetic defect, lysosomal function is impaired and substrates build up in the lysosome leading to 'storage'. A sub group of these disorders are the sphingolipidoses in which sphingolipids accumulate in the lysosome. In this review, I will discuss how the study of these rare lysosomal disorders reveals unanticipated links to other rare and common human diseases using Niemann-Pick disease type C as an example.


GENIE is a flexible Earth system modelling framework supporting a distributed community of environmental scientists. GENIE provides the means to couple together component models of the Earth system (ocean, atmosphere, ice-sheets, land surface, etc.) of varying resolution, dimensionality and complexity to create integrated models capable of simulating the planet over millennial timescales. Currently, the fully functional (although continuously evolving) GENIE family of models can be run only by users with technical computing expertise. Users encounter an extensive code base (managed under Subversion source control), a Linux based build environment, an XML based configuration system, third party library dependencies, proprietary input and output data formats (ASCII and/or NetCDF), a Grid-enabled environment for distributed simulation management and a Grid-enabled data management platform (GENIELab). All of these aspects of model management require an understanding and familiarity with a set of supporting tools and software (including Fortran and C compilers, Cygwin, XML/text editors, NetCDF tools, Matlab, X509 certificates, GENIELab). The lack of immediate "out-of-the-box" usability and a steep learning curve have proved a stumbling block to the uptake of the full capabilities of the GENIE framework. With a clear need to improve accessibility to the GENIE framework, the ENGAGE (http://engage.ac.uk) project has funded an initiative to improve the usability of GENIE in both its teaching and research capacities. Aladdin2 will build upon existing, but limited, interfaces to GENIE to provide a new platform independent GUI to act as a unified point of entry to the framework. We describe the requirements of a "front-end" to GENIE, the development of the Aladdin2 tool and discuss the issues in providing an intuitive and usable interface for Earth system modelling across distributed computing resource including the National Grid Service.


We have generated unique asymmetric liposomes with phosphatidylserine (PS) distributed at the outer membrane surface to resemble apoptotic bodies and phosphatidic acid (PA) at the inner layer as a strategy to enhance innate antimycobacterial activity in phagocytes while limiting the inflammatory response. Results show that these apoptotic body-like liposomes carrying PA (ABL/PA) (i) are more efficiently internalized by human macrophages than by nonprofessional phagocytes, (ii) induce cytosolic Ca2+ influx, (iii) promote Ca2+-dependent maturation of phagolysosomes containing Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), (iv) induce Ca2+-dependent reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, (v) inhibit intracellular mycobacterial growth in differentiated THP-1 cells as well as in type-1 and -2 human macrophages, and (vi) down-regulate tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-12, IL-1β, IL-18, and IL-23 and up-regulate transforming growth factor (TGF)-β without altering IL-10, IL-27, and IL-6 mRNA expression. Also, ABL/PA promoted intracellular killing of M. tuberculosis in bronchoalveolar lavage cells from patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis. Furthermore, the treatment of MTB-infected mice with ABL/PA, in combination or not with isoniazid (INH), dramatically reduced lung and, to a lesser extent, liver and spleen mycobacterial loads, with a concomitant 10-fold reduction of serum TNF-α, IL-1β, and IFN-γ compared with that in untreated mice. Altogether, these results suggest that apoptotic body-like liposomes may be used as a Janus-faced immunotherapeutic platform to deliver polar secondary lipid messengers, such as PA, into phagocytes to improve and recover phagolysosome biogenesis and pathogen killing while limiting the inflammatory response.


Cloud computing has recently gained popularity as a cost-effective model for hosting and delivering services over the Internet. In a cloud computing environment, a cloud provider packages its physical resources in data centers into virtual resources and offers them to service providers using a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Meanwhile, a service provider uses the rented virtual resources to host its services. This large-scale multi-tenant architecture of cloud computing systems raises key challenges regarding how data centers resources should be controlled and managed by both service and cloud providers. This thesis addresses several key challenges pertaining to resource management in cloud environments. From the perspective of service providers, we address the problem of selecting appropriate data centers for service hosting with consideration of resource price, service quality as well as dynamic reconfiguration costs. From the perspective of cloud providers, as it has been reported that workload in real data centers can be typically divided into serverbased applications and MapReduce applications with different performance and scheduling criteria, we provide separate resource management solutions for each type of workloads. For server-based applications, we provide a dynamic capacity provisioning scheme that dynamically adjusts the number of active servers to achieve the best trade-off between energy savings and scheduling delay, while considering heterogeneous resource characteristics of both workload and physical machines. For MapReduce applications, we first analyzed task run-time resource consumption of a large variety of MapReduce jobs and discovered it can vary significantly over-time, depending on the phase the task is currently executing. We then present a novel scheduling algorithm that controls task execution at the level of phases with the aim of improving both job running time and resource utilization. Through detailed simulations and experiments using real cloud clusters, we have found our proposed solutions achieve substantial gain compared to current state-of-art resource management solutions, and therefore have strong implications in the design of real cloud resource management systems in practice.


The paper focuses on biodiversity—an issue that easily gets left out of consideration because it is hard to measure. While efforts to reduce over-fishing or conservation of water resources are relatively easy to discuss in quantitative terms, biodiversity in terms of plant species is usually covered by crude and even invalid figures. The paper begins by providing a brief historical overview of attempts to define biodiversity, going back to the early efforts in Africa to deal with conservation and showing how definitions have evolved overtime and how they have shaped conservation efforts. While the main focus of the paper is biodiversity conservation and the poor, the paper makes references to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and other important global conferences including the World Conference on Environment and Development and Convention on Biological Diversity. The paper finds that international conferences by and large do not adequately address the issue of biodiversity and the poor. The limited commitment shown by political leaders at the conferences should be a reason for global and local authorities to create an environment that enables communities to meet their daily needs, foster development and conserve biodiversity.


