The demand for the use of natural dyes continues to increase all over the world. Natural dyes can be derived from different natural sources including plants. Application of natural dyes in food and textile industries is very pronounced but knowledge on staining biological specimens like urine is very limited. Currently, only synthetic dyes are available for staining urine sediments but empirical studies suggest that they are hazardous to health and to the environment. This study assessed the potential ability of the extract of turmeric rhizome as a suitable stain for microscopic urine sediments. Extraction and quantification of the natural product was evaluated using sohxlet apparatus. Results of the study were analyzed utilizing the statistical tool two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to determine the effect of certain factors to the efficacy of the plant dyes and Tukey's multiple comparison tests to determine the effect of each parameter on the different microscopic urine elements. The results of the study revealed that turmeric extract can be used as a stain for microscopic urine sediments such as urates, phosphates, crystals, red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs), hyphal elements and epithelial cells. However, urinary casts were not optimally stained due to its high refractile nature. The efficiency of the staining result to urine elements is affected by varying concentrations and pH except for casts. On the other hand, there were noted changes in the staining affinity of elements when they were subjected to varying length of staining time except for red blood cells which were best observed when incubated for 5 minutes.


After the revision of Fet & Soleglad (2002), Euscorpius tergestinus (C. L. Koch, 1837) was considered a polymorphic species widespread from France to Croatia. In this study, we reconsidered the taxonomy of E. tergestinus s.str. based on morphological and genetic evidence, its range, and its original description. Euscorpius aquilejensis (C. L. Koch, 1837), stat. nov., previously synonymous with E. tergestinus , is elevated to species status herein. A preliminary phylogenetic analysis based on available GenBank 16S rDNA data shows a separate, basal position of E. aquilejensis and some other Euscorpius species, which implies that the subgenus Euscorpius s.str. is paraphyletic.


Analysts of environmental policy in the former Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe have increasingly recognised the need to interrelate inherited social institutions and new political dynamics. This perspective is developed by examining the transformation of minerals policy in the Czech Republic, focusing on regulation of the aggregates industry. This sector highlights specific problems for institutional 'capacity-building' for sustainable development. Efforts to move beyond the centralised, legalistic and poorly implemented regulatory regimes of the early post-Communist period encounter significant dislocation between bureaucratic capacities for data-gathering and effective mechanisms for the implementation of strategic policies. This reflects a particular concentration of expertise in the geological sciences rather than policy design, and the importation of policy mechanisms from other EU countries that depend heavily on multi-level planning, for which there is little capacity in the Czech Republic. Understanding hesitant regulatory transformations in the aggregates sector also show the need to articulate national-level analyses of capacity-building with the uneven progress towards ecological modernisation in particular economic sectors.


Infrastructure asset management (IAM) gave a step forward in Portuguese water utilities due to recent legal obligations in developing IAM plans. An effort was made by AGS (Administracao e Gestao de Sistemas de Salubridade, S.A.), private operator in 17 water utilities, to achieve a higher level of managing data. Data management was an important hurdle to be overcome in order to accurately assess performance indicators. An appropriate bridge to be made is the link between IAM methodological processes and current operational management; this link is crucial when alternative solutions are defined in the planning stage and decisions need to be made. In the past, through continuously hydraulic modelling collaborative projects, AGS achieved sufficient maturity in several processes, such as (a) update network maps, (b) link geographical information system with other information systems, and (c) profiling consumption demand. Nowadays, concerns related with energy savings are gaining importance; concepts as energy efficiency, reducing carbon footprint and gas emissions should be followed. This paper describes an approach to energy assessment in a real water distribution system, where performance indicators associated with energy efficiency were computed for three different operational alternatives. Results considering a balance between cost and performance dimensions were assessed.


Background: Interferon-α (IFN-α) is a therapeutic option in high risk patients with Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPNs). The response to IFN-α treatment of chronic hepatitis C was shown to be strongly influenced by several related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in a region adjacent to the IL28B gene. The objective of this study was to investigate the possibility of similar influence of IL28B gene polymorphism in IFN-α treated MPN patients. Methods: 20 patients with polycythemia vera (PV) or essential thrombocythemia (ET) treated with IFN-α included, 7 were earlier treated with hydroxyurea. Hematologic response was evaluated using the European Leukemia Net (ELN) criteria. DNA from whole blood samples was isolated using MagNA Pure LC DNA Isolation Kit I for IL28B genotyping, and the variability at rs12979860, rs12980275 and rs8099917 were determined by allelic discrimination assays using Taqman minor groove binding probes. Results: The IFN-α treatment reduced platelet count ( p <0.05), and in patients with polycythemia vera (PV) also hemoglobin, hematocrit and white blood cell counts declined ( p <0.05). Hematologic response by ELN criteria was significantly influenced by the IL28B SNP. Among 20 patients with PV or ET, the CC genotype at rs12979860 was found in 8/11 patients (73%) with hematologic CR as compared with 1/9 (11%) with PR or NR ( p =0.010). Conclusion: The results in this pilot study indicate that variation in IL28B genotype might influence hematologic response in IFN-α treated MPN patients.


1,3,5-Trinitrobenzene (TNB) was recrystd. from about 30 solvents and five mixed solvents in around 50 expts. to yield five new solvates. All the solvates lose their solvent readily, and special precautions were required to det. their crystal structures. In all cases, the solvents that gave solvates are electron-rich aroms. leading to the conjecture that p...p donor-acceptor stacking interactions are important. This was confirmed from the crystal structures. Addnl., these structures are composed of hexagonal sheets in which TNB and solvent mols. are linked with weak C-H...O hydrogen bonds. The benzene solvate contains an unusual finite TNB motif not hitherto seen. The toluene and chlorobenzene solvates are not isostructural, and C-H...Cl interactions in the latter are unusually short and linear, accounting thereby for the failure of chloro-Me structural exchange. The m-xylene and mesitylene solvates are similar to the toluene solvate. This study indicates that the use of terms such as solvate, pseudopolymorph, donor-acceptor complex, and mol. complex is a subjective matter, and also that a better definition for the term pseudopolymorph may be needed, esp. because it occurs frequently in the pharmaceutical literature.


The relationship between life stress, coping strategies and psychological distress was
investigated in a non-clinical population of thirteen to fifteen year olds (N = 159). The
main aim of the research was to evaluate whether the effectiverneffective dichotomy was,
clinically, the most useful way to understand coping responses. The study combined
traditional psychological and social constructionist perspectives and utilised a multimethod
approach.
The Birleson Depression Inventory (Birleson, 1981), the Life Events Checklist
(LEC) (Johnson and McCutcheon, 1980) and the Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS)
(Frydenberg and Lewis, 1993) were administered to all participants. A sample of twenty
was then interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule which combined
questions from the Coping Process Interview (Seiffge-Krenke, 1995) and Narrative
Therapy (White, 1995). Quantitative data was statistically analysed and qualitative data
was described using content analyses of the interviews.
Levels of depression were shown to be relatively high amongst this group. The
results revealed that minor life events were as salient for this population as more major
change. Few life events were universally experienced as either positive or negative.
Results confirmed that there were significant correlations between coping
strategies used and levels of depression. `Solving the Problem' strategies were related to
low levels of depression while `Non-Productive Coping' was related to higher depression
levels. The adoption of these constructs as respectively `effective' and `ineffective' was
not supported due to both the poor to moderate internal reliability of the Adolescent
Coping Scale and the findings of the qualitative analysis.
Content analyses of the interviews suggested that there was a broad range of
coping strategies that the participants themselves considered effective, including `nonproductive'
responses. Appraisal was shown to be a key element of the coping process.
The interviews also revealed that coping responses changed over time and were neither
static in terms of the situation nor the individual.
These results were discussed in relation to findings in the literature and
implications for clinical intervention and future research were highlighted


Curriculum integration and working in teams are two key characteristics of middle schooling in Australia today. As part of a new primary/middle teacher education program an interdisciplinary team of academics has developed a course that aims to teach pre service teachers how to plan for and teach an integrated curriculum unit in an authentic context: their 6 week school placement. This paper will describe the first cycle of an action research project detailing the issues for the third year pre service teachers and for the staff involved in teaching the course as they come to grips with new ways of working. This is an action research project and the data includes course materials, staff notes and journals and student assignments. A number of key issues have emerged from this trial including pre services teachers' knowledge of how curriculum is constructed at this stage of their career and the difficulties of modeling this approach.


Abstract. Lincoln Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a technique known as dynamic photoacoustic spectroscopy (DPAS) that could enable remote detection of trace gases via a field-portable laser-based system. A fielded DPAS system has the potential to enable rapid, early warning of airborne chemical threats. DPAS is a new form of photoacoustic spectroscopy that relies on a laser beam swept at the speed of sound to amplify an otherwise weak photoacoustic signal. We experimentally determine the sensitivity of this technique using trace quantities of SF6 gas. A clutter-limited sensitivity of ∼100  ppt is estimated for an integration path of 0.43 m. Additionally, detection at ranges over 5 m using two different detection modalities is demonstrated: a parabolic microphone and a laser vibrometer. Its utility in detecting ammonia emanating from solid samples in an ambient environment is also demonstrated.


We address the impact of corruption in a developing economy in the context of an empirically relevant hold-up problem - when a foreign firm sinks an investment to provide infrastructure services. We focus on the structure of the economy's bureaucracy, which can be centralized or decentralized, and characterize the 'corruptibility' of bureaucrats in each case. Results are explained in terms of the noninternalization, under decentralization, of the 'bribe externality' and the 'price externality.' In welfare terms, decentralization is favoured, relatively speaking, if the tax system is less inefficient, funding is less tight, bureaucrats are less venal, or compensation for expropriation is ungenerous.


