With the rapid development of Internet technologies, higher education institutions have adopted blended learning to engage students in active learning and enhance their learning outcomes. This study investigated 261 preservice student teachers participating in a teacher education programme that was based on a blended learning design. Questionnaires and focus group interviews were administered to obtain data. The purpose of this study was to understand student' perceptions of blended learning and examine how the interaction between traditional and constructivist conceptions influences learning. The result indicated that the participants favoured face-toface lectures over e-learning, and they exhibited strong preferences for traditional modes of learning. The author suggests that there is still some way to go before students fully engage with online learning but, as they are rooted in the Confucian heritage culture, this can also be used to encourage students to engage with this mode of learning as the process of transformation.


Empirical studies show that emotions mediate the impact of perceived service quality on customer satisfaction. In this paper, we explore how the mediating effect of emotions differs between web and telephone encounters. In addition, we explore if this mediating effect differs across three service industries that rely heavily on telephone and web customer care: telecommunications, energy and banking. We use SEM to analyze a large-scale consumer survey (N = 2872) in telecommunication, energy and banking sectors. Emotions partially mediate the effect on customer satisfaction, both for telephone-based (25% mediation) and web-based service encounters (21%). When distinguishing positive and negative emotions, the mediating effect of negative emotions is much stronger. While mediation takes place in all three sectors, negative emotions in phone-based service encounters are more important in telecommunications, while negative emotions in web-based encounters are more important in banking industry. We advise firms to use explicit emotion evoking strategies for positive service experiences and emotion reducing strategies for negative ones.


Accurate and valid data is essential during the development of building projects and throughout the use phase of buildings. This study proposes a framework to help owners and facility managers in: (a) defining the requirements for asset management tasks in a structured way; (b) validating project and asset data against the established requirements; and (c) visualising asset data, stored in different and distributed sources, in an integrated and interactive way to support specific asset/facility management functions (e.g. maintenance tasks). The framework combines the use of Information Delivery Manual (IDM), Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie), and Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) in the development of Asset Information Models (AIM) to fulfil the owner's requirements (Asset Information Requirements) throughout the lifecycle of a building. An AIM is a data model that contains all digital data (graphical, non-graphical, and documentary) required to operate an asset or portfolio of assets. Validation methods are identified for each of the AIM data types and a method for their integration and visualisation is proposed and implemented in a virtual environment.
The proposed framework was tested in two use cases that involved (1) the validation of the various data sources against the client requirements, defined in the Asset Information Requirement (AIR); and (2) the visualisation of asset data required for a maintenance task in an interactive virtual environment. The two use cases demonstrated the capability of the framework to enable the definition of AIR and the validation of the different AIM's data deliverables. The visualisation of the AIM data - from different and distributed sources - for a maintenance task was successfully performed in an integrated and interactive game environment. Future work will consider other data sources and will evaluate the proposed framework using real industrial data.


The purpose of the study was to explore the main problems that teachers encounter in their daily lives in the Omani schools. Despite teachers problems have been researched in many developing and developed nations, these problems have up until now never been researched in Omani schools. The relevant research indicated that teachers are adversely affected by the economic and social conditions of a society, which in turn affect their roles and affects pupils' academic performance as well. This was indicated in the experience of some Asian and European nations. As a result, to solve and improve performance, developed and some developing nations made serious attempts to reform teacher's social and economic status. Also, they went further by refOrming school environment (e,g, reducing class size) and enhancing the home school relationship as an important issue in refOrming educational poliCies. The ideas for this research were based on the World Bank and Ministry of Education reports that identified problems in the educational system in Oman. To explore the main problems that affect teachers' performance, the researcher selected a large sample (50/0 of the total population of male teachers) of teachers (as the main sample in the study). the total population of the principals of educational areas, and purposive samples of parents, schools principals and school teachers. The study used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to reveal the problems that were investigated. The questionnaires were handled to teachers and the principals of the educational areas. Semistructured interviews were also used with teachers, parents and schools principals. The outcomes of the field survey indicated that teachers have a good relationship with the schools' principals and with their colleagues as well. By contrast, the majority of teachers in the sample are dissatisfied with the salary, the annual salary increment and the opportunities of in-service training. Teachers also indicated that large class size produces adverse effects on teaching practice and on the Omani pupils' academic performance. With regard to the Omani pupils' performance, teachers indicated that the aspects that are most affected by large class size are: amount of individual attention, the assessment and standard of work. Teachers considered the issue of class size as one of, or indeed the most important issue for them and for enhancing the academic performance of the Omani pupil's performance. Teachers indicated that they are dissatisfied with Omani parents contact with school. They attributed the lack of home-contact with the school to many factors, e,g. illiteracy among parents. disregarding of the value of education for the future of their sons. The principals of the educational areas emphasised the same issues that teachers raised in the questionnaire namely: weak home contact with the school. large class size and lack of in-service training. The semi-structured interviews revealed that Omani parents are dissatisfied with the perfonnance of the Omani teachers. Also. they indicated that the lack of the necessary facilities and curricula improvements, are serious problems that have adverse effects on teachers' and Omani pupils' perfonnance. Schools principals believe that the economic condition of Omani families and ignorance among Omani parents are serious social impediments that hamper them from contacting schools and to followup their child's academic progress. Alongside these home-school problems, the school principals indicated that the Omani pupils perfonnance has been worsening and the Ministry of Education must introduce an effective policies that support and enhance teachers perfonnance and improve the Omani parents awareness of the value of education. The outcomes of the teachers' semi-structured interviews indicated that most of them are not optimistic about the future of education in Oman unless the Ministry of Education introduces qualitative improvements. It was concluded that there was an urgent need for an appropriate balanced policy that takes into account the point that expanding the educational services must not be at the expense of the quality of education system in Oman. Also, I concluded that refOrming teachers' status and teaching perfonnance must be the starting point in any prospective improvements policy. Moreover, I concluded that improving the social awareness of the Omani parents of the importance of education must be an essential input in improving the perfonnance of the Omani pupil perfonnance and to bridge the gulf between the home and the school.


Objective. Keloids occur commonly after trauma to the skin, with ear piercing being a well-known inciting event. We surveyed 32 patients with keloids resulting from ear piercing, to examine a potential relationship between age of piercing and keloid formation. Methods. A total of 32 consecutive patients completed a survey about ear-piercing and keloid formation. Fisher's exact test was used for data analysis. Results. Fifty percent (n = 16) of surveyed patients developed a keloid after their first piercing. Twenty surveyed patients developed keloids with subsequent piercings. Those who had piercings at ≥11 years of age were more likely to develop keloids (80%) than were those who had piercings at <11 years of age (23.5%). Conclusions. Keloids are more likely to develop when ears are pierced after age 11 than before age 11. This observation holds true for patients with a family history of keloids. Given the difficulty and cost of treating keloids, prevention remains the best approach. Patients with a family history of keloids should consider not having their ears pierced. If this is not an option, then piercing during early childhood, rather than later childhood, may be advisable. Primary care physicians and pediatricians should educate children and their parents about the risk of keloid formation.


Identification of structural and stratigraphic components within a hydrocarbon reservoir is essential for the construction of geologic models that represent the facies distribution as accurately as possible. Such construction may represent a challenge for ancient carbonate reservoirs, which exhibit greater heterogeneity than siliciclastic reservoirs. We developed a workflow that incorporated seismic attribute analysis and well log data to highlight structural and architectural elements with the benefit of the understanding the distribution of facies in this features in an Albian offshore carbonate reservoir in Brazil. The proposed workflow combined incoherence, sweetness, and a new approach of spectral decomposition to delineate the main structural and architectural elements in the field. Well log facies and modern analog analyses were used to support the architectural elements' interpretation. Joulters Cays is an oolitic shoal in the Bahamas that provided a modern analog for the field in study. Three main fault systems, responsible for the rollover structure of the field, were detected with the incoherence attribute. The workflow allowed the interpretation of four main architectural elements in the field: (1) tidal channels, (2) carbonate shoals, (3) reef, and (4) lagoons. Tidal channels and lagoons are mainly composed by wackestone. Carbonate shoals are primarily composed by grainstone with secondary packstone, while the reef crest is composed by packstone. Sequential indicator simulation (SIS) of well log facies supported these observations. The highlighted architectural elements could be helpful for the construction of a conceptual model of the field or useful as a training image for multiple-point statistics because SIS of well log facies does not define geologic bodies.


Buddhism or Buddhisms? By the time they move on to Buddhism in Japan, many students who have studied its origins in India ask whether this is in fact the same religion, so different can they appear. In Buddhisms: An Introduction, Professor John S. Strong provides an overview of the Buddhist tradition in all its different forms around the world. Beginning at the modern day temples of Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, Strong takes us through the life of the Buddha and a study of Buddhist Doctrine, revealing how Buddhism has changed just as it has stayed the same. Finally, Strong examines the nature of Buddhist community life and its development today in the very different environments of Thailand, Japan, and Tibet. Enriched by the author's own insights gathered over forty years, Buddhisms never loses sight of the personal experience amidst the wide-scope of its subject. Clear in its explanations, replete with tables and suggestions for further reading, this is an essential new work that makes original contributions to the study of this 2,500 year-old religion.