We discuss uncertainty quantification for aerosol type selection in satellite-based atmospheric aerosol retrieval. The retrieval procedure uses pre-calculated aerosol microphysical models stored in look-up tables (LUTs) and top of atmosphere spectral reflectance measurements to solve the aerosol characteristics. The forward model approximations cause systematic differences between the modeled and observed reflectance. Acknowledging this model discrepancy as a source of uncertainty allows us to produce more realistic uncertainty estimates and assists the selection of the most appropriate LUTs for each individual retrieval. This paper focuses on the aerosol microphysical model selection and characterization of uncertainty in the retrieved aerosol type and aerosol optical depth (AOD). The concept of model evidence is used as a tool for model comparison. The method is based on Bayesian inference approach where all uncertainties are described as a posterior probability distribution. When there is no single best matching aerosol microphysical model we use a statistical technique based on Bayesian model averaging to combine AOD posterior probability densities of the best fitting models to obtain an averaged AOD estimate. We also determine the shared evidence of the best matching models of a certain main aerosol type in order to quantify how plausible each main aerosol type is in representing the underlying atmospheric aerosol conditions. The developed method is applied to Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) measurements using multi-wavelength approach for retrieving the aerosol type and AOD estimate with uncertainty quantification for cloud-free over-land pixels. Several larger pixel set areas were studied in order to investigate robustness of the developed method. We evaluated the retrieved AOD by comparison with ground-based measurements at example sites. We found that the uncertainty of AOD expressed by posterior probability distribution reflects the difficulty in model selection. The posterior probability distribution can provide a comprehensive characterization of the uncertainty in this kind of problem for aerosol type selection. As a result, the proposed method can account for the model error and also include the model selection uncertainty in the total uncertainty budget.


This article presents a review of theoretical modeling of psychophysical anomalies. It originates from my involvement with the Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions (JNLRMI) which was founded by Lian Sidorov in the wake of research institutions of previous decades, such as SRI, IONS, PEARS, and MRU. JNLRMI began as an attempt to bridge widely scattered evidence and ideas on the frontline of mind-matter research (energetics, remote mind-mind and mind-matter interactions). JNLRMI was a challenging and exhilarating journey, sustained by multidisciplinary readership interest in the subject. Part 1 of this article contains Introduction; Make Me Want to Psi; Open Sesame; From Trance to Creativity; Psi Deeply; Hypnosis & SP; Dream of Telepathy and Beyond; and Cyber Psi Training.


This volume studies the fascinating millenarian background to the early Rosicrucian pamphlets with special emphasis on their reception in the Baltic area, but also with reference to the original authors in Tubingen.


Analysis of plants (Arabidopsis) lacking S-nitrosoglutathione reductase (GSNOR) revealed an important role for the enzyme in multiple processes that mediate the plant immune response and resistance to pathogens. The enzyme metabolizes S-nitrosoglutathione, which appears to function in S-nitrosylation of proteins--a covalent modification that can alter protein function. Feechan et al. used T-DNA insertions to create Arabidopsis mutants that expressed increased amounts of GSNOR or lacked expression of the protein and explored the effects on resistance to pathogens. Plants expressing more GSNOR showed increased resistance to bacterial pathogens. Plants express resistance (R) gene products that specifically recognize avirulence protein from pathogens. Such resistance to a bacterial pathogen, PstDC300, was diminished in plants lacking GSNOR. Plants also have two more general disease resistance mechanisms, which the authors call a basal disease resistance and nonhost disease resistance. Loss of GSNOR also enhanced these defense mechanisms. Sialic acid (SA) is a plant signaling molecule that promotes expression of genes that participate in defense responses. Such SA-dependent gene expression was reduced and delayed in plants lacking GSNOR. Thus, GSNOR appears to be a negative regulator of multiple plant defense responses. This contrasts with the role of vertebrate GSNOR, which appears to inhibit inflammatory responses. The authors note that control of GSNOR activity provides a possible target for modification of plant disease responses. A. Feechan, E. Kwon, B.-W. Yun, Y. Wang, J. A. Pallas, G. J. Loake, A central role for S-nitrosothiols in plant disease resistance. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 102, 8054-8059 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


We study the effect of Coulomb repulsion between oxygen holes on the London penetration depth λ based on the concept of spin-polaron nature of Fermi quasiparticles in cuprates superconductors. It is shown that for the generally accepted values of the parameters of the spin-fermion model, taking into account the Coulomb interaction, both the one-site Hubbard Up and interaction between holes on the next-nearest-neighbor oxygen ions V2, allows one to achieve a much better agreement of the calculated temperature dependencies of the value λ−2 with the experimental data in La2−xSrxCuO4 in a wide range around optimal doping.


A study was conducted to determine the potential suitability of Terra/MODIS imagery for monitoring short‐term phenological changes in forage conditions in a semi‐arid region. The study sites included four meadow steppes and six typical steppes in the Xilingol steppe in central Inner Mongolia, China. The live biomass, dead standing biomass, total biomass, crude protein (CP) concentration and standing CP were estimated from early April to late October using the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) values from Terra imagery (500 m pixels). Applying regression models, the EVI accounted for 80% of the variation in live biomass, 42% of the dead biomass, 77% of the total biomass, 11% of the CP concentration and 74% of the standing CP. MODIS/EVI is superior to AVHRR/NDVI when estimating forage quantity. Applying these results, the seasonal changes in live biomass and the standing CP could be described in the selected four sites with different degrees of grazing intensity. Generally, the increase in grazing intensity tended to decrease live biomass and standing CP. It was suggested that the EVI obtained from Terra imagery was an available predictor of the forage condition as measured by live biomass and standing CP. The MODIS/EVI values could provide information on the suitable timing of cutting for hay‐making and nutritive value to range managers.


In this paper, we propose an approach that automatically extract users' activities in sentences retrieved from Twitter. We then design a timeline action network based on Web Ontology Language (OWL). By using the proposed activity extraction approach, we can automatically collect data for the action network. Finally, we propose a novel action-based collaborative filtering, which predicts missing activity data, in order to complement this timeline network. Moreover, with a combination of collaborative filtering and natural language processing (NLP), our method can deal with minority actions such as successful actions. Based on evaluation of tweets which related to the massive Tohoku earthquake, we indicated that our timeline action network can provide useful action patterns in real-time. Not only earthquake disaster, our research can also be applied to other disasters and business models, such as typhoon, travel, marketing, etc.


