Profound contractions in the housing market and the economy as a whole have had distressing effects on homeowners. Many prudent borrowers who have stayed current on their mortgage payments have watched their property values plummet until they no longer have sufficient equity to refinance to lower interest rates. Additionally, due to massive layoffs and a lean job market, millions of these recently unemployed borrowers must now bend over backwards to make each monthly payment. Currently, nearly 2,900 families are losing their homes each day, with many more struggling to meet their monthly mortgage obligations. Many of these foreclosures are not preventable. For example, investors may no longer wish to retain a property whose value has depreciated significantly, and some "borrowers - perhaps because they were put into an inappropriate loan or because personal circumstances have changed - cannot realistically sustain homeownership." However, when a borrower desires to stay in her home and the foreclosure is preventable, the high legal and administrative costs and the destabilizing effects on communities and property values militate towards avoiding foreclosure.Foreclosure prevention programs to date, largely in the form of loan modification efforts, have failed to effectuate affordable mortgages, and therefore, have done little more than delay foreclosures. In fact, recent reports have shown that 68% of loan modifications have involved capitalizing unpaid interest and fees into a larger mortgage debt, and 45% have actually increased monthly payments. Lenders, who have a fiduciary duty to protect investors' interests, have been unwilling and unable to make affordable modifications. The lack of any incentive for lenders to make meaningful and affordable changes to a loan's repayment terms caused the historic failure of modification programs, as evidenced by re-default rates approaching 60%. Unlike previous efforts to encourage voluntary modification, the Making Home Affordable program's ("MHA") refinancing and modification plans could be the vehicle to achieve more permanent foreclosure prevention because of its focus on actual affordability and tripartite incentives for lenders, investors and borrowers. For example, MHA will reduce mortgage payments to 31% of qualified homeowners' monthly gross income, with the government subsidizing interest rate deductions made by lenders to achieve this monthly payment affordability goal. Simultaneously, MHA provides lenders with payments of $1,000 per loan modified and pay-for-success bonuses if borrowers stay current. These provisions give lenders previously nonexistent financial incentives structure payments that borrowers can actually afford, and complement similar inducements for mortgage investors to permit restructuring qualifying loans and borrowers to stay current on their post-modification payments. However, while MHA tackles the borrower affordability and lender incentive shortcomings of prior foreclosure prevention programs, it fails to effectively address the main problem arising from the recent mortgage crisis: Severely underwater borrowers who are foreclosing because they purchased homes at an enormously inflated price and now have outstanding mortgage balances two or three times the actual value of their homes. Reformed bankruptcy laws permitting judges to modify mortgage terms if lenders do not make sustainable modifications are necessary to bolster MHA's affordability - and incentive-based foreclosure mitigation program. While bankruptcy should never be the first option for a distressed borrower, the proposed cramdown legislation offers "the only remedy available that will provide the stick to go with the carrots that [Congress has] offered lenders to modify mortgages voluntarily." This paper considers the current mortgage crisis, specifically looking at the Making Home Affordable program and proposed Chapter 13 bankruptcy mortgage cramdown legislation. Part I analyzes the policy rationale for and against government intervention in the residential foreclosure market. Part II establishes the historical context of ineffective voluntary mortgage modifications, looking at the former Hope for Homeowners plan as an example of recent failure. Part III explores the Making Home Affordable program, evaluating the potential efficacy of preventing foreclosures and inducing voluntary modifications based on the two primary impediments to modification plans: Affordable new terms for borrowers and incentives provided to obtain widespread lender participation. Looking at incentives, MHA induces lender participation through a combination of carrots and sticks, including monetary per-modification payments and judicial modifications of mortgages (i.e. "cramdowns" - decreasing principal, reducing interest rates, and extending repayment terms) in bankruptcy where borrowers have no viable options left. Part IV discusses the necessity of bankruptcy cramdown legislation, which would cast a broader curative net and offer a remedy to the many underwater borrowers currently outside the scope of MHA's modification program. This cramdown legislation would provide further incentive for lenders to make a good faith effort at modification because it increases bargaining power for any borrower in modification negotiations, given that all parties - lender, borrower, and investor - will know that bankruptcy courts have the power to make equitable modifications.


Background Class size reduction (CSR) is an enduring school reform undertaken in an effort to improve academic achievement and has been widely encouraged in the United States. Supporters of CSR often cite the positive contemporaneous and carryover effects of Project STAR. Much has been discussed regarding the robustness of the contemporaneous effects but not regarding that of the carryover effects. Purpose This article checks the robustness of the carryover effects of STAR's small classes. Setting STAR was undertaken in 75–79 schools in Tennessee. Participants: Each year in the experimental period, 6,000–7,000 students in grades K–3 participated in the experiment, for a total of 12,000 students during the entire period. Intervention As students initially entered STAR schools, they were (arguably) randomly assigned to small classes with 13–17 students, regular classes with 22–25 students without teacher aides, and regular classes with 22–25 students with teacher aides. The experiment was performed from 1985 through 1989, but information on STAR students continued to be collected thereafter. Research Design STAR is a randomized controlled field experiment. Data Analysis In this article, STAR schools are divided into "effective" schools and "ineffective" schools. Effective schools are defined as schools where the test scores of students in small classes were statistically significantly higher than those of students in regular classes at the 5% level in both math and reading. By contrast, ineffective schools are defined as schools where the test scores of students in small classes were not statistically significantly higher than those of students in regular classes at the 5% level in either math or reading. Separately for effective schools, schools other than effective schools, and ineffective schools, the academic achievement of students is regressed on variables indicating small class assignment, along with student characteristics and school-by-entry wave fixed effects. Findings The carryover effects of CSR are not robust; they are driven mostly by effective schools, which account for at most a quarter of STAR schools. During this investigation, it is revealed that, in contrast to the protocol of randomization, observable student characteristics in these schools are not randomly distributed between small and regular classes. They are instead distributed in such a way as to increase the academic achievement of students in small classes and decrease that of students in regular classes. Recommendations Caution is recommended when citing the positive carryover effects of S TAR.


The age distribution of LCT pegmatites largely overlaps with
major phases of collisional orogenic events and assembly of
super-continents. Some of the largest known LCT pegmatite
deposits formed in very short intervals, 2.7-2.5 and 1.9-1.8
billion years ago (Ga), corresponding to two major pulses of
continental crust growth. However, the exact process of
generation and segregation of large volumes of Li-bearing
pegmatite liquids, perhaps involving disequilibrium fractional
crystallization and leaving residual melts enriched in fluxing
elements such as B, F, H2O, Li, and P, remains largely obscure.
The new data on Li contents and isotope compositions in major
mineral phases from temporally and geographically separated
pegmatite bodies document extreme variations in d7Li values
among individual large LCT pegmatites, in particular Archean
occurrences. The observed >10‰ variations in d7Li values for
the same mineral phases from different localities (i.e., beryl,
petalite, spodumene, lepidolite, amblygonite, muscovite)
contrast with globally homogeneous Li isotope systematics of
major mineral phases from unmodified mantle rocks. Consistent
Li isotope offsets between coexisting mineral phases are best
explained by Li isotope fractionation as a function of the bond
length between Li and neighboring ions (O, OH, F). We suggest
that spatially distinct Li isotope patterns act as fingerprints
for different pegmatites and can be explained by the
pre-existing Li isotope differences of their crustal sources at
the time of pegmatite formation owing to differences in crustal
age and evolution. This would imply secular evolution of the
continental crust over Earth history toward present-day
globally broadly uniform crustal 7Li/6Li ratios (d7Li ~0‰). The
differences among Archean occurrences could reflect possible
Archean paleogeography and perhaps be linked with different
thermal regimes of individual cratons as a consequence of
variations in crustal thickness.


OBJECTIVES: Pain in children with cerebral palsy (CP) is underrecognized, undertreated, and negatively affects quality of life. Communication challenges and multiple pain etiologies complicate diagnosis and treatment. The primary objectives of this study were to determine the impact of pain on activities and to identify the common physician-identified causes of pain in children and youth ages 3 to 19 years across all levels of severity of CP. METHODS: The study design was cross-sectional, whereby children/youth aged 3 to 19 years and their families were consecutively recruited. The primary caregivers were asked to complete a one-time questionnaire, including the Health Utilities Index 3 pain subset, about the presence and characteristics of pain. The treating physician was asked to identify the presence of pain and provide a clinical diagnosis for the pain, if applicable. RESULTS: The response rate was 92%. Of 252 participants, 54.8% reported some pain on the Health Utilities Index 3, with 24.4% of the caregivers reporting that their child experienced pain that affected some level of activities in the preceding 2 weeks. Physicians reported pain in 38.7% and identified hip dislocation/subluxation, dystonia, and constipation as the most frequent causes of pain. CONCLUSIONS: One-quarter of our sample experienced pain that limited activities and participation. Clinicians should be aware that hip subluxation/dislocation and dystonia were the most common causes of pain in children/youth with CP in this study. Potential causes of pain should be identified and addressed early to mitigate the negative impact of pain on quality of life.


