European citizenship consisting of equal economic, social and political rights for all EU citizens has come under pressure in recent years due to the different crises the EU had to face. Based on a survey conducted in 13 EU member states we examined to what extent EU citizens support the notion that citizens from other European countries should enjoy the same rights as nationals. Overall, 56% of EU citizens support the idea that citizens from other EU member states (EU migrants) and national citizens shall be treated equally. In addition, we find remarkable variation between the countries. Multivariate analyses indicate that cultural factors on the individual and the country level have a strong impact on attitudes towards Europeanized equality, whereas structural factors that are related to individuals' and a countries' socioeconomic position are only of minor importance.


Sensitive techniques for acrylamide gel electrophoretic analysis have been applied to animal virus systems and have proven generally useful. Estimates of the number of kinds, molecular weights and number of molecules of proteins in almost any biological sample have been made with ease. As applied to the poliovirus‐HeLa cell system they reveal four major proteins in the virion and at least ten additional proteins in the infected cell. Some of the intracellular and particulate proteins undergo cleavage reactions following a unique translation in which the genome is apparently translated in toto as one large polypeptide of molecular weight greater than 200,000 daltons. The splits occur at three levels: (a) during synthesis; (b) at intermediate stages; and (c) co‐incident with maturation. In vitro studies on protein synthesis, RNA synthesis and virus assembly have substantiated and extended the in vivo observations. The structure of the adenovirion has been established in detail. Hexon, penton base, fiber and core polypeptides and certain relevant subviral structures have been identified. Nearly all of the proteins synthesized in the infected cells after 20 hours are viral. The major structural antigens (hexon and penton) predominate and are made in 10 to 50 fold excess but the internal core polypeptides are not produced in great excess. Studies on the synthesis of polypeptides and their assembly into morphological subunits and virions show that hexon and penton polypeptides are made in about four and two minutes respectively on cytoplasmic polyribosomes, that morphological subunits are formed within five minutes of synthesis of protein, and that there is a delay of greater than one half hour for entry of hexons into virions.


The Bank of Canada Commodity Price Index (BCPI) summarizes the price movements of 23 commodities produced in Canada. Information provided by the BCPI is used in analyzing movements in GDP, industrial producer prices, inflation, and the exchange rate. Effective 15 May 2003, a number of changes will be reflected in the BCPI. To ensure that the index accurately reflects the natural resource sectors of the economy, a number of new components and pricing sources have been incorporated into the BCPI. Weights in the new index will be chained to 1 January 1991 and 1 January 2000 to better reflect contemporary values.


The main objective of this paper is to estimate the potential impacts of the increasing dissemination of the Huanglongbing (HLB) disease in citrus orchards in Sao Paulo State, Brazil, which is the largest world producer of orange juice and to discuss the importance of phytosanitary programs in order to control the disease's spreading in the territory. The methodology applied to evaluate the impacts and to discuss the importance of phytossanitary programs is the Cost-Benefit Analysis approach. A model has been used to project the orchard size and production along 20 years as well as to estimate the costs of production and disease control for the same period. Some assumptions have been made about the disease spread, prices and other variables for two basic scenarios: one considering the presence of an official phytosanitary program to eradicate and control the HLB, jointly implemented by Fundecitrus, which is a private institution; and the second one without the official program. The revenues for each scenario have been estimated and accumulated for 20 years, likewise the costs. The losses caused by the HLB considered to evaluate the avoided losses in the scenarios comprised basically those related to production reduction (yield) and reduction of the orchards' size. Cost-benefit ratios have been calculated for both scenarios. Regarding the CBA results for economic impacts, we found that for each Real invested by government and by Fundecitrus in the phytosanitary program, there is an avoided loss that amounts to R$ 57.3, which consists on a very high benefit-cost ratio for this kind of investment. When the additional costs imposed to farmers to manage the HLB is computed in the CBA analysis, the ratio falls to 4.6, however it is still higher than one, indicating that this phytosanitary "investment" is recommendable. Despite criticisms on this approach and the assumptions made, it provides elements to decision making, for both public and private actors and it allows having some approximation of impacts. Estimating those impacts is relevant to prove policy makers that phytosanitary policy has a high net benefit for society. It is worth-mentioning that other economic and social losses might be incorporated in the analysis.


OBJECTIVE
We examined the association between severity of diabetic peripheral neuropathy and depressive symptoms and investigated the potential mediators of this association.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) was used to assess depressive symptoms in 494 patients (mean age 62 years; 70% male; 72% type 2 diabetic) with diabetic neuropathy diagnosed by the Neuropathy Disability Score (NDS) and the Vibration Perception Threshold (VPT). Diabetic neuropathy symptoms, activities of daily living (ADLs), and social self-perception were measured by the neuropathy and foot ulcer-specific quality-of-life instrument, NeuroQoL; perceptions of diabetic neuropathy symptom unpredictability and the lack of effective treatment were assessed by the revised Illness Perception Questionnaire.

RESULTS
Both the NDS and VPT were significantly associated with the HADS after controlling for demographic and disease variables. Although diabetic neuropathy symptoms mediated this association, with unsteadiness being most strongly associated with HADS, the relationship between foot ulceration and depression was nonsignificant. The association between diabetic neuropathy symptoms and HADS was partially mediated by two sets of psychosocial variables: 1) perceptions of diabetic neuropathy symptom unpredictability and the lack of treatment control and 2) restrictions in ADLs and changes in social self-perception.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings establish the association between diabetic neuropathy and depressive symptoms and identify potential targets for interventions to alleviate depressive symptoms in persons affected by diabetic peripheral neuropathy.


Currently, there are very few in-situ measurement procedures available to evaluate the noise emissions of large machinery. Pressure based techniques often encounter difficulties adapting to industrial scenarios from controlled laboratory experiments. The presence of high background noise levels generated by surrounding equipment, along with the reverberant characteristics of most industrial sites, prevents the application of standard sound characterization techniques. In contrast, particle velocity measurements performed near a rigid radiating surface are less affected by background noise and can potentially be used to address noise problems even in such conditions. The vector nature of particle velocity, an intrinsic dependency upon surface displacement and sensor directivity are the main advantages over sound pressure based solutions. In this paper, the foundations of the proposed method are presented along with the experimental evaluation of the flow-induced noise of a large turbo-compressor and piping system. The results show the capabilities of this method for identifying and quantifying noise emissions of problematic elements, despite high levels of background noise.


NAD + has previously been shown to regulate TNF-α synthesis and TNF-α has been shown to regulate NAD + homeostasis, thus providing a link between a pro-inflammatory response and redox status. Despite the well-established link between TNF-α and NAD + , the mechanism as to how NAD + modulates TNF-α release is not fully understood. To achieve this, this link was investigated using THP-1 cell line-derived M1-like (pro-inflammatory) and M2-like (antiinflammatory) macrophages using PMA and vitamin D3, respectively. NAD + levels differed markedly between M1-like and M2-like macrophages, with M1-like having much higher basal levels. LPS increases NAD + levels and TNF-α secretion in M1-like but not M2-like cells. In an effort to investigate the source of the NAD + levels and the association with TNF-α release, three inhibitors (FK866, DPI and 1D-MT) were used. Following stimulation, NAD + is produced partially via NADH oxidation and partially through NAD + synthesis. Both DPI and FK866 reduced TNF-α secretion with DPI showing the largest effect. The two phenotypes showed differential profiles of NAD + homeostasis gene expression compared with each other and with the progenitor THP-1 in both resting and activated states. While IDO expression was induced in both phenotypes, CD38 and NAMPT were upregulated in M1-like cells whereas CD157 was upregulated in M2-like cells. LPS induced M1-like cells to up-regulate CD38 and CD157 and down-regulate NAMPT unlike M2-like cells which up-regulated NAMPT and CD38 and downregulated CD157. M1s increased glycolysis activity whereas conversely, decreased oxidative metabolism during LPS stimulation confirming previous findings showing that classical M1s are predominantly glycolytic. Collectively, these data suggest that the relationship between NAD + levels and pro-/anti-inflammatory responses is complex and may be regulated via a combination of pathways. These findings open the possibility of pharmacological manipulation of NAD + synthesis as a way of selectively modulating macrophage responses which may be beneficial for the development of therapeutics targeting inflammatory diseases.


This paper provides a simple portable wash machine designed for cleaning of small components. This paper describes a cleaning problem, developing a cleaning process, integrating the process to production needs, selecting and sizing appropriate cleaning equipment. This report stands with a sole purpose to develop a small, efficient energy and time saving wash machine to counterpart the assembly process at TRM assembly department of KPCL to replace the existing heavy, large and inefficient for small sized components Washing Machine. Along with this the project promotes Reuse and Recycle policy of the company as all the components comprising the new design have been used from Scarp Field and throw away company material. The manufactured wash machine and its components were reverse engineered and analysis was carried out with help of CREO 1.0 and Hypermesh. The design based method reduces instability and is cost effective.


In this paper, we consider the rate-loss problem for spatially-coupled LDPC (SC-LDPC) codes on the binary erasure channel. Although SC-LDPC codes have good noise thresholds under belief-propagation (BP) decoding, they also suffer a rate-loss due to termination that is significant at moderate blocklengths. Our idea is to attach additional variable nodes at the boundary using an irregular degree distribution. Then, this degree distribution is optimized to improve the code rate without reducing the BP threshold. The optimization is formulated as an linear program and solved numerically. Our results show that the code rate can be increased by a reasonable amount without decreasing the BP threshold.