With the ongoing trend of urban datafication and growing use of data/evidence to shape developmental initiatives by state as well as non-state actors, this exploratory case study engages with the complex and often contested domains of data use. This study uses on-the-ground experience of working with informal settlements in Indian cities to examine how information value chains work in practice and the contours of their power to intervene in building an agenda of social justice into governance regimes. Using illustrative examples from ongoing action-oriented projects of Mahila Housing Trust in India such as the Energy Audit Project, Slum Mapping Exercise and women-led climate resilience building under the Global Resilience Partnership, it raises questions about challenges of making effective linkages between data, knowledge and action in and for slum communities in the global South by focussing on two issues.

First, it reveals dilemmas of achieving data accuracy when working with slum communities in developing cities where populations are dynamically changing, and where digitisation and use of ICT has limited operational currency. The second issue focuses on data ownership. It foregrounds the need for complementary inputs and the heavy requirement for support systems in informal settlements in order to translate data-driven knowledge into actionable forms. Absence of these will blunt the edge of data-driven community participation in local politics. Through these intersecting streams, the study attempts to address how entanglements between southern urbanism, datafication, governance and social justice diversify the discourse on data justice. It highlights existing hurdles and structural hierarchies within a data-heavy developmental register emergent across multiple cities in the global South where data-driven governmental regimes interact with convoluted urban forms and realities.


The paper investigates the use of mobile tools by museums in order to provide mobile access to their permanent collections and special exhibitions. In fact, it deals with the wider topic of how museums tackle the complex issue of communicating with their present and potential audience using modern (i.e., mobile in this case) technologies. The paper presents and discusses the results of a survey that was proposed to Dutch and Flemish museums mainly dealing with modern and contemporary art or with science and technology. We tried to derive some trends and best practices in order to identify a good way to provide an engaging (mobile) experience to museum visitors. These results, although not always stirring in terms of answer percentages and of what most museums seem to be doing with new media, do show a clear interest towards mobile technologies and openness to innovation in the Dutch cultural sector.


Density-dependent dispersal can be caused by various mechanisms, from competition inducing individuals to emigrate (positive density-dependence) to social crowding effects impeding free movement (negative density-dependence). Various spatial population models have incorporated positively density-dependent dispersal algorithms, and recent theoretical models have explored the conditions for density-dependent dispersal (DD) to evolve. However, while the existence of DD is well documented in some taxa such as insects, there is no clear picture on its generality in vertebrates. Here I review the available empirical data on DD in birds and mammals, focusing mainly on variation in dispersal between years and on experimental density manipulations. Surprisingly few studies have explicitly focused on DD, and interpretation of the available data is often hampered by differences in approach, small sample sizes and/or statistical shortcomings. Positive DD was reported in 50 and 33% of the selected mammal and bird studies, respectively, while two studies on mammals (out of eight) reported negative DD. Among bird studies, DD was more often reported for emigration rates or long-distance recoveries than for average distances within finite study areas. Experimental studies manipulating densities (mainly on mammals) have consistently generated positive DD, typically showing reduced emigration in response to partial population removal. Studies that examined dispersal in relation to seasonal changes in density (small mammals only) have more often reported negative DD. Studies that compared dispersal between sites differing in density, also show a mixture of positive and negative DD. This suggests that dispersal changes in a more complex way with seasonal and spatial density variation than with annual densities, and/or that these results are confounded by other factors differing between seasons and sites, such as habitat quality. I conclude that both correlational and experimental studies support the existence of positive, rather than negative, density-dependent dispersal in birds and mammals.


In A.D. 192, the last year of his reign, Commodus threw restraint to the winds and had the senate declare him a god. He assumed such titles as Conqueror of the World, Roman Hercules, and All-Surpasser and named the twelve months of the year after himself. Founding Rome anew, he gave it the name Colonia Commodiana and ordered the legions likewise to be called Commodianae. Before the year was out, on 31 December, he was murdered, his memory cursed.


Isoprenoid precursors readily undergo (poly)cyclization in electrophilic reaction cascades, presumably as internal addition of the carbon-carbon double-bonds from neighboring isoprenyl repeats readily forms relatively stable cyclohexyl tertiary carbocation intermediates. This hypothesis is agnostic regarding alkene configuration (i.e., Z or E). Consistent with this, here it is shown that certain class II diterpene cyclases, which normally convert (E,E,E)-geranylgeranyl diphosphate to 13E-trans-decalin bicycles, will also act upon (Z,Z,Z)-nerylneryl diphosphate, producing novel 13Z-cis-decalin bicycles instead.


In Democracy and Tradition, Jeffrey Stout contends that American constitutional democracy constitutes a well-functioning moral and political tradition that is not hostile to religion, although it does not depend on any specifically religious claims. I argue that Stout's contention is supported by a consideration of the great common law subject of contracts, as taught to first-year law students across the United States. First, I demonstrate how contract law can fruitfully be understood as a MacIntyrean tradition. Second, I illustrate the moral richness of this tradition, and the mutually interpreting nature of rules and facts, by close attention to one particularly colorful case, Syester v. Banta. I conclude by suggesting that both religious and secular ethicists might find common law cases in general and contract law cases in particular to be a source of moral reflection that is substantively rich without being religiously divisive.


The paper

Abstract

Objective To determine the effect of clinical scores that predict streptococcal infection or rapid streptococcal antigen detection tests compared with delayed antibiotic prescribing.

Design Open adaptive pragmatic parallel group randomised controlled trial.

Setting Primary care in United Kingdom.

Patients Patients aged ≥3 with acute sore throat.

Intervention An internet programme randomised patients to targeted antibiotic use according to: delayed antibiotics (the comparator group for analyses), clinical score, or antigen test used according to clinical score. During the trial a preliminary streptococcal score (score 1, n=1129) was replaced by a more consistent score (score 2, n=631; features: fever during previous 24 hours; purulence; attends rapidly (within three days after onset of symptoms); inflamed tonsils; no cough/coryza (acronym FeverPAIN).

Outcomes Symptom severity reported by patients on a 7 point Likert scale (mean severity of sore throat/difficulty swallowing for days two to four after the consultation (primary outcome)), duration of symptoms, use of antibiotics.