Poverty and political, social, and economic inequalities between groups predispose to conflict; policies to tackle them will reduce this risk

Eight out of 10 of the world's poorest countries are suffering, or have recently suffered, from large scale violent conflict. Wars in developing countries have heavy human, economic, and social costs and are a major cause of poverty and underdevelopment. The extra infant deaths caused by the war in Cambodia, for example, were estimated to be 3% of the country's 1990 population.1 Most current conflicts, such as in the Sudan or the Congo, are within states, although there is often considerable outside intervention, as in Afghanistan. In the past 30 years Africa has been especially badly affected by war (see fig 1).

This article reviews the evidence on the root causes of conflict and suggests some policy responses that should be adopted to reduce the likelihood of future war.

#### Summary points

Wars are a major cause of poverty, underdevelopment, and ill health in poor countries

The incidence of war has been rising since 1950, with most wars being within states

Wars often have cultural dimensions related to ethnicity or religion, but there are invariably underlying economic causes too

Major root causes include political, economic, and social inequalities; extreme poverty; economic stagnation; poor government services; high unemployment; environmental degradation; and individual (economic) incentives to fight

To reduce the likelihood of wars it is essential to promote inclusive development; reduce inequalities between groups; tackle unemployment; and, via national and international control over illicit trade, reduce private incentives to fight

Fig 1.
Number of armed conflicts by level, 1946-2000. (Adapted from Gleditsch NP, Wallensteen P, Eriksson M, Sollenberg M, Strand H. Armed conflict 1946-2000: a new dataset. www.pcr.uu.se/workpapers.html)

Many groups of people who fight together perceive themselves as belonging to a common culture (ethnic …

Correspondence to: D Holdstock


Introduction. This paper presents an exploration of information sharing and trust in a geographically dispersed network of design scholars. Method. The study used a practice theory approach to identify aspects of trust in relation to information sharing. The empirical material consists of 15 in-depth interviews with design scholars from four Nordic countries and field notes from workplace visits. Analysis. The interview transcripts and field notes were categorised in accordance with three themes derived in synergy from practice theory and the empirical material. Results. A number of strategies for assessing and creating trust in relation to information sharing were identified. Depending on the dimension of practice in analytical focus, different aspects of trust emerge. Conclusions. Trust issues connected to information sharing appear in relation to the information to be shared, the people involved, the tools used for sharing, and the place where information sharing occurs. The practice-theoretical perspective has proven effective in order to identify and capture the elusive phenomenon of trust in connection to information sharing.


The natural pressure in hydrocarbon reservoirs is only sufficient in producing small amount of hydrocarbon at the end of the depletion stage. Therefore, in order to enhance or increase the hydrocarbon recovery, water or other fluids are injected into the formation to extract the hydrocarbon from the pore space. This common practice is known as Improved or Enhanced Oil Recovery (IOR or EOR). Foam is purposely used in some of the EOR displacement processes in order to control the mobility ratio, hence improving the volumetric sweep efficiency. The efficiency of a foam displacement process in EOR depends largely on the stability of the foam films. In laboratory, foam stability is usually measured through physical observation of the foam bubble in a glass tube. Unfortunately, this direct observation is not possible in the reservoir. Therefore, indirect measurement such as the measurement of electrokinetic signal would be a better alternative. This study aims to determine the correlation between the foam stability and the associated streaming potential signals which resulted from the flowing fluid in foam assisted water alternate gas (FAWAG) process. The experimental work will be conducted at the Reservoir and Drilling Engineering Laboratories at the Faculty of Petroleum and Renewable Energy Engineering (FPREE), UTM. The investigation includes sample preparation, sample analysis, displacing fluid formation, rheological properties test and electrokinetic signal measurement by using NI Data Acquisition System (NIDAS). It is expected that the burst of the foam bubble will change the pattern of the electrokinetic signals. The research findings could lead to a new approach in monitoring a FAWAG process. Application in the real field could benefit the oil and gas industry in term of making the EOR process more efficient and more economic.


Modern deep neural networks tend to be evaluated on static test sets. One shortcoming of this is the fact that these deep neural networks cannot be easily evaluated for robustness issues with respect to specific scene variations. For example, it is hard to study the robustness of these networks to variations of object scale, object pose, scene lighting and 3D occlusions. The main reason is that collecting real datasets with fine-grained naturalistic variations of sufficient scale can be extremely time-consuming and expensive. In this work, we present Counterfactual Simulation Testing, a counterfactual framework that allows us to study the robustness of neural networks with respect to some of these naturalistic variations by building realistic synthetic scenes that allow us to ask counterfactual questions to the models, ultimately providing answers to questions such as"Would your classification still be correct if the object were viewed from the top?"or"Would your classification still be correct if the object were partially occluded by another object?". Our method allows for a fair comparison of the robustness of recently released, state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks and Vision Transformers, with respect to these naturalistic variations. We find evidence that ConvNext is more robust to pose and scale variations than Swin, that ConvNext generalizes better to our simulated domain and that Swin handles partial occlusion better than ConvNext. We also find that robustness for all networks improves with network scale and with data scale and variety. We release the Naturalistic Variation Object Dataset (NVD), a large simulated dataset of 272k images of everyday objects with naturalistic variations such as object pose, scale, viewpoint, lighting and occlusions. Project page: https://counterfactualsimulation.github.io


The study of business processes has emerged as a highly effective approach to coordinating an organization's complex service- and knowledge-based activities. The growing field of business process management (BPM) focuses on methods and tools for designing, enacting, and analyzing business processes. This volume offers a definitive guide to the use of patterns, which synthesize the wide range of approaches to modeling business processes. It provides a unique and comprehensive introduction to the well-known workflow patterns collection -- recurrent, generic constructs describing common business process modeling and execution scenarios, presented in the form of problem-solution dialectics. The underlying principles of the patterns approach ensure that they are independent of any specific enabling technology, representational formalism, or modeling approach, and thus broadly applicable across the business process modeling and business process technology domains. The authors, drawing on extensive research done by the Workflow Patterns Initiative, offer a detailed introduction to the fundamentals of business process modeling and management; describe three major pattern catalogs, presented from control-flow, data, and resource perspectives; and survey related BPM patterns. The book, a companion to the authoritative Workflow Patterns website, will be an essential resource for both academics and practitioners working in business process modeling and business process management.


High-precision measurements of CO2, CH4, N2O, CFC-12, CFC-11 (major greenhouse gases) and 10 minor halogenated gases from a globally distributed network of air sampling sites are used to calculate changes in radiative climate forcing since the pre-industrial era (1750) for the period of measurement, 1979–2004. The five major greenhouse gases account for about 97% of the direct radiative forcing by long-lived gases. The fraction of the sum of radiative forcings by all long-lived gases that is due to CO2 has grown from 60% to 63% over this time. Though the long-term increase in this sum is due primarily to increased anthropogenic emissions of these radiatively important gases, interannual variations in the growth rate of radiative forcing due to CO2 are large and likely related to natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and ENSO events. The annual value of the total global radiative forcing of the long-lived gases is used to define an Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI). The AGGI is normalized to 1990, the Kyoto Protocol baseline year.


Abstract

Background: Idiopathic hypoparathyroidism is a rare endocrine disorder typically manifesting as paresthesias of the extremities and perioral region, muscle cramps, capopedal spasms, tetany, seizure, and fatigue. The condition is not known to manifest initially as psychological and behavioral abnormalities.

Case presentation: We report the case of a 53-year-old Chinese woman who presented with symptoms of depression, anxiety, feelings of agitation, irritability, hyperhidrosis, slow action and decreased interest in most activities. Computed tomography of the brain revealed intracranial calcification, scores on the Hamilton Anxiety Scale and Hamilton Depression Scale showed that she suffered from depression and anxiety, and scores on the Minimum Mental State Examination and Montreal Cognitive Assessment revealed impaired cognitive function. Laboratory analyses showed hypocalcemia, hyperphosphatemia and parathyroid hormone deficiency. Calcium carbonate and vitamin D3 supplementation therapy improved the patient's clinical symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as her levels of calcium and phosphate. However, this treatment did not substantially improve
the level of parathyroid hormone or reduce cognitive impairment.

Conclusions: Idiopathic hypoparathyroidism can manifest initially as psychological and behavioral abnormalities, which clinicians should keep in mind.


This study introduces a new dataset of bilateral value added trade costs for the goods and services sectors, based on a measure derived from the micro-founded gravity model and using data from the OECD-WTO TiVA database. This is the first study to calculate value added trade costs for a set of developed and developing economies, both for the goods and services sectors. Overall, we find that, in the goods sector and in absolute term, international trade costs calculated using value added data are lower than those calculated using gross trade and output data. However, in relative term, bilateral trade costs remain broadly similar regardless of the trade data employed, with trade costs of Republic of Korea and Malaysia consistently outperforming all other developing countries – as well as most developed countries – included in the dataset. Value added trade costs are declining over time across most countries and regional groups and integration into global supply chains and production networks is found to be clearly associated with lower value added trade costs. The agricultural sector is characterised by substantially higher trade costs than in both manufacturing and services sectors. In turn, value added trade costs are found to be slightly higher in services than in manufacturing, although substantial cross-country heterogeneity is observed at the sub-sectoral level.