Objective We studied evolving antithrombotic therapy patterns in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF) and ≥1 additional stroke risk factor between 2010 and 2015. Methods 39 670 patients were prospectively enrolled in four sequential cohorts in the Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF): cohort C1 (2010–2011), n=5500; C2 (2011–2013), n=11 662; C3 (2013–2014), n=11 462; C4 (2014–2015), n=11 046. Baseline characteristics and antithrombotic therapy initiated at diagnosis were analysed by cohort. Results Baseline characteristics were similar across cohorts. Median CHA2DS2-VASc (cardiac failure, hypertension, age ≥75 (doubled), diabetes, stroke (doubled)-vascular disease, age 65–74 and sex category (female)) score was 3 in all four cohorts. From C1 to C4, the proportion of patients on anticoagulant (AC) therapy increased by almost 15% (C1 57.4%; C4 71.1%). Use of vitamin K antagonist (VKA)±antiplatelet (AP) (C1 53.2%; C4 34.0%) and AP monotherapy (C1 30.2%; C4 16.6%) declined, while use of non-VKA oral ACs (NOACs)±AP increased (C1 4.2%; C4 37.0%). Most CHA2DS2-VASc ≥2 patients received AC, and this proportion increased over time, largely driven by NOAC prescribing. NOACs were more frequently prescribed than VKAs in men, the elderly, patients of Asian ethnicity, those with dementia, or those using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and current smokers. VKA use was more common in patients with cardiac, vascular, or renal comorbidities. Conclusions Since NOACs were introduced, there has been an increase in newly diagnosed patients with AF at risk of stroke receiving guideline-recommended therapy, predominantly driven by increased use of NOACs and reduced use of VKA±AP or AP alone. Trial registration number NCT01090362; Pre-results.


Negative curvature descent (NCD) method has been utilized to design deterministic or stochastic algorithms for non-convex optimization aiming at finding second-order stationary points or local minima. In existing studies, NCD needs to approximate the smallest eigen-value of the Hessian matrix with a sufficient precision (e.g., $\epsilon_2\ll 1$) in order to achieve a sufficiently accurate second-order stationary solution (i.e., $\lambda_{\min}(\nabla^2 f(\x))\geq -\epsilon_2)$. One issue with this approach is that the target precision $\epsilon_2$ is usually set to be very small in order to find a high quality solution, which increases the complexity for computing a negative curvature. To address this issue, we propose an adaptive NCD to allow for an adaptive error dependent on the current gradient's magnitude in approximating the smallest eigen-value of the Hessian, and to encourage competition between a noisy NCD step and gradient descent step. We consider the applications of the proposed adaptive NCD for both deterministic and stochastic non-convex optimization, and demonstrate that it can help reduce the the overall complexity in computing the negative curvatures during the course of optimization without sacrificing the iteration complexity.


The Effects of Laryngeal Activity on Articulatory Kinematics Katherine Marie Barber Department of Communication Disorders, BYU Master of Science The current study examined the effects of three speech conditions (voiced, whispered, mouthed) on articulatory kinematics at the sentence and word level. Participants included 20 adults (10 males, 10 females) with no history of speech, language, or hearing disorders. Participants read aloud six target utterances in the three different speaking conditions while articulatory kinematics were measured using the NDI Wave electromagnetic articulograph. The following articulators were examined: mid tongue, front of tongue, jaw, lower lip, and upper lip. One of the target utterances was chosen for analysis (It's time to shop for two new suits) at the sentence level and then further segmented for more detailed analysis of the word time. Results revealed a number of significant changes between the voiced and mouthed conditions for all articulators at the sentence level. Significant increases in sentence duration, articulatory stroke count, and stroke duration as well as significant decreases in peak stroke speed, stroke distance, and hull volume were found in the mouthed condition at the sentence level when compared to the voiced condition. Peak velocity significantly decreased in the mouthed condition at the word level, but overall the sentence level measures were more sensitive to change. These findings suggest that both laryngeal activation and auditory feedback may be necessary in the production of normally articulate speech, and that the absence of these may account for the significant changes between the voiced and mouthed conditions.


Objective. This investigation aimed to study the presence of Streptococcus spp. in tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) from fish farm located in Sullana-Piura, Peru. Materials and methods. 150 fish with clinical signs of streptococcal disease were sampled, and the bacterium isolation was performed on blood agar, correlated to histopathological lesions description and molecular confirmation by real-time PCR. Results. The necropsy revealed exophthalmia, hyphema, congestion and/or haemorrhagic meninges, ascites, splenomegaly, hepatomegaly and diffuse haemorrhagic zones throughout the body. 102 isolated positives (54 tilapias) to Streptococcus spp. were identified in the microbiological analysis (prevalence of 26%), the brain was the organ with the highest percentage of this bacteria (34.31%), and 19 isolates were beta-haemolytic (18.63%) with prevalence of 10.12%. Fish beta-haemolytic streptococci presented epicarditis, perisplenitis and chronic meningitis, panophthalmitis, coagulative necrosis of skeletal muscle and granulomas formation. In the confirmatory test by real-time PCR, any positive tilapia to S. iniae was obtained. The results were analysed using a stochastic simulation of beta distribution using @Risk program uncertainty, reporting an average prevalence of 0.66% in sick tilapias. Conclusions. The analysed fishes were positive to bacteria of the genus Streptococcus, which confirms its presence in the fish farm. However, 19 isolates were beta-haemolytic, and the presence of S. iniae was not positive to the limit prevalence of 2.7% in real-time PCR.


Emergence and adoption of cloud computing have become widely prevalent given the value proposition it brings to an enterprise in terms of agility and cost effectiveness. Big data analytical capabilities (specifically treating storage/system management as a big data problem for a service provider) using Cloud delivery models is defined as Analytics as a Service or Software as a Service. This service simplifies obtaining useful insights from an operational enterprise data center leading to cost and performance optimizations.Software defined environments decouple the control planes from the data planes that were often vertically integrated in a traditional networking or storage systems. The decoupling between the control planes and the data planes enables opportunities for improved security, resiliency and IT optimization in general. This talk describes our novel approach in hosting the systems management platform (a.k.a. control plane) in the cloud offered to enterprises in Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Specifically, in this presentation, focus is on the analytics layer with SaaS paradigm enabling data centers to visualize, optimize and forecast infrastructure via a simple capture, analyze and govern framework. At the core, it uses big data analytics to extract actionable insights from system management metrics data. Our system is developed in research and deployed across customers, where core focus is on agility, elasticity and scalability of the analytics framework. We demonstrate few system/storage management analytics case studies to demonstrate cost and performance optimization for both cloud consumer as well as service provider. Actionable insights generated from the analytics platform are implemented in an automated fashion via an OpenStack based platform.


The Cloud computing paradigm has revolutionised the computer science horizon during the past decade and has enabled the emergence of computing as the fifth utility. It has captured significant attention of academia, industries, and government bodies. Now, it has emerged as the backbone of modern economy by offering subscription-based services anytime, anywhere following a pay-as-you-go model. This has instigated (1) shorter establishment times for start-ups, (2) creation of scalable global enterprise applications, (3) better cost-to-value associativity for scientific and high performance computing applications, and (4) different invocation/execution models for pervasive and ubiquitous applications. The recent technological developments and paradigms such as serverless computing, software-defined networking, Internet of Things, and processing at network edge are creating new opportunities for Cloud computing. However, they are also posing several new challenges and creating the need for new approaches and research strategies, as well as the re-evaluation of the models that were developed to address issues such as scalability, elasticity, reliability, security, sustainability, and application models. The proposed manifesto addresses them by identifying the major open challenges in Cloud computing, emerging trends, and impact areas. It then offers research directions for the next decade, thus helping in the realisation of Future Generation Cloud Computing.


This phenomenological study utilizes the framework of Intersectionality to explore the perceived impact of race, gender, and other identity structures on the journey experiences of seven White and six African American women college presidents. Findings suggest that while gender is becoming more peripheral, the interlocking tensions of race and gender often shape the journey experiences of African American women, with race appearing to be a salient factor. Despite challenges resulting from these social constructs, the women employed various strategies for navigating the presidential pipeline including mentorship, leadership development programs, and firm assurance of institutional fit.


In the case 9535/06 Abadallah Abu Massad and Others v Water Commissioner and Israel Lands Administration (2011), the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the right to water deserves constitutional protection under Israel's Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom. The Court also found support for the right to water under both international human rights law and Israeli statutory law. At the same time, the Court held that the right to water is not absolute but must be balanced against the rights of the state. The case was brought by residents of unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev, a desert region in southern Israel, who do not have access to household water. The Court found that in exercising its discretion regarding additional water access points, the Israeli Water Authority could consider the 'illegal' nature of these villages. Applying the criteria of reasonableness and proportionality, the Court ultimately affirmed the Israeli Water Authority's policy in unrecognised villages in the Negev. Despite this administrative deference, the invocation of constitutional and international human rights law raises the level of scrutiny that should be applied to a review of the Israeli Water Authority's exercise of discretion. The Court's opinion is coloured and influenced by long-standing land disputes between the indigenous Bedouin population and the State of Israel. Drawing on empirical research conducted in December 2011, the analysis attempts to place the Abu Massad decision in its proper historical and political context. The dispute over land in the Negev can be traced back to the days of the Ottoman Empire. More recent efforts by the Israeli government as set out in the Goldberg Report and the Prawer Plan, and the international community's response to these efforts, are discussed. In light of the history and current political context, it may be prudent for the Israeli Water Authority to re-assess the effectiveness of its existing water policy in unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev.