The conversion of continuous forest coverage areas into forest fragments has contributed to the decrease of the biological diversity due to the micro-habitat loss, changes in dispersion and migration patterns, habitats' isolation and soil erosion. The solution for those problems is intimately linked to the planning and maintenance of hydrographic basins. Jacare's stream sub-basin is located in Taquari Valley, RS, with an area of 538,98 km2, where nine municipal districts are partially or totally inserted. This basin is in an ecotone area among the plant formations Deciduous Seasonal Forest (DSF) and Mixed Ombrophila Forest - Araucaria Forest (MOF). Information related to the structural characteristics of the existent forest classes in the area (DSF, MOF and secondary growth vegetation) was elaborated and analyzed using images from the satellite Landsat 7 ETM+, passage 04/02/2002 and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Idrisi 3.2 and Landscape Ecology Fragstats 3.3 software systems. The results indicate that the area presents approximately 52% of native forests that are preserved or in regeneration process, but in a highly fragmented way, with 87,82% of the fragments smaller than 1ha. Considering a border effect of 50m, around 40% of the fragments still present a nuclear area.


With mass propagation of the cellular phones and other small form factor devices as PDAs and other handhelds their usage in noise adverse environment is substantially increased. With adoption of the 3G and 4G wireless technologies the transition to videophone mode of communication is imminent. In addition most of the modern mobile phones have integrated cameras and are able to record short videos. In all these cases we have worse quality of the captured sound due to the old paradigm of a single microphone, which is supposed to be positioned close to the mouth of the human speaker. In this paper we propose enhanced sound capturing system for mobile devices. It consists of two directional microphones, pointing in opposite directions. Using a novel approach for the beamformer design we achieve satisfactory sound quality levels. The system output improves the perceptual sound quality with 0.29 MOS points and


The following paper presents a modular; groupware- and workflow based System called INFOFLOW. The system was designed to meet the requirements of a DIN EN ISO 9000 certified development and pre production plant. As a compromise between usage of standard software and a complete custom solution it is partly based oh Microsoft Standard Office Software to increase end-uses acceptance, supplemented by plugins and a self developed workflow engine, controlling the production flow, esp. exception handling and distributing relevant information between the several clients. INFOFLOW's engine especially supports exception handling like activity related, predefined rework sequences or handling the scrapping of damaged parts. The system integrates workflow and information technology providing the uses with relevant activity and order related information elements The user interfaces are realized as electronic forms, embedded in Microsoft's Outlook Web Access as public information store folders, representing the activities or People involved in the production process. These Web applications, called "electronic worklists" are created and distributed by the workflow engine. A mechanism to easily create and integrate user defined input forms allows the customization of the user front ends.


Today's artists create work that's challenging, complicated and often perplexing. Exploring the significance and impact of a broad selection of the most prominent artists working in Europe, North and Latin America, Asia and Australasia, including Francis Alys, Marina Abramovi'c, Allora and Calzadilla, Maurizio Cattelan, Luc Tuymans and many more, "How to Read Contemporary Art" provides a thoughtful and accessible key to understanding the everchanging face of art practice at the beginning of the 21st century. Organized alphabetically by artist, it describes each artists use of media and symbolism in reference to their key pieces, and provides useful biographical information. Encompassing work in video, film, photography, installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, digital media and performance, this is a vibrant and vital companion for art lovers everywhere.


Hazardous materials (HAZMAT) transport is a vital logistic activity from the supply of raw materials to production units. However, there are risks associated with trucks being involved in accidents during HAZMAT shipment. It is essential that all criteria and factors involved need to be considered prior to HAZMAT transport decision making. The main purpose of this paper is to present a HAZMAT transport framework based on the sustainability paradigm by the application of a multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and geographic information system (GIS) for optimum HAZMAT transport route planning. A number of criteria and factors are proposed and categorised into three main groups: economic, environment and social issues. An explanation of the framework development processes: goal, method and tool are described. The proposed framework can be useful in the planning process of policy makers and carriers and/or shippers when they plan and evaluate possible routes for HAZMAT transport.


This article examines the careers of three mid-century performers, the Americans Charles Browne and P. T. Barnum, and the Englishman Albert Smith. Their appearances at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly offer an alternative account of transatlantic cultural exchange to that developed through legitimate theatre. The theatre of display, parody, comedy, and fraud that they established negotiated the complex cultural and political tensions and borrowings between Britain and America in the period leading to and including the Civil War. ********** The American humorist Charles Browne visited London in November 1866 to perform his comic lecture "Artemus Ward Among the Mormons" at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. The show was a version of a popular travelogue panorama, purporting to describe experiences of Utah and encounters with Mormonism, but it burlesqued the form through deadpan comedy, non sequiturs and absurdity, deliberately shoddy artwork in the panorama, and inept musical accompaniment. It was popular enough for the lecture to be published later in book-form, with the illustrations of the show and detailed indications of pauses and stage business, but the publication was posthumous. Browne was taken ill in January 1867, forcing him to end the show's run prematurely, and he died in Southampton two months later. Where Browne's panorama is mentioned in histories of Victorian performance it is usually as an eccentricity--Richard Altick, for example, refers to it as "presumably the first and last of its kind." (1) However, I want to argue that Browne's visit is significant in more substantial ways. First, it offers an insight into the cultural transactions of Britain and America at a time of political crisis for the latter and of the intensification of the development of mass culture in the former. Secondly, it forms part of a little-studied tradition of transatlantic exchange that worked outside of dominant literary and theatrical modes. Such genres as the popular lecture, the minstrel show, and travelling exhibitions were staged in venues other than legitimate theaters and the developing music halls, and they offer a different perspective upon the course of popular entertainment in the mid-century. The comic performances of Browne and his precursors provided a sophisticated subversion of the educative and improving premise of the nineteenth-century public lecture, offering instead frequently ambivalent commentaries upon contemporary approaches to culture and its transmission. This essay explores the political and cultural context and history of Browne's visit and sets his comic panorama alongside the performances of two other comic lecturers who also occupied the strange stage of the Egyptian Hall, the American showman P.T. Barnum and his English protege Albert Smith. It was P.T. Barnum who most ostentatiously and controversially initiated the collisions and collusions that were to characterize the relationship between American and British popular culture in the mid-nineteenth century. (2) In the early 1840s, he had consolidated a career as an inventive and opportunistic showman by opening his American Museum in New York, and by promoting his most successful "attraction" to date, the midget "General" Tom Thumb. The radicalism of Barnum's redefinition of American culture within the changing displays and theaters of the Museum has been recently emphasized by Bluford Adams, (3) and it was this energy of populist-capitalist transformation of culture and spectacle that Barnum sought to export to Europe when he brought Tom Thumb to England in 1844. The English journalist Albert Smith's contemporary account of that visit gives a good sense of the impact of Barnum's radical entrepreneurialism, and of the wider fascinations and prejudices that characterized British responses to America in the period. During a "go-a-head day" in the Midlands, the sardonic Smith is exposed to Barnum's American challenge to British cultural hierarchies, beginning with their sacred center, Shakespeare. …


Jewish theologian and social activist Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72) died three decades ago, yet his major books are still in print, many in new editions, and it seems that his work is more appreciated now among his coreligionists than it ever was in his own lifetime. This essay suggests that, at a time when there is a swing toward conservatism (and fundamentalism) in Christian and Jewish theology and when interfaith dialogue has moved to the back burner, Jewish-Christian dialogue has much to be grateful for, and much still to learn from, Heschel's positive approach to Christian individuals and institutions. Born and brought up in an Orthodox hasidic family in Warsaw, educated at the liberal Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, successor to Martin Buber at Frankfurt, expelled by the Nazis, one of Morgenstern's "Refugee Scholars" at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (Reform), Heschel taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (Conservative) for the last twenty-seven years of his life. In the ten years before his death, he became best known as a social activist, particularly in the causes of the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and as the voice drawing attention to the plight of the Russian Jews. However, his particular contribution to the theological enterprise has been enormously influential and has become more so in the years since his death. Most of today's Christian theologians who have come to appreciate Heschel's contribution have discovered him through the work of Jurgen Moltmann, who has made extensive use of the "Divine Pathos" that brought Heschel into direct c onflict with classical Jewish and Christian metaphysics. I. Heschel's Influence on Christians The primary source of Heschel's influence on Christians is his writings about Judaism for Jews. His Jewish philosophy of religion, expounded in Man Is Not Alone, and God in Search of Man, (3) first brought him to the attention of Christians. Before the publication of Man Is Not Alone, Heschel was little known outside the world of Jewish scholarship. In a review for The New York Herald-Tribune Book Review, Reinhold Niebuhr predicted that the book's author would become "a commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish Community but in the religious life of America." (4) By the time Niebuhr reviewed God in Search of Man, almost exactly five years later, he was able to state that Heschel's books "have had an increasing bearing among both Jews and Christians." He also affirmed that God in Search of Man was "not merely an exposition of the 'philosophy of Judaism"' but also "a treatise which will be found illuminating to all who regard Biblical thought as the source of one of the main streams of Western r eligious life.... Naturally, much of what he writes has equal relevance for Christians as well as Jews." (5) Indeed, like Buber, Heschel is sometimes accused of being more appreciated in Christian than in Jewish circles. Certainly, he became increasingly important to Christians, although "[t]his was not because he was looked upon as a crypto-Christian but because he was so incurably and consistently Jewish." (6) W. D. Davies, speaking at the memorial service held at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City on January 21, 1973, a few weeks after Heschel's death, explained: Through his faith in the God beyond all mystery he ministered to our ultimate human need and, therefore, to us all. In his books and speeches, in which the cadences and rhythms and patterns of ancient synagogal prayers and sermons reverberate, his very prose is instinct with a poetry which strangely recalls us to primordial certainties. In all these he called into being the emotions which he described, and summoned not only Jews, but non-Jews also, to the depth of awe, wonder and mystery which life should evoke in all men. (7) Jacob Neusner, in his contribution to the Heschel memorial issue of the Jesuit journal America, expressed his concern that the Christian world's knowledge of Heschel was "chiefly in his roles of holy man and politician," a side of Heschel that Neusner considered to be unimportant: "The Heschel that will last is in his books. …


