The EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) program of National Aeronautics and Space Administration focuses on linking remotely sensed properties from satellites to the mechanisms that control the transfer of carbon from surface waters to depth. Here, the naturally occurring radionuclide thorium-234 was used as a tracer of sinking particle flux. More than 950 234Th measurements were made during August–September 2018 at Ocean Station Papa in the northeast Pacific Ocean. High-resolution vertical sampling enabled observations of the spatial and temporal evolution of particle flux in Lagrangian fashion. Thorium-234 profiles were remarkably consistent, with steady-state (SS) 234Th fluxes reaching 1,450 ± 300 dpm m−2 d−1 at 100 m. Nonetheless, 234Th increased by 6%–10% in the upper 60 m during the cruise, leading to consideration of a non-steady-state (NSS) model and/or horizontal transport, with NSS having the largest impact by decreasing SS 234Th fluxes by 30%. Below 100 m, NSS and SS models overlapped. Particulate organic carbon (POC)/234Th ratios decreased with depth in small (1–5 μm) and mid-sized (5–51 μm) particles, while large particle (>51 μm) ratios remained relatively constant, likely influenced by swimmer contamination. Using an average SS and NSS 234Th flux and the POC/234Th ratio of mid-sized particles, we determined a best estimate of POC flux. Maximum POC flux was 5.5 ± 1.7 mmol C m−2 d−1 at 50 m, decreasing by 70% at the base of the primary production zone (117 m). These results support earlier studies that this site is characterized by a modest biological carbon pump, with an export efficiency of 13% ± 5% (POC flux/net primary production at 120 m) and 39% flux attenuation in the subsequent 100 m (POC flux 220 m/POC flux 120m). This work sets the foundation for understanding controls on the biological carbon pump during this EXPORTS campaign.


This research is performed by the purpose of life skill training effect on the social life of women in the Kerman city border. The experimental study is done by the use of pretesting plan and aft testing in the control group and 40 of women are chosen in the control group randomly. To gather data, the social health standard questionnaire is used with the stability of 0.78 and the validity of 0.89. The gathered information is analyzed by the use of SPSS20 software through analyzing two GIM variation and T independent and dependant tests, the result of research showed that the life skills trainings has meaningful effect on the life of Kerman city border women and also the life skill trainings has meaningful effect on the social solidarity and social adaptation of Kerman city women, it is advised that the life skill trainings in organizations and institutions is hold in order to take required skills to make save social relation between women.


Calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is the most common valvular disorder, affecting approximately 25% of the population aged over 65 years. The formation of calcific nodules on the aortic surface of the leaflets contributes to a progressive obstruction of the left ventricular outflow and leads ultimately to heart failure (Stewart et al., 1997). While CAVD has been described historically as a passive degenerative process, it has now emerged as a highly regulated pathology presumably triggered by a combination of conventional cardiovascular risk factors, mechanical and hemodynamic cues. As an important hemodynamic force, fluid shear stress (FSS) is the frictional force acting in the direction of blood flow on the leaflet endothelium. FSS is experienced by the ventricularis when blood flows past the leaflets during systole and on the fibrosa when blood pools into the sinuses during diastole. Previous studies showed that FSS affect the molecular mechanisms that eventually lead to formation of calcific nodules for CAVD. (Sun, Rajamannan, & Sucosky, 2013). A severely calcified aortic valve needs to be replaced with an artificial valve. Mechanical or prosthetic valves are durable but come with the lifelong anticoagulant treatment. An alternative approach is tissue engineered valves within which aortic valve cells can grow, enhancing the biocompatibility of the valve (Bezuidenhout, Williams, & Zilla, 2015). No matter the artificial valve is mechanical, prosthetic or tissue engineered, when placed into the patient, it should interact with blood flow with minimal disturbance in order for not causing additional complications. Therefore, these valves need to be tested experimentally for the hemodynamic performance. In this study, we have developed an experimental system to investigate hemodynamics for artificial aortic heart valves. The system is composed of Aptus pulsed duplicator system and GE Vivid-q ultrasonic medical imaging system. Aptus pulsed duplicator generates the flow environment for left ventricular outflow tract. Artificial aortic valves can be placed inside the system and these valves are exposed to natural blood flow environment (i.e. natural pressure, heart rate, ejection fraction). GE Vivid-q system enables us to visualize how valve leaflets open and close in each pulse via b-mode ultrasound imaging. M-mode enables us to measure valve orifice size at peak ejection. Doppler mode on the other hand enables us to measure flow velocities through valves, which then are used to estimate FSS levels. Pressure measurement probes inside the pulse duplicator gives simultaneous pressure readings which are then used to calculate pressure difference across the valve which is another parameter to define valve function. Aptus bioreactor platform is equipped with a holder system that enables testing virtually any material (including woven and knitted fabrics) as a scaffold for heart valve leaflet. The holder is build out of transparent PDMS to enhance optical visibility. The valve geometries that will be tested can be chosen at different wall thicknesses and other dimensions. For example, geometry of the sinuses and leaflets can be freely chosen/designed. This enables comparison of different prototypes for the optimized tissue engineered scaffolds. We will compare the performance of the scaffolds that are designed in our lab with commercially available prosthetic valves. In conclusion, we were able to develop an ultrasound based experimental flow system that will enable us to evaluate the tissue engineered heart valve scaffolds in natural heart environment. References Bezuidenhout, D., Williams, D. F., & Zilla, P. (2015). Polymeric heart valves for surgical implantation, catheter-based technologies and heart assist devices. Biomaterials, 36, 6–25. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2014.09.013 Stewart, B. F., Siscovick, D., Lind, B. K., Gardin, J. M., Gottdiener, J. S., Smith, V. E., … Otto, C. M. (1997). Clinical Factors Associated With Calcific Aortic Valve Disease fn1. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 29(3), 630–634. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0735-1097(96)00563-3 Sun, L., Rajamannan, N. M., & Sucosky, P. (2013). Defining the Role of Fluid Shear Stress in the Expression of Early Signaling Markers for Calcific Aortic Valve Disease. PloS one, 8(12), e84433. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084433


This paper studies the optimal choice of exchange rate regimes between two large currency areas. It provides a positive and normative analysis of alternative monetary policy rules in a model with sticky prices, monopolistic competition, and frictions in the processes of capital accumulation and acquisition of external finance. The stabilization and welfare analysis provides a sound result on the desirability of monetary policy and exchange rate flexibility as business cycle smoothing devices. Given the presence of financial frictions the paper gives a richer explanation of the mechanism behind the stabilization properties of floating exchange rates and explains the difference in sign of the international transmission of shocks compared to the model without capital. In a two country model without capital the pattern of output is mainly determined by the pattern of consumption: any movement in the exchange rate under floating exchange rates causes movements in the price of the international traded bond and in consumption and consequently in output. In the model with capital and financial frictions output mimics the movements in investment: an active monetary authority reacting to exchange rate movements generates perverse movements in the interest rate, destabilizing investment and output. The paper also suggests how monetary policy can improve financial stability, stressing the importance of the interest rate smoothing in tuning movements in investment and output and in reducing the welfare cost of financial frictions mostly under fixed exchange rates. JEL Classification: E3, E42, E44, E52, F41


Abstract Isolated teeth representing several taxa of metatherian mammals were recovered from NMMNH locality L-4005 in the Naashoibito Member, Kirtland Formation, San Juan Basin, northwestern New Mexico. These include fragments of upper and lower molars and a fragmentary premolar that are referred to indeterminate "pediomyids," an isolated p2 or p3 that is referred to an indeterminate peradectid, and two lower molars, an m1 or m2 and an m4 that are referable to the hatcheriforme metatherian Glasbius cf. G. intricatus. Two upper molar fragments are also tentatively referred to Glasbius. These taxa are part of the Alamo Wash local fauna. Glasbius has been proposed as a potential first appearance datum for the Lancian North American Land Mammal 'age' (NALMA). The presence of both Glasbius and the multituberculate Essonodon within the Naashoibito Member support an age correlative with other formations producing Lancian faunas. A Lancian age for the Naashoibito Member suggests that there is a significant disconformity between the top of the late Campanian De-na-zin Member, which is constrained by radiometric dates to be about 73 Ma, and the base of the Naashoibito Member. Terrestrial faunas of Lancian age show differences that have been attributed to provinciality. The widespread distribution of mammalian index taxa indicates some degree of faunal homogeneity during this interval, but the refined stratigraphic correlation of the Alamo Wash local fauna allows us to recognize other taxa as geographically restricted, as opposed to asynchronous.


