Context A recent concern and topic of many publications in the last three years has been the quality of health information and services for the public on the Internet. Objectives To identify and summarize studies published in the peer-reviewed literature evaluating the quality of information and services for consumers on the Internet, including information published on web sites, information on newsgroups and mailing lists and other venues such as email contacts with doctors, as well as studies evaluating the quality of ehealth services such as cyberdoctors and cyberpharmacies. Data Sources MEDLINE and PREMEDLINE (1966 - May 2000), Science Citation Index (1992-May 2000), Social Sciences Citation Index (1992- May 2000), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (1992-May 2000) and a personal bibliographic database. Study Selection We included empirical studies where investigators searched the Internet systematically for specific health information or clearly define a set of specific services to be included, evaluated the quality of information or services found, and reported quantitative data. Data Extraction Study characteristics, medical domain, search strategies used, quality criteria and methodology of quality assessment, results (number of sites rated as sufficient pertaining to a quality), quality and rigor of study methodology and reporting. Data Synthesis A total of 41 studies met the inclusion criteria, dealing either with content of websites, information on e-commerce sites, quality of online-care or community venues. A) Content: 29 evaluated information on websites, of those 5 evaluated information on websites from the field of pediatrics, 3 from oncology, 3 pharmacology information, 2 nutrition information, 4 general clinical information and 12 specific information from other clinical disciplines. Studies varied widely in methodology, quality and results. Among the 29 studies dealing with quality of health information on websites, one study evaluated the authority of source, 19 studies checked sites for presence or absences of technical criteria (such as disclosure of sponsorship, authorship, presence of references or last update), three evaluated readability, 20 evaluated the accuracy of information, and 12 content completeness. B) E-Commerce: Three studies dealt with drug information on e-commerce sites. To evaluate the quality authors extracted prices, checked for completeness of online-history taking and/or information provided on the site e.g. pertaining to contraindications or the presence/absence of disclaimers and/or liability waivers. Only one of these three studies actually used the service by ordering drugs, allowing to evaluate quality of online-advice, qualification of cyberdocs, delivery time, reasons for non-delivery. C) Care: Five studies dealt with the quality of online consultations, of them one dealt with advice given by ordinary physicians in response to a unsolicited fictionous patient request, two evaluated the responses of cyberdocs soliciting patient requests, and two evaluated advice given in response to a request for an online prescription directed to drug e-commerce sites. D) Community: Seven studies evaluated messages on mailing lists or usenet newsgroups. Two studies collected messages from a venue and evaluated them for accuracy, two studies posted a "test" message on a newsgroup and evaluated the accuracy of responses. In three studies authors used the cumulative impact factor of the published research of the mailing list contributors as an indicator for the qualification of the authors and thus as quality indicator of the mailing list. Of the 23 studies evaluating accuracy and/or completeness of information provided on websites, 10 used guidelines as gold standard (all of the to extract a-priori criteria), five used peer-reviewed literature (all to compare information a posteriori), two used textbooks, one used consensus among the raters and three used the personal experience or opinion of the author. All three studies which compared information against personal opinion came to a positive conclusion regarding the accuracy of information, while all of the more rigorous studies comparing information against guidelines concluded that much of the information found on the web were of low quality. In two cases it was not reported where the gold standard comes from. 9 studies used more than one rater to assess a website, 6 of them provided some sort of information on inter-observer variability. Conclusions Methodology, results and conclusions of investigators vary widely. There is a wide variability even regarding the evaluation of formal criteria such as authorship and references. Differences in study conclusions regarding the quality of Internet information are likely a result of difference in study rigor, evaluation criteria and topic chosen. All but five studies concluded that quality is a problem on the Internet. The rigor of these five studies coming to a more positive conclusion as expressed in a "assessment quality score" was significantly inferior to the remaining studies. Although there were two comparative studies of the quality of information on the Internet compared with information found outside of the Internet, there is little evidence that health information found on the Internet is worse than health information in traditional media. A conceptual and methodological framework is presented for describing, comparing, and analyzing the structure and quality of e-health, based on Donabedians quality measures of structure, process and outcome.


The present thesis is not a mere overview of the existing legal literature bearing on
choice of law rules for marriage, nor is it a simple survey of the whole range of
arguments endorsing one approach over another with regard to this issue: it rather puts
forward a sustained argument towards a more appropriate way of looking at the conflict
of law problems in marriage. Though choice of law rules for marriage has long
preoccupied scholars and judges alike, the ever increasing antagonism between the
preponderance of conflict values [predictability, certainty] and the growing concern to
guarantee ajust result in individual atypical cases makes the continuous exploration of
this particular topic both necessary and of significant legal interest. The study seeks
essentially to establish that, contrary to what most scholars would have us believe, the
intractable conflict problems in marriage are not inherent in the inefficiency of the
traditional general choice of law rules, nor simply in the interrelation between different
social, religious and legal cultures.
Rather,they are attributable to the structure of a seemingly modem methodology that
focuses more and more on the the attainment of ajust substantive result, the astonishing
lack of consensus among legal systems, the disregard of coordination of policy
considerations relevant in marriage, the parochial and nationalistic focus in choice of
law, as well as in the application of the rule that lex fori is the only source of conflict
norms. Further, the inappropriate application of the general choice of law rules, and
the lasting antinomy between the international objectives [the attribution of an
international relationship to the relevant system] and the national sources of conflict of
laws are at the heart of the choice of law problems in marriage. The emerging academic
movement to modernise choice of law rules for marriage, with a view to guaranteeing desirable results in hard cases, defeats the very essence of conflict of laws, and renders
illusory what little certainty and predictability the normative criteria of the com1icts
orthodoxies may provide. The underlying reason lies in the inherent disregard of the
practical difficulties facing the officials who have, outside the courts, to apply the law
and to reconcile the competing goals of predictability and flexibility.The present writer's objective is the development of a more appropriate approach which
can establish an equilibrium between the much needed certainty in the present subject
and judicial appreciation of the difficulties presented in the individual atypical cases,
without scuttling the established conflicts orthodoxies, and at the same time to eliminate
the social evil termed "limping marriage". Finally, the domestic and intemationallaw
reform agencies should avoid the parochial and nationalistic focus in choice of law, and
the rule that lex fori is the only source of conflicts norms if they wish to make a claim
that their aim is the attainment of a universal uniform body of rules which will ensure
the universal validity of a marriage, and the maximum harmony of decisions.


TCP throughput limitations over wireless links have received considerable attention in the last few years. One of the problems is that TCP congestion control interprets packet losses as an indication of congestion, whereas in wireless links, losses could be due to transient link quality degradations. In this paper, we propose and study a link layer solution and evaluate its effects on TCP in the context of Bluetooth. We enhance the Bluetooth link layer to make use of channel state information and accordingly adapt the Bluetooth packet type to enhance TCP throughput We propose a simple analytical method to determine the optimal packet type for a given channel state by adding FEC support or changing packet size. Since wireless interfaces, such as 802.11 or Bluetooth, can provide information regarding the channel state using relevant APIs, this simple enhancement can easily be added to the link layer. We implemented this functionality in the Bluetooth link layer. Our simulation experiments show that the proposed adaptive packet type solution significantly improves TCP throughput. The throughput enhancement increases with the error rate. For high error rates close to 0.1%, the link layer enhanced with the adaptive scheme is able to maintain good TCP throughput, whereas throughput is almost zero when the adaptive scheme is not used.


A performance analysis has been made to determine whether boundary-layer control by suction might reduce the minimum take-off and landing distances of a four-place or five-place airplane or a liaison type of airplane below those obtainable with conventional high-lift devices. The airplane was assumed to have a cruise duration of 5 hours at 60-percent power and to be operating from airstrips having a ground friction coefficient of 0.2 or a combined ground and braking coefficient of 0.4. The payload was fixed at 1500 pounds, the wing span was varied from 25 to 100 feet, the aspect ratio was varied from 5 to 15, and the power was varied from 300 to 1300 horsepower. Maximum lift coefficients of 5.0 and 2.8 were assumed for the airplanes with and without boundary-layer-control --equipment weight was included. The effects of the boundary-layer control on total take-off distance, total power-off landing distance, landing and take-off ground run, stalling speed, sinking speed, and gliding speed were determined.


This paper is intended to stimulate discussion about the creation of a standard for a community participation model of terminology development. It begins with a discussion of why the current state of terminology development in Africa brings forth the need for such a standard process. The paper then presents the outcome of an experiment in the development of ICT terminology for Swahili, as well as a subsequent project to incorporate the experiment's results in the creation of terminology sets in African languages for multiple domains. A final section sets forth considerations for developing a community standard, particularly for contexts where no corps of professional terminologists exists. The proposed process is expected to deliver linguistically-appropriate terminology that will be acceptable to specialists and the general public, and will be adopted within a wide range of technical activities.


