In March 1944, the U.S. Institute of Inter-American Affairs (IIAA) celebrated the second anniversary of its "cooperative health and sanitation program" in Latin America.(1) George C. Dunham, the director of the IIAA's health and sanitation division, evaluated the program's accomplishments and goals. Although Dunham took most of his examples from Brazil, the IIAA's program was not restricted to that country. The institute had signed agreements with all but two Latin American republics: Cuba and Argentina.(2) In March 1944, the IIAA had 181 North American technicians working in eighteen Latin American countries. Most were physicians, nurses, sanitary engineers, construction engineers, architects, entomologists, and business managers.(3) By January 1944, another 13,000 nationals of the other republics were employed by the program, of whom some 600 were qualified technicians, working on a range of projects such as malaria control, environmental sanitation, hospital organization, dispensaries and health centers, professional training, and health education.(4) Of the original 821 planned projects, 451 had been concluded by July 1945.(5) Roots of Cooperative Action The IIAA's health and sanitation program was a product of the Good Neighbor Policy instituted during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, as a direct answer to Nazi economic and political expansion and its effects on the Americas. Although the program began to operate in 1942, its roots went back to the 1930s. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Berle Jr. indicated to the Buenos Aires Conference of Foreign Ministers of the American republics in 1936 the beginning of economic cooperation in the hemisphere. He outlined the diverse aspects of the Nazi policy that was threatening the interests of the United States in Latin America.(6) The main economic issue highlighted by Berle was related to the trade between Latin America and Europe, particularly with Germany. During the 1930s, Latin American countries had been the chief suppliers of raw materials for rebuilding the German war machine. Germany had introduced the so-called barter agreements to Latin America to tie its trade to its economy. Through this implementation, commodities imported from Latin America were paid in blocked currency, which means it could only be spent in Germany.(7) So the new economic hemisphere policy, referred to by Berle, was to shift Latin American trade to the United States. The United States was concerned with this commerce that "offered a fertile field in which the Axis power could carry on propaganda activities."(8) The political dilemma became more evident in 1937, when "Nazi and Fascist propaganda" began to be "exported in large scale."(9) Significantly dangerous in the political discourse of that time were the would-be fifth columns: Germans, Italians, Japanese, and their descendants living in the American republics. An American governmental publication alerted that some 1,400,000 "Axis aliens" and approximately 4,450,000 citizens of German and Italian descent lived in Brazil, "most of whom lived in the South and Southeast."(10) Feelings of insecurity increased within the United States after the fall of France in 1940, and the U.S. government, for the first time, felt that the German military threat could possibly reach the Americas. After the Nazi expansion in North Africa, Berle believed that "it was perfectly possible that aggressive powers might commence to operate in the Atlantic."(11) The War Department realized that northeastern Brazil could be reached by the power of German aircraft from western Africa. Concerned with U.S. security, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles suggested to the American ambassador to Brazil to have a "personal and confidential" talk with the Brazilian minister Oswaldo Aranha over the importance of the Fernando de Noronha and Natal areas, "both within ferrying range of European bombers operating from West African bases, and both of which could be used to facilitate the transfer of planes, men and munitions to the Western Hemisphere. …


Highlighting the key events, ideas, and individuals that have shaped modern Europe, this fresh and lively book provides a concise history of the continent from the Enlightenment to the integration of the European Union. Drawing on the enduring theme of revolution, David S. Mason explores the causes and consequences of revolution: political, economic, and scientific; the development of human rights; and issues of European identity and integration. He deliberately avoids a detailed chronology of every country and time period by emphasizing the most crucial events in shaping contemporary Europe. Fourteen focused chapters address such topical issues as the Enlightenment; the French Revolution and Napoleon; the Industrial Revolution; the theories and impact of Marx and Darwin; the revolutions of 1848, 1917, and 1989; the unifications of Germany and Italy; European imperialism; the two World Wars; the Cold War; and the evolution and expansion of the European Union. Any reader who wants to view the broad sweep of European history will find this book an engaging narrative.


Building occupants behave in various adaptive ways to restore thermal comfort when in a state of thermal discomfort. These adaptive actions affect building energy use and indoor environmental quality. This paper reports part of a draft risk study, here we focus on potential adaptive behaviour to counteract discomfort in rooms with displacement ventilation (DV) and underfloor air distribution (UFAD) systems. The most likely adaptive behaviours to be taken are: adjust clothing, open/close windows, adjust thermostat and change workstation. No conclusive relationship was found on whether these behaviours are influenced by overall or ankle thermal sensation. Females stated more frequently than males that they would open/close windows, while more males expressed the intention to use heaters and complain to building managers.


Purpose: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a heterogeneous disease with distinct molecular subtypes. The most established subtyping approach, the "Cell of Origin" (COO) algorithm, categorizes DLBCL into activated B-cell (ABC) and germinal center B-cell (GCB)-like subgroups through gene expression profiling. Recently developed immunohistochemical (IHC) techniques and other established methodologies can deliver discordant results and have various technical limitations. We evaluated the NanoString nCounter gene expression system to address issues with current platforms. Experimental Design: We devised a scoring system using 145 genes from published datasets to categorize DLBCL samples. After cell line validation, clinical tissue segmentation was tested using commercially available diagnostic DLBCL samples. Finally, we profiled biopsies from patients with relapsed/refractory DLBCL enrolled in the fostamatinib phase IIb clinical trial using three independent RNA expression platforms: NanoString, Affymetrix, and qNPA. Results: Diagnostic samples showed a typical spread of subtypes with consistent gene expression profiles across matched fresh, frozen, and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues. Results from biopsy samples across platforms were remarkably consistent, in contrast to published IHC data. Interestingly, COO segmentation of longitudinal fostamatinib biopsies taken at initial diagnosis and then again at primary relapse showed 88% concordance (15/17), suggesting that COO designation remains stable over the course of disease progression. Conclusions: DLBCL segmentation of patient tumor samples is possible using a number of expression platforms. However, we found that NanoString offers the most flexibility and fewest limitations in regards to robust clinical tissue subtype characterization. These subtype distinctions should help guide disease prognosis and treatment options within DLBCL clinical practice. Clin Cancer Res; 21(10); 2367–78. ©2014 AACR. See related commentary by Rimsza, p. 2204


Random Reshuffling (RR) is an algorithm for minimizing finite-sum functions that utilizes iterative gradient descent steps in conjunction with data reshuffling. Often contrasted with its sibling Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), RR is usually faster in practice and enjoys significant popularity in convex and non-convex optimization. The convergence rate of RR has attracted substantial attention recently and, for strongly convex and smooth functions, it was shown to converge faster than SGD if 1) the stepsize is small, 2) the gradients are bounded, and 3) the number of epochs is large. We remove these 3 assumptions, improve the dependence on the condition number from $\kappa^2$ to $\kappa$ (resp.\ from $\kappa$ to $\sqrt{\kappa}$) and, in addition, show that RR has a different type of variance. We argue through theory and experiments that the new variance type gives an additional justification of the superior performance of RR. To go beyond strong convexity, we present several results for non-strongly convex and non-convex objectives. We show that in all cases, our theory improves upon existing literature. Finally, we prove fast convergence of the Shuffle-Once (SO) algorithm, which shuffles the data only once, at the beginning of the optimization process. Our theory for strongly-convex objectives tightly matches the known lower bounds for both RR and SO and substantiates the common practical heuristic of shuffling once or only a few times. As a byproduct of our analysis, we also get new results for the Incremental Gradient algorithm (IG), which does not shuffle the data at all.


Abstract Objectives: The objectives of this study were to explore healthcare professionals' (HCPs) perceptions about patients who had been assaulted, who consult under the influence of alcohol, and to make them aware of their attitudes towards these patients, with a view to improving their care. Design: An explorative, descriptive study with 15 HCPs purposively selected across professional categories, qualifications, work experience, gender and age. These HCPs participated in four focus group interviews on intoxicated patients who had been assaulted. The interviews were audio-taped and supplemented with field and observational notes. Themes were identified using the cut-and-paste method and grouped into categories. Findings were subjected to mental triangulation, peer review and member check, and were compared with those in the literature. Settings and subjects: HCPs who treat assault patients within the emergency department (ED) of South Rand Hospital, Rosettenville, comprised the study population. They expressed their perceptions and inner feeling about patients under the influence of alcohol who had been assaulted. Interviews were carried out in the boardroom of the hospital. Outcome measures: HCPs' awareness of their attitudes towards assaulted patients under the influence of alcohol. Results: Frustration, anger, a desire to punish intoxicated patients and concern about wastage of hospital resources were some of the stressors experienced by HCPs. Exposure to health hazards and a poor security system were concerns that arose following intimidation, aggression and verbal abuse from alcohol-intoxicated patients who had been assaulted. Conclusion: HCPs experience negative emotions and develop negative attitudes in response to alcohol-intoxicated patients who have been assaulted.