Antibiotic-induced endotoxin release is associated with high mortality rate even when appropriate antibiotics are used for the treatment of severe infections in intensive care units. Since liver is involved in systemic clearance and detoxification of endotoxin hence it becomes a primary target organ for endotoxin mediated inflammation. Currently available anti-inflammatory drugs give rise to serious side effects. Hence, there is an urgent need for safe and effective anti-inflammatory therapy. It is likely that anti-inflammatory phytochemicals and neutraceutical agents may have the potential to reduce the endotoxin mediated inflammation and complications associated with endotoxin release. Keeping this in mind, the present study was planned to evaluate the hepatoprotective potential of zingerone (active compound of zingiber officinale) against liver inflammation induced by antibiotic mediated endotoxemia. The selected antibiotics capable of releasing high content of endotoxin were employed for their in vivo efficacy in P.aeruginosa peritonitis model. Released endotoxin induced inflammation and zingerone as co-anti-inflammatory therapy significantly reduced inflammatory response. Improved liver histology and reduced inflammatory markers MDA, RNI, MPO, tissue damage markers (AST, ALT, ALP) and inflammatory cytokines (MIP-2, IL-6 and TNF-α) were indicative of therapeutic potential of zingerone. The mechanism of action of zingerone may be related to significant inhibition of the mRNA expression of inflammatory markers (TLR4, RelA, NF-kB2, TNF- α, iNOS, COX-2) indicating that zingerone interferes with cell signalling pathway and suppresses hyper expression of cell signaling molecules of inflammatory pathway. Zingerone therapy significantly protected liver from endotoxin induced inflammatory damage by down regulating biochemical as well as molecular markers of inflammation. In conclusion, this study provides evidence that zingerone is a potent anti-inflammatory phytomedicine against hepatic inflammation induced by antibiotic mediated endotoxemia. These results thus suggest that zingerone treatment can be used as a co-therapy with antibiotics to reduced endotoxin induced inflammation during treatment of severe P.aeruginosa infections.


Objectives: Our objective was to test the performance of CA125 in classifying serum samples from a cohort of malignant and benign ovarian cancers and age-matched healthy controls and to assess whether combining information from matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) time-of-flight profiling could improve diagnostic performance. Materials and Methods: Serum samples from women with ovarian neoplasms and healthy volunteers were subjected to CA125 assay and MALDI time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MS) profiling. Models were built from training data sets using discriminatory MALDI MS peaks in combination with CA125 values and tested their ability to classify blinded test samples. These were compared with models using CA125 threshold levels from 193 patients with ovarian cancer, 290 with benign neoplasm, and 2236 postmenopausal healthy controls. Results: Using a CA125 cutoff of 30 U/mL, an overall sensitivity of 94.8% (96.6% specificity) was obtained when comparing malignancies versus healthy postmenopausal controls, whereas a cutoff of 65 U/mL provided a sensitivity of 83.9% (99.6% specificity). High classification accuracies were obtained for early-stage cancers (93.5% sensitivity). Reasons for high accuracies include recruitment bias, restriction to postmenopausal women, and inclusion of only primary invasive epithelial ovarian cancer cases. The combination of MS profiling information with CA125 did not significantly improve the specificity/accuracy compared with classifications on the basis of CA125 alone. Conclusions: We report unexpectedly good performance of serum CA125 using threshold classification in discriminating healthy controls and women with benign masses from those with invasive ovarian cancer. This highlights the dependence of diagnostic tests on the characteristics of the study population and the crucial need for authors to provide sufficient relevant details to allow comparison. Our study also shows that MS profiling information adds little to diagnostic accuracy. This finding is in contrast with other reports and shows the limitations of serum MS profiling for biomarker discovery and as a diagnostic tool.


Reovirus induces apoptosis in cultured cells and in vivo. In cell culture models, apoptosis is contingent upon a mechanism involving reovirus-induced activation of transcription factor NF-kappaB complexes containing p50 and p65/RelA subunits. To explore the in vivo role of NF-kappaB in this process, we tested the capacity of reovirus to induce apoptosis in mice lacking a functional nfkb1/p50 gene. The genetic defect had no apparent effect on reovirus replication in the intestine or dissemination to secondary sites of infection. In comparison to what was observed in wild-type controls, apoptosis was significantly diminished in the CNS of p50-null mice following reovirus infection. In sharp contrast, the loss of p50 was associated with massive reovirus-induced apoptosis and uncontrolled reovirus replication in the heart. Levels of IFN-beta mRNA were markedly increased in the hearts of wild-type animals but not p50-null animals infected with reovirus. Treatment of p50-null mice with IFN-beta substantially diminished reovirus replication and apoptosis, which suggests that IFN-beta induction by NF-kappaB protects against reovirus-induced myocarditis. These findings reveal an organ-specific role for NF-kappaB in the regulation of reovirus-induced apoptosis, which modulates encephalitis and myocarditis associated with reovirus infection.


ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to investigate what sets in motion the process that results in product innovations in rural micro-tourism firms. The point of departure is to place entrepreneurship as a process that precedes innovations. This approach enables the application of the opportunity-based perspective, on the study of 40 new tourism products. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with owner-managers of micro-tourism firms in rural Sweden. The focus of the analysis is on the formation of the entrepreneur–opportunity nexus. The findings suggest that in forming the nexus, three types of forces are at play: internal, supply chain dynamics and reaction to changes. The notion of triggering forces adds a new dimension to the study of entrepreneurial opportunities. The theoretical contribution of this paper to tourism research is twofold. First, it points at the generating moment as a step towards theorising innovations, and second, the findings contribute to the growing knowledge base about entrepreneurial behaviour in micro-tourism firms in rural areas. Finally, in a practical manner, the findings of this study should encourage tourism entrepreneurs to invest in exploring the value chain, regard tourists as sources of knowledge and be attentive to changes in circumstances.


INTRODUCTION: Cases of child abuse and neglect have increased in Mexico, but few studies have been carried out to examine the factors associated with this health problem. OBJECTIVE: With this study we sought to identify social factors associated with child abuse and neglect and to construct a predictor model of child maltreatment in children younger than 7 years in Guadalajara, Mexico. METHODS: A case-control study was designed; cases were selected randomly from the register of maltreated children younger than 7 years by the DIF (the public institution that provides assistance to families in Mexico) during 2002 (N = 205). Controls were chosen randomly from the register of children assisted in other DIF programs in 2002 (N = 379). A multivariate logistic regression model was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: In the multivariate analysis, 6 factors were statistically associated with child maltreatment: maternal drug addiction (OR: 15.3 [95% CI: 1.8–127.6]), mother without steady partner (OR: 3.0 [95% CI: 1.9–4.6]), bad family relationships (OR: 1.3 [95% CI: 1.1–4.2]), the child has "tantrums" (OR: 1.8 [95% CI: 1.2–2.8]), the child's behavior irritates the parents (OR: 1.5 [95% CI: 1.1–2.1]), and overcrowding (OR: 1.5 [95% CI: 1.1–2.2]). CONCLUSIONS: According to the constructed model, if a child were simultaneously exposed to all these risk factors, he or she would have a very high probability of being a maltreated child. The findings show that public health institutions can play an important role in designing timely intervention strategies directed at avoiding or reducing the cases of child abuse and neglect.


Background: Acute administration of caffeine produces panic attacks in most Panic Disorder (PD) patients, but little is known about chronic caffeine use in these patients. Objective: To assess caffeine use in patients with PD and to ascertain if caffeine consumption is associated with sociodemographic or clinical features. Methods: 65 adults with PD and 66 healthy controls were included in the current study. Their caffeine intake within the previous week was quantified with a questionnaire and compared. Harmful caffeine use was defined as consumption above 400 mg/day of caffeine. We tested for correlations between caffeine intake, demographic and clinical features. Results: Patients consumed significantly more caffeine than controls (P < 0.001). 14% (N = 9) of the PD patients made harmful use of caffeine. The use of caffeine-containing medications was observed in 40% (N = 26) of the PD patients and 6% (N = 4) of controls. Consumption of energy drinks was observed in 11% (N = 7) of PD patients and in none of the healthy subjects. Patients reported sleeping significantly less than controls (P < 0.001). In PD patients, caffeine consumption was not correlated with the presence of panic attacks or comorbidity with depression. The use of benzodiazepines or sedative medications was not correlated with caffeine intake. Conclusion: High caffeine consumption in PD patients could be explained by the development of tolerance with regular use of this substance. Subtypes of sensitive and non-sensitive PD patients could also explain why some of these patients are able to tolerate high doses of caffeine.


Background Noise exposure causes permanent or temporary hearing loss. High levels of noise may stimulate the vestibular system and thereby cause disturbances in the balancing mechanism. Objectives This work was designed to investigate the effect of chronic noise exposure on the vestibular system. Participants and methods Two groups were included in this study: control group: 20 healthy individuals with normal hearing and vestibular function and study group: 40 patients with a history of prolonged noise exposure at work. This group was further divided into two subgroups: 20 patients with noise-induced hearing loss and 20 individuals with normal hearing sensitivity. All participants in this study were subjected to combined vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) and videonystagmography (VNG). Results cVEMPs were absent in 5 and 20% of participants of subgroup IIa and IIb, respectively, with significantly delayed P13 and N23 latencies in the rest of participants in subgroup IIb. In terms of P13 and N23 amplitudes, there was no statistically significant difference between the control and the study subgroups. oVEMPs were absent in 40% of participants of subgroup IIb, with normal latencies and amplitudes in the rest of the participants. For VNG, only saccades latency was significantly delayed in subgroup IIb compared with subgroup IIa. A correlation was found between the participants' complaints and the results of the vestibular function tests. Conclusion Chronic noise exposure is hazardous to the inner ear structures and enhances vestibular damage, especially the sacculocollic reflex pathway. Vestibular insult is higher among patients with noise-induced hearing loss than in those with normal hearing.