Porous micritic facies, either primary chalks or resulting from secondary destructive micritization, can constitute important hydrocarbon or water reservoirs. Characterization of reservoir properties and the understanding of factors which controlled the distribution of porosity are of primary interest to evaluate the prospective reserves. Middle and late Oxfordian limestones of the eastern Paris Basin show several horizons with porosities higher than 20%. The porosity is mainly microporous and located either within secondary micritized grains or in the micritic matrix. Using SEM, cathodoluminescence, as well as confocal microscopy, stable oxygen and carbon isotope ratios, and petrophysical measurements, a scenario for the evolution of the micropores is proposed. Lime mudstones to packstones constitute the majority of the high-porosity facies (HPFs). Inner lagoonal deposits are more micritized and thus more porous than grainstones, and facies rich in leiolitic oncoids and echinoid clasts are less impacted by micritization. Micritization was responsible for an increase of the intragranular porosity in most grain types. During both eogenesis and shallow burial, mineralogical stabilization dissolved aragonitic particles and allowed precipitation of calcite rhombs. This process was probably enhanced below surfaces of subaerial exposure. During burial, Ostwald ripening allowed the growth of larger micrite crystals at the expense of smaller ones during early Berriasian and late Aptian recharges of deep aquifers when the northern margin of the basin was exposed. Overgrowths on micrite crystals were more important in intervals strongly affected by chemical compaction, which favored oversaturation of waters with respect to calcite. In low-porosity horizons (LPFs), the dense micritic texture of oncoids and the monocrystalline architecture of echinoid clasts prevented an intense micritization, while the strong chemical compaction enhanced poronecrosis. Telogenetic fracturing created new fluid pathways that favored inputs of meteoric fluid in porous micrite and allowed the continuation of Ostwald ripening during Cenozoic times. As a whole, mesogenetic inputs of waters undersaturated with respect to calcite in deep aquifers during exposure of basin margins are a more efficient process than early subaerial exposure for enhancing aggrading neomorphism and appearance of microporous micrites. Initial mineralogical heterogeneities also impact the intensity of chemical compaction and thus the stratigraphical distribution of microporous limestones.


A rigorous analytic Bloch wave formalism is presented to calculate and analyze the photon lifetime of distributed feedback (DFB) lasers. By expressing the electromagnetic fields in the DFB structure as a superposition of two counterpropagating Bloch waves, the DFB can be considered as a Fabry-Perot cavity for the Bloch waves. Analytic formulas for the laser threshold condition and the photon lifetime of DFB lasers are then derived, which have the same simple forms and physical insight as those for Fabry-Perot lasers. Numerical results are presented and interpreted along with comparisons with those obtained from the coupled mode theory and the transfer matrix method.


Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a premier model system to study ageing in post mitotic cells.
In this study, we show that Mtl1, member of the Cell Wall Integrity pathway (CWI), plays
a positive role in Chronological Life Span (CLS). The absence of Mtl1 shortens CLS
whereas its overexpression extends it. In mtl1 cells, we observe mitochondrial dysfunction
during diauxic shift that is reflected in i) increase in uncoupled respiration associated to
low oxygen consumption; ii) significant increase in mitochondrial membrane potential; iii)
ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species) accumulation and as well as iv) a descent in aconitase
activity. We demonstrate that this mitochondrial dysfunction observed in mtl1 mutant is a
consequence of improper regulation of key signaling pathwaysrequired for entry in
quiescence. TOR1/SCH9 deletion and less effectively PKA (Protein Kinase A) inactivation
in mtl1 not only suppressed the mitochondrial defects but also increased the CLS. Mtl1
links mitochondrial dysfunction with TOR (Target of Rapamycin) and PKA pathways in
quiescence.
In the absence of Mtl1, the stability of the inhibitory subunit of PKA, Bcy1 is severely
reduced, mainly as a consequence of a high PKA activity. Mtl1 regulates PKA inactivation
through Bcy1 phosphorylation, both in diauxic conditions and mainly in response to
glucose depletion. In these conditions, Mtl1 negatively regulates Tor1/Sch9 function to
phosphorylate Bcy1 and thus to inhibit PKA through phosphorylation of Bcy1 by Slt2
MAPK, although additional kinases might be also involved in this signal. We also show
that Mtl1 function in CLS does not totally depend on CWI pathway since mtl1slt2 double
mutant presents synthetic lethality. Mtl1 acts as a glucose sensor thereby it regulates both
NCR (Nitrogen Catabolite Repression) and RTG (Retrograde Response Mitochondrial-
Nucleus) pathways through Snf1 kinase upon glucose depletion, although independent of
TORC1 and PKA functions. Again, additional targets are not completely ruled out.
In conclusion, Mtl1 is an efficient transceptor involved in sensing and signaling nutrient
availability in quiescence, mainly glucose, and in regulating multiple pathways involved in
life extension.


In this investigation we have prototype a low-power, small size, wireless, reflectance photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor for collecting physiological data of patients. The PPG sensor is consisted of two circuit boards: a commercial available wireless sensor network (WSN) platform and a PPG amplifier circuit board. The WSN platform is used for testing the capability of several microchips, such as a microcontroller, an external flash memory and a radio chip, on a single printed circuit board. The WSN platform is stacked on the top of the PPG amplifier circuit board, in order to achieve a minimum size for patient to wear comfortably. The PPG sensor currently detects the physiological signals from finger tip and transmits the signal to a personal computer for display in real-time. The PPG sensor is suitable for universities laboratories to evaluate wide range of topics, including analog signal conditioning, embedded system and software, wireless communications, biomedicine engineering.


Previous accounts of preverbal subjects in Spanish and European Portuguese (EP) in the literature have debated the syntactic position of these elements. According to some analyses, preverbal subjects are canonical arguments appearing in an A-position (e.g. Goodall 2001, 2002; Suner 2003 for Spanish; Duarte 1997; Costa 2004 for EP). Other analyses propose that preverbal subjects are non-arguments appearing in a left-peripheral – perhaps CLLD – A'-position (e.g. Uribe-Etxebarria 1990, 1995; Ordonez & Trevino 1999 for Spanish; Barbosa 1996, 2000 for EP). Although Galician is an ideal language for insight on this debate due to linguistic ties with EP and political ties with Spain, Gupton (2006) obtained inconclusive results regarding the status of preverbal subjects in Galician. As the literature on Galician lacks descriptions of preferred word orders according to discourse context, I collected quantitative and qualitative experimental data to describe the syntax-information structure interface in Galician. The vast majority of speakers of this minority language are Spanish-Galician bilinguals with (self-reported) high levels of competency in both languages. This is of relevance because a variety of bilinguals, including heritage speakers, attrited L1 speakers, and those who have been claimed to have incompletely acquired the heritage language have been shown to exhibit instability and optionality at the linguistic interfaces, in particular at the syntax-discourse pragmatics interface (e.g. Hulk & Muller 2000; Sorace 2005 among numerous others), which is the subject of investigation in this dissertation. The data collected indicate a marked preference for SVO in a wide variety of discourse contexts, a preference that differs from those claimed to apply in similar contexts in Spanish (e.g. Ordonez 1997, Zubizarreta 1998, Casielles 2004). Assuming that the presence of clitics implies the projection of f (Raposo & Uriagereka 2005) and the extension of the preverbal field into the left periphery, the


Modelling of industrial dust explosions poses a formidable challenge to researchers and safety engineers. Whereas current best practice with respect to modelling the consequences of vapour cloud explosions in the petroleum industry involves the use of computational fluid dynamics and a probabilistic approach to risk assessment, current safety practice for powder handling plants still rely on empirical guidelines. Although there has been significant progress in the predictive capabilities of phenomenological tools and CFD codes in recent years, such methods still require further development and verification. The first part of the paper contains a brief review of medium to large-scale dust explosion experiments suitable for validating consequence models for dust explosions. The second part demonstrates typical modelling challenges by simulating selected experiments from a study of vented explosions in a connected vessel system with the CFD code DESC. The simulation results are evaluated based on comparison with experimental results, and with respect to the observed response to moderate variations in the input parameters. Finally, the discussion highlights main knowledge gaps with respect to available experimental data and current modelling capabilities.


Cardinal Decio Azzolino (1623-1689) has previously been known for his association with Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689). Thanks to the donation of the Azzolino Archive to the Biblioteca Comunale di Iesi in 1985 it is now possible to thoroughly study his career. This thesis is an attempt to outline Azzolino's life history and to examine his most important literary works: Aforismi politici (1667); History of the Papacy (1665); Voto nepotismo (1679). Azzolino was appointed Cardinal in 1654. He became the leader of a faction in the Sacred College, the Squadrone Volante, which emerged as an independent group in the conclave of 1655. The Squadrone sought to strengthen papal authority through two central policies: reasserting the Papacy's political neutrality in relation to the Catholic secular powers, and furthering the administrative professionalization of the Curia. The major development in the latter process was the official institution of the office Secretary of State in 1644. During the long period of transition which gives the thesis its chronological limits, the Secretary of State took over the duties heretofore exercized by the Papal Nephew. The Squadrone Volante functioned as a swing group and their politics focused on the papal conclaves. The election of Clement IX in 1667, in which Queen Christina played an important part by initiating an alliance between Louis XIV and the Squadrone, ushered in a brief period of cooperation between France and the Papacy. Azzolino was appointed Secretary of State in 1667. The election of Clement X in 1670 was a political setback for the faction. By the mid-1670's, so many of its members had died that it was now only a residue. But the policies of the Squadrone had penetrated to a broader base within the Sacred College, and were taken up by a new faction led by Benedetto Odescalchi, the Zelanti. It is my conclusion that Cardinal Azzolino and the Squadrone Volante had a greater role in the political reorientation and the administrative restructuring of the papal government during the second half of the 17th century than has heretofore been recognized.