Oil and gas development in the Williston Basin often involves the extraction of saline brines and presents a major source of saline contamination to surface and groundwater resources. The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is superimposed over much of the Williston Basin and provides critical habitats for migratory birds and waterfowl. Surface and shallow groundwaters in the PPR often contain high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS); however, salts produced from energy development are chemically different than the near-surface salts. To differentiate between saline contaminated and naturally high TDS water samples, Reiten and Tischmak (1993) developed a Contamination Index (CI = chloride concentration / specific conductance), with contamination indicated by values above 0.035. The Goose Lake study area in Sheridan County, Montana lies within the PPR and has a documented history of saline contamination. Local stratigraphy consists of coarse grained glacial outwash deposits overlying clay-rich glacial till, with extensive contamination in the saturated outwash deposits and wetlands evidenced from 1989 water samples. In 2009, water samples were analyzed from thirty locations including twenty six sites sampled in 1989 to determine changes in chemistry. Additionally, geophysical surveys were conducted to determine stratigraphic controls on contaminant transport using a Geonics EM-31 and EM-34. Widespread contamination was documented in 2009, with one water sample considered uncontaminated based upon the CI data. Two uncontaminated groundwater wells in 1989 had 2009 CI values indicating contamination, documenting the increased aerial extent of contamination due to down-gradient transport. Significant reductions in the median CI values from sites contaminated in 1989 were observed. Assuming reductions in CI values continue at the same rate, contamination would remain for roughly 140 years at the most contaminated site. Geophysical studies showed elevated apparent conductivities associated with saline contamination throughout the study. Contaminant transport is mainly occurring laterally within the outwash deposits, and is evident a minimum of 1,600 m from the source. In contrast, saline penetration into the underlying till is likely less than 30 m. These results demonstrate the potential for coproduced water contamination to aquatic resources far down-gradient of oil and gas developments in glacial outwash deposits within the PPR.


Background. Policymakers in many developing countries regard upper--secondary technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as a key element in economic growth and overty reduction. Unfortunately, there is evidence that the quality of TVET programs in developing countries is low. Although there are a number of indicators of low quality, one indicator is student dropout. The overall goal of this study is examine one dimension of the quality of China's TVET schools by studying the dropout behavior of TVET students. To meet this goal, we have three specific objectives. First, we seek to produce quality estimates of dropout rates among students in China's TVET schools. second, we seek to identify which students drop out from TVET. Third, we test whether financial constraints, math and computer achievement, and parental education and migration status correlate with TVET dropout. Drawing on data from a national survey of 7,414 upper-secondary TVET students, we dropout rates of 10.7% across China as a whole and as high as 22% in poorer inland areas, suggesting major gaps and disparities in Chinese TVET quality. Furthermore, we find that baseline academic performance and maternal education and migration status are strong correlates for student dropout.


It is timely that in this millennium, the education fraternity be introduced to
and progressively embrace a new concept called Emotional Intelligence
(EQ). EQ has become another important element in measuring human
intelligence and success. Therefore, it is crucial to make teachers aware of
the importance of students becoming emotional literate.
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the inculcation of EQ
in the ESL instruction in selected Smart School classrooms in Malaysia. The
study was guided and carried out through the examination of four research
questions: (1) How do the different ESL teachers' EQ inform their practice as
teachers?; (2) What is the extent of EQ being inculcated in the selected ESL
classrooms in a Smart School by the different ESL teachers using Goleman's
viii
checklist?; (3) How do elements associated with the inculcation of EQ in
selected ESL classrooms in a Smart School affect the teaching of the
different teachers?; and (4) What are the instructional strategies or activities
used by the different teachers to inculcate EQ in the ESL Smart School
classroom? The study employed qualitative methodology and the data were
collected through interviews and classroom observations.
Three ESL Smart School teachers were purposefully selected to participate
in this study. The participants are trained secondary school teachers,
teaching in a Smart School in the Federal Territory, Kuala Lumpur with at
least two years of experience teaching ESL. They all teach in non-
examination classes. The main sources of data were from the classroom
observations that were video-taped and recorded which was later transcribed
and analysed. Interviews were also carried out before and after observations
to obtain their perceptions, experiences, and practices related to the study.
The study revealed a number of findings. The findings are (1) elements like
beliefs, time constraints, no training, lack of experience, personality, personal
interest, syllabus, the education system, and fluency of the language impinge
upon the participants' use of EQ in the ESL classroom, (2) The Ministry of
Education (MOE) whilst acknowledging the importance of EQ (Malaysia,
1997), needs to do more in inculcating EQ in schools, (3) participants in this
study have different views about goals of education and appropriate means
of achieving these goals.
ix
The study concludes that there is great disparity in understanding the
concept of EQ as well as embracing it on equal footing against the
established regime of IQ. The MOE has to show more commitment to break
down years of mass acceptance of an old and perceived to be working
concept. In order to effect change, a deeper understanding of EQ must be
promulgated at the highest level namely MOE. If the following has been
achieved, only then can EQ be implemented at the classroom level
efficiently. Recommendations are proposed for further studies.


Perivascular epithelioid cell tumours (PEComas) belongs to the family of mesenchymal neoplasms that can occur in many organs, but rarely found in liver. Preoperative diagnosis could be challenging due to unspecific and variable radiologic patterns, which can be clinically misdiagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma and other benign tumors. This report aims to announce a case of hepatic PEComa with extramedullary hematopoiesis. A 44- year- old woman accidentally presented a nodular mass in the left hepatic segment on ultrasonography with normal liver function result. Abdominal enhanced CT Scan showed hypervascular lesion. Morphology exibits classical characteristics of PEComa with mature fat tissue predominance, thick-wall vessel; somewhat amount of extramedullary hematopoiesis was also recognized. Tumor cells are diffusely immunoreactive with HMB45. PEComa is a rare disease in liver, pathologists need to recognize three components of this tumor to avoid misdiagnosing with malignant conditions.


Tillage has been a common event in farming for centuries. New information and management practices are demonstrating better ways of managing the soil to reduce erosion and improve productivity and profitability. Tillage destroys the soil structure, actually increasing the weeds and reducing the water holding capacity of the soil. Highly erodible areas of a field can lose more than 5 tons of soil per year with conventional tillage. Converting to no-till management can reduce production costs more than $30 per acre per year, saving topsoil and reducing management time in the field.


Disintermediated active communication (DAC) is a new paradigm of communication in which a sending thread actively engages a receiving thread when sending it a message via shared memory. DAC is different than existing approaches that use passive communication through shared-memory - based on intermittently checking for messages - or that use preemptive communication but must rely on intermediaries such as the operating system or dedicated interrupt channels. An implementation of DAC builds on existing cache coherency support and exploits light-weight user-level interrupts. Inter-thread communication occurs via monitored memory locations where the receiver thread responds to invalidations of monitored addresses with a light-weight user-level software-defined handler. Address monitoring is supported by cache line user-bits, or CLUbits. CLUbits reside in the cache next to the coherence state, are private per thread, and maintain user-defined per-cache-line state. A light weight software library can demultiplex asynchronous notifications and handle exceptional cases. In DAC-based programs threads coordinate with one another by explicit signaling and implicit resource monitoring. With the simple and direct communication primitives of DAC, multi-threaded workloads synchronize at a finer granularity and more efficiently utilize the hardware of upcoming multi-core designs. This paper introduces DAC, presents several signaling models for DAC-based programs, and describes a simple memory-based framework that supports DAC by leveraging existing cache-coherency models. Our framework is general enough to support uses beyond DAC


As the Internet continues to experience a tremendous expansion in number of users and services today, the importance of satisfying service availability becomes recently one of the most critical factors for the success of "Internet services" such as the World Wide Web, peer-to-peer file sharing and digital audio/video streaming. In this thesis, we take an availability-centric view on end-to-end service Quality of Service (QoS) and investigate service availability for large-scale content distribution and replication systems in wide-area internetworks such as the Internet. The main focus is on issues of providing availability guarantees, i.e., delivering target level of service availability with guarantees for all individual users of services running on top of the above systems. Specifically, the thesis aims at the development of concept and framework for technically realizing the availability-centred QoS approach, on the one hand, and of decision strategies for content replication in order to provide availability guarantee for the large-scale Internet-based services, on the other hand. In particular, we tackle the replica selection and placement problem and study the effectiveness of realistic replication strategies on the achieved service availability in the Internet. There are several contributions that this thesis makes. The first contribution is the concept of Quality of Availability (QoA) which enables one to treat availability as a controllable and observable QoS parameter. On the basis of this concept, three refinements of the existing availability definition have been investigated (decoupled, differentiated and fine-grained) in order to enable a more quantitative specification and evaluation of the service availability. For a technical realization of the QoA concept, we have developed a QoA framework in which users can specify their service requirements in terms of QoA and the requirements are mapped into the low-level replication specification. Additionally, the QoA framework offers QoA metrics and mechanisms to control the QoA guarantee. The second contribution is an evaluation of the replication techniques used to resolve the replica placement problem for different content distribution and replication system models. We have tackled the replica placement problem and investigated specifically the effects of the degree of replication, the granularity and location of replicas on overall service availability achieved by the selected placements. We divided the placement problem into two sub-problems, (1) the static full server replica placement in content delivery network (CDN)-like replicated systems and (2) the dynamic partial data replica placement in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. For solving the static full server replica placement problem, we first modelled the content distribution and replication system as a stochastic graph and then developed several ranking-based heuristics and an exact state enumeration algorithm for improving and guaranteeing service availability of the system. By simulating the behaviour of the proposed algorithms, we found that the location of replicas is a relevant factor for the service availability. Even though the QoA improvement could be achieved by increasing replica numbers, replicas' placement and their dependability affected the QoA more significantly. In the case of the dynamic replica placement problem in P2P-based content distribution and replication systems, we took the intermittent connectivity of peers of the system explicitly into account. We modelled the system as a dynamic stochastic graph where each node (peer) goes up and down according to its assigned up-time probability. We considered different time scales for replica creation so that replicas could be created either proactively at the service initialization phase, or on-the-fly during the service running phase. We re-used the placement heuristics used for solving the static replica placement problem and modified them slightly so that they are fully decentralized, assume no global information about the system condition or network topology, and work in a cooperative way to replicate content on-the-fly. To quantitatively study the effectiveness of the used heuristics, we developed an event-driven simulation framework which captures the data access model as well as peers' dynamic behaviour. The simulation results indicated that the cooperative placement heuristics offer, in general, better QoA than non-cooperative local placement approach, while all of them induce approximately the same amount of replacement cost in terms of the number of replacements. The third contribution is a new approach for determining replica placements in large-scale content distribution and replication systems, which always provides an availability guarantee for all service requesting entities in a content distribution and replication system. For the first time, we suggested an admission control-based replica placement scheme that solves the static replica placement problem in a polynomial time, with respect to the size of the input system. Through a simulative study, we have experimentally evaluated the admission control-based algorithm with random and power-law graphs of different sizes. Our results show that the placement achieved by the admission control-based algorithm always provides a QoA guarantee, and that the upper bound of the replication degree (i.e., replica numbers) required for delivering QoA guarantees is about 27% and 37% of the total nodes in the random and power-law graph, respectively. As far as we know this is the first time that the admission control concept has been integrated with a replica placement scheme that solves the problem in a polynomial time while offering service availability guarantees.


