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Trauma refers an distinct experience with excessive stressful and destructive characteristics. According to criteari of diagnose in DSM-III (1980), traumatic events create death or threat of death, serious injury, threat to pyhsical integrity as well as feeling of intense fear, horror and helplessness. Many of individuals with traumatic events is not develop Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD). Only 5 to 25 percent of individuals exposured to traumatic experiences develops PTSD. In this context, it may be concluded that traumatic event can not be cause of PTSD itself. However, the type of traumatic event, in terms of context, appears to be a significant factor. The present study aims to provide the impacts on mental health of traumatic event in terms of "Gezi Activity" which is an example of mass movements. Thus, it was interwieved with 11 participants who involved in "Gezi Activity" by using semi-structured interwiev. In this context, a semi-structured interwiev form was created related to determine the political participation, the motivation to be involved in the "Gezi" process, the traumatic exposure in the process, and the effects on mental health of individuals. 2 of 11 participants to the research are individuals who injured in the process of "Gezi" and have received inpatient treatment for a while. The data has been established by making qualitative research, was evaluated by content analysis. The findings were that the majority of the participants answered in the direction of "yes" to questions related to political participant, the traumatic exposure and emotions (fear, horror and helplessness). However small of the participants answered in the direction of "yes" to questions of post traumatic re-experiencing, avoidance and hyperarousal. To sum up the findings, while the participants expressed traumatic exposure and emotions in the process of "Gezi", they reported that they did not experience post trauma re-experiencing, avoidance and hyperarousal. The findings on the possible effects of traumatic experience will be discussed in terms of both variables such as severity of traumatic experience and type of traumatic experience (political trauma) because of that discussed case is an example of a mass movement. Keywords: "Gezi", traumatic exposure, traumatic effects, mass movement, political trauma.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate primary care provider screening for hepatitis C virus (HCV) in three high risk populations. The specific aims were to determine the percentage of patients born between 1945-1965 who had a one-time screening for HCV, to determine what proportion of patients with a history of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or intravenous drug use (IVDU) have been screened for HCV, and to examine providers' thoughts on their HCV screening practices. Methods: A retrospective chart review of patient electronic medical records (EMR's) from 2015 was conducted in an urban primary care site. SPSS was used to analyze the data. A provider survey was conducted to assess comfort, familiarity, and adherence with screening recommendations. Results: The sample demographics were very similar to the total population of the practice. Of the birth cohort, it was determined that 6.1% were screened per the USPSTF recommendations. The HIV positive and IVDU groups were very small and either were not screened at all or were screened by a specialist. Of the individuals screened, 16.7% were positive for HCV. The provider survey demonstrated belief that screenings were done per recommendations. Barriers to screening according to the recommended guidelines included coding and insurance denials for screenings. The provider survey suggested acknowledged an EMR trigger would assist in prompting more screenings. Conclusion: The study demonstrates there is opportunity to improve screening rates of the birth cohort. There is insufficient evidence to determine if there are gaps in screening HIV and IVDU. Future studies should focus on additional high risk groups with larger sample sizes.


Assessment and treatment of personality disorder (PD) is a key issue in UK mental health service provision (NIMH report, 2003), but there is limited information on individuals with personality disorder presenting to primary care mental health services. This study investigates the characteristics of PD in individuals receiving cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) following GP referral and its relationship with therapist ratings of treatment process and outcome. One hundred and forty-eight participants completed the Millon Multiaxial Clinical Inventory (MCMI-III: Millon, Davis and Millon, 1997). Therapists completed a measure of therapy process and outcome (TPOQ) on 100 participants. Key therapy and process questions were answered for 60 participants who attended a minimum of five therapy sessions. MCMI-III indicated a rate of PD of 56.4%. Factor analysis of PD scales identified two factors: inward looking/emotionally distanced, and aggressive/acting out. For clinical syndromes (CLS), the factors were general psychopathology and substance abuse. TPOQ had two factors: therapeutic alliance and complexity in therapy. Regression analyses indicated that only those PDs contributing to the inward looking/emotionally distanced scale score were associated with therapeutic alliance problems. Conversely, complexity in therapy was only predicted by general psychopathology and not by personality disorder. This study identified high rates of personality disorder in primary care referrals to a clinical psychology service. It also indicated that relationships between the presence of personality disorder and therapist ratings of treatment difficulties were only associated with certain types of personality disorder. These findings are discussed in relation to service and therapy planning in mental health.


This article analyzes how treaty structure affects regulatory autonomy by shifting the point in a treaty in which tribunals address public interest regulation. The article also analyzes how trade and investment treaties use a variety of structures that influence their interpretation and the manner in which they address public interest regulation. WTO and investment tribunals have addressed public interest regulation in provisions regarding a treaty's scope of application, obligations and public interest exceptions. The structure of treaties affects a tribunal's degree of deference to regulatory choices. In treaties that do not contain general public interest exceptions, tribunals have excluded public interest regulation from the scope of application of the treaty as a whole or the scope of application of specific obligations. If treaty parties wish to preserve a greater degree of regulatory autonomy, they can limit the general scope of application of a treaty, or the scope of application of specific obligations, which places the burden of proof on the complainant. In cases where the complexity of the facts or the law make the burden of proof difficult to meet, this type of treaty structure makes it more difficult to prove treaty violations and thus preserves regulatory autonomy to a greater degree.


Caps for Sale is a timeless classic beloved by generations of readers-now celebrating its 75th anniversary! This story about a peddler and a band of mischievous monkeys is filled with warmth, humor, and simplicity and teaches children about problem and resolution. Children will delight in following the peddler's efforts to outwit the monkeys and will ask to read it again and again. Caps for Sale is an excellent easy-to-read book that includes repetition, patterns, and colors, perfect for early readers. Supports the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts


Objectives: The objectives of this study was to define and identify the symptoms of elder abuse, create awareness about its existence to the primary health care workers and recommend an appropriate strategy for its prevention. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study by questionnaires based was done considering prevalence and problems of elder abuse in Dakshina Kannada rural areas of Jaranadagudde and Ammunje district, peripheral health centres, Mangaluru, Karnataka, India in February, 2016. Results: The study showed that the prevalence of abuse was 1.57% in the sample population and undoubtedly, the offenders were their children even though it is quite low comparatively. Conclusion: Even though low, we opine that, to prevent elder abuse, interventions and policies are of utmost importance and help reduce the burden on the ageing population especially in a developing country like India. Key words: Burden, Cross-sectional Study, Elder abuse, Prevalence, Problems, Survey.


Offensive or defensive? Which approach has the greater impact on winning professional baseball league games? Because the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) has only four teams, it offered a limited sample size for relevant studies. In this study, a window analysis was coupled with the sports team performance management model of the network data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to solve the problems of offense efficiency, defense efficiency and integrated efficiency of each of the CPBL teams from 2007 to 2014. Truncated regression was coupled with a bootstrapping method to perform a 2000 times repeated sampling, reduce the sampling error and determine the effect of environmental variables on the value of the efficiencies of the CPBL teams. The results show that the Lamigo Monkeys led in both offense performance and defense performance, whereas the United 7-ELEVEn led in integrated performance. The "total number of players" had a significantly positive impact on the efficiency of the teams. The 7-ELEVEn Lions and the Lamigo Monkeys showed superior performance with regard to the investment in the players and the long-term management of the depth of bench players, which verifies the importance of the depth of bench players in the CPBL. The "total bases gained" also had a significantly positive impact on the efficiency of the teams, which indicates the importance of the offensive capability for winning in the CPBL.


