This paper assesses the export competitiveness of top fifteen textile products exported by India to top six textile export destinations (separately for each export destination) at 6 digit level of HS classification using both price and income export elasticities. The export elasticities are estimated using dynamic panel data approach for each country separately. Estimates of commodity specific elasticities are used to forecast the exports of commodities exported to respective export destinations. The resulting estimates are useful to designing destination specific export promotion policies for India.


Previous studies have suggested that the interaction between the small adaptor protein Grb2 with the Ras guanyl nucleotide exchange factor SOS is functionally important in the regulation of the Ras activation/inactivation cycle. To examine the relationship between the Grb2-SOS complex and Ras activation, we observed that insulin stimulation results in a rapid but transient activation of Ras and the extracellular-signal regulated kinase (ERK) followed by dissociation of the Grb2-SOS complex. Although treatment with the phorbol myristate acetate resulted in ERK activation and complete dissociation of the Grb2-SOS complex, there was no effect on subsequent insulin-stimulated Ras activation. Similarly, insulin stimulation followed by insulin removal resulted in a time-dependent restoration of the Grb2-SOS complex but which was significantly slower than the recovery of insulin-stimulated Ras activation. In addition, although insulin was able to activate Ras under these conditions, there was a complete desensitization of Raf and ERK activation. This apparent homologous desensitization of insulin action was specific for Raf and ERK as the insulin re-stimulation of insulin receptor autophosphorylation and protein kinase B activation were unaffected. Together, these data demonstrate the presence of a pathway independent of the Grb2-SOS complex that can lead to Ras activation but that the desensitization of Raf accounts for the homologous desensitization of ERK.


Salmonellosis is the second largest cause of foodborne illness in Australia, with rates of salmonellosis increasing over recent time. Outbreaks of foodborne illness attributed to pork products are most often associated with Salmonella. Pork industry risk managers, therefore, commissioned this study to develop robust risk assessment models to quantify the risks of salmonellosis to Australian consumers from pork burgers and moisture-infused pork, with the aim of informing risk managers in their decisions. Pork burgers are currently being marketed in Australia as an alternate serving suggestion for pork mince, while moisture-infused pork is also now being promoted as an alternative low-fat product with increased juiciness to offset the effects of reduced intramuscular fat. These products, however, may present increased risk compared to other pork products because of the potential internalisation of pathogens.

The risk assessments followed the approaches and guidelines recommended by FAO/WHO and Codex for microbiological risk assessment and used a stochastic modelling approach. An extensive review of literature relevant to these risk assessments identified many appropriate data sources, including Salmonella prevalence after boning, storage conditions during retail storage, consumer transport and domestic storage; and dose-response models for Salmonella. The lack of predictive models for thermal inactivation of Salmonella spp. in pork burger patties and the growth of Salmonella in moisture-infused pork, as well as the Salmonella concentration after boning, endpoint cooking temperatures for pork products, and the effect of the infusion process, were all identified as data gaps. Accordingly, novel data on the behaviour of Salmonella in pork products were also developed and incorporated into the modelling.

Thermal inactivation of Salmonella in pork burgers was investigated by cooking pork patties made from pork mince with either 'Low' or 'Regular' levels of fat. Mince was inoculated with several strains of Salmonella and cooked to one of seven internal endpoint temperatures (46, 49, 52, 55, 58, 61, 64 °C) and Salmonella enumerated, with survival described by a generalised logistic regression model. The fat content of pork mince influenced Salmonella survival significantly (p = 0:043), with increasing fat levels resulting in increased Salmonella survival, though this effect became negligible as the internal endpoint temperature approached 62 °C. Survival of Salmonella serovars did not differ significantly (p = 0:86 and 0:10 for the intercept and slope of the fitted logistic regression curve, respectively).

The growth of Salmonella in moisture-infused pork as a function of temperature was assessed by injecting intact pork loin steaks with a cocktail of Salmonella serovars. The steaks were cut into strips and incubated at nominal temperatures of 8, 15, 20, 25 or 30 °C, and Salmonella enumerated at various time intervals. Primary and secondary growth models were fitted to these observations using both one-step and two-step procedures to develop predictive growth models. The fits obtained using both procedures were compared with those obtained from ComBase data for meat products and were found to be similar, with the one-step method in closer agreement with the ComBase fits than the two-step fits. These results indicate that Salmonella growth is not significantly retarded by moisture infusion brines.

Stochastic risk assessment models were constructed to estimate the changes in Salmonella prevalence and concentration, between retail and consumption, with the probability of illness per meal estimated. These models were constructed in the statistical programming language 'R' using the 'mc2d' package, with models constructed in two dimensions, allowing variability and uncertainty to be separated, quantified and assessed independently. This separation is not currently implemented in commercial stochastic modelling software packages. The mean risk of illness from the consumption of a pork burger was estimated at 1:54 x 10-8 (95% uncertainty credible interval 7:2 x 10-10, 4:96 x 10-8) and for a moisture-infused pork steak at 4:12 x 10-8 (95% uncertainty credible interval 9:85 x 10-9, 7:75 x 10-8). Sensitivity analysis was performed in both risk assessments using Spearman rank correlation, which identified the low prevalence and concentration of Salmonella on pork in Australia and the high temperatures to which Australian consumers cook pork as having the greatest influence on the low risk experienced by consumers. Hypothetical scenarios were also investigated to determine their effect on risk, including changes to mean retail temperatures and consumer pork 'doneness' preferences.

The work described in this thesis has produced predictive models for Salmonella inactivation in pork burgers and growth in moisture-infused pork, providing novel information on factors that influence these processes. The risk assessments of salmonellosis from consumption of pork burgers and moisture-infused pork in Australia provide valuable information to industry on these risks, which will inform risk-based decisions, including industry risk management strategies, for pork products in Australia.


World attention on Iran centers on the threats to international security posed by the country's nuclear program. As Iran presses on in its efforts to become a nuclear power, the regime in Tehran also employs an aggressive foreign policy that relies heavily on the deployment of clandestine assets abroad to collect intelligence and support foreign operations, all of which are aimed at furthering Iranian foreign policy interests. From a U.S. perspective, Iran's massive diplomatic presence in the Western Hemisphere presents a particularly acute problem. In response to Iran's abuse of the diplomatic system, the international community should collectively press our friends and allies in Latin America to severely restrict the size of Iran's diplomatic missions to the minimum needed to conduct official business.


In the first part of my thesis, I use a theoretical model proposed by Antoine Berman in the 1980s to elicit the difficult points in the translation of Emiliya Dvoryanova's text with special attention to the practices of foreignization. Berman's theory proposes a twelve-point classification of the deformation tendencies—forces that prevent translation from transporting the foreign elements in the target text. I choose four of the deformation tendencies from Berman's list to analyze my translation of Concerto for a Sentence with the goal to creatively enforce foreignization practices. Then, I delve into the theoretical discussion regarding the translator and his/her choices of a text and the consequences in the receiving culture. I conclude that the positionality of the translator is a complex issue dependent on several variables: the dominant ideology in the receiving culture, its capacity to tolerate dissident voices, and the relationship between the two cultures—that of the text's origin and the target culture. Next, I analyze the case of Dvoryanova's novel Concerto for a Sentence: the possibilities for foreignization practices in its translation together with my positionality as a translator. In the end, I provide a sample from my translation of the novel.


Background Improving the recognition of transient ischaemic attack (TIA) at initial healthcare contact is essential as urgent specialist assessment and treatment reduces stroke risk. Accurate TIA detection could be achieved with clinical prediction rules but none have been validated in primary care. An alternative approach using qualitative analysis of patients' experiences of TIA may identify novel features of the TIA phenotype that are not detected routinely, as such techniques have revealed novel early features of other important conditions such as meningococcaemia. We sought to determine whether the patient's experience of TIA would reveal additional deficits that can be tested prospectively in cohort studies to determine their additional diagnostic and prognostic utility at the first healthcare contact. Methodology and Findings Qualitative semi-structured interviews with 25 patients who had experienced definite TIA as determined by a stroke specialist; framework analysis to map symptoms and key words or descriptive phrases used against each individual, with close attention to the detail of the language used. All interview transcripts were reviewed by a specialist clinician with experience in TIA/minor stroke. Patients described non-focal symptoms consistent with higher function deficits in spatial perception and awareness of deficit, as well as feelings of disconnection with their immediate surroundings. Of the classical features, weakness and speech disturbance were described in ways that did not meet the readily recognisable phenotype. Conclusion/Significance Analysis of patients' narrative accounts reveals a set of overlooked features of the experience of TIA which may provide additional diagnostic utility so that providers of first contact healthcare can recognise TIA more easily. Future research is required in a prospective cohort of patients presenting with transient neurological symptoms to determine how frequent these features are, what they add to diagnostic information and whether they can refine measures to predict stroke risk.