In South Africa, sport unites the country because it transcends race, gender, politics and language groups. Majority of South African youth are in the developmental phase where critical decisions are being taken on key life transitions, including education, work, lifestyle, participation in society, and other psycho-sociological areas. Learners in high school in the previously disadvantaged communities form a crucial part of South Africa's future. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to determine how high school learners in the Theewaterskloof Municipality in South Africa perceived the influence of sport participation on their quality of life. The perceptions of the learners were specified according to six domains: drugs, alcohol and crime; mental health; social contact, culture and safety; happiness and wellbeing; physical health and diseases; and academic achievement. The research was conducted at three high schools located in the Theewaterskloof Municipality, Western Cape Province. A questionnaire was used to collect information from 484 learners aged 13 to 18 years. A significant relationship was noted for variables of each domain, except drugs, alcohol and crime and academic achievement. Learners perceived that increasing sport participation resulted in a significantly positive response of at least one variable for the domains social contact, culture and safety; physical health and diseases; mental health; and happiness and wellbeing. Keywords: Sport, quality of life, learners, perception, South Africa.


This paper concentrates on the study of the three-dimensional free vibrations in a homogenous isotropic, viscothermoelastic hollow sphere whose surfaces are subjected to stress free, thermally insulated or isothermal boundary conditions. The use of governing partial differential equations is solved into a coupled system of ordinary differential equations. The equation for toroidal motion gets decoupled from rest of the motion and remains unaffected due to thermal variations. Matrix Fr?benious method of extended power series is employed to obtain the solution. The secular equations for the existence of various types of possible modes of vibrations in the considered hollow sphere are derived in the com- pact form. The special cases of spheroidal and toroidal modes of vibrations of a hollow sphere have also been deduced and discussed. In order to explore the characteristics of vibrations the secular equations are further solved by using fixed point iteration numerical technique with the help of MATLAB software tools. The computer simulated results have been presented graphically for copper material.


Given the importance of brand management of sport teams, the objective of this study was to investigate the impact of relationship marketing dimensions, including team attachment, team trust, team involvement, and team selfexpression on team loyalty of fans of sport teams participating in Iran Azadeghan Football League. Sample size of this study included 480 fans of football teams, and structural equation modeling was used for analysis of data using Lisrel software. The results confirmed all hypotheses, except one hypothesis. Therefore, there is significant relationship between team self-expression and team attachment among football sport teams in Azadeghan Football League of Iran. The results show the importance of paying attention to fans of sports teams and use of their high potential and capacity that sports teams brand managers must pay particular attention to this enormous capacity. Regarding sports teams, the impact of relationship marketing, particularly dimensions of self-expression and team involvement was investigated for the first time in Iran.


In 2014, panel physicians from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), who conduct Department of State–required predeparture examinations for U.S.-bound refugees at resettlement sites in Uganda, noticed an unusually high number of Congolese refugees with enlarged spleens, or splenomegaly. Many conditions can cause splenomegaly, such as various infections, liver disease, and cancer. Splenomegaly can result in hematologic disturbances and abdominal pain and can increase the risk for splenic rupture from blunt trauma, resulting in life-threatening internal bleeding. On CDC's advice, panel physicians implemented an enhanced surveillance and treatment protocol that included screening for malaria (through thick and thin smears and rapid diagnostic testing), schistosomiasis, and several other conditions; treatment of any condition identified as potentially associated with splenomegaly; and empiric treatment for the most likely etiologies, including malaria and schistosomiasis. CDC recommended further treatment for malaria with primaquine after arrival, after glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase testing, to target liver-stage parasites. Despite this recommended treatment protocol, 35 of 64 patients with available follow-up records had splenomegaly that persisted beyond 6 months after resettlement. Among 85 patients who were diagnosed with splenomegaly through abdominal palpation or ultrasound at any point after resettlement, 53 had some hematologic abnormality (leukopenia, anemia, or thrombocytopenia), 16 had evidence of current or recent malaria infection, and eight had evidence of schistosomiasis. Even though primaquine was provided to a minority of patients in this cohort, it should be provided to all eligible patients with persistent splenomegaly, and repeated antischistosomal therapy should be provided to patients with evidence of current or recent schistosomiasis. Given substantial evidence of familial clustering of cases, family members of patients with known splenomegaly should be proactively screened for this condition.


Mesh generation is a key step in graphics rendering and in using the finite-element method to solve partial differential equations. The goal of mesh generation is to discretize the domain of interest using polygonal elements such as triangles (in 2-D) or tetrahedra (in 3-D). One popular mesh generation algorithm is Delaunay mesh generation, which produces meshes with certain quality guarantees that are important for problems in which the geometry of the problem changes with time. Delaunay mesh generation works by iterative refinement of a coarse initial mesh. The sequential algorithm repeatedly looks for a "bad" mesh element that does not satisfy the quality constraints, computes a neighborhood of that element called its cavity, and replaces the elements in that cavity with new elements, some of which may not satisfy the quality guarantees themselves. It can be shown that the algorithm always terminates and produces a guaranteed quality mesh, regardless of the order in which bad elements are processed. Delaunay mesh generation can be parallelized in a natural way because elements that are far away in the mesh do not interfere with each other as they are being processed. We present experimental results showing that in practice, there is indeed a lot of parallelism that is exposed in this way. However, exploiting this parallelism in practice can be complicated. Compile-time analysis and parallelization are infeasible because of the inputdependent nature of the algorithm. One alternative is optimistic parallelization. We show how logical transactions can be identified in a natural way in this code, argue that current transactional memory implementations are inadequate for this application, and suggest an alternative conception of transactional memory that addresses these problems.


Budget stabilization funds (BSFs) play an important role as a safety device for countercyclical fiscal capacity in the United States. However, while BSFs take on a kind of allowance for a contingent budget deficit, state governments can't expect high return on the money because the BSFs should be used immediately. They can alternatively provide profits from short-term investment earnings with safety and liquidity. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine whether investment earnings decrease the volatility of total general fund expenditures (GFEs) and improve budget performance in state government. By using ordinary least square regression models with a paneled data set ranging from 2002 to 2013, this study concludes that investment earnings increase the volatility of GFEs, while the generally accepted countercyclical tools such as BSFs and unreserved and undesignated balances reduce it. In addition, it also finds that investment earnings are a source of better performance in state government.


firstname.lastname@example.com doi:10.13165/ST-15-5-1-06 Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at the factors driving online shopping and to develop an understanding of the factors influencing the online shopping by the consumers. This is done by exploring the factors that encourage consumers to shop online through analysis of such advantages as security, fast delivery, comparable price, convenience, cheaper prices and a wider choice. At the same time, the research project reveals the factors that are discouraging for consumers and the benefits received by buy ers making purchases online. Specifically, the research explores how online shopping can be affected by such factors as age, gender or occupation. Design/methodology/approach – The factors that affect the consumer online shopping have been disclosed through quantitative research by analysing data collected via a web‐based questionnaire survey. The sample consisted of 183 Lithuanian consumers who were Findings –The empirical findings of this study indicate that the main factors influencing consumers to shop online are convenience, simplicity and better price. Analysis of socio-demographical characteristics such as gender has shown that men shop more often online because of the lower price. Respondents of the 25–35 year age group more often choose shopping online for such reasons as lack of time and a wide range of products. The most beneficial factor of shopping online was identified as a possibility to compare prices and buy at a Research limitations/implications – This study was done regarding only general conditions and the findings may not necessarily be applicable to a particular e-business. Therefore, in the future it would be highly encouraged to examine consumers' attitudes towards specialized online shopping websites to look for differences by kind of products or services. Practical implications – Attributes identified by this study could help e-business developers to forme their marketing strategy, identify and remove the main obstacles to creating a highly convenient online shopping service to customers. Online stores can devote valuable corporate resources to better mapping of the online consumers' behaviour, future technologies and developments. Originality/Value – This paper may be valuable for online retailers, as it will help them to attract consumers and enable to better form their e-marketing strategies allo-wing to understand the consumers' changing needs and lifestyles as well as to to attract them with regard to their online shopping experience.


