Troughs are one of the main components of villages in Turkey. They are constructed by converting springs or underground waters. Until now, there has been no extensive study investigating the composition and diversity of trough zooplankton species. In order to contribute knowledge on the zooplanktons in troughs, 142 troughs were randomly sampled from 17 districts in Ankara Province between 22 June and 3 July 2011. A total of 18 zooplanktons including 11 Copepoda and 7 Cladocera species were determined. Twelve of the 18 (Paracyclops chiltoni, Paracylops fimbriatus, Paracyclops imminutus, Tropocyclops prasinus, Diacyclops bisetosus, Acanthocyclops vernalis, Canthocamptus staphylinus, Attheyella crassa, Bryocamptus minutus, Macrothrix hirsuticornis, Oxyurella tenuicaudis, Moina macrocopa) are new records for Ankara. Paracyclops imminutus was reported for the third time in Turkey in the last 50 years. UPGMA illustrated 4 main clustering groups of species corresponding to some of their ecological characteristics. Poisson distribution analysis showed almost random distribution of species among the troughs (s2/µ = 1.04). With their cosmopolitan characteristics, 3 species (M. hirsuticornis, E. serrulatus, and C. sphaericus) are the most common species. Their ecological tolerance and optimum values were higher than the mean tolerances for different environmental variables. The results show that troughs may provide suitable conditions for zooplankton species.


Recurrent instability has characterized the global financial system since the 1980s, eventually leading to the current global financial crisis. This instability and the resultant disruptions – sovereign debt defaults, exchange rate misalignments, financial market illiquidity and asset price bubbles – are linked, in this book, to the shortcomings of the global financial system which tends to generate cycles of boom and bust in credit flows. These cycles are set in motion by the monetary impulses of major industrial countries and are amplified and propagated through the operation of global financial markets. Fabrizio Saccomanni argues that to counter such systemic instability requires that national authorities give adequate weight to financial stability objectives when formulating their monetary and regulatory policies. He maintains that appropriate multilateral strategies to deal with unsustainable trends in credit aggregates and asset prices should be devised in the International Monetary Fund in the context of a strengthened framework to deal with global payments imbalances and exchange rate misalignments.


Economic debates about markets and freedom from the late 1940s onwards focused increasingly on how laws and regulation affected economic behavior, and how economics influenced legal decision-making. By the late 1950s the term "law and economics" came into use to refer to the application of economic analysis to legal problems. The overlap between legal and political systems also led to issues in law and economics being raised in political economy, constitutional economics, and political science. Concepts in Law and Economics: A Guide for the Curious provides a comprehensive integration of the fields of law and economics. In clear prose, Jim Leitzel challenges traditional approaches to law and economics and uncovers common themes that cut across the two fields, providing readers with a means of integrating their knowledge to examine problems through both a legal and economic lens. This book covers the major methods of law and economics and applies those methods to various issues, including art vandalism, sales of human kidneys, and the ownership of meteorites. Compact yet comprehensive, this is an ideal introduction to a vast number of concepts and controversies in the fields of law and economics. Economics students, law students, and those with a general interest in the social sciences will find Concepts in Law and Economics an interesting and engaging read, and will emerge with the necessary skills for thinking like a law and economics practitioner. Available in OSO:


In recent times, video content encoded at High-Definition (HD) and Ultra-High-Definition (UHD) resolution dominates internet traffic. The significantly increased data rate and growing expectations of video quality from users create great challenges in video compression and quality assessment, especially for higher-resolution, higher-quality content. The development of robust video quality assessment metrics relies on the collection of subjective ground truths. As high-quality video content is more ambiguous and difficult for a human observer to rate, a more distinguishable subjective protocol/methodology should be considered. In this study, towards better quality assessment of high-quality videos, a subjective study was conducted focusing on high-quality HD and UHD content with the Degradation Category Rating (DCR) protocol. Commonly used video quality metrics were benchmarked in two quality ranges.


This paper discusses the problem of reduced-resolution transcoding of compressed video bitstreams. An analysis of drift errors is provided to identify the sources of quality degradation when transcoding to a lower spatial resolution. Two types of drift error are considered: a reference picture error, which has been identified in previous works, and error due to the non-commutative property of motion compensation and down-sampling, which is unique to this work. To overcome these sources of error, four novel architectures are presented. One architecture attempts to compensate for the reference picture error in the reduced resolution, while another architecture attempts to do the same in the original resolution. We present a third architecture that attempts to eliminate the second type of drift error and a final architecture that relies on an intra block refresh method to compensate all types of errors. In all these architectures, a variety of macroblock level conversions are required, such as motion vector mapping and texture down-sampling. These conversions are discussed in detail. Another important issue for the transcoder is rate control. This is especially important for the intra refresh architecture since it must find a balance between number of intra blocks used to compensate errors and the associated rate-distortion characteristics of the low-resolution signal. The complexity and quality of the architectures are compared. Based on the results, we find that the intra refresh architecture offers the best trade-off between quality and complexity, and is also the most flexible.


Several studies have shown that natural light is preferred over electrical lighting in built environments. It has positive effects on user satisfaction, health, and energy saving. However, natural light is limited by time and space. A possible solution is to apply the new concept of virtual natural lighting solutions that ideally can artificially provide natural lighting and views, with all of their properties. Computational modelling has the potential to steer the innovation process and early feasibility testing of this solution. Several available modelling approaches are reviewed, examining their ability to predict performance indicators of the system, in terms of lighting, view, space availability, thermal comfort, and energy consumption.


Gene expression signatures are commonly used to create cancer prognosis and diagnosis methods, yet only a small number of them are successfully deployed in the clinic since many fail to replicate performance on subsequent validation. A primary reason for this lack of reproducibility is the fact that these signatures attempt to model the highly variable and unstable genomic behavior of cancer. Our group recently introduced gene expression anti-profiles as a robust methodology to derive gene expression signatures based on the observation that while gene expression measurements are highly heterogeneous across tumors of a specific cancer type relative to the normal tissue, their degree of deviation from normal tissue expression in specific genes involved in tissue differentiation is a stable tumor mark that is reproducible across experiments and cancer types. Here we show that constructing gene expression signatures based on variability and the anti-profile approach yields classifiers capable of successfully distinguishing benign growths from cancerous growths based on deviation from normal expression. We then show that this same approach generates stable and reproducible signatures that predict probability of relapse and survival based on tumor gene expression. These results suggest that using the anti-profile framework for the discovery of genomic signatures is an avenue leading to the development of reproducible signatures suitable for adoption in clinical settings.


Purpose: The research goal adopted in this article is to identify the factors determining remote work, as well as to determine the potential of this form of work in the context of increasing the functionality and efficiency of local government institutions not only in the daily work of these institutions, but above all in crisis situations. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research methodology was based on the construction of a research tool that would allow to collect data on remote work and teleworking in Polish local government administration. The research method used was related to an online survey, which was addressed to all members of the Union of Polish Metropolises (union of the 12 largest cities in Poland). Findings: The main conclusions from the analysis performed include: (1) implementation of tasks in the form of teleworking has not been the object of interest of Polish local governments so far; (2) more than a half of the surveyed local governments assessed positively the preparation of these units to remote work implementation in the period of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic; (3) the experience regarding remote work gained during the pandemic shows that employees no longer fear this particular form of work. Practical implications: The result of the conducted research was to obtain information on the experience of the surveyed organizations in the field of remote work process implementation before the pandemic period, during its duration, as well as to consider this form of work in the future, taking into account the conclusions presented in the article. Originality/Value: The conducted research is the first of its kind carried out in Poland since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The obtained results are undoubtedly a valuable source of information on how to prepare Polish local governments to carry out work remotely.


In the area of Hardanger, a part of the fjord region in Western Norway, the production of apple wine (cider) has a long tradition that goes back to the 12th century, when monks introduced apple growing in this area. Nowadays, this is also the main area of fruit production in Norway. Despite the strict regulation of the alcoholic beverage production in Norway, traditional cider is still produced on some farms in this area. By tradition cider is produced by a spontaneous fermentation process of apple juice, performed by naturally occurring indigenous yeasts that originate from the fruit or the surfaces of the processing equipment. Therefore, our aim was primarily to study the ecology and biodiversity of the yeasts associated with the production of traditional cider in the Hardanger area. For two consecutive years, we sampled at 11 different locations in the observed region, where we collected cider samples and surface swabs of processing facilities from the cideries, and also soil and various parts of apple trees in orchards owned by the same producers. Thus, by enriching collected samples with the selective medium with high sugar and ethanol concentration, we managed to isolate about 1,300 yeasts. Based on the multiplex PCR results the yeasts were grouped into the Saccharomyces sensu stricto complex and non-Saccharomyces yeasts. The isolates were determined to the species level by performing the restriction analysis of ITS PCR products, and in some cases identifications were confirmed by sequencing of the D1/D2 domain of the 26S rDNA and/ or ITS region. As expected, non-Saccharomyces yeasts from the genus Metschnikowia and Hanseniaspora mainly populated the orchards, while the Saccharomyces yeasts were isolated in the orchards from the soil and fruits. In contrast, in ciders the species S. uvarum was predominantly found, occasionally also S. cerevisiae, Torulaspora delbrueckii and P. membranifacies. Indigenous cider yeasts were further on characterized in micro-plate format for the most important cider-making technological parameters (tolerance to ethanol, SO2, growth at low pH), for the presence of glucoside hydrolase activity, H2S production ability, and assimilation of malic acid. Based on this screenings the micro-scale fermentations of apple juice were performed with 13 different indigenous cider yeasts as monocultures. The most promising indigenous yeasts, T. delbrueckii and S. uvarum, were also tested as mixed cultures in sequential fermentations. Since the tested strain of T. delbrueckii as monoculture was not able to complete the alcoholic fermentation, better results were obtained in sequential fermentation with the mixed culture in combination with S. uvarum.