A recent citation-based study by N. Thongpapanl and myself has found Research-Technology Management (RTM) to be the third-ranked Technology Innovation Management specialty journal (see Linton, J. D. and N. Thongpapanl. "Perspective: Ranking the Technology Innovation Management Journals." Journal of Product Innovation Management, Match 2004, pp. 121-139). This impressive ranking highlights the important role that RTM plays not only for practitioners, but also for academics who study technology and R&D management. The intent of this brief article is to offer some insights into how RTM is used and the role it plays in research on R&D. We ranked the journals on the basis of citation frequency. Briefly, we considered each issue of the ten base journals listed in Table 1 for the five years, 1997 through 2001. For each base journal, the number of articles and citations, in each issue, were recorded and a record made of which journals were cited in each article of the base journal. We summarized this information according to the number of times a journal was cited by a base journal in each of the five years. The total number of citations and number of articles for the base journal were also recorded. By combining this information from each of the base journals it was possible to tank the cited journals based on citation frequency. RTM placed third overall when compared to either specialty journals or all journals. If different measures of impact are used, RTM ranks between second and seventh place for all journals and either second or third in relation to Technology Innovation Management (TIM) specialty journals (see Table 2). The Most Practice-Oriented We found Research-Technology Management to be the most practice-oriented of the top-ranked TIM base journals. It draws from other TIM journals and practitioner-oriented sources. Many TIM journals cite RTM more frequently than RTM cites those journals. It appears that RTM is the source of choice for academics wishing to gain insights from practitioners and to ground academic theory in practice. Consequently, RTM is among the most highly ranked reference sources for many Technology Innovation Management journals, including: R&D Management (2nd), International Journal of Technology Management (5th), Journal of Product Innovation Management (11th), IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (14th), Technovation (14th), and Journal of Engineering and Technology Management (15th). We also found the most frequently referenced RTM articles (those with the greatest impact) to be: 1. "What We've Learned--Managing Invention and Innovation," E. B. Roberts, Jan.-Feb. 1988, pp. 11-29. 2. "Managing R&D as a Strategic Option," G. R. Mitchell and W. F. Hamilton, May-June 1988, pp. 15-22. 3. "Winning Businesses in Product Development: The Critical Success Factors," R. G. Cooper and E.J. Kleinschmidt, July-Aug. 1996, pp. 18-29. 4. "What We've Learned--Managing Human-Resources," M. K. Badawy, Sept.-Oct. 1988, pp. 19-35. 5. "Roadmapping Integrates Business and Technology," P. Groenveld, Sept.-Oct. 1997, pp. 48-55. 6. "Improving the Performance of " New Product Teams," D. G. Ancona and D. Caldwell, Mar.-April 1990, pp. 25-29. Research-Technology Management draws infrequently on a large number of sources, the main ones being RTM itself, Journal of Product Innovation Management and Harvard Business Review. In summary, RTM is the Technology Innovation Management specialty journal that acts as a bridge between practice and theory. Due to this critical role, it is highly respected and referred to by both practitioners and academics. Table 1.--Base Journals and Their First Year of Publication Year Journal Founded IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 1954 Research-Technology Management 1958 Technological Forecasting and Social Change 1969 R&D Management 1970 Research Policy 1971 Technovation 1981 Journal of Engineering and Technology Management 1984 Journal of Product Innovation Management 1984 International Journal of Technology Management 1986 Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 1989 Table 2. …


The Trump administration has made the construction of an "impregnable" 2,000-mile wall across the length of the US-Mexico border a centerpiece of its executive orders on immigration and its broader immigration enforcement strategy. This initiative has been broadly criticized based on: • Escalating cost projections: an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) study recently set the cost at $21.6 billion over three and a half years; • Its necessity given the many other enforcement tools — video surveillance, drones, ground sensors, and radar technologies — and Border Patrol personnel, that cover the US-Mexico border: former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and other experts have argued that a wall does not add enforcement value except in heavy crossing areas near towns, highways, or other "vanishing points" (Kerwin 2016); • Its cost-effectiveness given diminished Border Patrol apprehensions (to roughly one-fourth the level of historic highs) and reduced illegal entries (to roughly one-tenth the 2005 level according to an internal DHS study) (Martinez 2016); • Its efficacy as an enforcement tool: between FY 2010 and FY 2015, the current 654-mile pedestrian wall was breached 9,287 times (GAO 2017, 22); • Its inability to meet the administration's goal of securing "operational control" of the border, defined as "the prevention of all unlawful entries to the United States" (White House 2017); • Its deleterious impact on bi-national border communities, the environment, and property rights (Heyman 2013); and • Opportunity costs in the form of foregone investments in addressing the conditions that drive large-scale migration, as well as in more effective national security and immigration enforcement strategies. The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) has reported on the dramatic decline in the US undocumented population between 2008 and 2014 (Warren 2016). In addition, a growing percentage of border crossers in recent years have originated in the Northern Triangle states of Central America (CBP 2016). These migrants are fleeing pervasive violence, persecution, and poverty, and a large number do not seek to evade arrest, but present themselves to border officials and request political asylum. Many are de facto refugees, not illegal border crossers. This report speaks to another reason to question the necessity and value of a 2,000-mile wall: It does not reflect the reality of how the large majority of persons now become undocumented. It finds that two-thirds of those who arrived in 2014 did not illegally cross a border, but were admitted (after screening) on non-immigrant (temporary) visas, and then overstayed their period of admission or otherwise violated the terms of their visas. Moreover, this trend in increasing percentages of visa overstays will likely continue into the foreseeable future. The report presents information about the mode of arrival of the undocumented population that resided in the United States in 2014. To simplify the presentation, it divides the 2014 population into two groups: overstays and entries without inspection (EWIs). The term overstay, as used in this paper, refers to undocumented residents who entered the United States with valid temporary visas and subsequently established residence without authorization. The term EWI refers to undocumented residents who entered without proper immigration documents across the southern border. The estimates are based primarily on detailed estimates of the undocumented population in 2014 compiled by CMS and estimates of overstays for 2015 derived by DHS. Major findings include the following: • In 2014, about 4.5 million US residents, or 42 percent of the total undocumented population, were overstays. • Overstays accounted for about two-thirds (66 percent) of those who arrived (i.e., joined the undocumented population) in 2014. • Overstays have exceeded EWIs every year since 2007, and 600,000 more overstays than EWIs have arrived since 2007. • Mexico is the leading country for both overstays and EWIs; about one-third of undocumented arrivals from Mexico in 2014 were overstays. • California has the largest number of overstays (890,000), followed by New York (520,000), Texas (475,000), and Florida (435,000). • Two states had 47 percent of the 6.4 million EWIs in 2014: California (1.7 million) and Texas (1.3 million). • The percentage of overstays varies widely by state: more than two-thirds of the undocumented who live in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are overstays. By contrast, the undocumented population in Kansas, Arkansas, and New Mexico consists of fewer than 25 percent overstays.


Image denoising is a fundamental process in image processing, pattern recognition, and computer vision fields. The main goal of image denoising is to enhance or restore a noisy image and help the other system (or human) to understand it better. In this thesis, we discuss some efficient approaches for image denoising using wavelet transforms. Since Donoho proposed a simple thresholding method, many different approaches have been suggested for a decade. They have shown that denoising using wavelet transforms produces superb results. This is because wavelet transform has the compaction property of having only a small number of large coefficients and a large number of small coefficients. In the first part of the thesis, some important wavelet transforms for image denoising and a literature review on the existing methods are described. In the latter part, we propose two different approaches for image denoising. The first approach is to take advantage of the higher order statistical coupling between neighbouring wavelet coefficients and their corresponding coefficients in the parent level with effective translation-invariant wavelet transforms. The other is based on multivariate statistical modeling and the clean coefficients are estimated in a general rule using Bayesian approach. Various estimation expressions can be obtained by a priori probability distribution, called multivariate generalized Gaussian distribution (MGGD). The method can take into account various related information. The experimental results show that both of our methods give comparatively higher PSNR and less visual artifact than other methods.


This paper focuses on energy model based structured output prediction. Though inheriting the benefits from energy-based models to handle the sophisticated cases, previous deep energy-based methods suffered from the substantial computation cost introduced by the enormous amounts of gradient steps in the inference process. To boost the efficiency and accuracy of the energy-based models on structured output prediction, we propose a novel method analogous to the adversarial learning framework. Specifically, in our proposed framework, the generator consists of an inference network while the discriminator is comprised of an energy network. The two sub-modules, i.e., the inference network and the energy network, can benefit each other mutually during the whole computation process. On the one hand, our modified inference network can boost the efficiency by predicting good initializations and reducing the searching space for the inference process; On the other hand, inheriting the benefits of the energy network, the energy module in our network can evaluate the quality of the generated output from the inference network and correspondingly provides a resourceful guide to the training of the inference network. In the ideal case, the adversarial learning strategy makes sure the two sub-modules can achieve an equilibrium state after steps. We conduct extensive experiments to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method.