This paper presents a sub noise reduction design to enhance speech for completely-in-the-canal (CIC) type hearing aids by optimizing its algorithm and associated architecture. In algorithm optimization, a low-complexity mixed perceptual-discrete wavelet packet transform (P-DWPT) and fast Hartley transform (FHT) are adopted for spectral decomposition and reconstruction. A simple yet efficient denoise method with 4-zone-voice activity detection (VAD) supports a consonant protection to improve speech quality and a skip scheme to reduce power consumption. In the designed architecture, mixed P-DWPT and FHT are folded into one 8-by-8 configurable butterfly computation unit with on-time scheduling for low power operation. The circuit is implemented with 0.18 μm CMOS process and consumes only 0.65 μW power at 1.0 V with a speech quality that is comparable to that achieved using other high-complexity algorithms.


Nyquist Wavelength division multiplexing (N-WDM), is a promising scheme in order to enhance the spectral efficiency of future coherent optical communication systems. In N-WDM systems, the channel bandwidth and spacing are selected to maximize the spectral efficiency while maintaining acceptable levels of inter-carrier and inter symbol interference. To further increase the spectral efficiency, bandwidth constrained N-WDM, where baudrate is higher than channel bandwidth can be considered. We propose to combine the bandwidth-constrained N-WDM scheme with a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) designed according to the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. We show that the enhanced resilience to the inter symbol interference offered by DFE provides an effective gain on spectral efficiency. We compare system benefits of DFE and maximum a posteriori sequence detection (MAP) for coherent optical receivers, and show that DFE is as efficient as MAP in mitigating inter symbol interference at a considerably lower complexity.


Our theories formalise various matrix properties that serve to establish existence, uniqueness and characterisation of the solution to affine systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). In particular, we formalise the operator and maximum norm of matrices. Then we use them to prove that square matrices form a Banach space, and in this setting, we show an instance of Picard-Lindelöf's theorem for affine systems of ODEs. Finally, we apply this formalisation by verifying three simple hybrid programs.


The art practice of play uses spontaneity and surprise to communicate meaningful content and inspire critical thinking (1-3). We describe three engineering education outreach efforts that use play to communicate legged robotics research concepts. In the first workshop, Penn engineering students were motivated to learn how to program a legged robot using the narrative of a "dance competition," with the winning dances to be showcased at the Philadelphia Science Festival. In the second workshop, Philadelphia School District high school students used a poseably programmable legged robot to tell a story by performing a series of behaviors in a set of their own design and documenting the story as a video artwork. Here, there were two narratives: One created by the workshop directors, communicating concepts about complex multi-legged behaviors and gaits, and the other created by the students using the robots to express their ideas. In the final workshop, middle school students created locomoting robots using motors, post-consumer materials, and basic art supplies. The concepts of energy and physical programming were demonstrated using working Trashbots and practiced during an introductory exercise making a vibrating motor from a spinning one. Participants then created a robot of their own design using iterative experimentation. We conclude from these three workshops that play can be used as a vehicle for scientific communication. (1) David Getsy, ed. From diversion to subversion: Games, play, and twentieth-century art, Vol. 16 (Penn State Press, 2011). (2) Nato Thompson and Gregory Scholette, eds. The interventionists: Users' manual for the creative disruption of everyday life (MIT Press, 2004). (3) Diedra Krieger, 'Plastic Fantastic,' Gyre Exhibition, Anchorage Museum, Alaska, 2014. For more information: Kod*lab.


Multi-agent systems operating in complex domains crucially require agents to interact with each other. An important result of this interaction is that some of the private knowledge of the agents is being shared in the group of agents. This thesis investigates the theme of knowledge sharing from a theoretical point of view by means of the formal tools provided by modal logic.

More specifically this thesis addresses the following three points.

First, the case of hypercube systems, a special class of interpreted systems as defined by Halpern and colleagues, is analysed in full detail. It is here proven that the logic S5WDn constitutes a sound and complete axiomatisation for hypercube systems. This logic, an extension of the modal system S5n commonly used to represent knowledge of a multi-agent system, regulates how knowledge is being shared among agents modelled by hypercube systems. The logic S5WDn is proven to be decidable. Hypercube systems are proven to be synchronous agents with perfect recall that communicate only by broadcasting, in separate work jointly with Ron van der Meyden not fully reported in this thesis.

Second, it is argued that a full spectrum of degrees of knowledge sharing can be present in any multi-agent system, with no sharing and full sharing at the extremes. This theme is investigated axiomatically and a range of logics representing a particular class of knowledge sharing between two agents is presented. All the logics but two in this spectrum are proven complete by standard canonicity proofs. We conjecture that these two remaining logics are not canonical and it is an open problem whether or not they are complete.

Third, following a influential position paper by Halpern and Moses, the idea of refining and checking of knowledge structures in multi-agent systems is investigated. It is shown that, Kripke models, the standard semantic tools for this analysis are not adequate and an alternative notion, Kripke trees, is put forward. An algorithm for refining and checking Kripke trees is presented and its major properties investigated. The algorithm succeeds in solving the famous muddy-children puzzle, in which agents communicate and reason about each other's knowledge.

The thesis concludes by discussing the extent to which combining logics, a promising new area in pure logic, can provide a significant boost in research for epistemic and other theories for multi-agent systems.


This study aimed to identify performance profiles in NBA playoffs and describe performances in the first and the last games of the series. Thirty games from the official box-scores and player-tracking data of the 2014/15 NBA playoffs were considered. A k-means cluster analysis was performed to group the players according to their game performance profiles and a discriminant analysis was conducted to identify the game-related statistics that best discriminated the groups. The first function correctly classified 64.2% of the cases and the second function classified 29.9% of the cases. The cluster analysis identified four different performance profiles and from the discriminant analysis emerged several offensive and defensive variables to classify the players in the clusters. The identified trends help to improve understanding of the game during different stages of playoffs. Coaches may use this information to better prepare their teams for different game scenarios. Key words: game statistics, players profile, discriminant analysis


OBJECTIVE
Religious coping has implications for the development of psychopathology in the aftermath of traumatic events. This study explored the relationship between religious coping (positive and negative) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomology among survivors of a large industrial explosion that devastated parts of Beirut in August of 2020.

METHOD
Three months after the disaster, 996 residents of Beirut and Lebanon completed validated measures of religious coping (RCOPE) and PTSD symptomatology (Impact of Events Scale-Revised) in either English or Arabic. The majority of participants were young adults aged between 18 and 25 years.

RESULTS
Results indicated that higher levels of negative religious coping were a significant predictor of higher levels of PTSD symptomatology and were associated with a two-fold risk of meeting the criteria for probable PTSD. Other significant predictors included female gender, being a resident of Beirut at the time of the explosion, having personally sustained an injury, or knowing a person injured in the explosion. Effects sizes ranged from .34 to .68.

CONCLUSIONS
Higher scores on measures of negative religious coping were associated with higher levels of PTSD symptomatology. However, negative religious coping may be better construed as a set of religious-based appraisals of event causality and may represent a form of peritraumatic appraisal in the wake of traumatic events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).


Burial mounds act as agents in the relationship between prehistoric communities and their landscape and play a crucial role in claiming, gaining and preserving control of the landscape. As such, they were implemented by prehistoric communities through notions of identity and continuity. This paper addresses the transformation of that role from the early to late prehistoric periods in different areas of Croatia, based on the chronological differences between the burial mounds in continental and coastal areas. Mounds in coastal areas appear as early as the Early Bronze Age, while in continental regions they appear only in the Early Iron Age with a rather abrupt break in the middle of the last millennium B.C. and a very short reappearance in the Roman period. The size, number and distribution of burial mounds were mainly determined by factors from within the social framework of specific communities, which is, to a limited extent, reflected in their contents. The politics of use and re-use of burial mounds in periods following their initial construction is even more interesting in those cases where we can establish the sequence of culturally and/or ethnically different communities in the same area; or where we can establish a large time span between two major occupation periods.


Saline water irrigation has been widely used for crop production where agriculture is short of freshwater. To reveal the responses of soil environment and cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) growth to long-term irrigation with saline water, a 10-year (2006 to 2015) experiment was carried out to study the effects of saline water irrigation on soil physico-chemical properties, as well as the yield and fiber quality of cotton in the low plain around the Bohai Sea (BHLP), China. Five salinity levels of irrigation water were tested (3.4 [T1], 7.1 [T2], 10.6 [T3], 14.1 [T4], and 17.7 dS m−1 [T5]), and freshwater (1.3 dS m−1) was used as control (CK). The results showed that from 2006 to 2015, the electrical conductivity of a saturated soil extract (ECe) in 0 to 100 cm soil depth did not accumulate linearly with years for all treatments but positively correlated with the ratio of irrigation to precipitation. Cotton yield decreased significantly when salinity of irrigation water exceeded 10.6 dS m−1. Fiber quality tended to get worse when salinity of irrigation water reached 17.7 dS m−1. In the tenth year, ECe, sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), the content of silt and clay equivalent size particles, and bulk density of soil plow layer increased with increasing salinity of irrigation water, while soil porosity and the content of macroaggregate in plow layer decreased. Compared with the initial chemical properties of soil plow layer in 2006, pH and SAR for saline water treatments increased at the late stage of cotton growth in 2015. The assessment results of soil quality index (SQI) showed that, in comparison with CK treatment, SQI decreased by 3.7%, 11.1%, 16.9%, 21.0%, and 21.7% in T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5, respectively. Therefore, from the aspect of the soil quality of plow layer in the BHLP, long-term use of irrigation with saline water above 3.4 dS m−1 will decrease soil quality, and this agricultural management should be paid more attention.