Recent technological innovation in fields such as robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence have reduced the number of workers required in a range of sectors, while lowering costs and increasing reliability. This trend has led policymakers, academics, CEOs, and entrepreneurs to ask what types of jobs will be most affected, what new skillsets will be needed for the jobs of tomorrow, and how governments can ease the transition. "The Future of Work: Regional Perspectives" considers how technology is likely to change labor markets in Africa, Developing Asia, Emerging Europe, Central Asia, Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, and Latin American and the Caribbean in the coming years. The study identifies concrete policy actions countries in these regions could take to face up to the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by emergent technology.


Hypersensitivity to pressure and temperature is observed in the near-infrared emission lines of the Nd(3+) ion in a Cr(3+),Nd(3+):Gd(3)Sc(2)Ga(3)O(12) crystal, associated to the R(1,2)((4)F(3/2))→Z(5)((4)I(9/2)) and R(1,2)((4)F(3/2))→Z(1)((4)I(9/2)) transitions. The former emissions show large linear pressure coefficients of -11.3 cm(-1)/GPa and -8.8 cm(-1)/GPa, while the latter show high thermal sensitivity in the low temperature range. Thus this garnet crystal can be considered a potential optical pressure and/or temperature sensor in high pressure and temperature experiments up to 12 GPa and below room temperature, used in diamond anvil cells and excited with different UV and visible commercial laser due to the multiple Cr(3+) and Nd(3+) absorption bands.


The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wagesetting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received less attention. To study these outcomes, we build a model of bargaining under incomplete information and test our predictions in the context of the U.S. private sector. Our model predicts that transparency reduces the individual bargaining power of workers, leading to lower average wages. A key insight is that employers credibly refuse to pay high wages to any one worker to avoid costly renegotiations with others under transparency. In situations where workers do not have individual bargaining power, such as under a collective bargaining agreement or in markets with posted wages, greater transparency has a muted impact on average wages. We test these predictions by evaluating the roll-out of U.S. state legislation protecting the right of workers to inquire about the salaries of their coworkers. Consistent with our prediction, the laws lead wages to decline by approximately 2% overall, but declines are progressively smaller in occupations with higher unionization rates. Our model provides a unified framework to analyze a wide range of transparency policies, and reconciles effects of transparency mandates documented in a variety of countries and contexts. Zoe B. Cullen Rock Center 210 Harvard Business School 60 N. Harvard Boston, MA 02163 and NBER firstname.lastname@example.com Bobak Pakzad-Hurson 64 Waterman Street Providence, RI 02912 email@example.com A data appendix is available at http://www.nber.org/data-appendix/w28903


This work aims at developing a distributed power control algorithm for energy efficiency maximization (measured in bit/Joule) in wireless networks. Unlike most previous works, a new formulation is proposed to jointly account for the energy efficiency and communication delay while ensuring quality-of-service constraints. A non-cooperative game-theoretic approach is taken, and feasibility conditions are derived for the best-response of the game. Under the assumption that these conditions are met, it is shown that the game admits a unique Nash equilibrium, which is guaranteed to be reached by implementing the game best-response dynamics. Based on these results, a convergent power control algorithm is derived, which can be implemented in a fully decentralized fashion.


IZA DP No. 13839 NOVEMBER 2020 Female Employment and Childcare* Childcare and women's employment decisions are intimately linked. I develop a dynamic model designed to analyse the effects of childcare subsidies on labour supply, fertility, marriage, and childcare decisions in a collective setting. In the model, children are a household good, produced by both parental time and time in childcare. Couples cannot commit to insure one another against the lower wages and lower consumption associated with spending time with a child. I estimate the model using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics in the United States to evaluate the impact of childcare subsidy programmes on various life-cycle outcomes of women and men. Offering a 10 percent childcare subsidy expands the labour supply of single women from lower-education backgrounds by 5.4 percent while married women, and higher-educated single women, respond much less. Finally, I show that there are large increases in childcare take-up associated with childcare subsidies, which improves the quality of children as a household good. This increases gains from marriage and results in an increase in the married fraction of the sample. JEL Classification: J24, J22, J12, J13, D13


Cosmopolitans argue that the account of human rights and distributive justice in John Rawls's The Law of Peoples is incompatible with his argument for liberal justice. Rawls should extend his account of liberal basic liberties and the guarantees of distributive justice to apply to the world at large. This essay defends Rawls's grounding of political justice in social cooperation. The Law of Peoples is drawn up to provide principles of foreign policy for liberal peoples. Human rights are among the necessary conditions for social cooperation, and so long as a decent people respect human rights, a common good, and the Law of Peoples, it is not the role of liberal peoples to impose upon well-ordered decent peoples liberal liberties they cannot endorse. Moreover, the difference principle is not an allocative or alleviatory principle, but applies to design property and other basic social institutions necessary to economic production, exchange and consumption. It presupposes political cooperation—a legislative body to actively apply it, and a legal system to apply it to. There is no feasible global state or global legal system that could serve these roles. Finally, the difference principle embodies a conception of democratic reciprocity that is only appropriate to cooperation among free and equal citizens who are socially productive and politically autonomous.I am grateful to K. C. Tan for many helpful discussions and criticisms of this essay. I am also grateful to the other contributors to this volume for their comments, and to Ellen Paul for her many helpful suggestions in preparing the final version of this essay.


Commercial enterprises are increasingly using online communities to allow customers to interact with each other before and after a purchase, and television shows are using them to get a closer grip on the audience. Although they have been around since the foundation of the Internet, little research has been done to understand the communicative interactions that arise within such online communities. In this paper, we use the notion of genres to study the communicative practices of three emergent online Internet communities at a university in the United States. Genres are organizing structures shaped by the communicative actions of individuals, and they provide an analytical lens to investigate those actions (Orlikowski and Yates 1994a, 1994b). We find that a parsimonious set of only six genres is needed to adequately classify almost 1,250 communications between the members of our three communities. Evidence also suggests that three of these genres are essential foundation blocks for communication in online communities. We also witness unmediated, explicit structuring of a genre, and the increase in participation this generates, which provides insight for those building and managing online communities. This study shows that genre analysis is a powerful tool to assist in understanding emergent online communities and we provide insight into how its use may facilitate growth and participation in the community.


Diplomacy is an ancient concept known to man as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans. Through the passing of time the concept of diplomacy has continuously been developed. The evolution of this concept has followed with the great civilisations of this world. Most notable are the advancements in Europe from the medieval era to the industrial revolution. Diplomacy was first codified in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna. The 1961 Vienna Convention currently regulates the immunities and privileges of the modern diplomat. The immunities range from official acts to the conducting of personal affairs. These immunities protect the diplomat from the foreign state. The extent of these immunities has led to a range of abusive behaviour resulting in controversy.
This dissertation sets out a brief historic overview of diplomacy and theories dealing with the discourse of immunities in light of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961. A closer look is taken on the privileges and immunities a diplomat enjoys in his personal capacity, his property and his family. Furthermore the development of diplomacy in England and South Africa are discussed. Lastly the Vienna Convention sets out a number of remedies that are able to deter diplomatic agents from abusing their station. However, such remedies alone have proved to be inefficient without the immunities being limited in order to make diplomats accountable for their misconduct.
In light of the severity of misconduct by diplomats, a suggestion has been offered for such privileges to be curtailed in order for diplomats to be held accountable for severe crimes committed. As it stands now, diplomats escape liability for heinous crimes such as rape, murder and human trafficking. It is submitted that a re-evaluation of the principles is required.


Coherent responses to important problems such as climate change require involving a multitude of stakeholders in a transformative process leading to development of policy pathways. The process of coming to an agreement on policy pathways requires critical reflection on underlying system conceptualizations and commitment to building capacity in all stakeholders engaged in a social learning process. Simulation models can support such processes by providing a boundary object or negotiating artifact that allows stakeholders to deliberate through a multi-interpretable, consistent, transparent, and verifiable representation of reality. The challenge is how to structure the transdisciplinary process of involving stakeholders in simulation modeling and how to know when such a process can be labeled as transformative. There is a proliferation of approaches for this across disciplines, of which this article identifies Group Model Building, Companion Modeling, Challenge-and-Reconstruct Learning, and generic environmental modeling as the most prominent. This article systematically reviews relevant theories, terminology, principles, and methodologies across these four approaches to build a framework that can facilitate further learning. The article also provides a typology of approaches to modeling with stakeholders. It distinguishes transformative approaches that involve stakeholders from representative, instrumental and nominal forms. It is based on an extensive literature review, supported by twenty-three semi-structured interviews with participatory and non-participatory modelers. The article brings order into the abundance of conceptions of transformation, the role of simulation models in transformative change processes, the role of participation of stakeholders, and what type of approaches to modeling with stakeholders are befitting in the development of policy pathways.