Finding cost efficient earthing system design with acceptable level of safety might be quite tedious work. Thus, many earthing system engineers try to find the most suitable design either by employing only their best experience or taking advantage of some more complex optimisation programs. Although both approaches might work well under certain circumstances, they might fail either due to counter-intuitiveness of the specific situation or by misunderstanding of the applied optimisation method, its limitations etc. Thus, in this paper, the earthing system design optimisation problem was addressed by analysing optimisation simulation results together with conducted sensitivity analysis. In the paper, a simple double ring earthing system was optimised while using five different optimisation methods. The earthing system was placed in different horizontally stratified soil models and the earthing system was optimised by minimising touch voltages instead of commonly minimised earth potential rise. The earthing system was modelled by Ansys Maxwell software. Apart from using Ansys Maxwell built-in optimisers, the possible solution space has also been mapped by performing sensitivity analysis with changing the earthing system design dimensions and the results of optimisation were compared and validated. It was found out that the Sequential Non-Linear Programming Optimisation technique was quite superior to the other techniques. Additionally, in most cases, the Ansys Maxwell optimiser was able to found optimal solution; however, in some cases, based on the initial conditions, it might get stuck in local minima or the results might be influenced by the solution noise. Additionally, some quite non intuitive dependencies of earthing system electrodes positions had been found when different spatial dimensions constraints are used.


Primary education is currently at the centre of political attention. Reform is constantly under consideration, though the leading proponents of reform are often far removed from the classroom and the world of hard-pressed, demoralised primary teachers. Colin Richards rectifies this by communicating the big picture of primary school culture. He takes the world of the primary school since Plowden (1967) and traces perennial and emergent issues - the issues that need to be understood in order to make a difference to the future of primary education. Through constructive criticism of the national curriculum, OFSTED, ITT and teaching methodology the book will influence and improve the understanding of policy makers, headteachers, governors and teachers and students.


This paper presents calculations for an idea in photorefractive spatial soliton, namely, a dissipative holographic soliton and a Hamiltonian soliton in one dimension form in an unbiased series photorefractive crystal circuit consisting of two photorefractive crystals of which at least one must be photovoltaic. The two solitons are known collectively as a separate Holographic-Hamiltonian spatial soliton pair and there are two types: dark-dark and bright-dark if only one crystal of the circuit is photovoltaic. The numerical results show that the Hamiltonian soliton in a soliton pair can affect the holographic one by the light-induced current whereas the effect of the holographic soliton on the Hamiltonian soliton is too weak to be ignored, i.e., the holographic soliton cannot affect the Hamiltonian one.


Impulsive noise is a major source of degradation in industrial communications. Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is an extended technique used in many industrial communications, however the performance of OFDM systems is reduced under an impulsive noise source. To increase the system performance, impulsive noise detection and suppression techniques can be designed in the communication system. OFDM has high levels of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), thus PAPR reduction techniques, such as selected mapping (SLM), are implemented in OFDM systems. This paper proposes an impulsive noise detection exploiting the statistical properties of the OFDM envelope when applying SLM. The proposed detection technique increases the probability of detection and improves the BER of the communication system compared to other impulsive detection techniques.


The article analyzes dynamics of the volume and annual rate of loan delinquency of the country's population for intermediate quarter dates, compares default retail credit portfolios with similar portfolio of organizations, and determines the main reasons for appearance of population's debts before banks. It is concluded that it is necessary for banks to focus on development of their own tools and technologies of payment recovery, related to determination of early problematic debt for the purpose of taking preventive measures for preventing the appearance of past-due debts, which is possible under the condition of investing money assets into own analytical and technological tools. An approach to segmentation of debts and factors that could be used as indicators in the process of accompanying and servicing of credits are offered.


A protocol family supports a variety of fault models with a single client-server protocol and a single server implementation. Protocol families shift the decision of which types of faults to tolerate from system design time to data creation time. With a protocol family based on a common survivable storage infrastructure, each data-item can be protected from different types and numbers of faults. Thus, a single implementation can be deployed in different environments. Moreover, a single deployment can satisfy the specific survivability requirements of different data for costs commensurate with its requirements.


markdownabstract_A smart mix of legal instruments is not new, but green building
(GB) compliance is. As a way to environmental compliance in general,
the mixing of instruments may also work to overcome the challenges
facing GB compliance. The mix can be justified by the failings of
government regulation, liability, and self-regulation. Therefore in
theory, a smart mix of instruments makes sense, since each of the above
instruments may be subject to imperfect information, private interests,
the inaccuracy of measurement, and/or ineffectiveness. In practice,
instrument mixes have been around in the U.S. GB laws. The theory and
the U.S. case law indicate that, first, GB compliance may owe its survival
to self-regulation in early times, but over time law and policy will play a
big role. Second, in pursuit of GB compliance, governments can make
the most of self-regulation by incorporating industry-based certifications
into statutory mandates. Apart from the traditional carrots and sticks,
governments eventually can enlist private information as behavioral
interventions to encourage GB compliance._


Abbreviations Used in This Book. About the Authors. Preface. Chapter 1: Multidisciplinary Cardiac Rehabilitation. Background. Cardiac rehabilitation. Does cardiac rehabilitation work? Recent evidence for the efficacy of cardiac rehabilitation. Comprehensive cardiac rehabilitation. Comprehensive cardiac rehabilitation in Gloucestershire. The British Association for Cardiac Rehabilitation Standards and Core Components for Cardiac Rehabilitation (2007). Chapter 2: The Cardiac Rehabilitation Programme in Gloucestershire. Cardiac Rehabilitation in Gloucestershire. Where the CR service is delivered. What does CR look like in Gloucestershire? Individual CR. The Individual CR Psychology Service. Attendance at CR in Gloucestershire. Health outcomes. Professional development of the CR team. Psychology and Cardiac Rehabilitation. Psychological factors. Anxiety and depression. Psychological factors and health outcomes. Illness perceptions. Illness perceptions and cardiac events. Illness perceptions and CR. Control theory. Applying psychological theory in CR. Anxiety at assessment. Illness perceptions at assessment. Returning home. The CR group. Chapter 3: The Exercise Programme. Risk stratification for exercise. Using the information. Supervision following exercise. Exercise practical sessions. Calculating heart-rate training ranges. Exercise Practical. Exercise set-up. Warm-up. Circuit exercise. Cool-down. Use of music. Gym programmes. Seated exercises. Chapter 4: Preparing for the First Session. Staff background and training. Eligibility for CR group programmes. The patient pathway. Assessment. Patient invitation. Measurement of outcomes. Timing of CR. Open/closed groups. Venues for CR. Health, safety and essential equipment. Chapter 5: Coronary Heart Disease, Psychology and Exercise (Week 1). 1. Introduction to the Cardiac Rehabilitation Programme. 2. Coronary Heart Disease and its Risk Factors. Coronary heart disease. Angina. Angioplasty and stents. Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). Heart attack (or myocardial infarction). The risk factors for coronary heart disease. 3. The Psychological Side of Having a Cardiac Event. 4. Goal-setting and Pacing. The problem: "activity cycling". The solution: goal-setting and pacing. 5. The Exercise Programme. Monitoring the intensity of exercise. Heart rate. Breathing rate. Rate of Perceived Exertion/Exercise Scale. Exercise diaries. Chapter 6: Aerobic Exercise and Stress (Week 2). 1. Exercise: What Sort and How Much? Session set-up. Exercise-what sort and how much? Activity and exercise. 2. Exercise Practical. 3. Stress and Coronary Heart Disease. Prolonged stress and coronary heart disease. Understanding stress. The effects of stress. The gradual build-up of stress. When stress becomes a problem. Managing stress. Abdominal breathing. Chapter 7: Warming Up, Cooling Down, Angina and Hypertension (Week 3). 1. Warm Up and Cool Down. Warming up. Types of warm-up activity. Cooling down. How do we cool down? Stretching. 2. Exercise Practical. 3. Angina. What is angina? Symptoms of angina. Treatment for angina. Triggers for angina. Managing angina. What do you do if you are having angina? 4. High Blood Pressure (Hypertension). What should your blood pressure be? How can we lower our blood pressure? Chapter 8: Activities to Avoid, Making Changes for Life and Cholesterol (Week 4). 1. Activities to Avoid at the Moment. What would we regard as heavy lifting? 2. Exercise Practical. 3. Mind and Body Relaxation. Deep muscle relaxation. Mental relaxation. Autogenic relaxation. 4. Making Changes for Life. Why make changes for life? Making changes. Setbacks and maintaining behaviour change. 5. Cholesterol. What is cholesterol? What should our cholesterol level be? How to lower and improve our cholesterol levels. Chapter 9: Enough or Too Much Exercise? Diet and Coronary Heart Disease (Week 5). 1. Enough or Too Much Exercise? 2. Exercise Practical. 3. Diet and Coronary Heart Disease. Oily fish. Fats. Fruit and vegetables. Salt. Alcohol. Chapter 10: The Benefits of Regular Exercise and Making the Most of your Recovery (Week 6). 1. The Benefits of Regular Exercise. 2. Exercise Practical. 3. Making the Most of Your Recovery. Thoughts and feelings. Driving. Physical activities. Holidays. Sex. Chapter 11: Staying Fit, Cardiac Medication and the Future! (Week 7). 1. How to Stay Fit for Life. How to recognise that your exercise levels need to be increased. Dealing with setbacks. Maintaining exercise. How to keep motivated to exercise regularly. BACR Phase IV exercise instructor courses. 2. Exercise Practical. 3. Medication. Secondary prevention. Anti-platelets. Beta-blockers. ACE-inhibitors. Statins. 4. The Future! Follow-up sessions. Setbacks. Planning, pacing and goal-setting. Managing stress. Appendix 1: Assessment Document. Appendix 2: Letter of Invitation. References. Index.