Spatial patterns and biodiversity of algae assemblages, and the effect of environmental factors on species composition were studied in an ephemeral pristine stream. Samples were taken along a longitudinal stream transect beginning at the source. At each sampling site, different types of substrates were collected and water chemistry investigated. A total of 109 infrageneric algal taxa were identified with diatoms being the most diverse group (85 taxa). Characteristic diatom species included: Chamaepinnularia soehrensis, Diadesmis laevissima, D. paracontenta, Eunotia exigua agg., E. incisa, E. ursamaioris, Fragilariforma virescens, Microcostatus krasskei, Pinnularia silvatica agg., and P. subcapitata agg. In addition, green algae of the Chlococcaceae agg., and Klebsormidium flaccidum were also abundant. Composition of algal assemblages were primarily influenced by the type of substratum (20.5% variance explained, p = 0.001) and by the spatial distance from the stream origin (3.0%, p < 0.05). Variation in species composition explained by conductivity, pH, temperature and nitrogen was relatively low (10.1%).


Solar power tower (SPT) plants with thermal energy storage (TES) provide great opportunities on the utility-scale; becoming a viable option for areas with moderate to high direct solar availability. The absence of commercial SPTs in Australia, together with the need to increase renewable energy capacity, raises the importance of proving it viable and beneficial. There is an apparent research gap, specifically, into the feasibility of a grid connected SPT with molten salt storage system for the Goldfields city, which this research explores. In this dissertation, solar power tower with storage systems are reviewed to facilitate the research. The System Advisor Model (SAM) base case 104 MW SPT, with the performance advancement that (14 hours) molten salt storage adds, introduces the capability of replacing conventional power plants, generate reliable base load or demand following electricity into the SWIS power grid and create jobs. Kalgoorlie-Boulder, with its excellent solar resource, infrastructure, local economy and SWIS grid connection enables this solar thermal power system to be considered appropriate. The research methodology presents the procedure and limitations in the modeling of the system, and the sensitivity analysis. The estimated performance of certain SPT with molten salt TES designs (similar to Crescent Dunes SPT plant) show that it could generate all of the city's electricity demand (excluding the mine sites), and still feed in electricity to the grid. The benefits from grid connection come in the form of capacity credits and renewable energy certificates. These are required to form a PPA, as the estimated LCOE is above the fossil fuel range (although in line with current SPTs with storage). Taking advantage of Government policies and incentives from the gird, together with the system costs (explicitly, heliostat field) predicted reduction, the gap will close, improving economic viability and enhancing its feasibility.


The nature is constantly providing various resources for making textile materials for variety of applications. Though many textile fibres in the nature are available in the fibrous form itself, nature also offers raw materials that can be modified and formed into a filament in a way similar to the melt and solution spinning of other textile fibres. More than 60 sample representing 25 different types of metallic and industrial minerals, aggregates and the three main rock groups namely igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Basalt is a natural material belonging to the family of igneous rocks, which has the capability of melting at certain temperature in a way similar to thermoplastic materials. Also basalt material is capable of withstanding high temperature and pressures, which can be used for high performance applications. This paper deals with the manufacturing of basalt fibres, their properties and the applications.


Traditionally number theorists have studied, both theoretically and computationally, elliptic curves and their L-functions over number fields, in particular over the rational numbers. Much less work has been done over function fields, especially computationally, where the underlying geometry of the function field plays an intimate role in the arithmetic of elliptic curves. We make use of this underlying geometry to develop a method to compute the L-function of an elliptic curve and its twists over the function field of the projective line over a finite field. This method requires computing the number of points on an elliptic curve over a finite field, for which we present a novel algorithm. If the j-invariant of an elliptic curve over a function field is non-constant, its L-function is a polynomial, hence its analytic rank and value at a given point can be computed exactly. We present data in this direction for a family of quadratic twists of four fixed elliptic curves over a few function fields of differing characteristic. First we present analytic rank data that confirms a conjecture of Goldfeld, in stark contrast to the corresponding data in the number field setting. Second, we present data on the integral moments of the value of the L-function at the symmetry point, which on the surface appears to refute random matrix theory conjectures.


AbstractThe Raman spectra of an Rb_2KLuF_6 crystal are studied in the temperature range from 8 to 375 K, which includes two phase transitions: one of which proceeds from a cubic to a tetragonal phase, while the other transition takes place from a tetragonal to a monoclinic phase. An analysis of the temperature dependences of parameters of spectral lines shows that the former transition is of the second kind, while the latter transition is of the first kind, close to the tricritical point. It is shown that the structural phase transitions in the Rb_2KLuF_6 double perovskite are not associated with disordering. The former transition is associated with rotations of LuF_6 octahedra around the fourth-order axis, while the latter transition is related with rotations of octahedra and displacements of rubidium ions.


Wireless sensor networks (WSN) and mobile clouds are composed of sensor nodes that have limited energy resources. For wireless sensor networks, query processing is the state-of-the-art for data gathering and processing applications to avoid low-level programming. The stream programming model has been widely used to represent queries as an information flow from the sensor nodes to the base station. The model describes queries as stream graphs consisting of operators that process data and channels that connect operators. Operators are deployed in the network to reduce the communication overhead and hence energy. The modification of WSN queries at runtime is of key importance due to changes in the environment and the network energy levels, resulting in the migration of operators between the network nodes.
 In this work, we introduce the migrating operator placement problem (MOPP) that places operators of stream graphs on sensor nodes, such that energy costs are minimized. The placement takes changes of queries and migration of operators into account. The general MOPP is NP hard, and, therefore, we develop a dynamic program for a compositional subset of the stream graphs with polynomially-bounded running time. To improve the performance of our algorithm, we introduce a heuristic that reduces the search space to the proximity of the base station. We conduct various experiments using a simulator for wireless sensor networks with different sizes.


In the present work, the experimentally determined oscillator strengths of the 3p P2→nd D2 (16≤n≤43) Rydberg transitions of lithium have been reported for the first time. The experiments were performed using two dye lasers simultaneously pumped by the second harmonic (532 nm) of an Nd:YAG laser, and the vapor containment and detection system was a thermionic diode ion detector. The first frequency-doubled dye laser excites the ground-state atoms to the 3p P2 excited state at 325.35 nm, and the second dye laser was scanned up to the first ionization threshold. The f-values of the aforementioned transitions have been determined using the threshold value of the photoionization cross section (30±4.8  Mb) from the 3p P2 excited state. A complete picture of the oscillator strengths from n=3 to 43 has been presented, including the previously known oscillator strength and determined in this work.


Context. Low- and intermediate-mass stars go through a period of intense mass-loss at the end of their lives, during the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase. While on the AGB a significant part, or even most, of their initial mass is expelled in a stellar wind. This process controls the final stages of the evolution of these stars and contributes to the chemical evolution of galaxies. However, the wind-driving mechanism of AGB stars is not yet well understood, especially so for oxygen-rich sources. Characterizing both the present-day mass-loss rate and wind structure and the evolution of the mass-loss rate of such stars is paramount to advancing our understanding of this processes. Aims. We study the dusty wind of the oxygen-rich AGB star W Hya to understand its composition and structure and shed light on the mass-loss mechanism. Methods. We modelled the dust envelope of W Hya using an advanced radiative transfer code. We analysed our dust model in the light of a previously calculated gas-phase wind model and compared it with measurements available in the literature, such as infrared spectra, infrared images, and optical scattered light fractions. Results. We find that the dust spectrum of W Hya can partly be explained by a gravitationally bound dust shell that probably is responsible for most of the amorphous Al2O3 emission. The composition of the large (∼0.3 μm) grains needed to explain the scattered light cannot be constrained, but probably is dominated by silicates. Silicate emission in the thermal infrared was found to originate from beyond 40 AU from the star. In our model, the silicates need to have substantial near-infrared opacities to be visible at such large distances. The increase in near-infrared opacity of the dust at these distances roughly coincides with a sudden increase in expansion velocity as deduced from the gas-phase CO lines. The dust envelope of W Hya probably contains an important amount of calcium but we were not able to obtain a dust model that reproduces the observed emission while respecting the limit set by the gas mass-loss rate. Finally, the recent mass loss of W Hya is confirmed to be highly variable and we identify a strong peak in the mass-loss rate that occurred about 3500 years ago and lasted for a few hundred years.


High-resolution Fourier transform spectra of a vanadium–argon plasma have been recorded in the wavelength range of 365–670 nm (15,000–27,400 cm−1). Optical bandpass filters were used in the experimental setup to enhance the sensitivity of the Fourier transform spectrometer. In total, 138 atomic vanadium spectral lines showing resolved or partially resolved hyperfine structure have been analyzed to determine the magnetic dipole hyperfine structure constants A of the involved energy levels. One of the investigated lines has not been previously classified. As a result, the magnetic dipole hyperfine structure constants A for 90 energy levels are presented: 35 of them belong to the configuration 3d34s4p and 55 to the configuration 3d44p. Of these 90 constants, 67 have been determined for the first time, with 23 corresponding to the configuration 3d34s4p and 44 to 3d44p.