This new bilingual edition of George Seferis: Collected Poems both supplements and revises the two earlier editions published in 1967 and 1969. It presents for the first time the complete Notes for a 'Week,' " Three Secret Poems, and three later poems that were not collected by the poet himself but whose English translation he authorized during his lifetime. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Background Fall-related injuries are a global public health problem, especially in elderly populations. In this study, the effect of an intervention aimed at reducing the risk of falls in the homes of community-dwelling elderly persons was evaluated. The intervention, which involves home hazards reduction by providing a minor home help service, is provided in the majority of Swedish municipalities. Methods Intention-to-treat effect estimates were derived using quasi-experimental time series intervention (ITS) analysis for immediate effects and a difference-in-discontinuity (RD) design for long term effects, and community-level estimates were pooled using meta-analysis. The outcome measure was the incidence of fall-related hospitalizations in the treatment population, the age of which varied by municipality (≥65 years, ≥67 years, ≥70 years or ≥75 years). Results We found no statistically significant reductions in injury incidence in the ITS (IRR 1.01 [95% CI: 0.98–1.05]) or RD (IRR 1.00 [95% CI: 0.97–1.03]) analyses. The results are robust to several different model specifications, including segmented panel regression analysis with linear trend change and community fixed effects parameters. Conclusions It is unclear whether absence of an effect is due to a low efficacy of the home hazards modifications provided, or a result of low utilisation. Additional studies of the effects on other quality of life measures are recommended before conclusions are drawn regarding the cost-effectiveness of the provision of home help services.


Migration may confer benefits, such as foraging opportunity and predator avoidance, but partial migration, i.e. that not the whole population migrates, can be expected if benefits differ between individual phenotypes. We here show that seasonal migration from lakes to connected streams in the freshwater fish roach is strongly affected by risk of cormorant predation. We show that the duration away from the lake, as well as roach individual body size, influence the probability of being predated by cormorants. We also present novel field data showing that cormorant predation acts as a selective pressure against individuals with bold personality, providing a mechanism behind the evolution and maintenance of behavioural phenotypic diversity along the bold-shy continuum. Accordingly, we argue that bold individuals have a higher migratory propensity to avoid cormorants, and that cormorant predation on bold individuals may shift animal-personality composition of roach populations, with consequences for selective processes and lake system composition and function.


Today's shared hosting platforms often employ visualization to allow multiple enterprise applications with time-varying resource demands to share a common infrastructure in order to improve resource utilization. Meeting application-level quality of service (QoS) goals becomes a challenge in such an environment as enterprise applications often have a multi-tier architecture and complex interactions and dependencies among individual tiers. In addition, when the shared infrastructure becomes overloaded, appropriate resource control needs to be performed at these individual tiers in a coordinated fashion in order to provide differentiated services to co-hosted applications. In this paper, we present an adaptive multivariate controller that dynamically adjusts the resource shares to individual tiers of multiple applications in order to meet a specified level of service differentiation. The controller parameters are automatically tuned at runtime based on a quadratic cost function and a system model that is learned online using a recursive least-squares (RLS) method. To evaluate our controller design, we built a testbed hosting two instances of the RUBiS application, a multi-tier online auction web site, using Xen virtual machines. Our results indicate that our controller is able to meet given QoS differentiation targets between co-hosted applications while the total demand from these applications exceeds the capacities of the shared systems.


The period after E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)'s literary career ended and before the emergence of contemporary Indigenous writing in Canada, roughly between 1910 and 1960, has been labelled as a "barren period" for Indigenous authorship. The relative failure by Indigenous Peoples in this period to garner publishers or attract wide readerships, however, had more to do with the political and social environment of Canada at the time, than either an ability (or inability) to write material of value. Bernice Winslow Loft (Dawendine) (1902-1997) and Ethel Brant Monture (1892-1977), in the face of considerable challenges to have their voices heard, demonstrate that the period after Johnson's death was not entirely void of Indigenous authorship. Loft and Monture are among a small body of Indigenous authors during this period who, through persistence and performance, left their marks on the stages and pages of settler Canadian libraries and bookshelves.


Conserved genetic programs often predate the homologous structures and phenotypes to which they give rise; eyes, for example, have evolved several dozen times, but their development seems to involve a common set of conserved genes. Recently, the concept of orthologous phenotypes (or phenologs) offered a quantitative way to describe this property. Phenologs are phenotypes or diseases from separate species who share an unexpectedly large set of their associated gene orthologs. It has been shown that the phenotype pairs which make up a phenolog are mutually predictive in terms of the genes involved. Recently, we demonstrated the ranking of gene–phenotype association predictions using multiple phenologs from an array of species. In this work, we demonstrate a computational method which provides a more targeted view of the conserved pathways which give rise to diseases. Our approach involves the generation of synthetic pseudophenotypes made up of Boolean combinations (union, intersection, and difference) of the gene sets for phenotypes from our database. We search for diseases that overlap significantly with these Boolean phenotypes, and find a number of highly predictive combinations. While set unions produce less specific predictions (as expected), intersection and difference-based combinations appear to offer insights into extremely specific aspects of target diseases. For example, breast cancer is predicted by zebrafish methylmercury response minus metal ion response, with predictions MT-COI, JUN, SOD2, GADD45B, and BAX all involved in the pro-apoptotic response to reactive oxygen species, thought to be a key player in cancer. We also demonstrate predictions from Arabidopsis Boolean phenotypes for increased brown adipose tissue in mouse (salt stress response's intersection with sucrose stimulus response); and for human myopathy (red light response minus water deprivation response). We demonstrate the ranking of predictions for human holoprosencephaly from the set intersections between each pair of a variety of closely-related zebrafish phenotypes. Our results suggest that Boolean phenolog combinations may provide a more informed insight into the conserved pathways underlying diseases than either regular phenologs or the naïve Bayes approach.


Minimum fluidization velocity is one of the most important properties to characterize a bed, differentiating between a packed bed and a fluidized bed. Numerical simulation for 4 different ratios of initial bed heights (H) to base diameter (D), were performed; viz. 0.5, 1, 2 and 3. Glass beads of density 2600kg/m3 and with an average diameter of 550μm were used for all the simulations. Simulations were performed using the commercial CFD software, STAR-CCM+. The minimum fluidization velocity was identified by measuring pressure drop across the entire domain. The predicted minimum fluidization velocity remains constant for the different H/D ratios, proving that it is independent of bed height for a cylindrical bed.


In the title compound, C17H15BrO3S, the dihedral angle between the mean planes of the benzofuran and 3-methylphenyl rings is 77.37 (5)°. In the crystal, molecules are linked via pairs of Br⋯O [Br⋯O = 3.335 (2) Å] contacts into inversion dimers. These dimers are further linked by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds and π–π interactions between the benzene and furan rings of neighbouring molecules [centroid–centroid separation = 3.884 (3) Å] into supramolecular chains running along the a-axis direction.


Crosstalk in an analog polarization modulation (PolM) system is studied analytically and experimentally. It is shown capable of producing dramatically lower crosstalk levels than intensity modulation (IM) at higher modulation frequencies (greater than 1 GHz) for a system with 200 GHz channel spacing. Calculations based on the developed analytical model show excellent agreement with experimental results and allow us to determine the necessary launch conditions for low-crosstalk transmission in a polarization modulation link


The mechanism(s) of renal escape from the hydro-osmotic effect of vasopressin is unknown. We therefore studied escape in conscious, unrestrained rats receiving continuous intravascular infusions of 1-deamino-8-arginine-vasopressin (desmopressin) and hypotonic fluid over 5 days. Escape from desmopressin started 8 hours after exposure and was characterized by a progressive increase in urine flow and decreases in urine osmolality and free water reabsorption. When positive water balance was prevented by matching the rate of infusion of hypotonic fluid to urine flow while maintaining the dose of desmopressin constant, escape did not occur. This suggested that water retention, rather than chronic exposure to desmopressin, mediated the escape. To elucidate the mechanism whereby water retention induces escape from desmopressin, urinary prostaglandin E2 excretion was measured and found to be increased concomitant with the onset of escape. Prevention of this increase in urinary prostaglandin E2 excretion with indomethacin resulted in additional water retention and a delay in the onset of escape. During the maintenance of escape, after significant water retention occurred, increases in mean arterial pressure, renal blood flow, and glomerular filtration rate were observed. Renal interstitial solute concentration remained constant through escape. Basal and vasopressin-stimulated collecting tubular and thick ascending limb adenylate cyclase did not differ when control and escape animals were compared. These results suggest that enhanced renal synthesis of prostaglandin E2 facilitates the early phase of escape; later, water retention results in plasma volume expansion with increases in cardiac index, arterial pressure, renal blood flow, and glomerular filtration rate. These systemic and renal hemodynamic alterations may be important in maintaining escape from desmopressin.