Abstract Photographs of a 'spy raptor' killed while flying over the India-Pakistan border in Rajasthan were disseminated over the social media. The 'raptor' was a Macqueen's Bustard, Chlamydotis macqueenii carrying a satellite transmitter assembly and a red leg ring with an inscription K34. The National Avian Research Centre (NARC), Abu Dhabi, has extensively studied the biology of C. macqueenii. The killed bustard was one of the captive-bred bustards participating in NARC's monitoring of their migration. Inquiry showed that this bustard was shot in Afghanistan in 2014 and not in India in 2016 as reported. The report from Afghanistan described this bird as a Taliban drone fitted with a bomb vest. The Indian television channel broadcast this news and misinformed its viewers by calling this bird a spy sent over by Pakistan. The Afghanistan report misdirected this incident to blame the Taliban. The Indian television did the same to incriminate Pakistan. The misconceived labelling of a bird participating in a scientific study as a spy has led to misinformation and misdirection that can provoke international aggression. This paper argues that a Macqueen's bustard contributing to scientific knowledge for conservation has been killed unnecessarily and appeals for an improvement in the knowledge of security agencies about birds carrying identification tags and tracking devices.


Since volunteering to write, coordinate and edit a 50 year history for ISES at the 2001 Solar World Congress ANZSES committee meeting, Garry Baverstock proceeded on a worthwhile journey of discovery and re-discovery of the history of the organization. This journey lasted for 3 years and added to as well as enhanced his perception of events and people involved in solar energy who also had an active role in the Society. Many of the pioneers of solar energy, in Australia, were known personally to the author, as he was involved as an office bearer during the early 1980's. It was an active era when ANZSES became fully incorporated. It was a unique period of innovation and embryonic beginnings of the renewable energy industry.
The paper traces the approach, the methodology, as well presenting a short version that picks out the main highlights of the history. It also recommends what needs to be done to maximize the exposure of the document and how it can be a valuable promotional resource for ANZSES on the internet.


UCT, a state-of-the art algorithm for Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) in games and Markov decision processes, is based on UCB, a sampling policy for the Multi-armed Bandit problem (MAB) that minimizes the cumulative regret. However, search differs from MAB in that in MCTS it is usually only the final ``arm pull'' (the actual move selection) that collects a reward, rather than all ``arm pulls''. Therefore, it makes more sense to minimize the simple regret, as opposed to the cumulative regret. We begin by introducing policies for multi-armed bandits with lower finite-time and asymptotic simple regret than UCB, using it to develop a two-stage scheme (SR+CR) for MCTS which outperforms UCT empirically. Optimizing the sampling process is itself a metareasoning problem, a solution of which can use value of information (VOI) techniques. Although the theory of VOI for search exists, applying it to MCTS is non-trivial, as typical myopic assumptions fail. Lacking a complete working VOI theory for MCTS, we nevertheless propose a sampling scheme that is ``aware'' of VOI, achieving an algorithm that in empirical evaluation outperforms both UCT and the other proposed algorithms.


Birdsfoot trefoil is a perennial winter-spring forage legume, highly important in Rio Grande do Sul, in the south of Brazil. It stands out for the ability to survive in relatively acidic and nutrient-poor soils. This study aimed to select birdsfoot trefoil rhizobial strains with tolerance to acidity and aluminum toxicity and efficiency in nitrogen fixation in nutrient-poor soils. Fifty-two isolates of Lotus spp rhizobia from soils of five locations in the state of Rio Grande do Sul were evaluated. The strains were evaluated for genetic diversity and tolerance to pH 4.2 and to aluminum toxicity. Of the acid-tolerant rhizobia, seven were evaluated for symbiotic efficiency in plants grown in pots with non-sterile soil, in a greenhouse experiment. Genetic diversity in the studied rhizobia was high and 16 were tolerant to pH 4.2 and to 50 µM Al in media broth, reaching populations from 107 up to 108 CFU mL-1. The seven rhizobia tested in the greenhouse performed better than the strains recommended for inoculant production, demonstrating the existence of rhizobia tolerant to soil acidity and efficient in nitrogen fixation on birdsfoot trefoil plants in soils of Rio Grande do Sul.


Google Earth and high-resolution satellite imagery provide a means of carrying out remote-sensing survey of Hafit tombs able to cover large areas in short periods of time. While the potential of such research has already been demonstrated in the Wādī Andam area, the accuracy and precision of the methodology are not yet clear. A ground survey carried out by a Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) team in western Ja'alan provides an excellent control to assess the efficacy of the method. The study area was surveyed using Google Earth, and the two datasets were compared. Hafit tombs were identified to a high level of accuracy, but approximately 50% of the structures were not visible, with badly preserved tombs more likely to be missed than those in good condition. Remote sensing can be used in the preliminary stages of survey or more generally to discover and analyse broad patterns of Hafit tomb distribution. Comparisons of the distribution of Hafit tombs in western Ja'alan and Wādī Andam reveal clear similarities: the structures occupy elevated positions adjacent to sizeable wadi channels. The density of tombs is much greater in the western Ja'alan study area, which may suggest that Wādī Batha supported a larger Hafit population than Wādī Andam.


One of the most outstanding problems in the study of storm surges is that of the interaction with tides. Since the equations of motion are non-linear the surge cannot be adequately studied or forecast in relation to the meteorological situation until this problem of inter-action is solved. The important subject of probability of the combined effects of surges and tides reaching or exceeding danger levels also necessitates the solution of the problem, for there is some evidence to show that the largest apparent surges (that is, the excess of actual levels over those of the purely tidal levels) do not occur at or about the times of the purely tidal high water. The problem has been investigated for a long uniform gulf about 100 miles long and about 21 fathoms deep. This has required the development of methods of calculation of tides in the channel, taking account of all non-linear terms in the equations of motion, a problem which in itself is mathematically intractable. The numerical methods have been applied also to cases where storm surges have been superposed upon the tides, with the maximum of the surge occurring near high water, or near low water, or near one of the two half-tide levels. These four cases reveal the character and magnitude of the interaction in this particular gulf. The mean of the four cases shows no obvious tidal interaction, but it is shown that the apparent surge is dependent upon the coefficient of friction and that the magnitude of this is greatly affected by the tides. The actual apparent surge at the mouth of the gulf is, of course, affected by the reflexion which takes place at the head of the gulf, and a method is given for computing the incident and reflected oscillations. It is remarked that it is the incident part which is directly due to the meteorological disturbances in the sea, so that correlations of apparent surges with meteorological data are complicated by the reflected oscillation.


In ontology-enhanced database systems, an ontology on top of the extensional database expresses intensional knowledge that enhances the database schema. Queries posed to such systems are to be evaluated considering all the knowledge inferred from the data by means of the ontology; in other words, queries are to be evaluated against the logical theory constituted by the data and the ontology. In this context, tractability of query answering is a central issue, given that the data size is normally very large. This paper surveys results on a recently introduced family of Datalog-based languages, called Datalog+/-, which is a useful logical toolbox for ontology modeling and for ontology-based query answering. We present different Datalog+/- languages and related complexity results, showing that Datalog+/- can be successfully adopted due to its clarity, expressiveness and its good computational properties.


This paper investigates the long-run relationship between trade unionism and productivity using a panel data set comprising of 18 OECD economies. Much of the existing evidence on this issue derives from micro-economic studies, with limited attention paid to long-run dynamics and economy-wide effects. Using the mean group and pooled mean group estimation techniques on cross-country panel data, the paper offers support to the "productivity-increasing face of unionism" hypothesis, revealing a positive relationship between trade union density and per worker output.


This study examines ecotourism planning and management and sustainable development in rural areas of Chiang Rai province, Thailand. The assessment was based on developing a new conceptual framework based on a political ecology approach to examine ecotourism and sustainable development. It drew from theoretical ideas from the Western literature and previous studies about Thailand, and it is intended to be more integrative and comprehensive than previous ecotourism frameworks because it combines environmental ideas from research on natural resource management with a broad social science perspective. Political ecology helps to understand the complex connections between environment, economy, society, ideology and politics, and it explores the relationships among local actors and between them and relevant external actors. The framework was also developed to be sufficiently broad and flexible to be applied to understanding ecotourism planning and management in different rural areas.This framework was applied and evaluated for three case study rural areas in Chiang Rai province - Rong Bom, Yang Kham Nu and Ruammit villages. The framework was used to explore relations in these villages between the economy and society, politics and administration, practices and ideologies of sustainable development, and the management of ecotourism activities. These were examined from the perspectives of different actors within the villages and also outside them. Qualitative methods were adopted and relevant primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews, document analysis and fieldwork observation. The collected data were analyzed, interpreted and reported in the study using a thematic analysis method which drew on the study's conceptual framework.The research findings focused on relations between local social relations and sustainability, the ideologies of sustainability, and the local practices of ecotourism planning and management and sustainability. It was found, for example, that in villages where there was more cultural and society homogeneity the villagers were better placed to manage ecotourism and to promote more sustainable forms of development. It was also evident that in two of the villages there was a strong focus on environmental conservation in their activities, and this has subsequently attracted tourists to see their conservation practices and community forest work. In one of the villages commercial ecotourism led to environmental degradation, and it was then that conservation concerns were given more prominence. The village leaders were also seen to have an influential role, encouraged by Thai culture which accords respect and deference to people with higher social status. This had negative repercussions for ecotourism planning as villagers often had limited understanding of their potential for participation in ecotourism policy-making. It may also have encouraged a situation where local people often received less benefit from ecotourism than did external tour operators and where external government policies for ecotourism focused on economic returns rather than community development.The study concludes with an evaluation of the value of the conceptual framework for research on ecotourism planning, including consideration of its potential for use in other contexts and geographical areas.