Objectives: To determine the frequency of retained placenta at the University College Hospital Ibadan (UCH). and to describe the socio-demographic characteristics of the patients and examine the risk factors predisposing to retained placenta. Methods: This is a descriptive study covering a period of 5 years from January 1st 2002 to December 31st 2006. During the study period, 4980 deliveries took place at the University College Hospital, Ibadan and 106 cases of retained placenta were managed making the incidence 2.13 per cent of all births. Results: During the five year period, there were 106 patients with retained placenta; of these, 90 (84.9%) case notes were available for analysis. The mean age was 29.37 ± 4.99 years. First and second Para accounted for 52 per cent of the patients. Majority of the patient were unbooked for antenatal care in UCH with booked patients accounting for 27.8 per cent of the cases. The mean gestational age at delivery was 34.29 ± 6.02. Three patients presented to the hospital in shock of which 2 died on account of severe haemorrhagic shock. Fifty-eight patients (64.8%) presented with anaemia (packed cell volume less than 30 per cent) and 35 patients (38.8%) had blood transfusion ranging between 1-4 pints. 1 patient required hysterectomy on account of morbidly adherent placenta. Eleven patients (12.2%) had placenta retention in the past, 28 patients (31%) had a previous dilatation and curettage, 14 patients (15.5%) had previous caesarean sections and 47 patients (41.3%) had no known predisposing factors Conclusion: Retained placenta still remains a potentially life threatening condition in the tropics due to the associated haemorrhage, and other complications related to its removal. The incidence and severity may be decreased by health education, women empowerment and the provision of facilities for essential obstetric services by high skilled health care providers in ensuring a properly conducted delivery with active management of the third stage of labour.


Rupert Isaacson's "The Horse Boy" is one family's epic journey to rescue their son. Rupert and Kirstin Isaacson were heartbroken when they learned that their two-year-old son Rowan was autistic. And with each passing day, Rowan's growing isolation, his uncontrollable fits, each failed treatment, filled them with despair. Then one day Rowan escaped and ran into a field of horses. Rupert watched in horror - but saw a miracle occur. The horses responded lovingly to Rowan - and he to them. Could Rowan's affinity with these animals save their son from his condition? The Isaacsons left their home in Texas and travelled to the plains and mountains of Mongolia - the spiritual home of the horse - risking everything - their happiness, future and sanity - on an arduous epic horseback journey in search of a cure for Rowan..."An elegant, affecting narrative ...a triumph of the human spirit". ("Daily Telegraph"). "Captivating, incredible, a magical journey, an impossible dream". ("Telegraph Weekend"). "It is probably only once in a critical lifetime that one will be moved almost to tears by [such] an account ...the excellence of his writing [creates an] elegant, affecting narrative ...a triumph of the human spirit". ("Telegraph"). "Magical, miraculous, uplifting". ("Daily Mail"). Rupert Isaacson is British but lives with his family in Texas, USA. He is an ex-professional horse trainer and founding director of the Indigenous Land Rights Fund. He is the author of "The Healing Land: A Kalahari Journey" and his journalism and travel writing has appeared in the "Daily Telegraph", "Esquire", "National Geographic", "Independent on Sunday", "Conde Nast Traveller", "Daily Mail" and "The Field".


This study is an endeavour to analyze the influence of oil price shocks on the macroeconomy of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, KSA, Oman, Qatar and UAE). By employing a structural Vector auto-regression (SVAR) model for period 1980- 2016, our key findings suggest that there are significant positive effects of oil price shocks on the GDP, inflation and trade balance of those countries. The findings, however, show substantial heterogeneities in the responses of the GCC members to oil shocks, which suggests the presence of idiosyncrasies in the underlying structure of their economies and differences in the degree to which these economies are dependent on oil revenues. In terms of inflation, there are also major differences in the intensity of the impact of oil shocks on the overall price, which implies that the GCC monetary policies might face a different genre of challenges to attain price stability in the face of those shocks. Our findings have profound policy implications in terms of diversifying the economies of the GCC countries and efforts to decrease the sole dependence on oil revenues.


In this study, near-infrared transmission spectroscopy is investigated as an alternative technique for the real-time cure monitoring of thermosets systems. Two polymer systems based on dimethacrylate/styrene and dimethacrylate/divinylbenzene monomers were studied in order to check the influence of comonomer functionality. A new device utilizing ITO (indium-tin-oxide)-coated glass plates was developed to take into account the specificity of chain polymerization: oxygen inhibition, bulk polymerization, etc. Two absorption bands at 6166 and 6135 cm−1 suitable for in situ monitoring of methacrylate and vinyl double bonds were identified, and the molar absorption coefficient was determined. A quantitative analysis allows us to calculate the double-bond conversion during the polymerization in isothermal conditions between 60 and 80 °C.


The focus of this research is whether the Habermas' 'bourgeois public sphere', which is
characteristic of Western society, can be extended to China. My main contribution is to
demonstrate that the concepts of 'sentiment' and 'reason' are central to any discussion of
the public sphere in China. This is in sharp contrast to the West where rational discussion
and the rule of law are the twin foundations of the classical discourse of the public
sphere.
China's society is distinct from Western democracies the West in at least two fundamental
ways. In the first place, the political system remains 'communist' with a single party
controlling all of the media. As a result, the degree of freedom of thought and speech is
extremely limited, and there is no obvious way in which the mass media can act directly as
a forum for free and informed discussion of public policy. Secondly, whereas the rule of
law is understood as a central element in Western democratic culture, it has a subordinate
place in Chinese culture.
These assumptions are examined through a study of the readership of the Popular Press
and through text analysis. How the Popular Press engages with the general public, how
the general public reads and judges media messages, and crucially whether the Popular
Press could employ an indirect approach working to constitute an 'imaginary' public in
China were the discoveries.
In the end, this study concludes that while China's cultural, political and economic system
of control is the main factor leading to the restriction and dissent of the general public, a
'reasoning' popular public might, in time, be shaped through their reading of
controversies in political and public affairs in the Popular Press.


Ethnonationalism and anti-immigration sentiments are increasingly influencing voting behavior in Western countries. This study investigated the role of xenophobia in explaining support for right-wing parties and whether xenophobia correlates with the same psychological variables among voters of a radical right-wing party (Sweden Democrats, Sverigedemokraterna, N=2217) and a mainstream right-wing party (Conservative Party, Moderaterna, N=634) in Sweden. In both voter groups, Right-Wing Authoritarianism was the strongest predictor of xenophobia. Also, Social Dominance Orientation, (less) postmaterialist values, sexist attitudes, (low) Agreeableness, and higher age explained variance in xenophobia. As for voter mobility, xenophobia was more common among Sweden Democrat voters than among Conservative Party voters and, in both voter groups, respondents with high (vs. low) xenophobia had more positive views on the Sweden Democrats. Intended Sweden Democrat (vs. the Conservative Party) voting was predicted by less right-leaning socioeconomic attitudes and higher institutional distrust (among voters with both low and high xenophobia), Right-Wing Authoritarianism and sexism (voters with low xenophobia), and/or male gender (voters with high xenophobia). To conclude, the concept of xenophobia still seems to successfully capture anti-immigrant attitudes, correlates with psychological variables as expected in both voter groups, and helps partly explain the contemporary changes in voting behavior.


Background: Tori are benign anatomical bony prominences occurring in the hard palate and the lingual aspect of the mandible. Aim: to investigate the prevalence of maxillary and mandibular tori in different gender and age group. Methodology: three hundred and fifty patients from shorish teaching dental center (198 males and 152 females) were examined for presence of torus palatinus and torus mandibularis, their location and relation to gender and age were evaluated. Result: the overall prevalence of tori was 9.42%. The prevalence of torus palatinus was 4.75%, while the prevalence of torus mandibularis was 4.85%. Female showed a higher prevalence of tori 10.52% than males 8.58%.Conclusion: the incidence of tori is higher in females when compared to males, torus palatinus is more frequent in younger age group, whiletorus mandibularis in older age group. Keyword: tori, torus palatinus, torus mandibularis.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between size at birth (birthweight and birth length) and height in early adolescence in a prospective birth cohort study in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Interviews were carried out in 1993, including measurements of birthweight and length, and in 2004-2005, including measurements of weight and height. This analysis includes 4,452 individuals, with a mean age of 11.3 years (standard deviation-SD=0.3), representing a follow-up rate of 87.5%. Mean height at 11 years was 145.8 cm (SD=7.9), or 144.9 cm (SD=7.7) in boys and 146.8 cm (SD=7.9) in girls. Birthweight and birth length were positively associated with height in early adolescence in the crude analysis, but after adjustment for confounding and for each other, only the effect of birth length was still significant. A one z-score increase in birth length was associated with a 1.63 cm increase in height at 11 years. The present study shows that birth length is a strong predictor of later height, while the effect of birth weight disappears after adjustment for birth length.


Cannabis sativa, a subspecies of the Cannabis plant, contains aromatic hydrocarbon compounds called cannabinoids. [INCREMENT]9-Tetrahydrocannabinol is the most abundant cannabinoid and is the main psychotropic constituent. Cannabinoids activate two types of G-protein-coupled cannabinoid receptors: cannabinoid type 1 receptor and cannabinoid type 2 receptor. There has been ongoing interest and development in research to explore the therapeutic potential of cannabis. [INCREMENT]9-Tetrahydrocannabinol exerts biological functions on the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Cannabis has been used for the treatment of GI disorders such as abdominal pain and diarrhea. The endocannabinoid system (i.e. endogenous circulating cannabinoids) performs protective activities in the GI tract and presents a promising therapeutic target against various GI conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (especially Crohn's disease), irritable bowel syndrome, and secretion and motility-related disorders. The present review sheds light on the role of cannabis in the gut, liver, and pancreas and also on other GI symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting, cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, anorexia, weight loss, and chronic abdominal pain. Although the current literature supports the use of marijuana for the treatment of digestive disorders, the clinical efficacy of cannabis and its constituents for various GI disorders remains unclear.


Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of motivation and learning have demonstrated a critical role for midbrain dopamine and its targets in reward prediction. Converging evidence suggests that midbrain dopamine neurons signal a reward prediction error, allowing an organism to predict, and to act to increase, the probability of reward in the future. This view has been highly successful in accounting for a wide range of reinforcement learning phenomena in animals and humans. However, while current theories of midbrain dopamine provide a good account of behavior known as habitual or stimulus-response learning, we review evidence suggesting that other neural and cognitive processes are involved in motivated, goal-directed behavior. We discuss how this distinction resembles the classic distinction in the cognitive neuroscience of memory between nondeclarative and declarative memory systems, and discuss common themes between mnemonic and motivational functions. Finally, we present data demonstrating links between mnemonic processes and reinforcement learning.


This report is the evaluation of the pilot partnership agreement between Police Scotland and local authorities, for responses to children and young people missing from foster and residential care. This Partnership Agreement is a component of the National Missing Persons Framework for Scotland (2017). The report includes recommendations from the Advisory Group (comprising representatives of Police Scotland and the three pilot local authorities) in response to the findings are included and should inform any further roll out of the Partnership Agreement.


The evolution of dominance by the selection of modifiers of the phenotypes of deleterious mutations was proposed as a hypothesis by R. A. Fisher in 1928. It has been strongly criticized ever since, is regarded by many as having been made irrelevant by metabolic control theory, and most recently has been claimed to have been'falsified'by H. A. Orr. Is it indeed not only obsolete but wrong? Its history is reviewed and its present status evaluated. We conclude (1) that it has a role as the explanation of the dominance found in many cases of selection through visual predation and (2) that the selection mechanism long claimed to be ineffective (the increase in frequency of a single modifier) will be effective under certain special conditions that may be different from those Fisher proposed.


Antimicrobial resistance in the treatment of urinary tract infections is a major health problem. This study evaluates the pattern of susceptibility of pathogens commonly responsible for urinary tract infections (UTIs) to commonly used antimicrobial agents. Midstream urine samples of 80 patients (30 males and 50 females) and 20 diarrhea samples from 10 males and 10 females, who were attending clinics in Eku, Sapele and Abraka general hospitals, Delta state, between September and October 2007 were examined. Susceptibility of the urine and diarrhea bacteria isolates to ten commonly used antibiotics were investigated. Thirty five Escherichia coli isolates were obtained from the urine samples, out of which were nine hemolytic strains (25.7%), and 10 E. coli isolates from diarrhea, out of which was one strain (10%). All the hemolytic strains exhibited a significantly high resistance to septrin, sparfloxacin, amoxicillin, streptomycin, chloramphenicol but were either moderately or highly sensitive to the augmentin and gentamycin. I conclude that the incidence of hemolytic strains in urinary tract infection was higher than that observed from diarrhea because Escherichia coli strains that cause urinary tract infection typically produce hemolysins which is an important virulent factorin pathogenesis of infection, whereas those strains that are part of the gastro intestinal micro flora may not produce hemolysins and majority of the antimicrobial agents that are commonly used to treat UTIs caused by Escherichia coli in the hospitals are no longer effective due to hemolysin production. Therefore, the development and strict management of antimicrobial policy, and surveillance for resistant organisms should be given priority in Nigeria.


The federal tax code provides preferential treatment for the production and use of renewable energy. We report estimates of the subsidies' effects on greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions developed in a recent National Research Council (NRC) Report. Due to lack of estimates of the impact of tax provisions on GHG emissions, new modeling studies were commissioned. The studies found, at best, a small impact of subsidies in reducing GHG emissions; in some cases, emissions increased. The NRC report also identified the need to capture the complex interactions among subsidies, pre-existing regulations, and commodity markets.


In 2006, a team led by the English economist Sir Nicholas Stern issued a striking report that analyzed the economic dimensions of global climate change and called for immediate collective action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This seminal report poses the critical question of how much emissions should be reduced within specific timeframes. * To answer the challenge of finding a best-practices approach, Global Warming and the World Trading System looks at the economic aspects of GHG emissions and seeks a policy method to reduce them without adversely affecting global trade. The book begins with a survey of relevant data--such as emissions reports per sector--and evaluates current US climate policy options, focusing on the intricacies of specific Congressional bills. In this vein, this study examines whether the competitiveness provisions now under consideration are compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and explores the pragmatic opportunities the WTO should capitalize on in order to accomplish two goals simultaneously: 1. Ensure "policy space" for countries to limit national GHG emissions without sacrificing the competitive position of their own industries. 2. Preserve an open trading system relatively free of discrimination and opportunistic protectionist measures. * Should governments use trade measures to encourage other countries to cooperate in the adoption of environmental policies? The authors anticipate the potential negative environmental and economic outcomes as well as the disputes over violation of GATT articles. This book addresses how to avoid serious setbacks in an effort to reduce emissions without compromising the status of both domestic and international carbonintensive industries. Most importantly, the book considers what can be done by environmental organizations to head off conflict with the WTO.


Representative democracy consists of a chain of delegation from voters to the executive and a corresponding chain of accountability, with some questions (particularly constitutional questions) reserved for popular vote. This structure reflects the high transaction costs of coordinating preferences among a large and diverse population, which has in part been determined by technological limitations. A new technology, blockchain, significantly reduces transaction costs. This technology turns out to have significant implications for democratic governance. In a crypto-democracy, voters have contractual relationships that allow them to unbundle, delegate, re-rebundle and reserve their voting power. Rather than planning our democratic structure and thus restricting opportunities for political exchange, the use of blockchain in a crypto-democracy allows us to 'grow' a democracy in a Hayekian framework.


BK Channel Cytoplasmic Domain BK channels are potassium ion channels found on the surface of a variety of cell types that are essential for the regulation of several key physiological processes, including smooth muscle tone and neuronal excitability. BK channels are regulated by both membrane voltage and intracellular Ca2+. The channel comprises an integral membrane pore, an integral membrane voltage sensor domain, and a large cytoplasmic region that confers Ca2+ sensitivity. Now Yuan et al. (p. 182, published online 27 May; see the Perspective Weyand and Iwata) have determined the crystal structure of the cytoplasmic domain of the human BK channel. Four cytoplasmic regions form a gating ring at the intracellular membrane surface with four Ca2+ binding sites on the outer perimeter. A tetramer of two regulatory domains forms a gating ring that regulates calcium ion activation. High-conductance voltage- and Ca2+-activated K+ (BK) channels encode negative feedback regulation of membrane voltage and Ca2+ signaling, playing a central role in numerous physiological processes. We determined the x-ray structure of the human BK Ca2+ gating apparatus at a resolution of 3.0 angstroms and deduced its tetrameric assembly by solving a 6 angstrom resolution structure of a Na+-activated homolog. Two tandem C-terminal regulator of K+ conductance (RCK) domains from each of four channel subunits form a 350-kilodalton gating ring at the intracellular membrane surface. A sequence of aspartic amino acids that is known as the Ca2+ bowl, and is located within the second of the tandem RCK domains, creates four Ca2+ binding sites on the outer perimeter of the gating ring at the "assembly interface" between RCK domains. Functionally important mutations cluster near the Ca2+ bowl, near the "flexible interface" between RCK domains, and on the surface of the gating ring that faces the voltage sensors. The structure suggests that the Ca2+ gating ring, in addition to regulating the pore directly, may also modulate the voltage sensor.