Results For score 1 there were no significant differences between groups. For score 2, symptom severity was documented in 80% (168/207 (81%) in delayed antibiotics group; 168/211 (80%) in clinical score group; 166/213 (78%) in antigen test group). Reported severity of symptoms was lower in the clinical score group (−0.33, 95% confidence interval −0.64 to −0.02; P=0.04), equivalent to one in three rating sore throat a slight versus moderate problem, with a similar reduction for the antigen test group (−0.30, −0.61 to −0.00; P=0.05). Symptoms rated moderately bad or worse resolved significantly faster in the clinical score group (hazard ratio 1.30, 95% confidence interval 1.03 to 1.63) but not the antigen test group …


Neurons in the brain that boost the morning response of the circadian rhythm are themselves directly responsive to light. Circadian rhythms are linked to the external light-dark cycle through inputs from photoreceptors that signal into networks that regulate neural and physiological function. One of the key photoreceptors is CRYPTOCHROME, which is sensitive to blue-light wavelengths. Fogle et al. (see the Perspective by Im and Taghert) now find that CRYPTOCHROME has an unexpectedly direct effect on circadian physiology in fruit flies. A small group of neurons that are part of the circadian circuit and that are usually more active in the morning express CRYPTOCHROME. These neurons normally receive plenty of input from the circadian circuit that perceives cycles and drives responses. However, when those inputs are blocked, it seems that these neurons are able to respond directly to blue light. K. J. Fogle, K. G. Parson, N. A. Dahm, T. C. Holmes, CRYPTOCHROME is a blue-light sensor that regulates neuronal firing rate. Science 331, 1409–1413 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text] S. H. Im, P. H. Taghert, A CRY to rise. Science 331, 1394–1395 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


$E(V-I)$ reddening values for 1123 locations in the bar region of the Large Magellanic Cloud are presented. V , I  photometry of red clump stars identified in the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment II catalogue of LMC were used to estimate reddening. $E(V-I)$ values were estimated as the difference between observed and the characteristic values of $(V-I)$ for the red clump population in a given region. It is found that most of the regions in the bar have reddening values less than 0.1 mag with only a few locations having values more than 0.2 mag. The eastern side of the bar is found to be more reddened when compared to the western side, with similar and relatively small values for differential reddening as in most parts of the bar. Increased reddening in the eastern end of the bar could be caused by a small fraction of the H I clouds in the line of sight. A high density of HI clouds located in the eastern end of the bar should have caused very high reddening in these regions, whereas only a relatively small increase in the reddening is estimated. This indicates that most of the H I clouds in this direction are likely to be located behind the bar.


Background: Sentence Repetition (SR) is considered to be a good indicator of children's grammatical knowledge. Cross-linguistic evidence suggests that performance on SR improves with age, differentiates children with language difficulties, and shows relationships with other language assessments. However, there is debate about the underlying skills involved in SR with few studies directly investigating the impact of linguistic manipulation on SR performance. In the absence of standardized language assessments and lack of normative data, and building on evidence from typologically diverse languages, SR provides a potentially useful assessment tool in Arabic.

Aims: (1) To examine the clinical utility of a novel SR test and an adapted Verbal Short Term Memory (VSTM) test by investigating the psychometric properties of the tests and their sensitivity to age and language ability. (2) To evaluate the contribution of established linguistic knowledge to immediate repetition by comparing the patterns of performance across different linguistic factors 3) To determine whether patterns of performance are similar or dissimilar across different age groups of Typically Developing children and different language ability groups.

Methods: Three immediate repetition tests were developed or adapted: (1) a novel SR test targeting morphosyntactic structures of Arabic; (2) an adapted VSTM test based on the structure of the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C; Pickering & Gathercole, 2001) with three subtests of Digit Recall, Word List Recall, and Nonword List Recall; and (3) an Anomalous Sentence Repetition (ASR) test including sets of Semantically Anomalous and Syntactically Anomalous sentences created from and matched to a subset of sentences in the SR test in target Lexical and Grammatical Morphemes as well as length. The SR and ASR tests were scored for the number of Lexical and Grammatical Morphemes repeated correctly. VSTM tests were scored based on the highest number of items repeated in correct order. The SR and VSTM tests were administered to Typically Developing Arabic-speaking children aged 2;6 to 5;11 (n = 140) and a Language Concerns group in the same age range (n = 16), matched on age and nonverbal IQ. The ASR test was only administered to participants older than 4 years.

Results: The SR and VSTM tests were reliable, valid, and sensitive to age and language ability of participants. In the Typical sample a) Lexical Morphemes were easier to repeat than Grammatical Morphemes, (b) Digit span was higher than Word span and Word span was higher than Nonword span, and (c) Typical sentences were easier to repeat than Semantically Anomalous sentences followed by Syntactically Anomalous sentences. The gap between Digit and Word span, Grammatical and Lexical Morphemes in the SR test and Lexical Morphemes in Typical and Semantically Anomalous sentences showed a change with age. While performance was significantly reduced in the Language Concerns group, the profile of performance was largely similar. Like the younger children in the Typical sample, they showed a greater vulnerability in Grammatical Morphemes. Only four of 16 children in the clinical sample showed mismatches between their performance on the SR and VSTM tests.

Conclusions: The study's results are consistent with cross-linguistic evidence demonstrating that SR and VSTM tests are sensitive to developmental change and language difficulties and are informative about children's language processing abilities. These findings lay the foundations for creating standardized assessments for Arabic-speaking preschool children.


Growth in production of manufactured goods and the use of nanomaterials in consumer products has mounted in the past few decades. Nanotoxicology or toxicity assessment of these engineered products is required to understand possible adverse effects and their fate inside the human body. The present review is a one stop assessment intended to be a state of the art understanding on nanotoxicity. It provides a summation of the various kinds of cell death and also discusses the different types of toxicities along with their studies. The review discusses the physiological impact imparted on cells (reactive oxygen species generation and the resultant oxidative stress, inflammation, and other nonoxidant pathways). Moreover, it discusses the different physicochemical properties of nanomaterials (size, morphology, surface charge, and coating) governing the cytotoxicity properties. It also details the major pathways of nanomaterial uptake in cells and their outcome. Additionally, it also discusses the possible methods for human exposure to nanomaterials (skin, respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, blood brain barrier, liver, and spleen). Furthermore, an entire new section is contributed in discussion of all possible types of assays (cytotoxicity, cell proliferation, and genotoxicity assays). A summarized discussion of the recent advances on in vitro, in silico, and in vivo studies of nanomaterials (metal, metal oxides, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and other novel materials) is made. The review also provides a brief account of the safety guidelines for handling nanomaterials. Finally, the uses of engineered nanomaterials in commercial products are discussed in detail.