We saw with great interest the article "Return to play? Athletes with congenital long QT syndrome" recently published in this journal,1 describing the outcome of adolescents with long QT syndrome (LQTS) exposed to regular exercise training and sport participation for a 5-year period.

The authors claim that this experience represents ground for the revision of existing criteria of the Bethesda Conference (BC) #36 and European Society of Cardiology (ESC) recommendations regarding sport participation of young patients with LQTS.2 ,3 For this reason, we believed it appropriate to articulate pertinent considerations relative to their unique experience.

The novel observation refers to LQTS genotype-positive–phenotype-negative asymptomatic children actively involved in varied sport programmes. None incurred adverse events or developed cardiac symptoms in the 5-year period, supporting the substantial benign nature of this condition. This observation substantiates the clinical perception that gene abnormality, per se, should not be viewed as disease and, by showing the absence of significant risk for individuals with no symptoms and normal QTc interval (mean, 0.44 s in this subset), reassures clinicians of the favourable outcome of these young 'patients'.

The present experience supports the concept that participation in sport activities (at youth league and high-school) does not convey increased risk and is not associated with the occurrence of adverse events in …


Liberia's power generating capacity and national grid were completely demolished during 14 years of civil war. Piped water access fell from 15 percent of the population in 1986 to less than 3 percent in 2008. War also left the national road network in a state of severe disrepair. Since the return of peace, the port of Monrovia has resumed normal operations under private management, and progress has been made in securing donor finance for road reconstruction. Liberia has also successfully liberalized its mobile telephone markets, with low-priced access surging to 40 percent in 2009. Liberia's starkest challenge lies in funding a more cost-effective power sector. The country's generation capacity is barely one-tenth of the benchmark level of Africa's other low-income countries. The cost of generating power is exorbitant, and the power tariff is three times the regional average. Addressing Liberia's public infrastructure needs will require sustained expenditures of between $350 million and $600 million annually, mostly to fund power and transport. In the mid-2000s, with all sources of spending taken into account, Liberia spent around $90 million a year on infrastructure. An additional $17 million was lost to inefficiencies, such as underpricing of power. Because Liberia suffers an annual funding gap of between $250 million and $500 million per year, it will need a combination of increased finance, improved efficiency, and cost-reducing innovations to reach its infrastructure targets in a reasonable time. Without these, Liberians may have to wait for up to 40 years to achieve the targets.


When the instrumental variable is a poor one, in the sense of being weakly correlated with the variable it proxies, the small sample distribution of the IV estimator is concentrated around a value that is inversely related to the feedback in the system and which is often further from the true value than is the plim of OLS. The sample variance of residuals similarly becomes concentrated around a value which reflects feedback and not the variance of the disturbance. The distribution of the t-ratio reflects both of these effects, stronger feedback producing larger t-ratios. Thus, in situations where OLS is badly biased, a poor instrument will lead to spurious inferences under IV estimation with high probability, and generally perform worse than OLS.


This paper revisits Plato's and Aristotle's views on mimesis with a special emphasis on mythos as an integral part of it. I argue that the Republic 's notorious "mirror argument" is in fact ad hominem : first, Plato likely has in mind Agathon's mirror in Aristophanes' Thesmoforiazusae , where tragedy is construed as mimesis ; second, the tongue-in-cheek claim that mirrors can reproduce invisible Hades, when read in combination with the following eschatological myth, suggests that Plato was not committed to a mirror-like view of art; third, the very omission of mythos shows that the argument is a self-consciously one-sided one, designed to caricature the artists' own pretensions of mirror-like realism. These points reinforce Stephen Halliwell's claim that Western aesthetics has been haunted by a «ghostly misapprehension» of Plato's mirror. Further evidence comes from Aristotle's "literary" (as opposed to Plato's "sociological") discussion: rather than to the "mirror argument", the beginning of the Poetics points to the Phaedo as the best source of information about Plato's views on poetry.


The Dark Energy Survey covering 5,000 square degrees of the South Galactic Cap along with a dedicated 30 square degree SN survey has now completed four years of observations. The Data Management group (DESDM) has been responsible for the processing, release, and curation of these data products for the DES collaboration and to make them available to the general astronomical community.

I will give a brief overview of the DESDM pipelines and data management system, focusing on their evolution and performance, with an emphasis toward providing lessons that might help inform the current development effort of the LSST data management project.


After years of using spacer GIFs, layers of nested tables, and other improvised solutions for building your web sites, getting used to the more stringent standards-compliant design can be intimidating. HTML and XHTML Pocket Reference is the perfect little guide when you need answers immediately. Jennifer Niederst-Robbins, author Web Design in a Nutshell, has revised and updated the fourth edition of this pocket guide by taking the top 20% of vital reference information from her Nutshell book, augmenting it judiciously, cross-referencing everything, and organizing it according to the most common needs of web developers. The result is a handy book that offers the bare essentials on web standards in a small, concise format that you can use carry anywhere for quick reference. HTML and XHTML Pocket Reference features easily-to-find listings of every HTML and XHTML tag, and every Cascading Style Sheet value. It's an indispensable reference for any serious web designer, author, or programmer who needs a fast on-the-job resource when working with established web standards.


Studies of ballots have traditionally focused on roll-off, candidate order, and partisan advantage. This study is among the first to assess the impact of ballots on individual-level voter errors. We develop new hypotheses by bringing together theoretical insights from usability research and political science about the effects of ballots with and without a straight-party voting option. By comparing voters' intentions to the votes they cast, we are able to create two measures of voter errors: votes unintentionally cast for the wrong candidate and unintentional undervotes. Voters generally make fewer errors of both types when using a standard office-bloc ballot than when using an office-bloc ballot with a straight-party option, with the number of wrong-candidate errors substantially exceeding the number of unintentional undervotes. Voters' background characteristics have a significant impact on their ability to vote without error. Our results offer a new perspective for evaluating the use of the straight-party option.


OF DISSERTATION A Combinatorial Miscellany: Antipodes, Parking Cars, and Descent Set Powers In this dissertation we first introduce an extension of the notion of parking functions to cars of different sizes. We prove a product formula for the number of such sequences and provide a refinement using a multi-parameter extension of the Abel– Rothe polynomial. Next, we study the incidence Hopf algebra on the noncrossing partition lattice. We demonstrate a bijection between the terms in the canceled chain decomposition of its antipode and noncrossing hypertrees. Thirdly, we analyze the sum of the rth powers of the descent set statistic on permutations and how many small prime factors occur in these numbers. These results depend upon the base p expansion of both the dimension and the power of these statistics. Finally, we inspect the f -vector of the descent polytope DPv, proving a maximization result using an analogue of the boustrophedon transform.


The International Symposium on Ecosystem Governance held in South Africa during 2005 enabled scientists from several disciplines to debate issues relating to governance. The symposium provided an opportunity to explore the concept of governance, particularly as it relates to ecosystem governance, by interrogating the concepts of a Trialogue Model; and helped to develop a set of pointers for research on ecosystem governance that could stimulate future cooperation. The working hypothesis is that the Trialogue Model consists of six essential elements, and that successful governance—i.e. good governance —depends on the balance that is achieved between these elements. The key issues relating to ecosystem governance are presented in this special edition of Water Policy . Each paper interrogates the Trialogue Model, while the pointers for research on ecosystem governance provide a useful way forward for the implementation of government tools. The Trialogue Model of governance provides a simple conceptual construct that directs discussion about current governance processes and structures at different scales. This introductory paper provides an overview of the papers in this special edition, and outlines the set of proposals for research on ecosystem governance.


We compared the Italian of speakers from the Veneto, in the north of Italy, and from Sicily, in the far south, looking for evidence of rhythmic and prosodic differences. We found no reliable differences in scores for rhythm metrics (VarcoV, %V, VarcoC) for Venetan and Sicilian, with both varieties having scores similar to French and indicative of a greater durational marking of stress than Spanish. However, we found much stronger prosodic timing effects in Sicilian Italian, with stressed vowels in nuclear utterance-final position twice as long as in prenuclear utterance-medial position. We also found evidence of differential patterns of vowel reduction: Sicilian showed greater modulation of F1 and F2 values according to stress and prosodic position, indicating greater vowel centralisation in prosodically-weak contexts than in Venetan Italian. Overall, the results indicated greater prosodic contrast in southern Italian, and suggest that multiple factors contribute to the perception of rhythmic differences.