Editorial Board Dedication Foreword Preface Part 1 Operating Principles Thermordynamic Analysis Fundamental Chemical Kinetics Fundamental Combustion Modes Solving Combustion Chemistry in Engine Simulations NOx Formation and Models UHC and CO Formation and Models Particulate Formation and Models Gas Exchange - Breathing and Air Management Fuel Introduction In-Cylinder Flow Spark Ignition Combustion Diesel and Diesel LTC Combustion Advanced Compression-Ignition Combustion for Ultra-Low NOx and Soot Pressure and Heat Release Analysis Zero- and One-Dimensional Methodologies and Tools Multidimensional Simulation Fuels for Engines and the Impact of Fuel Composition on Engine Performance Intake Boosting Exhaust Gas Energy Recovery Engine Thermal Management Lubrication and Friction Gas Aftertreatment Systems Solid/Condensed Phase Aftertreatment Systems Engine Performance Exhaust Emissions Fundamentals Trends Spark Ignition Trends Compression Ignition Part 2 Automotive Diesel Engine Development Trends Critical layout dimensions Cranktrain Development Cooling Systems Lubrication systems Piston and ring development Valvetrain development Material and Process Selection Cylinder Blocks and Heads Block and Head Analysis Gaskets and Sealing NVH Considerations in Engine Development Turbocharging Supercharging Diesel Fuel Injection Systems Emission Control Systems - Oxides of nitrogen Stoichiometric Exhaust Emission Control Exhaust Emission Control Considerations for Diesel Engines Engine Management Systems Engine/Transmission Matching Drive Cycles Fuel economy optimization Part 3 Overview of Electric, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Vehicles EV powertrain configuration EV powertrain parameters EV auxilaries Basic consideration Micro, mild and full hybrid Series Hybrid Electric Vehicles (SHEVs) Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicles (Parallel HEVs) Series-Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicles Range extender EV All-Wheel Drive Hybrid System EVT and E-CVT for Full Hybrid Electric Vehicles Power and Energy requirements for electric and hybrid vehicles Rechargeable Battery Basics Advanced batteries for vehicle applications Batteries indication and management Battery safety for lithium batteries in vehicle applications Fuel Cell Powered Vehicles Ultracapacitors in electric drive vehicles General requirement of traction motor drives DC motor drives Induction motor drives Future direction of traction motor drives Regenerative braking systems Energy management systems of EVs Energy management systems of HEVs Battery charging standards Communication of Electric Vehicles Voltage Control and Frequency Control Impact of electric vehicles on low-voltage supply systems Part 4 General Introduction - basic definitions, structure of Part 4 Transmission Gear Design Loads & Bearings and Bearing Failure Mechanics of contacting surfaces Tribological optimisation in the powertrain Synchronisers - gear change process, loads, timing, shift effort, thermal loads, materials and tolerances Dry Clutch Clutch Wet Automotive Torque Converters Manual (MT) - layouts, design considerations, packaging & manual shift mechanism, manufacturing & assembly Automatic Transmissions - geartrain combinations, components, design considerations, hydraulic system, packaging, manuf., assembly The variable pulley CVT Traction drive CVT Power Split Configurations Dual Mass Flywheel (DMF) Propshafts (Driveshafts) Coupling connections and splines Articulated Joints and Couplings Cardan and CV Joints Axle Systems Basic Open Differentials Passive and Active Limited Slip Differentials Torque Transfer with AWD Systems Drive train noise, vibration and harshness Clutch Actuation Launch Control Control systems and strategies for automated manual and double clutch transmissions AT Control actuation methods & system integration, gear choice, gear shift strategy & process, adaptive features CVT Control - system integration, ratio choice, shift dynamics & strategy, adaptive features, engine calibration, em assist Part 5 Possibilities of coil springs and fibre reinforced suspension parts Air suspension systems, what advanced applications may be possible? The harshness of air springs in passenger cars Air supply for advanced applications Technology of active shock absorbers and benefits in regards of ride and handling Suspension arms, steel versus aluminium,where are the benefits? Performance Target Conflicts in Normal Tires and Ultra High Performance (UHP) Tires Tyre pressure monitoring systems Brake systems, an overview Carbon fibre reinforced siliconcarbide: a new brake disk material The development of alternative brake systems The Cooperation of Regenerative Braking and Friction Braking in Fuel Cell-, Hybrid- and Electric Vehicles Designing twist beam axles ULSAS Suspensions, a comparison of rear suspension design Light weight front suspensions, a comparison Active front steering for passenger cars New Electrical Power Steering Systems Steer by Wire, Potential and Challenges The potential for handling improvements by global chassis control Customer oriented Evaluation of Vehicle Handling Characteristics Automated Driving Global Chassis Control in Passenger Cars Chassis Control Systems - A Look into the Future Torque vectoring by drive train systems Chassis modeling and optimization by the advanced method ABE System Simulation in DSHPLUS, What applications are possible? Comparison of the modeling techniques for chassis applications. An advice for the user Part 6 Historical Overview of Electronics and Automobiles: Breakthroughs and Innovation by Electronics and Electrical Technology ECU technologies from components to ECU configuration Diversification of electronics and electrical systems and the technologies for the integrated systems Microcomputers and Related Technologies: Enlargement of Software Size, Algorithms, Architectures, Hierarchy Design, Functional Decomposition, and Standardization Increase of ECU and Wire harness, JB simplify and decrease networks ECU Design and Reliability Manufacturing: An Introduction to Production Technology, SCM, and Quality Assurance In-Vehicle Network Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation The Wire Harness Batteries Generators and Charging Control Starter Applications of radio wave technologies to vehicles Applications of image recognition technologies to vehicles Vehicle safety, Functional safety, OBD diagnosis Interfaces between Sensors and ECUs Various types of sensors Ceramics sensors for power train ECU systems Semiconductor Sensor (1) Sensors for Power Trains Semiconductor Sensors (2): Sensors for Safety Systems Semiconductor Sensors (3): Optical Sensors Various Kinds of Actuators and Signal Interfaces Engine ECU systems Hybrid Systems and High Voltage Components Chassis ECU (Vehicle dynamics, ABS) Chassis ECU (Steering) Chassis ECU (ACC) Body ECU Cluster Body ECU (airbag) Body and Lighting ECU (Key-less Entry, Sonar, HID, LED Usage for Lamps) Car air conditioning and electronics: analog, digital control and zone management Car navigation Telecommunications Active safety, pre-collision safety and other safety products (millimeter wave, image recognition, laser) Part 7 Body design, overview, targeting a good balance between all vehicle functionalities Innovative structural design The Fascination of Car Body Manufacture: Requirements for car body manufacture from viewpoint of production Styling of cars, from sketch to realisation, main trends and milestones Fundamentals, basic principals in road vehicle aerodynamics & design Exterior vehicle noise development: assessment and control Vehicle vibration and harshness Vehicle architecture for meeting anthropometric, posture, comfort, health requirements of passengers Human Machine Interface design in modern vehicles Vehicle seat design, development and manufacturing Physics of car crashes: design concepts for safer cars Reparability and insurance ratings in the development of cars Adaptive Restraint Systems: Towards Integral Safety Pedestrian protection, overview Part 8 Processing of Steels Wrought Aluminum Alloys: Grades and Properties and Processing Automotive Applications for Magnesium Automotive Applications for Titanium Processing of Polymers Application of Elastomeric Components for Noise and Vibration Isolation in the Automotive Industry Trim Hybrid Structures Metal Matrix Composites: Automotive Applications Automotive Glazing Recycling of Polymers & Composites Biopolymers & Biocomposites Automotive Environmental Life Cycle Assessment Part 9 Intelligent Transport Systems: Overview and Structure (history, applications, architectures) Intelligent Transport Systems: Market and Policies Evolution and Future Trends Technologies - Communication: Mobile Technologies - Communication: Wireless LAN-based Vehicular Communication Technologies - Positioning: GNSS Tracking and navigation for goods and people In-vehicle sensors Data Acquisition by Roadside Detection Technologies - Data Acquisition: Data fusion Applications - Intelligent Vehicles: Driver Information Driver Assistance Applications - Intelligent Roads and Cooperative Systems: Urban Traffic Management Advanced Highway Management Systems Road Traffic and Travel Information (RTTI) Logistics and Fleet Management Tolling, Mobility Pricing Applications - Further Applications: Emergency Services, eCall Quality Management in ITS IT-Security for Communicating Automotive Systems Driver Distraction


Abstract The share of workers who are self-employed rises markedly with age. Given policy concerns about inadequate retirement savings, especially among those with lower education, and the resulting interest in encouraging employment at older ages, it is important to understand the role that self-employment arrangements play in facilitating work among seniors. New data from a survey module fielded on a Gallup telephone survey distinguish independent contractor work from other self-employment and provide information on informal and online platform work. The Gallup data show that, especially after accounting for individuals who are miscoded as employees, self-employment is even more prevalent at older ages than suggested by existing data. Work as an independent contractor is the most common type of self-employment. Roughly one-quarter of independent contractors aged 50 and older work for a former employer. At older ages, self-employment generally – and work as an independent contractor specifically – is more common among the highly educated, accounting for much of the difference in employment rates across education groups. We provide suggestive evidence that differences in opportunities for independent contractor work play an important role in the lower employment rates of less-educated older adults.


: Various types of impairments of human beings living in the modern world is one of the notable aspects when it comes to discerning certain traits which primarily guide and regulate the basic phenomenon of living in this world. There are numerous individuals on earth who suffer from or rather have been suffering from some specific hindrances so to say which not only sort of cripple them in their path to fulfilling their dreams and aspirations but also, at the same time act as serious detriments in their sound personal growth and development as well. Literature has always been the mirror of human beings and their accomplishments. There are many notable fictions which deal with the nuances of disability of individuals and also the associated studies. What it brings to light is that disability is quite normal in terms of some kind of abnormality of human beings but then, it is the various mechanism of the society which rather portrays the same in a quite negative light. This paper is an attempt in order to make a critical evaluative study of the ramifications of disability in the field of literature. In the very process, the paper also deals with the tenets of disability studies in general.