Most of the large-N empirical studies on the liberal commercial peace theory demonstrate that, in general, trade has a robust pacifying effect in reducing the probability of dyadical militarized interstate disputes. However, why trade's pacifying effect varies across time and space remains a puzzle that previous research has not yet solved. The liberal commercial peace literature suggests the following questions are in need of answers: Why does trade promote peace mainly in inter-region dyads but not in intra-region dyads? What are the preconditions that make trade's pacifying effect work or not work? In this research, I argue that there are two critical preconditions for trade's pacifying effect to work: first, the benefits of trade must be substantively important, and second, important social actors who have stakes on trade must be able to influence the leaders when they are making foreign policy decisions. These two preconditions can be measured by countries' degree of democracy and degree of development. Therefore, regionally, the pacifying effect of trade is stronger in regions where the countries are more democratic and more developed, and it gets weaker in regions where the countries are less democratic and less developed; temporally, because countries' degree of democracy and degree of development vary from time to time, the pacifying effect of trade changes over time accordingly. I then extend this overarching framework to investigate the role of trade in the regional peace of Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the European Union countries, arguing that the variations of the regional peace can be predicted by looking at how trade affects the most important political issues in each of the


Ordered FePt film is attractive for its very high perpendicular anisotropy. In the present study, we report different texture formation and mechanisms of ordering FePt films on MgO (100) single crystal (A) substrates and MgO (200) polycrystalline film formed on SiO2/Si (B) substrates with and without SiO2 addition. Films with structure of [0.24 nm Pt/0.25 nm Fe/0.21 nm SiO2]15 were deposited on 600degC substrates and subsequently treated by rapid thermal annealing. In the as-deposited state, FePt grain size was smaller and its degree of ordering was lower on substrate (B) than substrate (A) regardless of SiO2 addition. Upon annealing, grain growth was more significant on substrate (A) than on substrate (B), and degree of ordering kept nearly constant. However, in the case of SiO2 addition, upon annealing, grain growth was more significant on substrate (B) than substrate (A), and the ordering parameter increased on both substrates (A) and (B). This indicates ordering reaction is dominated by phase separation of Mg, O or MgO incorporated in FePt grains of the as-deposited states during the short time rapid annealing treatments. Different texture formation and grain size difference in the two different substrates will be discussed together with the mechanism of ordering in FePt films.


Today's North Korean regime embodies elements of both communism and Confucian dynasty, is sovereign with respect to only part of the divided Korean nation, is vulnerable to pressure from external powers, and confronts incipient internal demands for change, yielding an unusually broad set of possible transition paths and successor regimes. Such paths range from maintenance of the status quo to evolution, probably toward a more conventional form of military authoritarianism, to revolutionary upheaval, the latter in all likelihood implying the North's collapse and its absorption into the rival Southern state. This policy analysis quantitatively analyzes the probability of regime change and examines the character of possible successor regimes and the implications of these profoundly different trajectories for South Korea.


This article draws on scholarship in Southern theory to 'world' the study of water's urbanization. This means complicating scholarship by widening the focus beyond the application of Northern norms to engage with complex and diverse practices in Southern cities. For water's urbanization, this means focusing on what water supply is for the majority: neither the centralized piped-water network nor its absence, but the range of practices and technologies that unite people, nature and artefacts in a complex socio-ecological politics of water. Drawing on scholarship from Southern urbanisms, urban political ecology, and science and technology studies, we illustrate how expanding water's urbanization to include more than networked infrastructure in Jakarta draws attention to the importance of ecological connections between piped water, groundwater, wastewater and floodwater. Thinking beyond the network requires deeper engagement with the ecological connections between the diverse flows of water in and around urban environments. These produce distinct forms of fragmentation that are missed when analysis is limited to piped-water supply. The emphasis on ecological connections between flows of water and power seeks to draw attention back to the importance of the uneven exposure to environmental hazards in cities in which neither water nor nature are wholly contained by infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


From Summary] As a condition of accepting funds under IDEA, public schools must provide special education and related services necessary for children with disabilities to benefit from a public education. Generally, states can finance only a portion of these costs with federal IDEA funds. Medicaid, the federal-state program that finances medical and health services for the poor, can cover IDEA required health-related services for enrolled children as well as related administrative activities (e.g., outreach for Medicaid enrollment purposes, medical care coordination/monitoring). However, the link between IDEA and Medicaid has not been seamless. Despite written federal guidance, schools have a difficult time meeting the myriad complex reimbursement rules applicable to all Medicaid participating providers. According to federal investigations and congressional hearings, Medicaid payments to schools have sometimes been improper. The President's FY2007 budget proposal would prohibit federal Medicaid reimbursement for IDEA-related school-based administration and transportation costs. This report will be updated.


We define an `enriched' notion of Chow groups for algebraic varieties, agreeing with the conventional notion for complete varieties, but enjoying a functorial push-forward for arbitrary maps. This tool allows us to glue intersection-theoretic information across elements of a stratification of a variety; we illustrate this operation by giving a direct construction of Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes of singular varieties, providing a new proof of an old (and long since settled) conjecture of Deligne and Grothendieck.


This paper describes the techniques and the tools developed to construct CO-OPN specifications (Concurrent Object Oriented Petri Nets) and to derive parallel programs. CO-OPN is a specification language allowing to describe concurrent aspects and data-structure of computer programs in an abstract way. The concurrent part of the formalism is described with Petri nets while the data-structure are described with algebraic abstract data types. In the CO-OPN formalism, this association is structured by the notion of object. The environment developed around CO-OPN is SANDS (Structured Algebraic Nets Development System). The production of quality software needs the use of a complete development method based on a life cycle including specification and implementation phases. This method must provide techniques in order to derive implementation from specification and for verifying if the implementation is adequate. The development of software must be supported by tools such as editors, validation and verification processes. A tool for obtaining correct parallel programs from formally specified problems is presented. The technique we propose is based on the concept of transformations oriented into the context of parallelism. In addition we introduce a methodology for deriving correct parallel algorithms.


Consumer search is analysed in a cross-sector study of six markets in the US, Germany and UK using online panel data. Two constructs are used to measure the search process: the consideration set and use of price comparison engines. The consideration sets range from 2.3 to 3.1 in the US, from 2.3 to 2.6 in Germany and from 2.6 to 3.2 in the UK, regardless of the use of price comparison engines. These results are significantly smaller than expected compared to pre-Internet studies and theory predictions. However, they are consistent with the few published results that used online panel data. It is shown that the consideration set is a function of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. The use of price comparison engines is inversely related to product complexity. The theoretical and managerial implications of the research results are explained and the potential of using online panel data for future research into online consumer behaviour and strategy is outlined.


Open educational resources (OER) is a topic that has aroused increasing interest by researchers as a powerful contribution to improve the educational system quality and openness, both in face to face and distance education. The goal of this research is to map publications related to OER, dating from 2002 to 2013, and available through the Web of Science and Scopus scientific databases as well as in the OER Knowledge Cloud open repository. Data were used to explore relevant aspects related to the scientific production in OER, such as: (i) number of publications per year; (ii) most cited publications; (iii) authors with higher number of publications; (iv) institutions and countries with more publications and (v) most referenced bibliography by the authors. The analysis has included 544 papers, written by 843 authors, from 338 institutions, from 61 different countries. Moreover, the analysis has included the publications referenced and the author's keywords, considering 6,355 different publications and 929 different keywords. Besides presenting a bibliographic mapping of the research on OER, this paper also intends to contribute to consolidate the idea that OER is a promising field for researchers, in line with the spreading of the Open movement.


The optical fiber based supercontinuum source has recently become a significant scientific and commercial success, with applications ranging from frequency comb production to advanced medical imaging. This one-of-a-kind book explains the theory of fiber supercontinuum broadening, describes the diverse operational regimes and indicates principal areas of applications, making it a very important guide for researchers and graduate students. With contributions from major figures and groups who have pioneered research in this field, the book describes the historical development of the subject, provides a background to the associated nonlinear optical processes, treats the generation mechanisms from continuous wave to femtosecond pulse pump regimes and highlights the diverse applications. A full discussion of numerical methods and comprehensive computer code are also provided, enabling readers to confidently predict and model supercontinuum generation characteristics under realistic conditions.