In Italy, B and C are the predominant serogroups among meningococci causing invasive diseases. Nevertheless, in the period from 2013 to 2016, an increase in serogroup W Neisseria meningitidis (MenW) was observed. This study intends to define the main characteristics of 63 MenW isolates responsible of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) in Italy from 2000 to 2016. We performed whole genome sequencing on bacterial isolates or single gene sequencing on culture-negative samples to evaluate molecular heterogeneity. Our main finding was the cocirculation of the Hajj and the South American sublineages belonging to MenW/clonal complex (cc)11, which gradually surpassed the MenW/cc22 in Italy. All MenW/cc11 isolates were fully susceptible to cefotaxime, ceftriaxone, ciprofloxacin, penicillin G and rifampicin. We identified the full-length NadA protein variant 2/3, present in all the MenW/cc11. We also identified the fHbp variant 1, which we found exclusively in the MenW/cc11/Hajj sublineage. Concern about the epidemic potential of MenW/cc11 has increased worldwide since the year 2000. Continued surveillance, supported by genomic characterisation, allows high-resolution tracking of pathogen dissemination and the detection of epidemic-associated strains.


Introduction In our trust all patients with a CXR suggestive of cancer have their CXR reviewed in the lung MDT. Following a serious incident investigation in our trust the question was raised as to whether this practise should be extended to all patients with "red flag symptoms" but not necessarily an abnormal CXR, in an attempt to improve early detection of lung cancer. Aims To determine frequency of red flag symptoms (i.e. hoarseness/haemoptysis) in patients undergoing community chest radiography To determine frequency of subsequent lung cancer diagnosis in such patients To determine if routine MDT review of such patients would improve time to lung cancer diagnosis. Method Review of community CXR request forms and images over a 1 month period (January 2010) was performed. Any CXR requested for a red flag symptom and reported as "normal", was re-reviewed by a radiologist. Review of medical records over the succeeding 27 months to determine if there was any subsequent detection of lung cancer. Results 549 community CXR's were requested in the review period. A random sample of 229 requests were reviewed. 8 requests included haemoptysis in clinical details and none included hoarseness. 5/8 CXR's were reported as normal. 3/8 were reported as abnormal, with one suggestive of cancer (subsequently diagnosed) and discussed at MDT anyway. The remaining 2 patients with abnormal CXR's had subsequent unremarkable imaging. None of the remaining 5 patients with haemoptysis and a normal CXR had any subsequent presentation with lung cancer. Conclusion The prevalence of red flag symptoms in patients being referred for community CXR's is low. In those with red flag symptoms and a CXR that does not suggest cancer, subsequent presentation with cancer is at worst highly unlikely. The practise of routinely reviewing images of such patients in a lung cancer MDT is unlikely to improve detection rate or time to diagnosis of lung cancer.


THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF LOVELACE AND BABBAGE . . . in which Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures. Meet Victorian Londons most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace translated a description of Babbages plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines. But do not despair! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crimefor the sake of both London and science. Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbages mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible.(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)


Marantaceae are the second largest family in the order Zingiberales, with approximately 31 genera and 535 species. Earlier studies based on morphological and molecular characters could not confidently determine the relationships among major lineages of the family, nor could they identify the basal branch of the family tree. Phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequence data from all three genomic compartments (chloroplast: matK, ndhF, rbcL, rps16 intron, and trnL-trnF intergenic spacer; mitochondrion: cox1; nucleus: ITS region and the 5'-end of 26S) for a restricted set of taxa were conducted under parsimony criteria to define the root node and to assess geographical distribution patterns. Our results support the recognition of five major lineages, most of which are restricted to a single geographical region (tropical America, tropical Africa, or tropical Asia). The phylogenies and character reconstructions (Fitch parsimony optimization, Bremer ancestral areas, and DIVA) support an African origin for the family, followed by a minimum of two dispersal events to the New World tropics and four or more dispersal events to the Asian tropics. Less likely are two alternative hypotheses: (1) vicariance of a western Gondwanan group (the Americas and Africa) followed by several dispersals to Asia and Africa, or (2) an American origin followed by several dispersals to Africa and Asia. The low specific diversity in Africa may be due to higher extinction rates as a result of shrinking lowland tropical forests during the Tertiary.


One of the toughest problems to solve when deploying an
enterprise-wide full-text search system is to handle the access
rights of the documents and intranet web pages correctly and
effectively. Post-processing the results of general-purpose
full-text search engine (filtering out the documents
inaccessible to the user who sent the query) can be an
expensive operation, especially in large collections of
documents. We discuss various approaches to this problem and
propose a novel method which employs virtual tokens for
encoding the access rights directly into the search index. We
then evaluate this approach in an intranet system with several
millions of documents and a complex set of access rights and
access rules.


In a seminal paper Abadie et al (2010) develop the synthetic control procedure for estimating the effect of a treatment, in the presence of a single treated unit and a number of control units, with pre-treatment outcomes observed for all units. The method constructs a set of weights such that covariates and pre-treatment outcomes of the treated unit are approximately matched by a weighted average of control units. The weights are restricted to be nonnegative and sum to one, which allows the procedure to obtain the weights even when the number of lagged outcomes is modest relative to the number of control units, a setting that is not uncommon in applications. In the current paper we propose a more general class of synthetic control estimators that allows researchers to relax some of the restrictions in the ADH method. We allow the weights to be negative, do not necessarily restrict the sum of the weights, and allow for a permanent additive difference between the treated unit and the controls, similar to difference-in-difference procedures. The weights directly minimize the distance between the lagged outcomes for the treated and the control units, using regularization methods to deal with a potentially large number of possible control units.


Objective, accurate, and fast assessment of a bridge's structural condition is critical to the timely assessment of safety risks. Current practices for bridge condition assessment rely on visual observations and manual interpretation of reports and sketches prepared by inspectors in the field. Visual observation, manual reporting, and interpretation have several drawbacks, such as being labor intensive, subject to personal judgment and experience, and prone to error. Terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) are promising sensors for automatically identifying structural condition indicators, such as cracks, displacements, and deflected shapes, because they are able to provide high coverage and accuracy at long ranges. However, limited research has been conducted on employing laser scanners to detect cracks for bridge condition assessment, and the research has mainly focused on manual detection and measurement of cracks, displacements, or shape deflections from the laser scan point clouds. This research project proposed to measure the performance of TLS for the automatic detection of cracks for bridge structural condition assessment. Laser scanning is an advanced imaging technology that is used to rapidly measure the three-dimensional (3D) coordinates of densely scanned points within a scene. The data gathered by a laser scanner are provided in the form of point clouds, with color and intensity data often associated with each point within the cloud. Point cloud data can be analyzed using computer vision algorithms to detect cracks for the condition assessment of reinforced concrete structures. In this research project, adaptive wavelet neural network (WNN) algorithms for detecting cracks from laser scan point clouds were developed based on the state-of-the-art condition assessment codes and standards. Using the proposed method for crack detection would enable automatic and remote assessment of a bridge's condition. This would, in turn, result in reducing the costs associated with infrastructure management and improving the overall quality of infrastructure by enhancing maintenance operations.


Poverty–growth elasticities are frequently calculated to provide insight into the inclusiveness of the growth process. Mathematically, the formula employed to calculate the growth elasticity of poverty leads to lower values for higher initial poverty rates, ceteris paribus. This paper discusses the potential for this property to produce misleading results both over time and space. Poverty–growth semi-elasticities provide a more robust measure of the responsiveness of poverty to growth.


This research aim to know the influence of concentration gift fertilize the Oxide Calcium (CaO) and fertilize the Oxide Magnesium ( MgO) for the growth of Jarak Pagar plant ( Jatropha Curcas Linn). During the time the Jarak Pagar plant not yet cultivation peculiarly, governmental policy applying cause to subsidize the BBM very big so that the process jarak oil assumed do not profit, on that account require to be conducted by technique of cultivation the jarak pagar plant. Jarak pagar very taking a fancy of land; ground owning tekstur sand, but in this research land; ground used in character acid land. While acid land not good habitat for the growth of jarak pagar plant, one of way of to avoid the the acidity in order to become the fertile environment by fertilization use the fertilize CaO and fertilize MgO. Research type used by eksperimental really (true experiment). Attempt device used is random device of group ( RAK) consisted of 25 treatment and 3 times restating, sampel used is 150 seed jarak pagar which sprout during one week obtained from regency Bojonegoro. Technique of Intake sampel by using technique of simple random sampling. Analyse the data used by Analysis Varians two factor continued with the Duncan's test. Result of research indicate that the concentration gift fertilize the Oxide Calcium (CaO) and fertilize the Oxide Magnesium (MgO) able to influence the difference growth of jarak pagar plant that is happened by the make-up growth with a few parameter that is high plant, sum up the leaf, wide of leaf, obstetrical of khlorofil, wet heavy, and dry weight. Best concentration at 36 mg fertilize the CaO and 30 mg fertilize the MgO (A3B3). While at concentration gift fertilize the CaO and also fertilize the just MgO can be seen from visible leaf colour of green (fertilize the MgO) and rather turning yellow (fertilize CaO). Combination of between fertilize CaO and fertilize the MgO can influence the plant growth of jarak pagar by various big to difference manner among other things minimize the bar, high lower the bar, big minimize the leaf, a lot of obstetrical at least khlorofil, etc. download