Over the last 5 years, several studies analyzing the reproductive safety of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), individually and as a group, have been published in the United States and elsewhere. Earlier studies that failed to show an association between first-trimester exposure to SSRIs and an overall increased risk of major congenital malformations were typically small cohort studies; subsequent meta-analyses of the available cohort studies have also failed to show an increased risk, which has been reassuring. The cohort study, which prospectively follows both exposed and unexposed people longitudinally, is the gold standard for evaluating the teratogenic potential of drugs. However, such a study is limited by the difficulty in enrolling enough exposed subjects to demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the two groups (which is particularly true for relatively rare outcomes that can easily be missed). Recently, several large case-control studies have been published that questioned the safety of SSRIs with respect to teratogenic risk. Case-control studies identify cases of an outcome of interest, such as a certain birth defect, and analyze case and control groups of patients to determine if an association exists between various exposures and the outcome. Such studies have included an analysis of records from a large managed care organization, which found an increased risk of heart defects in the babies of women who were prescribed paroxetine (Paxil) during pregnancy, compared with the babies of women prescribed other antidepressants during pregnancy. Another study, using data from the Swedish Medical Birth Registry, also found an increased risk of cardiac defects among infants with first-trimester exposure to paroxetine. Two large case-control studies published in June represent the latest efforts to use large multicenter birth defect surveillance programs to refine our understanding of the reproductive safety of SSRIs. Based on their size, these studies might be expected to refine the risk estimate for congenital malformations following fetal exposure to SSRIs, but these investigations produced some divergent results. The National Birth Defects Prevention Study compared 9,622 infants with birth defects with 4,092 control infants born in the United States from 1997 to 2003 and found no significant association between use of any SSRI from 1 month before to 3 months after conception and congenital heart defects or most other birth defects analyzed. There was, however, a significantly increased risk for anencephaly (odds ratio 2.4), craniosynostosis (OR 2.5), and omphalocele (OR 2.8) associated with SSRI use in early pregnancy; these are birth defects that have not been associated with in utero exposure to SSRIs in previous studies. The relationship was particularly strong with paroxetine (N. Engl. J. Med. 2007;356:2684-92). But no associations were identified between maternal SSRI use in early pregnancy and these three anomalies or congenital heart defects overall in the accompanying case-control study of 9,849 infants with birth defects and 5,860 infants with no birth defects enrolled in the Slone Epidemiology Center Birth Defects Study, at Boston University (N. Engl. J. Med. 2007;356:2675-83). However, there was a significant association between the use of sertraline (Zoloft) specifically and both omphalocele (odds ratio 5.7) and septal defects (2.0).There was also a significant association between paroxetine exposure and right-ventricular outflow tract obstruction defects (odds ratio of 3.3). It should be noted that the number of actual exposures in these studies to a specific SSRI was particularly small, fewer than 10 actual reported exposures. Where do these two important studies leave the patient and the clinician? Despite the divergent findings, both studies suggest that the absolute risk of overall major congenital malformations or even particularly rare malformations is extremely small, as pointed out by the respective authors and the accompanying editorial (N. Engl. J. Med. 2007;356:2732-3). For example, the Slone study authors point out that the estimated prevalence of right-ventricular outflow tract obstruction defects is about 5.5 cases per 10,000 live births, so the risk of this defect would be only 0.2% if an SSRI increased the risk fourfold. It also has been noted that in such studies the search for numerous outcomes associated with potentially numerous exposures may result in a finding by chance. Clinicians and patients deciding about treatment during pregnancy will need to continue to make decisions on a case by case basis, weighing the risks and benefits using the available, incomplete data on the relative risks of exposure to the medicine or to depression, and the patient's wishes. In addition, clinicians and patients should consider that, while we have not yet absolutely quantified the risk of prenatal exposure of SSRIs (which might not be achievable), a critical finding influencing treatment decisions is that untreated depression during pregnancy dramatically increases risk for postpartum psychiatric relapse. In fact, perhaps nothing trumps the importance of sustaining maternal emotional well-being during pregnancy, even given the small absolute risks that may be associated with an individual SSRI during pregnancy.


This paper first surveys a number of partial and macroeconomic approaches to the determination of the current account, and then summarizes the evidence from multicountry economic models about the linkages between U.S. government spending and the U.S. current account during the 1 980s. The available evidence from a large number of multicountry models suggests that the U.S. fiscal policy of the first half of the 1980s was responsible for about half of the buildup in the external deficit, and that the accumulated net foreign debt is about 500 billion dollars higher than it would have been without the fiscal expansion.


Generation of an ultrabroadband optical pulse with a fluent frequency dependency of the phase is important for creating a monocyclelike optical pulse and for shaping multiwavelength optical pulses. A previously proposed method that uses induced phase modulation between a femtosecond fundamental wave ω1 and its second-harmonic wave ω2=2ω1 in a fused-silica fiber is applied to a capillary fiber filled with noble gas. Analytic results of chirps without dispersion but with loss in the fiber are shown, and the optimum conditions relating to a delay time between two pulses and to input peak powers are found for fully covering the spectrum between ω1 and ω2. Furthermore, numerical calculations, including dispersion effects of the fundamental and the second-harmonic waves from a Ti:sapphire laser-amplifier system with experimentally realizable parameters, are presented. These calculations show that it is possible to generate an ultrabroadband optical pulse whose spectrum ranges from 300 to 900 THz (330 to 1000 nm) with quasi-linear chirp by this method.


Measurements of the optical properties of Pt films deposited on either hot or room temperature substrates have shown that the wavelength dependence of the optical properties is not altered significantly by the substrate temperature. There is a change, however, in the values of the extinction coefficient which increase with increasing substrate temperature. This is also true of the reflectance values. In addition, Pt films deposited on heated substrates have better adhesion, are more resistant to abrasion damage, and have less internal stresses. If, however, Pt is to be deposited on a replica diffraction grating, it must be done at room temperature to prevent damage to the grating.


Electric clothes dryers in the US consume about 6% of residential electricity consumption. Available electric clothes dryers today are either based on electric resistance (low-cost but energy-inefficient) or vapor compression (energyefficient but high-cost). Thermoelectric dryers have the potential to alleviate the disadvantages of both through a lowcost, energy-efficient solution. This paper presents experimental results and steady state simulation of a prototype thermoelectric dryer. A thermoelectric model is coupled with a psychrometric dryer system model to design the experimental prototype. The results from the prototype are used to calibrate the model and identify important parameters that affect performance, such as relative humidity of air leaving the drum.


Human society and the natural environment of the south Florida Everglades developed simultaneously. From the beginning the human perspective was inherently exploitative. Archaic Indians occupied all the high natural ground but neither farmed nor lived in the Everglades. This culture and succeeding Indian cultures persisted for thousands of years with the population sustainably capped by food supply and availability of high ground. After Spanish contact, Indian society collapsed leading to a 150‐year hiatus in human occupation. In the late 1800s for the first time newly immigrated Indians took up residence in the Everglades; European‐derived Americans settled high ground and agriculture developed. Within 100 years thereafter, half of the Everglades had been drained and the population of south Florida had reached 6.2 million residents. The overall exploitation of the Everglades' resources during the 20th century reflects the area as a place of transience. Contemporary human relationships with the environment appear to be different in scope but not in fundamentals from cultures that came before. Until the contact period, humans had adapted their culture to sustain communities in balance with the difficult landscape. Today's human population dominates the natural environment, although perhaps only in the short term. It remains to be determined whether cultural views can change quickly enough to secure a new viable carrying capacity.


Optimal control problems arise in many applications, such as in economics, finance, process engineering, and robotics
. Some optimal control problems involve a control which takes values from a discrete set. These problems are known as discrete-valued optimal control problems. Most practical discrete-valued optimal control problems have multiple local minima and thus require global optimization methods to generate practically useful solutions. Due to the high complexity of these problems, metaheuristic based global optimization techniques are usually required. One of the more recent global optimization tools in the area of discrete optimization is known as the discrete filled function method. The basic idea of the discrete filled function method is as follows. We choose an initial point and then perform a local search to find an initial local minimizer. Then, we construct an auxiliary function, called a discrete filled function, at this local minimizer. By minimizing the filled function, either an improved local minimizer is found or one of the vertices of the constraint set is reached. Otherwise, the parameters of the filled function are adjusted. This process is repeated until no better local minimizer of the corresponding filled function is found. The final local minimizer is then taken as an approximation of the global minimizer. While the main aim of this thesis is to present a new computational methodfor solving discrete-valued optimal control problems, the initial focus is on solvingpurely discrete optimization problems. We identify several discrete filled functionstechniques in the literature and perform a critical review including comprehensive numerical tests. Once the best filled function method is identified, we propose and test several variations of the method with numerical examples. We then consider the task of determining near globally optimal solutions of discrete-valued optimal control problems. The main difficulty in solving the discrete-valued optimal control problems is that the control restraint set is discrete and hence not convex. Conventional computational optimal control techniques are designed for problems in which the control takes values in a connected set, such as an interval, and thus they cannot solve the problem directly. Furthermore, variable switching times are known to cause problems in the implementation of any numerical algorithm due to the variable location of discontinuities in the dynamics. Therefore, such problem cannot be solved using conventional computational approaches. We propose a time scaling transformation to overcome this difficulty, where a new discrete variable representing the switching sequence and a new variable controlling the switching times are introduced. The transformation results in an equivalent mixed discrete optimization problem. The transformed problemis then decomposed into a bi-level optimization problem, which is solved using a combination of an efficient discrete filled function method identified earlier and a computational optimal control technique based on the concept of control parameterization.
 To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, we solve two complex applied engineering problems involving a hybrid power system and a sensor scheduling task, respectively. Computational results indicate that this method is robust, reliable, and efficient. It can successfully identify a near-global solution for these complex applied optimization problems, despite the demonstrated presence of multiple local optima. In addition, we also compare the results obtained with other methods in the literature. Numerical results confirm that the proposed method yields significant improvements over those obtained by other methods.


Cultural aversion to microbes, healthiness or desire for safe bathing, the applications for water disinfection are varied and the technologies used to achieve this goal are numerous.
 The authors looked at a simple solution to implement: the use of a reagent called performic acid. Consequently, more than two years of applied research, observations and analyzes were necessary to demonstrate its harmlessness towards the natural environment.
 The strength of the demonstration lies in the cross-vision of many researchers and scientists from different backgrounds who shared their studies and observations.
 The strength of this testimony also lies in the diversity of the application cases, including notable and sensitive receiving environments as different as the Seine, the Atlantic Ocean or the Venice lagoon.
 Through its intentions and results, this work is a step, moving forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly SDG 6 "clean water and sanitation" relying on the lever of SDG 17 "partnerships for the goals".
 Denis Penouel, Deputy CEO in charge of Prospective


The Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis is advancing an agenda on productive aging, focusing on three primary forms of productive engagement: employment, volunteerism/civic engagement, and caregiving. These are activities that produce goods and services, whether paid for or not, and that have effects beyond individuals to families, communities, and society. Older adults who engage in these activities make important economic and social contributions, though these contributions are often undervalued. This agenda on productive aging builds on the results of a CSD-sponsored symposium where leading gerontologists from many academic disciplines discussed older adults as a resource. The meeting resulted in an edited volume published by Johns Hopkins University Press.