Prior studies have demonstrated that immunologic dysfunction underpins severe illness in COVID-19 patients, but have lacked an in-depth analysis of the immunologic drivers of death in the most critically ill patients. We performed immunophenotyping of viral antigen-specific and unconventional T cell responses, neutralizing antibodies, and serum proteins in critically ill patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, using influenza infection, SARS-CoV-2-convalescent health care workers, and healthy adults as controls. We identify mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cell activation as an independent and significant predictor of death in COVID-19 (HR = 5.92, 95% CI = 2.49–14.1). MAIT cell activation correlates with several other mortality-associated immunologic measures including broad activation of CD8+ T cells and non-Vδ2 γδT cells, and elevated levels of cytokines and chemokines, including GM-CSF, CXCL10, CCL2, and IL-6. MAIT cell activation is also a predictor of disease severity in influenza (ECMO/death HR = 4.43, 95% CI = 1.08–18.2). Single-cell RNA-sequencing reveals a shift from focused IFNα-driven signals in COVID-19 ICU patients who survive to broad pro-inflammatory responses in fatal COVID-19 –a feature not observed in severe influenza. We conclude that fatal COVID-19 infection is driven by uncoordinated inflammatory responses that drive a hierarchy of T cell activation, elements of which can serve as prognostic indicators and potential targets for immune intervention.


Abstract Corundum xenocrysts from alkaline basalt fields differ in characteristics and hence lithospheric origins.Trace element, fluid/melt inclusion and oxygen isotope studies on two eastern Australian corundum deposits are compared to consider their origins. Sapphires from Weldborough, NE Tasmania, are magmatic (high-Ga, av. 200 ppm) and dominated by Fe (av. 3300 ppm) and variable Ti (av. 400 ppm) as chromophores. They contain Cl, Fe, Ga, Ti and CO2-rich fluid inclusions and give δ18O values (5.1−6.2 ‰) of mantle range. Geochronology on companion zircons suggests several sources (from 290 Ma to 47 Ma) were disrupted by basaltic melts (47 ± 0.6 Ma). Gem corundums from Barrington, New South Wales, also include magmatic sapphires (Ga av. 170 ppm; δ18O 4.6−5.8 ‰), but with more Fe (av. 9000 ppm) and less Ti (av. 300 ppm) as chromophores. Zircon dating suggests that gem formation preceded and was overlapped by Cenozoic basaltic melt generation (59−4 Ma). In contrast, a metamorphic sapphire-ruby suite (low-Ga, av. 30 ppm) here incorporates greater Cr into the chromophores (up to 2250 ppm). Fluid inclusions are CO2-poor, but melt inclusions suggest some alkaline melt interaction. The δ18O values (5.1−6.2%) overlap magmatic sapphire values. Interactions at contact zones (T = 780−940ºC) between earlier Permian ultramafic bodies and later alkaline fluid activity may explain the formation of rubies.


Of all the figures in the Bible, David arguably stands out as the most perplexing and enigmatic. He was many things: a warrior who subdued Goliath and the Philistines; a king who united a nation; a poet who created beautiful, sensitive verse; a loyal servant of God who proposed the great Temple and founded the Messianic line; a schemer, deceiver, and adulterer who freely indulged his very human appetites. David Wolpe, whom Newsweek called "the most influential rabbi in America," takes a fresh look at biblical David in an attempt to find coherence in his seemingly contradictory actions and impulses. The author questions why David holds such an exalted place in history and legend, and then proceeds to unravel his complex character based on information found in the book of Samuel and later literature. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of an exceptional human being who, despite his many flaws, was truly beloved by God.


Project definition continues to be very problematic in Information Systems. Attempts to 'nail down' the definition of projects reflect what Mitroff and Linstone[1993] call an overly 'technical' or objective perspective. Rather a more social constructionist method is required. The authors arranged a small 'town and gown' colloquium to explore the problems and possible solutions to project definition. Drawing on this, and many years of their own project definition experience, the paper argues that project definition has to be explicitly treated as something that will constantly grow with client and designer interaction. Some pragmatic methods that align with this view are suggested.


What makes a leader successful? This question has been asked throughout the ages; before oneattempt to understand what makes a leader successful, one must first have a full comprehension ofwhat constitutes success and what constitutes a leader. To merely hold the position of a leader doesnot make one a leader. Success is largely an individualistic interpretation of personal increase orsatisfaction, whether physical, emotional, or psychological. One's perception of success is influencedby the social contexts around the individual. A successful leader must possess certain characteristicsand have the ability to transform those characteristics into action. A person may understand, believe,and accept proper leadership techniques; however, if one is not able to implement those techniquesthe leadership would be flawed and the proper leadership model would break down under adverseconditions. Two basic factors contribute to one's ability or inability to implement proper leadershiptechniques: first, emotional intelligence, the cognitive understanding and acceptance of basicleadership principles, and second, the ability to implement those principles, emotional maturity. Anindividual may possess one without the other yet their ability to be a successful leader will be inhibited.


This article aims to demonstrate the perceptions of patients with chronic renal disease in Hong Kong towards the new vaccine for influenza A (H1N1), as well as the main disincentives. Little is known about the views of chronically ill patients on the H1N1 vaccine and even less about the underlying factors that motivate its low acceptance by this group. To explore these issues, this study adopted a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 40 chronic renal disease patients in Hong Kong from December 2009 to March 2010. The participants were selected by purposive sampling from a patient with renal disease self-help alliance, which has over 4000 members with chronic renal diseases coming from nine public hospitals. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis. Although vaccination was portrayed as one of the most effective methods to prevent influenza A (H1N1), chronically ill participants in this study showed reluctance towards it. Six disincentives for them to receive H1N1 vaccines were identified: perceptions of H1N1 vaccine as unsafe, cultural perception of vaccines as harmful, the belief that seasonal influenza vaccines provided immunity against influenza A (H1N1), inaccessibility for receiving the H1N1 vaccine, worries in contracting infectious diseases from vaccination locations and the financial cost. As chronically ill patients are one of the high-risk groups who can suffer from severe complications from influenza, understanding the underlying social, cultural and perceptual factors that prevent their immunisation is crucial to the design of a public health policy responsive to their needs.


Many vertebrates and invertebrates rely on the ion channel TRPA1 to detect both warmth and chemicals. The pit organs of pit vipers, pythons, and boas are remarkable sensory devices that allow these snakes to detect infrared radiation emitted by warm-blooded prey. It has been theorized that this capacity reflects the pit organ's exceptional sensitivity to subtle fluctuations in temperature, but the molecules responsible for this extreme thermal resolution have been unknown. New evidence shows that pit organs respond to temperature using the warmth-activated cation channel TRPA1 (transient receptor potential ankyrin 1), a finding that provides a first glimpse of the underlying molecular hardware. The properties of these snake TRPA1s raise intriguing questions about the mechanisms responsible for the exceptional sensitivity of many biological thermoreceptors and about the evolutionary origins of these warmth-activated TRP channels.


Small drinking water systems (SDWS) are widely identified as presenting particular challenges for drinking water management and governance in industrialised nations because of their small customer base, geographic isolation, and limited human and financial capacity. Consequently, an increasing number and range of scholars have examined SDWS over the last 30 years. Much of this work has been technocentric in nature, focused on SDWS technologies and operations, with limited attention to how these systems are managed, governed, and situated within broader social and political–economic contexts. This review seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the governance dimensions of SDWS by drawing together existing literature relating to SDWS governance and exploring its key themes, research foci, and emerging directions. This overview is intended to provide guidance to scholars and practitioners interested in specific aspects of SDWS governance and a baseline against which researchers can position future work. The review identified 117 academic articles published in English-language journals between 1990 and 2016 that referred to some aspect of drinking water governance in small, rural, and Indigenous communities in industrialised nations. The articles' content and bibliographic information were analysed to identify the locations, methods, journals, and themes included in research on SDWS governance. Further analysis of SDWS' governance dimensions is organised around four questions identified as central to SDWS research: what governance challenges are experienced by SDWS, and what are their causes, solutions, and effects? Overall, the review revealed that the SDWS governance literature is piecemeal and fragmented, with few attempts to theorise SDWS governance or to engage in interdisciplinary, cross-jurisdictional conversations. The majority of articles examine North American SDWS, retain a technocratic orientation to drinking water governance, and are published in technical or industry journals. Such research tends to focus on the governance challenges SDWS face and proposed solutions to systems' performance, capacity, and regulatory challenges. A small but growing number of studies examine the causal factors underpinning these governance challenges and their socio-spatially differentiated impacts on communities. Looking forward, the review argues for a more holistic, integrative approach to research on SDWS governance, building on a water governance framework.


Psidium guajava (L.) belongs to the Myrtaceae family and it is an important fruit in tropical areas like India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and South America. The leaves of the guava plant have been studied for their health benefits which are attributed to their plethora of phytochemicals, such as quercetin, avicularin, apigenin, guaijaverin, kaempferol, hyperin, myricetin, gallic acid, catechin, epicatechin, chlorogenic acid, epigallocatechin gallate, and caffeic acid. Extracts from guava leaves (GLs) have been studied for their biological activities, including anticancer, antidiabetic, antioxidant, antidiarrheal, antimicrobial, lipid-lowering, and hepatoprotection activities. In the present review, we comprehensively present the nutritional profile and phytochemical profile of GLs. Further, various bioactivities of the GL extracts are also discussed critically. Considering the phytochemical profile and beneficial effects of GLs, they can potentially be used as an ingredient in the development of functional foods and pharmaceuticals. More detailed clinical trials need to be conducted to establish the efficacy of the GL extracts.