Developing Policies and Guidelines to Prevent Medication Errors and ADEs in Nursing Homes by Marion Johnson MS, Walden University, 2013 Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice Walden University February 2016 Abstract According to the National Patient Safety Foundation, more than 1.5 million Americans are affected by medication errors because of varied factors including miscommunication, bad handwriting, name confusion, poor packaging, and metric or other dosing unit errors. This project addressed medication errors and adverse drug events by developing policy and practice guidelines to support and aid the utilization of health information technologyAccording to the National Patient Safety Foundation, more than 1.5 million Americans are affected by medication errors because of varied factors including miscommunication, bad handwriting, name confusion, poor packaging, and metric or other dosing unit errors. This project addressed medication errors and adverse drug events by developing policy and practice guidelines to support and aid the utilization of health information technology (HIT) systems in addressing medication errors and adverse drug events at a local nursing home in Cincinnati, Ohio. The National Quality Strategy Framework was used by a team of interdisciplinary stakeholders as a guide for the development of policies and practice guidelines. An interdisciplinary project team of institutional stakeholders was led by the DNP student through a review of literature to assess the effectiveness of current policies and guidelines and explore areas for improvement. New policy, practice guidelines, and educational materials were developed, along with plans for implementing and evaluating the policies in the institution. Policy and practice guidelines were shared with 4 scholars possessing expertise in health information technology to validate content of the products. Feedback was used to inform revision and preparation of final policy, practice guidelines, educational materials, and plans for implementation and evaluation. The implementation plan advocates a process that includes multiple stakeholders and institutional preparatory stages. The evaluation plan addresses multiple outcomes related to efficiency and patient safety, and proposes both intermediate and long-term evaluation based on comparisons of pre-post metrics routinely collected by the institution. Following implementation and evaluation, dissemination of results of the project may stimulate positive social change by reducing medication errors in similar health care institutions that adopt related measures. Developing Policies and Guidelines to Prevent Medication Errors and ADEs in Nursing Homes


The Domain Name System's Security Extensions (DNSSEC) allow clients and resolvers to verify that DNS responses have not been forged or modified inflight. DNSSEC uses a public key infrastructure (PKI) to achieve this integrity, without which users can be subject to a wide range of attacks. However, DNSSEC can operate only if each of the principals in its PKI properly performs its management tasks: authoritative name servers must generate and publish their keys and signatures correctly, child zones that support DNSSEC must be correctly signed with their parent's keys, and resolvers must actually validate the chain of signatures.

This paper performs the first large-scale, longitudinal measurement study into how well DNSSEC's PKI is managed. We use data from all DNSSEC-enabled subdomains under the .com, .org, and .net TLDs over a period of 21 months to analyze DNSSEC deployment and management by domains; we supplement this with active measurements of more than 59K DNS resolvers worldwide to evaluate resolver-side validation.

Our investigation reveals pervasive mismanagement of the DNSSEC infrastructure. For example, we found that 31% of domains that support DNSSEC fail to publish all relevant records required for validation; 39% of the domains use insufficiently strong key-signing keys; and although 82% of resolvers in our study request DNSSEC records, only 12% of them actually attempt to validate them. These results highlight systemic problems, which motivate improved automation and auditing of DNSSEC management.


Results in the literature indicate that high levels of moral development are positively correlated with high levels of empathy. However, the issue of moral reasoning style and its relationship to empathy remains unclear. The role that moral reasoning style (care vs. justice orientation) plays in counselors' ability to relate empathically to clients was investigated among a sample of 44 counselors-in-training. Results indicate that counselors were able to respond equally to clients with the same moral reasoning style as themselves and to those with a different style. Counselors with a care orientation were no more able than justice-oriented counselors to respond empathically. Findings contribute information about measures of moral reasoning style and suggest that matching of counselors with college-aged and young adult clients based on moral reasoning style is not an issue of concern for college counselors.


Purpose. To evaluate the efficacy of surgical treatment for conjunctivochalasis using the Tear Film Stability Analysis System. Methods. Fifteen eyes of 15 patients (74.5 ± 4.8 years; 14 females and 1 male) who had surgical reconstruction of the tear meniscus for conjunctivochalasis underwent evaluation with a symptom questionnaire, Schirmer I test, fluorescein tear film break-up time (FBUT), and break-up time index (BUI) measurement by Tear Film Stability Analysis System examinations that were performed preoperatively and 3 months after the surgery. Changes of these tear parameters were statistically analyzed using the paired t test. Results. After the surgery, the mean FBUT and BUI values significantly improved from 5.7 ± 3.2 s and 42.8 ± 18.7, respectively, to 8.4 ± 2.5 s and 60.7 ± 16.5, respectively (FBUT, p = 0.0438; BUI, p = 0.0036). The mean Schirmer test value showed no significant changes before and after surgery (p = 0.9064). Fourteen eyes (93.3%) had improvement of ocular symptoms after surgery. One eye (6.7%) with no improvement of ocular symptoms, FBUT, and BUI after surgery appeared to have aqueous tear deficiency. Conclusions. Surgical treatment for conjunctivochalasis was associated with improvement of tear stability and clinical dry eye symptoms.


Background: Orthodontics is outstanding among the medical branches with a higher number of predisposing factors for cross-infection. Awareness of efficient sterilization techniques is considered to be a very important subject. Aim: To investigate the efficacy of various disinfection methods on orthodontic clamping tweezers contaminated with bacteria and Candida albicans. Materials and method: Staphylococci, Streptococci and Candida albicans cultivated from the sample of the whole saliva were taken from one patient after 3 months of braces placement. The broth was prepared of Streptococcus and Staphylococcus, and Candida albicans to obtain 106-107 CFU/ml. The peaks of 25 clamping tweezers were cut to get 50 pieces; the ends of these pieces were polished. Total 25 pieces of clamping tweezer peaks were divided into 5 groups with 5 pieces in each tube exposed to the broth of Streptococcus and Staphylococcus mixture for 5 minutes. The other 25 clamping tweezers pieces were also divided in the same manner and exposed to the broth of Candida albicans for 5 minutes. The 25 pieces of each group were subdivided into 5 groups, 4 of which were disinfected with Saniswiss biosanitizer I, desident cavicide, glutaraldehyde 2%, peracetic acid 0.25%, and the 5th group was autoclaved. Result: All the disinfection methods used showed no growth of staphylococci and streptococci. However, when the tweezers were contaminated with Candida albicans, disinfection with desident cavicide solution showed growth of candida on Sabouraud's agar while the use of an autoclave, glutaraldehyde 2%, peracetic acid 0.25% and biosanitizer I, recorded no growth on Sabouraud's agar. Conclusion: Autoclave, peracetic acid, glutaraldehyde and biosanitizer I can be used to effectively eliminate Streptococcus, Staphylococcus and Candida albicans.


The Occupation of Namibia analyzes the historical factors that led to the initial occupation of Namibia by South Africa in 1915, and explores the diplomatic and legal arguments used to justify this occupation. The author offers a unique perspective on Namibian history that has been ignored by both apologists for South Africa as well as by critics of white minority rule. While most studies concentrate on whether the United Nations had the legal authority to assume responsibility over the mandate for Namibia, this book argues that there were British colonial regulations that took precedence over any claim by South Africa to possess the Namibian mandate independently of Britain or the U.N. This study documents how South Africa attempted to remove British influence from Namibia, and how Namibian history was falsified by South Africans to justify their rule over Namibia. This analysis promises to influence the nature of the negotiations that will occur between an independent Namibian government and the republic of South Africa over the future status of Walvis Bay, Namibia's primary port, which remains under South African occupation.


On behalf of the World Stroke Organization and the Indian Stroke Association, we warmly welcome you to the 10th World Stroke Congress (WSC) in Hyderabad, October 26–29, 2016. The history of India can be traced back to the Indus Valley civilization (2500 BC). India has a rich cultural heritage and diversity in language, dress, religious places, flora and fauna and varied delicious cuisines. India is an agricultural country but has made a rapid growth over the last few decades in industries, information technology and in the field of science. Hyderabad, the conference venue, is the meeting point of the central and southern part of India. It was ruled by the Mughals and the Nizams and the architectural beauty is seen in Charminar, Golkonda fort, Falaknuma and Chowmahalla palaces. Stroke is a major cause of disability and death in India. A large proportion of stroke occurs in young people. The stroke care infrastructure is developed mainly in private hospitals but the vast majority of public hospitals are ill-equipped to treat stroke patients. The treatment expenses are borne by the patients and relatives and hence there is a huge economic burden on the family. The neighboring countries in south Asia also face a similar problem of a huge burden of stroke with a poor infrastructure to tackle the situation. The Congress will provide a cutting edge educational and scientific experience, focusing on the latest developments in acute management, rehabilitation and long term care. There will be a particular emphasis on the issues related to stroke care in the South Asian region. Please join us at the 10th World Stroke Congress in 2016 in Hyderabad, and join the World Stroke Organization and Indian Stroke Association in our mission to reduce the global and regional burden of stroke. We look forward to meeting you in Hyderabad.