The Continuous Droplet Interface Crossing Encapsulation (cDICE) is an easy and robust method for producing, at high yield, monodisperse lipid vesicles with a controlled content as well as capsules with a designed shell. It consists in forcing a droplet through an interface between two imiscible fluids, using an external force such as centrifugation. At high inertia, the droplet entrain fluid that will constitute the shell of the capsule. At low inertia, the presence of amphiphile and the deformable interface interactions lead to monolayers zipping and formation of an amphiphile bilayer around the droplet. We will discuss the physical mechanisms involved in the production of both cDICE vesicles (low droplets inertia) and capsules (at high inertia), and the potential applications of this method. This method founds indeed many applications in biomimetics as it allows to encapsulate various biological solutions (biopolymers, hemoglobin, colloids, polymeric gels, cells. . . ) in membranes that can be composite and/or assymetric, or polymeric, and in the field of microencapsulation.


This article explores the gap between privacy and design in the context of "lateral privacy"— privacy issues arising among users of a service rather than from the service provider — on social networking sites (SNSs) and other platforms by analyzing the privacy concerns lodged against the introduction of Facebook's News Feed in 2006. Our analysis reveals that the dominant theory of privacy put forth by regulators, privacy as individual control, offers little insight into the experiences of privacy violation claimed by users. More importantly, we show that this theory is ill equipped to guide the design of SNSs and platforms to avoid similar harms in the future. A rising tide of privacy blunders on social networking sites and platforms drives the search for new regulatory approaches, and privacy regulators across the globe are increasingly demanding that the Fair Information Practice Principles, the embodiment of privacy as individual control, inform the design of technical systems through Privacy By Design. The call for Privacy By Design — the practice of embedding privacy protections into products and services at the design phase, rather than after the fact — connects to growing policymaker recognition of the power of technology to not only implement, but also to settle policy through architecture, configuration, interfaces, and default settings. We argue that regulators would do well to ensure that the concept of privacy they direct companies to embed affords the desirable forms of protection for privacy. Ideally, there would be a widely used set of methods and tools to aid in translating privacy into design. Today, neither is true. We identify three gaps in the "informational self-determination" approach that limit its responsiveness to lateral privacy design decisions in SNSs and platforms and then explore three alternative theories of privacy that provide compelling explanations of the privacy harms exemplified in platform environments. Based on this descriptive utility, we argue that these theories provide more robust grounding for efforts by SNSs and platform developers to address lateral privacy concerns in the design of technical artifacts. Unlike FIPPs, which can be applied across contexts, these theories require privacy to be discovered, not just implemented. To bridge this discovery gap, we turn to the field of Human Computer Interaction ("HCI") and dip into the related field of Value Sensitive Design ("VSD") to identify tools and methodologies that would aid designers in discovering and ultimately embedding these contextual, socially-oriented understandings of privacy in technical artifacts. Finally, we provide some tentative thoughts on the form and substance of regulations that would prompt corporations to invest in these HCI approaches to privacy.


This book enquires into the politics and practices of international literacy assessment programmes, exploring how the internationally comparable numbers so heavily relied on in national policy are produced and how they shape our understanding of the meanings and purposes of literacy. It aims to raise questions and trigger discussion on processes of quantification by examining the concepts of literacy competence that underpin international assessment data and the challenges of achieving cross-cultural validity in diverse international settings The collection brings together internationally leading academics in this field and representatives from key policy and literacy assessment institutions to begin to identify a future research agenda for the emerging field of International Assessment Studies. It illuminates the work that goes on behind the scenes in producing the tests and the data. The unfinished nature of this work is evidenced through insider accounts of the debates that absorb researchers, policy makers, implementers and practitioners alike. The book will be of particular interest for students of literacy and global educational policy, teachers of literacy and researchers located within universities and within assessment programmes, as well as practitioners in testing agencies, educational policy makers and other end users of the data. Mary Hamilton is Professor of Adult Learning and Literacy in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. She is Associate Director of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre and a founder member of the Research and Practice in Adult Literacy group. Bryan Maddox is a senior lecturer in education and international development at the University of East Anglia. He specialises in ethnographic and mixed methods research on globalised literacy assessments. Camilla Addey is a researcher in international educational assessments and global educational policy. She recently completed her PhD which focused on the rationales for participation in international literacy assessments in Mongolia and Laos.


Banking regulations set minimum levels of capital for banks. These requirements are generally formulated through a ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. A risk-weighting scheme assigns a weight to each asset or category of assets and effectively functions as a linear constraint on a bank's portfolio choice; it also changes the incentives for banks to hold various kinds of assets. In this paper, we investigate the design of risk weights to align regulatory and private objectives in a simple mean-variance framework for portfolio selection. By setting risk weights proportional to profitability rather than risk, the regulator can induce a bank to reduce its overall level of risk without distorting its asset mix. Because the regulator is unlikely to know the true profitability of assets, we introduce an adaptive formulation in which the regulator sets weights by observing a bank's portfolio. The adaptive scheme converges to the same combination of weights and portfolio choice that would hold if the regulator knew the asset profitability. We also investigate other objectives, including steering banks to a target mix of assets, adding robustness, mitigating procyclicality, and reducing system-wide risk in a setting with multiple heterogeneous banks.


The mammalian cell cytoskeleton consists of a diverse group of fibrillar elements that play a pivotal role in mediating a number of digestive and nondigestive cell functions, including secretion, absorption, motility, mechanical integrity, and mitosis. The cytoskeleton of higher-eukaryotic cells consists of three highly abundant major protein families: microfilaments (MF), microtubules (MT), and intermediate filaments (IF), as well as a growing number of associated proteins. Within digestive epithelia, the prototype members of these three protein families are actins, tubulins, and keratins, respectively. This review highlights the important structural, regulatory, functional, and unique features of the three major cytoskeletal protein groups in digestive epithelia. The emerging exciting biological aspects of these protein groups are their involvement in cell signaling via direct or indirect interaction with a growing list of associated proteins (MF, MT, IF), the identification of several disease-causing mutations (IF, MF), the functional role that they play in protection from environmental stresses (IF), and their functional integration via several linker proteins that bridge two or potentially all three of these groups together. The use of agents that target specific cytoskeletal elements as therapeutic modalities for digestive diseases offers potential unique areas of intervention that remain to be fully explored.


Positive psychology is the empirical study of what makes life worth living, an exploration of human flourishing. Work-life integration is a holistic approach to living that enables people to create wins across varying life domains. The author suggests that positive psychology and worklife integration are mutually satisfying fields of study. This paper outlines specific recommendations for how positive psychology theory and research can contribute to an individual's success in effectively integrating work and life. In turn, the process of improving work-life integration may enhance an individual's ability to live a flourishing life. Possible implications for this work include future empirical testing of the recommendations made in this paper to determine their validity and reliability and the scientific exploration of specific connections that can be made between positive psychology and work-life integration. POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION 2


BACKGROUND: Endothelial progenitor cells play a pivotal role in tissue repair, and thus are used for cell replacement therapies in "regenerative medicine." We tested whether the anesthetic sevoflurane would modulate growth or mobilization of these angiogenic cells. METHODS: In an in vitro model, mononuclear cells isolated from peripheral blood of healthy donors were preconditioned with sevoflurane (3 times 30 min at 2 vol% interspersed by 30 min of air). Colony-forming units were determined after 9 days in culture and compared with time-matched untreated control. Using magnetic cell sorting, CD133+/CD34+ endothelial progenitors were enriched from human umbilical cord blood, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), VEGFR2 (KDR), granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), STAT3, c-kit, and CXCR4 expressions were determined in sevoflurane-treated and untreated cells by real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. In a volunteer study with crossover design, we tested whether sevoflurane inhalation (<1 vol% end-tidal concentration) would mobilize endothelial progenitor cells from the bone marrow niche into the circulation using flow cytometry of peripheral blood samples. VEGF and G-CSF plasma levels were also measured. RESULTS: In vitro sevoflurane exposure of mononuclear cells enhanced colony-forming capacity and increased VEGF mRNA levels in CD133+/CD34+ cord blood cells (P = 0.017). Sevoflurane inhalation in healthy volunteers did not alter the number of CD133+/CD34+ or KDR+/CD34+ endothelial progenitors in the circulation, but increased the number of colony-forming units (P = 0.034), whereas VEGF and G-CSF plasma levels remained unchanged. CONCLUSIONS: Sevoflurane preconditioning promotes growth and proliferation of stem cell-like human endothelial progenitors. Hence, it may be used to promote perioperative vascular healing and to support cell replacement therapies.