The surface plasmon modes of metal nanoparticles provide a way to efficiently enhance the excitation and emission from a fluorescent dye. We have employed DNA-directed assembly to prepare dimers of gold nanoparticles and used their longitudinally coupled plasmon mode to enhance the fluorescence emission of an organic red-emitting dye, Atto-655. The plasmon-enhanced fluorescence of this dye using dimers of 80 nm particles was measured at the single-molecule detection level. The top enhancement factors were above 1000-fold in 71% of the dimers within a total of 32 dimers measured, and in some cases, they reached almost 4000-fold, in good agreement with model simulations. Additionally, fluorescence lifetime correlation analysis enabled the separation of enhanced from nonenhanced emission simultaneously collected in our confocal detection volume. This approach allowed us to recover a short relaxation component exclusive to enhanced emission that is attributed to the interaction of the dye with DNA in the inte...


Greater sophistication of buyers in the wheat market has increased demands for higher quality wheats and focused attention on the consistency of the quality of wheat purchased. In this study, the variability of wheat quality characteristics was examined at different stages of the marketing chain. Variability was measured by variety and at farm and export levels. Comparisons were made with Canada where similar data were available. Different measures of variability were utilized where data were available. Inter-year variability, intra-year variability, and within-lot variability of wheat quality characteristics were measured at different points in the wheat marketing chain in the United States and Canada. Variability of many characteristics was similar between Canada and the United States for changes in annual average levels between years and for within year variability. In both Canada and the United States, higher grades exhibited lower variability than lower grades. In addition, the within-year variability of protein and dockage declined from farm level to export levels for the United States. The variability of average levels for grade and protein segregations between sampling periods in Canada was similar at both the farm production and export levels.


Get where you need to be with CORNERSTONES OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING. Cornerstones delivers a truly unique learning system that is integrated through the entire introductory managerial accounting journey — ensuring students will leave the course with the knowledge they need to be future business leaders. Students are guided through: Building A Strong Foundation: Students need to build a strong foundation of the fundamentals before they can move forward in this course. The unique Cornerstones approach gets them through the fundamentals FASTER so that they can transition to analyzing and applying concepts. Understanding Relationships: Rather than focusing on concepts in isolation, students should understand accounting as a system and recognize how the end result changes based on how the numbers affect each other. CORNERSTONES aids students in this step as an important part in training them to be good decision makers. Making Decisions: Armed with the knowledge they have gained from working through the other aspects of the Cornerstones approach, students are now given the tools to bring their knowledge full-circle and practice making good business decisions. Students love this approach because it presents materials the way they learn. Instructors love it because it gets students to master the foundations more quickly and allows more time to learn and apply the analysis and decision making of accounting. Get There with Cornerstones! Available with InfoTrac Student Collections http://gocengage.com/infotrac. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.


The industry continues to face a challenge understanding and optimizing completion strategies to minimize the impact of infill development on existing wells and achieve larger Stimulated Reservoir Volume (SRV) on infill wells. This paper presents a cost-effective technique for evaluating parent-child interaction using poroelastic pressure responses on the parent wells. The method was employed on a four-well pad in the Eagle Ford to understand diversion effectiveness and the extent of offset depletion.
 The case study comprised the analysis of pressure data sets, covering wellhead pressure data from the nearby parent wells. The method quantifies and interprets pressure signal magnitude and its transient behavior for each completed stage. The well offsetting the parent well was completed using two different completion designs. One half of the lateral was completed without employing diversion, while the other half employed a specific diversion strategy. The primary goal of the case study was to demarcate the areal extent and degree of depletion around the existing wells and determine the effectiveness of using diversion in inhibiting growth towards parent wells.
 The analysis determined fluid and fracture pathways, mainly seen driven by formation stresses, depletion, and completion design in each stage. The case study compared the effects of employing diversion vs. not employing diversion, using the magnitude of pressure responses felt by the parent well. The initiation points of the pressure signals, as felt by the offset wells on each side quantified how quickly and in which direction the newly treated fractures were growing. The pressure responses from multiple parent wells were correlated to understand the areal extent of depletion around each offset producer. This ultimately promotes understanding the difference in pre and post production of the wells and optimizes infill completions for future development.
 Cross well analysis using poroelastic pressure responses is easy to implement and very cost-effective. The proposed method provides a workflow to analyze offset pressure data in a consistent and reproducible manner. This method affords the industry a better understanding of parent well damage and mitigation of child well productivity loss.


Process checkpoint/restart is a very useful technology for process migration, load balancing, crash recovery, rollback transaction, job controlling and many other purposes. Although process migration has not yet been widely used and is not widely available commercial systems, the growing shift of computing facilities from supercomputers to networked workstations and distributed systems is increasing the importance and demand for migration technologies. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of CRAK, an innovative transparent checkpoint/restart package for Linux. CRAK provides transparent migration of Linux networked applications and computing environments without modifying, recompiling, or relinking applications or the operating system. CRAK is the first system for Unix/Linux that provides transparent checkpoint/restart with the following properties: (1) it does not require any modifications of existing operating system or application code and (2) it supports migrating network sockets. Prototype implementations are available for Linux 2.2 and Linux 2.4 kernels.


In conventional finite element analysis of reinforced concrete the
steel bars are normally assumed to lie along the concrete element
edges and very often the bond gripping the steel to the concrete is
assumed to be infinitely stiff. The first assumption makes it
difficult to model all steel bars leading to the inclusion of only a
few representative bars. Shear reinforcement is usually ignored.
Thin concrete cover also creates difficulty by causing long thin
finite elements in that region. The second assumption does not
reflect the true behaviour of the system.
In this research a new method for the modelling of steel in
reinforced concrete by finite element analysis has been developed
which allows all steel reinforcement to be included in the
analysis. The method is based on modelling the steel and concrete
separately, the two materials being interconnected by the bond
forces between them. Thus, bond stiffness is naturally included in
the analysis. Such interconnection of steel and concrete is
achieved by an interface bond matrix which is derived from the
relative displacements between the steel and the concrete at the
steel nodes. A linear bond slip relation is assumed for the bond,
and a linear stress strain relation is assumed for the concrete and
the steel. The work has extended also to nonlinear bond stress-slip
relation. Concrete is represented by 8-noded isoparametric
quadrilateral elements, and the steel is represented by two noded
bar elements. The bond is represented by springs joining each steel
node to all 8-concrete nodes.
The solution of the resulting system of equations is achieved in
an iterative manner which converges quite rapidly, and which
requires less computation than the direct solution needs.
Three types of problems are analysed in two dimension to
demonstrate the application of this new method. These are beam,
cantilever and pullout problems. The first two, being real
problems, demonstrate the ability of the method to handle complex
steel arrangements, thin concrete covers and anchorage of steel,
while the third problem shows the application of load to the steel
rather than to the concrete. Concrete and steel deformations and
stresses are calculated at their nodes. Bond stresses are given at
all steel nodes. In the nonlinear bond analysis, deterioration of
bond will be demonstrated in pullout and pushout tests at high
loads.


Perturbation of addition of second heart field (SHF) cardiac progenitor cells to the poles of the heart tube results in congenital heart defects (CHD). The transcriptional programs and upstream regulatory events operating in different subpopulations of the SHF remain unclear. Here, we profile the transcriptome and chromatin accessibility of anterior and posterior SHF sub-populations at genome-wide levels and demonstrate that Hoxb1 negatively regulates differentiation in the posterior SHF. Spatial mis-expression of Hoxb1 in the anterior SHF results in hypoplastic right ventricle. Activation of Hoxb1 in embryonic stem cells arrests cardiac differentiation, whereas Hoxb1-deficient embryos display premature cardiac differentiation. Moreover, ectopic differentiation in the posterior SHF of embryos lacking both Hoxb1 and its paralog Hoxa1 results in atrioventricular septal defects. Our results show that Hoxb1 plays a key role in patterning cardiac progenitor cells that contribute to both cardiac poles and provide new insights into the pathogenesis of CHD.