We design an experiment to explore the impact of earned entitlements on the frequency and intensity of conflicts in a two-stage conflict game where players may attempt to use non-binding side-payments to avoid conflict. In this game, Proposers make offers and Responders decide simultaneously whether to accept the offers and whether to engage in a conflict. A simple theoretical analysis suggests that Proposers should never offer side-payments because Responders should always accept them and then still choose to enter conflict; however, our experiment reveals that some individuals use this non-binding mechanism to avoid conflict. Moreover, when subjects earn their roles (Proposer or Responder), conflicts are 44% more likely to be avoided than when roles are assigned randomly. Earned entitlements impact behavior in three important ways: (1) Proposers who have earned their position persistently make larger offers; (2) larger offers lead to a lower probability of conflict; but (3) Proposers whose offers do not lead to conflict resolution respond spitefully with greater conflict expenditure. Hence, with earned rights, the positive welfare effects of reduced conflict frequency are offset by higher conflict intensity. This result differs from previous experimental evidence from ultimatum games in which earned entitlements tend to encourage agreement and increase welfare; thus, our findings highlight the important consequences of endogenizing the costs of conflict. Our analysis suggests that earned entitlements alter behavior by influencing the beliefs of Proposers about the willingness of Responders to accept a peaceful resolution. As a result, these Proposers make persistent high offers, and when their beliefs are disappointed by a Responder's decision to accept a side-payment and still enter conflict, they retaliate.


This study aimed to provide information regarding viral pathogenesis and molecular epidemiology linked with recently reported atypical porcine pestivirus (APPV) strains and to determine the circulation of APPV in Spain from 1997 to 2016. Two-day-old piglets with moderate-severe congenital tremor (CT) from a Spanish farm were received for diagnostic purposes. Sera, nasal and rectal swabs and tissue samples were collected. qRT-PCR was performed in these samples, and a retrospective study to detect APPV RNA was carried out using a serum collection from 1997 to 2016. APPV genome was identified with high and moderate RNA loads in different tissues of the CT affected pigs. High APPV RNA load was detected in lymphoid organs, suggesting that these constitute a target for APPV replication. In 89 of the 642 retrospectively analysed samples (13.9%), APPV genome was detected. CT cases were related to the presence of APPV in viraemic piglets below 1 week of age, in which the viral RNA load was the highest. A considerable number of animals between 4 and 14 weeks of age and some 1-week-old piglets were viraemic in the absence of CT, which can act as carriers of the virus. The relative risk of APPV and CT was 8.5 (CI 95% 5.8-12.5). Thus, our data show that APPV infection is epidemiologically related to CT. Phylogenetic analysis from 1615 NS2-3 nucleotides showed only one defined APPV clade, grouping the most phylogenetically related strains from Europe and China. Of this clade, there are other strains from Europe, USA and China. This data confirm the high APPV genetic diversity, not being able to cluster this virus according to the geographic area. Our result showed that APPV has been circulating in Spain at least since 1997, being the earliest date of detection of this virus worldwide and suggesting that APPV may be widespread.


The age of electoral majority has declined over time and across the globe. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the average voting age worldwide was just under twenty-four; today, it is just over seventeen. More than a dozen nations have recently lowered local, state, or national voting ages to sixteen. Others, including Australia and the U.K., are seriously considering doing the same. Yet the United States, which holds itself out as a beacon of democratic participation, is not currently considering the electoral inclusion of some cohort of its younger citizens. For a number of compelling reasons, it should be.Classic democratic theory describes the decision making of the ideal citizen-voter as both well-informed and rational. The decision making of the actual citizen-voter, however, is often neither. For reasons detailed in this article, I argue for a conception of electoral competence (1) informed by behavioral decision theory and studies of voter decision making; and (2) characterized by the reliable attainment of the relevant cognitive processes (cognition/learning, information processing, and decision making) and maturity of judgment.Converging research from several disciplines within the developmental sciences has established a reliable connection between age range and the attainment of certain cognitive competencies. Research in developmental psychology and cognitive and social neuroscience explains that/why adolescents make notoriously bad decisions under certain conditions. It also explains that by mid-adolescence, when making unpressured, considered decisions — like those required to privately cast a ballot in an election that has unfolded over time — their cognitive competencies are mature.States can thus no longer justify the electoral exclusion of mid-adolescents by claiming that they lack the relevant competencies. Absent other legitimate bases for their exclusion, I argue that the democratic presumption of inclusion obliges the states to adjust downward the age of electoral majority.


IMPORTANCE
The modest effects of clinical studies using intracoronary administration of autologous bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells (BMCs) in patients with chronic postinfarction heart failure may be attributed to impaired homing of BMCs to the target area. Extracorporeal shock wave treatment has been experimentally shown to increase homing factors in the target tissue, resulting in enhanced retention of applied BMCs.

OBJECTIVE
To test the hypothesis that targeted cardiac shock wave pretreatment with subsequent application of BMCs improves recovery of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in patients with chronic heart failure.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The CELLWAVE double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial conducted among patients with chronic heart failure treated at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, between 2006 and 2011.

INTERVENTIONS
Single-blind low-dose (n = 42), high-dose (n = 40), or placebo (n = 21) shock wave pretreatment targeted to the left ventricular anterior wall. Twenty-four hours later, patients receiving shock wave pretreatment were randomized to receive double-blind intracoronary infusion of BMCs or placebo, and patients receiving placebo shock wave received intracoronary infusion of BMCs.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Primary end point was change in LVEF from baseline to 4 months in the pooled groups shock wave + placebo infusion vs shock wave + BMCs; secondary end points included regional left ventricular function assessed by magnetic resonance imaging and clinical events.