Title of Document: CONSERVING POLLINATORS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO EVALUATING THE ECOLOGICAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL VALUE OF NATIVE BEES IN MID-ATLANTIC SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE Annette May Meredith, Ph.D., 2008 Directed By: Dr. Michael Paolisso, Department of Anthropology Certain pollinator populations are threatened globally due to habitat fragmentation and alteration, pesticides, disease and infestations by parasites. Localized population declines have prompted interest on the part of various stakeholders in restoring and maintaining pollinator-friendly habitats on working landscapes, particularly private agricultural lands. Recommendations from the National Research Council's report, Status of Pollinators in North America, include informing the agricultural community about ways to manage pollinators and conducting studies to improve restoration protocols and to understand land managers' willingness to adopt pollinator-friendly practices (NRC 2007). Interdisciplinary in nature, this research follows NRC's recommendations and incorporates methods from environmental science, ecology and anthropology to investigate and evaluate the opportunities and challenges to native bee conservation in Mid-Atlantic sustainable agriculture. I censused sustainable agriculture farms to assess the diversity of bees in different habitats and collected and identified over 3100 individuals representing five families, 26 genera and 81 species. Native bee abundance measures indicated a temporal shift in foraging among habitats with more bees moving into crops in mid-summer. I investigated floral constancy and visitation rates among native bees at Blandy Experimental Farm in Boyce, VA and found that bees move primarily among conspecific flowers and that particular flowers are more attractive to certain bee genera. I also investigated pollination of okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) and bell pepper (Capsicum annuum) and examined importance of native bees to Mid-Atlantic vegetable crops. Additionally, I conducted a survey to examine similarities and differences in beliefs and values of Mid-Atlantic sustainable agriculture producers and pollinator scientists/managers in relation to native bee conservation. Sustainable agriculture farmers already hold beliefs, values and knowledge about ecosystem services conservation; therefore to formulate effective outreach, there is a need to understand how these beliefs differ or align with those of pollinator advocates. Although sustainable agriculture producers and pollinator scientists/managers share certain beliefs and values, enough differences were detected to impact outreach efforts. Results from the research can be used to develop feasible conservation approaches for native bees in this region. CONSERVING POLLINATORS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO EVALUATING THE ECOLOGICAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL VALUE OF NATIVE BEES IN MID-ATLANTIC SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE


The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the social tagging phenomenon, including how it evolved and the debate surrounding its benefits and limitations. Further, social tagging's potential as a new tool for knowledge organization and resources discovery will be considered. Finally, some questions concerning social tagging will be presented for future research. The paper reflects an interdisciplinary overview of the technical aspect of social tagging along with a behavioural look at why and how it is used as a tool to discover and organize knowledge.


Background Ketamine increases both blood pressure and heart rate, effects commonly thought of as sympathoexcitatory. The authors investigated possible central nervous system actions of ketamine to inhibit cardiac parasympathetic neurons in the brainstem by inhibiting multiple nicotinic excitatory mechanisms. Methods The authors used a novel in vitro approach to study the effect of ketamine on identified cardiac parasympathetic preganglionic neurons in rat brainstem slices. The cardiac parasympathetic neurons in the nucleus ambiguus were retrogradely prelabeled with the fluorescent tracer by placing rhodamine into the pericardial sac. Dye-labeled neurons were visually identified for patch clamp recording. The effects of ketamine were tested on nicotine-evoked ligand-gated currents and spontaneous glutamatergic miniature synaptic currents (mini) in cardiac parasympathetic preganglionic neurons. Results Ketamine (10 &mgr;m) inhibited (1) the nicotine (1 &mgr;m)-evoked presynaptic facilitation of glutamate release (mini frequency, 18 ± 7% of control; n = 9), and (2) the direct postsynaptic ligand-gated current (27 ± 8% of control; n = 9), but ketamine did not alter the amplitude of postsynaptic miniature non–N-methyl-d-aspartate currents. &agr; Bungarotoxin, an antagonist of &agr;7 containing nicotinic presynaptic receptors, blocked ketamine actions on mini frequency (n = 10) but not mini amplitude. Conclusions Ketamine inhibits the presynaptic nicotinic receptors responsible for facilitating neurotransmitter release, as well as the direct ligand-gated inward current, but does not alter the nicotinic augmentation of non–N-methyl-d-aspartate currents in brainstem parasympathetic cardiac neurons. Such actions may mediate the decrease in parasympathetic cardiac activity and increase in heart rate that occurs with ketamine.


In this paper, we describe a novel method for handwriting style identification. A handwriting style can be common to one or several writer. It can represent also a handwriting style used in a period of the history or for specific document. Our method is based on Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) using different kind of features computed using a combined fixed-length horizontal and vertical sliding window moving over a document page. For each writing style a GMM is built and trained using page images. At the recognition phase, the system returns log-likelihood scores. The GMM model with the highest score is selected. Experiments using page images from historical German document collection demonstrate good performance results. The identification rate of the GMM-based system developed with six historical handwriting style is 100%.


This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions per-capita and economic growth in a panel of 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries over the period 1971-2011. This empirical relationship, known in the economic literature as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, suggests that the relationship between these variables, in the long run, follows an inverse U-shape, that is, from a certain level of per-capita income, an increased economic growth would be accompanied by improvements in environmental quality. Although this hypothesis has been studied since the 1990s, its empirical validity has recently been questioned on the basis of, among other things, the lack of diagnosis of the stationarity properties of the variables, and in a panel data context, the presence of cross-sectional dependence. Taking into account both criticisms, we use recent unit root tests and cointegration techniques that are robust to the presence of cross-sectional dependence. We find contradictory results depending on the assumption of cross-dependence. Under the assumption of cross-independence, the existence of an EKC with a realistic turning point is confirmed. However, this assumption is subsequently rejected, and because of the presence of cross-dependence in the panel, a long-run equilibrium relationship between the variables cannot be established, and we reject the existence of an EKC.


Between 1973 and 1986, Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, and Albert Solnit published three influential but controversial books on the best interests of the child that had an enormous impact on state decisions to intervene in family life and direct the placement of children. During the same period, children in child welfare proceedings were increasingly represented by lawyers or guardians ad litem whose advocacy included understanding and interpreting the meaning of best interests. This article begins by tracing a conversation of sorts that occurs between the authors and other scholars and practitioners as their ideas begin to influence decision-making in child protective and custody proceedings. It then turns to the central issue of how the books provide important lessons to child advocates about the indeterminacy of a best interest standard, the centrality of family integrity, and the need for all professionals working with children to define their decision-making roles clearly but narrowly. The article concludes that if these books had been written today, Goldstein, Freud and Solnit would embrace a child-directed role for lawyers as the sole practice paradigm which fully engages the child advocate in the right practices they proscribe: distinguishing between personal values and professional knowledge; remaining true to their assigned role as counsel within strict legal boundaries; and resisting taking on the roles of other professionals in the case. These right practices, in turn, limit the indeterminacy of the best interest standard by limiting the freedom of the lawyer to decide what is best.


Codex MS 003183 in the Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, is a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Middle English prose Brut (MEPB) that was in W. A. Foyle's private manuscript collection, housed at his residence at Beeleigh Abbey for much of the twentieth century. (1) Its purchase by Dartmouth College in 2006 has made the manuscript accessible once again, and there are significant observations to be made about the manuscript itself and about how this manuscript fits in to the large textual corpus of the MEPB. (2) Rauner MS 003183 seems to be an independent revision and abbreviation of the Brut version that Lister Matheson, following Friedrich Brie, calls the Extended Version (EV) to 1419 (EV-1419). In the content of its 1377-to-1419 continuation, at least, MS 003183 likely derives from subgroup A of the EV, since it shares with EV-1419:A (and apparently no other EV group) a textual lacuna concerning Henry IV's early years (See Appendix 2 and discussion below). MS 003183 could be said to form a "fifth branch" that parallels the four recensions of the Abbreviated Version (AV) to 1419 (AV-1419:A, B, C, and D). The one trait that most dramatically identifies the AVs, the absence of four chapters after the death of King Arthur, is featured in MS 003183, where Conan rather than Constantine succeeds Arthur. Yet MS 003183 is not one of the recognized AV texts. In content, it is a fuller text than any one of the AV-1419 groups A to D, so its taxonomically significant details cannot possibly be derived from AV texts. (See Appendix 1 for selected transcriptions of Rauner MS 003183.) In wording, MS 003183 is unusually idiosyncratic (even for the MEPB), to the extent that none of the AV-1419 texts could possibly be derived from MS 003183. As neither source nor product of the AV manuscripts, then, MS 003183 is a unique recension that is comparable to the AVs. If MS 003183 represents a unique recension or version, however, the physical manuscript has some intriguing company. London, British Library MS Royal 18.A.ix and San Marino, Huntington Library MS HM 131, two AV-1419:A(c) manuscripts of the MEPB, show rubrication styles similar to those of the second rubricator of MS 003183. If these three manuscripts, representing two different redactions of the Middle English prose Brut, were at some point in a common workshop setting or were farmed out to the same professional rubricator, then they suggest a book production milieu in which texts of the Middle English prose Brut were being abbreviated and revised from EV sources to produce individualized manuscripts. Linne Mooney and Matheson convincingly show that a common workshop produced numerous manuscripts of a single MEPB version, the AV-1419:B manuscripts. (3) Rauner MS 003183 helps make visible a slightly different production habit of multiple abbreviations of the Brut in which the same material "finish" could be applied to various narrative versions. Description of the Manuscript The fifteenth-century manuscript contains 121 unnumbered vellum folios in a limp leather binding of the sixteenth century. Dorothy Africa has assessed the binding as "a stationer's binding, the sort most commonly used for ledgers and business records, characterized by external bands, decorative lacing patterns, tackets and an overlap front flap." (4) Folios 1 to 5, which comprise the first quire, were added most likely in the sixteenth century; they contain a table of contents in a sixteenth-century hand. (5) This table-of-contents hand writes an occasional Elizabethan-style h and confuses letter forms for y and thorn, although otherwise the hand achieves a script eerily imitative of the fifteenth-century script of the rest of the manuscript. The writer of the table of contents copied the chapter headings from within the manuscript itself rather than from any other source, as shown by this writer's replication of several errors made by the manuscript's rubricators, including five erroneously repeated chapter headings (see discussion under "Rubrication"). …


Based on empirical data on "green" practices according to household size, this article questions the role, if any, given to close personal relationships by social practice theories in sustaining or not daily life practices. Data are mainly drawn from an Internet survey conducted in Belgium in 2006 by WWF-Belgium on daily practices, related to food, energy consumption, mobility, and tourism. Results show that smaller households carry out more numerous "green" practices than larger ones. The concluding discussion underlines the relevance of including social interactions-namely within the household-into the conceptual framework derived from the social theories of practices, to take into account the rearticulating role of social interactions and domestic power claims when carrying out a practice or a set of practices, and when changing it. © Berghahn Journals.