During the Clinton Administration, the United States sought to disintegrate Microsoft to remedy the firm's purported monopolistic conduct. The remedy proposed by the United States would have divided Microsoft into two firms. One, the Oppco, would have retained the firm's operating system business. The other firm, the Appco, would have retained the firm's applications business, including Internet Explorer and Microsoft's Office Suite. The United States did not rebut the presumption that the integration of Microsoft's operating system and applications business was procompetitive. Instead, the government claimed that disintegration of Microsoft would lower the so-called "applications barrier to entry," a barrier that Microsoft's unlawful conduct purportedly "raised." Most importantly, the government claimed that an independent Appco would probably transform Microsoft's Office Suite into a form of middleware, the existence of which would lower the "applications barrier to entry" and thus facilitate the emergence of operating systems competitive with Windows. This paper argues that the district court erred when it granted the government's petition for disintegration. Simply put, the court's factual findings did not support any element of the story supporting the government's request for relief. There was, for instance, no finding that Microsoft "raised" the applications barrier; that barrier existed before, during, and after the conduct at issue in this case. Similarly, there was no finding that Microsoft unlawfully maintained that barrier, i.e., that, but for Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct, middleware would have emerged and lowered the applications barrier to entry. Moreover, there was no finding that an independent Appco would, in fact, have the ability or incentive to transform Microsoft's Office Suite into a form of middleware. Finally, there was no finding that Appco would be the only source of middleware capable of lowering the applications barrier to entry. The absence of the sort of findings necessary to justify disintegration was a necessary consequence of the government's litigation strategy. The government did not undertake to prove that Microsoft's conduct actually reduced social welfare. Instead, the United States chose to rely upon outmoded antitrust rules that reduced its burden at trial. For instance, the government relied upon the per se rule against tying contracts, which bans certain ties regardless of their competitive effect. Moreover, the government relied upon precedents suggesting that non-standard contracts entered by a monopolist are presumptively unlawful, regardless of their actual effect. By lightening its load at the trial stage, the United States deprived itself of the sort of factual findings necessary to justify the destruction of presumptively beneficial integration. Absent further findings that validate the government's story, Microsoft should remain intact.


We consider the problem of the limited-bandwidth communication for multi-agent reinforcement learning, where agents cooperate with the assistance of a communication protocol and a scheduler. The protocol and scheduler jointly determine which agent is communicating what message and to whom. Under the limited bandwidth constraint, a communication protocol is required to generate informative messages. Meanwhile, an unnecessary communication connection should not be established because it occupies limited resources in vain. In this paper, we develop an Informative Multi-Agent Communication (IMAC) method to learn efficient communication protocols as well as scheduling. First, from the perspective of communication theory, we prove that the limited bandwidth constraint requires low-entropy messages throughout the transmission. Then inspired by the information bottleneck principle, we learn a valuable and compact communication protocol and a weight-based scheduler. To demonstrate the efficiency of our method, we conduct extensive experiments in various cooperative and competitive multi-agent tasks with different numbers of agents and different bandwidths. We show that IMAC converges faster and leads to efficient communication among agents under the limited bandwidth as compared to many baseline methods.


Ongoing ocean warming and acidification have been found to particularly affect polar marine ecosystems. However, few data exist about the ability of Antarctic fish to respond to environmental change. We therefore studied the acclimatory capacities of the Antarctic fish Notothenia rossii after 4-6 weeks of acclimation to 7°C, hypercapnia (0.2 kPa CO2) and the combination of both. We analysed routine metabolic rate (RMR) during acute thermal challenge and after acclimation, extra- and intracellular acid-base status, mitochondrial as well as enzymatic capacities and lipid composition.
Our results showed partially compensated RMR after warm acclimation and no effect of increased PCO2 on the RMR. Hypercapnic acclimation led to a general overcompensation of extracellular pH. Intracellular pH displayed a slight acidosis in liver after warm normocapnic/hypercapnic acclimation, whereas white muscle remained well buffered under hypercapnia. Mitochondrial state III respiration in liver was unaffected by temperature acclimation, but depressed in the hypercapnia acclimated animals, which went along with reduced rates of proton leak. The activities of the mitochondrial enzymes citrate synthase and cytochrome c oxidase increased during hypercapnia acclimation in red and white muscle, but not in liver and heart. Furthermore, there was a trend towards an enrichment of poly-unsaturated fatty acids in liver mitochondria towards the warm hypercapnic conditions.
We conclude that N. rossii possesses basic acclimatory capacities towards ocean warming and acidification. However, these capacities are confined within strict limits, becoming obvious in metabolically more active organs like heart and liver that show less plasticity than muscle and ultimately define animal survival.


The article discusses the "self-defense" techniques presented in fightbooks and treaties. The objective is to determine if these techniques take the reality of fight in account, to evaluate the difference between theory and practice in remaining safe during an aggression. In order to do so, this work uses crossed analysis, with remission letters (judicial sources) studied in the light of the knowledge contained in the fight-books. This study is based on the sorting out of weapons, wounds, and times of death found in remission letters (the data of real fight). In parallel, the theorization of fight in treaties will be taken in account.


The magnetic excitation spectrum in the bilayer iridate Sr3Ir2O7 has been investigated using high-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) performed at the iridium L-3 edge and theoretical techniques. A study of the systematic dependence of the RIXS spectrum on the orientation of the wave-vector transfer Q, with respect to the iridium-oxide bilayer, has revealed that the magnon dispersion is comprised of two branches well separated in energy and gapped across the entire Brillouin zone. Our results contrast with those of an earlier study which reported the existence of a single dominant branch. While these earlier results were interpreted as two overlapping modes within a spin-wave model of weakly coupled iridium-oxide planes, our results are more reminiscent of those expected for a system of weakly coupled dimers. In this latter approach, the lower-and higher-energy modes find a natural explanation as those corresponding to transverse and longitudinal fluctuations, respectively. We have therefore developed a bond-operator theory which describes the magnetic dispersion in Sr3Ir2O7 in terms of quantum dimer excitations. In our model, dimerization is produced by the leading Heisenberg exchange J(c), which couples iridium ions in adjacent planes of the bilayer. The Hamiltonian also includes in-plane exchange J, as well as further neighbor couplings and relevant anisotropies. The bond-operator theory provides an excellent account of the dispersion of both modes, while the measured Q dependence of the RIXS intensities is in reasonable qualitative accord with the spin-spin correlation function calculated from the theory. We discuss our results in the context of the quantum criticality of bilayer dimer systems in the presence of anisotropic interactions derived from strong spin-orbit coupling.


Everyday person transfer situations involving persons with dementia and their caregivers can be reciprocally problematic. Group interviews with professional caregivers were conducted, focusing on the caregivers' experiences of singing during person transfer situations with residents with dementia, and a qualitative content analysis was performed. The caregivers expressed that com- pared to everyday transfer situations without singing, there were obvious differences during singing. When the caregiver sang, communication was mutually enhanced between the caregivers and the residents. Caregivers reported that residents seemed to show their true personalities, were able to move more fluidly and easily, seemed to better understand what was going on, and reacted with a spirited cheerfulness. The caregivers experienced themselves as more competent in and motivated to provide care in addition to positive emotions and moods. Caregiver singing during transfer situations may be one of several suitable non-pharmacological interventions that can be utilized when caregivers need to assist persons with dementia in transfer.


We investigate the role of physician agency and competition in determining health care supply and patient outcomes. A 2005 change to Medicare fees had a large, negative impact on physician profit margins for providing chemotherapy treatment. In response to these cuts, physicians increased their provision of chemotherapy and changed the mix of chemotherapy drugs they administered. The increase in treatment improved patient survival. These changes were larger in states that experienced larger decreases in physician profit margins. Finally while physician response was larger in more competitive markets, survival improvements were larger in less competitive markets.


Many clustering techniques have been proposed for the analysis of gene expression data. However, the optimal method for a given experimental dataset is still not resolved. Fuzzy c-means and kernel fuzzy c-means algorithm have been widely applied to gene expression data, but they give the equal weight to the genes and noises, which lead to results that are not stable or accurate. In this paper, we propose a local weighted fuzzy clustering method in the kernel space. The original data is mapped to the high-dimensional feature space and Gaussian function is employed to investigate the local information of the cluster centre. Consequently, it will assign different weights to the noise and genes. Our experiments show that the proposed methods achieve better clustering effect than the fuzzy clustering algorithm and fuzzy kernel clustering algorithm.


IN BRIEF "Quality Improvement Success Stories" are published by the American Diabetes Association in collaboration with the American College of Physicians, Inc. (ACP), and the National Diabetes Education Program. This series is intended to highlight best practices and strategies from programs and clinics that have successfully improved the quality of care for people with diabetes or related conditions. Each article in the series is reviewed and follows a standard format developed by the editors of Clinical Diabetes. The following article describes an initiative to increase the use of basal-bolus insulin therapy for hyperglycemia in an inpatient setting and to evaluate its effects on patient outcomes compared to sliding-scale insulin therapy.