Quantitative approaches to directly measure infant movement have not utilized miniature electronics technology, nor been used effectively in evaluating neurological dysfunctions' affect on movement. This thesis presents a new quantitative technique for measuring infant general movements (GMs) using micro-electromechanical accelerometers, while discussing future improvements for this technology and possible benefits to present methods of diagnosing cerebral palsy. For decades, GMs have interested neurologists because characteristics can indicate neurological dysfunctions. Motions over the entire body that show fluency, variation, and complexity characterize normal GMs. Analyzing these movements can accurately predict neurological dysfunction – cerebral palsy, in particular. This research describes a technique to make consistent, quantitative measurements of GMs using accelerometers on infant limbs. Signal processing techniques can find patterns, later determined characteristic of neurological dysfunctions. Such analyses complement the current technique of video footage review. Additionally, data could be reanalyzed using updated signal processing algorithms. An accurate collection of data allows physicians to quickly review an infant's entire history of motion studies. Physical information can be inferred from the data. Correlation techniques have compared motions from different limbs to examine coordination. Evidence suggests this may help indicate dysfunction. High-speed data acquisition enables the study of highfrequency motions, possibly undetectable with the human eye. This research has successfully recorded acceleration and video during GMs from four limbs on multiple infants. Signal processing techniques have been applied to create various graphical representations. The direct measurement of movement makes this work unique, enabling a graphical analysis tool for physicians based on physical performance.


The combination of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signaling is capable of providing significantly improved spectral efficiency and effective multiple access. However, conventional MIMO-NOMA entails significantly increased power consumption and implementation complexity. Inspired by the essence of spatial modulation (SM), in this paper, a novel three-node cooperative relaying system (CRS) using SM-aided NOMA, termed CRS-SM-NOMA, is proposed, in which the messages for two users are conveyed by two different information-bearing units of SM. As the reference scheme, conventional CRS-NOMA is further re-investigated with multiple receive antennas. Besides the achievable rate, which is adopted by most of the existing NOMA works as the performance metric, the bit error rate (BER) of CRS-SM-NOMA and CRS-NOMA is analyzed assuming maximum-likelihood detection. Approximate bit error probability expressions are derived in closed form for both users. Simulation results verify the analysis and show that the proposed CRS-SM-NOMA outperforms conventional CRS-NOMA and SM-OMA in terms of the BER as well as ergodic sum rate.


Introduction. Anticonvulsant hypersensitivity syndrome (AHS)/DRESS induced by anticonvulsants (ACs) is a rare, but severe and potentially fatal adverse reaction that occurs in patients who are treated with classical aromatic anticonvulsants (AAs) (phenytoin, carbamazepine and phenobarbital) as well as with some of the new ACs.
Covered fields. AHS is a disease often difficult to diagnose, with high variability in its clinical presentation. The usual presentation is rash associated with fever and internal organ dysfunction. Symptoms usually occur between 2 and 8 weeks after starting treatment. A type IV hypersensitivity mechanism has been proposed, but viral infections, particularly herpes virus 6, have been shown to play a role. Individuals with specific HLA haplotypes are predisposed to develop this syndrome when exposed to certain medications. In vivo (patch test) and in vitro tests (lymphocyte transformation test) may be useful for the etiologic diagnosis of AHS. Management of AHS consists in its recognition, discontinuation of the causative AC, and the use of systemic corticosteroids. A 40-80% incidence of cross-reactivity between different AAs has been reported. Non-aromatic ACs are considered safe in these patients, but sometimes choosing an alternative AC may be difficult.
Conclusions. Given the high variability in the clinical presentation of AHS, physicians should have a high index of suspicion in AC-treated patients experiencing cutaneous manifestations and internal organ dysfunction. Early recognition of AHS and withdrawal of the causative AC therapy are essential for the treatment and for a successful outcome.


This article describes the development of a task-based framework for providing learning within the workplace using networked multimedia. A philosophy is adopted for the framework that builds on the recognition that tasks must reflect the social process of learning as considered by Vygotsky (1978). This takes into account the role of dialogue in the building of knowledge for an individual and for a group, following the ideas of the conversational framework (Laurillard, 1993), and allowing for future vicarious forms of learning (Mayes & Dineen, 1999). Tasks are supported by links between people as well as activities, material, and the opportunity to find further resources. The framework was provided as a set of guidelines within a manual and also instantiated as a prototype system that represented the course using XML (eXtensible Markup Language). This representation allowed flexible delivery and the system has been used to support undergraduate courses within a university as well as trials within the semiconductor industry.


This paper considers the self-heating process occurring in a compost pile using one- and two-dimensional spatially-dependent models and incorporating terms that account for self-heating due to both biological and oxidative mechanisms. Biological heat generation is known to be present in most industrial processes handling large volumes of bulk organic materials. The heat release rate due to biological activity is modelled by a function which is, at sufficiently low temperatures, a monotonically increasing function of temperature and, at higher temperatures, a monotonically decreasing function of temperature. This functionality represents the fact that microorganisms die or become dormant at high temperatures. The heat release rate due to oxidation reactions is modelled by Arrhenius kinetics. As moisture is another crucial factor in the degradation process of compost, this model consists of four mass-balance equations, namely, energy, oxygen, vapour and liquid water concentrations. Analyses are undertaken for different initial water contents within the compost pile. We show that, when the water content is too low, the reaction is almost negligible whereas, for the case when the water content is too high, the reaction only commences when the water content evaporates and the water ratio drops into an appropriate range. However, for an intermediate water content range, biological reaction is at its optimum and there is a possibility of spontaneous combustion of the compost pile.


Influenza viruses have caused significant pandemics and epidemics throughout history and continue to be a health problem in humans. New molecular diagnostic assays can be used in the clinical setting to explore relevant clinical manifestations, virus characteristics, and virus epidemiology. This thesis focuses on a variety of subjects related to the molecular diagnosis and clinical consequences of seasonal and pandemic influenza virus infections. Our findings demonstrate that molecular assays are highly sensitive and afford practical detection of resistance mutations, virulence markers and virus expression. We show that computational phylogenetics can provide accurate confirmation of an institutional influenza outbreak. Clinical observational studies reveal that immunocompromised patients can display remarkable prolonged influenza virus excretion with common antiviral resistance development, and that resistant viruses can be transmissible and pathogenic. We demonstrate that host immune responses correlate with virus-associated symptoms and sustained viral clearance. The results described in this thesis confirm that molecular diagnostic assays should be widely implemented in the clinical setting to improve influenza virus laboratory diagnostics. The inherent viral genetic variability and antigenic plasticity is a continuous incentive for new clinical and molecular research to keep up with relevant mutations and to improve our medical understanding of influenza virus infections.


Sparked by the protests in Tunis and Cairo, the 2011 Pearl Roundabout uprising was a watershed in the political life of Bahrain—an unprecedented challenge to the tiny island kingdom's ruling bargain and, ultimately, its social fabric. And while the dramatic events unfolding in Tunis and in Tahrir Square may have sparked the Pearl Roundabout uprising, the seeds of dissent were sown much earlier, as Bahrain's post-2001 parliamentary experiment came undone. Behind the tentative steps toward dialogue, the Bahraini parliament continues to loom as the country's most contested institution and also the best-available foundation for lasting peace in the country and even for a political solution that would preserve al-Khalifa rule.


We carry out the recursion-relation analysis for the optical pumping scheme to polarize nuclei by a sequence of short laser pulses and show that such analysis agrees very well with the numerical solution of density matrix equations. A small difference between the results obtained by the numerical solution of density matrix equations and recursion-relation analysis arises from the contribution of the very small populations remaining in excited states when the next pulse arrives, and the difference becomes smaller if the pulse interval is chosen to be much longer than the spontaneous lifetime of the excited states.


The
launch of app-based for-hire vehicle (FHV) services like Uber and Lyft has led
to increased mobility options, but the associated increase in vehicular traffic
has also presented challenges. In New York City, the number of FHVs tripled between
2010 and 2019, to over one hundred thousand, due to the advent of such
companies. This study seeks to understand the impact this increase in FHV usage
has had on greenhouse gas emissions in New York City. The study uses data
collected by the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, which regulates the FHV and
taxi industries, and the NYC Mayor's Office of Sustainability, which publishes
the City's greenhouse gas emissions inventory. The main result of the study is
that although the overall per-vehicle efficiency of the fleet has improved, the
high growth in registered vehicles has led to emissions from FHVs and taxis increasing
66 percent from 2010 to 2018. Electric vehicles present an opportunity for
emissions reductions in New York City's FHV fleet if barriers to vehicle
adoption are adequately addressed and if adoption of EVs does not outpace
vehicle attrition.