About this book It is now fourteen years since we collaborated in the writing of our first research methods book. In 2009 the fifth edition was published (Saunders et al., 2009). The success of that book suggests that research methods is a popular subject with business and management students. This may be so. But we think that it has more to do with the fact research methods is a complex areaone where it is easy to do things, but much less easy to do things right. When we planned the first book we had one overall mission in mind. That was to write a book in a way that came as near as possible to the way in which we taught our students. By this we mean that we wanted to be clear and straightforward, and explain things in a way that lost none of the complexity, or academic rigour of the subject. Over the years this mission has not altered. We feel just as passionate about clear communication as we did back in 1997. However, things in the world of business and management education have changed since 1997, and this book reflects those changes. In 1997 the normal requirement was for undergraduate students in their final year, to undertake a large piece of research which involved them in collecting their own data and was assessed by means of a written project report. This is now often not the case. Although some degree programmes still require students to complete an assessed research project, they may be told that, rather than collect their own data, they should use only data that have already been collected for some other purpose (secondary data), or alternatively, write an extended review of the literature. For a second category of students on undergraduate programmes the extent of their research work is a research methods module which is assessed by a research proposal. There is a third category, those business and management students who opt not to do a research project at all. We have written this book to cater for all three categories of student. For those undertaking research to be assessed by a written project report we aim to help in all aspects of the research process; from thinking of a topic through to writing the final submission. We therefore include material, in chapter three, on managing the research process; as well as chapters on using secondary data (chapter 4) and reviewing the literature (chapter 2). There are also two chapters (6 and 7) on collecting and analysing data as an understanding of these is important for all types of research projects as well as preparing a research proposal. If you're taking a research methods module which is assessed by a research proposal you will find that there is considerable emphasis upon the preparation of a research proposal. Indeed, chapter 8 deals specifically with writing the research proposal. It may sound strange, but we think that business and management students in the third category, those who opt not to do a research project at all, can gain just as much from this book as those in the other two categories. As a student you will spend much of your time studying material which is the result of careful research which has been scrutinised by the research community prior to publication. This scrutiny is a guarantee of good quality: that you should put your faith in what you have read. However, some of what you read may not have been through quite such a rigorous process. Knowing something about the research process enables you to ask the right questions of the material you are studying. It gives you the sense of healthy scepticism that is the hallmark of a university education. How you might use this book We don't anticipate that you will read this book progressively from chapter 1 through to chapter 8. In fact, you may not read all the chapters, although we certainly hope that you will! The reason we suspect is that you will choose those chapters that meet your own needs. This may be because you are in one of the categories we mentioned earlier, have specific questions about the research process you need to answer, or it may be that your research methods lecturers specify certain chapters. We've written the chapters in such a way that they stand alone. To some extent they draw inevitably on material from other chapters directly. Where this is so, we have crossreferenced to the relevant chapter. But the point remains that you can pick up any chapter in isolation and make sense of it. This book is not a self-study text in the truest sense; there are no questions with model answers! However, we have included points in each chapter which facilitate an element of independent learning. Each chapter begins with a summary of content which we call 'Why read this chapter?' This gives you some idea of the chapter content and the approach we have taken to the topic being discussed. Each chapter contains a small number of examples of research called 'Research in Practice'. These serve to illustrate in a practical manner some of the points being made in the chapter, in much the same way as a lecturer would give practical examples in a research methods lecture. Every chapter ends with a summary of the main points in the chapter and a section called 'Thinking about ...' Here we make suggestions as to how you may test and reinforce the learning you have achieved during the reading of the chapter. Throughout the book key research terms we use are isolated and placed in 'Key terms definition' boxes to make it easy for you to refresh your understanding of these terms as you read through chapter. What's in the book? Chapter 1 deals with the first issue you will encounter in the research process: choosing the right research topic. We suggest some novel ways in which you may decide upon your topic, offer guidance in deciding what constitutes an effective research topic, and consider some topics which may be problematic. In the latter part of the chapter we deal with the issue of defining suitable research questions and objectives. The chapter ends with a discussion on what is meant by the all important term 'theory'. In chapter 2 we approach the subject of the literature review. We offer some practical suggestions on the way you may go about approaching your literature review and actually conducting it, particularly through the use of information technology. The chapter also explains what constitutes an effective critical literature review and offers guidance in how it may be structured. Chapter 3 is


Tables organize valuable content in a concise and compact representation. This content is extremely valuable for systems such as search engines, Knowledge Graph's, etc, since they enhance their predictive capabilities. Unfortu-nately, tables come in a large variety of shapes and sizes. Furthermore, they can have complex column/row-header configurations, multiline rows, different variety of separation lines, missing entries, etc. As such, the correct iden-tification of the table-structure from an image is a nontrivial task. In this paper, we present a new table-structure identification model. The latter improves the latest end-to-end deep learning model (i.e. encoder-dual-decoder from PubTabNet) in two significant ways. First, we introduce a new object detection decoder for table-cells. In this way, we can obtain the content of the table-cells from program-matic PDF's directly from the PDF source and avoid the training of the custom OCR decoders. This architectural change leads to more accurate table-content extraction and allows us to tackle non-english tables. Second, we replace the LSTM decoders with transformer based decoders. This upgrade improves significantly the previous state-of-the-art tree-editing-distance-score (TEDS) from 91% to 98.5% on simple tables and from 88.7% to 95% on complex tables.


I explore the ramifications of applying some recent research on cities, built on the work of Jane Jacobs, to early city development. A communications approach to 'city ness' is offered as a way of understanding early cities as qualitatively new social worlds enabling world-changing processes. Returning to Jacobs' use of Catalhoyuk to push back the timing of the first cities, I review recent work on the site to support her thesis. In the process I also argue in favour of her controversial thesis of cities inventing agriculture using Sahlin's 'stone age economics'. Further, and going beyond Jacobs, I argue that states were also invented in cities and harness evidence for this in Mesopotamian studies. In both cases I provide generic conclusions that briefly indicate examples from other parts of the world.


Introduction: The etiopathogenesis of acne vulgaris is multifactorial, and its therapy is prolonged course that might be not accepted by many patients. Most recently TCA 35% one session peeling gave complete clearance and full remission for active acne vulgaris. Lactic acid has been used effectively as therapeutic topical agents for many skin diseases. Aim: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of chemical peeling using 88% lactic acid solution in the treatment of active acne vulgaris. Material and Methods: This clinical, interventional, therapeutic study was done at the Department of Dermatology, Baghdad Teaching Hospital, during the period from October 2012 to October 2013. Twenty five patients with active acne vulgaris were included, 15 (60%) females and 10 (40%) males and their ages ranged from 16-36 (21.5000± 5.46279) years. Fifteen patients were associated with acne scars. Three chemical peels using 88% lactic acid solution was carried out two weeks apart for patients with active acne vulgaris with or without scarring. Scoring for active acne vulgaris and acne scar was done for each case before and after operation to evaluate the severity of acne and the degree of scar before and after treatment. All patients were with Fitzpatrick's skin types III and IV. Patients were followed up every two weeks during period of therapy and monthly for 3 months after stopping the treatment. Results: Twenty five patients with active acne vulgaris were treated with 3 sessions of lactic acid, fifteen patients had associated acne scar. Scoring for active acne vulgaris including papules and pustules showed highly statistically significant reduction after 2 weeks of therapy (p=0.0001), after 4 weeks (p=0.0001)and after 6 weeks (p=0.0001), with percent reduction 87.2% for papules and 94% for pustules after end of sessions while after 3 months follow up the reduction rate for papules 93.8% and p-value (p=0.001) and for pustules 97.6% and (p=0.0001). While the scarring reduction was moderate in 3 (20%) patients, marked in 3 (20%) patients and excellent in 9 (60%) patients with statistically significant reduction (p=0.002). All patients had full satisfaction about the results of peeling. Post inflammatory hyperpigmentation was observed few weeks after peeling but follow up for 3 months showed complete clearance of pigmentation with lightening and tightening of skin. Conclusions: Chemical peeling using 88% lactic acid is an effective mode of therapy for active acne vulgaris and acne scar in patient with dark complexion.