Gray, calcareous, lacustrine strata of Early Jurassic age crop out adjacent to the faulted western margin of the Culpeper basin, a Mesozoic graben dominated by fluviogenic red beds. Sedimentological, mineralogical, and paleontological aspects reveal a distinct zonation of littoral, sublittoral, and profundal deposits in the lacustrine sequence. Reconstructed physiographic profiles of the lake exhibit shore-terrace, slope, and basin-plain subenvironments. Dominant sedimentary processes in these domains were, respectively, sediment agitation by waves; deposition from suspension, slumping, and proximal sediment gravity flows; and suspension and distal turbidity current deposition. Deposition of the lacustrine sediments occurred in a eutrophic, calcite-precipitating, permanently or normally stratified lake.

The lake occupied an elongate, actively subsiding sub-basin adjacent to, or possibly straddling, the western border fault. The sedimentary fill of the sub-basin is characterized by several cyclic fluvio-lacustrine sequences which average 150 m in thickness and closely resemble sedimentary cycles of other Newark rift basins. The maximum areal extent of the lake may have exceeded 3,000 km2, with an average maximum depth of ∼35 m. Proterozoic and lower Paleozoic strata of the Blue Ridge anticlinorium to the west constituted the major source of clastic sediments in the lacustrine sequence, but uptilted basalt flows and interbedded sedimentary units of the Culpeper Group simultaneously shed detritus from the east.


Understanding the molecular genetics of odontogenesis (tooth development) can unlock innovative avenues to genetically engineer teeth for therapy. In this review, emerging insights into the genetic and molecular bases of tooth development are presented. Four conserved signature genes express master molecules (fibroblast growth factors, bone morphogenetic proteins, wingless integrated ligands and sonic hedgehog protein) that underwrite odontogenesis. Five homeobox genes (Barx1, Dlx, Pax9, Msx and Pitx) and many secondary molecules (notably transcription factors) mediate signalling pathways that drive tooth initiation, morphogenesis and differentiation. The role of at least 57 genes and signalling molecules are presented in this work.


OBJECTIVE
To review the clinical presentation and management of children with nephroplastoma and the factors influencing the outcome at Kenyatta National Referral and Teaching Hospital (KNH).

DESIGN
This was a retrospective case series study based on secondary data accumulated between 1990 and 1996.

SETTING
The relevant data were extracted from records of all children aged 12 years and below, admitted for cancer at KNH, Nairobi.

RESULTS
Out of 803 children with cancer, 71 (8.8%) had histologically proven nephroblastoma. At presentation, 1.5% were in stage I, 13.2% stage II, 36.8% stage III, 41.2% stage IV and 7.4% stage V. Eighty five per cent presented with stage III-V disease. Ninety five per cent had nepherectomy and received chemotherapy. Radiotherapy was given to 50.7% of the patients. Nine patients died before commencement of chemotherapy, two of whom died in the immediate post-operative period. The median duration between admission and surgery was 41 days. Pre-operative chemotherapy was given to 42% of the patients. Approximately 25.5% of the patients received little or no induction chemotherapy due to unavailability of drugs while only 2.8% received the prescribed maintenance treatment with the remainder getting erratic or no treatment. Overall, only 34.7% remained disease free two years from time of diagnosis.

CONCLUSION
Late presentation, poor availability of cytotoxic drugs and frequent treatment interruptions for various reasons have contributed to the poor outcome of nephroblastoma in Kenya.


Conventional wisdom holds that most students can earn a doctoral degree in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field without amassing large amounts of debt. However, a new study of 19,000 newly minted Ph.D.s by a team at the American Institutes for Research in Washington, D.C., suggests that the conventional wisdom is wrong and that minorities face a steeper climb onto the STEM career ladder. It finds that only 51% of African-Americans and 64% of Hispanics earning STEM Ph.D.s in 2010 graduated debt-free. In comparison, 73% of white and Asian STEM Ph.D.s avoided debt.


Recent media events like the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, the beating of Rodney King and its aftermath, and the murder trial of O.J. Simpson have trained our collective eye on the televised spectacle of race. "Living Color" combines media studies, cultural studies, and critical race theory to investigate the representation of race on American TV.Ranging across television genres, historical periods, and racial formations, "Living Color"--as it positions race as a key element of television's cultural influence--moves the discussion out of a black-and-white binary and illustrates how class, gender, and sexuality interact with images of race. In addition to essays on representations of "Oriental" performers and African Americans in the early years of television, this collection also examines how the celebrity of the late MTV star Pedro Zamora countered racist and homophobic discourses; reveals how news coverage on drug use shifted from the white middle-class cocaine user in the early 1980s to the black "crack mother" of the 1990s; and takes on TV coverage of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent unrest in Los Angeles. Other essays consider O.J. Simpson's murder trial, comparing television's treatment of Simpson to that of Michael Jackson, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Clarence Thomas and look at the racism directed at Asian Americans by the recurring "Dancing Itos" on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show."


This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience accumulated in the home countries of the immigrants receive significantly lower returns than human capital obtained in Germany. We further find evidence for heterogeneity in the returns to human capital of immigrants across origin countries. Finally, imperfect human capital transferability appears to be a major factor in explaining the wage differential between natives and immigrants.


Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound ...It's Superman!" Bending Steel examines the historical origins and cultural significance of Superman and his fellow American crusaders. Cultural historian Aldo J. Regalado asserts that the superhero seems a direct response to modernity, often fighting the interrelated processes of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and capitalism that transformed the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present. Reeling from these exciting but rapid and destabilizing forces, Americans turned to heroic fiction as a means of explaining national and personal identities to themselves and to the world. In so doing, they created characters and stories that sometimes affirmed, but other times subverted conventional notions of race, class, gender, and nationalism. The cultural conversation articulated through the nation's early heroic fiction eventually led to a new heroic type--the brightly clad, super-powered, pro-social action heroes that first appeared in American comic books starting in the late 1930s. Although indelibly shaped by the Great Depression and World War II sensibilities of the second-generation immigrants most responsible for their creation, comic book superheroes remain a mainstay of American popular culture. Tracing superhero fiction all the way back to the nineteenth century, Regalado firmly bases his analysis of dime novels, pulp fiction, and comics in historical, biographical, and reader response sources. He explores the roles played by creators, producers, and consumers in crafting superhero fiction, ultimately concluding that these narratives are essential for understanding vital trajectories in American culture.


The use of tree cambium to make cucua dance outfits attracted the attention of international plant and culture conservationists. Scholarly narratives, media interpretations, and publications for the tourism market about cucua often reiterate racialized colonial categories as the origin point for a history construed as Panamanian. Implementation of conservation programs, like the construction of a museum and cultural center, ignored existing social structures among dancers. Arsonists allegedly destroyed the museum. This article presents data collected in anthropological participant observation methodologies and describes why conservation programs were rejected through the ethnography of historical experience that shows how people make sense of the past. Local explanations of plant uses that include power accessed through the ruptures of social structures during liminal times, such as Spanish colonialism, are real and not just symbolic. This article places cucua plant use in cultural context with other plant fibers used in northern Cocle for baskets, all called "weaving."


Abstract This article suggests three critical inquiries for formulating a feminist analysis of patent law. The first questions how patent law functions as a strategy within neoliberal, biopolitics. The second examines how patent law is structured through biopolitical techniques of governance by examining two conceptions of the public domain I call open public domain and protective public domain. The third inquiry, drawing upon feminist science studies, asks how women's reproductive and intellectual labor are valued and devalued in various different ways through new patent law technologies. In addition, two recent patent law are struggles are examined. These include an American Civil Liberties Union case against the patenting of breast cancer gene sequences and Southern African San struggles against patents related to the Hoodia gordonii plant. In conclusion, I argue that patent law functions within gendered and ethno-racialized forms of neoliberal, biopolitics involving the patenting of women's reproductive and intellectual labor within new bioeconomics.


With the growing popularity of IoT-based smart city applications, various long-range and low-power wireless connectivity solutions are under rigorous research. LoRa is one such solution that works in the sub-GHz unlicensed spectrum and promises to provide long-range communication with minimal energy consumption. However, conventional LoRa networks are single-hop, with the end devices connected to a central gateway through a direct link, which may be subject to large path loss and hence render low connectivity and coverage. This article motivates the use of multi-hop LoRa topologies to enable energy-efficient connectivity in smart city applications. We present a case study that experimentally evaluates and compares single-hop and multi-hop LoRa topologies in terms of range extension and energy efficiency by evaluating packet reception ratio (PRR) for various source to destination distances, spreading factors (SFs), and transmission powers. The results highlight that a multi-hop LoRa network configuration can save significant energy and enhance coverage. For instance, it is shown that to achieve a 90 percent PRR, a two-hop network provides 50 percent energy savings as compared to a single-hop network while increasing 35 percent coverage at a particular SF. In the end, we discuss open challenges in multi-hop LoRa deployment and optimization.