We examine the evidence on Amazonian road impacts with a strong emphasis on context. Impacts of a new road, on either deforestation or socioeconomic outcomes, depend upon the conditions into which roads are placed. Conditions that matter include the biophysical setting, such as slope, rainfall, and soil quality, plus externally determined socioeconomic factors like national policies, exchange rates, and the global prices of beef and soybeans. Influential conditions also include all prior infrastructural investments and clearing rates. Where development has already arrived, with significant economic activity and clearing, roads may decrease forest less and raise output more than where development is arriving, while in pristine areas, short-run clearing may be lower than immense long-run impacts. Such differences suggest careful consideration of where to invest further in transport.


Abstract
Introduction: In the Philippines, the National Council on Disability made a survey revealing a prevalence of 43.367 disabled who lost one or both legs and/or feet. This study explored the challenges encountered and coping mechanisms an amputee manifests, and the assistance that they get from their expected support system.

Methodology: This case study was anchored on Dorothea Orem's Self-Care Theory of Nursing. Four purposively sampled amputee informants were interviewed and observed. Primary and secondary data were gathered and triangulation with the relatives was done to ensure the validity and depth of the results. Data were encoded and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results: Results revealed that the informants experienced physical, psychological, emotional, socio-economic, and spiritual challenges. Physical challenges involved mobility problem and lack of gait balance, physical deformity, adjustment to the new body, altered physical appearance, a sedentary behavior, and phantom pain. Psychological challenges involved suicidal tendency, loss of libido, self-pity, and depression. Emotional challenges included fear and hopelessness. Socio-economic challenges involved the development of anti-social behavior, dissociative behavior, fear of losing a job, problem with money, and fear of rejection. Spiritual challenges involved loss of faith. Coping mechanism included support from family and friends, mastery of gait and balance, proper practice in using assistive devices, hastened adjustment to the new body, wearing of prosthesis, medication and mobility, and trust in God. Although they get strong support from the family and friends, there is very limited assistance from the government and the community.

Discussion: There is a need to increase family awareness in anticipating the needs of the amputees. Likewise, full support must be given to them. Health education campaign may be formulated by the local health leaders and provision of assistive devices and equipment to achieve the equalization and opportunities for persons with disabilities may also be done.


Although "executive" policies remain an important governance tool, there appears to be confusion on the status and possible basis for their judicial enforcement in South Africa. The aim of this article is to critically reflect on the status and possible constitutional basis for the enforceability of "executive" policies that give effect to socio-economic rights in South Africa. Based on the jurisprudence of courts and some examples of "executive" policies, this article demonstrates that the constitutional basis for the enforceability of "executive" policies could be located inter alia in the positive duties imposed on government by sections 24(b), 25(5), 26(2) and 27(2) of the Constitution to "take reasonable legislative and other measures" within the context of available resources to give effect to relevant rights. This article argues that these duties amount to a constitutional delegation of authority to the legislative and executive branches of government to concretise socio-economic rights. In addition, this article demonstrates that where "executive" policies give effect to socio-economic rights pursuant to powers delegated by enabling provisions in original legislation that covers the field of socio-economic rights, such policies may be perceived to have the force of law, thereby providing a legal basis for their judicial enforcement.


The in-plane dispersion relarions of the valence sub- bands of GaAs - Ga0.7Al0.3As quantum well are calcu- lated within the envelope function approximation. The anisotropy related with the difference between the Lut-tinger parameters ?2 and ?3 is taken into account con- sistently. The anisotropy proved to be considerable for the ground valence subbands of heavy and light holes and the great values ok k. The cross sections of the constant-energy surfaces of the valence subbans by the kxky plane are built. The envelope wave functions of the valence subbands as the mixture of the hole states dis-tinguished in mJ at k=0 are found. The change of the percental contribution of the hole states different in mJ to the resultant state with k varying is investigated.


Estimations of potential evapotranspiration as input to runoff calculations with the HBV model are usually given as monthly standard values calculated with the Penman method. Daily changes in the weather conditions can in later model versions be taken into account by the introduction of a temperature anomaly correction of the evapotranspiration. In this study daily values of potential evapotranspiration calculated with the Priestley-Taylor method were used as input to the model. The required net radiation estimations were calculated from routine weather observations including cloudiness. Potential evapotranspiration was calculated on a three hour basis over a 20-year period. Model simulations using different input data on the potential evapotranspiration were made for three drainage basins (3,500-4,300 km 2 ) in Sweden. The Priestley-Taylor evapotranspiration generally gave small improvements of the runoff simulations. The simple temperature anomaly correction method gave improvements of the same size.


DanielL. Spears Carl A. Boger, Jr. This study assessed the perceptions and attitudes toward Native American Gaming (NAG) development in the State of Kansas. By using the resident support for tourism model developed by Perdue, Long, and Allen (1990), this study assessed perceptions and attitudes of residents in relation to their proximity to NAG activity and their number of visits to Native American casinos in the last 12 months. A survey was administered to 1038 households on a population proportionate basis in Brown County (35.65%), Doniphan County (25.30% ), and Jackson County (39.05%) in the State of Kansas. Significant differences were found between distance from NAG activity and the perception of overcrowding in the county. Additionally, significant differences were noted between number of visits and the perception of income benefits, employment opportunities, condition of the local economy, quality of life in the county, entertainment opportunities, illegal drug activities, standard of living, meeting interesting people, social opportunities and overall quality of life.


This paper reports findings from the second stage of a mixed-methods study of embedded academic literacies and diagnostic assessment—specifically first-year nursing students' perceptions of the MASUS procedure. We found overwhelming support from participants (85%) in favour of embedded diagnostic assessment. The main reasons for this were receiving constructive, individualised feedback and insights into expectations and requirements. This was important as over a quarter of participants said they had "no idea" about the academic literacy requirements of university when they commenced their program and 60% had not formally studied for at least seven years. Those without recent study experience or with prior poor academic performance expressed high levels of anxiety about academic literacy requirements and lacked confidence in their writing abilities. These findings indicate how stressful the process of mastering academic literacies is for many first-year students' and highlight the potential benefits of embedding for retention and engagement.


Guanidinium-rich transporters are promising agents to deliver a wide range of molecules through cell membranes. This article reports the synthesis of a modular, conformationally restricted guanidinium display scaffold, designed with the goal to study the impact of conformational restrictions on the resulting properties of the transporters and ultimately probe the anionic chemical space of the cellular membrane. The scaffold was assembled on solid phase as a peptoid, and its subsequent biological evaluation showed very good cellular penetration and low cytotoxicity.


In an increasingly aging population, a number of adults are concerned about declines in their cognitive abilities. Online computer-based cognitive training programs have been proposed as an accessible means by which the elderly may improve their cognitive abilities; yet, more research is needed in order to assess the efficacy of these programs. In the current study, a commercially available 21-day online computer-based cognitive training intervention was administered to 34 individuals aged between 53 and 75 years. The intervention consisted of computerized training in reaction time, inspection time, short-term memory for words, executive function, visual spatial acuity, arithmetic, visual spatial memory, visual scanning/discrimination, and n-back working memory. An active solitaire control group was also included. Participants were tested at baseline, posttraining and at three-weeks follow-up using a battery of neuropsychological outcome measures. These consisted of simple reaction time, complex reaction time, digit forwards and backwards, spatial working memory, digit symbol substitution, RAVLT, and trail making. Significant improvement in simple reaction time and choice reaction time task was found in the cognitive training group both posttraining and at three-weeks follow-up. However, no significant improvements on the other cognitive tasks were found. The training program was found to be successful in achieving transfer of trained cognitive abilities in speed of processing to similar untrained tasks.


Many price indices must be constructed without quantity data at the elementary level. We show that for some consumer goods in the United States and other countries, one can approximate expenditure shares using weights derived from the retail distribution of sellers. These weights are based on the share of outlets selling an item, or the share of outlets adjusted by the total number of items sold in each. Relative to using no weights, we find that using such imputed weights substantially reduces bias in the frequency of price changes, in annual inflation, and in price comparisons across countries.


Since 12 March 2020, when Kenya reported the first COVID-19 cases, the Ministry of Health confirmed a total of 45,076 cases and 839 deaths, as of 19 October.1 Despite the rising number of COVID-19 confirmed infections and deaths in Kenya during the third quarter (Q3) of 2020, the national and county governments relaxed some of the restrictions that had been in place during Q2 aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19. This assessment was aimed at understanding the effects of COVID-19 at household level and attendant policy responses during Q3 of 2020, to inform actions to assure protection of local food systems, rural livelihoods and the supply of adequate, affordable food of acceptable quality to the population.