The forests of Czechoslovakia are seriously endangered by air pollution. Another factor contributing to forest decline could be the historical development of silviculture. The study discusses the contemporary state of forests in Czechoslovakia and the outlook to 2000. Continued forest decline could seriously endanger the non-timber functions of forests. The importance of the water-controlling function of forests and its economic efficiency are broadly discussed. The largest part of the paper deals with the influence of forest decline on recreation. Even with limited data, one can observe a continually growing demand for recreation in mountain areas with damaged forests. The reasons lie in the historical development and peculiar features of recreation in this socialist society. The difficulties of forecasting peoples' behavior and their recreational demands is recognized. The last part of the paper deals with the influence of forest decline on production in the wood-processing and pulp-and-paper industries and strategies for their future. It will be necessary to change the structure of the forest-products sector and to investigate the newest technologies for the best utilization of all wood grown, which due to forest damage and the ensuing compulsory sanitation fellings will increase first and then after some years decrease. The study shows that forest decline in Czechoslovakia will lead to high economic losses and high consequent costs and investments in future decades, and can also have serious social consequences even if none have yet been manifested.


Procedure Appropriateness Category Relative Radiation Level MRI sella without and with IV contrast Usually Appropriate O MRI sella without IV contrast Usually Appropriate O CT sella with IV contrast May Be Appropriate ☢☢☢ MRI sella with IV contrast May Be Appropriate O CT sella without IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢ CTA head with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢ MRA head without IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate O MRA head with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate O MRA head without and with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate O CT sella without and with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢ Radiography sella Usually Not Appropriate ☢ Venous sampling petrosal sinus Usually Not Appropriate Varies


Members of the Sox transcription factor family have a wide variety of roles in the
development of higher animals, including neural development and early embryogenesis.
To better understand both the evolution of the Sox family and the roles of these genes in
cnidarians, we are studying the Sox gene complement of the coral, Acropora millepora
(Class Anthozoa). Based on overall domain structures and HMG box sequences, the
Acropora Sox genes clearly fall into four of the five major Sox classes. Each of these
genes has a clear Nematostella ortholog, but in most cases the expression pattern
observed in Acropora differs significantly from that reported in Nematostella. AmSoxC
is expressed in the ectoderm in a cell specific manner during development, with
expression beginning much earlier than in Nematostella. During gastrulation, AmSoxB1
and AmSoxB3 transcripts are detected only in the presumptive ectoderm whereas
AmSoxE1 transcription is restricted to the presumptive endoderm, suggesting that these
Sox genes might play roles in germ layer specification. Again, the expression patterns
reported for the corresponding Nematostella genes differ in many respects from those
observed in Acropora. These differences may reflect diversity both in fundamental
developmental processes and the underlying molecular mechanisms within the
anthozoan Sub-Class Hexacorallia (Zoantharia).

Wnt/-catenin-signalling has important and multiple roles during early metazoan
embryogenesis, including axial patterning or early embryogenesis. Upon receipt of the
Wnt signal, -catenin protein, which acts as a transcriptional regulator, is translocated
into nuclei. Interactions between Sox proteins and -catenin protein during germ layer
formation have been reported, in a number of higher animals. To better understand the
molecular mechanisms of early embryogenesis in Acropora and the ancestral roles of
Wnt/-catenin signalling during early embryogenesis, the distribution of nuclear -
catenin protein was investigated during early development. In Acropora, whole-mount
immunohistochemistry revealed that, unlike most other animals, including the sea
anemone Nematostella, -catenin protein accumulates in nuclei in the presumptive
ectoderm of the blastula stage. At the 256–512-cell stage, -catenin starts to accumulate
in nuclei, and nuclear localization is observed in the presumptive ectoderm of the
blastula stage. To investigate the function of -catenin and its potential role as a
regulator of Sox gene expression during embryogenesis, Acropora embryos were
treated with alsterpaullone, a specific inhibitor of the Wnt/-catenin signalling inhibitor
GSK3. Alsterpaullone treatment significantly inhibited gastrulation in Acropora
embryos and suppressed the expression of AmSoxB1 and AmSoxE1, suggesting that
AmSoxB1 and E1 are downstream targets of Wnt/-catenin signalling. These results
indicate that Wnt/-catenin signalling and several of the Sox genes play important roles
in gastrulation and/or in germ layer formation in Acropora. As in the case of the Sox
genes, the ectodermal accumulation of nuclear -catenin in Acropora embryos again
illustrates the surprisingly diversity of molecular mechanisms involved in early
development of cnidarians.


Background Traditional cultivation approaches have not identified additional pathogens responsible for the 45% of non-gonococcal urethritis (NGU) cases with no identified aetiology. Cultivation-independent methods have identified novel bacteria associated with female reproductive tract disease, particularly bacterial vaginosis (BV). We evaluated the association of NGU and 5 newly described BV-associated bacteria (BVAB). Methods English-speaking, heterosexual men aged 16 years attending the STD clinic in Seattle, WA between May 2007 and July 2011 were eligible if PCR tests for Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Trichomonas vaginalis, Mycoplasma genitalium, and Ureaplasma urealyticum-biovar2 were negative. Cases were men with visible urethral discharge or 5 PMNs/HPF in urethral exudates. Controls were men with no visible urethral discharge and < 5 PMNs/HPF. Urine was tested for Atopobium, BVAB-2, BVAB-3, Megasphaera spp., and Leptotrichia/Sneathia spp. using quantitative taxon-directed PCR. Results Cases (n = 157) and controls (n = 191) were similar with respect to age, education, and income. Mean age was 34.7 (SD ±9.9) and most were white. Leptotrichia/Sneathia was significantly associated with NGU (25/157 (15.3%) vs. 6/102 (5.9%), p = 0.03) and BVAB-2 was detected more often in cases than controls (7/157 (4.5%) vs. 1/102 (1.0%), p = 0.15). BVAB-3 (n = 2) and Megasphaera (n = 1) were uncommon, but only detected in men with NGU. In contrast, Atopobium was not associated with NGU (8.3% vs. 7.8%, p = 1.0). Quantity of bacteria did not differ between cases and controls for any of the 5 candidate pathogens. Among treated cases, doxycycline was somewhat more effective than azithromycin for clinical cure of men with Leptotrichia/Sneathia(9/10 (90%) vs. 7/12 (58%), p = 0.16), and BVAB-2 (3/3 (100%) vs. 0/3 (0%), p = 0.10). Conclusion Leptotrichia/Sneathia was significantly associated with NGU. BVAB-2, BVAB-3, and Megasphaera were less commonly detected, but most often identified in men with NGU and rarely or never in men without NGU. Doxycycline may be more effective against these newly identified bacteria than azithromycin.


Available data suggest that, between 2006 and 2012, Germany may have suffered losses to the value of more than 20% of annual economic output on its net foreign assets. Were these presumed losses on German net foreign assets coincidental or can they be attributed to deeper causes? Over time, fluctuating asset valuations are nothing unusual, per se. Losses can quickly turn into profits and vice versa. In addition, the available data should be interpreted with some caution. However, this report also shows that there are lessons to be learned from the loss in value on foreign assets. First, losses have been for the most part in portfolio investments, whereas foreign direct investments by German firms (strategic equity investments) have shown reasonable valuation gains since 2006 by international comparison. At the same time, foreign investors have also seen profit on their direct investments in Germany. With hindsight, it might have been a better strategy for German entrepreneurs and investors to either increase domestic investment or make long-term investments abroad. Further, a comparison with investment behavior in the United States (US) suggests that the profitability of German foreign asset placement has been low. Both countries attract capital from abroad for fixed-interest bonds because both Germany and the US profit from the fact that investors see them as "safe havens" and must pay comparatively low interest rates on bonds. However, while companies and private individuals in the US have simultaneously invested abroad in bonds with high value return, this can generally not be said for German investors in recent years. Some of Germany's net losses can even be attributed to foreign investors making valuation gains on their investments in Germany.


To develop more cost-effective and environmentally friendly strategies to prevent the formation of gas hydrate plugs in oil production pipelines, a better understanding of the mechanisms of plug formation is needed. This paper presents broad-band permittivity measurements of hydrate formation in water-in-oil emulsions. The experiments were conducted at atmospheric pressure using dead crude oil and diesel fuel, with cyclopentane as hydrate former. However, the use of dielectric probes employed in this work can be extended to more realistic systems, as they are able to withstand high pressures and harsh chemical environments. The results show that broad-band permittivity measurements can be used to detect hydrate agglomeration and formation of hydrate deposits in oil-dominated systems. By applying existing dielectric mixing models, the fractions of oil, water, and hydrates can be estimated.


Patients with abdominal pain are often quickly labelled as having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) once organic disease has been excluded. The possibility of chronic abdominal wall pain (CAWP) syndrome is not often considered in the differential at that stage, partly through lack of awareness and partly due to difficulty of specific diagnosis. van Assen and colleagues from the Netherlands have developed and validated an instrument for the identification of CAWP syndromes, which we are delighted to publish in Frontline Gastroenterology . Patients with CAWP have a three-fold increased risk for being operated on compared to matched population. Use of this novel instrument could have repercussions for both clinical practice and appropriate identification of patients for research.