To find out psychodramatists' opinions about issues facing the profession that might have been affected by the terrorist acts of 09/11/2001, a survey was mailed to 200 individuals selected at random from the Directory of the American Board of Examiners in Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy. Of the 78 respondents, 45 (58%) indicated that they felt the terrorist acts changed the profession "some-to-extensively". Client issues, populations of clients served, approaches to psychotherapy, and training in psychodrama were major areas of perceived change. While 78 respondents may not represent the entire profession, it was hoped that the opinions conveyed could guide discussions as the healing professions attempt to cope with the after-effects of acts of terrorism. ********** Introduction and Method To ascertain psychodramatists' opinions about issues facing the profession that might have been affected by the major acts of terrorism in the United States on September 11th, 2001, a survey was mailed to 200 individuals selected at random from the Directory of the American Board of Examiners in Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy. Two doctoral-level psychologists, one of whom has extensive training in psychodrama, designed the survey, which contained primarily closed-ended questions for ease of response. Respondents were encouraged to provide additional qualifying information for each area of perceived change. Of the 78 respondents, 67 provided demographic information. Of those 67, 40 were female and 27 male; 64 indicated that they were White, 1 responded Asian/Pacific Island American, and 2 indicated "other" as their race/ethnicity. In terms of age, 5 were 30-39, 11 were 40-49, 34 were 50-59, 12 were 60-69, and 5 indicated "over 70". Twenty-six of the 67 respondents providing demographic information indicated they were certified at the Practitioner level and 41 said they were credentialed at the Trainer, Educator and Practitioner (TEP) level. The average number of years indicated in practice as a psychodramatist was 19.0, with a range of 2-50 years. Twenty-nine self-identified primarily as a psychodramatist, and 38 indicated that their primary professional identification was other than as a psychodramatist. Of the latter 38, 12 self- identified as psychologists, 8 as psychotherapists, 9 as social workers, 4 as professors, 2 as professional counselors, 1 as a clinical consultant, 1 as a music therapist, and 1 as a lawyer. Results Following is a summary of the 78 responses to the survey of significant issues facing the psychodrama profession following the terrorist events of September 11th (commonly called 9/11). Of the 78 survey respondents, 11 (14%) felt the terrorist events of 9/11 changed the profession of psychodrama extensively, 34 (44%) felt those events changed the profession "some", 26 (33%) indicated no change, and 7 (9%) left the question blank. When asked about areas of the profession that might have changed as a result of 9/11 events, "client issues" was indicated as the area of greatest change, with 53 (68%) of the respondents indicating "some-to-extensive" change. "Population of clients served" was another area of notable perceived change, with 44 (56%) of the respondents indicating "some to extensive" change. In addition, a notable number (42 or 54%) of respondents felt that their approaches to psychotherapy were changed because of 9/11 events. …


Agenesis (complete non formation) of human organs or glands is known since antiquity for example asplenia (spleenic agenesis), gall bladder agenesis, renal agenesis and so on. Endocrine glands like adrenals and thyroid are no exception to agenesis. Thyroid is the first endocrine gland to develop and is not uncommonly affected with congenital abnormalities. Commonest is left lobar hemi-agenesis. However, only one case of bilobar thyroid agenesis (BTA) has been reported in the literature. We report a case of BTA with adenomatous Isthmus and sub clinical hypothyroidism in a 13 year old girl who presented with midline thyroid nodule. FNAC was suggestive of colloid nodule with cystic degeneration. Preoperatively hypothyroidism was corrected. At surgery, entire isthmus was found to be replaced by a large cyst and both lobes of the thyroid were absent. So, Isthmusectomy amounting to total thyroidectomy was done and she was put on thyroxine replacement therapy. Preoperative diagnosis of BTA is difficult even if patient develops nodule or becomes symptomatic. Many cases go unnoticed or detected only intra operatively; and they require life long thyroxine replacement therapy.


Background:Hypothermia is being used with increasing frequency to prevent or mitigate various types of neurologic injury. In addition, symptomatic fever control is becoming an increasingly accepted goal of therapy in patients with neurocritical illness. However, effectively controlling fever and inducing hypothermia poses special challenges to the intensive care unit team and others involved in the care of critically ill patients. Objective:To discuss practical aspects and pitfalls of therapeutic temperature management in critically ill patients, and to review the currently available cooling methods. Design:Review article. Interventions:None. Main Results:Cooling can be divided into three distinct phases: induction, maintenance, and rewarming. Each has its own risks and management problems. A number of cooling devices that have reached the market in recent years enable reliable maintenance and slow and controlled rewarming. In the induction phase, rapid cooling rates can be achieved by combining cold fluid infusion (1500–3000 mL 4°C saline or Ringer's lactate) with an invasive or surface cooling device. Rapid induction decreases the risks and consequences of short-term side effects, such as shivering and metabolic disorders. Cardiovascular effects include bradycardia and a rise in blood pressure. Hypothermia's effect on myocardial contractility is variable (depending on heart rate and filling pressure); in most patients myocardial contractility will increase, although mild diastolic dysfunction can develop in some patients. A risk of clinically significant arrhythmias occurs only if core temperature decreases below 30°C. The most important long-term side effects of hypothermia are infections (usually of the respiratory tract or wounds) and bedsores. Conclusions:Temperature management and hypothermia induction are gaining importance in critical care medicine. Intensive care unit physicians, critical care nurses, and others (emergency physicians, neurologists, and cardiologists) should be familiar with the physiologic effects, current indications, techniques, complications and practical issues of temperature management, and induced hypothermia. In experienced hands the technique is safe and highly effective.


The goal of this report is to evaluate brominated persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the indoor air and dust to further assess their health effects on thyroid hormones and neurodevelopment in infants, toddlers, and young children. This category of brominated POPs includes polybrmonated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), hexabromocyclododecanes (HBCDs), polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs), and polybrominated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PBDD/DFs). These organobromines are lipophilic compounds which resist physical and chemical degradation in the environment and biota, and so easily bioaccumulate in adipose tissue. Brominated POPs, particularly in brominated fire retardants (BFRs) such as PBDEs, HBCDs, and PBBs, are ubiquitous in indoor environments due to their inadvertent release from certain consumer products. Some of these organobromines have been recognized in some in-vitro and in-vivo studies to be neurotoxins and disrupt thyroid hormones, although the evidence from actual epidemiological studies is contradicted and inconsistent, especially for infants, toddlers, and young children, who are particularly vulnerable to these substances as they spend most of their time in the home. This report focuses on exposure to PBDEs, HBCDs, PBBs, and PBDD/DFs in the indoor dust and on the indoor aerosol, to explore their association with human health, particularly the disruption of thyroid hormones and neurodevelopment in early childhood.


This paper examines the consequences of an agent's breach of the fiduciary duty of loyalty. These consequences are underexplored in academic literature, in contrast to rationales for fiduciary duties more generally. The consequences of an agent's disloyalty are, moreover, not uniform across jurisdictions. The paper begins by differentiating between the meaning and consequences that the law ascribes to agency and its meaning in other academic disciplines, including economics and philosophy. It then considers the extent to which principles derived from contract and tort law can account for the consequences that courts assign to agents' disloyal conduct and concludes that a more complex doctrinal and normative vocabulary is required. The paper focuses more specifically on remedies available to a principal when an agent acts disloyally, then turns to an agent's duty to disclose prior misconduct to the principal and then to the impact of disloyalty on contractual provisions and to the consequence for organizations that carry out agency functions when employees of the organization indulge in self-interested fiduciary transgressions. These specific topics are addressed (often with divergent outcomes) by recent or well-known cases and provide good vehicles for analysis of the implications and limitations of more general questions about the nature and function of the fiduciary of loyalty. In general, the remedies available to a principal when an agent is disloyal are varied, distinctive, and in some respects ferocious, all qualities the paper argues are helpful in understanding the theoretical and functional position of fiduciary duties of loyalty.


Our recent studies indicate that insulin rapidly inactivates serine/threonine protein phosphatase-2A (PP-2A) by increasing tyrosine phosphorylation on the catalytic subunit. The exact mechanism of PP-2A inactivation by insulin in vivo is unclear. The Janus kinase (JAK) family of non-receptor protein tyrosine kinases constitute a novel type of signal-transduction pathway which is activated in response to a wide variety of polypeptide ligands, including insulin. In this study we investigated the potential role of JAK-2 in insulin-mediated tyrosine phosphorylation and inactivation of PP-2A using the rat skeletal muscle cell line L6. Co-immunoprecipitation studies revealed that PP-2A is associated with JAK-2 in the basal state. Insulin treatment did not alter JAK-2 association with PP-2A, but did increase JAK-2-mediated tyrosine phosphorylation of the PP-2A catalytic subunit and therefore inhibited PP-2A enzymic activity. Furthermore, PP-2A is associated with phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI-3K) in the basal state and insulin treatment increases the catalytic activity of PI-3K bound to PP-2A. Pretreatment with AG-490, a specific JAK-2 inhibitor, and SpcAMP, a cAMP agonist, prevented the insulin-mediated increase in (i) JAK-2 kinase activity, (ii) PP-2A tyrosine phosphorylation, (iii) PP-2A inactivation and restored the enzyme activity to control levels, and (iv) PP-2A and JAK-2-associated PI-3K activity. These observations, together with the fact that insulin rapidly activates JAK-2 in L6 cells, and that this is accompanied by an increase in tyrosine phosphorylation of PP-2A in JAK-2 immunoprecipitates, suggest that insulin controls the activation status of PP-2A by tyrosine phosphorylation via JAK-2. PP-2A inactivation may result in an amplification of insulin-generated signals at the level of PI-3K.