This chapter addresses the basic question of how much light is desirable. In particular, when replacing each ray of light with synthetic light, one must know how much synthetic light to use. The analysis portion of the apparatus is described. Since it is based on a camera or camera-like device, a procedure for determining the quantity of light entering the camera is formulated.


Time delay in the project execution phase causes cost escalation. This paper demonstrated the magnitude of severness of time delay affected to an increase of the project cost during the construction of bridge in Indragiri Hulu District. It wa evaluated that the project construction program was planned for 120 days but it was delayed up to 255 days. The time delay of 135 days within the project affected an increase of the constractor's additional expenses about Rp. 703 million. By simulating various parameters of risks, it was found that; (i) based on the "what it is" scenario, 80 % probability the project was predicted to delay up to 118 days (cost of Rp 686 million); and (ii) by the implementation of risk management procedure encompassing 6 (six) risk mitigation elements it was estimated that 80% probablility of project delay may reach 46 days (cost Rp 361 million). The reduction of time delay and cost overruns may reach 50%.  Hence, it demonstrates that the implementation of risk management procedure may control project risks systematically. Key words; risk analysis, time delay, costs, project, probability Permalink: http://ejournal.undip.ac.id/index.php/mkts/article/view/3419 [How to cite: Sandyavitri, A. (2009). Manajemen Resiko di Proyek Konstruksi, Jurnal Media Komunikasi Teknik Sipil , 17 (1): 23-38]


We develop and use a statistical matching technique to construct a panel data set from the Chilean National Employment Survey; and then use this panel to test the short term impacts of minimum wage increases during the 1996-2005 period.We estimate wage increase effects for the treated group (people earning wages between ex ante an ex post minimum wages), the hours worked and the employment effects for this group. We also estimate the effect on the proba- bility of obtaining a job for a theoretical treated group of unemployed and inactive workers constructed by estimating their likely wage in the case that they found one. We then estimate the integral of these three effects (wage increase, wage loss and lower probability of obtaining a job). We find that minimum wage increases do have a significant impact on the wages of the treated group, hence the suspicion that they are somehow made irrelevant by informal practices in Chilean labor markets seems to be unfunded. We find that there is a significant negative effect on the probability of staying employed, a negative effect on hours worked and a signifi- cant negative effect on the probability of finding the job. We find that the integral of the three effects is positive and has statistical significance. We conclude that, in general, minimum wage increases in Chile during the aforementioned period have increased the real income of treated and potentially treated workers. However, we also find that there is a redistribution of income among these workers in favor of currently employed workers. We submit our results to several robustness checks including a variety of definitions of income and wages, a continuous changing control group, a "dif-in-dif" approach and a pressure and distance.approach. We conclude that, if anything, minimum wage increases have generated real income redistribution towards the treated workers as well as among them in Chile.


In recent years, most would associate "intent skepticism" with the rise of modern textualism. In fact, however, many diverse approaches — legal realism, modern pragmatism, Dworkinian constructivism, and even Legal Process purposivism — all build on the common theme that a complex, multimember body such as Congress lacks any subjective intention about the kind of difficult issues that typically find their way into court. From that starting point, competing approaches have tended to focus on which interpretive method will promote appropriate conceptions of legislative supremacy and the role of the courts in our constitutional system. The debates, in recent years, between textualists and modern defenders of Legal Process purposivism (such as Professor Peter Strauss) nicely illustrate that emphasis.A new generation of empirical scholarship, however, has raised questions about the intent skepticism that has long framed the interpretation debate. Most prominently, Professors Abbe Gluck and Lisa Bressman conducted an extensive survey of the understandings and practices of 137 members of the congressional staff who are engaged in legislative drafting. According to the authors, the resultant findings show, inter alia, that some interpretive approaches cannot be squared with legislative intentions while others nicely reflect such intentions. Ultimately, however, this Essay concludes that the study's findings, although illuminating, do not alter the baseline of intent skepticism against which the statutory debate has proceeded. Indeed, the very idea of legislative intent remains unintelligible without a normative framework that structures what should count as Congress's decision.


Papua Blood: A Photographer's Eyewitness Account of West Papua Over 30 Years, by Peter Bang. Copenhagen, Denmark: Remote Frontlines,  2018. 248 pages. ISBN 978-87-430-0101-0 See No Evil: New Zealand's Betrayal of the People of West Papua, by Maire Leadbeater. Dunedin, NZ: Otago University Press, 2018. 310 pages. ISBN 978-1-98-853121-2
TWO damning and contrasting books about Indonesian colonialism in the Pacific, both by activist participants in Europe and New Zealand, have recently been published. Overall, they are excellent exposés of the harsh repression of the Melanesian people of West Papua and a world that has largely turned a blind eye to to human rights violations.


Sulphuric acid vapour has been suspected of being an industrial carcinogen. In this study, a cluster is presented of three patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) who worked in the same building of a telecommunications conveyance station in southern Taiwan with long term exposure to sulphuric acid vapour concentrations as high as 0.18 mg/m3. All three workers were diagnosed with NPC within a 5 month period between September 1992, and March 1993. Compared with 19 other healthy workers from the same building, these three workers with NPC had worked significantly longer in this building than had the others (mean (SD) (years): 12.7 (0.6) v 7.4 (4.4); p = 0.01). With an in situ nucleic acid hybridisation and immunostaining method for colocalised Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and secretory component (SC) protein among biopsy specimens of these three patients with NPCs, it was found that some tumour cells did not contain EBV and SC protein staining signals. These results indicate that EBV infection is not the only risk factor for NPC and long term exposure to relatively low concentrations of sulphuric acid vapour may be associated with the development of NPC.


Abstract. China is experiencing severe carbonaceous aerosol pollution driven mainly by large emissions resulting from intensive use of solid fuels. To gain a better understanding of the levels and trends of carbonaceous aerosol emissions and the resulting ambient concentrations at the national scale, we update an emission inventory of anthropogenic organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) and employ existing observational studies to analyze characteristics of these aerosols including temporal, spatial, and size distributions, and the levels and shares of secondary organic carbon (SOC) in total OC. We further use ground observations to test the levels and inter-annual trends of the calculated national and provincial emissions of carbonaceous aerosols, and propose possible improvements in emission estimation for the future. The national OC emissions are estimated to have increased 29 % from 2000 (2127 Gg) to 2012 (2749 Gg) and EC by 37 % (from 1356 to 1857 Gg). The residential, industrial, and transportation sectors contributed an estimated 74–78, 17–21, and 4–6 % of the total emissions of OC, respectively, and 49–55, 30–34, and 14–18 % of EC. Updated emission factors (EFs) based on the most recent local field measurements, particularly for biofuel stoves, led to considerably lower emissions of OC compared to previous inventories. Compiling observational data across the country, higher concentrations of OC and EC are found in northern and inland cities, while higher OC / EC ratios are found in southern sites, due to the joint effects of primary emissions and meteorology. Higher OC / EC ratios are estimated at rural and remote sites compared to urban ones, attributed to more emissions of OC from biofuel use, more biogenic emissions of volatile organic compound (VOC) precursors to SOC, and/or transport of aged aerosols. For most sites, higher concentrations of OC, EC, and SOC are observed in colder seasons, while SOC / OC is reduced, particularly at rural and remote sites, attributed partly to weaker atmospheric oxidation and SOC formation compared to summer. Enhanced SOC formation from oxidization and anthropogenic activities like biomass combustion is judged to have crucial effects on severe haze events characterized by high particle concentrations. Several observational studies indicate an increasing trend in ambient OC / EC (but not in OC or EC individually) from 2000 to 2010, confirming increased atmospheric oxidation of OC across the country. Combining the results of emission estimation and observations, the improvement over prior emission inventories is indicated by inter-annual comparisons and correlation analysis. It is also indicated, however, that the estimated growth in emissions might be faster than observed growth, and that some sources with high primary OC / EC, such as burning of biomass, are still underestimated. Further studies to determine changing EFs over time in the residential sector and to compare to other measurements, such as satellite observations, are thus suggested to improve understanding of the levels and trends of primary carbonaceous aerosol emissions in China.


Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is often up-regulated in a variety of malignancies, including gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), and its overexpression seems to be associated with tumor progressiveness and poor prognosis. GIST is well known to have a mutation to c-KIT; thus, a specific c-KIT inhibitor (imatinib) is recognized as the first-line chemotherapy for GIST, although a certain type of c-KIT mutation reveals a resistance to imatinib due to as yet uncertain molecular mechanisms. To assess the c-KIT mutation-related variation of cellular responses to imatinib, murine lymphocyte-derived Ba/F3 cells, which are stably transduced with different types of c-KIT mutation, were treated with either imatinib or a FAK inhibitor (TAE226), and their antitumor effects were determined in vitro and in vivo. A mutation at exon 11 (KITdel559-560) displayed a high sensitivity to imatinib, whereas that at exon 17 (KIT820Tyr) showed a significant resistance to imatinib in vitro and in vivo. KIT820Tyr cells appeared to maintain the activities of FAK and AKT under the imatinib treatment, suggesting that FAK might play a role in cell survival in imatinib-resistant cells. When FAK activity in those cells was inhibited by TAE226, cell growth was equally suppressed and the cells underwent apoptosis regardless of the c-KIT mutation types. Oral administration of TAE226 significantly diminished tumor growth in nude mice bearing KIT820Tyr xenografts. In summary, c-KIT mutation at exon 17 displayed a resistance to imatinib with maintained activations of FAK and subsequent survival signals. Targeting FAK could be a potential therapeutic strategy for imatinib-resistant GISTs. [Mol Cancer Ther 2009;8(1):127–34]


Background: Glucose increases memory in rats, and inhibit memory impairments produced by morphine. One mechanism by which glucose might act on memory via regulating the ATP-sensitive potassium channel.
Objective: The aim of present study was to investigate the effects of glibenclamide on memory retention of passive avoidance learning in rats.
Methods: This experimental study has been conducted in Qazvin University of Medical Sciences (2016). Forty male Wistar rats were divided into: Control, DMSO and glibenclamide groups (n=8). All rats were trained in a passive avoidance task (50 Hz, 1 mA, 3 s). DMSO (0.2 ml) or glibenclamide (1, 2, 5 mg/kg, i.p.) were injected for 10 days before training. Retention test was done 48 h later. Memory retention of each animal was measured as latency takes to enter the dark chamber.
Findings: The time spent in the light chamber area before entering to the dark area and total time spent in the light chamber in the glibenclamide groups were less than control group. These times in the glibenclamide (5 mg/kg) group was significantly lower than control group (P<0.05), conversely total time spent in the dark chamber in the glibenclamide groups were higher than control group.
Conclusion: Glibenclamide, as an ATP-sensitive potassium channel blocker, may reduce memory retention by increasing insulin levels and, consequently, reducing blood glucose levels.