Protein tertiary structure plays a very important role in determining its possible functional sites and chemical interactions with other related proteins. Experimental methods to determine protein structure are time consuming and expensive. As a result, the gap between protein sequence and its structure has widened substantially due to the high throughput sequencing techniques. Problems of experimental methods motivate us to develop the computational algorithms for protein structure prediction.
In this work, the clustering system is used to predict local protein structure. At first, recurring sequence clusters are explored with an improved K-means clustering algorithm. Carefully constructed sequence clusters are used to predict local protein structure. After obtaining the sequence clusters and motifs, we study how sequence variation for sequence clusters may influence its structural similarity.
Analysis of the relationship between sequence variation and structural similarity for sequence clusters shows that sequence clusters with tight sequence variation have high structural similarity and sequence clusters with wide sequence variation have poor structural similarity. Based on above knowledge, the established clustering system is used to predict the tertiary structure for local sequence segments. Test results indicate that highest quality clusters can give highly reliable prediction results and high quality clusters can give reliable prediction results.
In order to improve the performance of the clustering system for local protein structure prediction, a novel computational model called Clustering Support Vector Machines (CSVMs) is proposed. In our previous work, the sequence-to-structure relationship with the K-means algorithm has been explored by the conventional K-means algorithm. The K-means clustering algorithm may not capture nonlinear sequence-to-structure relationship effectively. As a result, we consider using Support Vector Machine (SVM) to capture the nonlinear sequence-to-structure relationship. However, SVM is not favorable for huge datasets including millions of samples. Therefore, we propose a novel computational model called CSVMs. Taking advantage of both the theory of granular computing and advanced statistical learning methodology, CSVMs are built specifically for each information granule partitioned intelligently by the clustering algorithm. Compared with the clustering system introduced previously, our experimental results show that accuracy for local structure prediction has been improved noticeably when CSVMs are applied.


The paper reviews results of work done in the context of TEI-Lex0, a joint ENeL /DARIAH / PARTHENOS initiative aimed at formulating guidelines for the encoding of retro-digitized dictionaries by streamlining and simplifying the recommendations of the "Print Dictionaries" chapter of the TEI Guidelines. TEI-Lex0 work is performed by teams concentrating on each of the main components of dictionary entries. The work presented here
concerns proposals for constraining TEI-based encoding of orthographic, phonetic, and grammatical information on written and spoken forms of the lemma (headword), including auxiliary inflected forms. We also adduce examples of handling various types of orthographic and phonetic variants, as well as examples of handling the representation of inflectional paradigms, which have received less attention in the TEI Guidelines but which are
nonetheless essential for properly exposing data content to the various uses that digitized lexica may have.


Chinese restaurants are now a cultural fixture, as American as cherry pie. Startlingly, however, there was once a national movement to eliminate Chinese restaurants, using innovative legal methods to drive them out. Chinese restaurants were objectionable for two reasons. First, they threatened white women, who were subject to seduction by Chinese men, through intrinsic female weakness, or employment of nefarious techniques such as opium addiction. In addition, Chinese restaurants competed with "American" restaurants, thus threatening the livelihoods of white owners, cooks and servers; unions were the driving force behind the movement.

The effort was creative; Chicago used anti-Chinese zoning, Los Angeles restricted restaurant jobs to citizens, Boston authorities decreed Chinese restaurants would be denied licenses, the New York Police Department simply ordered whites out of Chinatown. Perhaps the most interesting technique was a law, endorsed by the American Federation of Labor for adoption in all jurisdictions, prohibiting white women from working in Asian restaurants. Most measures failed or were struck down. However, Asians still lost; the unions did not eliminate Chinese restaurants, but they achieved their more important goal, extending the federal policy of racial exclusion in immigration from Chinese to all Asians. The campaign is of more than historical interest. As current anti-immigration sentiments and efforts show, even today the idea that white Americans should have a privileged place in the economy, or that non-whites are culturally incongruous, persists among some.


This thesis is focused on studying the motion of the Sun and the Solar siblings through the Galaxy. The Solar siblings are stars that were born with the Sun in the same molecular cloud 4.6 Gyr ago.
In the first part of the thesis, we present an efficient method to calculate the evolution of small systems embedded in larger systems. Generalizations of this method are used to calculate the motion of the Sun and the Solar siblings in an analytical potential containing a central bar and spiral arms. By integrating the orbit of the Sun backwards in time, we determine its birth radius and the amount of radial migration experienced by our star. The birth radius of the Sun is used to investigate the evolution and disruption of the Sun's birth cluster. Depending on the Galaxy model parameters, the present-day phase-space distribution of the Solar siblings might be quite different. We used these data to predict the regions in the Galaxy where it will be more likely to search for Solar siblings in the future. Finally, we compute the stellar encounters experienced by the Sun along its orbit and their role on the stability of the outer Solar System.


The bacterial cell cycle is a developmental process starting with newborn bacteria that progress to the predivisional status in which they eventually generate two daughter cells. Along their development, the newborns grow and replicate their genome that is in turn faithfully transmitted to the two siblings. The bacterial cell cycle has been extensively investigated in the alphaproteobacterium Caulobacter crescentus, which produces a small non-replicating (G1 phase) swarmer cell for the colonization of new niches in aquatic environments at each cell division. The pathogen Brucella abortus is also part of the alphaproteobacteria group but displays a singular cell cycle compared to C. crescentus. Opposite to C. crescentus, B. abortus growth mode is unipolar resulting in the asymmetric distribution of the cell wall material in the predivisionnal cell. This asymmetry is further exacerbated by an asymmetric division that generates a large cell composed of "old" cell wall material and a small cell made of a new envelope material. In addition, B. abortus also contains a genome divided into several replicons each encoding its own segregating apparatus. Among those replicons is included a chromid (a combination of chromosomal and plasmidic features) carrying a RepAB-based segregation system for which the localization has not been not assessed so far. During this PhD thesis, we characterized the mechanisms of unipolar growth and chromosomes segregation of B. abortus. Concerning the unipolar growth study, we localized the only monofunctional transpeptidase penicillin-binding protein (FtsI) identified in B. abortus that creates links between the different peptidoglycan strands at every growth zone. The localization of FtsI revealed that this protein is present at the growing pole during the unipolar elongation and at the constriction site during the division. These data suggest the presence of a unique growth machinery performing both the elongation (at the new pole) and the division (at the constriction site) in two different periods of the cell cycle. We therefore propose that B. abortus and other rhizobiales unipolar growth mode relies on a simple process involving only one machinery used after the loss of the genes involved in the formation of the core of the elongation machinery such as mreB or pbp2. We investigated the replication status of B. abortus by generating fluorescent reporters of the segregation markers (ParB and RepB) and the replication origins (ori) and terminators (ter). We showed that both chromosomes were oriented along the cell length axis and that oriI was strictly polarly localized while oriII was not anchored to the poles, similarly to plasmids. Moreover, we showed that the replication and segregation of chromosome I are initiated before the duplication of chromosome II origin. As B. abortus is a facultative intracellular pathogen characterized by a striking proliferation arrest during the first phase of its infectious process, we envisioned a potential link between its cell cycle and its infectivity. Importantly, our chromosomal reporters indicated that the newly generated non-replicating bacteria (newborns) are predominant during the non-proliferative stage of the infection. As the bacterial cell cycle appears to be blocked during this infectious period, we propose that the B. abortus newborns constitute the major cell type able to colonize host cells. These data demonstrate thus that only a subset of the Brucella population is dedicated to the prospection of new environmental niches similarly to the swarmer G1 blocked cells in C. crescentus. Overall, this work demonstrates the need to investigate bacterial cell cycle to improve our knowledge of bacterial pathogenicity, since G1 block may represent a general strategy of resistance form in stressful conditions encountered by the intracellular pathogens.


What is learning after all? Being the cornerstone of educational psychology, this question has not lost its appeal since there still is no consensus over it. What makes providing a careful definition of learning important is that such definitions carry important pedagogical implications which might not be equally beneficial. This theoretical paper, therefore, has tried to define learning by a novel interdisciplinary approach through connecting educational psychology to philosophy. It has started with the dilemma of a lack of consensus over the definition of definition itself and the necessity for holding a theory of definition. Consequently, Aristotle's definition theory has been chosen. To be impartial, it has been contrasted with that adopted by Karl Popper- Aristotle's major critic. Then, mainstream leaning definitions have been investigated. Their inadequacy has been attributed to their non-adherence to a tenable definition theory. The paper recommends a framework for learning definition studies established by adopting Aristotle's definition theory and other points discussed. Such a framework constitutes guidelines for future studies. These guidelines give future definition studies direction and coherence and allow us to move away from idiosyncrasies reflecting personal bias and, as such, they can direct us towards developing a consensual definition.