ESSAYS ON ROBUST ESTIMATORS FOR NONIDENTICALLY DISTRIBUTED OBSERVATIONS IN SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC AND TIME SERIES MODELS by Suleyman Taspinar Adviser: Professor Wim Vijverberg This thesis proposal consists of three essays on the estimation methods and applications of spatial econometric models and one essay on the generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH)-type models in financial time series. The first essay discusses the heteroskedasticity robust generalized method of moments estimator (RGMME) for the spatial models that allow for spatial dependence in both the dependent variable and the disturbance term (SARAR(1,1)). First, we show that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is generally inconsistent in the presence of unknown heteroskedasticity. Then, we extend robust GMM approach in Lin and Lee (2010) to SARAR(1,1). The large sample properties are rigorously studied and presented for the RGMME. Through a comprehensive Monte Carlo study, we compare the finite sample properties of the RGMME with some other estimators proposed in the literature. The second essay focuses on the GMM estimation of the spatial autoregressive models which impose a moving average process for the disturbance term (SARMA). We extend the best GMM estimator (BGMME) of Liu et al. (2010) to the SARMA models and provide the best set of instruments for the SARMA(1,1) and the SARMA(0,1) specifications. The large sample properties are rigorously studied and presented for the BGMME. The finite sample properties are investigated through an extensive Monte Carlo study. To confirm our results from the Monte Carlo study, we replicate the results for the SARMA(1,1) specification in Behrens et al. (2012) in an empirical illustration. The third essay investigates the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth through a spatially augmented Solow growth model. The current literature on the relationship between FDI and economic growth uses canonical cross-country growth regression specifications that are derived from the textbook Solow growth model for closed economies. iv We claim that these specifications cannot reflect the relationship between economic growth and FDI, because they model each country as an isolated island that does not interact with the rest of the world. On the other hand, a spatially augmented Solow growth model allows for technological interdependence among countries through spatial externalities. The modified growth model yields regression specifications that properly account for spatial autocorrelations. We construct a panel of 85 countries for the period 1980–2010 and estimate the modified specifications with the tools from spatial econometrics. Our findings indicate that FDI inflows have a significant positive effect on the growth rate of host countries. The final essay proposes a flexible distribution for the maximum likelihood estimation of the GARCH-type time series models. The new distribution can better account for the potential skewness and leptokurticity in the driving noise sequence. We study the large sample properties of the new estimator following the methodology presented in Francq and Zakoian (2004). To investigate the finite sample properties of the new estimator, we first conduct a Monte Carlo study. Furthermore, to test the relative out-of-sample predictive power of the new estimator, we test for its prediction power on two data sets using the methods described in White (2000) and Hansen et al. (2003).


Room temperature ionic liquids comprise an unique class of solvent composed of organic and inorganic-based ions that are molten under ambient conditions. They are characterised by high solvent polarity and low vapour pressure, and can be tailored to have specific physical and chemical properties. Consequently, there has been great interest in exploiting these attributes to accelerate and control organic reactions. One such reaction, the Diels-Alder reaction, is an important [4+2] cycloaddition reaction used extensively in the preparation of cyclic and heterocyclic compounds. Understanding the factors involved in the enhancing this reaction in ionic liquids remains a subject of intense interest and the centrepiece of the dissertation. The objective of the research is to explore the Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction in ionic liquids, with a view of developing high effective reactions systems, that operate under mild reaction conditions. The role that ionic liquid media plays in facilitating the Diels-Alder reaction is discussed. A range of physical and chemical modes of activating the reaction are discussed including pressure, the application of Lewis acid catalysts, microwave irradiation and ultrasound sonication and a comparison on the various modes of activation is provided. Importantly, the results of this study can lead to a better understanding of the ionic liquids as well as their utilization for other organic reactions.


Understanding the process of liquid-core breakup in optically dense sprays is critical for the development of predictive models in a variety of combustion engine applications. One of the limitations of current optical techniques is the inability to extract information on internal spray dynamics within regions shrouded by a dense cloud of droplets. Similar difficulties are faced with the use of any technique based on path-integrated absorption, such as X-ray radiography. Recently, a technique referred to as ballistic imaging, has been shown to improve the visualization of liquid-core breakup in dense sprays by employing an ultrafast time gate to discriminate against diffuse light. The goal of this work is to improve on the existing imaging system and investigate the breakup mechanisms of the liquid core immediately following injection. By reducing the contribution from photons that exit the spray after undergoing multiple scattering events, it is possible to emphasize the contribution from photons that undergo little to no scattering (ballistic photons). In the current work, the ballistic imaging technique is used in optically dense rocket sprays with light attenuation levels of 97% to 99%. The images collected in this manner reveal a variety of breakup mechanisms, with coherent liquid-core structures dominating the near-nozzle region. Through comparisons with conventional (non-time-gated) shadowgraph images, it is shown that these coherent structures are surrounded by a dense cloud of droplets. Tests were conducted for a variety of nozzle geometries and a range of flow conditions. In addition to investigating trends in the liquid breakup process, it is also observed that the internal nozzle flow within the injector can have a significant effect on the subsequent spray structure under certain flow conditions.


Micro gas turbine engines in the range of 1–100 kW are playing a key role in distributed generation applications, due to the high reliability and quick load following that favor their integration with intermittent renewable sources. Micro-CHP systems based on gas turbine technology are obtaining a higher share in the market and are aiming at reducing the costs and increasing energy conversion efficiency. An effective control of system operating parameters during the whole engine lifetime is essential to maintain desired performance and at the same time guarantee safe operations. Because of the necessity to reduce the costs, fewer sensors are usually available than in standard industrial gas turbines, limiting the choice of control parameters. This aspect is aggravated by engine aging and deterioration phenomena that change operating performance from the expected one. In this situation, a control architecture designed for healthy operations may not be adequate anymore, because the relationship between measured parameters and unmeasured variables (e.g. turbine inlet temperature or efficiency) varies depending on the level of engine deterioration. In this work, an adaptive control scheme is proposed to compensate the effects of engine degradation over the lifetime. Component degradation level is monitored by a diagnostic tool that estimates performance variations from available measurements; then, the information on the gas turbine health condition is used by an observer-based model predictive controller to maintain the machine in a safe range of operation and limit the reduction in system efficiency.


Prior to Pietsch's (1993) revision of the genus Triglops, identification of their larvae was difficult; six species co-occur in the eastern North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea and three co-occur in the western North Atlantic Ocean. We examined larvae from collections of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and Atlantic Reference Centre and used updated meristic data, pigment patterns, and morphological characters to identify larvae of Triglops forficatus, T. macellus, T. murrayi, T. nybelini, T. pingeli, and T. scepticus; larvae of T. metopias, T. dorothy, T. jordani, and T. xenostethus have yet to be identified and are thus not included in this paper. Larval Triglops are characterized by a high myomere count (42–54), heavy dorsolateral pigmentation on the gut, and a pointed snout. Among species co-occurring in the eastern North Pacific Ocean, T. forficatus, T. macellus, and T. pingeli larvae are distinguished from each other by meristic counts and presence or absence of a series of postanal ventral melanophores. Triglops scepticus is differentiated from other eastern North Pacific Ocean larvae by having 0–3 postanal ventral melanophores, a large eye, and a large body depth. Among species co-occurring in the western North Atlantic Ocean, T. murrayi and T. pingeli larvae are distinguished from each other by meristic counts (vertebrae, dorsal-fin rays, and anal-fin rays once formed), number of postanal ventral melanophores, and first appearance and size of head spines. Triglops nybelini is distinguished from T. murrayi and T. pingeli by a large eye, pigment on the lateral line and dorsal midline in flexion larvae, and a greater number of dorsal-fin rays and pectoral-fin rays once formed.


Gas Condensate Damage in Hydraulically Fractured Wells. (December 2003) Adedeji Ayoola Adeyeye, B.S., University of Lagos Co-Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. Robert A. Wattenbarger Dr. J. Bryan Maggard This project is a research into the effect of gas condensate damage in hydraulically fractured wells. It is the result of a problem encountered in producing a low permeability formation from a well in South Texas owned by the El Paso Production Company. The well was producing a gas condensate reservoir and questions were raised about how much drop in flowing bottomhole pressure below dewpoint would be appropriate. Condensate damage in the hydraulic fracture was expected to be of significant effect. Previous attempts to answer these questions have been from the perspective of a radial model. Condensate builds up in the reservoir as the reservoir pressure drops below the dewpoint pressure. As a result, the gas moving to the wellbore becomes leaner. With respect to the study by El-Banbi and McCain, the gas production rate may stabilize, or possibly increase, after the period of initial decline. This is controlled primarily by the condensate saturation near the wellbore. This current work has a totally different approach. The effects of reservoir depletion are minimized by introduction of an injector well with fluid composition the same as the original reservoir fluid. It also assumes an infinite conductivity hydraulic fracture and uses a linear model. During the research, gas condensate simulations were performed using a commercial simulator (CMG). The results of this research are a step forward in helping to improve the management of gas condensate reservoirs by understanding the mechanics of liquid build-up. It also provides methodology for quantifying the condensate damage that impairs linear flow of gas into the hydraulic fracture.


From Tony Fletcher, the acclaimed biographer of Keith Moon, comes an incisive history of New York's seminal music scenes and their vast contributions to our culture. Fletcher paints a vibrant picture of mid-twentieth-century New York and the ways in which its indigenous art, theater, literature, and political movements converged to create such unique music. With great attention to the colorful characters behind the sounds, from trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie to Tito Puente, Bob Dylan, and the Ramones, he takes us through bebop, the Latin music scene, the folk revival, glitter music, disco, punk, and hip-hop as they emerged from the neighborhood streets of Harlem, the East and West Village, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. All the while, Fletcher goes well beyond the history of the music to explain just what it was about these distinctive New York sounds that took the entire nation by storm.