Data provenance is essential in applications such as scientific computing, curated databases, and data warehouses. Several systems have been developed that provide provenance functionality for the relational data model. These systems support only a subset of SQL, a severe limitation in practice since most of the application domains that benefit from provenance information use complex queries. Such queries typically involve nested subqueries, aggregation and/or user defined functions. Without support for these constructs, a provenance management system is of limited use.
 In this paper we address this limitation by exploring the problem of provenance derivation when complex queries are involved. More precisely, we demonstrate that the widely used definition of Why-provenance fails in the presence of nested subqueries, and show how the definition can be modified to produce meaningful results for nested subqueries. We further present query rewrite rules to transform an SQL query into a query propagating provenance. The solution introduced in this paper allows us to track provenance information for a far wider subset of SQL than any of the existing approaches. We have incorporated these ideas into the Perm provenance management system engine and used it to evaluate the feasibility and performance of our approach.


The frequency and amplitude of vibration of a representative sample of reeds from American reed organs have been studied as functions of the (negative) static pressure difference between the interior and exterior of the windchest, along with the spectrum of the near‐field sound. Over a pressure range that includes the normal playing pressure of the instrument, the frequency initially tends to decrease in an approximately linear fashion with increasing blowing pressure, but some anomalous effects are observed at higher pressures, including an increase in frequency at very high blowing pressures. Some hysteresis effects are also observed in the frequency–pressure relationships. The effects of constrictions to the airflow, simulating the effect of a partially opened pallet, have also been studied.


Purpose To study the design and distribution of different organizational solutions regarding the responsibility for and provision of home care for elderly in Swedish municipalities. Method Directors of the social welfare services in all Swedish municipalities received a questionnaire about old-age care organization, especially home care services and related activities. Rate of response was 73% (211/289). Results Three different organizational models of home care were identified. The models represented different degrees of integration of home care, i.e. health and social aspects of home care were to varying degrees integrated in the same organization. The county councils (i.e. large sub-national political-administrative units) tended to contain clusters of municipalities (smaller sub-national units) with the same organizational characteristics. Thus, municipalities' home care organization followed a county council pattern. In spite of a general tendency for Swedish municipalities to reorganize their activities, only 1% of them had changed their home care services organization in relation to the county council since the reform. Conclusion The decentralist intention of the reform—to give actors at the sub-national levels freedom to integrate home care according to varying local circumstances—has resulted in a sub-national inter-organizational network structure at the county council, rather than municipal, level, which is highly inert and difficult to change.


The Sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Rumi is most beloved for his poems expressing the ecstasies and mysteries of love in all its forms--erotic, platonic, divine--and Coleman Barks presents the best of them in this delightful and inspiring collection. Rendered with freshness, intensity, and beauty as Barks alone can do, these startling and rich poems range from the "wholeness" one experiences with a true lover, to the grief of a lover's loss, and all the states in between: from the madness of sudden love to the shifting of a romance to deep friendship to the immersion in divine love. Rumi, the ultimate poet of love, explores all "the magnificent regions of the heart," and he opens you to the lover within. Coleman Barks has made this medieval, Persian-born (present-day Afghanistan) poetic and spiritual genius the most popular poet in America today. This seductive volume reveals Rumi's charms and depths more than any other.


A photovoltaic detector based on an N+-InAs0.55 Sb0.15P0.30/n(0)-InAs0.89Sb0.11/P+-InAs0.55Sb0.15P0.30 double heterostructure (DH) suitable for operation in the mid-infrared (MIR) spectral region (2 to 5 mum) at room temperature has been studied. A physics based closed form model of the device has been developed to investigate the relative importance of the different mechanisms which determine dark current and photoresponse. The results obtained on the basis of the model have been compared and contrasted with those obtained from experimental measurements on DH detectors fabricated previously in our laboratory using liquid phase epitaxy (LPE). The model helps to explain the various physical mechanisms that shape the characteristics of the device under room temperature operation. It can also be used to optimize the performance of the photodetector in respect of dark current, responsivity and detectivity. A comparison of theoretical predictions and experimental results revealed that Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) recombination is more important than Auger recombination in determining the room temperature detector performance when the concentration of nonradiative recombination centers in our material exceeds 10(17) cm(-3). Furthermore, compositional grading in the cladding regions of the double heterostructure has been found to be responsible for the reduction of the detectivity of the device in the shorter wavelength region.


Free haem is known to be toxic to organs, tissues and cells. It enhances permeability by binding to a cell membrane, which leads to cell death, and damages lipids, proteins and DNA through the generation of reactive oxygen species. Lysine- and arginine-specific gingipains (Kgp and RgpA/B) are major proteinases that play an important role in the pathogenicity of a black-pigmented periodontopathogen named Porphyromonas gingivalis. One of the adhesin domains of gingipain, HbR could bind haem as an iron nutrient source for P. gingivalis. Using erythrocyte and its membrane as a model, results from the present study demonstrate that recombinant HbR expressed in Escherichia coli could inhibit haem-induced haemolysis, probably through removing haem from the haem-membrane complex and lowering free haem toxicity by mediating dimerization of haem molecules. The ability to protect a cell membrane from haem toxicity is a new function for HbR.


BACKGROUND
Loss of urinary control after spinal cord injury increases risk of urinary tract disease and is problematical for owners of affected dogs.

OBJECTIVES
To design, implant, and test a sacral nerve stimulating device for controlling urine voiding in paraplegic dogs.

ANIMALS
Nine pet dogs with severe thoracolumbar spinal cord injury causing paraplegia, loss of hindquarter sensation, and incontinence for more than 3 months. The procedure was offered prospectively to owners of suitable candidates after the irreversibility of the incontinence had been ascertained.

METHODS
Open label clinical study. Surgically implantable electrode "books" were designed for insertion and retention of mixed sacral nerves. Sacral nerves were accessed via laminectomy and stimulated to test their ability to elicit detrusor contraction and then inserted into the electrode book, which was attached to a subcutaneously implanted, externally activated receiver.

RESULTS
In 8/9 dogs, S2 nerves elicited the largest increases in intravesicular pressure with minimum stimulation and were placed in electrode books. Voiding efficiency was >90% in 8 of the 9 implanted dogs. No important detrimental effects of the procedure were observed.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE
This sacral nerve stimulating implant is a simple and apparently effective neuroprosthetic device that restores urine voiding in paraplegic dogs.


Self-replication is a fundamental skill present in every living system. Successful living systems must be able to produce offspring that is both capable of performing a set of required tasks and of producing offspring with these same two properties, which we define as fertility. Moreover, species generally produce offspring as a fertile variation of its parents. Despite the widespread use of deep learning and neural networks in industry and academia over the last decades, self-replication with neural networks still remains largely unexplored. In this paper we train neural networks capable of encoding specific images and of producing fertile offspring with and without variation for arbitrary lengths of a genealogy. We accomplish stable self-replication by creating contractions in the parame- ter space of the self-replication function, and train replication with meaningful variation to give the agents a possibility of escaping these contractions in the search for other configurations that do not diverge to chaotic behaviours.


Prenatal exposure to alcohol (ethanol) results in a continuum of physical, neurological, behavioral, and learning defects collectively grouped under the heading fetal alcohol spectrum disorders [5] (FASD). Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is the most severe combination of these defects under this heading, and is characterized by preand postnatal growth deficiencies, facial abnormalities, and defects of the central nervous system [6] (CNS). The developing brain is particularly vulnerable to the toxicity of ethanol, given the broad time frame of susceptibility from neurulation [7], when the neural tube [8] is formed, all the way through to birth. The cerebellum [9] is an area of the brain particularly vulnerable to prenatal ethanol exposure. Mechanisms proposed for this drastic reduction [10] in brain cells include apoptosis [11], oxidative stress, and damage to the radial glia [12] stem cell progenitor pool. Physical dexterity, coordination, and visuospatial processing are all affected by these stressors, and eyeblink classical conditioning [13] tests have proven that ethanol-induced damage goes beyond motor coordination by permanently impacting learning and memory.