Medicaid is a critical part of ensuring health care access for vulnerable populations, which is why it was expanded as part of the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. But many are cautiously optimistic about this expansion. Health care access for Medicaid beneficiaries depends on providers willing to treat them, yet many providers are severely restricting the number of Medicaid patients they see or are dropping out of the Medicaid program altogether. This threat to Medicaid access can be traced to state payment cuts, freezes, or changes in rate-setting methodology that dramatically reduce provider reimbursement. Congress gave states significant flexibility in rate setting in order to encourage them to experiment with health delivery and financing models that would reduce cost and deliver care more efficiently. Nonetheless, there are constraints on this flexibility. Rates must be adequate to ensure timely and equal access to quality care. There are also procedural requirements - states must get federal regulatory approval of rate changes and give the public adequate notice and opportunity to comment on such changes. Since Medicaid's enactment, however, providers and beneficiaries have brought payment suits challenging state rate cuts and rate-setting methodology as violating these requirements. In some cases, states ignore clear procedural requirements, making cuts without any consideration of access and quality factors. In other instances, the claim is that a state's process is inadequate because it does not consider the information necessary to ensure equal access. But the fate of Medicaid payment suits as a tool for protecting health care access and quality is uncertain for a number of reasons. First, the Supreme Court in Douglas v. Independent Living Center has taken up (and just recently remanded to the Ninth Circuit) a case that considers providers' and beneficiaries' right to challenge state rate cuts in federal court, as well as the level of review courts must apply to cuts approved by the federal government. Second, the recent Medicaid expansion means that more people will be eligible for Medicaid and will need providers, further exacerbating access concerns. Finally, despite the Obama Administration's renewed focus on Medicaid access generally, it is sending conflicting signals about its commitment to enforce existing federal access and quality protections. This Article explores the efficacy of payment suits as a tool for Medicaid access enforcement, and it considers the implications of the current regulatory and jurisprudential uncertainty for this important enforcement tool.


The Supreme Court's decision last June in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is torn between general principle and particularity in considering important questions of separation of powers in American constitutional law – just as had been an earlier decision that, in some respects, it both repudiated and modeled, Freytag v. Commissioner. Indeed, the same problems live in two earlier cases that are staples of the administrative law and separation of powers repertoire, Myers v. United States and Humphrey's Executor v. United States. The Supreme Court has a long history of reaching sensible results in its assessments of congressional choices about the structures of government, while having the deuce of a time explaining them. It has taken later developments to pick up the pieces. Its Free Enterprise Fund decision is only the most recent exhibit in this right-minded but inelegantly reasoned chain of opinions. The essay reviews the tensions between holding and explanation in the earlier cases, and then turns to the PCAOB decision. On the general question what the Constitution provides about the relationship between President and the Departments of executive government, in some respects matters are more settled than they had been at the beginning of the year. All nine Justices placed the independent regulatory commissions where they should be – not a "headless fourth branch," but elements of the executive branch in a different – but necessary – oversight relationship with the President. The Supreme Court's most important function, as Charles Black once remarked, lies in its validation of Congress's choices, not the opposite. But the majority opinion strangely refuses to say, flat out, that its conclusion entailed a presidential right to demand "Opinions in writing" from the SEC – the one authority Article II of the Constitution explicitly gives the President over the acts of domestic agencies – even as its holding reasons from the necessity of effective presidential oversight of executive action. And it seems unwilling to choose between saying that Congress may not place a for-cause-protected institution within another for-cause-protected institution, an untroubling proposition, and saying that Congress may not give for-cause protection to any "inferior officer" serving in a for-cause-protected institution, an unsettling proposition. Can Congress not protect the Inspector General of the SEC in the same way as it protects the Inspector General of the Department of Justice? The Court's approach to such issues would be greatly improved by pragmatic attention to reality and detail.


Purpose. The aim of this study was to evaluate the 2-year outcome of a multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme for working-age people, regarding sick leave and mental health. Method. The test persons consisted of 40 women and 20 men (mean age 46.8 ± SD 7.9) with musculoskeletal disorders, mainly neck and back pain. The rehabilitation programme was individually adapted and consisted of physical activity in several forms, relaxation, theoretical and practical education and individual guidance. Before, during and after the programme all participants were evaluated with the Global Self-Efficacy Index, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and stress test. Results. At the 2-year follow-up full-time sick leave had decreased by 37% (p < 0.0001) in the women, and by 25% (p < 0.05) in the men. Both women and men showed an increased quality of life (QoL) and decreased anxiety, depression and self-experienced stress at the 2-year follow-up compared with the start of the rehabilitation programme. Conclusions. The most important conclusion was that the effects of the rehabilitation programme persisted for up to 2 years. At 2 years the majority of the participants were still physically active, their QoL was increased, and most participants had returned to work.


The Internet of Things (IoT) is a common catch phrase among techies. It conjures up a world of connected devices which will make our lives easier: self-driving cars; wired kitchen appliances; smart cities. Other important applications include fleet tracking, temperature monitoring and the digital transformation of agriculture. The Internet of Things has the potential to disrupt both business and policy. For instance, Amazon is increasingly using connected robots to locate products on its warehouse shelves and bring them to workers, saving time and money. Similarly, the medical sector can be revolutionised by the use of connected devices monitoring the real-time health of patients. 1 2


ABSTRACT Lipase catalyzed hydrolysis of a triglyceride, palm oil, was performed in L2 type microemulsions based on different surfactants. Isooctane was used as hydrocarbon and the composition of the microemulsions was the same in all experiments. NMR self-diffusion measurements indicated that all microemulsions consisted of closed water droplets and that the structure did not change much during the course of the reaction. The hydrolysis was fast in the microemulsions based on branched-chain anionic or nonionic surfactant but very slow when a branched cationic or a linear nonionic surfactant was used. The cationic surfactant was found to form aggregates with the enzyme. No such interactions were detected with the other surfactants.


This paper builds a framework to jointly examine the possibility of both 'expansionary fiscal contractions' (austerity increasing output) and 'fiscal free lunches' (expansions reducing government debt), arguments supported by the austerity and stimulus camps, respectively, in recent debates. We propose a new metric quantifying the budgetary implications of fiscal action, a key aspect of fiscal policy particularly at the monetary zero lower bound. We find that austerity needs to be highly persistent and credible to be expansionary, and stimulus temporary, responsive and well-targeted in order to lower debt. We conclude that neitherare likely, especially during periods of economic distress.


The authors summarize the presentations and discussions contributed to the symposium International Perspectives on Career Development by members of Group 5, who considered the topic of the structure and organization of career development programs in different nations. A capsule picture of the national setting, primary goals, components, objectives, and implementation strategies is presented. Papers fell largely into 4 categories: national programs with several components; large, but more specific programs, serving a national population; smaller programs serving diverse populations; and focused programs. One theme emerged strongly from virtually every presentation: There is a gap, often profound, between policy or vision and reality. Although every nation about which participants heard had laudable policies and had made genuine attempts to assist its people with life career development, many individuals do not have access to quality, or even any, services. Group 5's focus in the symposium organized by the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance and the National Career Development Association was the structure and organization of career development programs in different nations. The planning committee described the group's focus in this way: There are large differences in the way in which career development provisions are made available among countries and regions. These structures have considerable influence on what the guidance practitioners can do and how it has to be done. The impact on the efficiency and outcome of certain techniques and methodologies is related to these structures and the policies, legislation, or other factors that shape such structures. Developing a comprehensive view of the structures in which programs of career development function may increase international understanding of why guidance methodology IS often different across settings and nations. The group's chairperson pointed out that it is difficult to discuss the structure and organization of career guidance programs without saying something about the context in which programs are being developed. With this in mind, participants were asked to provide a capsule picture of the national setting, along with the definition of career guidance being used in each country. They also were asked to describe the primary goals, components, objectives, and implementation strategies. Additional information about context included describing primary populations, a brief history of career guidance in their country, and the theoretical framework used, if any. They were also invited to share information about program funding; involvement of government, business, and industry; and the training available to career service providers. Questions were raised about programs for specific populations, such as ethnic minorities, girls and women, persons with disabilities, and others. Another important question was on the effectiveness of programs and the methods used to evaluate them. Presenters were asked to describe how programs have changed over time. Because of time limitations and the differences in the stage of career development and guidance across countries, the speakers were not able to address all questions. The papers presented fell largely into four categories: national programs with several components by country (e.g., Australia and the United States); large, but more specific programs, serving a national population (e.g., United Kingdom and Slovenia); smaller programs serving diverse populations (e.g., Torres Strait Islanders, Colombians, African Americans, and Finns); and focused programs such as career centers in China, lack of career counselor training programs in Japan, and adult programs that address gender issues of women and men in the United States. Because of the nature of the group's topic, which was to learn about how the wide range of ways that nations are approaching the challenge of helping their citizens prepare for, find, and manage the transitions and decisions necessary in today's global world of work, the members of the group did not invest time in coming to conclusions. …


On the Black Hill is an elegantly written tale of identical twin brothers who grow up on a farm in rural Wales and never leave home. They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advances of the twentieth century. In depicting the lives of Benjamin and Lewis and their interactions with their small local community Chatwin comments movingly on the larger questions of human experience.