Little is known about host defense mechanisms responsible for protective immunity in malaria. The intravascular location of the infection suggested that removal of parasitized erythrocytes by reticuloendothelial organs might be important. To study this possibility, we examined the clearance of (51)Crlabeled Plasmodium berghei-infected erythrocytes in rats. Infected erythrocytes were removed more rapidly from circulation than homologous uninfected erythrocytes. The rate of clearance of infected cells during the 1st hour after inoculation was approximately three times greater in rats rendered immune by prior infection than in control rats. This accelerated clearance resulted from greater splenic uptake in immune rats and appeared to correlate with spleen size. Since the clearance pattern of infected erythrocytes more closely resembled the clearance of Heinz body-containing uninfected erythrocytes than of antibody-coated (immunoglobulin G) uninfected erythrocytes, rheologic alterations of parasitized erythrocytes might be a more important determinant of clearance than an antibody-dependent process. During the phase of malaria infection in which increasing parasitemia is observed, organ uptake of infected erythrocytes did not increase despite splenic and hepatic enlargement. However during the spontaneous onset of resolution of malaria infection characterized by decreasing parasitemia, a marked enhancement of splenic clearance was noted. These observations suggest that sudden alteration in splenic clearance of parasitized erythrocytes might be important in the resolution of acute malaria.


The explosion in popularity of online social networks has led to increased interest in identity resolution from security practitioners. Being able to connect together the multiple online accounts of a user can be of use in verifying identity attributes and in tracking the activity of malicious users. At the same time, privacy researchers are exploring the same phenomenon with interest in identifying privacy risks caused by re-identification attacks. Existing literature has explored how particular components of an online identity may be used to connect profiles, but few if any studies have attempted to assess the comparative value of information attributes. In addition, few of the methods being reported are easily comparable, due to difficulties with obtaining and sharing ground- truth data. Attempts to gain a comprehensive understanding of the identifiability of profile attributes are hindered by these issues. With a focus on overcoming these hurdles to effective research, this thesis first develops a methodology for sampling ground-truth data from online social networks. Building on this with reference to both existing literature and samples of real profile data, this thesis describes and grounds a comprehensive matching schema of profile attributes. The work then defines data quality measures which are important for identity resolution, and measures the availability, consistency and uniqueness of the schema's contents. The developed measurements are then applied in a feature selection scheme to reduce the impact of missing data issues common in identity resolution. Finally, this thesis addresses the purposes to which identity resolution may be applied, defining the further application-oriented data quality measurements of novelty, veracity and relevance, and demonstrating their calculation and application for a particular use case: evaluating the social engineering vulnerability of an organisation.


This article presents results from an investigation into the modeling of solids friction factor for fluidized dense-phase pneumatic conveying of powders. A fundamental design approach was pursued by employing "straight pipe" and "back calculation" techniques for modeling and using two types of power function formats. The "straight pipe" models were found to be unexpectedly different depending on the selected location of pressure-measuring tapping points (even for the same product). An attempt to explain this variation by studying the "straight pipe" conveying characteristics suggested significant changes in flow mechanisms along the pipe. The derived models were evaluated for scaleup accuracy and stability by predicting for larger and longer pipes. The results showed significant variations in predictions. One format of power function model was found to result in more stable predictions than the other. Possible explanations for the causes of such variations are provided. Physical observations of the flow phenomena of dense-phase conveying for different powders showed the products were mostly conveyed as a dense non-suspension liquid-type-layer along the bottom of the pipe. This mechanism does not seem to be correctly represented by the existing design approach of using a Froude number term in the solids friction factor models, thus initiating a search for suitable alternative dimensionless grouping(s) that can adequately represent the non-suspension flow phenomena. In this study, Steady-state conveying data of three different powders conveyed in various pipes (diameter/lengths) were used for the purpose of modeling and scaleup investigations.


This paper analyses several dimensions of workers' safety that are relevant in the context of a pandemic. We provide a classification of occupations according to the risk of contagion: by considering a wider range of job characteristics and a more nuanced assessment of infection risk, we expand on the previous literature that almost exclusively looked at feasibility of working from home. We apply our classification to the United States and to European countries and we find that roughly 50% of jobs in our sample can be considered safe, although a large cross-country variation exists, notably in the potential incidence of remote working. We find that the most economically vulnerable workers (low-educated, low-wage workers, immigrants, workers on temporary contracts, and part-timers) are over-represented in unsafe jobs, notably in non-essential activities. We assess the nature of the reallocation of workers from unsafe to safe jobs that is likely to take place in the years to come, and the policies that could mitigate the social cost of this reallocation.


Embryonic stem cells can self-renew and differentiate, holding great promise for regenerative medicine. They also employ multiple mechanisms to preserve the integrity of their genomes. Nucleotide excision repair, a versatile repair mechanism, removes bulky DNA adducts from the genome. However, the dynamics of the capacity of nucleotide excision repair during stem cell differentiation remain unclear. Here, using immunoslot blot assay, we measured repair rates of UV-induced DNA damage during differentiation of human embryonic carcinoma (NTERA-2) cells into neurons and muscle cells. Our results revealed that the capacity of nucleotide excision repair increases as cell differentiation progresses. We also found that inhibition of the apoptotic signaling pathway has no effect on nucleotide excision repair capacity. Furthermore, RNA-Seq–based transcriptomic analysis indicated that expression levels of four core repair factors, xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) complementation group A (XPA), XPC, XPG, and XPF-ERCC1, are progressively up-regulated during differentiation, but not those of replication protein A (RPA) and transcription factor IIH (TFIIH). Together, our findings reveal that increase of nucleotide excision repair capacity accompanies cell differentiation, supported by the up-regulated transcription of genes encoding DNA repair enzymes during differentiation of two distinct cell lineages.


The majority of the ancient rock art sites of the U.S. Southwest are located in rural locations that are difficult to monitor or police. These sites seem to exert a pull on humans, an attraction that not only provokes curiosity and wonder but also what can be classed as destructive responses or vandalism. Many crime control methods for reducing vandalism are based on traditional theories such as defensible space and broken window theory. In the case of rock art, however, these methods do not yield expected results and in some cases are even detrimental. Rural crime, including rural vandalism, as a whole is marginalized in criminology, which has been dominated by urban-focused approaches and theories. In the case of rock art, considering how security is approached and maintained ultimately leads to questions about human–object relationships with regards to crime and about object agency. By focusing on the policing challenges of one particular type of rural vandalism, we hope to contribute to the discussion of vandalism in rural spaces.


The Arabidopsis transposon Tag1 has an unusual subterminal structure containing four sets of dissimilar repeats: one set near the 5' end and three near the 3' end. To determine sequence requirements for efficient and regulated transposition, deletion derivatives of Tag1 were tested in Arabidopsis plants. These tests showed that a 98-bp 5' fragment containing the 22-bp inverted repeat and four copies of the AAACCX (X = C, A, G) 5' subterminal repeat is sufficient for transposition while a 52-bp 5' fragment containing only one copy of the subterminal repeat is not. At the 3' end, a 109-bp fragment containing four copies of the most 3' repeat TGACCC, but not a 55-bp fragment, which has no copies of the subterminal repeats, is sufficient for transposition. The 5' and 3' end fragments are not functionally interchangeable and require an internal spacer DNA of minimal length between 238 and 325 bp to be active. Elements with these minimal requirements show transposition rates and developmental control of excision that are comparable to the autonomous Tag1 element. Last, a DNA-binding activity that interacts with the 3' 109-bp fragment but not the 5' 98-bp fragment of Tag1 was found in nuclear extracts of Arabidopsis plants devoid of Tag1.


Recent events in world politics demonstrate that a part of society has lost faith in their institutions. The importance of facts and evidence in citizens' decision making is weakened by opinions and belief systems. This post-fact or alternate facts era is a new challenge in the field of science communication as we urgently need to tackle global environmental challenges. Not only do scientists need to better communicate their work, they also need to explore alternative ways of transferring knowledge to help citizens reconnect with nature and actively take responsible decisions to protect it. The activity 'I am the Ocean' has been developed by an artist and a scientist with the goal to help students understand, connect and be equipped to take actions on marine global changes. The activity was a mix of field trips, open discussions and sensory immersion. It illustrates how art and metaphors can add an emotional and physical dimension to science communication, allowing a better understanding of otherwise invisible threats, and move from knowledge to passion.


JORGE H. DARUNA Introduction to Psychoneuroimmunology Boston, MA: Elsevier Academic Press, 2004, 304 pages (ISBN 0-12-203456-2, US$69.95 Hardcover) Reviewed by LINDA E. CARLSON Dr. Daruna tackles a large and daunting area of research in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). PNI is not defined, except to say, "It seeks to shed light on how mental events and processes modulate the function of the immune system, and how, in turn, immunological activity is capable of altering the function of the mind" (p. 7). Throughout, the fundamental unity and interconnectedness of bodily systems is emphasized, a cornerstone of PNI first articulated by Robert Ader in 1980. The first two chapters discuss the aim and organization of the book and historical antecedents. Insight from ancient medical wisdom is summarized with the recognition that these philosophies had essentially understood the principal dynamics of balancing bodily systems centuries ago. In this context, PNI uses scientific method to show the long-recognized unity of the organism. The book is well organized with each chapter suitably divided into sections and subsections; necessary as the text itself is physically small. The intended audience are students in medicine, nursing, psychology, public health or social work. However, those without a university-level biology education may find the chapters on the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems difficult, as the language assumes an understanding of cell biology, neurochemistry, and neuroanatomy. The glossary of terms is helpful but not inclusive and there are a very large number of abbreviations introduced in the first few chapters. Medical students and basic scientists will be most at home in these first chapters, which cover immune system basics (Chapter 3), endocrineimmune modulation (Chapter 4), and neuroimmune modulation (Chapter 5). Much more detail is given here than other sources aimed at students, perhaps too in-depth for some, but valuable for graduate researchers who require a better understanding of the complexities of these systems. A section in Chapter 3 on commonly used measures of immune function is most welcome. The next section deals with stress, contextual change, and disease (Chapter 6), and psychosocial stress: neuroendocrine and immune effects (Chapter 7). The basic understanding of systemic functioning is applied to the stress paradigm with a repeated emphasis on the importance of context. Stress is viewed as contextual change, with context broken down into the social environment, other life forms, nonliving environment and within the individual organism. Change in any of these spheres constitutes stress. Disease is also framed as a contextual change and therefore, stress. The individual shapes the context in which the immune system operates through thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. This view of the organism existing in several different contexts simultaneously is fitting and recognizes the complexity of layered influences on health and illness. Chapter 7 moves from theoretical to empirical, summarizing research on neuroendocrine and immune effects of psychosocial stress. As is the case throughout the book, the focus is on the human literature, and research is summarized without reference to studies or authors. Sources are listed at the end of each chapter but without reference in the text to specific findings. Most sources are review articles, books or book chapters, so determining original studies is difficult. This is appropriate for some textbooks but is frustrating to those who wish to investigate specific findings further. Psychosocial effects of stress are organized by the type of outcomes assessed: endocrine activity, autonomie and peripheral neural activity, central nervous system activity, immune system activity (further broken down into nonspecific, humoral, and cell-mediated immunity), and neuroendocrine-immune pathways. This specificity allows the reader easily to focus on areas of interest. …