This paper presents an analysis of approximately thirty Request for Qualifications/Proposals (RFQ/RFPs) for electricity and related energy services issued by a mix of government, large commercial and industrial energy consumers. The authors evaluate the RFQ/RFPs on a variety of issues such as: economic sector is issuer, specific services requested, pricing approaches, and criteria used to select service provider. They have augmented the analysis with a series of interviews of representatives of the issuing firms. These solicitations are useful in understanding revealed preferences of large customers as retail competition develops. These solicitations also enable us to evaluate a variety of efficiency-related issues, such as potential roles for energy service companies (ESCOs), the specific efficiency services desired, and concerns regarding purchasing power and efficiency services from single suppliers. Initial findings include: (1) solicitations have a number of uses beyond simple purchase mechanisms, such as learning about the emerging market and influencing legislators and regulators; (2) a variety of pricing approaches are emerging depending, significantly, on the objectives of the potential purchaser; (3) providing a green power option is important to many aggregators intending to include residential customers in their aggregations; and (4) customers appear interested in exploring a wide variety of value-addedmore » services, in addition to the purchase of commodity electricity.« less


Traditionally, a simulation of a dense stellar system required choosing an initial model, running an integrator, and analyzing the output. Almost all of the effort went into writing a clever integrator that could handle binaries, triples and encounters between various multiple systems efficiently. Recently, the scope and complexity of these simulations has increased dramatically, for three reasons: 1) the sheer size of the data sets, measured in Terabytes, make traditional `awking and grepping' of a single output file impractical; 2) the addition of stellar evolution data brings qualitatively new challenges to the data reduction; 3) increased realism of the simulations invites realistic forms of `SOS': Simulations of Observations of Simulations, to be compared directly with observations. We are now witnessing a shift toward the construction of archives as well as tailored forms of visualization including the use of virtual reality simulators and planetarium domes, and a coupling of both with budding efforts in constructing virtual observatories. This review describes these new trends, presenting Starlab as the first example of a full software environment for realistic large-scale simulations of dense stellar systems.


This amici curiae brief was filed on behalf of Intellectual Property Law Scholars in WesternGeco LLC v. Ion Geophysical Corp. in the U.S. Supreme Court. The question presented is:
"Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit erred in holding that lost profits arising from prohibited combinations occurring outside of the United States are categorically unavailable in cases in which patent infringement is proven under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)."
In RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 136 S. Ct. 2090 (2016), the Supreme Court articulated a two-step method for assessing the extraterritorial reach of a US statute:
1. A court should determine "whether the presumption against extraterritoriality has been rebutted—that is, whether the statute gives a clear, affirmative indication that it applies extraterritorially." If the presumption is rebutted, the statute may have extraterritorial reach.
2. But even if the presumption has not been rebutted, a court should look at the "focus" of the statute. "If the conduct relevant to the statute's focus occurred in the United States, then the case involves a permissible domestic application even if other conduct occurred abroad; but if the conduct relevant to the focus occurred in a foreign country, then the case involves an impermissible extraterritorial application regardless of any other conduct that occurred in U.S. territory."
The brief of amici curiae makes the follow points:
1. The Supreme Court has not squarely answered the question as to whether the presumption against extraterritoriality applies separately to remedial provisions of a statute generally (here whether it applies to § 284). We argue it does.
2. We argue that the territorial reach § 284 necessarily depends the relevant provision of § 271 used to find liability. Here, under § 271(f), the presumption is rebutted (though it would not be generally for a case under § 271(a), with NTP v. Research in Motion may be a counter-example when one looks at the "focus" at step 2)).
3. We also argue that the Court should offer more guidance as to what happens even if the RJR test is satisfied. RJR Nabisco seems to operate in binary fashion -- either the statute has extraterritorial reach or it doesn't. But Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., and earlier Supreme Court decision also interpreting 35 U.S.C. § 271(f), suggests that the presumption may still have a role in interpreting a statute. We offer two suggestions on how the presumption should operate in this context. First, courts should seriously and formally consider issues of comity and potential conflicts with foreign law in assessing whether to apply U.S. law extraterritorially. Second, that territoriality should remain relevant in assessments of proximate cause.


Recently, applications of real-time polling service (rtPS) in IEEE 802.16 wireless networks have gained considerable popularity. These applications generate large amounts of real time traffic in the network and thus maintaining the quality of service (QoS) such as packet delay requirement in rtPS dominant networks is critical. Existing dimensioning methodology does not consider QoS parameters of rtPS in network dimensioning. Moreover, exhaustive and time-consuming simulations are required to evaluate the performance and QoS of rtPS. To overcome this problem, we propose an improved radio network dimensioning framework which considers QoS parameters of rtPS in network dimensioning. In this framework, an analytical model is developed to evaluate the capacity and performance of rtPS in IEEE 802.16 wireless networks. The proposed framework provides a fast and accurate means of finding the trade-off between system load and packet delay, thus providing network operators with an analytical tool that jointly considers coverage, capacity and QoS requirements for obtaining the minimum number of sites required. The accuracy of the proposed model is validated through simulations.


International Journal of Exercise Science 6(3) : 242-249, 2013. Fatigue is a common neuromuscular factor examined in relation to risk of ACL injury. Unfortunately, variations between the protocols used to induce fatigue in studies examining this phenomenon may have contributed to reported inconsistencies in the effects of fatigue on movements with high-risk of ACL injury. In addition, the ecological validity of fatigue experienced as a result of protocols commonly administered in the experimental setting is unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the ecological validity, using basketball competition as the criterion measure, of two fatigue protocols commonly used to study the effect of fatigue on ACL injury risk. One male basketball player with competitive collegiate experience was recruited to participate in this study. Three dimensional angular kinematics of the lower extremity at the point of peak knee flexion were measured during a jump landing task before and after the completion of three fatigue protocols: a basketball game, a unilateral squatting and drop landing fatigue protocol, and a unilateral isokinetic knee flexion/extension fatigue protocol. We observed significant (p<.05) differences between fatigue protocols in knee flexion, knee rotation, knee abduction, hip rotation, and hip abduction during the landing task. In this study the fatigue-induced changes in landing biomechanics experienced as a result of basketball competition were not like those observed in the two fatigue protocols tested. These findings suggest that the effects of fatigue on ACL injury risk may be activity-specific and future investigations may benefit from the development of ecologically valid sport-specific fatigue protocols.


Object-oriented (OO) software engineering techniques are often used with programming languages, but they also apply to relational databases. OO techniques are not only helpful for determining database structure, but also for designing stored procedure code. In fact, we were surprised by the magnitude of the stored procedure benefits. OO techniques boost development productivity as well as the quality, clarity, and maintainability of the resulting code.


Job shop scheduling problems are computationally complex combinatorial optimization problems. Genetic algorithms have been used in various forms and in combination with other algorithms to solve job shop scheduling problems. A partially flexible job shop with precedence constraints increases this complex behaviour. There are two main parts to optimizing ajob shop, the routing and the scheduling. The objective here is to get consistent optimal makespan using a genetic algorithm. This paper firstly, presents a simulation approach for the considered partially flexible job shop scheduling problem. Which take into account the precedence constraints and reduce situations of deadlock. To solve the partially flexible job shop scheduling problem a genetic algorithm was used and improved. It utilise a genetic crossovers for routing and a new random shuffle feature is introduced for the scheduling. The computational results have shown that the algorithm performs well in terms of finding a consistent optimal schedule for the given problem


Aim and scope: To investigate the inhibitory effect of subconjunctival application of VEGF antibodies bevacizumab, ranibizumab, pegaptanib, and HER2 antibody trastuzumab on corneal neovascularization in a rat model of experimental corneal neovascularization. Material and method: Thirty male Wistar albino rats were included in the study. A chemical burn was induced in central cornea of one eye of the rats by a 75% silver nitrate and 25% potassium nitrate stick. Rats were randomly divided into five groups so that each group contained 6 subjects. Right after the chemical burn, 0.1 ml serum physiologic was injected subconjuctivally in control group (group 1). 1.25 mg/0.05 ml bevacizumab was injected in group 2; 1.2 mg/0.1 ml trastuzumab was injected in group 3; 0.5 mg/0.05 ml ranibizumab was injected in group-4; and 0.3 mg/0.1 ml pegaptanib was injected in group 5. On the 8th day of the experiment, rat corneas were photographed by digital photo-camera. Later, eyes of the sacrificed rats were enucleated and corneal speciements were histopathologically analyzed. The percentages of neovascularization on corneal photographs were examined with digital image analysis. Results: The percentage of corneal neovascularization in all treatment groups was found to be significantly lower than the control group (p < 0.05). Bevacizumab was found to be more effective than all other agents (p < 0.05). While the degree of inflammation and vascularization in bevacizumab and trastuzumab groups were significantly lower than the control group (p < 0.05), the difference was not significant in ranibizumab and pegaptanib groups (p > 0.05). In all treatment groups, fibroblast intensity was significantly lower than the control group. In terms of corneal thickness, no significant difference was observed between treatment and control groups (p > 0.05). Conclusion: Bevacizumab, ranibizumab, pegaptanib, and trastuzumab were found effective for the inhibition of corneal NV. In our study we detected that the most effective agent was bevacizumab.


Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is emerging as a popular learning approach utilized by both educational institutions and business organizations. Learning Recommender Systems (RSs) can help e-learners to cope with the data overload difficulty and suggest useful items that users may wish to use. This research aims to examine the design and implementation of personalized RS that supports individual learning in the workplace. First, a hybrid knowledge recommendation technique is proposed by combing content-based method with feedback learning method to adapt to the dynamic preference of users. Second, the design and implementation of a personalized knowledge recommender system using proposed technique in a case company is presented. Quantitative and qualitative data are collected to validate the system and evaluate its performance and impact. The preliminary results show that involving enterprise experts and target users in the system design phase can improve the system transparency and users' trust in the system. It is also found that users' learning attitude can be positively influenced by the system experience. This research provides important implications on employing intelligent recommender system to support workplace learning.