The appearance of sharp vorticity gradients in two-dimensional hydrodynamic turbulence and their influence on the turbulent spectra are considered. We have developed the analog of the vortex line representation as a transformation to the curvilinear system of coordinates moving together with the divorticity lines. Compressibility of this mapping can be considered as the main reason for the formation of the sharp vorticity gradients at high Reynolds numbers. For two-dimensional turbulence in the case of strong anisotropy the sharp vorticity gradients can generate spectra which fall off as k−3 at large k, resembling the Kraichnan spectrum for the enstrophy cascade. For turbulence with weak anisotropy the k dependence of the spectrum due to the sharp gradients coincides with the Saffman spectrum, E(k)∼k−4. We have compared the analytical predictions with direct numerical solutions of the two-dimensional Euler equation for decaying turbulence. We observe that the divorticity is reaching very high values and i...


This article considers how American cyclist Floyd Landis is commodified, or produced and reproduced (hereafter "re/produced"), for consumption through the multiple texts of his mediated campaign to fight doping allegations, a campaign that emphasized digital media. Critical discourse analysis revealed several intertextually related narratives deployed for consumption by fans and supporters, narratives that commodified Landis in a variety of complex and interrelated ways. The overriding self-referential narrative across the defense campaign texts commodified Landis as the epic (American) hero fighting for justice against insurmountable odds, institutional forces, and foreign conspiracies, yet remaining grounded, accessible, and available for consumption by fans and supporters. It is suggested here that the effective consumption of Landis's campaign is partly due to features of digital media that render it a powerful site for guiding interpretations and for performing identities in ways that directly re/ produce users and fans as part of the promotional cycle. Equally, using digital media simultaneously enacted other key discourses (such as justice and democratization) mobilized in the campaign.


The long history of fire in North America spans millennia and is recognized as an important driver in the widespread and long-term dominance of oak species. Early European settlers intensified the occurrence of fire from about 1850 to 1950, with dates varying by region. This resulted in much forest damage and gained fire a negative reputation. The lack of fire for the past 50 years due to suppression programs is now indicted as a major cause of widespread oak regeneration failures. Alarms are sounding for the continued loss of oak forests. The use of prescribed fire is increasing in forest management and ecosystem restoration. An understanding of fire effects on trees can provide the basis for the silviculture of restoring and sustaining oak ecosystems. We present an overview of fire-tree wounding interactions, highlight important determinants of fire injury and damage, and discuss several practical situations where fire can be used to favor oak while minimizing damage and devaluation of the forest. We also identify stages in stand development, regeneration methods, and management objectives for which fire has the potential of causing substantial damage and alternative practices should be preferred.


With the Walking Dead game series, I tackle a very extensive and rich material in this paper and show how digital seriality accounts for very specific practices of production, reception, as well as game-play. The first section focuses on the inter-ludic seriality of the game's release and structuring as reminiscent of TV series (seasons, episodes, "previously on") as well as the comic book-aesthetic and transmedia storytelling as para-ludic seriality. The game series employs different strategies of transmedia storytelling to position the game within the crossmedia franchise of The Walking Dead. Besides inviting comparison of the different protagonists or "cameos" by established characters, the game series also explores themes like parenting/childhood or the handling of injury in a media specific manner. Gender and race play a particular role concerning the theme of parenting. The first section of the paper touches on intra-ludic seriality and the importance of relating game experiences to a collective of other gamers to provide a self-aware pleasure in variation as well as the game's mechanics. In the game's playing statistics as well as in "meta-moments", practices of individuality and collectivity are enabled through the game's operational aesthetic as well as gamers' serial appreciation of variation as a narrative outcome of the choices made.


Following a model to satellite approach, this study points out the ability of the general circulation model (GCM) of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique to reproduce the observed relationship between tropical convection and subtropical moisture in the upper troposphere. Those parameters are characterized from Meteosat water vapor equivalent brightness temperatures (WVEBT) over a monthly scale. The simulated WVEBT field closely resembles to the observed distribution. The pure water vapor features and the convective areas are well located and their seasonal variations are captured by the model. A dry (moist) bias is found over convective (subsiding) areas, whereas the model globally best acts over Atlantic ocean than over Africa. The observed and simulated seasonal variations show that an extension of the ITCZ is correlated to a moistening of the upper troposphere in subtropical areas. Those results imply a positive large scale relationship between convective and subsiding areas in both observation and simulation, and suggest the relevance of our approach for further climatic studies.


This research identifies and quantifies horizontal and vertical inequities resulting from selected owner-occupied housing tax policies though micro-simulation. The simulations are spread sheet constructions underpinned by the respective UK and US tax systems. Within each country-specific simulation case families are established varying with regard to income levels and investment choices. The specific tax policies analysed are the acquisition taxes, property taxes, elements specific to housing affecting income taxes (i.e. mortgage interest relief) and capital gains taxes. In addition to the specific tax policies, the overall tax obligations (the sum of the four specific taxes) are considered. The time frame of the study is a twenty-year period from 1990 through 2009. A recurring theme in the literature is that homeowners ought to be taxed as investors in rental properties to ensure tenure neutrality or, alternatively, taxed as any other investor to ensure tax neutrality. This research considers the corresponding effects on horizontal and vertical equity by modifying the UK and US tax systems for increased levels of neutrality through further micro-simulation analysis. Finally, the respective owner-occupied housing tax policy changes and reforms that occurred within the twenty-year period studied are evaluated in terms of enhancements to or hindrances of horizontal and vertical equity. This is accomplished by simulating sixteen five-year periods within the twenty-year time frame and evaluating horizontal and vertical equity on a within-country and a cross- country basis. What appears to be lacking in the literature is an extensive comparative analysis of the specific owner-occupied housing tax policies and their interrelationship with respect to the complex overall tax system in which they are present. The aim of this research is to contribute to the middle/high range of comparative analytical work. The research is set within a comprehensive theoretical framework and systematically ii compares the two countries' specific tax policies and their overall impact on the respective tax systems. The methodology used is consistent between the two countries, ensuring a robust dual-nation comparison. The US specific tax policies relevant to homeownership and the overall tax system were found to have greater inherent horizontal inequities when compared with the UK tax policies and tax system. Both countries' specific tax systems were found to have varying inherent vertical inequities. The UK homeowner occupiers experience more vertical equity (progressivity) in the acquisition tax system when compared with the US investors. Conversely, the US homeowner occupiers experience more vertical equity (progressivity) in the property tax, income tax and capital gains tax systems. Overall, the US investors experience a more progressive tax system when compared directly with the UK investors. The abolition of the UK Mortgage Interest Relief at Source (MIRAS) resulted in a less progressive income tax system for homeowner occupiers but one that is more horizontally equitable with other investors. The erosion of the benefits realised from the US mortgage interest and real estate tax deductions has resulted in a more vertically and horizontally equitable income tax system for all but the most wealthy. Vertical equity was improved by the adoption of the UK council tax in that it is a less regressive form of property taxation when compared with its predecessor. The recent reforms to the UK stamp duty (land tax) have made the system of acquisition taxation more vertically equitable but have exacerbated the horizontal inequity of the system with respect to other capital investors. The US capital gains tax system as it relates to the homeowner occupier changed significantly with the Tax Reform Act of 1997, resulting in a simpler but less equitable system depending on circumstances. With regard to the equity of the overall tax systems of the two countries, the UK's progressivity has decreased while the horizontal equity has improved during the twenty-year period, whereas the progressivity of the US system has remained relatively flat with an improvement in horizontal equity. iii The author concludes with a call for the gradual repeal of the mortgage interest relief in the US, a subsidy shown to be extremely vertically inequitable in this study and one that was estimated to cost the exchequer $79 million in lost tax revenue in 2010 by the US Office for Management and Budget. While a taxable imputed rental income may be theoretically optimal, the well-recognised administrative and compliance issues associated with such tax reform make it untenable. Therefore, the second best option and the one adopted by the UK and most other developed nations, is not to allow a deduction for a cost in generating untaxed income. This research contributes a unique synthesis of methodological techniques to the housing equity literature. The combined analyses of horizontal equity under the classical definition with the chosen structural and distributional techniques in evaluating vertical equity have never been done before. The analysis of the overall tax system comprising four specific tax systems is also original in this area of research and employs the Suits (1977) method for determining overall progressivity. There is an attempt within this research to replicate the results derived from the Suits indices by similarly extending the structural indices, thus testing the transferability of the methodology established by Suits. This is the first attempt to extend the structural indices established decades earlier to researcher's knowledge. The results from two of the three structural measures are inconsistent with each other and the results from the Suits indices and therefore not believed to be informative. However, the results from the extended Liability Progression of both countries are indeed consistent with the results of Suits indices. This is an interesting research observation and may be indicative of the transferability of the Suits methodology. This area of research continues to be discussed by academics and policymakers given the conflicting underpinning theories and continued fiscal favouritism in many developed countries. This research area has become even more topical in the last few years given the recent financial crisis. The multi-layered, comparative micro-simulation technique employed within this research provides a solid platform from which to appraise conventional wisdoms and proposals for future policy with regard to owner-occupied housing taxation and beyond.


Congenital contractural arachnodactyly is a disorder that affects many parts of the body. People with this condition typically are tall with long limbs (dolichostenomelia) and long, slender fingers and toes (arachnodactyly). They often have permanently bent joints (contractures) that can restrict movement in their hips, knees, ankles, or elbows. Additional features of congenital contractural arachnodactyly include underdeveloped muscles, a rounded upper back that also curves to the side (kyphoscoliosis), permanently bent fingers and toes (camptodactyly), ears that look "crumpled," and a protruding chest (pectus carinatum). Rarely, people with congenital contractural arachnodactyly have heart defects such as an enlargement of the blood vessel that distributes blood from the heart to the rest of the body (aortic root dilatation) or a leak in one of the valves that control blood flow through the heart (mitral valve prolapse). The life expectancy of individuals with congenital contractural arachnodactyly varies depending on the severity of symptoms but is typically not shortened.