An investigation was conducted to determine the variability of borehole shear test results obtained in testing soft and medium consistency marine clays. A statistical comparison of the results of stage tests obtained by different operators at two test depths at a research site is made. An additional comparison of the results obtained from stage tests and fresh shearing and a brief discussion of the linearity of both types of tests is also made. A short summary discussing the applicability of the results is also presented.


News verification is a process of determining whether a particular news report is truthful or deceptive. Deliberately deceptive (fabricated) news creates false conclusions in the readers' minds. Truthful (authentic) news matches the writer's knowledge. How do you tell the difference between the two in an automated way? To investigate this question, we analyzed rhetorical structures, discourse constituent parts and their coherence relations in deceptive and truthful news sample from NPR's "Bluff the Listener". Subsequently, we applied a vector space model to cluster the news by discourse feature similarity, achieving 63% accuracy. Our predictive model is not significantly better than chance (56% accuracy), though comparable to average human lie detection abilities (54%). Methodological limitations and future improvements are discussed. The long-term goal is to uncover systematic language differences and inform the core methodology of the news verification system.


Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in a well-to-do family in Atlanta, Georgia. Notwithstanding this, King did not escape indirect and direct encounters with one of the cruelest enemies of human dignity--racism. As a young boy he witnessed the racist mistreatment of his father by a White shoe salesman (King, 1958, 19) and by a White policeman (Ibid., 20). Around the age of six, when he' had started school, he was told by the parents of his White friend that he could no longer play with him. King recalled this as his first encounter with racism (Carson, 1992, 362; also King, 1958, 18-19). A number of times he saw members of the Ku Klux Klan riding through black neighborhoods trying to intimidate the residents. In addition, he had witnessed police brutality, "and watched Negroes receive the most tragic injustice in the courts" (King, 1958, 90). Moreover, while in high school, there was a nasty incident on a return bus trip from Dublin, Georgia, where he won an oratory contest. Because of segregation laws, King and his teacher were disrespectfully ordered by the bus driver to give their seats to White patrons. When King hesitated, the driver began cursing at him and his teacher. Urged by his teacher to get up, because it was the law, King recalled that they stood all the way back to Atlanta. He said: "That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life" (King, 1998, 10). As if this were not enough, King recalled that, just before he entered Morehouse College, he spent the summer working on a tobacco farm in Connecticut. He was thrilled by the fact that he could move about freely and eat wherever he wanted. However, it was hurtful to have to return to a segregated South. He reflected on how it made him feel to have to move to a Jim Crow car on the return trip to Atlanta. It was hard to understand why I could ride wherever I pleased on the train from New York to Washington and then had to change to a Jim Crow car at the nation's capital in order to continue the trip to Atlanta. The first time that I was seated behind a curtain in a dining car, I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood. I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect (King, 1998, 11-12). It is not difficult to understand why King confessed to having come "perilously close to resenting all White people" (King, 1958, 90). In any case we can see that neither money nor status completely shielded King from the degradation caused by racism. His own early encounters with racism and the utter disgust that resulted helps us to understand why he was so devoted to fighting for the dignity of persons as such, and that of his own people in particular. King learned when he was young that every person is a child of God and therefore is sacred and infinitely valuable to God. However, he also knew that, because of slavery and the continued practice of racial discrimination, the sense of human dignity was marred, and even lost, in large numbers of his people. Therefore much of his work was devoted to helping to restore in his people their lost sense of dignity. Although there are a number of themes that appear repeatedly in King's published and unpublished writings, speeches, and sermons, a case could be made that the two themes that appear most often have to do with God and with human dignity. As a pastor and theological social ethicist, King believed God to be the fundamental source of human worth or dignity. Persons have inviolable worth because they are created, loved, and sustained by the God of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ. Although King discovered the theological ground for his doctrine of dignity in his conception of God, he grounded it metaphysically in the philosophy of Personalism. …


We show that autoregressive language models can learn to infill text after we apply a straightforward transformation to the dataset, which simply moves a span of text from the middle of a document to its end. While this data augmentation has garnered much interest in recent years, we provide extensive evidence that training models with a large fraction of data transformed in this way does not harm the original left-to-right generative capability, as measured by perplexity and sampling evaluations across a wide range of scales. Given the usefulness, simplicity, and efficiency of training models to fill-in-the-middle (FIM), we suggest that future autoregressive language models be trained with FIM by default. To this end, we run a series of ablations on key hyperparameters, such as the data transformation frequency, the structure of the transformation, and the method of selecting the infill span. We use these ablations to prescribe strong default settings and best practices to train FIM models. We have released our best infilling model trained with best practices in our API, and release our infilling benchmarks to aid future research.


A performance analysis of an irreversible regenerative magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) power cycle operating at maximum power for a constant-velocity and a constant-Mach-number type of MHD generator has been carried out. The obtained results are evaluated together with the results of performance analysis at maximum thermal efficiency, and thus the upper and lower bounds of the optimal operating region in terms of power and thermal efficiency are determined. The considered MHD power cycle model includes irreversibilities coming from the electrical losses at the MHD generator, frictions at the compressor and pressure losses in the heater, the cooler and the regenerator. The effects of these major irreversibilities and regeneration application on the general and optimal performance are investigated. The analysis presented in this study may provide a theoretical basis for the optimal design and operating conditions for regenerative MHD power cycles.


Fault tolerance is a key feature for every grid based algorithm. In this paper we have proposed a fault tolerance technique for hierarchical mutual exclusion problem solver algorithm. This algorithm is based on Naimi-Trehel's token-based mutual exclusion algorithm. Our algorithm uses some intra cluster broadcasts to achieve this end and tolerate N-l permanent crashes of N nodes. We have also proposed a sketch of the proof for our algorithm and its integrity.


Everyone is aware that measurement is a cornerstone of science, one that in some cases is highly controversial. Much complex technology underlies the refined measurement of certain physical quantities, some of which can be< estimated to surprisingly large numbers of significant figures; one of the more ' elaborate businesses spawned by the social sciences, a business that affects all of our lives, attempts to measure intellectual ability and/or achievement; and elaborate computer programs are widely used to provide numerical representations (and simplifications), e.g., by factor analysis and multidimensional scaling, of complexes of data. Behind all of this activity is a belief, often sustained by a mixture of intuition and successful-if ill understood-procedures, that certain bodies of data can be represented in some fashion by numbers and their relations to each other. The goal of the semiphilosophical, semimathematical field of our title is to lay bare the types of empirical structures that admit such numerical representations. The reason for the term "axiomatic" in the title is that this is how the structures involved are described. The task is to isolate axioms that, on the one hand, are empirically and/or philosophically acceptable for at least one important scientific interpretation of the primitives and that, on the other hand, permit us to prove mathematically that the structure is closely similar (usually, isomorphic or homomorphic) to some numerical structure. Ultimately, one aims for a finite collection of different classes of structures that span all the scientifically interesting cases. At present, our knowledge appears quite adequate for the better developed parts of classical physics. It is interesting to note that many influential writers


It is well-known that micromolar to millimolar concentrations of cardiac glycosides inhibit Na/K pump activity, however, some early reports suggested nanomolar concentrations of these glycosides stimulate activity. These early reports were based on indirect measurements in multicellular preparations, hence, there was some uncertainty whether ion accumulation/depletion rather than pump stimulation caused the observations. Here, we utilize the whole-cell patch-clamp technique on isolated cardiac myocytes to directly measure Na/K pump current (IP) in conditions that minimize the possibility of ion accumulation/depletion causing the observed effects. In guinea pig ventricular myocytes, nanomolar concentrations of dihydro-ouabain (DHO) caused an outward current that appeared to be due to stimulation of IP because of the following: (1) it was absent in 0 mM [K+]o, as was IP; (2) it was absent in 0 mM [Na+]i, as was IP; (3) at reduced [Na+]i, the outward current was reduced in proportion to the reduction in IP; (4) it was eliminated by intracellular vanadate, as was IP. Our previous work suggested guinea pig ventricular myocytes coexpress the α1- and α2-isoforms of the Na/K pumps. The stimulation of IP appears to be through stimulation of the high glycoside affinity α2-isoform and not the α1-isoform because of the following: (1) regulatory signals that specifically increased activity of the α2-isoform increased the amplitude of the stimulation; (2) regulatory signals that specifically altered the activity of the α1-isoform did not affect the stimulation; (3) changes in [K+]o that affected activity of the α1-isoform, but not the α2-isoform, did not affect the stimulation; (4) myocytes from one group of guinea pigs expressed the α1-isoform but not the α2-isoform, and these myocytes did not show the stimulation. At 10 nM DHO, total IP increased by 35 ± 10% (mean ± SD, n = 18). If one accepts the hypothesis that this increase is due to stimulation of just the α2-isoform, then activity of the α2-isoform increased by 107 ± 30%. In the guinea pig myocytes, nanomolar ouabain as well as DHO stimulated the α2-isoform, but both the stimulatory and inhibitory concentrations of ouabain were ∼10-fold lower than those for DHO. Stimulation of IP by nanomolar DHO was observed in canine atrial and ventricular myocytes, which express the α1- and α3-isoforms of the Na/K pumps, suggesting the other high glycoside affinity isoform (the α3-isoform) also was stimulated by nanomolar concentrations of DHO. Human atrial and ventricular myocytes express all three isoforms, but isoform affinity for glycosides is too similar to separate their activity. Nevertheless, nanomolar DHO caused a stimulation of IP that was very similar to that seen in other species. Thus, in all species studied, nanomolar DHO caused stimulation of IP, and where the contributions of the high glycoside affinity α2- and α3-isoforms could be separated from that of the α1-isoform, it was only the high glycoside affinity isoform that was stimulated. These observations support early reports that nanomolar concentrations of glycosides stimulate Na/K pump activity, and suggest a novel mechanism of isoform-specific regulation of IP in heart by nanomolar concentrations of endogenous ouabain-like molecules.