Abstract Combining new measurements of thermal diffusivity (D) and viscosity (η) of 13 silica-rich glasses and their melts with previous data reveals specific effects of Al, Ca, and Fe cations on heat and mass transport for diverse glasses and melts. We investigated rhyolites, tektites, leucogranite, haplogranite, and chemically complex commercial glasses. Highly polymerized samples, with high-Al but low-Ca contents, yield high values for η, D, and glass transition temperatures (Tg,12), whereas less polymerized samples with high-Ca but low-Al contents, have low η, D, and Tg,12. Upon crossing the glass transition, D decreases substantially, to ~0.35 mm2/s for Ca-rich melts, but D decreases only weakly, to ~0.52 mm2/s for Al-rich melts. The magnitude of the decrease in D at Tg,12 correlates with the melt fragility, and also to the configurational heat capacity. High-Ca contents result in low D for glasses and melts, whether or not Al is present. At high T, ∂D/∂T is positive for glasses and melts containing Fe2+, which we attribute to diffusive radiative transfer involving electronic-vibronic coupling. Thermal conductivity of all glasses increases with T, flattening out as the transition is approached. For melts with >1 wt% FeOtotal, ∂k/∂T is positive. We predict that upon melting, I-type arc granite liquids should have lower thermal diffusivity than calcium-poor A- or S-types, and calc-alkaline basalts will have lower D than tholeiitic basalts, such that D of granitic melts is ~0.2 mm2s-2 higher than basaltic. Ferrous iron enhancing heat transport could alter the predicted order at higher temperatures.


Motivated by applications to sensor, peer-to-peer and ad hoc networks, we study distributed asynchronous algorithms, also known as gossip algorithms, for computation and information exchange in an arbitrarily connected network of nodes. Nodes in such networks operate under limited computational, communication and energy resources. These constraints naturally give rise to "gossip" algorithms: schemes which distribute the computational burden and in which a node communicates with a randomly chosen neighbor. We analyze the averaging problem under the gossip constraint for arbitrary network, and find that the averaging time of a gossip algorithm depends on the second largest eigenvalue of a doubly stochastic matrix characterizing the algorithm. Using recent results of Boyd, Diaconis and Xiao (2003), we show that minimizing this quantity to design the fastest averaging algorithm on the network is a semi-definite program (SDP). In general, SDPs cannot be solved distributedly; however, exploiting problem structure, we propose a subgradient method that distributedly solves the optimization problem over the network. The relation of averaging time to the second largest eigenvalue naturally relates it to the mixing time of a random walk with transition probabilities that are derived from the gossip algorithm. We use this connection to study the performance of gossip algorithm on two popular networks: wireless sensor networks, which are modeled as geometric random graphs, and the Internet graph under the so-called preferential connectivity model.


Background Impacts of social isolation measures imposed by COVID-19 Pandemic on mental health and quality of life of older adults living with dementia and their caregivers remain unexplored. Studies have shown that psychoeducational and psychosocial interventions can manage behavioral and psychological symptoms in dementia (BPSD) and reduce the emotional burden on family members when applied in home-setting scenarios. Method a comprehensive systematic review of useful interventions for easing the BPSD burden in patients with dementia (PwD) and their caregivers in the context of COVID-19 quarantine was performed from January 2010 to March 2020. Results From a total of 187 articles retrieved from electronic databases (MEDLINE, LILACS, Cochrane and SCOPUS), 43 studies were eligible for this review. Most of the psychosocial and psychoeducational interventions described were person-centered strategies based on the cognitive-behavioral approach or informational tools to enhance care providers' knowledge of dementia. Most studies achieved successful results in handling BPSD and mood-anxiety symptoms of care providers, contributing to an overall improvement in dyad life quality. Conclusion Evidence from the last few years suggest that low-cost techniques, tailored to the dyad well-being, with increasing use of technology through friendly online platforms and application robots, can be an alternative to conventional assistance during COVID-19 Pandemic. Nevertheless, the world's current experience regarding the duration of the COVID-19 Pandemic and its effects on the cognition, behavior, and life quality of PwD will demand research on preventive and protective factors of dementia and the pursue of efficient interventions in different scenarios.


The events of 9/11 and the occurrence of major natural disasters in recent years has resulted in increased awareness and renewed desire to protect critical infrastructure that are the pillars to maintaining what has become normal life in our economy. The problem has been compounded because the increased connectedness between the various sectors of the economy has resulted in interdependencies that allow for problems and issues with one infrastructure to affect other infrastructures. This area is now being investigated extensively after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) prioritized this issue. There is now a vast extant of literature in the area of infrastructure interdependencies and the modeling of it. This paper presents a synthesis and survey of the literature in the area of infrastructure interdependency modeling methods and proposes a framework for classification of these studies. The framework classifies infrastructure interdependency modeling and analysis methods into four quadrants in terms of system complexities and risks. The directions of future research are also discussed in this paper.


Abstract Graded copper-doped Be shells have been fabricated by sputter coating on spherical mandrels. While such coatings have consistent microstructure and acceptable void content and size, we have found that they suffer from sufficient interconnected porosity leading to relatively rapid gas leakage. In this paper, we present an extensive study of D2 leakage out of Be shells made by sputter coating. The leakage appears to follow molecular flow dynamics as determined by examining the temperature dependence of the flow. Furthermore, the time dependence of the leakage suggests that the flow channels are nanometerish in diameter, propagating through the thickness of the coating, possibly brought about by residual stress in the coatings. We have investigated the D2 leakage time constant as a function of a large number of coating parameters, including the effect of introducing boron-doped layers. Addition of thin 0.25 μm amorphous boron-doped layers near the inside surface has been most effective in producing shells with long time constants (greater than 7 days to immeasurable) with yield of greater than 50%. There is still substantial scatter in the data, even within a given coating batch, suggesting a possible stochastic cracking process driven by residual stress in the coating.


We propose a model for the reflectance of a particle medium made of identical, large, spherical, and absorbing particles in a clear binder. A 3D geometrical description of light scattering is developed by relying on the laws of geometrical optics. The amount of light backscattered by a single particle is determined as a function of its absorbance and refractive index. Then, we consider a set of coplanar particles, called a particle sublayer, whose reflectance and transmittance are functions of the particle backscattering ratio and the particle concentration. The reflectance of an infinite particle medium is derived from a description of multiple reflections and transmissions between many superposed particle sublayers. When the binder has a refractive index different from that of air, the medium's reflectance factor accounts for the multiple reflections occurring beneath the air-binder interface as well as for the measuring geometry. The influences of various parameters, such as the refractive indices and the particle absorption coefficient, are examined.


We introduce "extreme summarization," a new single-document summarization task which aims at creating a short, one-sentence news summary answering the question "What is the article about?". We argue that extreme summarization, by nature, is not amenable to extractive strategies and requires an abstractive modeling approach. In the hope of driving research on this task further: (a) we collect a real-world, large scale dataset by harvesting online articles from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC); and (b) propose a novel abstractive model which is conditioned on the article's topics and based entirely on convolutional neural networks. We demonstrate experimentally that this architecture captures long-range dependencies in a document and recognizes pertinent content, outperforming an oracle extractive system and state-of-the-art abstractive approaches when evaluated automatically and by humans on the extreme summarization dataset.


We propose an incentive compatible (IC) online mechanism for market integration of a flexible demand side in a smart grid with significant contribution from renewable energy sources (RES). This mechanism relies on the notion of energy services (Schweppe et al., 1989), i.e., combinations of appliances and associated time-wise load shifting potential. We compare this online mechanism over several metrics to an idealistic offline and online social planner. We find that the cost of establishing incentive compatibility in terms of social welfare is especially low in settings with high flexibility. This is a very positive result as we cannot expect classic welfare maximization approaches to compute realistic outcomes given self-interested agents. Under the IC mechanism, providing consumption flexibility decreases individual agents' payments and increases their chances of allocation. The presented online IC mechanism addresses a major obstacle for smart grid adoption, namely the lack of incentives fostering demand side flexibility. We see sufficient flexibility as an essential component in future power systems to facilitate higher RES penetration levels. Furthermore, we show that the classic paradigm of centralized control of flexible energy services offers only little societal benefits under our assumptions and can thus be replaced by a decentralized mechanism ensuring incentive-compatibility, scalability as well as robustness.


Rangelands in temperate areas provide food to herds of domesticated animals and, therefore, provide the infrastructure for two major industries: (a) the meat industry that feeds large populations around the globe; and (b) the wool industry that uses fibre from sheep. In the semiarid zone, rangelands have a socio-economic role as they support the economy and culture of pastoral societies. However, despite their importance, rangelands are under constant threat due to encroachment by humans and invasion by noxious plants, due to degradation and erosion processes and due to drought effects. Remote sensing can be used to identify and monitor the threats to ecological processes in rangelands and, thus, to their ecological sustainability. This article provides a review of the scientific literature on the remote sensing of rangelands and discusses recent developments with respect to mapping thematic classes of vegetation and vegetative cover, mapping biophysical properties such as primary production, and monitoring land-use changes, including those driven by anthropogenically enhanced processes such as soil erosion. In the light of the reviewed studies, we expect that future research on monitoring rangeland sustainability with remote sensing will focus on hyperspectral measurements of the spectra of rangeland plant species, on lidar measurements of canopy height, and on synthetic aperture radar for biomass assessment. In the long-term, more predictive (or at least heuristic) modelling of degradation scenarios due to erosion, invasion of noxious species, and land-use transformations can be anticipated.