Utilizing the variationist method, this contribution is concerned with the alternation between the s -genitive ( the president's speech ) and the of -genitive ( the speech of the president ) in Late Modern English news prose as sampled in ARCHER. A frequency analysis reveals that text frequencies of the s -genitive collapsed in the early 19th century, but recovered afterwards. Linear regression analysis indicates that slightly over half of this frequency variability is induced by "environmental" changes in the news genre habitat, such as varying input frequencies of human possessors. To investigate the remaining variability, we fit a logistic regression model and show that genitive choice grammars changed genuinely in regard to four language-internal conditioning factors: POSSESSOR ANIMACY, GENITIVE RELATION, POSSESSUM LENGTH, and POSSESSOR THEMATICITY. Applying customary grammaticalization diagnostics, we conclude that while the s -genitive was subject to grammaticalization in the 19th century, it actually degrammaticalized during the 20th century.


Institutional repositories have played a major role in universities worldwide during the last decade. Such systems are developed with the aim to collect and disseminate the research activities of universities. They provide access to and showcase research outputs, and therefore they have become an essential infrastructure for universities. A repository provides the means to properly preserve research outputs and can also be used for research monitoring and assessment. In this case study, we concentrate on the transformation of Ktisis, the institutional repository of the Cyprus University of Technology, into a Current Research Information System (CRIS). A CRIS system records, processes, and presents metrics and figures related with research activity throughout its life cycle. Particular emphasis is given to the results of research activities (publications, patents, research data) and their connection with the environment within which they were created (researchers, organizations, funded programs and projects, research infrastructures, services). In this case study we will describe the procedures followed in order to transform Ktisis into a CRIS system together with the implementation of the integration of ORCID identifiers within the system. Particular attention will be paid to the challenges we came across throughout the process and how we overcame these difficulties and problems. Ktisis is the institutional repository developed and maintained by the Library and Information Services at the Cyprus University of Technology. Ktisis was created in 2008 using the open source software DSpace after the University's Interim Governing Board made the decision that all the research products of academic members must be deposited in the Library. In subsequent years, the mandatory deposit of undergraduate, MSc and PhD theses was also imposed. In early 2015 it was decided that the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) must become a member of ORCID and the Library undertook the project to integrate ORCID in its systems. At the same time the Library decided that the best way to move forward was to transform Ktisis into a CRIS system using DSpace-CRIS, an extension to DSpace, in order to integrate ORCID with the repository and to take advantage of all the functionalities provided by a CRIS system.


Shape modeling is an important constituent of computer vision as well as computer graphics research. Shape models aid the tasks of object representation and recognition. This paper presents a new approach to shape modeling which retains some of the attractive features of existing methods and overcomes some of their limitations. The authors' techniques can be applied to model arbitrarily complex shapes, which include shapes with significant protrusions, and to situations where no a priori assumption about the object's topology is made. A single instance of the authors' model, when presented with an image having more than one object of interest, has the ability to split freely to represent each object. This method is based on the ideas developed by Osher and Sethian (1988) to model propagating solid/liquid interfaces with curvature-dependent speeds. The interface (front) is a closed, nonintersecting, hypersurface flowing along its gradient field with constant speed or a speed that depends on the curvature. It is moved by solving a "Hamilton-Jacobi" type equation written for a function in which the interface is a particular level set. A speed term synthesized from the image is used to stop the interface in the vicinity of object boundaries. The resulting equation of motion is solved by employing entropy-satisfying upwind finite difference schemes. The authors present a variety of ways of computing the evolving front, including narrow bands, reinitializations, and different stopping criteria. The efficacy of the scheme is demonstrated with numerical experiments on some synthesized images and some low contrast medical images. >


Background: NSAIDs appear to moderately reduce prostate cancer risk. However, evidence is limited on whether NSAIDs protect against prostate cancer mortality (death from prostate cancer among men without a cancer history) and case fatality (death from prostate cancer among men with prostate cancer), and whether benefits are consistent in white and black men. This study investigated associations of aspirin and non-aspirin (NA) NSAID use with prostate cancer incidence, mortality, and case fatality in a population-based cohort of white and black men. Methods: We included 6,594 men (5,060 white and 1,534 black) from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study without a cancer history at enrollment from 1987 to 1989. NSAID use was assessed at four study visits (1987–1998). Cancer outcomes were ascertained through 2012. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate adjusted HRs, overall and by race. Results: Aspirin use was not associated with prostate cancer incidence. However, aspirin use was inversely associated with prostate cancer mortality [HR, 0.59; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.36–0.96]. This association was consistent among white and black men and appeared restricted to men using aspirin daily and/or for cardiovascular disease prevention. Aspirin use was inversely associated with case fatality (HR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.22–0.94). NA-NSAID use was not associated with these endpoints. Conclusions: Aspirin use was inversely associated with prostate cancer mortality and case fatality among white and black men. Impact: If confirmed by additional studies, benefits of aspirin for preventing prostate cancer mortality may need to be factored into risk–benefit calculations of men considering an aspirin regimen.


To understand the genesis of trade is necessary to go back to the XIV and XV centuries to know that it is in Italy where accelerated development of merchant capital is observing. The fast trade between cities such as Milan, Genova and Florence results in economic conditions of trade that began to spread to other cities like Bremen, Hamburg and Lubeck in the Baltic region, which led to the rise of capitalism. So, we cannot think in capitalism without thinking in trade. Later, with the great discovers of the period, in the XVI century, Spain becomes a world power by its conquests in America (Mexico and Peru) and in Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, much of Italy, among other countries). However, by the XVIII century, Holland was the model of capitalist nation. It´s in those centuries that the economic doctrine of mercantilism emerges based on historical and economic aspects that characterize the fall of feudalism, promoting foreign trade, (sell more and buy less). This doctrine (practice) comes together with a nationalist stance in a protectionist direction of its own interests based on wealth generation. This contradiction is still observing today with the domestic markets protectionism, relocating the investment and provoking the argue of diversification: The nowadays main challenge for APEC. At the same time APEC has to take into account that, far from encouraging a free global trade, free trade agreements promote protectionism. Therefore, negotiations as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and a possible Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), aim at the protection of a regional space that is opposed to free trade that is supported economically by the classical theory. Trade agreements promotes trade liberalization among its members, but with restrictions for the externals, limiting this way free trade and current philosophy of capitalism and globalization itself. We find that current trading conditions are based on economic activities at four or five centuries ago, when trade comes to its final stage of feudalism to become the dominant category of capitalist mode of production, in what there is a sort of perverse association between protectionism and free trade. Nowadays Mexico is suffering some investment relocation and facing up the idea of trade diversification as component for its own economic development taking into account exports growing up to the APEC region, where are located the most important economies of XXI century. JEL classification numbers: D24, O47, O50


Supplementation of the specific digestive enzymes in feed improves its nutritional value by increasing its digestion efficiency and enzymes help in the breakdown of anti-nutritional factors which are present in feed ingredients. The key benefits of enzymes improve feed efficiency and reduce the cost of production of meat and eggs. Enzymes improve the consistency of feed that helps in maintenance of gut health and digestion process results in overcome the growth of disease causing bacteria. Phytases act on phytate and release phosphorus from phytate, while beta Glucanase acts on non-starch polysaccharides and break down the fiber. Proteases act on protein and improve its digestibility. Cellulases act on cellulose polysaccharides and break down the fiber and Alpha Amylases act on starch and improve its digestibility. All enzymes are used extensively in textile industry, leather industry, waste managements, food industry, syrup making, pulp industry, detergents, paper industry, and in animal feeds to increase its digestibility. These digestive enzymes increased growth performance and quality of meat.


The growth and the availability of the smart devices is becoming ubiquitous today and inter-networking of these devices make up what is commonly called the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is being used to update, enhance, simplify and automate individual lives and communities. Most of the cities in general and universities in special are adopting IoT technologies in order to create a smart sustainable living and working environments. Based on the existing literature of smart campus domain, it can be observed that there is only a small number of models as such. This study attempts to bridge the following knowledge gaps of smart campus domain.

This project falls into the concept of Smart Campus and aims to design a Smart Campus solution for Staffordshire University. The primarily goal is to design a solution architecture able to collect data from remote sensor networks and analyse them with the support of data analytics and machine learning techniques for sound business decision making. The project has two stages. The first stage is the business side of the project where a business requirement study has been done to extract the exact business requirements and once this complete the second stage was the technical implementation of one or many requirements and evaluation of the solution. The scope of this paper limits to the first stage of the project.

A quantitative approach was chosen by considering the nature of this study. A self-administered online questionnaire was developed around several key challenges and directed especially to the staff members, in order to identify what are the expectations of university staff in relation to thematic topics. Subsequently, business requirements under each key challenge were ranked based on MoSCoW prioritisation method. Energy management, space utilisation and occupancy, cleanliness recognition, smarter car parking, internet enabled cafe, network and physical security and environment (temperature) control are the key business challenges identified. Moreover, intended system qualities and specific project benefits were also identified to scope the project well.