The ciliate Strombidium sulcatum was used to feed and grow young stages of the copepods Temora longicornis (Muller) and Pseudocalanus elongatus (Boeck). The ciliate was cultured in the laboratory using either bacteria or the green alga Dunaliella sp. as a food source. Young copepodites of both copepod species consumed S. sulcatum at significant rates, but after 3 d, weight-specific ingestion decreased more than 2-fold. Larvae and copepodites feeding on S. sulcatum developed at suboptimal rates, survived poorly and showed abnormal morphology in comparison to control individuals fed a good-quality Rhodomonas sp. diet. The specific mass of fatty acids in S. sulcatum was much lower than in the Dunaliella sp. diet. However, the fatty acid composition of the protozoan more or less resembled that of the food, lacking long-chain highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFAs). Sterols only occurred in Dunaliella sp., although in low abundance of unuseful A7 sterols. Obviously, S. sulcatum did not biochemically enhance bacterial or algal food for subsequent use at higher trophic levels, and only transferred fatty acids without further conversion. The results indicate a deficiency in the ciliate of HUFAs and sterols which are essential nutrients for copepod growth. Apart from energy, ciliates seem to contribute little nutritive value to the diet of higher trophic levels, and this may limit secondary production during periods of low algal abundance.


With this practical book, you will learn proven methods for anonymizing health data to help your organization share meaningful datasets, without exposing patient identity. Leading experts Khaled El Emam and Luk Arbuckle walk you through a risk-based methodology, using case studies from their efforts to de-identify hundreds of datasets. Clinical data is valuable for research and other types of analytics, but making it anonymous without compromising data quality is tricky. This book demonstrates techniques for handling different data types, based on the authors experiences with a maternal-child registry, inpatient discharge abstracts, health insurance claims, electronic medical record databases, and the World Trade Center disaster registry, among others. Understand different methods for working with cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets Assess the risk of adversaries who attempt to re-identify patients in anonymized datasets Reduce the size and complexity of massive datasets without losing key information or jeopardizing privacy Use methods to anonymize unstructured free-form text data Minimize the risks inherent in geospatial data, without omitting critical location-based health information Look at ways to anonymize coding information in health data Learn the challenge of anonymously linking related datasets


This paper analyses Nigerian citizen perception of (a) democracy and the economy; (b) the performance of their civilian government, and (c) extent of corruption in public institutions and by elected officials and public officers. It also examines the effects of corruption and governance performance on the approval of and trust in Nigeria's political institutions. The analysis is based on the round 2 version of the Afrobarometer survey and employs descriptive analysis, factor analysis, scale item reliability analysis as well as OLS multiple regression analysis. Key findings show that one-half of the respondents preferred a market economy while a third preferred a government-run economic system. More than two thirds preferred democratic governance, while more than one-half agreed that the national constitution expresses the values and hopes of the Nigerian people. Generally, findings show that trust in public institutions is low and that political approval and trust are primarily influenced by how government performs in the arenas of socio-economic management and civil rights protection.


Scientific knowledge dissemination is necessary to collaboratively develop solutions to today's challenges among scientific, public, and commercial actors. Building on this, recent concepts (e.g., Third Mission) discuss the role and value of different dissemination mechanisms for increasing societal impact. However, the value individual scientists receive in exchange for disseminating knowledge differs across these mechanisms, which, consequently, affects their selection. So far, value capture mechanisms have mainly been described as appropriating monetary rewards in exchange for scientists' knowledge (e.g., patenting). However, most knowledge dissemination activities in science do not directly result in capturing monetary value (e.g., social engagement). By taking a value capture perspective, this article conceptualizes and explores how individual scientists capture value from disseminating their knowledge. Results from our qualitative study indicate that scientists' value capture consists of a measureable objective part (e.g., career promotion) and a still unconsidered subjective part (e.g., social recognition), which is perceived as valuable due to scientists' needs. By advancing our understanding of value capture in science, scientists' selection of dissemination mechanisms can be incentivized to increase both the value captured by themselves and society. Hence, policy makers and university managers can contribute to overcoming institutional and ecosystem barriers and foster scientists' engagement with society.


This paper considers the Sri Lanka/Tamil Eelam conflict with attention to how its dramatic end can be explained through postcolonial territorial politics. I argue discourses of postcolonial nationalism and global terrorism aligned along domestic, regional, and international political levels to enable a military victory for the government of Sri Lanka. At the domestic political level, there was a change in government along with a split and defection within the LTTE command. At the international level, there was a turn away from Western allies due to their perceived inability to understand the needs of the Asian front in the global war on terror (GWOT). This led to a geopolitical realignment with China, a state sympathetic to fighting terrorism and secession movements. The case is studied under a theoretical lens of "de/re territorialisation" from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. De/re territorialisation reveals simultaneous efforts to inscribe nationalist meaning into territory in a constant process of "becoming."


Recent numerical calculations have shown that while strong toroidal rotation can increase the external kink limit of tokamak plasmas, the associated rotation shear can drive a Kelvin–Helmholtz like global instability in the plasma, if the rotation frequency exceeds a threshold value (Chapman et al 2011 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 53 125002; Chapman et al 2012 Nucl. Fusion 52 042005). On the basis of a large aspect ratio toroidal expansion of the magnetohydrodynamic stability equations, the present paper investigates analytically various properties of this instability in tokamak plasmas with sonic toroidal flows and low magnetic shear in the core region. We also compare the analytical results with numerical code calculations. Many characteristic features and parameter dependences of the instability can be understood from the analytical theory, such as an eigenmode structure peaking at the position of largest rotation shear, and insensitivity of the growth rate to the plasma beta and to the precise value of the safety factor in the region of low magnetic shear. From an algebraic expression for the growth rate, valid asymptotically at large rotation frequencies, the drop in the dynamic pressure associated with the flow in the plasma can be identified as a major driving mechanism of the instability. For modes with (dominant) poloidal mode number m > 1, and rotating equilibria with isothermal magnetic surfaces, another driving mechanism of the instability is related to the centrifugally induced density variation along the magnetic field lines.


This thesis addresses the problem of acquiring spatial data concerning points on the surface of structures such as underground tunnels and sewers. These data can usefully provide knowledge of deformation, shape, area, volume, and position of structures. Such data can be further analysed to give insight into clearances, deterioration, flow rates and in-fill volumes or can be used to give knowledge of the present state of structures and their position.

Few systems address the problem of reliably acquiring this data in a manner that is fast and accurate while remaining flexible, adaptable and robust. This thesis considers a solution to the problem of fast and accurate spatial data acquisition concerning commonly found structures using the technique of optical triangulation with a linear array camera and diode laser light source.

Optical triangulation is a technique that has not fully matured for medium range measurement with few systems having been developed and little research material produced. However, the research carried out for this thesis shows that providing all the factors that contribute errors of measurement are understood, then a fast, robust and high accuracy system can be developed.

The development of the optical triangulation technique for use in surveying was addressed through a programme of prototype development, testing, and refinement. Three prototypes were built that demonstrated the reliability, accuracy, speed and robustness of this technique.

The errors associated with the a triangulation measuring system when applied to surveying application is considered from the intrinsic errors which are the same for any triangulation system and the extrinsic errors which are particular to the use of this system in surveying situations.

A calibration bench was constructed for consideration of the triangulation system which was automatic and used an interferometer to provide high accuracy measurement of the performance of the triangulation system. Calibration and interpolation trials were conducted and the results analysed. An analysis of the subpixel accuracy achieved with the discrete pixel CCD imagers has been performed and an analysis made.

One of the main disadvantages of optical triangulation when applied to the range 0-5 metres is that of non-linearity. A method of correction has been developed and analysed which is believed to be novel and makes a significant improvement to the measuring system.