Recent observations have uncovered short-duration density holes in the Earth's foreshock region. There is evidence that the formation of density holes involves non-linear growth of fluctuations in the magnetic field and plasma density, which results in shock-like boundaries followed by a decrease in both density and magnetic field. In this study we examine in detail a few such events focusing on their low frequency wave characteristics. The propagation properties of the waves are studied using Cluster's four point observations. We found that while these density hole-structures were convected with the solar wind, in the plasma rest frame they propagated obliquely and mostly sunward. The wave amplitude grows non-linearly in the process, and the waves are circularly or elliptically polarized in the left hand sense. The phase velocities calculated from four spacecraft timing analysis are compared with the velocity estimated from δ E /δ B . Their agreement justifies the plane electromagnetic wave nature of the structures. Plasma conditions are found to favor firehose instabilities. Oblique Alfven firehose instability is suggested as a possible energy source for the wave growth. Resonant interaction between ions at certain energy and the waves could reduce the ion temperature anisotropy and thus the free energy, thereby playing a stabilizing role.


Daysmoke is a local smoke transport model and has been used to provide smoke plume rise information. It includes a large number of parameters describing the dynamic and stochastic processes of particle upward movement, fallout, fluctuation, and burn emissions. This study identifies the important parameters for Daysmoke simulations of plume rise and seeks to understand their impacts on regional air quality simulations with the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. The Fourier Amplitude Sensitivity Test (FAST) was first applied to Daysmoke simulations of prescribed burning in the southeastern U.S. It is shown that, for the specified value ranges of 15 parameters, entrainment coefficient and number of updraft cores are the most important for determining smoke plume rise. Initial plume temperature anomaly, diameter of flaming area, and thermal stability also contribute to a certain extent. CMAQ simulations were then conducted for a couple of different updraft core numbers. The simulated ground PM2.5 concentration is much closer to the measurements with multiple updraft cores than single core. The results from this study therefore suggest that simulations of Daysmoke and CMAQ could be improved by a better understanding of plume structure to aid in specifying the number of smoke updraft cores.


Are you just starting out and need easy-to-follow advice on how, and in what, to invest so that you can maximise your returns and build your wealth? If so, this is the book for you ? Money plays a role in nearly every aspect of our lives, and yet very few of us know how to save, where to invest and how to make our money grow. There are a great many questions surrounding successful investing and building wealth: where to invest, how to invest, how to diversify, who to trust, how to save on costs, which investments perform the best and yet are safe ... the list is endless. This reliable and highly accessible guide is aimed at the financial novice who needs clear basic guidelines on how to deal with money, and covers all aspects of investment that the average person would encounter in his or her life, from earning the first salary cheque to retirement.
 This book will show you that financial freedom is possible for everyone ? and that means you, too!


Persistent firing is believed to be a crucial mechanism for memory function including working memory. Recent in vivo and in vitro findings suggest an involvement of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) in persistent firing. Using whole‐cell patch‐recording techniques in a rat entorhinal cortex (EC) slice preparation, we tested whether EC layer III neurons display persistent firing due to mGluR activation, independently of cholinergic activation. Stimulation of the angular bundle drove persistent firing in 90% of the cells in the absence of a cholinergic agonist. The persistent firing was typically stable for > 4.5 min at which point persistent firing was terminated by the experimenter. The average frequency of the persistent firing was 2.1 Hz, ranging from 0.4 to 5.5 Hz. This persistent firing was observed even in the presence of atropine (2 μm), suggesting that the persistent firing can occur independent of cholinergic activation. Furthermore, ionotropic glutamate and GABAergic synaptic blockers (2 mm kynurenic acid, 100 μm picrotoxin and 1 μm CGP55845) did not block the persistent firing. On the other hand, blockers of group I mGluRs (100 μm LY367385 and 20 μm MPEP) completely blocked or suppressed the persistent firing. An agonist of group I mGluRs (20 μm DHPG) greatly enhanced the persistent firing induced by current injection. These results indicate that persistent firing can be driven through group I mGluRs in entorhinal layer III neurons, suggesting that glutamatergic synaptic input alone could enable postsynaptic neurons to hold input signals in the form of persistent firing.


The study presents a survey of the information seeking behavior of the journalists in north India. It highlights that the journalists mostly use the newspaper libraries once a week Majority of them visit the library to consult the reference books. Most of the respondents are satisfied with the behavior of the library staff and they opine that the newspapers should be digitised.


The frizzled receptors, which mediate development and display seven hydrophobic, membrane-spanning segments, are cell membrane–localized. We constructed a chimeric receptor with the ligand-binding and transmembrane segments from the β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) and the cytoplasmic domains from rat Frizzled-1 (Rfz1). Stimulation of mouse F9 clones expressing the chimera (β2AR-Rfz1) with the β-adrenergic agonist isoproterenol stimulated stabilization of β-catenin, activation of a β-catenin–sensitive promoter, and formation of primitive endoderm. The response was blocked by inactivation of pertussis toxin–sensitive, heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding proteins (G proteins) and by depletion of Gαq and Gαo. Thus, G proteins are elements of Wnt/Frizzled-1 signaling to the β-catenin–lymphoid-enhancer factor (LEF)-T cell factor (Tcf) pathway.


Ginger has been used for 1000s of years as a food and medicine; it is likely one of the most ancient remedies valued by humans. Ancient Indian and Chinese cultures reportedly used ginger for a wide variety of conditions and modern day research has found it effective as an anti-emetic and anti-inflammatory agent, when taken internally. Random controlled trials using ginger extract have been found effective in relieving symptoms of osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is the primary cause of musculoskeletal pain and disability in Western cultures. Current management is primarily through the use of anti-inflammatory and analgesic medication, with cortisone injections and joint replacements a final resort. There is a need for a self-administered, non-toxic, natural therapy that relieves osteoarthritis symptoms, with none of the disadvantages of conventional medication or surgical procedures. A treatment is needed to control symptoms that are: easy to administer, using minimal materials, comfortable to receive, with no known side effects. People with osteoarthritis require a simple treatment that supports the management of chronic pain, relieves their anxiety and improves mobility. This chapter introduces the significant effect on osteoarthritis symptoms, when ginger is applied externally rather than ingested internally. Four aspects are discussed: 1) ginger for arthritis, 2) ginger qualities and characteristics, 3) ginger for osteoarthritis and, 4) management and ginger therapy.


The problem of creating a personalized seizure detection algorithm for newborns is tackled in this paper. A probabilistic framework for semi-supervised adaptation of a generic patient-independent neonatal seizure detector is proposed. A system that is based on a combination of patient-adaptive (generative) and patient-independent (discriminative) classifiers is designed and evaluated on a large database of unedited continuous multichannel neonatal EEG recordings of over 800 h in duration. It is shown that an improvement in the detection of neonatal seizures over the course of long EEG recordings is achievable with on-the-fly incorporation of patient-specific EEG characteristics. In the clinical setting, the employment of the developed system will maintain a seizure detection rate at 70% while halving the number of false detections per hour, from 0.4 to 0.2 FD/h. This is the first study to propose the use of online adaptation without clinical labels, to build a personalized diagnostic system for the detection of neonatal seizures.


This study provides a critical edition of chapters nine and ten of Muḥīṭ al-tavārīkh (The Sea of Chronicles) by Muḥammad Amīn b. Mīrzā Muḥammad Zamān Bukhārī (Ṣūfīyānī). Muḥīṭ al-tavārīkh is a valuable source for the study of late seventeenth-century Central Asian history, historiography, and language. The present work represents the first critical edition of a primary source of Subḥān Qulī Khān's reign. The ninth chapter (bāb) offers accounts of the Timurid kings, Abulkhayrid/Shaybanid and the first four Ashtarkhanid/Janid khans. The tenth chapter presents a detailed account of the life and times of "the last great" Ashtarkhanid/Janid khan, Subḥān Qulī Bahādur (1682–1702), revealing historical information essential for scholars of the period and region


Book synopsis: Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture and the Body brings together cutting-edge scholarship examining the myriad ways that architects, urban planners, medical practitioners, and everyday people have applied modern ideas about health and the body to the spaces in which they live, work, and heal. The book's contributors explore North American and European understandings of the relationship between physical movement, bodily health, technological innovation, medical concepts, natural environments, and architectural settings from the nineteenth century through the heyday of modernist architectural experimentation in the 1920s and 1930s and onward into the 1970s. Not only does the book focus on how professionals have engaged with the architecture of healing and the body, but also how urban dwellers have strategized and modified their living environments themselves to create a kind of vernacular modernist architecture of health in their homes, gardens, and backyards. This new work builds upon a growing interdisciplinary field incorporating the urban humanities, geography, architectural history, the history of medicine, and critical visual studies that reflects our current preoccupation with the body and its corresponding therapeutic culture.