Chaotic dynamics are expected during and after planet formation, and a leading mechanism to explain large eccentricities of gas giant exoplanets is planet-planet gravitational scattering. The same scattering has been invoked to explain misalignments of planetary orbital planes with respect to their host star's spin. However, an observational puzzle is presented by Kepler-56, which has two inner planets (b and c) that are nearly coplanar with each other, yet are more than 45 degrees inclined to their star's equator. Thus the spin-orbit misalignment might be primordial. Instead, we further develop the hypothesis in the discovery paper, that planets on wider orbits generated misalignment through scattering, and as a result gently torqued the inner planets away from the equator plane of the star. We integrated the equations of motion for Kepler-56 b and c along with an unstable outer system initialized with either two or three Jupiter-mass planets. We address here whether the violent scattering that generates large mutual inclinations can leave the inner system intact, tilting it gently. In almost all of the cases initially with two outer planets, either the inner planets remain nearly coplanar with each other in the star's equator plane, or they are scattered violently to high mutual inclination and high spin-orbit misalignment. On the contrary, of the systems with three unstable outer planets, a spin-orbit misalignment large enough to explain the observations is generated 28% of the time for coplanar inner planets, which is consistent with the observed frequency of this phenomenon reported so far. We conclude that multiple-planet scattering in the outer parts of the system may account for this new population of coplanar planets hosted by oblique stars.


These photographs make reference to the work of the French 19th century Landscape painter, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot. In particular these works depict a subject often repeated in Corot's work, the bent tree, a motif which dominated his painting in the 1860s. During this period Corot became increasingly aware in the work of the early photographers, and his interest led him to use a more suppressed palette influenced by the monochromatic tones of early photography. The photographs in this series not only make direct reference to the composition, but also the subdued colour of Corot's painting of this period. Details: Series of two works, entitled, 'Flooded Tree (after Jean Baptiste Camille Corot)' (2006) colour lightjet photographic print mounted on dibond 48.5cm x 55.5cm, 'Broken Tree (after Jean Baptiste Camille Corot)' (2003) colour c.type photographic print mounted on dibond 48.5 cm x 55.5 cm. Edition of three.


At the interface with solids, liquid molecules tend to adopt a particular structural arrangement, which depends on the local interplay of forces between the solid and the liquid. As a result, this interfacial liquid does not behave like bulk liquid, often exhibiting higher densification and ordering (solvation structure) that strongly depends on the local properties of the solid surface. Being a link between a solid and its surroundings, the interfacial liquid largely determines how a particular solid will interact with its environment. This is particularly relevant for nanomedicine where synthetic nano-objects are injected in a liquid environment for therapeutic purposes. Experimentally, little is known about the local structure and properties of interfacial liquid due to the lack of techniques offering sufficient resolution over inhomogeneous surfaces. Recently we demonstrated how amplitude-modulation atomic force microscopy (AM-AFM) could be used to probe and quantify solid-liquid interfaces locally and with sub-nanometer resolution. Here we apply this technique to compare the interface formed by selected solids with water, dimethylsulfoxide and 1-hexanol. The results highlight differences in the solvation structure formed by the different liquids over a same solid. Importantly, our results show that AM-AFM images reflect the structure of the interfacial liquid, which is not necessarily following the atomic structure of the interfaced solid in a trivial manner. These findings have important implications for the interpretation of AM-AFM images in liquid.


Background: Almost all intellectual disabilities research is conducted in urban areas, and very little is known about the population of adults with intellectual disabilities living in rural areas. It is important to know whether there are significant rural-urban differences, in order to provide appropriate services and address inequalities. In particular, the general rural population is known to be disadvantaged with respect to access to healthcare and social exclusion. Adults with intellectual disabilities are also disadvantaged in these areas, and therefore adults with intellectual disabilities living in rural areas may have a double disadvantage.

Method: A sample of adults with intellectual disabilities living in a rural area on the West Coast of Scotland participated in a face-to-face semi-structured interview; their medical notes were also accessed. Demographics, healthcare, access to services, daytime opportunities, access to community facilities, recent contact with others, the quality of personal relationships, and area deprivation by postcode were measured. Data were already available for a pre-existing urban sample. Data were analysed using direct comparison and binary logistic regression.

Results: A representative sample of adults with intellectual disabilities from rural (n=39) and urban (n=633) areas were compared. There were no significant rural-urban differences over a wide range of variables including: age, gender, ethnicity, level of intellectual disabilities, mental ill health and common co-morbidities such as mobility, visual impairment, incontinence and epilepsy. Both direct comparison and binary logistic regression showed the rural sample to have had significantly more contact with primary (Odds Ratio = 4.02, 95% CI 1.56 -10.35, P = 0.004) and secondary health care (OR = 3.93, 95% CI = 1.81 – 8.55, P = 0.001.) Participants from rural areas were significantly more likely to have any regular daytime opportunity (Odds Ratio = 10.8, 95% CI = 2.3 – 51.5) including employment (OR = 22.1, 95% CI = 5.7 - 85.5) and attending resource centres (OR = 6.7, 95% CI = 2.6 – 17.2) than were participants from urban areas. They were also more likely to have been on holiday (OR = 17.8, 95% CI = 4.9 – 60.1); however, were less likely to use community facilities on a regular basis. Participants from urban and rural areas had a similar number of contacts with other people in a wide range of situations, but the quality of relationships may have been less close in rural areas. Finally, rural participants lived in significantly less deprived areas (Mann Whitney U = 7826, Z = -3.675, P ≤ 0.001).

Conclusion: There were no significant demographic and health differences between the rural and urban samples. The study was underpowered with respect to some of these findings, and some results may reflect a Type II error. Nevertheless this is an important negative finding. Contrary to original hypothesis, the rural sample was found to have better access to healthcare services, had better opportunities and lived in less deprived areas than adults with intellectual disabilities living in urban areas. However, the results suggest that the rural sample may not have held such positive or close relationships, and this may be important when considering the subjective experience of social exclusion.

Additional qualitative sub-study: A qualitative sub-study investigated the difficulties experienced with recruitment to the original study. 10 semi-structured telephone interviews were held with professionals who had helped with recruitment. These were transcribed verbatim and anonymised, then analyzed using the Framework approach. A number of themes arose, including participant factors (interview anxiety, worry about negative feedback), the importance of the researcher (using a personal approach, meeting potential participants prior to recruitment) and motivators (enjoyment of the research interview (participant), obtaining a medical assessment (carer)). The themes were then used to generate strategies to improve recruitment to intellectual disabilities research: these include the research team applying a more personal approach, and considering motivators for both participants and carers. The findings of this study have implications in terms of both time and money. However, successful recruitment is essential to intellectual disabilities research, and the results can be used by intellectual disabilities researchers to review and improve their recruitment processes.


Abdominal obesity is related to significant morbidity and mortality and differs by ethnicity; however, the relation between diet and abdominal obesity has not been extensively studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the dietary and lifestyle determinants of abdominal obesity in a multi-ethnic population. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 617 Canadians of Aboriginal, South Asian, Chinese, and European origins, with diet evaluated using validated, culture specific, interviewer-administered FFQs, and abdominal obesity measured as waist-hip ratio (WHR). The mean proportion of energy intake from protein in the diet was 17.4 vs. 15.8% comparing the lowest and highest tertiles of WHR. Energy-adjusted protein substituted for an equivalent amount of carbohydrate was associated with a reduction in WHR (difference in WHR for every g/d increase in protein intake = -0.0005, P = 0.01) after accounting for age, sex, ethnicity, smoking status, BMI, alcohol intake, height, physical activity, and total energy. Fat or total energy were not related to WHR in the same linear regression model. Smoking was positively and physical activity inversely related to WHR in the multivariate model independent of BMI and other potential confounders. Substituting a modest amount of protein for carbohydrate may reduce abdominal obesity in a diverse multi-ethnic population. Smoking was positively related to abdominal obesity after accounting for BMI.


The influence of seed provenances and seedling production methods on quality of one and two years old seedlings of Austrian pine were investigated. Seeds from three provenances of Austrian pine (Goc, Studenica and Sargan) were used for seedlings production, combined with three production methods: (i) the modified seedbeds (bare-root), (ii) the container type Plantagrah II and (iii) the container type Gocko. Provenance, as well as the combined influence of provenance and production method had minimal influence on the variability of one and two years old Austrian pine seedlings. Nevertheless, the production method had the highest influence. The production system, besides its importance in nursery, will have a high influence on seedlings growth during the first year after planting. Considering the results of this study (e.g. the highest values of the diameter, number of lateral roots, shoot and root dry weight, and quality index and the lowest value of SQ and satisfactory value of S:R), we can conclude that the seedlings produced in container type Gocko led to the highest seedlings quality, recommended especially for afforestation on hard sites.