RESULTS
The primary end point was significantly improved in the shock wave + BMCs group (absolute change in LVEF, 3.2% [95% CI, 2.0% to 4.4%]), compared with the shock wave + placebo infusion group (1.0% [95% CI, -0.3% to 2.2%]) (P = .02). Regional wall thickening improved significantly in the shock wave + BMCs group (3.6% [95% CI, 2.0% to 5.2%]) but not in the shock wave + placebo infusion group (0.5% [95% CI, -1.2% to 2.1%]) (P = .01). Overall occurrence of major adverse cardiac events was significantly less frequent in the shock wave + BMCs group (n = 32 events) compared with the placebo shock wave + BMCs (n = 18) and shock wave + placebo infusion (n = 61) groups (hazard ratio, 0.58 [95% CI, 0.40-0.85]; P = .02).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Among patients with postinfarction chronic heart failure, shock wave-facilitated intracoronary administration of BMCs vs shock wave treatment alone resulted in a significant, albeit modest, improvement in LVEF at 4 months. Determining whether the increase in contractile function will translate into improved clinical outcomes requires confirmation in larger clinical end point trials.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00326989.


Visible-light-mediated tandem radical difluoroalkylation and alkynylation of unactivated alkenes is described in this communication. The process comprises a mild C–C bond activation via intramolecular 1,4-alkynyl migration. The general and elegant protocol can serve as a straightforward access route to obtain a wide range of synthetically valuable difluoroalkylated linear alkynyl ketones under mild reaction conditions.


Establishing interconnection to the grid is a recognized barrier to the deployment of distributed energy generation. This report compares interconnection processes for photovoltaic projects in California and Germany. This report summarizes the steps of the interconnection process for developers and utilities, the average length of time utilities take to process applications, and paperwork required of project developers. Based on a review of the available literature, this report finds that while the interconnection procedures and timelines are similar in California and Germany, differences in the legal and regulatory frameworks are substantial.


Following the end of the Cold War, the hegemony of the United States in Latin America was intimately related to the globalization of the hemispheric political economy. Free-trade agreements (FTAs) were crucial to this process, helping to extend and entrench the neoliberal model. As a result of the region's political turn to the left during the 2000s, however, the Washington Consensus became increasingly untenable. As U.S. trade policy subsequently moved in the direction of a "post-Washington Consensus," the "Pink Tide" fostered the creation of Latin American-led approaches to integration independent of the United States. In this context, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was designed to catalyse a new wave of (neo)liberalization among its 12 participating countries, including the United States, Canada, Chile, Peru, and Mexico.
 The TPP codified an updated and comprehensive set of rules on an array of trade and investment disciplines not covered in existing agreements. Strategically linking the Asia-Pacific to the Americas, but excluding China, the TPP responded to China's growing economic presence in Asia and Latin America. Largely a creation of U.S. foreign economic policy, the United States withdrew from the TPP prior to its ratification and following the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. The remaining 11 countries signed a more limited version of the agreement, known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which is open to future participation by the United States and other countries in Asia and Latin America. The uncertainties in the TPP process represented the further erosion of Washington's "free trade" consensus, reflecting, among other things, a crisis of U.S. hegemony in the Americas.


Accommodating our Eighteenth Century Constitution to the government that Congress has shaped in the intervening two and a quarter centuries, Professor Strauss argues, requires accepting the difference between the President's role as "Commander in Chief" of the Nation's military, and his right to seek written opinions from those Congress has empowered to administer domestic laws under his oversight. Thus, the question for today is not whether the PCAOB offends Eighteenth Century ideas about government structure, but the question asked by Professors Bruff, Lawson, and Pildes - whether the relationships between PCAOB and SEC, SEC and President meet the constitutional necessity for effective presidential oversight of the execution of federal law or not. The Constitution does not require more than this and, Professors Calabresi and Yoo to the contrary notwithstanding, the Court should and surely will avoid a result imperiling the wide range of governmental agencies Congress has created, the President has overseen, and the courts have treated as legitimate wielders of government authority over the many years since the Constitution was written.


[1] The first probabilistic tsunami flooding maps have been developed. The methodology, called probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment (PTHA), integrates tsunami inundation modeling with methods of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA). Application of the methodology to Seaside, Oregon, has yielded estimates of the spatial distribution of 100- and 500-year maximum tsunami amplitudes, i.e., amplitudes with 1% and 0.2% annual probability of exceedance. The 100-year tsunami is generated most frequently by far-field sources in the Alaska-Aleutian Subduction Zone and is characterized by maximum amplitudes that do not exceed 4 m, with an inland extent of less than 500 m. In contrast, the 500-year tsunami is dominated by local sources in the Cascadia Subduction Zone and is characterized by maximum amplitudes in excess of 10 m and an inland extent of more than 1 km. The primary sources of uncertainty in these results include those associated with interevent time estimates, modeling of background sea level, and accounting for temporal changes in bathymetry and topography. Nonetheless, PTHA represents an important contribution to tsunami hazard assessment techniques; viewed in the broader context of risk analysis, PTHA provides a method for quantifying estimates of the likelihood and severity of the tsunami hazard, which can then be combined with vulnerability and exposure to yield estimates of tsunami risk.


The tool kit Mobilizing Rural Communities to Prevent Childhood Obesity is the product of a seven-state multidisciplinary research project focused on enhancing obesity prevention efforts by integrating community coaching into the work of rural community coalitions. The interactive tool kit is available at no cost both in print form and online, and it consists of five tutorials that present best practices and lessons learned throughout the research project. Extension professionals working within health promotion coalitions may wish to use or promote the tool kit. Coalition members can complete the activities contained in the tool kit individually or as a group.