The conclusion of this research is that an improved system of measurement has been produced which has a number of novel features. Trials show that the measuring system could be developed commercially to provide a solution to measurements of structures within the range of the device and with greater accuracy than comparable equipment designed for the same purpose.


This paper uses an option valuation model of the firm to answer the question, "What magnitude tax advantage to debt is consistent with the range of observed corporate debt ratios?" We incorporate into the model differential personal tax rates on capital gains and ordinary income. We conclude that variations in the magnitude of bankruptcy costs across firms can not by itself account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. When it is possible for the value of the underlying assets to junip discretely to zero, differences across firms in the probability of this jump can account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. Moreover, if the tax advantage to debt is small, the annual rate of return advantage offered by optimal leverage may be so small as to make the firm indifferent about debt policy over a wide range of debt-to-firm value ratios.


The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of circularity, comorbidity, prevalence and presentation variation on the accuracy of differential diagnoses made in optometric primary care using a modified form of naive Bayesian sequential analysis. No such investigation has ever been reported before. Data were collected for 1422 cases seen over one year. Positive test outcomes were recorded for case history (ethnicity, age, symptoms and ocular and medical history) and clinical signs in relation to each diagnosis. For this reason only positive likelihood ratios were used for this modified form of Bayesian analysis that was carried out with Laplacian correction and Chi-square filtration. Accuracy was expressed as the percentage of cases for which the diagnoses made by the clinician appeared at the top of a list generated by Bayesian analysis. Preliminary analyses were carried out on 10 diagnoses and 15 test outcomes. Accuracy of 100% was achieved in the absence of presentation variation but dropped by 6% when variation existed. Circularity artificially elevated accuracy by 0.5%. Surprisingly, removal of Chi-square filtering increased accuracy by 0.4%. Decision tree analysis showed that accuracy was influenced primarily by prevalence followed by presentation variation and comorbidity. Analysis of 35 diagnoses and 105 test outcomes followed. This explored the use of positive likelihood ratios, derived from the case history, to recommend signs to look for. Accuracy of 72% was achieved when all clinical signs were entered. The drop in accuracy, compared to the preliminary analysis, was attributed to the fact that some diagnoses lacked strong diagnostic signs; the accuracy increased by 1% when only recommended signs were entered. Chi-square filtering improved recommended test selection. Decision tree analysis showed that accuracy again influenced primarily by prevalence, followed by comorbidity and presentation variation. Future work will explore the use of likelihood ratios based on positive and negative test findings prior to considering naive Bayesian analysis as a form of artificial intelligence in optometric practice.


Woodchucks (Marmota m o m ) and meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) can be serious pests in orchards where they damage young fruit trees by gnawing on main stems. Previous work indicated that topical application of bobcat (Lynx rufus) urine to apple trees could reduce woodchuck damage by an average of 98%. Here, we report on field trials designed to determine whether various fractions of bobcat urine could achieve comparable reductions in gnawing activity. Trials with smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) resulted in an average reduction in gnawing over a 4-week period, relative to controls, of 86% for undiluted urine, 56% for a methanol extract of urine, and 25% for a solution of 5 nitrogen-containing compounds (indole, phenylacetamide, 1-methylhydantoin, 2,6-dimethylpyrazine, 6-valerolactam) in the approximate concentrations they were found in urine. Trials with apple seedlings and cuttings resulted in an average reduction in gnawing over a period of 2-3 weeks, relative to controls, of 90% for undiluted urine, 49% for a methylene chloride extract of urine, 34% for a solution containing a single sulfur-containing compound extracted from urine (3-mercapto-3-methy l-butanol) , and 30 % when this compound was mixed with three additional sulfur volatiles from urine. Reductions due to the nitrogenand sulfur-containing fractions were not significant. We also conducted laboratory trials in which we recorded the amount of time meadow voles spent in treated versus untreated halves of an arena. Preliminary trials indicated strong aversions (P<0.01) to areas containing bobcat, red fox (Vulpes vulpes), or coyote (Canis latrans) urine, and no aversion (P = 0.56) to woodchuck urine. In subsequent trials, we tested various fractions of bobcat urine and found that the methylene chloride extract and solutions containing either 3-mercapto-3-methyl-butanol, P-mercaptoethanol, or thiophenol caused significant aversions, but the mixture of five nitrogen-containing compounds did not. Woodchucks and meadow voles respond aversively to predator urine, but we were unable to identify fractions of bobcat urine capable of eliciting aversions comparable in magnitude to those achieved with undiluted urine. 272 REPELLENCY OF PREDATOR URINE


BACKGROUND
 Efficacious psychiatric treatments are not consistently deployed in community practice, and clinical outcomes are attenuated compared with those achieved in clinical trials. A major focus for mental health services research is to develop effective and cost-effective strategies that increase the use of evidence-based assessment, prevention, and treatment approaches in community settings.

 OBJECTIVE
 The goal of this program of research is to apply insights from behavioral economics and participatory design to advance the science and practice of implementing evidence-based practice (EBP) for individuals with psychiatric disorders across the life span.

 METHODS
 Project 1 (Assisting Depressed Adults in Primary care Treatment [ADAPT]) is patient-focused and leverages decision-making heuristics to compare ways to incentivize adherence to antidepressant medications in the first 6 weeks of treatment among adults newly diagnosed with depression. Project 2 (App for Strengthening Services In Specialized Therapeutic Support [ASSISTS]) is provider-focused and utilizes normative pressure and social status to increase data collection among community mental health workers treating children with autism. Project 3 (Motivating Outpatient Therapists to Implement: Valuing a Team Effort [MOTIVATE]) explores how participatory design can be used to design organizational-level implementation strategies to increase clinician use of EBPs. The projects are supported by a Methods Core that provides expertise in implementation science, behavioral economics, participatory design, measurement, and associated statistical approaches.

 RESULTS
 Enrollment for project ADAPT started in 2018; results are expected in 2020. Enrollment for project ASSISTS will begin in 2019; results are expected in 2021. Enrollment for project MOTIVATE started in 2018; results are expected in 2019. Data collection had begun for ADAPT and MOTIVATE when this protocol was submitted.

 CONCLUSIONS
 This research will advance the science of implementation through efforts to improve implementation strategy design, measurement, and statistical methods. First, we will test and refine approaches to collaboratively design implementation strategies with stakeholders (eg, discrete choice experiments and innovation tournaments). Second, we will refine the measurement of mechanisms related to heuristics used in decision making. Third, we will develop new ways to test mechanisms in multilevel implementation trials. This trifecta, coupled with findings from our 3 exploratory projects, will lead to improvements in our knowledge of what causes successful implementation, what variables moderate and mediate the effects of those causal factors, and how best to leverage this knowledge to increase the quality of care for people with psychiatric disorders.

 CLINICALTRIAL
 ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03441399; https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03441399 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/74dRbonBD)

 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPOR
 DERR1-10.2196/12121


After cemented total hip arthroplasty (THA) there may be failure at either the cement-stem or the cement-bone interface. This results from the occurrence of abnormally high shear and compressive stresses within the cement and excessive relative micromovement. We therefore evaluated micromovement and stress at the cement-bone and cement-stem interfaces for a titanium and a chromium-cobalt stem. The behaviour of both implants was similar and no substantial differences were found in the size and distribution of micromovement on either interface with respect to the stiffness of the stem. Micromovement was minimal with a cement mantle 3 to 4 mm thick but then increased with greater thickness of the cement. Abnormally high micromovement occurred when the cement was thinner than 2 mm and the stem was made of titanium. The relative decrease in surface roughness augmented slipping but decreased debonding at the cement-bone interface. Shear stress at this site did not vary significantly for the different coefficients of cement-bone friction while compressive and hoop stresses within the cement increased slightly.


The precursor sources of bile acid and bile neutral sterol were evaluated in the rat using Triparanol to inhibit the terminal reduction in the synthesis of cholesterol. During the initial period of Triparanol administration, the accumulation of hepatic desmosterol acts to segregate relatively newly synthetic hepatic sterol from the bulk of the equilibrated sterol mass. Biliary excretion of newly synthetic sterol can then be determined in acute studies, assuming no great differences between desmosterol and cholesterol as precursors of biliary neutral sterol or bile acid. It has been determined in this model that newly synthetic sterol comprises a mean of about 28% of the total biliary neutral sterol output. This fraction fell when hepatic cholesterogenesis was suppressed by prior cholesterol feeding. By using this approach in conjunction with the administration of labeled mevalonate to a renal pedicle-ligated rat, it was possible to calculate the amount of bile acid produced from either newly synthesized sterol or the equilibrated sterol pool. It has been estimated that the bulk of bile acid synthesis arises from this equilibrated source when these determinations were made within two hours of creating the fistula. With more prolonged fistula times, more of the bile acid originated from the newly synthesized sterol.