This thesis addresses the relationship between urban waste and agriculture using an interdisciplinary systems approach. The environmental, economic, socio-cultural and political potential for using municipal waste compost (MWC) in urban and peri-urban agriculture in Accra, Ghana, was explored from different stakeholder perspectives and scales of enquiry. A pluralistic methodology was used in order to address different parts of the research and a critical reflection was made by the researcher on the carrying out of interdisciplinary research using these approaches. Waste management and composting practices were studied, as was urban and peri-urban agricultural systems. A series of farmer participatory experiments were carried out with urban vegetable growers to test the effects of using MWC from two different composting plants in Accra alongside current farmers' practices. The perspectives of different stakeholders were also assessed through a combination of methods, including semi structured and informal interviews, participatory appraisal techniques, formal surveys, group discussions and workshops. Compost quality assessments revealed that the compost from the small-scale James Town plant was of higher quality than that produced at the large-scale Teshie/Nungua plant. Compost applications had a positive effect on crop growth. However, vegetable producers primarily used chicken manure as a fertility input and compared to this, the compost was inferior, particularly in relation to crop establishment and in creating a higher water demand. The growers were happy with the crop performance from compost, but saw the watering issue as a potential problem. They agreed that compost would be an attractive alternative during the rainy season. They also liked the fact that they did not need to apply compost to each crop, as they did with chicken manure. Whilst, growers would be willing to use and pay for MWC, both composts were too expensive to represent a viable alternative to other fertility inputs. However, given an appropriate blend of public-private-community partnerships and scales of operation which could harness opportunistic alignments between the needs of different actors, composting and its use in agriculture has potential in contributing towards sustainable development in the urban environment of Accra. With some modest policy support, the possibilities for improving quality and financial viability are considerable. Providing quality and price can meet the needs of growers, there is a market for MWC in Accra.


Time motion analysis is extensively used to assess the demands of team sports. At present there is only limited information on the reliability of measurements using this analysis tool. The aim of this study was to establish the reliability of an individual observer's time motion analysis of rugby union. Ten elite level rugby players were individually tracked in Southern Hemisphere Super 12 matches using a digital video camera. The video footage was subsequently analysed by a single researcher on two occasions one month apart. The test-retest reliability was quantified as the typical error of measurement (TEM) and rated as either good ( 10% TEM). The total time spent in the individual movements of walking, jogging, striding, sprinting, static exertion and being stationary had moderate to poor reliability (5.8-11.1% TEM). The frequency of individual movements had good to poor reliability (4.3-13.6% TEM), while the mean duration of individual movements had moderate reliability (7.1-9.3% TEM). For the individual observer in the present investigation, time motion analysis was shown to be moderately reliable as an evaluation tool for examining the movement patterns of players in competitive rugby. These reliability values should be considered when assessing the movement patterns of rugby players within competition.


RNA interference (RNAi) is a highly conserved cellular mechanism and in the last years it has become to a major tool for functional analyses of genes in different species. Moreover, RNAi has recently been suggested as a novel and promising approach for pest control. Transgenic plants can be engineered to express double stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) targeting essential genes of a pest species. Upon feeding, the dsRNAs induce gene silencing in the pest, resulting in its death. However, the main challenge of RNAi-mediated plant protection is the identification of efficient RNAi target genes. In most pest species, the screening for RNAi target genes by a whole-animal-high-throughput-approach is not feasible due to missing genomic tools and limited breeding capacity.
Therefore, the first aim of this thesis was to use Tribolium castaneum (Tc) as a screening platform in order to identify the most efficient RNAi target genes. By employing the data from the iBeetle RNAi screen, some novel and highly efficient RNAi target genes were identified that induced organism death most rapidly after knockdown. The orthologs of these genes are hence excellent candidates for RNAi based pest control methods in other pest insects. Based on this set of RNAi targets, Gene Ontology term (GO term) combinations were identified that are predictive for efficient RNAi target genes and which detect proteasomal genes as prime targets. Further, I could show that the efficiency of RNAi mediated pest control cannot be increased by synergistic action in double knockdowns. Finally, an off target analysis revealed that protein sequence conservation does not strongly correlate with the number of potential off target sites, indicating that it will be difficult to design dsRNAs without potential off-target sites in non-target organisms.
In the second part of this thesis, I aimed to establish a method to regulate the RNAi response. Ubiquitous gene silencing can sometimes lead to pleiotropic effects, hampering the identification of specific phenotypes. Temporal and/or spatial regulation of RNAi can circumvent such effects. The viral RNAi suppressor protein CrPV1A can be used for this purpose. The expression of CrPV1A effectively blocks the RNAi mechanism and does not impair the development or viability of Tribolium. Probably, it also does not interfere with the microRNA (miRNA) pathway. Furthermore, temporal activation of CrPV1A is able to terminate the RNAi response of a previously silenced gene, resulting in a rescued RNAi phenotype. Temporally controlled RNAi by CrPV1A activation is therefore an effective approach to investigate genetic interactions of further genes.


The name William Rooney has long been familiar to historians of Ireland, primarily because of his closeness to Arthur Griffith in the 1890s, yet he remains an elusive figure. Reports of public meetings at this time often end with the enigmatic phrase "... and William Rooney spoke in Irish". Given the centrality of language revivalism to Rooney's politics, this provides ironic commentary on the capacities of Irish journalists, his audience and, sometimes, his historians. Moreover, what we do know of his life has the air of tragedy about it. He lost a sister in November 1895 and died of tuberculosis at the age of 28 in May 1901.

Griffith famously said that Rooney was the finest Irishman he had known or could hope to know, and he quickly became a totemic figure for young Irish separatists, an ideal against which longer-lived activists were sometimes found wanting. For instance, one of the first articles in Irish Freedom, an Irish Republican Brotherhood newspaper that began publication in 1910, memorialised the early days of Griffith's United Irishman, celebrating in particular Rooney's purist politics. This reflected the growing impatience in republican circles with Griffith and his Sinn Fein newspaper: he was not living up to Rooney's reputation as an unalloyed separatist. P. S. O'Hegarty, one of Griffith's sternest critics during this period, later wrote of how damaging Rooney's death had been. By leaving Griffith isolated intellectually and surrounded by lesser men, it helped nurture the dictatorial attitude and wayward views that republicans found troubling.


Code-carrier smoothing is a commonly used method in Differential GPS (DGPS) systems to mitigate the effects of receiver noise and multipath. The FAA's Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) uses this technique to help provide the navigation performance needed for aircraft precision approach and landing. However, unless the reference and user smoothing filter implementations are carefully matched, divergence between the code and carrier ranging measurements will cause differential ranging errors. The FAA's LAAS Ground Facility (LGF) reference station will implement a prescribed first-order Linear Time Invariant (LTI) filter. Yet flexibility must be provided to avionics manufacturers in their airborne filter implementations. While the LGF LTI filter is one possible means for airborne use, its relatively slow transient response (acceptable for a ground based receiver) is not ideal at the aircraft because of frequent filter resets following losses of low elevation satellite signals (caused by aircraft attitude motion). However, in the presence of a code-carrier divergence (CCD) anomaly at the GPS satellite, large divergence rates are theoretically possible, and therefore protection must be provided by the LGF through direct monitoring for such events. In response, this paper addresses the impact of the CCD threat to LAAS differential ranging error and defines an LGF monitor to ensure navigation integrity. Differential ranging errors resulting from unmatched filter designs and different ground/air filter start times are analyzed in detail, and the requirements for the LGF CCD monitor are derived. A CCD integrity monitor algorithm is then developed to directly estimate and detect anomalous divergence rates. The monitor algorithm is implemented and successfully tested using archived field data from the LAAS Test Prototype (LTP) at the William J. Hughes FAA Technical Center. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for initial monitor implementation and future work.


The paper examines local food and food production in the Dominican Republic and how local agriculture intersects with the tourism and restaurant sectors. It argues that not only has tourism created a demand for local produce, and thus provided jobs and income for Dominicans far removed from the fabled beaches of Punta Cana; but local production of food, especially fruits and vegetables, has helped put the Dominican Republic on top as the most popular destination among the island nations of the Caribbean. The primary contribution of the paper is an empirical analysis of agricultural production and consumption using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization since 1961. The paper is historical as well as empirical. It first discusses the antecedents of the Dominican diet and the historical roots of the foods Dominicans produce and eat. It also traces the struggle, over the last 150 years, of forces that pushed toward export agriculture and others that pushed toward food self-sufficiency. The paper wraps up with a more focused discussion of the mutual benefits provided by agriculture, local food, and tourism in the Dominican Republic.


Damage assessment of structures includes estimation of location and severity of damage. Quite often it is done by using changes of dynamic properties, such as natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping ratios, determined on undamaged and damaged structures. The basic principle is to use dynamic properties of a structure as indicators of any change of its stiffness and/or mass. In this paper, two new methods for damage detection are presented and compared. The first method is based on comparison of normalised modal shape vectors determined before and after damage. The second method uses so-called 𝑙l-norm regularized finite element model updating. Some important properties of these methods are demonstrated using simulations on a Kirchhoff plate. The pros and cons of the two methods are discussed. Unique aspects of the methods are highlighted.