Abstract : In early October 2016, the group that calls itself the Islamic State killed two Kurdish soldiers with an explosive device hidden inside a drone. While terrorist groups have long had a fascination with drones and experimented with their use, the incident was a first for a terror group, and it potentially represents the leading edge of a wave of similar incidents that could follow in the months, years and decades ahead. Much has been made of the threat of terror use of drones, but little empirical and historical work has been done to support our understanding of this phenomenon and its evolution. This report seeks to address this gap by providing a review of, and framework to situate, cases in which terrorist entities have either shown a substantive interest in drones or have used them. It evaluates both individual use cases and the activity of groups that have used drones frequently enough to constitute their having a program. These cases are then complemented by a review of the creative ways that private citizens have used drones, in order to provide decisionmakers with a firmer baseline of both demonstrated terror capability and what lies within the immediate realm of possibility, given what has already been achieved by others. This report also includes an overview of new technologies that are likely to further complicate the scope of this developing threat.


Loanwords are a strategy to expand the vocabulary of a language, by which a word is borrowed from a donor language and directly incorporated into a recipient language. In written language, these borrowed units can go through a process of graphic adaptation to the recipient language, or they can preserve their original orthography. The use of loanwords may be motivated by the need to describe a new reality or just by linguistic creativity and expressivity. One of the languages that most frequently lends lexical units to Catalan is, after English, Spanish (32% of all loanwords, and 9.2% of all neologisms). Within Spanish loanwords we find a high percentage of (graphically) adapted neologisms. Overall, the adapted loanwords represent 48.9% of all Spanish loanwords. This high proportion of adapted loanwords reflects the degree of assimilation of certain lexical units to the Catalan orthographic system. Some lexical units show great formal variation (pelotazo, pelotaso, pelotasso), due to fluctuation between the normative form in Spanish and different degrees of graphic adaptation to Catalan, and also great productivity (apijar, pijada, pijerio…). The typological proximity and the contact between both languages result in speakers using words in Catalan that they do not perceive as loanwords from a psychological perspective. This phenomenon is known as interference. In our data, approximately 60% of all loanwords may be the result of this phenomenon. This proportion is fairly high if we bear in mind that our extraction sources undergo several editing filters. Regarding the thematic aspects, the most outstanding feature is the large number of derogatory nouns and adjectives, used mostly as personal qualifiers. We also find numerous units related to Spanish and Latin American cultural expressions. In regards to the occurrence of Spanish loanwords across the different territories, the data show great variability. The scarce coincidence of lexical units across regions leads us to the conclusion that there is a high degree of idiosyncrasy regarding the use of Spanish loanwords in each territory. Most units recorded in a specific region are not found in the rest of territories. The analysis of Spanish loanwords shows that, due mostly to cultural proximity and typological similarity of the Spanish and Catalan languages, they are one of the most frequent strategies to incorporate new words into written Catalan language.


Anthocyanins have been studied as potential antimicrobial agents against Helicobacter pylori. We investigated whether the biosynthesis and secretion of cytotoxin-associated protein A (CagA) and vacuolating cytotoxin A (VacA) could be suppressed by anthocyanin treatment in vitro. H. pylori reference strain 60190 (CagA+/VacA+) was used in this study to investigate the inhibitory effects of anthocyanins; cyanidin 3-O-glucoside (C3G), peonidin 3-O-glucoside (Peo3G), pelargonidin 3-O-glucoside (Pel3G), and malvidin 3-O-glucoside (M3G) on expression and secretion of H. pylori toxins. Anthocyanins were added to bacterial cultures and Western blotting was used to determine secretion of CagA and VacA. Among them, we found that C3G inhibited secretion of CagA and VacA resulting in intracellular accumulation of CagA and VacA. C3G had no effect on cagA and vacA expression but suppressed secA transcription. As SecA is involved in translocation of bacterial proteins, the down-regulation of secA expression by C3G offers a mechanistic explanation for the inhibition of toxin secretion. To our knowledge, this is the first report suggesting that C3G inhibits secretion of the H. pylori toxins CagA and VacA via suppression of secA transcription.


Virtualization is a key technology for cloud based data centers to implement the vision of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and to promote effective server consolidation and application consolidation. However, current implementation of virtual machine monitor does not provide sufficient performance isolation to guarantee the effectiveness of resource sharing, especially when the applications running on multiple virtual machines of the same physical machine are competing for computing and communication sources. In this paper, we present our performance measurement study of network I/O applications in virtualized cloud. We focus our measurement based analysis on performance impact of co-locating applications in a virtualized cloud in terms of throughput and resource sharing effectiveness, including the impact of idle instances on applications that are running concurrently on the same physical host. Our results show that by strategically co-locating network I/O applications, performance improvement for cloud consumers can be as high as 34%, and the cloud providers can achieve over 40% performance gain.


Abstract. Observed correlations between short-term decreases in cosmic ray ionisation and cloud and aerosol properties have been attributed to short-term decreases in the ion-induced nucleation rate. We use a global aerosol microphysics model to determine whether a 10 day reduction of 15% in the nucleation rate could generate a statistically significant response in aerosol concentrations and optical properties. As an upper limit to the possible effect of changes in ion-induced nucleation rate, we perturb the total nucleation rate, which has been shown to generate particle concentrations and nucleation events in reasonable agreement with global observations. When measured against a known aerosol control state, the model predicts a 0.15% decrease in global mean cloud condensation nucleus concentration at the surface. However, taking into account the variability in aerosol, no statistically significant response can be detected in concentrations of particles with diameters larger than 10 nm, in cloud condensation nuclei with diameters larger than 70 nm, or in the Angstrom exponent. The results suggest that the observed correlation between short-term decreases in cosmic ray ionisation and cloud and aerosol properties cannot be explained by associated changes in the large-scale nucleation rate.


This article looks at girlhood in an historical and culturally specific context, through close textual analysis of a central narrative from a key British girls' comic of the 1950s. Girl, published by Hulton Press, predominantly addressed issues around femininity, girlhood and class in that period, often linking reading with other activities considered "appropriate" for girls. I will explore how Girl articulates gender and class and also how it encouraged the mainly middle-class readership to make ballet an important aspect of their cultural practice, popularising ballet classes across Britain. In doing so, I shall focus on the narrative, "Belle of the Ballet." I will also look at other texts of the period, including Bunty, launched in 1958 by DC Thomson, and show how the representation of ballet changed in later comics for girls, relating this to shifting constructions of girlhood.


Ribi}, I.: Sustainable redevelopment of hazardous waste landfills – the hazardous waste landfill of Sovjak (Rijeka, Croatia) as case study. Nat. Croat., Vol. 17, No. 4., 375–384, 2008, Zagreb. Sustainable landfill redevelopment is a concept that proposes restoration of a degraded environment, social benefits for the community and economic benefits for possible investors. In the scope of this study a conceptual framework for sustainable redevelopment is presented and applied as a post project analysis in the case of the hazardous waste landfill of Sovjak. A comparative representation of the results obtained by the introduction of the concept of sustainable redevelopment is provided. The comparison of the achieved results shows that sustainable redevelopment will provide social benefits to a community living in close proximity to the hazardous waste landfill; threats to human health are eliminated, property values are restored, and the project presents social progress, economic growth and the possibility of employment. Furthermore an overview of the present state of the environment influenced by the hazardous waste landfill of Sovjak is described. Emphasis here is given to contamination of groundwater, due to the specific karst terrain in which the landfill is located, and its threat to human health.


Mortality caused by harvesting can select for life history changes in the harvested stock. Should this possibility be taken into account in the management of renewable resources? I compare the performance of different harvest strategies when evolutionary change is accounted for with a help of an age-structured population dynamics model. Assuming that age of first reproduction is the only evolving trait, harvesting of only mature individuals selects for delayed maturation and results in increased sustainable yields. Unselective harvesting of both mature and immature fish selects for earlier maturation which causes the sustainable yield to decrease. Constant stock size and constant harvest rate strategies perform equally well in terms of maximum sustainable yield, both before and after evolutionary change. The maximum sustainable yield for fixed quota strategies is lower. All those strategies have similar evolutionary consequences given a similar average harvest rate. Coevolutionary dynamics between fish stock and the stock manager indicate that the evolutionary benefits of selective harvesting are attainable without incurring yield losses in the near future.


The relationship between the Bayesian approach and the minimum description length approach is established. We sharpen and clarify the general modeling principles minimum description length (MDL) and minimum message length (MML), abstracted as the ideal MDL principle and defined from Bayes's rule by means of Kolmogorov complexity. The basic condition under which the ideal principle should be applied is encapsulated as the fundamental inequality, which in broad terms states that the principle is valid when the data are random, relative to every contemplated hypothesis and also these hypotheses are random relative to the (universal) prior. The ideal principle states that the prior probability associated with the hypothesis should be given by the algorithmic universal probability, and the sum of the log universal probability of the model plus the log of the probability of the data given the model should be minimized. If we restrict the model class to finite sets then application of the ideal principle turns into Kolmogorov's minimal sufficient statistic. In general, we show that data compression is almost always the best strategy, both in model selection and prediction.