We present an accurate, real-time approach to robotic grasp detection based on convolutional neural networks. Our network performs single-stage regression to graspable bounding boxes without using standard sliding window or region proposal techniques. The model outperforms state-of-the-art approaches by 14 percentage points and runs at 13 frames per second on a GPU. Our network can simultaneously perform classification so that in a single step it recognizes the object and finds a good grasp rectangle. A modification to this model predicts multiple grasps per object by using a locally constrained prediction mechanism. The locally constrained model performs significantly better, especially on objects that can be grasped in a variety of ways.


Cross-cultural communication challenges arise for managers in international corporations on a daily basis, and in order to evaluate why these challenges occur we conducted a case study in collaboration with the fast-fashion corporation Gina Tricot. Our work challenges the influential theory that cultural proximity leads to less miscommunication within the business environment. By using Griffith's model on a fashion-based corporation, our thesis demonstrates that geographical distance is not an aiding factor in superior communication within multinational corporations, however, the longevity of relationships have a more deciding impact. Global expansion and the rapid development of technology contribute to faster communication possibilities across boarders, therefore the highly international, dynamic and quick communication based fast-fashion industry becomes an interesting object when studying cross-cultural communication. Moreover, this research will investigate which specific areas of business communication that creates the greatest challenges for international managers within the fast-fashion corporation Gina Tricot's cross-cultural operations. Our secondary sources are mainly based on previous models and guidelines for effective cross-cultural communication, with David Griffith's model of "Communication Effectiveness" as a main resource. Furthermore, it enabled us to test how well Griffith's model applies in the fast-fashion industry. Our primary data was obtained by a close collaboration with Gina Tricot in a case study fashion, by conducting personal interviews with retail and purchase managers. Trough our research and analysis we concluded that the core flaw with previous models is based in their rigidness and lack of flexibility to adapt to different circumstances. We base our conclusions on the notion that as human behaviours is dynamic and highly unpredictable, so is also culture and therefore even communication.


The active control of 30-m ring interferometric telescope needs edge sensing and tip sensing when its primary mirror is composed by trapezoid-shaped segments, and the imaging performance of the RIT is determined by the accuracy of these two detecting approaches. Considering the detecting accuracy available in current segmented telescope active control systems, tire effect of these detecting approaches on the surface error of the RIT primary mirror is calculated from the point of error propagation. The corresponding effect on imaging performance (modulation transfer functions (MTFs) and point; spread functions (PSFs) at several typical wavelengths) of the RIT primary mirror is also simulated. The results show that tip sensing is very important. for increasing the active control quality of the RIT primary mirror under the present techniques.


Over the past two decades, the retail landscape has experienced remarkable changes due to macro- and micro-environmental forces. Many industries, including textile and apparel businesses have shut down their facilities and some have modified their strategic plan to withstand the global economic recession. One of the important marketing strategies utilized by major retailers to sustain in this economy is brand extension. While several studies have examined the effect of brand extension on brand equity, very few have investigated the parent core brand concept once the brand extension has been introduced. Considering both the paucity of research and potential financial maximization to be gained from such efforts, the overall purpose of the study is to enrich our understanding of the impact of brand extensions on the parent core brand concept and brand equity in the context of apparel. Specifically, the current study also seeks to examine whether consumers' perceived fit moderates the effects of different types of brand extensions and consumers' evaluations of the parent core brand concept and brand equity after the extension. Data were collected from a convenience sample of undergraduate students between the ages of 18 to 26. The final sample consisted of 240 college students. Of these, approximately 91% were female, approximately 65% were Caucasians, and the average age category was 18 to 23 years old. Different statistical analysis techniques (e.g., multiple regression, paired sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance) were employed to test all hypotheses. Results revealed that there are positive relationships among consumers' initial evaluations of the parent brand equity, their attitudes toward the extensions, and their post extension evaluations of the parent core brand concept and brand equity. Results further showed that brand extension strategies (horizontal vs. vertical) have an impact on consumers' post extension evaluations of the parent core brand concept and brand equity. The study's findings also advance the brand literature in that consumers' perceived fit moderates the relationship between brand extension strategy (regardless of the types of extension) and consumer' post extension evaluations of the parent core brand concept and brand equity. Implications are provided. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.


The retrieval of aerosol parameters from passive satellite instruments in cloudy scenes is challenging, partly because clouds and cloud-related processes may significantly modify aerosol optical depth (AOD) and particle size, a problem that is further compounded by 3D radiative processes. Recent advances in retrieval algorithms such as the "color ratio" method, which utilizes the measurements at a shorter (470 nm) and a longer (860 nm) wavelength, have demonstrated the simultaneous derivation of AOD and cloud optical depth (COD) for scenes in which absorbing aerosols are found to overlay low-level cloud decks. This study shows simultaneous retrievals of abovecloud aerosol optical depth (ACAOD) and aerosol-corrected cloud optical depth (COD) from airborne measurements of cloud-reflected and sky radiances using the color ratio method. These airborne measurements were taken over marine stratocumulus clouds with NASA's Cloud Absorption Radiometer (CAR) during the SAFARI 2000 field campaign offshore of Namibia. The ACAOD is partitioned between the AOD below-aircraft (AOD_cloudtop) and above-aircraft AOD (AOD_sky). The results show good agreement between AOD_sky and sun-photometer measurements of the aboveaircraft AOD. The results also show that the use of aircraftbased sun-photometer measurements to validate satellite retrievals of the ACAOD is complicated by the lack of information on AOD below aircraft. Specifically, the CAR-retrieved AOD_cloudtop captures this "missing" aerosol layer caught between the aircraft and cloud top, which is required to quantify above-cloud aerosol loading and effectively validate satellite retrievals. In addition, the study finds a strong anticorrelation between the AOD_cloudtop and COD for cases in which COD< 10 and a weaker anticorrelation for COD> 10, which may be associated with the uncertainties in the color ratio method at lower AODs and CODs. The influence of 3D radiative effects on the retrievals is examined, and the results show that at cloud troughs, 3D effects increase retrieved ACAOD by about 3 %–11 % and retrieved COD by about 25 %. The results show that the color ratio method has little sensitivity to 3D effects at overcast stratocumulus cloud decks. These results demonstrate a novel airborne measurement approach for assessing satellite retrievals of aerosols above clouds, thereby filling a major gap in global aerosol observations.


Introduction Although with the increased frequency of ventral herniorrhaphy use, it is somewhat surprising that the question of optimal choice of repair is not yet settled. The published data of numerous studies revealed results with major differences. Objectives The aim of this study to compare the results of mini-component separation technique (mini-CST) repair of primary ventral hernia cases with onlay mesh repair. Patients and methods This prospective randomized controlled study was carried out on 64 consecutive adult patients with primary ventral hernia. Patients were divided randomly into two groups. Group A was treated using mini-component separation technique. Group B was treated using suture repair reinforced with onlay polypropylene mesh. Results Group A repair demonstrated 9.4% seroma rate and 6.3% surgical site infection rate (SSI), no wound dehiscence, and 3.1% recurrence rate. Group B repair demonstrated 15.6% seroma rate, 25% SSI, 3.1% wound dehiscence, and no recurrence. For seroma rate, infection, wound dehiscence, and recurrence, P values were 0.44, 0.038, 0.31, and 0.31, respectively, between both the group. These results indicate that mesh repair has a small reduction in recurrence rate compared with mini-CST for primary ventral hernias, but an increased risk of SSO (seroma, SSI, and wound dehiscence). Conclusion The repair of primary ventral hernia cases can be made simple without foreign body implantation by holding the concept of CST to allow for tension-free midline fascial closure. We prefer to retain the mesh repair for big defects or complex cases that need either mesh reinforcement or even bridging of the defect.