While solar physicists have a better understanding of the importance magnetic fields play in the solar heating mechanism, it is still not possible to predict whether or when an active region will flare. In recent decades, qualitative studies of the changes in active region morphology have shown that there is generally an increase in the complexity of the spatial configuration of a solar active region leading up to a flare event. In this study, we quantify the spatial structure of the region using the differential Box-Counting Method (DBC) of fractal analysis. We analyze data from NASA/Marshall Space Flight Centr's vector magnetograph from two flaring active regions: AR 6089 from June 10, 1990, which produced one M1.7 flare, and AR 6659 from June 8, 9 and 10, 1991, this data set including one C5.7 and two M(6.4 and 3.2) flare. (AR 6659 produced several other flares). Several magnetic parameters are studied, including the transverse and longitudinal magnetic field components (Bt and B1), the total field (Bmag), and the magnetic shear, which describes the non-potentiality of the field. Results are presented for the time series of magnetograms in relation to the timing of flare events.


While Deliberate Metaphor Theory is controversial from a psychological point of view, its advocates propose that the communicative notion of 'deliberateness' is valuable for structural-functional analyses of metaphors in the social world. Nevertheless, the inter-relationships between the linguistic, conceptual, and communicative dimensions of metaphor highlighted by Deliberate Metaphor Theory, and how these may vary across different discourse contexts, remains underexplored. This paper examines deliberate metaphor across four contrasting discourse categories of psychotherapy talk, news articles, popular science articles, and political speeches. 800 metaphor units were randomly sampled and coded under the variables DIRECT (direct/indirect), NOVEL (novel/conventional), DELIB (deliberate/non-deliberate), and CATEGORY. In the first part of the study, a hierarchical log-linear analysis identified three significant interaction effects: DELIB*DIRECT, CATEGORY*NOVEL*DIRECT, and CATEGORY *NOVEL*DELIB (χ2(7) = 0.0, p  = 1). While generally reflecting the inter-relatedness of the three dimensions, the three-way interactions point towards underexplored patterns of variation which are discussed with respect to contrasting discourse objectives. In the second part of the study, six categories of deliberate metaphor features were inductively identified: elaboration, signal, analogy, stark novelty, topic-triggering, and repetition. They demonstrate diverse strategic ways in which 'deliberateness' is constructed across the four discourse categories.


With the internet as an established medium for artistic, communicative and commercial work, blogs written by amateur authors make the newest addition to the World Wide Web. Within the ever-growing blogosphere covering topics from politics to sports, Isabelle Kuster, a German arts student, posts weekly updates about outfits and lifestyle on her fashion blog Moon Cult . Literary texts like she publishes on her very personal side project Gedankenbuhne , are a minority and haven been neglected by academic research. This article analyzes the form and content of Gedankenbuhne , with a focus on the production process of Kuster's art, using Walter Benjamin's and Simone de Beauvoir's critical theories. Their notions of aura and authenticity, female authorship and representation help interpret this poetry blog.


The supply of adequate amounts of safe water for drinking and hygiene during natural disasters or armed conflict can be compromised and is one of the priorities in public health interventions to prevent the spread of disease. When surface waters are the only viable source, emergency water treatment kits are usually deployed by relief agencies for the supply of water. One option is the Oxfam Field Up‐flow 'Clarifier' Kit, which was designed to treat raw waters with high turbidities to adequate levels [i.e. <5 nephelometric turbidity units (NTU)] and at a relatively high yield (i.e. 10 m3/h). Performance data on the Clarifier from its development and during pilot and field evaluations are presented, as well as its long‐term use records during the emergency response to the Indian Ocean tsunami. This modular treatment system has been shown to be robust in being able to produce drinking water of turbidity levels considered to be acceptable during emergencies over a prolonged period.


In this paper we define and investigate a set of confidence measures based on hybrid Hidden Markov Model/Artificial Neural Network (HMM/ANN) acoustic models. All these measures are using the neural network to estimate the local phone posterior probabilities, which are then combined and normalized in different ways. Experimental results will indeed show that the use of an appropriate duration normalization is very important to obtain good estimates of the phone and word confidences. The different measures are evaluated at the phone and word levels on both an isolated word task (PHONEBOOK) and a continuous speech recognition task (BREF). It will be shown that one of those confidence measures is well suited for utterance verification, and that (as one could expect) confidence measures at the word level perform better than those at the phone level. Finally, using the resulting approach on PHONEBOOK to rescore the N-best list is shown to yield a 34% decrease in word error rate.


A robust yet sensitive Q-band (35 GHz) cavity has been designed for routine variable temperature EPR (electron paramagnetic resonance) and ENDOR (electron nuclear double resonance) measurements down to 2 K. It consists of an aluminum or brass (plain, silver or gold plated) ribbon imbedded in a cylindrical epoxy or epoxy/quartz composite with a tunable piston at the bottom. The cavity has all the advantages of the traditional silver wire-wound cavity often used for Q-band measurements but is much more robust and easier to construct. The cavity suppresses degenerate resonant modes and minimizes wall eddy currents induced by field modulation. With standard Varian Q-band modulation coils, a 100-kHz modulation field of 27 G peakto-peak is obtained at the sample. The cavity Q$\rm\sb{L}$ ($\approx$2500) and weak pitch signal/noise ($\approx$1000:1) with a Varian/E-110 microwave bridge are comparable to those obtained with either a traditional wire-wound cavity or a cavity constructed with a thin silver wall on an epoxy/quartz substrate. A set of parallel posts along the axis of the cavity (bidirection) form the ENDOR coil. Dinitrosyl iron model complexes with ligands of cysteine, mercaptoethanol, thioglycolic acid, ethanethiol, penicillamine and imidazole were studied by EPR and ENDOR spectroscopy. X-band and Q-band ENDOR measurements have been made at various fields across the EPR envelope at temperatures from 2 K to 100 K. We have assigned most of the $\sp1$H resonances with reasonable certainty. The data confirm the thiol groups binding in the complexes with mercaptan ligands at room temperatures, and suggest that a structural rearrangement occurs with dinitrosyl iron cysteine and penicillamine upon freezing the sample, in which case coordination of both the thiol and amino group takes place. The assignment of axial EPR spectra to thiol coordination in every instance has also been cast in doubt by our data.


Multi-agent systems (MAS) have proven to be an effective platform for diagnostic and condition monitoring applications in the power industry. For example, a multi-agent system architecture, entitled condition monitoring multi-agent system (COMMAS) (McArthur et al., 2004), has been applied to the ultra high frequency (UHF) monitoring of partial discharge activity inside transformers. Additionally, a multi-agent system, entitled protection engineering diagnostic agents (PEDA) (Hossack et al., 2003), has demonstrated the use of MAS technology for automated and enhanced post-fault analysis of power systems disturbances based on SCADA and digital fault recorder (DFR) data. In this paper, the authors propose the integration of COMMAS and PEDA as a means of offering enhanced decision support to engineers tasked with managing transformer assets. By providing automatically interpreted data related to condition monitoring and power system disturbances, the proposed integrated system offer engineers a more comprehensive picture of the health of a given transformer. Defects and deterioration in performance can be correlated with the operating conditions it experiences. The integration of COMMAS and PEDA has highlighted the issues inherent to the inter-operation of existing multi-agent systems and, in particular, the issues surrounding the use of differing ontologies. The authors believe that these issues need to be addressed if there is to be widespread deployment of MAS technology within the power industry. This paper presents research undertaken to integrate the two MAS and to deal with ontology issues


The conditions under which universities are attempting to coherently accomplish their three missions of teaching and learning, research and community engagement have a significant impact on the institutional form, structure and character of universities.
The concept of the developmental state, the role and place for the Higher Education sector in the developmental state and its role in supporting political, social and economic transformation is explored. In this article we attempt to further develop a conceptual framework for the development(al) university considering the context, drivers of focus, and changes in control, governance and university functions to the end of defining a potential development pathway. The research problem addressed in this article is therefore not an attempt to extend the 'research university' or 'entrepreneurial university' concept but to rather discuss the pathways through which a university may strengthen its development role as 'instrument' or 'engine'.
The empirical analysis presented in the article is a case study of an agricultural development project at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. We analyse the case study against the development pathway framework and explore its utility to facilitate understanding and learning within the University towards reaching development and transformation objectives. We propose that such a framework could support understanding of the impact universities have on the economy and society beyond typical mechanistic measures.


The psychrophilic pennate diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus is a dominant polar diatom adapted to grow at extremely low temperatures and high salinities prevailing in the brine channels of sea ice. As a basis for deeper investigations of this physiological trait, we used an EST approach to find candidate genes involved in acclimation to salt stress in this diatom. From 2880 cDNA clones sequenced from the 5′ end, 1691 high-quality tentative unique sequences were assembled and analysed. Only 62% of these sequences have homologues in the genomes of two mesophilic diatoms, Thalassiosira pseudonana (centric) and Phaeodactylum tricornutum (pennate), which share 73–78% of their genes. Of the 1691 sequences, 44.2% could be functionally characterized by comparison with the Swiss-Prot and RefSeq databases. These include sequences encoding different ionic transporters and antiporters, reflecting the requirement to re-establish the ion homeostasis disturbed by exogenous salt stress. Furthermore, numerous genes encoding heat shock proteins (hsps), genes related to oxidative stress, and three key genes involved in the proline synthesis pathway, the most important organic osmolyte synthesized in F. cylindrus were identified. A major outcome of this analysis is the finding of four full-length ORFs showing significant similarities to ice-binding proteins (IBPs), which have been shown in a parallel study to be specific to sea ice diatoms, giving evidence of their ability to shape their habitat.