Evidence from cell culture studies indicates that β-carotene-(BC)-derived apocarotenoid signaling molecules can modulate the activities of nuclear receptors that regulate many aspects of adipocyte physiology. Two BC metabolizing enzymes, the BC-15,15′-oxygenase (Bcmo1) and the BC-9′,10′-oxygenase (Bcdo2) are expressed in adipocytes. Bcmo1 catalyzes the conversion of BC into retinaldehyde and Bcdo2 into β-10′-apocarotenal and β-ionone. Here we analyzed the impact of BC on body adiposity of mice. To genetically dissect the roles of Bcmo1 and Bcdo2 in this process, we used wild-type and Bcmo1 -/- mice for this study. In wild-type mice, BC was converted into retinoids. In contrast, Bcmo1-/- mice showed increased expression of Bcdo2 in adipocytes and β-10′-apocarotenol accumulated as the major BC derivative. In wild-type mice, BC significantly reduced body adiposity (by 28%), leptinemia and adipocyte size. Genome wide microarray analysis of inguinal white adipose tissue revealed a generalized decrease of mRNA expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) target genes. Consistently, the expression of this key transcription factor for lipogenesis was significantly reduced both on the mRNA and protein levels. Despite β-10′-apocarotenoid production, this effect of BC was absent in Bcmo1-/- mice, demonstrating that it was dependent on the Bcmo1-mediated production of retinoids. Our study evidences an important role of BC for the control of body adiposity in mice and identifies Bcmo1 as critical molecular player for the regulation of PPARγ activity in adipocytes


The Boulder Conglomerate is the Lower Carboniferous sedimentary allochthon deposited in the second order half graben created by major listric normal faults in the Navan area. The base of the Boulder Conglomerate comprises erosive-based, highly immature rock avalanches which are interbedded with hemipelagic limestone. Sulphide mineralisation in the autochthon, the Pale Beds Ore, is truncated by the fault-generated unconformity and is reworked as clasts and matrix into the basal Boulder Conglomerate. Matrix-deficient breccia beds deposited on the unconformity possess mineralisation as cement to interclast porosity. This cement is contiguous with replacement and fracture-cementing mineralisation in limestone strata beneath the unconformity. Mineralisation associated within the interbeds to the Boulder Conglomerate occurs as early diagenetic concretions and as stratiform replacement. The 34S of these sulphides ranges from -21‰ to +1‰.

The rock avalanches are overlain by clast-bearing carbonate mud strata. The carbonate mud is replaced by pyrite and paragenetically later sphalerite and galena. The isotopic range of 34S for pyrite (-32‰ to -35‰) is distinct from that of the zinc and lead sulphides (-18‰ to +6‰).

The uppermost Boulder Conglomerate is characterised by slumped and brecciated mineralisation which is dominated by pyrite. The 34S values of the in situ and reworked mineralisation range from -40‰ to -23‰.

The Thinly Bedded Unit overlies the Boulder Conglomerate and comprises interlayered shales and calcarenite and laterally impersistent, erosive-based, graded bioclastic and oolitic microbeccias. Mineralisation occurs as selective replacement to the microbreccia and as stratiform sphalerite and pyrite mud. The latter occur in-situ as laminae and as channelised debris flows. The reworked sulphide mud supports plant fragments which exhibit exceptional preservation by pyrite, sphalerite and galena. The 34S of the laminated and reworked sulphides ranges from -37‰ to -41‰. (DXN008,313)


Technological latecomer countries face a dilemma, they need to pursue pro-active industrial policies to compensate for manifold disadvantages vis-à-vis established competitors, but at the same time, due to neopatrimonial politics and capacity constraints, their institutions are rarely in a position to correct market failure effectively. Do the risks of misallocation outweigh the benefits and should these countries abstain from industrial policies? Country studies show that selective industry support is indeed frequently used as a source of patronage and clientelism, and implementation is often ineffective. Two of the surveyed countries—Tunisia and Ethiopia—with neopatrimonial traits nevertheless pursue ambitious agendas of industrial modernization and implement them fairly effectively. Scarcity of fossil energy and mineral resources, the need to build legitimacy on increasing social welfare, and committed leadership distinguish them from worse performers. JEL classification: L52, O14


This dissertation explores the importance of the payo® structure and beliefs for noncooperative games. Chapter 2 considers instances where the payo®s and the objectives may not be very clear to the players or the analyst. We develop a model for analyzing such games using a vector of reference utilities which are included in the de nition of the game and assumed to be shared by all players. These are used to obtain the true utilities in the game. Conditions for the existence of equilibrium are identi ed by allowing players to have beliefs about the others. The solution concept is applied to the Traveler's Dilemma and a duopoly. In Chapter 3 a non-cooperative model of network formation is developed. Agents form links based on the cost of the link and its assessed bene t. Link formation is one-sided, i.e., agents can initiate links with other agents without their consent, provided the agent forming the link makes the appropriate investment. The model builds on the work of Bala and Goyal, but allows for agent heterogeneity by allowing for di®erent failure probabilities. We investigate Nash networks that exhibit connectedness and redundancy and provide an explicit characterization of star networks. E±ciency and Pareto-optimality issues are discussed through examples. We also explore the consequences of three alternative speci cations which address criticisms of such communication networks. Chapter 4 examines noncooperative fuzzy games. Both in fuzzy noncooperative games and in abstract economies, players impose mutual restrictions on their available strategic choices. Here we combine these two theories: A player tries to minimize the restrictions he imposes on others, while respecting the restrictions imposed by others on him, but does not explicitly pursue any other objectives of his own. We establish existence of an equilibrium in this framework. In Chapter 5 normal form game is modeled using tools from fuzzy set theory. We extend the decision theory framework of Bellman and Zadeh (1970) to a game-theoretic setting. The formulation is preliminary with some results and examples.


SUMMARY The incidence of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhoea (CDAD) was investigated retrospectively at a 690-bed teaching hospital for the period 1983–92. Our aims were to determine: (i) the distribution by age and sex of patients with CDAD, (ii) the possibility of a seasonal trend and, (iii) the influence of infection control procedures, contamination of the hospital environment and the use of third-generation cephalosporins. The laboratory diagnosis of CDAD was based on demonstration of the organism by stool culture and/or detection of specific cytotoxin in stool filtrates. C. difficile was detected in 917 patients who were being investigated for diarrhoeal illness. Yearly isolations varied from a low of 49 in 1983 to a high of 120 in 1990 (Chi square for linear trend 128·8; P < 0·005). Most patients were elderly, with 63% aged 60 years or more; the majority (59%) were female. The relationship between culture of C. difficile and detection of cytotoxin in faecal extracts was also examined. Sixty percent of a sample of 132 isolates from patients in whom faecal cytotoxin was not detected produced cytotoxin in vitro, suggesting that culture is a more sensitive indicator of infection with C. difficile than cytotoxin detection. When the total number of faecal specimens received in the laboratory was used as a denominator there was an increase in the number of incident cases of CDAD between 1983 and 1990, apart from 1986. When occupied bed days was used as the denominator a similar trend was observed with a peak in 1990. These increases correlated with an increase in the use of third-generation cephalosporins at SCGH between 1983 and 1989 (Pearson's correlation coefficient, 0·90). The introduction of Body Substance Isolation in 1989, in conjunction with other infection control procedures, appears to have halted the rise, despite a continuing use of broad-spectrum cephalosporins. In order to reduce the number of cases of CDAD, either a reduction in levels of environmental contamination or a reduction in the use of third-generation cephalosporins is required. If this can be achieved the economic consequences, in terms of an opportunity cost, will be considerable.


The ideal on-the-job reference guide for project managers who use Microsoft Project 2010 This must-have guide to using Microsoft Project 2010 is written from a real project manager's perspective and is packed with information you can use on the job. The book explores using Project 2010 during phases of project management, reveals best practices, and walks you through project flow from planning through tracking to closure. This valuable book follows the processes defined in the PMBOK Guide, Fourth Edition, and also provides exam prep for Microsoft's MCTS: Project 2010 certification. Explains Microsoft Project 2010, the leading software tool for project managers Shows working project managers practical ways to use Project 2010 on the job Delves into project planning, tracking, reporting, and project closure, and explores best practices for all phases of planning Reveals new software features, including tools that show what factors are affecting the schedule, a "what-if" scenario builder, and how slippages affect other aspects of the project Follows processes and procedures from The Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Fourth Edition Covers the skill set required for the MOS: Microsoft Project 2010, Managing Projects certification, so you can use this book for exam prep This valuable book follows the processes defined in the PMBOK Guide, Fourth Edition, and also provides exam prep for Microsoft's MCTS: Project 2010, Managing Projects certification. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.