Importance Identifying individuals at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) is of utmost importance. Although genetic studies have identified APOE and other AD associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), genetic information has not been integrated into an epidemiological framework for personalized risk prediction. Objective To develop, replicate and validate a novel polygenic hazard score for predicting age-specific risk for AD. Setting Multi-center, multi-cohort genetic and clinical data. Participants We assessed genetic data from 17,008 AD patients and 37,154 controls from the International Genetics of Alzheimer's Project (IGAP), and 6,409 AD patients and 9,386 older controls from Phase 1 Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC). As independent replication and validation cohorts, we also evaluated genetic, neuroimaging, neuropathologic, CSF and clinical data from ADGC Phase 2, National Institute of Aging Alzheimer's Disease Center (NIA ADC) and Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) (total n = 20,680) Main Outcome(s) and Measure(s) Use the IGAP cohort to first identify AD associated SNPs (at p < 10-5). Next, integrate these AD associated SNPs into a Cox proportional hazards model using ADGC phase 1 genetic data, providing a polygenic hazard score (PHS) for each participant. Combine population based incidence rates, and genotype-derived PHS for each individual to derive estimates of instantaneous risk for developing AD, based on genotype and age. Finally, assess replication and validation of PHS in independent cohorts. Results Individuals in the highest PHS quantiles developed AD at a considerably lower age and had the highest yearly AD incidence rate. Among APOE ε3/3 individuals, PHS modified expected age of AD onset by more than 10 years between the lowest and highest deciles. In independent cohorts, PHS strongly predicted empirical age of AD onset (p = 1.1 x 10-26), longitudinal progression from normal aging to AD (p = 1.54 x 10-10) and associated with markers of AD neurodegeneration. Conclusions We developed, replicated and validated a clinically usable PHS for quantifying individual differences in age-specific risk of AD. Beyond APOE, polygenic architecture plays an important role in modifying AD risk. Precise quantification of AD genetic risk will be useful for early diagnosis and therapeutic strategies.


This is a short and succinct summary of the unique position of Roman law in European culture by a leading legal historian. Peter Stein's masterly study assesses the impact of Roman law in the ancient world and its continued unifying influence throughout medieval and modern Europe. Roman Law in European History is unparalleled in range, lucidity and authority, and should prove of enormous utility for teachers and students (at all levels) of legal history, comparative law and European Studies. Award-winning on its appearance in German translation, this English rendition of a magisterial work of interpretive synthesis is an invaluable contribution to the understanding of perhaps the most important European legal tradition of all.


Visual representations of student-generated trace data during learning activities help both students and instructors interpret them intuitively and perceive hidden aspects of these data quickly. In this paper, we elaborate on the visualization of temporal trace data during assessment. The goals of the study were twofold: a) to depict students' engagement in the assessment procedure in terms of time spent and temporal factors associated with learning-specific characteristics, and b) to explore the factors that influence the teachers' Behavioural Intention to use the proposed system as an information system and their perceptions of the effectiveness and acceptance of our approach. The proposed visualizations have been explored in a study with 32 Secondary Education teachers. We adopted a design-based research methodology and employed a survey instrument – based on the Learning Analytics Acceptance Model (LAAM) – in order to measure the expected impact of the proposed visualizations. The analysis of the findings indicates that a) temporal factors can be used for visualizing students' behaviour during assessment, and b) the visualization of the temporal dimension of students' behaviour increases teachers' awareness of students' progress, possible misconceptions (e.g., guessing the correct answer) and task difficulty.


Introduction Surveys of businesses, organizations, and institutions—so-called "establishment surveys"—provide key data for some of the Nation's most important measures of economic health. However, the quality of the data depends on respondent cooperation; thus, survey nonresponse is a major challenge for a survey. Increasing concern about this challenge to the data quality of its establishment surveys led senior management from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to charter a team in 2001 to conduct qualitative research on the scope of the problem. Fox et al. (2003) describes procedures used by the team to carry out its charter. This paper reports the major findings of the qualitative research.


The stagnation of the Italian economy over the last two decades is widely documented. During this period, the world economy has become highly integrated, and foreign outsourcing has become a standard practice for firms. While trade theory predicts benefits from the internationalization of production, Italy seems to have gained negligibly from it, or, rather to have lost. In a simple model, we show that this may be the case when markets are overregulated and competition policies are weak. We study a small open economy with one oligopolistic and one competitive sector, which outsources part of its production process abroad. Advances in globalization entail lower tariff rates of outsourcing. Contrary to the common wisdom, we show that national welfare is an inverted U-shaped function of tariffs. There exists a tariff threshold, below which the economy loses from globalization because the competitive sector overproduces and the oligopolistic underproduces (the oligopolistic good has a higher marginal effect on welfare). Competition policies that target the competitive sector lower the threshold and allow the economy to benefit from increased openness.


Objective: Specific biomarkers are essential in the diagnosis of heart failure. Our trial aim is determined that relationship between toll-like receptor-5 (TLR-5) and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-ProBNP) in patients with reduced ejection fraction. Methods: Two groups were formed in our study (normal and patient group). Among the two groups were investigated that relationship between TLR-5 and NT-ProBNP. Results: The plasma levels of both NT-ProBNP and TLR-5 are significantly higher in patients with congestive heart failure than healthy individuals. However, there is no definite correlation between plasma levels of NT-ProBNP and TLR-5 in patients with congestive heart failure. The high-level plasma TLR-5 is of prognostic value independent from the plasma NT-ProBNP levels, in these patients. Conclusion: As a conclusion, according to recent studies, the high plasma levels of NT-ProBNP and TLR-5 are mainly associated with high mortality and longer hospitalization rate in individuals with heart failure. Therefore, the higher is plasma levels of markers such as TLR-5 and NT-ProBNP, the worse is the overall prognosis in these patients. NT- ProBNP and TLR-5 are thought to be the cheapest and the most appropriate marker to be determined.


The article begins by stating that the time has come for a reexamination of our drug policy. It continues by discussing the two day conference "Is Our Drug Policy Effective?" "Are There Alternatives?" organized by several committee's. Because of space constraints, the article mainly delves into two topics, certain substances both licit and illicit with regard to both their physiological effects and the policies governing them, and also the disproportionate emphasis placed by the war on drugs on combating marijuana. The article then gives summaries of the speakers at the conference. These include: Objectives of our drug policy, overviews of drug policy effectiveness, impact of drug policy on human rights, living with our drug policy, education prevention and treatment, drug policy and the rule of law, drug policy alternatives, and international dimensions of drug policy. It then concludes with closing remarks that the conference should be done again, that this is just the beginning of the discussion.


Gilbert Patten, writing as Burt L. Standish, made a career of generating serialized twenty-thousand-word stories featuring his fictional creation Frank Merriwell, a student athlete at Yale University who inspired others to emulate his example of manly boyhood. Patten and his publisher, Street and Smith, initially had only a general idea about what would constitute Merriwell's adventures and who would want to read about them when they introduced the hero in the dime novel Tip Top Weekly in1896, but over the years what took shape was a story line that capitalized on middle-class fears about the insidious influence of modern life on the nation's boys. Merriwell came to symbolize the Progressive Era debate about how sport and school made boys into men. The saga featured the attractive Merriwell distinguishing between "good" and "bad" girls and focused on his squeaky-clean adventures in physical development and mentorship.By the serial's conclusion, Merriwell had opened a school for "weak and wayward boys" that made him into a figure who taught readers how to approximate his example. In Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood , Andersontreats Tip Top Weekly as a historical artifact, supplementing his reading of its text, illustrations, reader letters, and advertisements with his use of editorial correspondence, memoirs, trade journals, and legal documents. Anderson blends social and cultural history, with the history of business, gender, and sport, along with a general examination of childhood and youth in this fascinating study of how a fictional character was used to promote a homogeneous "normal" American boyhood rooted in an assumed pecking order of class, race, and gender.


Has the US dollar delivered the benefits that the rest of the world is expecting from its holdings of international liquidity? US government debt has been liquid and safe, and it is supplied in sufficient quantity. But it has given a low return to the countries that accumulated the most reserves, especially when those returns are measured in terms of the countries' own consumption. I argue in this paper that the countries that accumulate the most reserves should expect a low return in terms of their own consumption, and that there is little that international monetary reform can do to change that fact.


While magnesium alloys are routinely used in engineering applications in the form of net shape castings, applications for sheet product have been limited due to the poor cold formability of magnesium combined with the perceived expense of sheet. The issues associated with poor cold formability could largely be overcome if magnesium alloys were to be superplastically formed. Superplasticity in magnesium is well established with research papers on the subject dating back to the late 1960s. In recent years, interest in this area has grown to the point where a number of companies have successfully superplastically formed prototype automotive panels from magnesium alloy sheet. Concurrent to this the scientific community have demonstrated superplasticity in a wide range of magnesium alloys using processing techniques ranging from the exotic (severe plastic deformation) to the mundane (traditional warm rolling). Work by the current authors has shown, rather surprisingly, that superplasticity can be achieved in magnesium alloys in the as-cast condition. This has led to some initial exploratory work involving twin roll casting. The concept being that affordable superplastic magnesium sheet could be produced via twin roll casting with only limited rolling reduction to final gauge. This paper describes the superplastic behaviour (in uniaxial tension) and microstructure of sheet processed from strip cast AZ31 and AZ91. The experimental material has included strip cast AZ91 subjected to large shear strains immediately prior to casting. The material was tested in the as-cast condition and after warm rolling to a number of gauges. Industrially useful superplastic capability was demonstrated in the strip cast alloys. Furthermore, good superplastic capability was also demonstrated in sheet subsequently rolled from the cast metal and rolling strain did not significantly influence the ductilities obtained. The mechanism for achieving superplasticity in as-cast magnesium alloys will be considered and the contrasting deformation characteristics of AZ31 and AZ91 will be discussed in terms of m value analysis and microstructural characterisation.