Title of dissertation: EXAMINATION OF THE BRAIN PROCESSES UNDERLYING EMOTION REGULATION WITHIN A STRESS RESILIENT POPULATION Michelle E. Costanzo, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Bradley D. Hatfield, Ph.D., FACSM, FAAKPE Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences Program Emotion robustly affects the quality of cognitive-motor performance under conditions of mental stress. As such, the regulation of emotion is critical to successful execution of motor skills during emotional challenge. Previous investigations of the stressperformance relationship have typically focused on behavioral outcomes, however, few have adopted a cognitive neuroscience approach to examine the involved mechanisms underlying this relationship. Furthermore, it is unclear if individuals who have a history of superior performance under stress (stress resilient population) exhibit brain responses characterized by an efficiency of neural processing and an adaptive emotion regulatory strategy. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the present study examined activation in critical brain regions during affective challenge (i.e., presentation of International Affective Picture System negative images and Sport-Specific negative images) in 13 elite athletes (intercollegiate football players who have demonstrated successful execution of cognitive-motor skills under mental stress) relative to an age-matched control group (n=12). The present dissertation is organized into three main sections. The first report, entitled Brain Processes during Motor Performance under Psychological Stress, an Independent Component Analysis of EEG, is an examination of brain processes during competitive stress. This study revealed non-essential neuromotor cerebral cortical noise with a quantified increase in complexity during a cognitivemotor task. The second report is entitled Efficiency of Affective Brain Processes in Expert Cognitive-Motor Performers during Emotional Challenge. This fMRI examination of elite athletes revealed processing economy in brain regions critical to self regulation, management of emotional impulses and social cognition. The third report, entitled The Specificity of Neural Regulatory Processes during Emotional Challenge in a Stress Resilient Population, examined with fMRI if elite athletes spontaneously engage in cognitive reappraisal during the presentation of arousing sport-specific images. Results suggest that elite athletes process sports-relevant affective information in an automatic manner, congruent with a cognitive reappraisal strategy, which neutralized the negative impact of the scenes. In conclusion, the results suggest that elite performers are important models of stress resilience and respond not only in an efficient manner to stressful events, but demonstrate an adaptive regulatory response when challenged within their domain of experience. EXAMINATION OF THE BRAIN PROCESSES UNDERLYING EMOTION REGULATION WITHIN A STRESS RESILIENT POPULATION


This paper explores the phenomenon of US quasi-bases in Latin America, which are semi-formal agreements that grant the US military tacit access to local military bases without a formal lease. While the importance of formal US bases in the region has dramatically decreased, a network of quasi-bases provides critical support for US antidrug operations from Central to South America. The paper builds on Alexander Cooley's theory of base politics (2008) to explain why formal bases are more difficult to open and maintain as democracy expands in the region, and categorizes previously unstudied quasi-base arrangements. Democratic expansion affects foreign military bases in three ways. Formal base negotiations are likely to succeed if the benefits of hosting foreign bases are not only perceived by the local government but also by the opposition. Conversely, when the benefits are concentrated in the government and its clients, excluded political groups are likely to oppose the base. The electoral strength of the opposition and the existence of institutional mechanisms autonomous of the government increase the chances that the opposition will succeed in blocking the base negotiations. However, when formal basing agreements fail, or when the type of operations requires secrecy and informality, interested governments may still negotiate alternative arrangements, such as quasi-bases, which are more difficult for the opposition to contest.


The liquid crystal thermography is a high-resolution and non-intrusive optical technique for full-field temperature measurement. We present detailed calibration data for a wide-bandwidth thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) to investigate the effect of the coating thickness on the hue-temperature characteristics and the measurement uncertainty of the TLC. It is found that the coating thickness has appreciable effect on the TLC hue-temperature curve. For TLC coatings with the thickness over 20 μm, a thicker TLC coating shows a relatively smaller measurement uncertainty, but the effect of the coating thickness is non-distinctive on the measurement uncertainty.


Research in domain independent planning has concentrated on making desired facts (goals) become true, with less attention on preventing undesired facts (negative goals) from becoming true. This document presents preliminary work towards a temporal-based model of prevention, based on Allen and Koomen's temporal planner. The temporal model permits more expressive prevention problems and a more powerful prevention-oriented planner. Negative goals are temporally constrained—for instance, we can direct the planner to prevent a fact F from occurring before, after, or during a specific goal, between two temporally separated goals, etc. The planner can find solutions which allow F to become true at any time outside of the specified interval or which never allow F to become true. The temporal model permits the idea of delaying F after the interval, as well as terminating it before the interval. This paper describes a set of prevention techniques which have been implemented in a temporal planner and discusses necessary requirements for a more complete preventive planner.


It was conducted an observational study in two villages in Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, in order to evaluate
the seroepidemiological profile of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and the risk factors in its transmission. Six hundred
sixty samples were analyzed by ELISA method for serological tests for HBV (anti-HBc total, anti-HBs and HBsAg).
The results showed that 50.7% (335) of samples were positive for some kind of serological marker. HBsAg was positive in 12 (1.8%) samples, 11 (91.6%) were from male ones. Anti-HBc total was positive in 212 (32.1%) samples distributed in all groups, except for the range of 11 to 16 years old. Anti-HBs was positive in 239 (36.2%) samples with the highest prevalence in groups over 21 years old. This study showed that the analyzed locations have low endemicity for chronic HBV carriers, however, there was a high prevalence of infection. The percentage
of susceptible individuals was 49.2% (325), the highest was in individuals between 6 to 15 years old. Aspects of
transmission such as dental extractions, surgeries and sharing personal hygiene materials are possibly associated
with HBV infection in the analyzed region. Furthermore, the low percentage of anti-HBs marker indicates an immunization coverage failure in the population of this study.


This dissertation uses experimental evidence to explore the effects of overconfidence on economic decision making. In Chapter 1 I provide experimental evidence of the effects of alcohol on overconfidence and several other important tasks. I also explore the relationship between overconfidence and the behavior in the other tasks. The data from this experiment show that an alcohol level of 0.08 does not have a systemic effect on behavior and more importantly it does not affect ones level of overconfidence. I also show that overconfidence is not significantly correlated with risk preferences, math, strategic behavior, anchoring, altruism, and food choices. In Chapter 2 I use feedback to establish a causal link between overconfidence and trading behavior. Feedback is used to eliminate the possibility for subjects to be overconfident about the accuracy of their signals. The data from this experiment show that overconfidence affects trading volume and profits, but when feedback is provided trading volume is no longer affected by overconfidence. This shows that there exists a causal relationship between overconfidence and trading volume. Lastly, Chapter 3 explores the role of overconfidence on insurance purchasing decisions. I show that overconfident people buy significantly less insurance. The stability of overconfidence using different measures and the relationship between overconfidence and risk is also explored. I find that different tasks do not elicit the same level of overconfidence and that risk preferences and overconfidence are not statistically significantly correlated.


This fundamental resource for all textile and fashion designers explores over 70 production techniques and over 60 materials used in textile and fashion design. Organized into four main parts Fibre and Yarn Technology, Textile Technology, Construction Technology, and Materials it is a complete overview of the life cycle of textile and fashion manufacturing, from the spinning of yarn to recycling. In parts 13, over 70 major processes are explained in detail, each featuring a technical description, an analysis of the applications, design opportunities and considerations, quality, cost, speed and environmental impact. All of the processes feature detailed step-by-step case studies showing the process either at source or in manufacture at a leading international supplier. Part 4 features essential knowledge on over 60 natural and synthetic materials.


Archiving Web pages into themed collections is a method for ensuring these resources are available for posterity. Services such as Archive-It exists to allow institutions to develop, curate, and preserve collections of Web resources. Understanding the contents and boundaries of these archived collections is a challenge for most people, resulting in the paradox of the larger the collection, the harder it is to understand. Meanwhile, as the sheer volume of data grows on the Web, "storytelling" is becoming a popular technique in social media for selecting Web resources to support a particular narrative or "story". There are multiple stories that can be generated from an archived collection with different perspectives about the collection. For example, a user may want to see a story that is composed of the key events from a specific Web site, a story that is composed of the key events of the story regardless of the sources, or how a specific event at a specific point in time was covered by different Web sites, etc. In this paper, we provide different case studies for possible types of stories that can be extracted from a collection. We also provide the definitions and models of these types of stories.


Bisimidazoline arylamides and related compounds are high affinity DNA minor groove binders with a preference for AT over GC-rich DNA. However, further selectivity towards different classes of AT-sites (e.g., CGAATTCG, CATATATAT) is not always observed with these series. In this work, we wanted to understand the effect of imidazoline ring N-substitution on binding to DNA AT-sites. The structure–affinity relationships of a series of structurally related bisimidazoline compounds were studied by UV titrations and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) experiments using fish sperm DNA and different hairpin oligonucleotides. We found that in this series, the presence of N1–OH groups enhances the binding affinity to dsDNA CGAATTCG oligonucleotide, resulting in a higher selectivity for dsDNA containing AATT over (AT)4 sequences. The docking models showed that the N-hydroxy derivatives bind in a more planar conformation to the CGAATTCG DNA sequence, display more favorable van der Waals interactions, and show additional H-bonds with the bases and the sugar-phosphate backbone.