We revisit the physics of neutrino magnetic moments, focusing in particular on the case where the right-handed, or sterile, neutrinos are heavier (up to several MeV) than the left-handed Standard Model neutrinos. The discussion is centered around the idea of detecting an upscattering event mediated by a transition magnetic moment in a neutrino or dark matter experiment. Considering neutrinos from all known sources, as well as including all available data from XENON1T and Borexino, we derive the strongest up-to-date exclusion limits on the active-to-sterile neutrino transition magnetic moment. We then study complementary constraints from astrophysics and cosmology, performing, in particular, a thorough analysis of BBN . We find that these data sets scrutinize most of the relevant parameter space. Explaining the XENON1T excess with transition magnetic moments is marginally possible if very conservative assumptions are adopted regarding the supernova 1987 A and CMB constraints. Finally, we discuss model-building challenges that arise in scenarios that feature large magnetic moments while keeping neutrino masses well below 1 eV. We present a successful ultraviolet-complete model of this type based on TeV-scale leptoquarks, establishing links with muon magnetic moment, B physics anomalies, and collider searches at the LHC.


The purpose of this paper was twofold. First, it compared the criteria used by the different authorities in Australia to fund black spot treatments in their jurisdictions. Second, it presented the results of an evaluation of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the Black Spot Program in WA. The findings presented in the paper form part of a wider review of the Black Spot Program in WA, which includes also a review of international black spot programs and a qualitative study of the views of stakeholders of the WA State Black Spot Program. The paper reports that different black spot programs within Australia have different eligibility criteria for funding and distribute varied proportions of funding to projects located on metropolitan, non-metropolitan, state and local roads. The WA Black Spot Program was found to be effective and cost-effective, with an overall crash reduction of 20% pre- and post-treatment and a BCR of 4.0. Factors that might have affected the evaluation of the effectiveness of the program were the lack of control sites and no account being taken of crash migration. It is difficult to identify what the best criteria for funding are in order to achieve an optimal reduction in crashes, with different stakeholders disagreeing on how funding should be distributed across road types and between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan regions. A recent international investigation on state-of-the-art black spot approaches suggested an alternative approach, the empirical Bayesian method, as best practice for identifying black spots. Empirical Bayesian methods, however, require comprehensive and connected crash, road and traffic data and may be currently unrealistic for Australian black spot programs. It also stated that reactive crash analysis was still considered the best indicator of black spots rather than proactive methods based on road safety audits. However, proactive identification of black spots through road safety audits is still likely to be highly relevant to several Australian states due to their large area and long stretches of remote roads where crashes are more dispersed.


Water deficit is a major abiotic factor limiting plant growth and crop productivity around the world. Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is considered to be relatively tolerant to drought and the effects of water stress on leaf physiology and metabolism have been extensively documented. However, information is lacking on the effect of water-deficit stress on the cotton flower. It was hypothesized that water-deficit stress would impair gas exchange functions which consequently would result in perturbation of carbohydrates of cotton reproductive units. To investigate this hypothesis growth room studies and field studies were conducted with the objectives being to document the physiological and biochemical changes that take place in cotton flowers and their subtending leaves when subjected to limited water supply. Additionally, the effect of the ethylene inhibitor 1-Methylcyclopropene under conditions of water stress was investigated as well as the response of leaf and ovary polyamine metabolism of two cotton cultivars differing in drought tolerance. Results indicated that water-deficit stress during flowering significantly compromised leaf gas exchange functions resulting in decreased stomatal conductance, photosynthesis, respiration and water potential. However, cotton reproductive units appeared to be less drought-sensitive compared to the leaves possibly due to higher water potential and glutathione reductase activity. Limited supply of water significantly affected carbohydrate metabolism of both leaf and pistil resulting in carbohydrate accumulation. Contrary to expectations, application of the ethylene inhibitor 1-MCP had no effect on leaf gas exchange function, however, it reversed the effect of water stress on pistil sucrose concentrations. Finally, water-deficit stress during flowering had a significant effect on polyamine metabolism of both leaf and pistil, resulting in increases in putrescine, spermidine and spermine in drought-sensitive cultivars. The differential response of polyamine metabolism between drought-sensitive and tolerant cultivars suggests that polyamines could be effective tools not only in selection of drought-tolerant cultivars, but also in drought tolerance engineering, however further research is needed in order to elucidate the exact pathways of


Service-oriented architectures (SOA) become more and more important in networked embedded systems. The main advantages of Service-oriented architectures are a higher abstraction level and interoperability of devices. In this area, Web services have become an important standard for communication between devices. However, this upcoming technology is only available on devices with sufficient resources. Therefore, embedded devices are often excluded from the deployment of Web services due to a lack of computing power, insufficient memory space and limited bandwidth. Furthermore, embedded devices often require real-time capabilities for communication and process control. This paper presents a new table driven approach to handle real-time capable Web services communication, on embedded hardware through the Devices Profile for Web Services.


In this idea paper, we propose a novel way for improving the testing of program changes via symbolic execution. At a high-level, our technique runs two different program versions in the same symbolic execution instance, with the old version effectively shadowing the new one. In this way, the technique can exploit precise dynamic value information to effectively drive execution toward the behaviour that has changed from one version to the next. We discuss the main challenges and opportunities of this approach in terms of pruning and prioritising path exploration, mapping elements across versions, and sharing common symbolic state between versions.


Inducement prizes are increasingly popular because of their potential to induce technological innovations and attain related goals. Academic research, however, has barely investigated these prizes. This paper investigates the motivation of prize entrants, the characteristics of their research and development (R&D) activities, and the overall effect of prizes on innovation using case study research and documentary data sources. The Ansari X Prize and the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, both considered successful technology competitions in the aerospace sector, are investigated. The findings show that, first, incentives created by competitions, particularly those that are nonmonetary, attract unconventional entrants. The market value of the prize technologies motivate entrants as well but do not attract traditional industry players. Second, limited technology development lead times and no up‐front funding characterize prize R&D activities, yet their differences with traditional industry practices are caused by participant‐level factors. Most importantly, the introduction of novel R&D approaches is associated with the participation of unconventional entrants. Third, these prizes induced innovations over and above what would have occurred anyway, with the caveat that they were linked to significant technology incentives and fundamentally, ongoing R&D processes. These findings put forward lessons that inform the design of more effective prize competitions.


The statistical decision theoretic foundations of modern machine learning have largely focused on the minimization of the expectation of some loss function for a given task. However, seminal results in behavioral economics have shown that human decision-making is based on different risk measures than the expectation of any given loss function. In this paper, we pose the following simple question: in contrast to minimizing expected loss, could we minimize a better human-aligned risk measure? While this might not seem natural at first glance, we analyze the properties of such a revised risk measure, and surprisingly show that it might also better align with additional desiderata like fairness that have attracted considerable recent attention. We focus in particular on a class of human-aligned risk measures inspired by cumulative prospect theory. We empirically study these risk measures, and demonstrate their improved performance on desiderata such as fairness, in contrast to the traditional workhorse of expected loss minimization.


Written in an easy-to-use, non-technical style, this resource contains an insightful collection of essays, articles, poetry, humor and personalities that illustrate why the practice of medicine is as much art as it is science. Compiled and organized by the AMA's library, reference, and information resources staff, it is also a comprehensive directory of names, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and website addresses for hundreds of nationally recognized groups, associations, and organizations in the field of health and medicine.


The protein kinase RIP3 mediates necrotic cell death, likely through regulation of metabolic enzymes. Cells can undergo regulated cell death through distinct processes known as apoptosis and necrosis. Regulation of apoptosis is better understood than that of necrosis. In a screen for gene products that participate in control of necrosis in cells treated with TNF (tumor necrosis factor), Zhang et al. identified a protein kinase, RIP3. In cells treated with TNF and a caspase inhibitor that inhibits apoptosis, seven metabolic enzymes interacted with RIP3, some of which are associated with mitochondria. Generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was necessary for TNF-induced necrosis, and depletion of RIP3 reduced the generation of ROS. Thus, RIP3 may participate in the mechanisms that link energy metabolism with mechanisms of cell death. D.-W. Zhang, J. Shao, J. Lin, N. Zhang, B.-J. Lu, S.-C. Lin, M.-Q. Dong, J. Han, RIP3, an energy metabolism regulator that switches TNF-induced cell death from apoptosis to necrosis. Science 325, 332–336 (2009). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Since the advent of computers, the natural and engineering sciences have enormously progressed. Computer simulations allow one to understand interactions of physical particles and make sense of astronomical observations, to describe many chemical properties ab initio, and to design energy-efficient aircrafts and safer cars. Today, the use of computational devices is pervasive. Offices, administrations, financial trading, economic exchange, the control of infrastructure networks, and a large share of our communication would not be conceivable without the use of computers anymore. Hence, it would be very surprising, if computers could not make a contribution to a better understanding of social and economic systems. While relevant also for the statistical analysis of data and data-driven efforts to reveal patterns of human interaction, we will focus here on the prospects of computer simulation of social and economic systems. More specifically, we will discuss the techniques of agent-based modeling (ABM) and multi-agent simulation (MAS), including the challenges, perspectives and limitations of the approach. In doing so, we will discuss a number of issues, which have not been covered by the excellent books and review papers available so far . In particular, we will describe the different steps belonging to a thorough agent-based simulation study, and try to explain, how to do them right from a scientific perspective. To some extent, computer simulation can be seen as experimental technique for hypothesis testing and scenario analysis, which can be used complementary and in combination with experiments in real-life, the lab or the Web.