Sheldon Eveloff, CPA, a partner of Goldenberg/Rosenthal, Philadelphia, and former member of the American Institute of CPAs management advisory services executive committee and practice standards and administration committee, explains how CPAs can expand their professional competence to work in a new practice area. The leopard cannot change its spots, but the CPA is capable of adding the right skills to become a management consultant. This step can be especially important to smaller CPA firms, since the addition of consulting skills gives them an additional competitive edge in a high-growth practice area. PLANNED DEVELOPMENT Consulting, in the broadest sense, is almost unavoidable. Advising management has been an integral part of CPA services since the very beginning of our profession. It's a natural by-product of performing tax, accounting and auditing services, but only up to a point. When a firm or an individual CPA decides to offer formal consulting services, the depth of expertise and professional approach must be better defined and more finely tuned. Since consulting activities can take many forms, the firm must decide which types of activities are most suited to firm members' talents and client needs. Today, consulting includes a wide range of services, such as developing information systems, providing forecasts and projections, performing profitability studies, conducting organizational reviews and providing litigation support. Consulting skills are acquired by design. The motivated CPA must undertake a three-point plan of skills development: * Continuing education. * Reading. * Apprenticeship opportunities. CONTINUING EDUCATION Anyone who wants a successful consulting practice needs a significant amount of continuing education. Nothing substitutes for a solid base of knowledge. Fortunately, there are many fine sources of continuing education within easy reach of almost every CPA. One obvious source is formal college education through, for example, a master's is business administration or an executive program on nights or weekends. Other possibilities are courses or advanced degrees in computer technology, public finance, information services or electronic data processing. Some larger firms offer structured training programs that prepare CPAs in specific consulting areas and allow attendance by members of other firms. Another alternative for small firms is to hire a local business school professor to run an in-house training program that is conducted after hours. Perhaps the most efficient, least costly and most productive sources of continuing education are courses sponsored by the AICPA and the state CPA societies. These condensed sessions heighten awareness and intensify analytical skills while giving attendees the advantage of working alongside peers with different insights. Courses available through the AICPA that might be helpful include those on small business consulting, basic cost systems, business valuation methods and forecasts and projections. The AICPA certificate of educational achievement (CEA) programs are designed to give in-depth knowledge in specialized areas through an integrated series of courses. CEA programs are offered to AICPA and state society members who meet certain prerequisites. Equally enlightening are programs sponsored by other professional organizations, such as the Electronic Data Processing Auditors Foundation, the Data-Tech Institute, the American Management Association and the Institute of Management Consultants. In addition, other courses focus more directly on specific interests or industries. Certain trade groups and professional organizations, such as the Family Firm Institute, for privately held family businesses, or the Data Processing Management Association, are good sources of more narrowly focused courses. …


We consider the energy minimization problem in optical networks from an algorithmic perspective. Our objective is to plan optical WDM networks so as to minimize the energy expended, by reducing the number of energy-consuming components, such as amplifiers, regenerators, add/drop terminals, optical fibers, etc. We initially present an algorithm for solving the energy-aware routing and wavelength assignment problem based on an integer linear programming formulation that incorporates energy consumption and physical impairments (through a maximum transmission reach parameter) into routing and wavelength assignment. We then present a second algorithm that decomposes the problem and uses a linear programming relaxation to address the problem in large scale networks. Simulations are performed to evaluate and compare the performance of the proposed algorithms. In previously published works, energy minimization derives mainly from the reduction of the electronic processing of the traffic and the bypass in the optical domain, while the energy consumed by the optical devices is usually neglected. We focus on the optical layer and show that energy reductions can be obtained in that layer also.


Introduction: Postoperative delirium is one the most common and serious complications that patients develop after undergoing cardiac surgery. Objective:The present study aimed To investigate the preoperative anxiety and depression of the patients decided to undergo heart bypass surgery and to examine the relationship between these two factors and the incidence of postoperative delirium in the patients. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional research study, as many as 108 patients referred to the surgery department of Heshmat Educational-Therapeutic Center in Rasht, north of Iran, for elective cardiac surgery were targeted. For the purpose of the data collection, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Speilberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory(STAI), and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) were distributed among the patients before they undergo the surgery and a Postoperative Delirium Scale (DOS) was given to them three days after the surgery. The data were then analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (independent t-test and chi-square). Results: On average, delirium was reported in 38% percent of the patients three days after the surgery. It was also discovered that the average age of the patients with delirium was not significantly different from that of those without delirium. Moreover, the findings indicated that the frequency of experiencing delirium was not significantly different among patients in terms of being diabetic and non-diabetic and in terms of their sex, education, life condition, and marital status. State anxiety and trait anxiety were reported in 72% percent and 65% percent of the patients respectively. The frequency of experiencing delirium by the patients with state-trait anxiety as well as hospital anxiety and depression was not significantly different from that of those without disorders. It was shown that 31% of the patients had reported degrees of minor cognitive disorders before the surgery; the frequency of delirium in this group of the patients was not significantly different from the patients without any psychological disorders. Conclusion: Despite the prevalence of anxiety and depression in the patients before the heart bypass surgery, they did not experience more delirium than the patients without psychological disorders. Conflict of interest: none declared.


This study first provides a descriptive evidence on the evolution of corporate governance in the UK over 2003-2015. This research reveals that the board size of UK boards was somewhat stable over the 2003-2015 but with a noticeable drop during the 2007 financial crisis. Proportion of non-executive independent directors has increased dramatically over the period of 2003-2015. This is in line with the UK corporate governance codes that recommend most board of directors should be non-executive independent directors. Additionally, CEO duality has also seen a dramatic decrease from 21% in 2003 to almost 7% in 2015. This also reflects the UK corporate governance's approach to separate the roles of chairman and CEO. Another important observation regarding the evolution of UK boards is that women representation on corporate boards sharply increased over the study period, mostly post the publication of the Davies Report (2011).

Additionally, this research examines whether the presence of female and foreign directors on the remuneration committee has an influence on say-on-pay voting and chief executive officer (CEO) remuneration. Based on panel data from the UK's FTSE 350 firms between 2003 and 2015, this study finds that the presence of women on the remuneration committee is associated with a reduction in shareholders' dissent via say-on-pay voting and leads to lower CEO cash in terms of bonus remuneration, but not CEO equity remuneration. Moreover, this research finds that the presence of foreign directors on remuneration committees is associated with more shareholder dissent votes via say-on-pay voting and higher CEO remuneration, including cash, equity and bonus remuneration.

This study offers theoretical and academic implications and provides empirical evidence that gender and nationality diversity of directors on a remuneration committee plays a significant role in shaping shareholders' dissent via say-on-pay voting and CEO pay. The results also provide empirical support for previous studies which find that women are more effective monitors (Adams and Ferreira, 2009; Carter et al., 2003). Additionally, this research provides empirical support for previous studies that find that foreign directors are less effective monitors and lead to higher CEO pay (Masulis et al., 2012).

Furthermore, this study provides practitioner and policy implications. First, the findings of this research contribute to the on-going debate regarding board diversity, say-on-pay voting and CEO pay literature. Specifically, this study has practical implications, in that recent recommendations for more women on boards, such as those of the Davies Reports, have been useful and effective. This study also supports recent recommendations by the Hampton-Alexander Review (2016) for more representation of women on board sub-committees, such as the remuneration committee. Finally, the results of this research suggest that caution is needed when proposing an increase in foreign directors on board sub-committees, as their insufficient oversight can significantly exacerbate agency conflicts, rather than resolve them, potentially leading to higher CEO pay and a consequent increase in shareholders' dissent on remuneration policy via the say-on-pay.


The following remarks concerning textual criticism are not intended to extrapolate from the Byzantine redactions any kind of "Ur-Theognis", i.e. to reconstruct archaic elegies, from which the transmitted verses might have arisen by being repeatedly excerpted. Rather they start from the fact that the individual pieces as presented in West's editions are on the one hand text segments of high and concise stylistic quality, while on the other they have become heavily corrupt. Corrupt pieces of text may be recognized and emended by the process of text-immanent observation. Consequently immanent textual criticism without recurrence to an "Ur-Theognis" seems to be possible.


The extra-territorial reach of the antitrust laws is subject to multiple constraints, including the Commerce Clause of the constitution, the text of the antitrust statutes, and a variety of policy considerations. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the American Banana case, the Supreme Court severely limited the application of the antitrust laws to anti-competitive behavior beyond our shores. The next eighty years saw an expansion of their extra-territorial reach, by including within their coverage a range of foreign conduct which had domestic effects. However, confusion among the lower courts as to the extent of this coverage, as well as a concern about the application of American antitrust laws against exporters whose conduct principally affected competition in foreign markets, led to the passage in 1982 of the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act. FTAIA expressly excludes certain conduct from the antitrust laws, while maintaining the principle that they should continue to apply to import commerce and to foreign behavior having a domestic effect. In the intervening three decades, however, courts have given improperly broad readings to the FTAIA's exclusionary provisions. The result has been to deny to American competitors and American consumers the appropriate level of protection afforded them by the antitrust laws. This Article reviews the history leading up to the passage of FTAIA and discusses its provisions. It then examines and critiques the judicial treatment FTAIA has received. It concludes that many of these decisions are wrong – both as a matter of statutory interpretation and as a matter of policy – and urges either a judicial redirection or legislative correction.