Liquid water, the most familiar liquid, is still not completely understood, even less so all the processes in which it participates. The directionality of the bonds and quantum aspects make the establishment of a complete theory difficult, particularly in the case of effective potentials built with spherical electrostatic forces. Recent work has focused on the hydrogen bonds formed between water molecules or with hydrophilic substrates. We describe the present situation of research concerning the so-called anomalies of liquid water at low temperature. Although without direct applications, this problem is consistently an object of discussion, enhanced by results from molecular dynamics simulations. Conversely, because in many situations where water plays a major role, such as, for example, in biology, only a few molecules are involved, the study of confined water is extremely important, sometimes decoupled from the more fundamental studies of bulk water. A short, but far from exclusive, summary of some of the more active domains of research concerning liquid water is given, mainly concerning interactions with other media.


JNCCN is committed to providing a forum to enhance collaboration between academic medicine and the community physician. We welcome comments about the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines), articles published in the journal, or any other topic relating to cancer prevention, detection, treatment, supportive care, or survivorship. Please send correspondence to JNCCN.edmgr.com or to email@example.com.


This paper introduces AdaSDCA: an adaptive variant of stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA) for solving the regularized empirical risk minimization problems. Our modification consists in allowing the method adaptively change the probability distribution over the dual variables throughout the iterative process. AdaSDCA achieves provably better complexity bound than SDCA with the best fixed probability distribution, known as importance sampling. However, it is of a theoretical character as it is expensive to implement. We also propose AdaSDCA+: a practical variant which in our experiments outperforms existing non-adaptive methods.


Merging and splitting source code entities is a common activity during the lifespan of a software system; as developers rethink the essential structure of a system or plan for a new evolutionary direction, so must they be able to reorganize the design artifacts at various abstraction levels as seems appropriate. However, while the raw effects of such changes may be plainly evident in the new artifacts, the original context of the design changes is often lost. That is, it may be obvious which characters of which files have changed, but it may not be obvious where or why moving, renaming, merging, and/or splitting of design elements has occurred. In this paper, we discuss how we have extended origin analysis (Q. Tu et al., 2002), (M.W. Godfrey et al., 2002) to aid in the detection of merging and splitting of files and functions in procedural code; in particular, we show how reasoning about how call relationships have changed can aid a developer in locating where merges and splits have occurred, thereby helping to recover some information about the context of the design change. We also describe a case study of these techniques (as implemented in the Beagle tool) using the PostgreSQL database system as the subject.


This datasheet on Daphnia lumholtzi covers Identity, Overview, Distribution, Dispersal, Diagnosis, Biology & Ecology, Environmental Requirements, Natural Enemies, Impacts, Uses, Further Information.


Genomic, biochemical, and strain‐specific data can be assembled to define an in silico representation of the metabolic network for a select group of single cellular organisms. Flux‐balance analysis and phenotypic phase planes derived therefrom have been developed and applied to analyze the metabolic capabilities and characteristics of Escherichia coli K‐12. These analyses have shown the existence of seven essential reactions in the central metabolic pathways (glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway, tricarboxylic acid cycle) for the growth in glucose minimal media. The corresponding seven gene products can be grouped into three categories: (1) pentose phosphate pathway genes, (2) three‐carbon glycolytic genes, and (3) tricarboxylic acid cycle genes. Here we develop a procedure that calculates the sensitivity of optimal cellular growth to altered flux levels of these essential gene products. The results indicate that the E. coli metabolic network is robust with respect to the flux levels of these enzymes. The metabolic flux in the transketolase and the tricarboxylic acid cycle reactions can be reduced to 15% and 19%, respectively, of the optimal value without significantly influencing the optimal growth flux. The metabolic network also exhibited robustness with respect to the ribose‐5‐phosphate isomerase, and the ribose‐5‐phosephate isomerase flux was reduced to 28% of the optimal value without significantly effecting the optimal growth flux. The metabolic network exhibited limited robustness to the three‐carbon glycolytic fluxes both increased and decreased. The development presented another dimension to the use of FBA to study the capabilities of metabolic networks.


Intense tonal sound radiates from flows around a trailing edge with an upstream kink shape such as found in an automotive body. To clarify the acoustic radiation mechanism and the effects of the kink shape angle on tonal sound, direct numerical simulations (DNS) of flows and sound fields and wind tunnel experiments were performed. As a result, the feedback loop of the sound generation was clarified as below. A vortex is shed between the kink shape and the trailing edge, and convects downstream. The acoustic wave radiates from distortion of the vortex due to the interference with the wall around the trailing edge. The acoustic waves are propagated and lead to the vibrating of shear layers around the kink shape. The disturbances due to this vibrating are amplified in the downstream of the reception point of sound, and a vortex is again shed. The reception point is located slightly downstream of the flow separation point. The positions of the acoustic source and the acoustic reception in this feedback loop were also clarified. Meanwhile, the tonal sound dose not radiate for smaller kink shape angle, where the vortex formation does not occur around the kink shape by the lack of flow separation. Also, for the larger kink shape angle, the large separation prompts turbulent transition and the tonal sound does not radiate.


We have developed a new derivative-free algorithm based on Radial Basis Functions (RBFs). Derivative-free optimization is an active field of research and several algorithms have been proposed recently. Problems of this nature in the industrial setting are quite frequent. The reason is that in a number of applications the optimization process contains simulation packages which are treated as black boxes. The development of our own algorithm was originally motivated by an application in biomedical imaging: the medical image registration problem. The particular characteristics of this problem have incited us to develop a new optimization algorithm based on trust-region methods. However it has been designed to be generic and to be applied to a wide range of problems. The main originality of our approach is the use of RBFs to build the models. In particular we have adapted the existing theory based on quadratic models to our own models and developed new procedures especially designed for models based on RBFs. We have tested our algorithm called BOOSTERS against state-of-the-art methods (UOBYQA, NEWUOA, DFO). On the medical image registration problem, BOOSTERS appears to be the method of choice. The tests on problems from the CUTEr collection show that BOOSTERS is comparable to, but not better than other methods on small problems (size 2-20). It is performing very well for medium size problems (20-80). Moreover, it is able to solve problems of dimension 200, which is considered very large in derivative-free optimization. We have also developed a new class of algorithms combining the robustness of derivative-free algorithms with the faster rate of convergence characterizing Newtonlike-methods. In fact, they define a new class of algorithms lying between derivative-free optimization and quasi-Newton methods. These algorithms are built on the skeleton of our derivative-free algorithm but they can incorporate the gradient when it is available. They can be interpreted as a way of doping derivative-free algorithms with derivatives. If the derivatives are available at each iteration, then our method can be seen as an alternative to quasi-Newton methods. At the opposite, if the derivatives are never evaluated, then the algorithm is totally similar to BOOSTERS. It is a very interesting alternative to existing methods for problems whose objective function is expensive to evaluate and when the derivatives are not available. In this situation, the gradient can be approximated by finite differences and its costs corresponds to n additional function evaluations assuming that Rn is the domain of definition of the objective function. We have compared our method with CFSQP and BTRA, two gradient-based algorithms, and the results show that our doped method performs best. We have also a theoretical analysis of the medical image registration problem based on maximization of mutual information. Most of the current research in this field is concentrated on registration based on nonlinear image transformation. However, little attention has been paid to the theoretical properties of the optimization problem. In our analysis, we focus on the continuity and the differentiability of the objective function. We show in particular that performing a registration without extension of the reference image may lead to discontinuities in the objective function. But we demonstrate that, under some mild assumptions, the function is differentiable almost everywhere. Our analysis is important from an optimization point of view and conditions the choice of a solver. The usual practice is to use generic optimization packages without worrying about the differentiability of the objective function. But the use of gradient-based methods when the objective function is not differentiable may result in poor performance or even in absence of convergence. One of our objectives with this analysis is also that practitioners become aware of these problems and to propose them new algorithms having a potential interest for their applications.


SUMMARY While gender issues are becoming increasingly integrated in international environment and development policies, the simplistic manner in which they are treated holds scant promise for real change. In the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program in Burkina Faso, women are targeted in projects promoting non-timber forest product commercialisation aimed to incentivise forest conservation. Such policies are often based on essentialist assumptions about what men and women do, ignoring that social relations of inequality need to be understood in context. Drawing on intersectional theory this study analyses REDD+ documents, and data about resource use in two villages in Burkina Faso, showing how the participatory approach in Burkina's REDD+ program is unlikely to encourage currently marginalised voices to be heard in existing forest management organisations. Rather, the lack of acknowledgement of intersecting relations of inequality leads to crucial aspects of NTFP resource use being overlooked, and risks leading to increased marginalisation of certain groups.


Through a descriptive and cross-sectional study, a classification is made on the moment of change in physical exercise in adolescents and the relationship with motivations, barriers and physical condition is analyzed in a sample of 379 Spanish young people between 12 and 16 years of age. These evaluations make possible to prepare a basis for an action's proposal to improve the process of changing habits towards physical exercise. The results show that the majority of the study population (52.2%) is in the Maintenance stage, observing a difference in women (38.3%), and an alarming decrease in physical activity as age increases. The most outstanding motivations are prevention and health, followed by the search for fun and well-being; The most obvious barriers are obligations and lack of time. For this reason, intervention programs should consider these aspects, offering activities compatible with school hours, generating motivational contexts and adapted to the stage in which the subject is.