Ultra wideband technology is one of the most promising directions in the rapidly developing modern communications. Ultra wideband communication system applications include radars, wireless personal area networks, sensor networks, imaging systems and high precision positioning systems. Ultra wideband transmission is characterized by high data rate, availability of low-cost transceivers, low transmit power and low interference. The proposed book consisting of 19 chapters presents both the state-of-the-art and the latest achievements in ultra wideband communication system performance, design and components. The book is addressed to engineers and researchers who are interested in the wide range of topics related to ultra wideband communications.


Developmental thinking is gradually becoming integrated within mainstream evolutionary psychology. This is most apparent with respect to the role of parenting, with proponents of life history theory arguing that cognitive and behavioral plasticity early in life permits children to select different life history strategies, with such strategies being adaptive solutions to different fitness trade-offs. I argue that adaptations develop and are based on the highly plastic nature of infants' and children's behavior/cognition/brains. The concept of evolved probabilistic cognitive mechanisms is introduced, defined as information processing mechanisms evolved to solve recurrent problems faced by ancestral populations that are expressed in a probabilistic fashion in each individual in a generation and are based on the continuous and bidirectional interaction over time at all levels of organization, from the genetic through the cultural. Early perceptual/cognitive biases result in behavior that, when occurring in a species-typical environment, produce continuous adaptive changes in behavior (and cognition), yielding adaptive outcomes. Examples from social learning and tool use are provided, illustrating the development of adaptations via evolved probabilistic cognitive mechanisms. The integration of developmental concepts into mainstream evolutionary psychology (and evolutionary concepts into mainstream developmental psychology) will provide a clearer picture of what it means to be human.


Praxiology is like the prose of Moliere's The Prodigious Snob: everybody uses it but few can define it. That task fell to the famous Polish philosopher and logician, Tadeusz Kotarbinski. He noted that praxiology deals with doing and working from the point of view of effectiveness. It has three components: analysis of concepts involving purposive actions; critique of modes of action from the viewpoint of efficiency; and normative advisory aspects in recommendations for increasing efficiency. Increasingly, praxiology has focused on the social sciences, since both have a strong sense of knowledge and its applications. In this encyclopedic effort, the editors, aided by a remarkable group of international scholars, convened a meeting to examine fundamental issues in the theory of human action, the nature of economics, and theoretical issues in such praxiological disciplines as design, accounting, market mechanisms, management, and planning. This is a breakthrough volume in its combination and permutation of fault lines in the logic of scientific inquiry and the newer aspects of social action. It is graced with pioneering, new papers on "Methodological Foundations of Economics" by Herbert A. Simon; "Appropriate Methods for the Studies of the Economy" by Kenneth E. Boulding; "The Role of the Uncertainty Principle in Economics" by George J. Klir; "Problems of Market Forecasting" by Donald N. McCloskey; "Rights as Social Practices" by Beth J. Singer; and "The Crisis of Professional Knowledge" by Donald A. Schon. The volume thoroughly integrates European, British, and American scholarship in advanced areas of philosophy and decision-theory. Contributions cover a broad area of economics: from criticism of institutional economics to examination of the role of induction in economic forecasting. Major figures examined include Menger, von Mises, Hayek, and Keynes among others, concluding with an attempt to integrate praxiology and economics in a larger theory of the social and historical life cycle. In its unifying potentials Praxiology and the Philosophy of Economics is a landmark of scholarship.


A graph on $n$ vertices is equitably $k$-colorable if it is $k$-colorable and every color is used either $\left\lfloor n/k \right\rfloor$ or $\left\lceil n/k \right\rceil$ times.
Such a problem appears to be considerably harder than vertex coloring, being $\mathsf{NP\text{-}Complete}$ even for cographs and interval graphs.
In this work, we prove that it is $\mathsf{W[1]\text{-}Hard}$ for block graphs and for disjoint union of split graphs when parameterized by the number of colors; and $\mathsf{W[1]\text{-}Hard}$ for $K_{1,4}$-free interval graphs when parameterized by treewidth, number of colors and maximum degree, generalizing a result by Fellows et al. (2014) through a much simpler reduction.
Using a previous result due to Dominique de Werra (1985), we establish a dichotomy for the complexity of equitable coloring of chordal graphs based on the size of the largest induced star.
Finally, we show that \textsc{equitable coloring} is $\mathsf{FPT}$ when parameterized by the treewidth of the complement graph.


The political change in the former Soviet Union and its sphere of influence has brought into the open information on various situations involving the radiation exposure of large populations, and has thus widened the field of radioepidemiological investigations that need to be performed. Three issues are considered. The consequences of the Chernobyl accident are still largely unresolved, and the hopes for radioepidemiological investigations have been gravely disappointed due to the lack of coordinated efforts. The steep increase of childhood thyroid carcinoma rates in Belarus is the only observed late effect so far; but even in the face of this alarming situation there is little readiness to accept help with regards to medical treatment and to scientific investigations. The attempts to block all information after the reactor accident in the former Soviet Union must be seen against the background of earlier occurrences that were successfully hidden for decades, and a particularly grave issue was the large scale contaminations in the Southern Urals of the River Techna and adjacent villages. An epidemiological study on the affected population has led to first results; it may develop into a major body of knowledge on radiation risks from protracted exposures. A third broad task in the years to come will be the analysis of the health effects in the underground miners of the Wismut AG, the former Soviet-German uranium mining enterprise. Exposure data and health information on several 100,000 miners will need to be analysed, and this may further the knowledge of the effects of radon exposures.


One of the world's oldest continuing armed conflicts is also one of the least known: the conflict between the government of India and the Nagas. Since 1997, there has been a ceasefire between the Indian government and Naga militants, and there have been intermittent talks to end the conflict. Naga leaders appear to be willing to make concessions on their main demand of independence. But the peace process has stumbled on an unexpected hurdle: the Naga aspiration to the unification of all Naga-inhabited areas. Whether or not some people included in the Naga category should indeed be considered Nagas is in fact a highly contested matter. Since it is impossible to agree on who is a Naga and who is not, it has been difficult to decide what the Naga-inhabited areas are. The issue has generated some new conflicts in the region. As in all ethno-national conflicts, the politics of recognition is an underlying theme in the Naga conflict. But projects about recognition are also projects about constructing identities. The notion of bounded collectivities living in national homelands relies on a very different spatial discourse from the one of overlapping frontiers and hierarchical polities that precedes it. The article argues that the historical relations between hill peoples and the lowland states in this frontier region were premised on an especially complex spatial, cultural, and political dynamic. Saving the faltering Naga peace process will require confronting the constructionism of modern identities by the political actors themselves.


"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" considers the implications and lessons of Judges in Contemporary Democracy for the ongoing debate about the legitimacy of international judicial dialogue, with particular attention to the problems associated with operationalizing strong forms of transnational borrowing of foreign legal precedents. The interlocutors participating in the conversations set forth in Judges in Contemporary Democracy are a remarkably talented group, including three members of national constitutional courts (Robert Badinter, Stephen Breyer, and Dieter Grimm), two members of transnational courts (Gil Carlos Rodriguez Iglesias and Antonio Cassese), and a well regarded constitutional theorist (Prof. Ronald Dworkin). Even so, the participants at times fail to appreciate the importance of political, social, economic, and cultural factors (as well as institutional structure) in the operation of both courts and legal rules. Even as the book demonstrates the potential value of informal forms of international judicial dialogue, it suggests that significant problems remain to be addressed before strong forms of international judicial dialogue (such as overt transnational borrowing of foreign legal precedents) could be implemented successfully. "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" begins with a review of the idea of international judicial dialogue as propounded by its supporters and questioned by its critics. The review essay then considers and critiques the principal arguments set forth in Judges in Contemporary Democracy and the implications of these discussions for the project of international judicial dialogue. The essay concludes by positing that weak forms of international judicial dialogue could serve a kind of judicial muse - an ephemeral source of inspiration and creativity, but probably should not displace formal domestic sources of law in the creation, explication, and enforcement of fundamental human rights.


Background: CD4+ T cells produce IL-4 that drives Th2 cell differentiation. Early production of IL-4 in naïve T cells leads to Th2 cell differentiation. Results: Thp5, a novel peptide, regulates IL-4 production in early activated CD4+ T cells. Conclusion: Early activated CD4+ T cells produce Thp5, which plays a critical role in the differentiation of Th2 cells. Significance: Thp5 acts as an important determinant of Th2 cell differentiation during early T cell activation. The differentiation of naïve CD4+ T cells into T helper 2 (Th2) cells requires production of the cytokine IL-4 in the local microenvironment. It is evident that naïve/quiescently activated CD4+ T cells produce the IL-4 that drives Th2 cell differentiation. Because early production of IL-4 in naïve T cells leads to preferential Th2 cell differentiation, this process needs to be tightly regulated so as to avoid catastrophic and misdirected Th2 cell differentiation. Here, we show that Thp5, a novel peptide with structural similarity to vasoactive intestinal peptide, regulates production of early IL-4 in newly activated CD4+ T cells. Induction of IL-4 in CD4+ T cells by Thp5 is independent of the transcription factor STAT6 but dependent on ERK1/2 signaling. Furthermore, cytokines (IL-12 and TGF-β) that promote the differentiation of Th1 or Th17 cells inhibit Thp5 induction, thus suppressing Th2 cell differentiation. We further showed that Thp5 enhances Th2 responses and exacerbates allergic airway inflammation in mice. Taken together, our findings reveal that early activated CD4+ T cells produce Thp5, which plays a critical role as a molecular switch in the differentiation of Th cells, biasing the response toward the Th2 cell phenotype.