Background : Mental health is important factor for bright adolescent future. Screening of mental, emotional and behaviour problems is very important to prevent further noticeable behaviour problem. Mental, emotional and behaviour problems are caused by many factors. One of the factors that affects mental, emotional and behaviour problems is school environment. Aim : This study aims to describe mental and emotional problems in acceleration and regular classes junior high school (SMP) students. Methods : This was an observational descriptive study. Subjects for this study were students of SMPN 2 Semarang. This study recruited 88 respondents; 40 from acceleration class and 48 from regular class. Data were collected by filling Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), questionnaire of characteristic samples which had been tested before, focus group discussion and interview. The data were analyzed by descriptive analysis. Results : Emotional symptoms (mean=3,31 SD=2,15), hiperactivity (mean=3,83 SD=1,83), conduct problem (mean=2,79 SD= 1,34) and peer problem (mean=2,27 SD = 1,77) in regular students were higher than acceleration students. Acceleration students reported higher prosocial behaviour score (mean=8,67 SD = 1,46) than regular students (7,50 SD = 1,89). Finally, girls had higher total difficulties score (mean=11 SD=4,8) and prosocial behaviour score (mean=8,08 SD=1,75) than boys (mean=9,84 SD = 4,65 ; mean=7,97 SD = 1,88). Conclusions : The prevalence and mean score of mental emotional problems in regular students were higher than acceleration students. The prevalence of mental emotional problems in girls was higher than boys. Keywords : mental emotional, SDQ, acceleration class


Impact assessments often focus on short-term behavioral responses of animals to human disturbance. However, the cumulative effects caused by repeated behavioral disruptions are of management concern because these effects have the potential to influence individuals' survival and reproduction. We need to estimate individual exposure rates to disturbance to determine cumulative effects. We present a new approach to estimate the spatial exposure of minke whales to whalewatching boats in Faxafloi Bay, Iceland. We used recent advances in spatially explicit capture-recapture modeling to estimate the probability that whales would encounter a disturbance (i.e., whalewatching boat). We obtained spatially explicit individual encounter histories of individually identifiable animals using photo-identification. We divided the study area into 1-km2 grid cells and considered each cell a spatially distinct sampling unit. We used capture history of individuals to model and estimate spatial encounter probabilities of individual minke whales across the study area, accounting for heterogeneity in sampling effort. We inferred the exposure of individual minke whales to whalewatching vessels throughout the feeding season by estimating individual whale encounters with vessels using the whale encounter probabilities and spatially explicit whalewatching intensity in the same area, obtained from recorded whalewatching vessel tracks. We then estimated the cumulative time whales spent with whalewatching boats to assess the biological significance of whalewatching disturbances. The estimated exposure levels to boats varied considerably between individuals because of both temporal and spatial variations in the activity centers of whales and the whalewatching intensity in the area. However, although some whales were repeatedly exposed to whalewatching boats throughout the feeding season, the estimated cumulative time they spent with boats was very low. Although whalewatching boat interactions caused feeding disruptions for the whales, the estimated low cumulative exposure indicated that the whalewatching industry in its current state likely is not having any long-term negative effects on vital rates.


This paper employs a panel vector autoregressive model for the member countries of the Euro Area to explore the role of banks during the slump of the real economy that followed the financial crisis. In particular, we seek to quantify the macroeconomic effects of adverse loan supply shocks, which are identified using sign restrictions. We find that loan supply shocks significantly contributed to the evolution of the loan volume and real GDP growth in all member countries during the financial crisis. However, concerning both, the timing and the magnitude of the shocks our results also indicate that the Euro Area was characterized by a considerable degree of cross–country heterogeneity. JEL-Code: C330, E320, E510.


Abstract With more than 20 recognized species, Monodelphis is the most species-rich genus of living Didelphidae. Recent research on these opossums revealed additional species from Perú and Venezuela, and herein we describe a new species from the montane forests of the eastern slope of the central Andes in Perú. Monodelphis gardneri, new species, is a small taxon with three black dorsal stripes, more similar in external appearance and cranial features to taxa from eastern Brazil, such as M. theresa or M. americana, than to Andean species, like M. osgoodi. Phylogenetic analyses of cytochrome b gene sequences recovered this new species as closer to M. americana from eastern Brazil than to M. theresa (another species in our analyses with three black dorsal stripes). In spite of this external resemblance, the molecular phylogeny indicates that species with dorsal stripes, including M. americana, M. theresa, and the new species, do not form a monophyletic group. Although weakly supported, a relationship between M. americana and the new species suggests a biogeographic connection between these disjunct distributions, i.e., from eastern Brazil and the eastern versant of the Andes.


This paper presents the transformations of Latin American-European relations over time as an interdependent unequal relationship. These relations have been shaped by exports of commodities, including the enrichment of European foodways with indigenous Latin American crops and the environmentally destructive extraction of natural resources and commercial export agriculture. The transformation under colonialism led not only to the settlement of Europeans in Latin America but also to the Atlantic slave trade. The consequence of these relations of domination even today is a limited acknowledgement of Latin America as being more than an extension of Europe. With the end of European immigration to and from Latin America, the role of the United States has grown instead, and increasingly developments in Latin America have also taken on their own dynamics, decoupled from Europe. In the coming decades, relations with China which have grown rapidly in commerce and commodity exports are likely to transform the role of Europe in the region yet again.


This research is the first step in building an efficient Decision Support System (DSS) which employs Data Mining (DM) predictive, classification, clustering, and association rules techniques. This step considers finding groups of members in the dataset that are very different from each other, and whose members are very similar to each other, therefore one DM task is applied which is clustering task. The main objective of the proposed research is to enhance the performance of one of the most well-known popular clustering algorithms (K-mean) to produce near-optimal decisions for telcos churn prediction and retention problems. Due to its performance in clustering massive data sets. The final clustering result of the k-mean clustering algorithm greatly depends upon the correctness of the initial centroids, which are selected randomly. This research will be followed by a serious of researches targeting the main objective which is an efficient DSS which will be applied on customer banking data. In this research a new method is proposed for finding the better initial centroids to provide an efficient way of assigning the data points to suitable clusters with reduced time complexity. The proposed algorithm is successfully developed an applied on customer banking data, and the evaluation results are presented. Index Terms — Data Mining, Classification, K-Mean, Business Information, Data Envelopment Analysis, Artificial Neural Network, Rough set Theory


Despite being exempt from compulsory military service, women have been indispensable in their roles as mothers of conscripted soldiers in the conflict between the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Based on in-depth interviews conducted with twenty women in Istanbul whose sons were deployed to the conflict zone and returned home without any injuries, this article examines how the conflict has impacted the mothers' perception of national service, of the Kurdish conflict, and of the "East." I argue that the women start to partly question the obligation to serve once their children are asked to become the potential victims, and perpetrators, of the conflict. But this questioning does not develop into a full-fledged critique of the service and ends up reinforcing the tropes associated with Kurds and the "East" as backward, unruly, and resistant to change. Thus they mostly justify the modernizing mission of the military.


Extensive particle-in-cell simulations of fast electron beams injected in a background magnetised plasma with a decreasing density profile were carried out. These simulations were intended to further shed light on a newly proposed mechanism for the generation of electromagnetic waves in type III solar radio bursts [D. Tsiklauri, Phys. Plasmas, 18, 052903 (2011)]. The numerical simulations were carried out using different density profiles and fast electron distribution functions. It is shown that electromagnetic L and R modes are excited by the transverse current, initially imposed on the system. In the course of the simulations, no further interaction of the electron beam with the background plasma could be observed.


An alternative and simple coprecipitation method was developed to obtain carbon nanotube-hydroxyapatite CNTs:HAp based nanocomposites. The incorporation of CNTs in a concentration of 5% and 10% of total weight of the nanocomposite and their impact on both structural and biological properties were studied by using a set of standard complementary biological, microscopic, and spectroscopic techniques. The characteristic peaks of carbon structure in CNTs were not observed in the CNTs-HAp composites by X-ray diffraction analysis. Moreover, FTIR and Raman spectroscopies confirmed the presence of HAp as the main phase of the synthesized CNTs:HAp nanocomposites. The addition of CNTs considerably affected the nanocomposite morphology by increasing the average crystallite size from 18.7 nm for raw HAp to 28.6 nm for CNTs:HAp-10, confirming their proper incorporation. The biocompatibility evaluation of CNTs:HAp-5 and CNTs:HAp-10 nanocomposites included the assessment of several parameters, such as cell viability, antioxidant response, and lipid peroxidation, on human G-292 osteoblast cell line. Our findings revealed good biocompatibility properties for CNTs:HAp nanocomposites prepared by the coprecipitation method supporting their potential uses in orthopedics and prosthetics.


SUMMARY Introduction: A negative disposition influences the attitudes of health care professionals, since this is often based on erroneous assumptions about the usefulness of chronological age as a functional marker or with respect to elderly persons' ability to contribute to society. Material and Method: This is a study for validating an instrument, the Kogan's attitudes towards older people, and to determine attitudes towards the elderly in primary health care personnel in Tumbes. Results: A language validation was performed, the instrument was assessed by specifically appointed raters, and its reliability was also determined. Finally, the validated survey was administered to primary health care workers in Tumbes Health Direction. A 0,81 concordance coefficient (kappa) between translators and re-translators was found. The validity of the instrument was estimated on the basis of the assessment performed by the five aforementioned raters who reviewed every item. The coincidence value found was 84 %, and the reliability of the instrument was determined using the Cronbach alpha coefficient, which was 0,82. Two hundred health care workers were interviewed, and a positive attitude towards the elderly was found in 59 % (118) of all surveyed persons. Conclusions: An instrument for measuring attitudes toward the elderly was validated. It was found that 59 % of primary health care personnel had positive attitudes toward the elderly.


Despite the central role played by human capital in entrepreneurship, little is known about how employees in entrepreneurial firms are compensated and incentivized. We address this gap in the literature by studying 18,935 non-CEO compensation contracts across 1,809 privately-held venture-backed companies. Our key finding is that employee compensation varies with the degree to which VCs versus founders control the business. We show that relative to founder-controlled firms, VC-controlled firms pay their hired-on (i.e., non-founder) employees higher cash salaries, provide stronger cash and equity incentives, and have more formal pay policies in place. We also observe that founder employees earn less cash pay and face weaker cash incentives than do hired-on employees, but have stronger equity incentives. We propose that the compensation differences we identify arise because the preferences and capabilities of controlling shareholders significantly influence the quality of the human capital attracted and retained by the firm.