Third-generation mobile systems provide access to a wide range of services and enable mobile users to communicate regardless of their geographical location and their roaming characteristics. Due to the growing number of mobile users, global connectivity, and the small size of cells, one of the most critical issues regarding these networks is location management. In recent years, several strategies have been proposed to improve the performance of the location management procedure in 3G mobile networks. In this paper, we present a user pattern learning strategy (UPL) using neural networks to reduce the location update signaling cost by increasing the intelligence of the location procedure in UMTS. This strategy associates to each user a list of cells where she is likely to be with a given probability in each time interval. The implementation of this strategy has been subject to extensive tests. The results obtained confirm the efficiency of UPL in significantly reducing the costs of both location updates and call delivery procedures when compared to the UMTS standard and with other strategies well-known in the literature.


Gorgeously repackaged, this reissue of the classic book presents the iconic photographer's expert and witty reminiscences of the personalities who inspired fashion's golden eras, and left an indelible mark on his own sense of taste and style. The camera will never be invented that could capture or encompass all that he actually sees, Truman Capote once said of Cecil Beaton. Though known for his portraits, Beaton was as incisive a writer as he was a photographer. First published in 1954, The Glass of Fashion is a classic-an invaluable primer on the history and highlights of fashion from a man who was a chronicler of taste, and an intimate compendium of the people who inspired his legendary eye. Across eighteen chapters, complemented by more than 150 of his own line drawings, Beaton writes with great wit about the influence of luminaries such as Chanel, Balenciaga, and Dior, as well as relatively unknown muses like his Aunt Jessie, who gave him his first glimpse of the grown-up world of fashion. Out of print for decades but recognized and sought after as a touchstone text, The Glass of Fashion will be irresistible to a new generation of fashion enthusiasts and a seminal book in any Beaton library. It is both a treasury and a treasure.


Uncertainty analysis and reduction is a crucial part of stochastic reservoir modelling and fluid flow simulation studies. Outcrop analogue studies are often employed to define reservoir model parameters but the analysis of uncertainties associated with sedimentological information is often neglected. In order to define uncertainty inherent in outcrop data more accurately, this paper presents geometrical and dimensional data from individual point bars and braid bars, from part of the low net:gross outcropping Tortóla fluvial system (Spain) that has been subjected to a quantitative and qualitative assessment. Four types of primary outcrop uncertainties are discussed: (1) the definition of the conceptual depositional model; (2) the number of observations on sandstone body dimensions; (3) the accuracy and representativeness of observed three-dimensional (3D) sandstone body size data; and (4) sandstone body orientation. Uncertainties related to the depositional model are the most difficult to quantify but can be appreciated qualitatively if processes of deposition related to scales of time and the general lack of information are considered. Application of the N0 measure is suggested to assess quantitatively whether a statistically sufficient number of dimensional observations is obtained to reduce uncertainty to an acceptable level. The third type of uncertainty is evaluated in a qualitative sense and determined by accurate facies analysis. The orientation of sandstone bodies is shown to influence spatial connectivity. As a result, an insufficient number or quality of observations may have important consequences for estimated connected volumes. This study will give improved estimations for reservoir modelling.


Abstract The financialisation of economies is believed to be the primary cause of the increase in income inequality in the world, occurring on a scale unseen for more than 30 years. One can hypothesise that it is the state that is responsible for the widening inequality, as the state has not sufficiently used the redistributive function of taxation. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of tax policy on income inequality in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. These so-called Visegrad countries have, in the last several years, carried out some controversial experiments with tax policy, specifically in terms of the flattening of tax progressivity or its replacement with a flat tax, which led to the weakening of the income adjustment mechanism. The imbalance between income tax and consumption tax has contributed to perpetuating income inequality. The verification of tax systems carried out during the recent financial crisis has forced the countries included in this research to implement tax reforms. The introduced changes caused various fiscal and redistributive effects. Analyses show that the changes in income taxation and an increase in the consumption tax rate had the most negative impact on the income and asset situation in Hungary.


By use of a novel recording technique, 2000 high-resolution image holograms were recorded in a single spectral hole-burning sample at different frequencies and at different values of an applied electric field. We recorded each hologram by sweeping the frequency of a cw laser over a narrow interval while simultaneously changing the hologram phase by 2π. This swept recording technique produces holograms that have increased diffraction efficiency and that exhibit reduced cross talk with respect to conventional frequency-multiplexed holograms.


We study the problem of extracting correspondences between a pair of point clouds for registration. For correspondence retrieval, existing works benefit from matching sparse keypoints detected from dense points but usually struggle to guarantee their repeatability. To address this issue, we present CoFiNet - Coarse-to-Fine Network which extracts hierarchical correspondences from coarse to fine without keypoint detection. On a coarse scale and guided by a weighting scheme, our model firstly learns to match down-sampled nodes whose vicinity points share more overlap, which significantly shrinks the search space of a consecutive stage. On a finer scale, node proposals are consecutively expanded to patches that consist of groups of points together with associated descriptors. Point correspondences are then refined from the overlap areas of corresponding patches, by a density-adaptive matching module capable to deal with varying point density. Extensive evaluation of CoFiNet on both indoor and outdoor standard benchmarks shows our superiority over existing methods. Especially on 3DLoMatch where point clouds share less overlap, CoFiNet significantly outperforms state-of-the-art approaches by at least 5% on Registration Recall, with at most two-third of their parameters.


Although practitioner-prescribed `western' herbal medicine (phytotherapy) is a popular complementary therapy in the UK, no clinical studies have been reported on patient-orientated outcomes. The objective of this pilot study was to investigate the effects of phytotherapy on symptoms of osteoarthritis of the knee. A previous study of Chinese herbal medicine for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association,1 acted as a model in the development of the protocol of this investigation. Twenty adults, previously diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the knee, were recruited from two Inner London GP practices into this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, pilot study carried out in a primary-care setting. All subjects were seen in consultation three times by a herbal practitioner who was blinded to the randomization coding. Each subject was prescribed treatment and given lifestyle advice according to usual practice: continuation of conventional medication where applicable, healthy-eating advice and nutrient supplementation. Individualized herbal medicine was prescribed for each patient, but only dispensed for those randomized to active treatment — the remainder were supplied with a placebo. At baseline and outcome (after ten weeks of treatment), subjects completed a food frequency questionnaire and the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) knee health and Measure Yourself Outcome Profile (MYMOP) wellbeing questionnaires. Subjects completing the study per protocol (n = 14) reported an increased intake of wholegrain foods (p = 0.045) and oily fish (p = 0.039) compared to baseline, but no increase in fruit and vegetables and dairy products intakes. There was no difference in the primary outcome measure of knee health assessed as the difference in the mean response (baseline-week 10) in WOMAC score between the two treatment groups. However, there was, compared with baseline, improvement in the active group (n = 9) for the mean WOMAC stiffness sub-score at week 5 ( p = 0.035) and week 10 ( p = 0.060) but not in the placebo group (n = 5). Furthermore, for the active, but not the placebo group, the mean WOMAC total and sub-scores all showed clinically significant improvement (≥ 20%) in knee symptoms at weeks 5 and 10 compared with baseline. Moreover, the mean MYMOP symptom 2 sub-score, mostly relating to osteoarthritis (OA), showed significant improvement at week 5 ( p = 0.02) and week 10 ( p = 0.008) compared with baseline for the active, but not for the placebo group. This pilot study showed that herbal medicine prescribed for the individual by a herbal practitioner resulted in improvement of symptoms of OA of the knee.


SUMMARY This paper aims to describe the status of land reform in Cambodia by looking at the background information, general approaches and basic types of land reform from the world's views and experience, and the efforts taken thus far on land reform in Cambodia. The paper also reflects on key elements, principles, good and bad experiences, innovations, achievements and challenges around the issues of Cambodia's land reform. It also touches on theories and practices of land reform, and provides future perspectives on Cambodia's land reform, such as Comprehensive Land Policy Framework, Spatial Planning Policy, Land Consolidation, etc. Last but not least, the paper also explains the different approaches for the Cambodian land sector reform.


This is a critical analysis of the Rule of Law in the EU, concluding that the Union is not driven by the Rule of Law as an institutional ideal. Instead, the Union deploys the "Rule of Law", viewed to a large extent through the lens of the autonomy of the EU legal order, to shield itself from potential internal and external contestation. This is precisely the contrary to what the classical understanding of the Rule of Law would imply. The Union thus suffers, it is argued, as a result of misrepresenting legality at the EU level, selling it to friendly observers under the label of the "Rule of Law", while compelling reasons exist to distinguish the two. To do so, Gianluigi Palombella's vision of the Rule of Law as an institutional ideal is employed, implying that the law – gubernaculum – should always be controlled by other law – jurisdictio – lying outwith the sovereign's reach. Unable to boast any jurisdictio expressly intended as the legal aspect of positive law beyond the internal market logic programmed into the Treaties, the EU emerges as a somewhat rudimentary legal system, with no strong guarantees of legal non-domination extending beyond the Treaty text. The paper demonstrates the clear negative consequences of the prevalent deficient understanding of the Rule of Law for both constitutional levels: the EU and the Member States. One of the curious outcomes of the current reading of the Rule of Law in the EU is that this principle can be presented as demanding to trump the values of the Treaties as well as of the national constitutions in the name of upholding formal organisational considerations seemingly underpinning the EU legal system, resulting in anarchical confusion.