Abstract. We use the Principle of Galilean Relativity (PGR) to gain insight into the physical basis for magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. The PGR states that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames, considering relative speeds between such reference frames that are significantly less than the speed of light. The PGR is a limiting case of the principle of Special Relativity, the latter applicable to any relative speeds between two inertial reference frames. Although the PGR has been invoked in past works related to magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, it has not been fully exploited for the insights it can provide into such topics as large-scale ionospheric convection and high latitude heating. In addition, the difficulties of applying the PGR to electrodynamics has not been covered. The PGR can be used to show that in the high latitude ionosphere there often exists a reference frame where electric fields vanish at lower altitudes where collisions are important (altitudes near ~ 100–120 km). In this reference frame, it is problematic to assert that currents of magnetospheric origin cause horizontal electric fields in the ionosphere, as has been suggested for the causal origin of Subauroral Polarization Stream electric fields. Electric fields have also been invoked as the causal origin of large-scale ionospheric convection, which may be a problematic assertion in certain reference frames. The PGR reinforces the importance of the neutral species and ion-neutral collisions in magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, which has been noted by several authors using detailed multi-species plasma calculations. A straightforward estimate shows that the momentum carried by electron field aligned currents of magnetospheric origin during disturbed periods is much less than the momentum changes experienced by the neutral species in an Earth-fixed frame. The primary driver of neutral species momentum changes during disturbed periods is the momentum imparted by the solar wind to ionospheric ions resulting from electrodynamic interactions. This is consistent with the idea that electric fields do not lead to large scale ionospheric convection.


In recent years there has been a growing interest in improving all aspects of the interaction between human and computers. Emotion recognition is a new research direction in human-computer interaction (HCI) which is based on affective computing that is expected to significantly improve the quality of HCI system and communications. Most existing works address this problem using 2D features, but they are sensitive to head pose, clutter, and variations in lighting conditions. In light of such problems, two 3D visual feature based approaches are presented in this dissertation. First, we present a recognition method based on the Gabor library for real 3D visual features extraction and an improved kernel canonical correlation analysis (IKCCA) algorithm for emotion classification. Second, to reduce the computation cost and provide a more general approach, we propose using a fiducial points' controlled 3D face model to recognize human emotion from video sequences. An Elastic body spine (EBS) technique is applied for deformation feature extraction and a discriminative Isomap (D-Isomap) based classification is used for the final decision. The most significant contributions of this work are detecting and tracking fiducial points automatically from video sequences to construct a generic 3D face model, and the introduction of EBS deformation features for emotion recognition. The experimental results show the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed methods.


We investigated connections between subtropical Atlantic climate variability, atmo- spheric conditions in the European Alpine region (45 to 47° N and 5 to 8° E) and the interannual vari- ability of the thermal conditions in the largest body of freshwater in Western Europe (Lake Geneva). The long-term water temperature was related to climate variability by means of a multivariate regres- sion model. Results revealed atmospheric connections that have been elusive so far, and showed that over the period from 1959 to 2000, summer thermal conditions in Lake Geneva appear tightly linked to the long-term variability of the subtropical Atlantic climate. The multivariate model revealed high skills and tight correlations, which suggest the possibility of assessing future thermal changes in Lake Geneva from the Atlantic climate variability. The implications of such climatic forcing on the function- ing of the pelagic ecosystem in Lake Geneva were illustrated by analysing the long-term changes in abundance of the summer-dominant carnivorous cladocerans Bythotrephes longimanus and Lep- todora kindtii during the period 1974 to 2000. Again, the multivariate model revealed high skills and excellent correlations between the interannual changes in abundance of these species and the variability of summer climate. Our approach provides a general understanding of the interrelations be- tween large- and regional-scale climates, local environmental conditions and the ecological responses in Lake Geneva during summer, and is therefore applicable to other retrospective studies.


Aims. AR Scorpii is unique amongst known white dwarf binaries in showing powerful pulsations extending to radio frequencies. Here we aim to investigate the multi-frequency radio emission of AR Sco in detail, in order to constrain its origin and emission mechanisms. Methods. We present interferometric radio frequency imaging of AR Sco at 1.5, 5 and 9GHz, analysing the total flux and polarization behaviour of this source at high time resolution (10, 3 and 3s), across a full 3.6h orbital period in each band. Results. We find strong modulation of the radio flux on the orbital period and the orbital sideband of the white dwarf's spin period (also known as the "beat" period). This indicates that, like the optical flux, the radio flux arises predominantly from on or near the inner surface of the M-dwarf companion star. The beat-phase pulsations of AR Sco decrease in strength with decreasing frequency. They are strongest at 9GHz and at an orbital phase ∼ 0.5. Unlike the optical emission from this source, radio emission from AR Sco shows weak linear polarization but very strong circular polarization, reaching ∼ 30% at an orbital phase ∼ 0.8. We infer the probable existence of a non-relativistic cyclotron emission component, which dominates at low radio frequencies. Given the required magnetic fields, this also likely arises from on or near the M-dwarf.


The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between perceived source credibility and impression management with psychological well-being among people in flood prone areas. This paper is based on quantitative approach by conducting a survey to 386 people in flood prone areas in Kubang Pasu district, Kedah, Malaysia. Few literatures on source credibility, impression management and psychological well-being that constitute the building blocks of this model have discussed. This paper also discusses the findings of the relationships between these variables by fill in the gap identified from previous studies by applying it in a new context of flood disaster management. On the other hand, the findings provide support for the relationships between perceived source credibility and impression management with psychological well-being among people flood prone areas.


The pelagic Jurassic successions of Western Sicily are dominated by the Tethyan Rosso Ammonitico. In the eastern sector of Monte Inici this lithofacies has been deposited during the Callovian-upper Berriasian interval. In the southwestern and northwestern sectors, it reached the middle Oxfordian and was followed by the deposition of silicified limestones which form a lateral equivalent of Tethyan radiolarites. The base of the studied pelagic succession reveals a high energy environment during the Callovian. It is followed by a low energy period until the upper Kimmeridgian-Berriasian interval, characterised by an intense and cyclic hydrodynamism. This energy decreases during the end of the Berriasian time. During the middle-upper Oxfordian a positive δ 13 C peak (δ 13 C = + 3 ‰) coincides with the highest skeletal diversity, the appearance of the nodular facies in Monte Inici East and the deposition of the silicified limestones in the southern zone. This peak indicates a high biological productivity. On the other hand, the Planula Zone (upper Oxfordian) is characterised by a relative negative excursion of the δ 13 C curve (+ 2.3 %o), a decrease of the biodiversity and the local disappearance of protoglobigerinids. The fluctuations of the δ 13 C curve are interpreted as variations of global palaeoenvironmental conditions. The heteropy Rosso Ammonitico/radiolarites s.l. is controlled by local palaeotopographic gradients.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
The purpose of this project was to create guidelines for electrotherapy and thermotherapy interventions in the management of adult patients (>18 years of age) with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis according to the criteria of the American Rheumatism Association (1987).

METHODS
Using Cochrane Collaboration methods, the Ottawa Methods Group identified and synthesized evidence from comparative controlled trials. The group then formed an expert panel, which developed a set of criteria for grading the strength of the evidence and the recommendation. Patient-important outcomes were determined through consensus, provided that these outcomes were assessed with a validated and reliable scale.

RESULTS
The Ottawa Panel developed 8 positive recommendations of clinical benefit. Lack of evidence meant that the panel could not gauge the efficacy of electrical stimulation.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The Ottawa Panel recommends the use of low-level laser therapy, therapeutic ultrasound, thermotherapy, electrical stimulation, and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for the management of rheumatoid arthritis.


We propose a multicountry quantile factor augmeneted vector autoregression (QFAVAR) to model heterogeneities both across countries and across characteristics of the distributions of macroeconomic time series. The presence of quantile factors allows for summarizing these two heterogeneities in a parsimonious way. We develop two algorithms for posterior inference that feature varying level of trade-off between estimation precision and computational speed. Using monthly data for the euro area, we establish the good empirical properties of the QFAVAR as a tool for assessing the effects of global shocks on country-level macroeconomic risks. In particular, QFAVAR short-run tail forecasts are more accurate compared to a FAVAR with symmetric Gaussian errors, as well as univariate quantile autoregressions that ignore comovements among quantiles of macroeconomic variables. We also illustrate how quantile impulse response functions and quantile connectedness measures, resulting from the new model, can be used to implement joint risk scenario analysis.