The present task was carried out with the objective of determining the effect of available dry matter of a natural grassland during burning in the post Andropogon lateralis Nees leaf growth rate. The work was executed during the years of 1995 and 1996 in an area belonging to the Department of Animal Science of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. The experimental design was randomized blocks with 40 plants per treatments. Burning was applied in August of 1995. In May of 1996 levels of dry matter were simulated in the experimental area. The grasslands treatments were controlled without burning (2.860kg of dry matter (DM)/ha) and burned was with dry matter of 2.580, 5.000, 5.690 and 6.480kg DM/ha. The evaluation of the leaf growth was done in 600 tillers of A. lateralis, with 40 marked plants by treatment and the metodology used to determine the leaf growth was the Haun index. There was burn effect on the increase form of A. lateralis elongation rate (ER) when the available dry matter was 6.480kg MS/ha. The others treatments provided ER similar to the non-burned areas. A. lateralis demonstrated to be a adapted specie to the handling with fire, with fast growth after burning. The decimal scale of Haun demonstrated to be an useful methodology in the study of the budding of plants.


Clustering of membrane proteins is essential for signaling by T lymphocytes and neurons and in both cases depends on the transit of membrane microdomains across the plane of the cell surface. Khan et al. show that agrin, a protein required for organization of the neuromuscular synapse, is also expressed in T cells and influences the formation of the immune synapse. Addition of purified agrin to T cell cultures or enhancement of clustering with an antibody to agrin significantly lowered the threshold of antigen responsiveness by T cells. Thus, the modes for information delivery between lymphocytes and neurons may be more closely related than previously anticipated. See the Perspective by Trautmann and Vivier for more details. A. A. Khan, C. Bose, L. S. Yam, M. J. Soloski, F. Rupp, Physiological regulation of the immunological synapse by agrin. Science 292, 1681-1686 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text] A. Trautmann, E. Vivier, Agrin--a bridge between the nervous and immune systems. Science 292, 1667-1668 (2001). [Full Text]


On the basis of modern plasticity considerations, a unified theory of plastic buckling applicable to both columns and plates has been developed. For uniform compression, the theory shows that long columns which bend without appreciable twisting require the tangent modulus and that long flanges which twist without appreciable bending require the secant modulus. Structures that both bend and twist when they buckle require a modulus which is a combination of the secant modulus and the tangent modulus.


Abstract Neutral theory in ecology is based on the symmetry assumption that ecologically similar species in a community can be treated as demographically equivalent on a per capita basis—equivalent in birth and death rates, in rates of dispersal, and even in the probability of speciating. Although only a first approximation, the symmetry assumption allows the development of a quantitative neutral theory of relative species abundance and dynamic null hypotheses for the assembly of communities in ecological time and for phylogeny and phylogeography in evolutionary time. Although Steve Gould was not a neutralist, he made use of ideas of symmetry and of null models in his science, both of which are fundamental to neutral theory in ecology. Here I give a brief overview of the current status of neural theory in ecology and phylogeny and, where relevant, connect these newer ideas to Gould's work. In particular, I focus on modes of speciation under neutrality, particularly peripheral isolate speciation, and their implications for relative species abundance and species life spans. Gould was one of the pioneers in the study of neutral models of phylogeny, but the modern theory suggests that at least some of the conclusions from these early neutral models were premature. Modern neutral theory is a remarkably rich source of new ideas to test in ecology and paleobiology, the potential of which has only begun to be realized.


The mitochondria of non-bilaterian metazoans display a staggering diversity of genome organizations and also a slow rate of mtDNA evolution, unlike bilaterians, which may hold a key to understand the early evolution of the animal mitochondrion. Octocorals are unique members of Phylum Cnidaria, harboring several atypical mitochondrial genomic features, including a paucity of tRNA genes, various genome arrangements and the presence of novel putative mismatch repair gene (mtMutS) with various potential biological roles. Thus octocorals represents an interesting model for the study of mitochondrial biology and evolution. However, besides its utility in molecular phylogenetics, the mtDNA of octocorals is not studied from the perspective of DNA repair, oxidative stress response or gene expression; and there is a general lack of knowledge on the DNA repair capabilities and role of the mtMutS gene, response to climate-change, and mtDNA transcription in absence of interspersed tRNA genes of octocoral mitochondrial genome. In order to put the observed novelties in the octocoral mitochondria in an evolutionary and an environmental context, and to understand their potential functions and the consequences of their presence in conferring fitness during climate change induced stress, this study was undertaken. This dissertation aims to explore the uniqueness and diversity of octocoral mtDNA from an environmental as well as an evolutionary perspective.
The thesis comprises five chapters exploring various facets of octocoral biology. The introductory section provides basic information and elaborates on the importance of studying non-bilaterian mitochondria. The first chapter sets the base for subsequent gene expression studies. Octocorals are extensively studied from a taxonomic and phylogenetic point of view. However, gene expression studies on these organisms have only recently started to appear. To successfully employ the most commonly used gene expression profiling technique i.e., the quantitation real-time PCR (qPCR), it is necessary to have an experimentally validated, treatment-specific set of stably expressed reference genes that will support for the accurate quantification of changes in expression of genes of interest. Hence, seven housekeeping genes, known to exhibit constitutive expression, were investigated for expression stability during simulated climate-changed (i.e. thermal and low-pH) induced stress. These genes were validated and subsequently used in gene expression studies on Sinularia cf. cruciata, our model octocoral.
The occurrence of a mismatch repair gene, and the slow rates of mtDNA evolution in octocoral mitogenome calls for further investigations on the potential robustness of octocoral mitochondria to the increased oxidative stress. The second chapter presents a mitochondrion-centric view of climate-change stress response by investigating mtDNA damage, repair, and copy number dynamics during stress. The changes in gene expression of a set of stress-related nuclear, and mitochondrial genes in octocorals were also monitored. A robust response of octocoral mitochondria to oxidative mtDNA damage was observed, exhibiting a rapid recovery of the damaged mtDNA. The stress-specific regulation of the mtMutS gene was detected, indicating its potential involvement in stress response. The results highlight the resilience potential of octocoral mitochondria, and its adaptive benefits in changing oceans.
The tRNA genes in animal mitochondria play a pivotal role in mt-mRNA processing and maturation. The influence of paucity of tRNA genes on transcription of the mitogenome in octocorals has not been investigated. The third chapter steps in the direction to understand the mitogenome transcription by investigating the nature of mature mRNAs. Several novel features not present in a "typical" animal mt-mRNAs were detected. The majority of the mitochondrial transcripts were observed as polycistronic units (i.e. the mRNA carrying information for the synthesis of more than one protein). 5' and 3' untranslated regions were delineated for most protein-coding genes. Alternative polyadenylation (APA) of mtMutS gene and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) for ATP6 were detected and are reported for the first time in non-bilaterian metazoans providing a glimpse into the complexity and uniqueness of mtDNA transcription in octocorals.
The mismatch repair (MMR) mechanism plays a crucial role in mutation avoidance and maintenance of genomic integrity. Its occurrence in animal mitochondria remains equivocal. Octocorals are the only known animals to posses an mtDNA-encoded MMR gene, the mtMutS, speculated to have self-contained DNA repair capability. In order to gain knowledge of the MMR activity in the octocoral mitochondria MMR assays using the octocoral mitochondrial fraction is necessary. A prerequisite for this assay is the availability of an MMR-substrate, which is a DNA fragment, usually a plasmid, containing the desired mismatch lesion (i.e. a heteroduplex) and a nicked strand. However, the methods to prepare such a substrate are time consuming and technically demanding. Chapter four describes two convenient and flexible strategies that can be used in parallel to prepare heteroduplex MMR substrate using a common plasmid and routine molecular biology techniques. This method should aid in MMR investigations in general, helping to advance this field of research.
The mtMutS gene mentioned above is a bacterial homolog, predicted to have been horizontally transferred to the octocoral mitogenome. However, unlike the bacterial mutS, which is extensively studied, protein expression studies of the octocoral mtMutS gene are lacking. To investigate the biological role of the mtMutS protein, in vitro, and to gain knowledge on its structure and function, the expression of the gene in a bacterial host is necessary. The fifth chapter discusses the characteristics of the mtMutS protein, the efforts to express it in E. coli and some necessary precautions to be taken while working with the expression of such mtDNA-encoded proteins for the research in future.
This dissertation elucidates and contributes to the understanding of the unexplored complexity of non-bilaterian mitochondria. It deals for the first time with DNA repair, gene expression and gene function, encompassing an integrative analysis of DNA, RNA and proteins to achieve its goals. This study forms the basis for many future investigations on the molecular mitochondrial biology of octocorals as well as other non-bilaterians, augmenting the understanding of the evolution of animal mitochondria, and also its role in cellular and organismal homeostasis in the context of environmental change.


We aim at developing autonomous miniature hov- ering flying robots capable of navigating in unstructured GPS- denied environments. A major challenge is the miniaturization of the embedded sensors and processors allowing such platforms to fly autonomously. In this paper, we propose a novel ego-motion estimation algorithm for hovering robots equipped with inertial and optic-flow sensors that runs in real- time on a microcontroller. Unlike many vision-based methods, this algorithm does not rely on feature tracking, structure estimation, additional distance sensors or assumptions about the environment. Key to this method is the introduction of the translational optic-flow direction constraint (TOFDC), which does not use the optic-flow scale, but only its direction to correct for inertial sensor drift during changes of direction. This solution requires comparatively much simpler electronics and sensors and works in environments of any geometries. We demonstrate the implementation of this algorithm on a miniature 46g quadrotor for closed-loop position control.