This article reports on a project, led jointly by Lancaster University and Save the Children UK, that used mobile, creative, and performance-based methods to understand children's experiences and perceptions of the 2013–2014 UK winter floods and to promote their voices in flood risk management. We argue that our action-based methodology situated the children as "flood actors" by focusing on their sensory experience of the floods and thus their embodied knowledge and expertise. The research activities of walking, talking, and taking photographs around the flooded landscape, as well as model making and the use of theater and performance, helped to "mobilize" the children not only to recall what they did during the floods but also to identify and communicate to policy makers and practitioners how we can all do things differently before, during, and after flooding.


As humans are being progressively pushed further downstream in the decision-making process of autonomous systems, the need arises to ensure that moral standards, however defined, are adhered to by these robotic artifacts. While meaningful inroads have been made in this area regarding the use of ethical lethal military robots, including work by our laboratory, these needs transcend the warfighting domain and are pervasive, extending to eldercare, robot nannies, and other forms of service and entertainment robotic platforms. This paper presents an overview of the spectrum and specter of ethical issues raised by the advent of these systems, and various technical results obtained to date by our research group, geared towards managing ethical behavior in autonomous robots in relation to humanity. This includes: 1) the use of an ethical governor capable of restricting robotic behavior to predefined social norms; 2) an ethical adaptor which draws upon the moral emotions to allow a system to constructively and proactively modify its behavior based on the consequences of its actions; 3) the development of models of robotic trust in humans and its dual, deception, drawing on psychological models of interdependence theory; and 4) concluding with an approach towards the maintenance of dignity in human-robot relationships.


Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a surveillance mechanism that detects and degrades transcripts containing premature translation termination codons. Gene expression profiling experiments have shown that inactivation of the NMD pathway leads to the accumulation of both aberrant, nonsense-containing mRNAs, and many apparently wild-type transcripts. Such increases in transcript steady-state levels could arise from direct changes in the respective mRNA half-lives, or indirectly, as a consequence of the stabilization of transcripts encoding specific regulatory proteins. Here, we distinguished direct from indirect substrates by virtue of their association with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Upf1 protein. Analyses of this dataset, and its comparison to the sets of transcripts that respectively increase or decrease in abundance when NMD is either inactivated or reactivated, indicate that the number of direct NMD substrates is larger than previously thought and that low abundance, alternatively transcribed mRNAs, i.e., mRNAs whose 5′ ends are derived from previously unannotated 5′ flanking sequences, comprise a significant class of direct substrates. Using thiamine metabolism as an example, we also show that apparent NMD-regulated cellular pathways may actually reflect the detection of low-abundance alternative transcripts under conditions where a pathway is repressed.


Table of Contents: Part I: CRIME AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. 1. The Criminal Justice System. 2. Crime and Crime Causation. 3. Criminal Justice and the Rule of Law. Part II: POLICE. 4. Police. 5. Policing: Contemporary Issues and Challenges. 6. Police and Law. Part III: COURTS. 7. Courts and Adjudication 8. Pretrial Procedures, Plea Bargaining, and the Criminal Trial. 9. Punishment and Sentencing. Part IV: CORRECTIONS. 10. Corrections. 11. Incarceration and Prison Society. 12. Probation and Intermediate Sanctions. Part V: SPECIAL ISSUES IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE. 13. Reentry into the Community. 14. Technology and Criminal Justice. 15. Juvenile Justice.


This paper examines how equitable, differentiated pricing can improve access to and affordability of medicines, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and how governments and supranational agencies can create an environment that enables pharmaceutical companies to operate a sustainable business model benefitting all key stakeholders. Using value-based pricing techniques in combination with a non-linear function that captures national income parameters as defined in the Human Development Index together with health system variables, the authors have developed an integrated pricing policy framework. The degree to which the proposed framework offers a sustainable solution to the problem of access to medicines depends on: the economic development status of a country, the value of a particular medicine to its therapeutic class and the incidence of the relevant disease, and the extent to which market segmentation can be applied. This paper further argues that for equitable, differential pricing to succeed, policymakers and lawmakers must design and implement a regulatory and legislative framework that prevents leakage through parallel trade and price referencing between affluent and poorer segments when discounts are applied.


Scholarship demonstrates that internet memes – digital-media based, intertextual, participatory creations – are polyvocal, political discourse (Milner, 2012) and grassroots action and advocacy (Shifman, 2014). In democratic and nondemocratic societies, citizens use memes to react, critique, protest, and speak truth to power. In a late November 2014 post for The Spectator , a long-running conservative British magazine, Isabel Hardman lamented the spread of a particular meme, the purpose of which was ostensibly to critique the British Parliament by highlighting MPs' lack of concern for social issues, in contrast to their over concern for their own benefits. In the post, headlined "The Menace of Memes," Hardman traced the origins of photos used in the meme to argue that the memes were "deceitfully spreading lies" through a combination of out-of-context images and over-simplification of Parliament's processes (Hardman, 2014). Underlying Hardman's essay was the assumption that these memes contributed to viewers' understanding of the issue. While an interesting assumption, it is also an understudied one. Though the influence of media on politics has long been of interest to scholars, this research has been largely focused on traditional forms of media. With the rise of social media has come a blurred distinction regarding what counts as "media." When nearly anyone can write a blog post or share a meme, it becomes necessary to understand how user-generated media influences politics. While this work has begun with studies of relationships between social media use and information-seeking or traditional political participation, there is more work yet to be done to understand how user-generated content, like internet memes, influence those who view them as media. By exploring this question of meme effects, this paper seeks to answer Shifman's (2014) call for future meme research to establish what constitutes an effect of memes and how such effects might be measured.


The Mycoplasma genus comprises a group of microbes that cause persistent infection in humans and its role in promoting tumor development has long been a concern. Although mixtures of components isolated from Mycoplasma have been shown to activate host Rho family small GTPases and Stat3, no individual factor with this activity has been reported. In the current study, a conserved small GTPase-like protein fragment (SGLP) from Mycoplasma pulmonis chromosome partition protein, Smc, was identified as a virulence factor. SGLP was observed to interact with Rac1 and Stat3. The wild‑type (wt) SGLP, which contains a WxxxE motif, induced activation of Rac1 and phosphorylation of Stat3 at the tyrosine‑705 residue, while the SGLP mutant containing a mutation from WxxxE to AxxxA did not exert the same effects. Moreover, SGLP‑induced Stat3 phosphorylation was observed to be dependent upon Rac1 activity. Furthermore, wt SGLP was observed to promote cell migration and increase bromodeoxyuridine incorporation in HeLa cells and the SGLP mutant did not elicit these effects in HeLa cells. In conclusion, the current observations suggest that SGLP is an important virulence factor of Mycoplasma, which contributes to tumor cell migration and proliferation in vitro via interaction with Rac1 and Stat3.


Purpose To determine the prevalence of screening, cervical dysplasia, and malignancy on the basis of histologic diagnoses from colposcopy and large loop excision of the transformation zone among women living with HIV (WLWH) who attended an urban antiretroviral treatment (ART) clinic in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Materials and Methods We performed a retrospective cohort study to examine a random sample of 462 WLWH during a 5-year period from 2004 to 2009. Women on ART for < 3 months were excluded. Data were abstracted from electronic records and paper charts to assess rates of cervical abnormalities detected on Pap smears as well as time to colposcopy. Results During the study period, 432 women (93.5%) had at least one evaluable Papanicolau test. At baseline, 237 women (54.9%) had an abnormal Papanicolau test, and of these patients, 181 (76.3%) had a Papanicolau test that qualified for further colposcopic evaluation. In addition, 115 women (63.5%) received colposcopy within a median of 39 days from referral. This yielded 74 evaluable histologic samples (64.3%), of which 21.6%, 27.0%, 27.0%, and 1.4% had cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 1, CIN2, CIN3, and invasive cervical cancer, respectively. Conclusion In a large sample of WLWH who received ART in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where Papanicolau test coverage and rates of referral for colposcopy and large loop excision of the transformation zone were high, > 75% of women with evaluable histologic samples had evidence of cervical dysplasia or malignancy. These findings underscore the importance of routine cervical screening upon entry into HIV care to optimize survival.


The hydrophobic catalysts were originally conceived in Canada for the deuterium enrichment and tritium separation by hydrogen-liquid water isotopic exchange in nuclear field. Unlike the conventional hydrophilic catalysts, which becomes inefficient to direct contact with liquid water, the hydrophobic catalysts kept a high catalytic activity and stability, even under the direct contact with liquid water or in presence of humid gas. Based on the long experience of the authors, in the preparation, testing and evaluation of the performances of hydrophobic catalysts, and based on the reviewed references, this paper presents up-to-date R&D activities on the preparation methods and applications of the hydrophobic catalysts, in tritium separation. The objectives of the paper are: (1) to provide a database for selection of the most appropriate catalyst and catalytic packing for above mentioned processes (2) to asses and to find a new procedure for preparation of a new improved hydrophobic catalyst. From reviewed references we consider that platinum remains the most active and efficient catalytic metal and the TEFLON is the best wetproofing agent. A new improved hydrophobic Pt-catalyst has been proposed and is now underway. The main steps and experimental conditions of preparation are largely discussed. A new wet-proofing agent and a new binding agents (titanium oxide, cerium oxide, zirconium oxide) with catalytic role are proposed and tested. The physico-structural parameters of new improved catalyst have been determined and are discussed in details. The new proposal is a promising idea to improve the performances of conventional hydrophobic Pt-catalysts.