A model of the relationship between need for closure (NFC) and intergroup hostility was tested in four studies. According to the model, heightened NFC promotes glorification of the ingroup which fosters support for extreme measures against the group's perceived enemies. In a parallel process, high level of NFC induces perceptions of ingroup victimhood, which also adds support for aggressive actions toward rival outgroups. In the first two studies, conducted in Palestine's West Bank (Study 1) and in the United States (Study 2), NFC promoted a greater sense of moral entitlement to engage in violence against the outgroup, and this was mediated by perceived ingroup victimhood. The subsequent two studies tested the full hypothesized parallel mediation model among students in Northern Ireland (Study 3) and Jewish-Israelis (Study 4). Results largely supported the proposed model. Findings are discussed in relation to additional evidence linking NFC to phenomena of intergroup hostility.


Background Males are more likely to suffer from autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than females. As to whether females with ASD have similar brain alterations remain an open question. The current study aimed to examine sex-dependent as well as sex-independent alterations in resting-state functional connectivity in individuals with ASD compared with typically developing (TD) individuals. Method Resting-state functional MRI data were acquired from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE). Subjects between 6 to 20 years of age were included for analysis. After matching the intelligence quotient between groups for each dataset, and removing subjects due to excessive head motion, the resulting effective sample contained 28 females with ASD, 49 TD females, 129 males with ASD, and 141 TD males, with a two (diagnosis) by two (sex) design. Functional connectivity among 153 regions of interest (ROIs) comprising the whole brain was computed. Two by two analysis of variance was used to identify connectivity that showed diagnosis by sex interaction or main effects of diagnosis. Results The main effects of diagnosis were found mainly between visual cortex and other brain regions, indicating sex-independent connectivity alterations. We also observed two connections whose connectivity showed diagnosis by sex interaction between the precuneus and medial cerebellum as well as the precunes and dorsal frontal cortex. While males with ASD showed higher connectivity in these connections compared with TD males, females with ASD had lower connectivity than their counterparts. Conclusions Both sex-dependent and sex-independent functional connectivity alterations are present in ASD.


Information Technology is the collective term for various technologies involved in the processing and transmission of information. The various technologies like computer technology, barcode technology, RFID technology, CCTV technology, remote access technology etc. can be adopted in libraries to provide better services to the users. Manipal Academy of Higher Education, a premier higher education institute is striving hard to provide excellent library services to its stake holders. The adoption of various technologies to provide better library services is explained in the paper. An attempt is made to capture the user perception on IT applications in libraries.


The purpose of the project was to assess the effects of inbreeding on the genetic constitution of two Pakistani bradaris (literally defined as brotherhoods). Both bradaris contain children born to consanguineous (first cousin) and nonconsanguineous marriages. DNA samples have been supplied by Dr Subaib Ahmed of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rawalpindi, for a total of 91 individuals. The specific allele frequencies, and levels of homozygosity of each bradari, were determined using twenty fluorescence-labelled microsatellite markers for chromosomes 13 and 15. Amplification of the DNA was performed using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The PCR products were separated electrophoretically on an ABI Prism 310 Genetic Analyzer, with GeneScan software employed to identify the alleles of each individuf!J. Comparisons were made between the two bradaris, and between the bradaris and previously published data available from the GDB (Genome Data Base) and CEPH (Centre d'Etudes du Polymorphisme Hurnain). The level of homozygosity in each bradari was also compared to expected levels, calculated assuming random mating and with a correction for the inbreeding coefficient for each pedigree. The observed allele frequencies differed significantly between the bradaris for thirteen of the twenty markers. Allele frequencies in each bradari Wl!re also compared to the GDB and CEPH data and were found to be significantly different for all loci. The observed levels of homozygosity at each locus varied from 4% to 55% in the Khattar, and 3% to 40% in the Rajpoot. Observed homozygosity in each bradari was not statistically different from the GDB or CEPH data. Both the basic and corrected values for expected homozygosity were significantly greater than observed homozygosity in each bradari. An increase in homozygosity i.n the children of first cousin marriages was observed, however it was less than the predicted 6.25%. Lower than expected levels of homozygosity in the Pakistani families could indicate that there is preferential early selection against homozygotes in these families. There also appear to be reduced homozygosity levels in some regions of the two chromosomes, which may indicate that the resistance to homozygosity is specific


A forward genetic screen in immortalized cells identifies NF-κB signaling components required to transduce signals from Toll-like receptors. Vertebrates have evolved acquired immunity, but to detect an infection in its early stages they, nonetheless, rely on Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and other innate immune receptors. We have performed genomewide mutagenesis screens in an immortalized murine cell line to study nuclear factor κΒ (NF-κB) signaling in the context of innate immunity. To enable metabolic and physical selection for alterations in NF-κB signaling, we equipped cells with multiple reporter genes. Despite the diploid nature of the cells, multiple mutants unresponsive to lipopolysaccharide and CpG DNA were isolated from as few as 10 million mutagenized cells. Mutant clones may lead to the discovery of novel genes, and in combination with syngeneic wild-type reporter cells, they may allow a detailed functional analysis of NF-κB signaling. Compared with the use of whole animals in genetic screens, somatic cell genetics allows the isolation of genes required for innate immunity, even if these genes also have an essential function in development. Our discovery of an essential role for the endoplasmic reticulum chaperone gp96 (Grp94) in the maturation of TLRs and our work on the regulation of the inhibitor of nuclear factor κB kinase (IKK) complex by Nemo will be discussed in this context.


The aim of this paper is to provide a syntactic account of interpolation structures in Romance. In the introduction you are presented with a general approach: definition, scope within the Indo-European languages and prosodic aspects of this linguistic phenomenon. In section 2, the distributive properties of clitic object pronouns with respect to the verb are examined in detail and they are exemplified with Old Spanish, Old Catalan, Modem Portuguese and Modem Galician data. This section is concluded with a hypothesis that regards interpolation as a kind of stylistic construction related to a syntactic projection that occurs between CP and IP (namely, FocusP). The existence of this maximal projection not only allows us to account for the syntactic distribution of clitic object pronouns in embedded sentences but also for the prosodic aspects involved. Section 3 is devoted to the analysis of periphrastic perfects and passives and the intervention of severa1 linguistic items between either haber or ser and the past participle, which have generally been considered interpolation structures (cf. Andrés-Suárez (1994)). In our opinion, these constructions must be given a different analysis and, therefore, cannot be regarded as interpolation structures.


New forms of boundary integral equations are presented for the exact treatment of wave propagation in two-dimensional complicated dielectric waveguide circuits. Since the new boundary integral equations can be solved numerically by the conventional boundary-element method, they are suitable for the basic theory of computer-aided-design software for dielectric waveguide circuits. The new boundary integral equations are derived for a two-dimensional dielectric waveguide bend. They can be obtained by considering specific conditions at points far away from the bend. The numerical solution of the corner bend by the boundary-element method establishes the validity of the new boundary integral equations. The numerical results are evaluated on the bases of the law of energy conservation and the reciprocity condition. Since the theory is based on the exact theory, the solution is exact if sufficiently large computer memory and computational time are used.


The ripening stage of apple fruits at harvest is the main factor influencing fruit quality during the cold storage period that lasts several months and give rise to physiological disorders in fruits of susceptible cultivars. In particular, superficial scald is connected to α-farnesene oxidation, leading to fruit browning. Therefore, the assessment of the optimal ripening stage at harvest is considered to be crucial to control the overall quality, the length of storage life and the scald incidence. However, the maturity indexes traditionally used in the horticultural practice do not strictly correlate with fruit maturity, and do not account for the variability occurring in the field. Hence, the present work focused on the determination of apple fruit ripening with the use of an innovative, non-destructive device, the DA-meter. The study was conducted on 'Granny Smith' and 'Pink Lady' cultivars, which differ in scald susceptibility. Pre- and post- harvest ripening behavior of the fruits was studied, and the influence of ripening stage and treatments with 1-MCP were evaluated in relation to scald development and related metabolites. IAD was shown to be a reliable indicator of apple ripening, allowing cultivar-specific predictions of the optimal harvest time in different growing seasons. IAD may also be employed to segregate apple fruits in maturity classes, requiring different storage conditions to control flesh firmness reduction and scald incidence. Moreover, 1-MCP application is extremely effective in reducing superficial scald, and its effect is influenced by fruit ripening stage reached at harvest. However, the relation between ethylene and α-farnesene was not entirely elucidated. Thus, ethylene can be involved in other oxidative processes associated with scald besides α-farnesene regulation.