Various generations of zero α,ω-alkylenediamine core poly(amidoamine) PAMAM dendrimers (tetra-amine terminated substrates, A4) were allowed to react with sub-stoichiometric amounts (i.e., 2.0 equivalents) of Boc anhydride to give product mixtures consisting of the symmetrical tetra-Boc product (B4) and four partial Boc protected adducts, namely, (1) the tri-(AB3), (2) di-geminal (A2B2), (3) di-vicinal (A2B2) and (4) mono-Boc (A3B) products. These unprecedented, regio-differentiated Boc cores possess emerging dendritic features and intrinsic "protect–deprotect" function. We refer categorically to these newly differentiated branched cores as differentiated dendroid templates (DDT's). These dendroid templates can be well resolved by thin layer chromatography (TLC). Gram quantities of these Boc adducts were purified using single pass silica gel column chromatography. These partial Boc protected, differentiated dendroid templates (AmBn, m/n = 1–3) were used as "protect–deprotect" functionalized starting substrates (i.e., regio-differentiated cores) for synthesizing higher generation libraries of regio-differentiated PAMAM dendrimers. In principle, the use of differentiated dendroid templates (i.e., regio-functionalized star-branched cores) should be expected to offer broad options for the systematic engineering and control of many diverse organic nanostructures as a function of size, shape and regio-chemistry.


The effect of gay and lesbian parenting on children has been the touchstone issue in much of the recent state litigation on same sex marriage, with opponents of same sex marriage arguing that there is a rational basis for denying marriage rights to gays and lesbians because the central purpose of marriage is procreation and childrearing, but that children are harmed or disadvantaged when raised by gay or lesbian parents. To interrogate this claim, I critique the social science research that informs the concerns frequently expressed about the possible negative effects of lesbigay parenting on children's emotional, psychosocial, and sexual development. In particular, I focus on research relevant to whether growing up in a lesbigay household is as positive an experience for children as growing up in a heterosexual household, as much of the literature to date has addressed the issue of whether lesbigay parenting is harmful to children. I conclude that the research fails to support the theory that denying marriage or parenting rights to same sex couples serves the welfare of children. I further argue that public opposition to gay marriage, particularly in the context of lesbigay parenting, is animated by a deeper concern - the proverbial 'elephant in the room' on gay rights issues. That elephant is the visceral disgust reaction that many Americans feel toward homosexual sex, and the resulting moral intuition that homosexuality and homosexual relationships are immoral. Thus, many people will conclude that it is better for children to be raised in heterosexual households because they do not want children exposed to the lesbigay 'lifestyle.' Nor do they want to increase the 'risk' that children will develop a homosexual orientation if they are raised by lesbigay parents. The article discusses new psychological research on moral decision making, which suggests that the 'moral' emotion of disgust is at the root of much of the opposition to gay rights. The disgust reaction is likely a byproduct of human evolution that fails to inform rational judgments about the policy questions surrounding lesbigay parenting and marriage rights.


The purpose of this study is to obtain a spatially explicit assessment of the impact of reservoirs on natural river sediment fluxes to the sea in the Mediterranean Maghreb Basin (MMB), a region where both mechanical erosion rates and the anthropogenic pressure on surface water resources are high. We combined modeling of riverine sediment yields (sediment fluxes divided by the drainage basin area) and water drainage intensities in a 5' × 5' grid point resolution (~10 km × 10 km) with a compilation of existing reservoirs in the area, and calculated sediment trapping based on average water residence time in these reservoirs. A total number of 670 reservoirs could be assembled from various sources (including digitization from Google maps), comprising large-scale, small-scale and hillside reservoirs. 450 of them could be implemented in our modeling approach. Our results confirm that natural sediment yields are clearly above the world average, with the greatest values for Morocco (506 t km−2 year−1), followed by Algeria (328 t km−2 year−1) and by Tunisia (250 t km−2 year−1). Including dams in the downstream routing of suspended sediments to the sea reduces the natural sediment flux in the entire MMB to the sea from 96 to 36 Mt km−1 year−1, which corresponds to an average sediment retention of 62%. Trapping rates are highest in the Tunisian basin part, with about 72%, followed by the Algerian (63%) and the Moroccan basin parts (55%). Small reservoirs and hillside reservoirs are quantitatively important in the interception of these sediments compared to large reservoirs. If we only considered the dams included in the widely used Global Reservoir and Dam (GRanD) database which comprises mainly large reservoirs sediment retention behind dams would account for 36% of the natural suspended particulate matter (SPM) flux to the Mediterranean Sea. Our data reveal negative correlation between sediment retention and natural erosion rates among the three Maghreb countries, which can be explained by the greater difficulties to build dams in steep terrains where natural sediment yields are high. Although the lowest sediment retention rates are found in the Moroccan part of the MMB, it is probably here where riverine sediment starvation has the greatest impacts on coastline dynamics. Understanding the impact of dams and related water infrastructures on riverine sediment dynamics is key in arid zones such as the MMB, where global warming is predicted to cause important changes in the climatic conditions and the water availability.