Applications such as autonomous driving or real-time route recommendations require up-to-date and accurate digital maps. However, manually creating and updating such maps is too costly to meet the rising demands. As large collections of GPS trajectories become widely available, constructing and updating maps using such trajectory collections can greatly reduce the cost of such maps. Unfortunately, due to GPS noise and varying trajectory sampling rates, inferring maps from GPS trajectories can be very challenging. In this paper, we present a framework to create up-to-date maps with rich knowledge from GPS trajectory collections. Starting from an unstructured GPS point cloud, we discover road segments using novel graph-based clustering techniques with prior knowledge on road design. Based on road segments, we develop a scale- and orientation-invariant traj-SIFT feature to localize and recognize junctions using a supervised learning framework. Maps with rich knowledge are created based on discovered road segments and junctions. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our approach can efficiently construct high-quality maps at city scales from large collections of GPS trajectories.


Abstract. An inhomogeneous mixing of reactants causes a reduction of their chemical removal compared to the homogeneously mixed case in turbulent atmospheric flows. This can be described by the intensity of segregation IS being the covariance of the mixing ratios of two species divided by the product of their means. Both terms appear in the balance equation of the mixing ratio and are discussed for the reaction between isoprene and OH for data of the field study ECHO 2003 above a deciduous forest. For most of these data, IS is negatively correlated with the fraction of mean OH mixing ratio reacting with isoprene. IS is also negatively correlated with the isoprene standard deviation. Both findings agree with model results discussed by Patton et al. (2001) and others. The correlation coefficient between OH and isoprene and, therefore, IS increases with increasing mean reaction rate. In addition, the balance equation of the covariance between isoprene and OH is applied as the theoretical framework for the analysis of the same field data. The storage term is small, and, therefore, a diagnostic equation for this covariance can be derived. The chemical reaction term Rij is dominated by the variance of isoprene times the quotient of mixing ratios of OH and isoprene. Based on these findings a new diagnostic equation for IS is formulated. Comparing different terms of this equation, IS and Rij show a relation also to the normalised isoprene standard deviation. It is shown that not only chemistry but also turbulent and convective mixing and advection – considered in a residual term – influence IS. Despite this finding, a detection of the influence of coherent eddy transport above the forest according to Katul et al. (1997) on IS fails, but a relation to the turbulent and advective transport of isoprene variance is determined. The largest values of IS are found for most unstable conditions with increasing buoyant production, confirming qualitatively model predictions by Ouwersloot et al. (2011).


ABSTRACT This study suggests that the upper shale (regressive shale) in the Upper Pennsylvanian (Missourian), Lansing-Kansas City Groups D-zone from Hitchcock County, Nebraska, is a paleosol. Pedogenesis of this unit occurred during prolonged subaerial exposure on a semiarid to arid alluvial flood plain. Pedogenesis occurred during maximum retreat of the Late Pennsylvanian sea during the D-zone sedimentary cycle. Initially, clays in this unit were deposited in marine environments but as eustatic sea level continued to drop, deposition became dominated by continental alluvial processes. Characteristics which distinguish the upper shale as a paleosol are the presence of (1) a basal subsoil caliche (C-soil horizon) characterized by weathered limestone regolith clasts, soil nodules, thin-laminated calcrete beds with pseudo-fenestral fabric, pelleted and clotty calcareous and dolomitic caliche, weathered clays, circumgranular cracks, and root casts; and (2) an upper unit (B-soil horizon) characterized by authigenic hematite, intensely weathered clays, soil nodules, slickensides, and gypsum root casts.


Navigation guided by natural language instructions presents a challenging reasoning problem for instruction followers. Natural language instructions typically identify only a few high-level decisions and landmarks rather than complete low-level motor behaviors; much of the missing information must be inferred based on perceptual context. In machine learning settings, this is doubly challenging: it is difficult to collect enough annotated data to enable learning of this reasoning process from scratch, and also difficult to implement the reasoning process using generic sequence models. Here we describe an approach to vision-and-language navigation that addresses both these issues with an embedded speaker model. We use this speaker model to (1) synthesize new instructions for data augmentation and to (2) implement pragmatic reasoning, which evaluates how well candidate action sequences explain an instruction. Both steps are supported by a panoramic action space that reflects the granularity of human-generated instructions. Experiments show that all three components of this approach---speaker-driven data augmentation, pragmatic reasoning and panoramic action space---dramatically improve the performance of a baseline instruction follower, more than doubling the success rate over the best existing approach on a standard benchmark.


Abstract. The climate in the Arctic is changing faster than anywhere else on earth. Poorly understood feedback processes relating to Arctic clouds and aerosol–cloud interactions contribute to a poor understanding of the present changes in the Arctic climate system, and also to a large spread in projections of future climate in the Arctic. The problem is exacerbated by the paucity of research-quality observations in the central Arctic. Improved formulations in climate models require such observations, which can only come from measurements in situ in this difficult-to-reach region with logistically demanding environmental conditions. The Arctic Summer Cloud Ocean Study (ASCOS) was the most extensive central Arctic Ocean expedition with an atmospheric focus during the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008. ASCOS focused on the study of the formation and life cycle of low-level Arctic clouds. ASCOS departed from Longyearbyen on Svalbard on 2 August and returned on 9 September 2008. In transit into and out of the pack ice, four short research stations were undertaken in the Fram Strait: two in open water and two in the marginal ice zone. After traversing the pack ice northward, an ice camp was set up on 12 August at 87°21' N, 01°29' W and remained in operation through 1 September, drifting with the ice. During this time, extensive measurements were taken of atmospheric gas and particle chemistry and physics, mesoscale and boundary-layer meteorology, marine biology and chemistry, and upper ocean physics. ASCOS provides a unique interdisciplinary data set for development and testing of new hypotheses on cloud processes, their interactions with the sea ice and ocean and associated physical, chemical, and biological processes and interactions. For example, the first-ever quantitative observation of bubbles in Arctic leads, combined with the unique discovery of marine organic material, polymer gels with an origin in the ocean, inside cloud droplets suggests the possibility of primary marine organically derived cloud condensation nuclei in Arctic stratocumulus clouds. Direct observations of surface fluxes of aerosols could, however, not explain observed variability in aerosol concentrations, and the balance between local and remote aerosols sources remains open. Lack of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) was at times a controlling factor in low-level cloud formation, and hence for the impact of clouds on the surface energy budget. ASCOS provided detailed measurements of the surface energy balance from late summer melt into the initial autumn freeze-up, and documented the effects of clouds and storms on the surface energy balance during this transition. In addition to such process-level studies, the unique, independent ASCOS data set can and is being used for validation of satellite retrievals, operational models, and reanalysis data sets.


Exposure to high levels of air pollution is a significant cause of premature mortality. In Norway, people spend about 90% of their time indoors. Therefore, the relationship between indoor and outdoor concentrations of air pollution is important for the understanding of potential health effects from pollution. In addition, the indoor climate plays a critical role in the comfort of building occupants. Niche companies, with heavy-duty analyzers can be used to monitor the air quality in buildings. However, low powered and cheap IoT-devices with a long communication range offer the potential for more continuous monitoring and analysis of buildings air quality, while covering a larger geographical area. In this research, we present an air quality monitoring system, based on a LoRaWAN network with low cost sensors. The dashboard web application includes all features needed to help increase air quality awareness in buildings. We analyze the relationship between indoor and outdoor air quality in different building types (office, campus, and residential), and investigate the difference between old and new buildings. We measured the concentrations of indoor and outdoor particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), carbon dioxide (CO2), temperature, and humidity at six different buildings in Bergen, Norway. The results show that the overall air quality in the monitored buildings are within the set climate recommendations. In addition, our results indicate that there is a stronger relationship between indoor air quality and outdoor pollution in old mechanically ventilated buildings.