The objective of this study was to determine prognostic factors related to death from adult tetanus. Fifty-three cases of tetanus, 25 females and 28 males, were treated in Cukurova University Hospital during 1994-2000. The mean age was 46.6 years. Forty-one (77.7%) patients came from rural areas. Most (64.1%) cases had minor trauma, but 19 (35.8%) had deep injuries. The mean incubation period was 11.5 days. Mortality was high (52.8%), caused by cardiac or respiratory failure or complications, and was related to the length of the incubation period. In cases with an incubation period < or = 7 days, the mortality rate was 75% (p 0.07). Mortality was significantly associated with generalised tetanus (p < 0.05), fever of > or = 40 degrees C, tachycardia of > 120 beats/min (p < 0.05), post-operative tetanus (p 0.03), and the absence of post-traumatic tetanus vaccination (p 0.068). Patients who were given tetanus human immunoglobulin or tetanus antiserum (p > 0.05) had similar outcomes. Patients who were given penicillin had a mortality rate similar to patients who were given metronidazole (p 0.15). The mortality rate was higher (92%) in patients with severe tetanus than in patients with moderate disease (53%). By multivariate analysis, the time to mortality caused by tetanus, and also the mortality rate, were both related significantly to age and tachycardia.


AMP‐dependent protein kinase (AMPK) is an evolutionarily conserved serine/threonine protein kinase central to the regulation of energy balance at both the cellular and whole‐body levels. In its classical role as an intracellular metabolic stress‐sensing kinase, AMPK switches on fatty acid oxidation and glucose uptake in muscle, while switching off hepatic gluconeogenesis. AMPK also has a broader role in metabolism through the control of appetite. Regulation of AMPK activity at the whole‐body level is coordinated by a growing number of hormones and cytokines secreted from adipose tissue, skeletal muscle, pancreas and the gut including leptin, adiponectin, insulin, interluekin‐6, resistin, TNF‐α and ghrelin. Understanding how these secreted signalling proteins regulate AMPK activity to control fatty acid oxidation, glucose uptake, gluconeogenesis and appetite may yield therapeutic treatments for metabolic disorders such as diabetes, insulin resistance and obesity.


Laser metal forming is an attractive process for rapid prototyping or the rebuilding of worn parts. However, large tensile stress may arise in layers deposited by laser melting of powder. A potential solution is to preheat the substrate before and during deposition of layers to introduce sufficient contraction during cooling in the substrate to modify the residual stress distribution in the deposited layers. To demonstrate the value of this approach, specimens were prepared by depositing stellite F on a stainless steel substrate with and without preheating. Residual stresses were computed by numerical simulation and measured using the crack compliance method. For non-preheated specimens simulation and experiment agreed well and showed that extremely high residual tensile stresses were present in the laser melted material. By contrast, pre-heated specimens show high compressive stresses in the clad material. However, in this case the numerical simulation and experimental measurement showed very different stress distribution. This is attributed to out of plane deformation due to the high compressive stresses which are not permitted in the numerical simulation. A ''strength of materials'' analysis of the effect of out of plane deformation was used to correct the simulation, Agreement with experimental results was then satisfactory.


Trypanosoma brucei variant surface glycoprotein expression sites are interesting examples of genomic loci under complex epigenetic control. In the infectious bloodstream stage, only one of about 20 expression sites is actively transcribed. In the Tsetse midgut (procyclic) stage, chromatin remodeling silences all expression sites. We have begun to explore the function of one of the expression-site-associated genes, ESAG8. Gene knockout experiments implied that ESAG8 is essential. ESAG8 is present at a very low level and apparently accumulates in the nucleolus. A 32-amino-acid domain, which contains a putative bipartite nuclear localization signal (NLS), is both necessary and sufficient to target fusions of ESAG8, with Aequorea victoria green fluorescent protein, to the trypanosome nucleolus. This same sequence functioned only as an NLS in mammalian cells, supporting the idea that nucleolar accumulation requires specific interactions. These results have implications for models of ESAG8 function.


Three stages of reform of collective forest tenure after reform and opening up are reviewed. The reform of forest tenure brings sharp increase of economic benefit. However, due to forest farmers' subjective pursuit for economic benefit and objective lack of necessary economic, financial and technical support, ecological hidden troubles are created. Based on these, we put forward countermeasures, including strengthening forest farmers' awareness of ecological protection and solving ecological problems in accordance with actual conditions of the region.


Unsupervised detection of anomaly points in time series is a challenging problem, which requires the model to derive a distinguishable criterion. Previous methods tackle the problem mainly through learning pointwise representation or pairwise association, however, neither is sufficient to reason about the intricate dynamics. Recently, Transformers have shown great power in unified modeling of pointwise representation and pairwise association, and we find that the self-attention weight distribution of each time point can embody rich association with the whole series. Our key observation is that due to the rarity of anomalies, it is extremely difficult to build nontrivial associations from abnormal points to the whole series, thereby, the anomalies' associations shall mainly concentrate on their adjacent time points. This adjacent-concentration bias implies an association-based criterion inherently distinguishable between normal and abnormal points, which we highlight through the \emph{Association Discrepancy}. Technically, we propose the \emph{Anomaly Transformer} with a new \emph{Anomaly-Attention} mechanism to compute the association discrepancy. A minimax strategy is devised to amplify the normal-abnormal distinguishability of the association discrepancy. The Anomaly Transformer achieves state-of-the-art results on six unsupervised time series anomaly detection benchmarks of three applications: service monitoring, space&earth exploration, and water treatment.


BACKGROUND: Epidemic keratoconjunctivitis is an acute, generally bilateral infection, that appears sporadically or in outbreaks from a source of common infection which may be a visit to the ophthalmologist or a swimming pool. Keratis may evolve to form sub-epithelial injuries in the cornea lasting as much as several months. METHODS: Description of an outbreak of epidemic keratoconjunctivitis that took place in Navarre (Spain) between April and August 1996 and which affected at least 266 people. RESULTS: The epidemiological research highlights the existence of two ophthalmologist visits as the transmission mechanism for the infection in 47 of the 116 patients researched. The spread of the infection in the environment of the patients was recorded in 119 cases, 62 of which are considered secondary cases. The aetiological diagnosis of the outbreak was carried out 11 days after the start of the microbiological research, isolating adenovirus in conjunctival samples of 8 of the 19 patients researched. CONCLUSIONS: The preventive measures taken to control the outbreak and their effectiveness was highlighted by the gradual reduction in cases.


A key assumption underlying the World Trade Organization (WTO) is that its program of trade negotiations will strengthen the world economy and lead to more trade, investment, employment and income growth throughout the world. In the author's view, the WTO truly is strengthening the world economy and promoting trade and investment in many parts of the world. Yet the rest of the thesis is debatable. Is it necessarily true that the WTO and the trade negotiations it sponsors are increasing employment and income growth throughout the world? Indeed, even aggregating the world economy into one planetary unit, one wonders whether increased trade (and its ensuing dynamic efficiencies) inevitably increases the quantity of global employment. Even if it does, what is the quality of the jobs created? Does the WTO promote what the International Labour Organization (ILO) calls decent work? Such questions underlie the subject of this article - the neglected employment dimension of the WTO. The author does not propose to answer these questions empirically. Instead, the article endeavors to point out how little the WTO does to monitor these issues or to design trade rules with sensitivity to the objective of employment growth. So far, the WTO has not set any quantitative goals for income or employment growth. The trade ministers have alluded to their desire that the WTO promote the benefit and welfare of their peoples, but the ministers are lackadaisical about keeping WTO negotiations on schedule. In view of the broad nature of international trade law today, the WTO seems to be overlooking many opportunities to promote a positive employment agenda.


OBJECTIVES
For the management of patients with small renal tumor, laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (LPN) provides similar oncological control as radical nephrectomy (RN) and is superior to RN with respect to preserving renal function and preventing chronic kidney disease (CKD). The challenge of LPN is to resect a tumor in a bloodless field within a limited warm ischemia time (WIT) , followed by hemostatic renorrhaphy under restricted movement of laparoscopic forceps. Therefore, LPN still remains challenging to even experienced laparoscopic surgeon. DaVinci device improved the movability of forceps in LPN and provided three-dimensional visualization. We evaluated outcome and safety of our first series of robot-assisted laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (RALPN) for localized kidney tumor. There was no previous report of RALPN undertaken in our country.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Since August 2010, our team carried out RALPN for a total of five cases of renal tumor. There were four males and one female with an age range of 41 to 65 years-old. Size of tumor ranged from 15 to 28 mm, located in exophytic region, and four cases in right side and one in left. RALPN was undertaken by single surgeon through transperitoneal approach in two cases and retroperitoneal in tree.

RESULTS
RALPN was completed in all patients without conversion to open or hand-assisted surgery. The median operative time and the estimated blood loss were 189 minutes, ranged from 150 to 264, and 29 ml, from 10 to 50, respectively. The median volume of removed tumor and the length of WIT were 7 g, ranged from 4 to 13 g, and 18 minutes, from 13 to 26 minutes, respectively. No complications or reoperations were associated during or post our RALPN cases. Pathological examination of removed tumor showed renal cell carcinoma with negative surgical margin in all cases.

CONCLUSIONS
Introduction of daVinci device to LPN made this procedure, RALPN, a secured and promising one, which leading to shorten the WIT and to achieve satisfied renorrhaphy. Even for the complex and technically challenging renal tumors, robotic assistance is expected to provide patients the benefit of minimally invasive surgery with safety and satisfactory renal function.