The trend in many countries is to outsource maintenance with competitive tendering. The design of the tender is then a crucial issue. A new type of tendering contract, called "Integrated Bridge Maintenance", was introduced in one experimental area in Sweden. In this case the preventive bridge maintenance is separated from the standard road maintenance contract. The ideas behind these changes are that the new approach can increase efficiency through a combination of increased specialization, economies of scale and through giving the private contractor a greater degree of freedom concerning exactly what to do and exactly when to do it. A pilot project has been running since 2004 for all bridges in Uppsala County with about 400 bridges and since 2007 for all bridges in Orebro County with about 700 bridges. The experiences and lessons from this pilot project are presented in this thesis together with guidelines on how to procure Integrated Bridge Maintenance in the future. An important feature of the contract was that it contained a combination of specific measures that the contractor should carry out and properties of the bridges that the contractor was responsible to maintain. This created a balance between predictability and flexibility for the contractor. The contractor could make long term planning for the work. The client was satisfied because of increased competence and a low price. The latter can partly be explained by the possibility for the specialised bridge crew to receive additional work from other clients. As information about old bridges always is incomplete a partnering structure needs to be built into the contract. Experience has also shown that a conscious policy to maintain long run competition is important. The general conclusion is that the project was seen as successful and as creating more "value for money". To manage a bridge stock optimally from a life cycle perspective is a very complex task, since the conditions for the individual bridge can vary greatly from place to place which the answers from the research questions indicate. Besides following-up and evaluating the Integrated Bridge Maintenance projects a number of research questions have been studied. Is Integrated Bridge Maintenance a successful method to increase the effectiveness and to increase the standard in bridge maintenance alternatively increasing the service life for the bridge stock at an optimal cost, i.e., will IBM lead to lower LCC? It is difficult to answer this question with exact numbers after so short time, but so far the opinion is that the effectiveness has increased. How can a bridge stock develop over a long time e.g. 15 years? Based on historical data one can calculate, for instance, new construction rate, demolition rate and average age for the bridge stock. This information could together with different future scenarios be a basis for different bridge management strategies for the actual bridge stock. What is the real service life for a bridge? Survival analysis for the different types of bridges in the actual bridge stock will give a good estimate of the different expected service life. Why and at which age are bridges demolished? Two main reasons were found in this study: deterioration process of the bridge had gone too far and/or load bearing capacity was too low, and road were rerouted. What is the real service life for a bridge edge beam, one of the most often repaired element of Swedish bridges? Survival analysis of edge beams located on different types of roads will give a good estimate of the different expected service life. How should a long-term contract for bridge maintenance and specially Integrated Bridge Maintenance be procured? The bridge manager should have a good understanding of the answers on the research questions above when the tender documents are to be prepared for the actual bridge stock. Thereafter the area that the contract should cover could be chosen, a good balance between properties and measures, defining the working cycle for properties, a flexible partnering structure in the contract and a suitable length of the contract (x years) inclusive an option (+ y years) and finally good incentives in the contract. To sum up, the main purpose with the doctoral project has been reached. A model for procurement of bridge maintenance has been developed; see the projects in Uppsala and Orebro. The contractor has developed more effective methods for bridge maintenance. The doctoral project has been a step closer to the end goal of reducing the society's costs for bridge maintenance in the future. The bridges should be functional to the lowest possible cost during its expected service life (LCC). The doctoral project has also contributed with new knowledge in the area of bridge maintenance, the actual development of a bridge stock over time, real service life for road bridges in Sweden and survival analysis.


Background: According to the Qatar National Vision 2030, Qatar residents are encouraged to implement information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives in government, business, and education in pursuit of a knowledge-based society that embraces innovation, entrepreneurship, and excellence in education. This research project, which is funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) under the National Priority Research Program (NPRP), is contributing to this vision by investigating the use of innovative training technology to train Qataris so that they are prepared for the 21st century workforce. Specifically, this research project investigates the use of mobile computer technology--such as mobile phones, tablet computers, and handheld computers--to train Qatar residents on workplace English so that they can become more effective when communicating in the workplace. This presentation will share the results of a preliminary study that was conducted. This project will be expanded using the "Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile Education" (FRAME) model (Figure 1) that describes the convergence of mobile technologies, human learning capacities, and social interaction. Objectives: The research evaluates the effectiveness of the mobile computer technology training and transferability to the Qatar workplace environment. Methods: A total of 27 trainees participated in this study. They were given a pre-test followed by the mobile learning training and then a post-test. Results: Overall, the learners' performance improved by 16 percent after completing the training with mobile technology. Ninety four percent of subjects said that the quality of the presentation on the mobile technology was either excellent, good, or fair. One hundred percent of subjects reported that the mobile technology helped them learn. Conclusion: The delivery of training using mobile computer technology was well received by learners. They liked the interactive and innovative nature of the training.


In this article, we report on the construction of a test of deep word knowledge in French as a second language that can be used at advanced levels of proficiency.By 'deep word knowledge' we mean the knowledge of the semantic network of L2-words; our test focuses on the knowledge of the relations between L2-words and the words semantically related to each of these words; part of this is the knowledge of different meanings of polysemous words.In our test, each item consists of an L2-word, i.e. the item word, accompanied by six other L2-words that have or do not have a semantic relation with the item word. The testee has to mark the semantically related words. These relations may be paradigmatic (i.e. cases of synonymy, antonymy, or hyponymy) or syntagmatic (i.e. collocations, ?art-whole relations, or defining terms).The test was pretested on students of different university levels, i.e. advanced and near native students, and also on several reference groups of real native students. The results of the pretest showed the fairly good discriminatingpower of the test: differences between the mean scores of the groups of advanced, near native and native students proved to be significant. The test even discriminates between different levels of native proficiency (the french equivalents of ??, ?A and highschool students). The reliability (Cronbachs a) was estimated separately for the groups of advanced and near native students and proved satisfactory: .84 and .88 respectively.The data of the pretest administration was used in an item analysis procedure to modify and improve the test and to give it its final form.In the near future we will investigate the relationship between the deep word knowledge our test measures and scores on tests of broad, quantitative word knowledge; furthermore we will investigate the power of these two kinds of vocabulary scores to predict integrated language skills, in particular writing ability.


ABSTRACT Using ED(P)-XRFS (Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry) analytical methodology, iodine is now routinely determined as part of a multi-element XRFS analysis package on samples (soils and stream sediments) collected for regional geochemical baseline mapping in the United Kingdom. For the first time, a high density regional geochemical map of iodine in soils is presented. These new data for iodine greatly increase the worldwide database for iodine in soils and the regional map of iodine offers an opportunity to better understand the factors that control its distribution in the surface environment. Iodine is often cited as the classic example of how a trace element deficiency in the environment affects human health, in the case of iodine endemic diseases collectively referred to as iodine deficiency disorders. The proximity to the sea coast, providing a supply of iodine via the atmosphere, and the organic content of the soil are seen as the two most important factors in determining the iodine status of the soil.


This is the first comprehensive field guide to illustrate and describe the varied bird species of Borneo, an ecologically significant island comprising Brunei, the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan. With close to 1,600 beautiful color illustrations and 630 color distribution maps, this up-to-date guide identifies and details more than 620 bird species by key characteristics and habitat information. It also includes all recently split species, and provides full coverage of the Bornean endemics and distinctive races when they differ from their counterparts on neighboring islands or in mainland Southeast Asia. Birds of Borneo is the essential resource for all birdwatchers and wildlife enthusiasts interested in this remarkable and unique region. * A convenient single-volume guide to the bird species of Borneo * Up-to-date information on key characteristics and habitats * Close to 1,600 color illustrations of more than 620 bird species *630 color distribution maps * Includes recently split species and distinctive Bornean races