According to the empirical and theoretical research in past ten years, the General Factor of Personality (GFP) was interpreted as the highest-order (most general) personality dimension, which occupies the apex of the structural hierarchy of personality traits. Thus, the GFP is the central concept in the new structural paradigm of personality (the Pyramidal Model of Personality). In the majority of the studies, the GFP was conceptualized as a general factor with substantial psychological (cognitive and behavioural) content reflecting the general social and personal adjustment or effectiveness. The alternative explanations of the GFP emphasize the role of the semantic factors, response styles and other biases. This study reviews the main results of the GFP research including the nature, the biological bases, the strength and cultural universality of GFP, its relations to intelligence and other prominent psychological variables, and its predictive power and practical importance.


Fundamentals of the atomic mechanisms governing the strength of nanosized metallic crystals are described. An attempt is made to explain on this basis the size and orientation effects, temperature dependence of strength and atomism of fracture of bcc crystals under triaxial uniform (hydrostatic) tension. A feature of the proposed material is that it com-bines the results of molecular dynamics simulation with the data of experimental research findings on failure of metallic nanosized crystals under the high-field mechanical loading. It is exhibited that local instability of the lattice is the main mechanism governing the strength of defect-free nanosized crystals (NSC). Based on the concept of local instability, an explanation is given of the nature of the size effect in NSC, as well as of the differences in its manifestation in nanocrystals with bcc and fcc lattices. The concept of the mechanism of thermal activation of local instability is outlined. This enables to explain the specific features of the temperature dependence of NSC. The results of experimental studies and molecular dynamics simulation of the failure of tungsten nanocrystals under hydrostatic tension are presented. The ideas about the atomism of the bcc-fcc transition in these conditions are articulated. as a result of electrochemical polishing. This means that formation of an atomically smooth surface of nanoneedles is one of the factors to reach the ultimate strength levels.


The low rank matrix completion problem which aims to recover a matrix from that having missing entries has received much attention in many fields such as image processing and machine learning. The rank of a matrix may be measured by the [Formula: see text] norm of the vector of its singular values. Due to the nonconvexity and discontinuity of the [Formula: see text] norm, solving the low rank matrix completion problem which is clearly NP hard suffers from computational challenges. In this paper, we propose a constrained matrix completion model in which a novel nonconvex continuous rank surrogate is used to approximate the rank function of a matrix, promote low rank of the recovered matrix and address the computational challenges. The proposed rank surrogate differs from the convex nuclear norm and other existing state-of-the-art nonconvex surrogates in a way that it alleviates the discontinuity and nonconvexity of the rank function through a local [Formula: see text]-relaxation of the [Formula: see text] norm so that it possesses several desirable properties. These properties ensure that it accurately approximates the rank function by choosing an appropriate relaxation parameter. We moreover develop an efficient iterative algorithm to solve the resulting model. We also propose strategies of automatically updating the relaxation parameter to practically ensure the global convergence and speed up the algorithm. We establish theoretical convergence results for the proposed algorithm. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate significant performance improvements of the proposed model and the associated algorithm as compared to state-of-the-art methods in both recoverability and computational efficiency.


We use the dynamic Gordon-growth model to decompose the rent-price ratio for owner-occupied housing in the U.S., four Census regions, and twenty-three metropolitan areas into three components: The expected present value of real rental growth, real interest rates, and future housing premia. We use these components to decompose the trend and variance in rent-price ratios for 1975-2005, for an early sub-sample (1975-1996), and for the recent housing boom (1997-2005). We have three main findings. First, variation in expected future real rents accounts for a small share of variation in our sample rent-price ratios; variation in real interest rates and housing premia account for most of the variability. Second, expected future real rates and housing premia were so strongly negatively correlated prior to 1997 that changes to real interest rates did not affect the rent-price ratio. After 1997, rates and premia have been positively correlated, and the decline in the rent-price ratio that has occurred in almost every geographic area in our sample since 1997 reflects both declining real rates and declining premia. Third, we show that in the recent housing boom, 65 percent of the decline in the aggregate rent-price ratio is due to a declining housing premium.


This paper advances knowledge of how civil society organisations (CSOs) negotiate the shift from boom-time public expenditure to governmental austerity. The study focuses on the Republic of Ireland, where CSOs occupied an important role in providing a voice for'vulnerable' citizens in corporatism for over a decade. The global financialcrisis and subsequent austerity measures caused the country's model of corporatist-style 'social partnership' to collapse. The article connects CSOs' adaptation to austerity measures when protecting the 'people behind the cuts' to broader questions about co-optation of civil society through state-led policy-making institutions.


The purpose of the study was to identify and analyze the
nature of job, satisfaction level, attitudes and factors of
motivation of extension officers from ten agricultural
development agencies in the State of Selangor and Federal
Territory. Data were provided by 126 respondents who were
Divisions A and B officers from the Community Development
Division of the Ministry of National and Rural Development
(KEMAS), Department of Agriculture, Department of Fisheries,
Department of Veterinary Services, Farmers' Organization
Authority (FOA), Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority
(FAMA), Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA), Rubber
Research Institute of Malaysia (RRIM), Rubber Industry Smallholders
Development Authority (RISDA) and Universiti Pertanian
Malaysia (UPM). The research was carried out from January
until March, 1983.


Cardiomyopathy includes a diverse and heterogeneous group of disorders affecting the myocardium and eventually leading to cardiac dysfunction. Cardiomyopathy is the leading cause of hospitalization in patients older than 65 years of age and it is an important cause for enormous healthcare expenditure. All reversible cardiomyopathies can be associated with cardiomegaly, systolic heart failure, structural changes, and an increase in mortality, but when the offensive agent is identified and stopped, these conditions tend to stop their progression and reverse. The prognosis of reversible nonischemic cardiomyopathies is better than ischemic or other nonreversible cardiomyopathies. Additionally, it is important to diagnose etiology of HF early and precisely to determine prognosis and effective treatment. Most patients with reversible cardiomyopathy present with clinical picture similar to that of systolic heart failure. Here in this book chapter, we discuss about different types of reversible cardiomyopathy including pathogenesis, clinical picture, diagnosis and treatment.


From 1972 to 1983, we treated 78 patients who had primary epidermoid carcinoma of the anus. Forty-four of these patients were treated by protocol, while 34 patients were not treated according to protocol. Protocol consisted of fluorouracil (750 mg/m for 5 days) and mitomycin (10 to 15 mg/m on day 1), followed sequentially by 3000 rad (30 Gy) over three weeks, followed by surgery. There were 20 local excisions and 29 abdominoperineal resections in the protocol group, and 11 local excisions and 14 abdominoperineal resections in the nonprotocol group. In the protocol group, 26 patients (59%) had no residual cancer in their operative specimens, while only ten (29.9%) of the nonprotocol patients had no remaining cancer. Four (11.7%) of the 34 nonprotocol patients had pathologically positive inguinal nodes, compared with only three (4.5%) of 44 protocol patients. Thirty-four (77%) of 44 protocol patients remained free of disease, while ten patients experienced local or pelvic recurrence. In contrast, only 17 (50%) of 34 patients in the nonprotocol group remained free of disease. Of 17 recurrences, five were at distant sites. The status at this writing of all patients in the protocol group was 32 (75%), with no evidence of disease, four alive with disease, and eight dead of or with disease. Of the untreated patients, only 11 (32%) remained without evidence of disease, two were alive with disease, and 19 were dead of or with disease. Smaller carcinoma size (less than 5 cm, 27 of 32 had no evidence of disease), younger age, female gender, and deep infiltration also predicted a statistically significant survival advantage after protocol treatment. Controlled, prospective, multi-institutional trials should stratify for these factors when comparing new treatment modalities.


We examine impacts of market integration on the development of American manufacturing, as railroads expanded through the latter half of the 19th century. Using new county-by-industry data from the Census of Manufactures, we estimate substantial impacts on manufacturing productivity from relative increases in county market access as railroads expanded. In particular, the railroads increased economic activity in marginally productive counties. Allowing for the presence of factor misallocation generates much larger aggregate economic gains from the railroads than previous estimates. Our estimates highlight how broadly-used infrastructure or technologies can have much larger economic impacts when there are inefficiencies in the economy.


Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic reveals for the first time how this complex service organization fosters a culture that exceeds customer expectations and earns deep loyalty from both customers and employees. Service business authority Leonard Berry and Mayo Clinic marketing administrator Kent Seltman explain how the Clinic implements and maintains its strategy, adheres to its management system, executes its care model, and embraces new knowledge - invaluable lessons for managers and service providers of all industries. Drs. Berry and Seltman had the rare opportunity to study Mayo Clinic's service culture and systems from the inside by conducting personal interviews with leaders, clinicians, staff, and patients, as well as observing hundreds of clinician-patient interactions. The result is a book about how the Clinic's business concept produces stellar clinical results, organizational efficiency, and interpersonal service. By examining the operating principles that guide every management decision at this legendary healthcare institution, the authors Demonstrate how a great service brand evolves from the core values that nourish and protect it Extrapolate instructive business lessons that apply outside healthcare Illustrate the benefits of pooling talent and encouraging teamwork Relate historical events and perspectives to the present-day Mayo Clinic Share inspiring stories from staff and patients An innovative analysis of this exemplary institution, Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic presents a proven prescription for creating sustainable service excellence in any organization.


We have developed two different magnetic levitation devices which provide unprecedented ranges of motion in both translation and rotation to a levitated handle to be used for tool-based haptic interaction. The first device levitates a handle attached to a thin spherical shell of flat coils suspended in permanent magnet fields using Lorentz forces. A novel coil type and magnet configuration provides motion ranges of 50 mm and 60 degrees in all directions, double the translation and triple the rotation ranges of the current maximum range Lorentz levitation haptic devices developed at Carnegie Mellon University. The second device uses a planar array of cylindrical coils to levitate a platform of one or more magnets. By using redundant control methods and an experimentally measured high resolution model of the forces and torques generated on the levitated magnets from each coil, the translation range of the magnet in horizontal directions and its rotation in all directions and can be extended potentially indefinitely. The present prototype uses 10 coils to levitate a single magnet over a 80×60 mm planar range, a 30 mm vertical range, and a tilt range of 40 degrees, or to control the yaw rotation of a pair of magnets over 360 degrees. Design and control methods are presented with preliminary motion trajectory results from both devices.


Recently, our attention has focused on the low level detection of many antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, and other organic chemicals in water resources. The limited studies available suggest that urban or rural streams receiving wastewater effluent are more susceptible to contamination. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the occurrence of antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, and other organic chemicals at 18 sites on seven selected streams in Arkansas, USA, during March, April, and August 2004. Water samples were collected upstream and downstream from the influence of effluent discharges in northwestern Arkansas and at one site on a relatively undeveloped stream in north-central Arkansas. At least one antibiotic, pharmaceutical, or other organic chemical was detected at all sites, except at Spavinaw Creek near Mayesville, Arkansas. The greatest number of detections was observed at Mud Creek downstream from an effluent discharge, including 31 pharmaceuticals and other organic chemicals. The detection of these chemicals occurred in higher frequency at sites downstream from effluent discharges compared to those sites upstream from effluent discharges; total chemical concentration was also greater downstream. Wastewater effluent discharge increased the concentrations of detergent metabolites, fire retardants, fragrances and flavors, and steroids in these streams. Antibiotics and associated degradation products were only found at two streams downstream from effluent discharges. Overall, 42 of the 108 chemicals targeted in this study were found in water samples from at least one site, and the most frequently detected organic chemicals included caffeine, phenol, para-cresol, and acetyl hexamethyl tetrahydro naphthalene (AHTN).


Ethernet switches are increasingly used in real-time distributed systems as a technical solution to guarantee the timeliness in communications. However, there are still limitations related to real-time behavior caused by the limited number of priority levels and the possibility of memory overruns with consequent message losses. These limitations can be eliminated using a master/slave technique such as proposed by the FTT paradigm. This led to the FTT-SE protocol that schedules transmissions centrally in a master node. While this protocol has already been well studied and investigated for small networks with a single switch, its extension to larger networks is still an open issue. In this paper we propose a compact clustered solution to scale the FTT-SE protocol to networks of multiple switches by organizing the network in sub-networks composed of one master and one switch each and which can be connected directly, without bridges. This paper also shows how the timeliness of the traffic can still be enforced. The response time analysis, implementing a prototype and developing a simulator is currently on-going.


Variations of the Gale-Shapley algorithm have been used and studied extensively in real world markets. Examples include matching medical residents with residency programs, the kidney exchange program and matching college students with on-campus housing. The performance of the Gale-Shapley marriage matching algorithm (1962) has been studied extensively in the special case of men's and women's preferences random. We drop the assumption that women's preferences are random and show that En /n ln n -> 1, where En is the expected number of proposals made when the men-propose Gale-Shapley algorithm is used to match n men with n women. This establishes in spirit a conjecture of Donald Knuth (1976, 1997) of thirty years standing. Under the same assumptions, we also establish bounds on the expected ranking by a woman of her assigned mate. Bounds on men's rankings of their assigned mates follow directly from the conjecture.


BACKGROUND
Thiopurine antimetabolites are important agents for the treatment of severe diseases, such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia and inflammatory bowel disease. Their pharmacological actions depend on biotransformation into active thioguanine-nucleotides; intracellular metabolism is mediated by enzymes of the salvage pathway of nucleotide synthesis and relies on polymorphic enzymes involved in thiopurines' catabolism such as thiopurine-S-methyl transferase. Given the enzymes involved in thiopurines' metabolism, it is reasonable to hypothesize that these drugs are able to induce significant oxidative stress conditions, possibly altering their pharmacological activity.

METHODS
A systemic search of peer-reviewed scientific literature in bibliographic databases has been carried out. Both clinical and preclinical studies as well as mechanistic studies have been included to shed light on the role of oxidative stress in thiopurines' pharmacological effects.

RESULTS
Sixty-nine papers were included in our review, allowing us to review the contribution of oxidative stress in the pharmacological action of thiopurines. Thiopurines are catabolized in the liver by xanthine oxidase, with potential production of reactive oxidative species and azathioprine is converted into mercaptopurine by a reaction with reduced glutathione, that, in some tissues, may be facilitated by glutathione- S-transferase (GST). A clear role of GSTM1 in modulating azathioprine cytotoxicity, with a close dependency on superoxide anion production, has been recently demonstrated. Interestingly, recent genome-wide association studies have shown that, for both azathioprine in inflammatory bowel disease and mercaptopurine in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, treatment effects on patients' white blood cells are related to variants of a gene, NUDT15, involved in biotransformation of oxidated nucleotides.

CONCLUSIONS
Basing on previous evidences published in literature, oxidative stress may contribute to thiopurine effects in significant ways that, however, are still not completely elucidated.


Sir, Granulomatous infiltrates have been described in systemic lymphomas such as Hodgkin's disease, but also in mycosis fungoides (MF). Indeed, granulomatous MF is a rare histological subtype of MF with about 40 cases reported since its initial description by Ackerman and Flaxman in 1970. While granuloma annulare has been described in association with classical lesions of MF, we have recently observed an unusual granulomatous MF mimicking a granuloma annulare both clinically and histologically, without any clinical lesion of classical MF. A 66-year-old man was seen in our Department in September 1995 with a 1-year history of pruriginous cutaneous eruption lesions that first developed on the dorsum of the feet and secondarily extended to the trunk, legs and arms. Lesions were annular with an erythematous centre without atrophy and a papular erythematous peripheral ring without scaling (Fig. 1). This clinical aspect was suggestive of granuloma annulare. No other skin lesions such as plaques or patches were noticed. Skin biopsies immediately showed patterns of MF and granuloma annulare. Indeed, atypical small and medium-sized lymphocytes proliferated in the upper dermis and infiltrated the epidermis, forming small intraepidermal aggregates (Fig. 2a). Simultaneously, collagenic necrosis was observed, surrounded by an abundant infiltrate consisting of histiocytes, monocyte ⁄ macrophagederived giant cells, and atypical lymphocytes (Fig. 2b,c) that have a similar cytological aspect to epidermotropic lymphocytes. No elastolysis was observed. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detected a monoclonal rearrangement of the T-cell receptor c chain on skin biopsy. General investigations were otherwise normal. Psoralen ultraviolet A therapy was initially performed, but was stopped after 2 months because of the efflorescence of multiple actinic keratoses. Daily topical steroids (betamethasone) were prescribed and remission was achieved in 3 months. This treatment was pursued three times weekly for 4 years. Similar annular lesions recurred twice on the legs and arms but regressed when topical steroids were applied more frequently. The patient has been in remission since December 1998 with a weekly application of topical steroids. This patient presented lesions clinically suggestive of granuloma annulare. The cutaneous biopsies showed a pattern compatible with this diagnosis, but the presence of atypical lymphocytes both around the granulomatous infiltrate and in the epidermis, forming microabscesses, led to the diagnosis of granulomatous MF. Clinical presentation of granulomatous MF is variable and the diagnosis may be a fortuitous histological discovery. Lesions may consist of patches, plaques, tumours or erythroderma as in Sézary syndrome. Lesions may be poikilodermic or erythemato-violaceous mimicking sarcoidosis. Granulomatous slack skin syndrome is also a rare variant of granulomatous MF with a particular clinical presentation with areas of pendulous lax skin in axillae and groins. To our knowledge, no case of granulomatous MF clinically mimicking granuloma annulare has been described. Histologically, granulomatous MF may consist of a sarcoidlike granuloma pattern with well-circumscribed collections of epithelioid histiocytes and multinucleated giant cells or less commonly in a granuloma annulare-like pattern with palisaded collection of epithelioid histiocytes with central necrosis. Elastolysis is observed in the granulomatous slack skin variant. Atypical lymphocytes may be hidden by an extensive granulomatous inflammation. In these cases, the pathologist must be vigilant for the atypical features of the granulomatous infiltrate, such as the presence of monocytes ⁄ macrophage-derived giant cells as individuals cells in a small-size infiltrate with little eosinophilic collagenic necrosis. The presence of epidermotropic atypical lymphocytes associated with granulomatous infiltrate is one of the clues to diagnosis and PCR detection of a T-cell monoclonal population is a further argument for granulomatous MF. Granuloma annulare has been described in association with malignant lymphoproliferations such as Hodgkin's disease, B-cell lymphoma, Sézary syndrome and MF, with a parallel course between granuloma annulare and lymphomatous disease. The histological pattern was that of granuloma annulare without any lymphomatous cells mixed with the granulomatous infiltrate. In these patients, granuloma annulare consists in a non-specific sign of an underlying lymphoma and a sudden increase in the number of granuloma annulare may be concomitant with recurrence or progression of lymphomatous disease. Recently, granuloma annulare has been reported in association with an aggressive granulomatous MF with a parallel evolution of granuloma annulare and granulomatous MF but in this