Little is known of the state of practice of endoscopy amongst paediatric patients in the UK or indeed …


We introduce a novel class of stable nonlinear modes trapped in a lower-index film core sandwiched between two optical lattices, or in the cylindrical core of a radial lattice, imprinted in defocusing media. Such a family of nonlinear modes transforms into defect lattice solitons when the core width is sufficiently small or into an array of kinks when the width is large enough. We find that higher-order modes with multiple zeros inside the guiding core can be stable in one-dimensional settings.


Abstract. In this work we study the effects of systematic and random errors on the inversion of multiwavelength (MW) lidar data using the well-known regularization technique to obtain vertically resolved aerosol microphysical properties. The software implementation used here was developed at the Physics Instrumentation Center (PIC) in Troitsk (Russia) in conjunction with the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. Its applicability to Raman lidar systems based on backscattering measurements at three wavelengths (355, 532 and 1064 nm) and extinction measurements at two wavelengths (355 and 532 nm) has been demonstrated widely. The systematic error sensitivity is quantified by first determining the retrieved parameters for a given set of optical input data consistent with three different sets of aerosol physical parameters. Then each optical input is perturbed by varying amounts and the inversion is repeated. Using bimodal aerosol size distributions, we find a generally linear dependence of the retrieved errors in the microphysical properties on the induced systematic errors in the optical data. For the retrievals of effective radius, number/surface/volume concentrations and fine-mode radius and volume, we find that these results are not significantly affected by the range of the constraints used in inversions. But significant sensitivity was found to the allowed range of the imaginary part of the particle refractive index. Our results also indicate that there exists an additive property for the deviations induced by the biases present in the individual optical data. This property permits the results here to be used to predict deviations in retrieved parameters when multiple input optical data are biased simultaneously as well as to study the influence of random errors on the retrievals. The above results are applied to questions regarding lidar design, in particular for the spaceborne multiwavelength lidar under consideration for the upcoming ACE mission.


Since its inception in the 1940's, chemotherapy has remained the standard treatment for many cancers. The morbidity and mortality associated with these drugs have triggered scientists to discover newer methods of treatment such as immunotherapy. Although immunotherapy has proven to be successful in many preclinical and clinical models in cancers such as melanoma, data in poorly immunogenic cancers such as breast cancer continues to be controversial. Several large clinical trials have tested the use of various forms of immunotherapy in breast cancer such as checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive T cell therapy, vaccines and adjunctive immunotherapy, all of which have shown promising results. This review article highlights the advances of immunotherapy in breast cancer and discusses the future research needed to be conducted to unveil the full potential of these drugs.


Abstract "Systemic risk" now occupies centre stage in discussions of bank regulatory reform. Systemic risk is often seen as a problem of size, operational complexity, interconnectivity and contagion. It is less often discussed in terms of the institutional framework of legal rules and principles within which financial intermediation takes place, and the organizational culture promoted by those structures. In this article we redress this deficit through an appraisal of Northern Rock, illustrating the consequences of its transformation from mutually owned building society to publicly held company on organisational culture. These changes had profound effects on the incentive structure of its owners and managers, as profit-maximisation and shareholder value became the driving force within the firm, as in much of the rest of the UK banking sector. Thus, in addition to grappling with risk and uncertainty—and taking care to distinguish between the two—current efforts to construct a new macro-prudential regulatory paradigm should recognise the importance of Frank Knight's third key conceptual category–profit. Furthermore, in seeking to understand systemic risk, it becomes necessary to delve into micro-legal concepts such as property, trust, and contract that govern different forms of business to discern whether or not some modes of financial association create a greater degree of systemic risk than others. This is especially so when one organizational model comes to dominate retail markets, as did the publicly held company in the UK banking sector at the turn of the twenty-first century.


Objectives We examine adolescent receipt of tobacco coupons and subsequent tobacco use. Methods Data were from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study (2013–2015). We identified correlates of coupon receipt at Wave 1 (youth sample age 12–17 ; n = 13 651) including demographics, additional vulnerability factors that may place youth at risk of tobacco use and correlates of coupon receipt by channel. We examined associations of Wave 1 coupon receipt with Wave 2 tobacco use using weighted multivariable models. Results Overall, 7.6% of US youth received tobacco coupons in the 6 months before Wave 1. Coupon recipients were more likely to be women, living outside urban areas, living with a tobacco user, current and former (vs never) tobacco users, having high internalising mental health symptoms and having a favourite tobacco advertisement. Coupons were received primarily through direct mail (56%), product packs (28%) and online (25%). Never tobacco users at Wave 1 who received coupons were more likely to be ever users at Wave 2 (adjusted OR (aOR)=1.42; 95% CI 1.06 to 1.91). Coupon recipients were more likely to use a new tobacco product between waves (aOR=1.67; 95% CI 1.18 to 2.36) and report past 30-day tobacco use at Wave 2 (aOR=1.81; 95% CI 1.31 to 2.49). Conclusions One in 13 US youth (7.6%) received coupons. Vulnerable youth had the greatest odds of coupon receipt. Coupon recipients had greater odds of tobacco use among never users, trying a new tobacco product and current use. Coupon bans, limits on youth coupon exposure, stronger age verification, pack inserts or restricting coupon redemption may help reduce tobacco use among adolescents, particularly for those at greatest risk.


Although there is debate about whether juvenile incarceration deters future crime, it is a common practice worldwide. We contribute to this debate by using Chilean data to assess the causal impact of different types of juvenile incarceration on recidivism in young adulthood (18-21 years old). To address the endogeneity issues, we use the quasi random assignment of detention judges as instrumental variable to estimate the effect of pretrial detention, and the quasi random assignment of public attorneys to estimate the effect of any type of incarceration. Considering a standard IV linear model, we find that pretrial detention increases the probability of recidivism by 61 percentage points (pp), and when we define the treatment as any type of incarceration, this impact is equal to 65 pp. When we estimate bivariate probit models – using a novel approach for estimating this model in the context of fixed effects – the impact of pretrial detention and incarceration on recidivism are equal to 12 pp and 15 pp, respectively. We also estimate the marginal treatment effect (MTE), finding that the magnitudes of the marginal effects are larger for those individuals with low treatment probabilities. If we use MTE estimates to calculate the average treatment effect (ATE), the impact of pretrial detention on recidivism is equal to 28 pp. If we define the treatment as any type of incarceration, this impact is equal to 36 pp. Finally, we find that an important mechanism behind these impacts is the effect of these different types of incarceration on high school graduation.


Membranes made of composite polymer material are widely employed to separate gas mixtures in industrial processes. These membranes have better performance than membranes consisting of polymer alone. To understand the mechanism and therefore aid membrane design it is essential to explore the penetrant transport in the complex composites from the molecular level, but few researchers have done such research to our knowledge. Herein the penetrant transport in the composite Poly (4-methyl-2-pentyne) (PMP) and silica nanoparticle has been explored with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The structure of the PMP and amorphous silica nanoparticle composite was modeled and subsequently the variation of the cavity size distribution was established in the presence of nanoparticles. The diffusivity of different penetrants, including H2, O2, Ar, CH4 and n-C4H10 was determined through a least squares fit of the displacement at different times in the Fickian diffusive regime. The solubility coefficients and the permeability of different penetrants in PMP and the composite were calculated and the distribution of potential difference due to the penetrant insertion was analyzed in detail to find the reason for the higher solubility in the composite than in pure PMP. Silica has different crystalline forms. In faujasite silica, there are pores that are large enough to allow penetrants to pass through, while in cristobalite silica, the Si and O atoms are densely packed; therefore there are virtually no pores through which penetrants can pass. The transport properties of penetrants in the composite (consisting of PMP and nanoparticles) of the iii two types of silica are therefore different. The molecular dynamics method was employed in the research to explore the transport of different penetrants in the composites of PMP and nanoparticles of two forms of silica, namely the cristobalite form and the faujasite form. The structures of the PMP and cristobalite silica nanoparticle composite (PMPC) on one hand, and the PMP and faujasite silica nanoparticle composite (PMPF) on the other hand were established and relaxed. With the relaxed structure, the cavity size change due to the insertion of both types of nanoparticle was analyzed. The diffusivity of different penetrants was determined through a least square fit of the mean square displacement at different times in the Fickian diffusive regime. The solubility coefficients and the permeability of different penetrants in PMPC and PMPF were calculated and compared. The parameters of 'Ti' in the Lennard-Jones potential equation were estimated; MD simulation of penetrants transport in composite poly (4-methyl-2-pentyne) and TiO2 nanoparticles were done. Finally the simulation results were compared with composite poly (4-methyl-2-pentyne) and silica nanoparticles.


Expecting to become pregnant or to get someone pregnant in the near future separates adolescents in terms of both their current circumstances and future experiences. Drawing on life course, social control, and reasoned action perspectives, this study examined the predictors and outcomes of adolescents' pregnancy expectations in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, emphasizing non-linearity in the meaning and implications of such expectations during a critical period when youths' future plans begin to change from hypothetical ideas to actual realities. The results suggested that the number and type of risky behaviors during adolescence were associated with an increased level of pregnancy expectations that, in turn, predicted later childbearing. Importantly, risky behaviors also moderated the link between pregnancy expectations in adolescence and fertility in young adulthood, with childbearing more likely to follow split expectations when youth also engaged in risky behavior. These patterns did not vary substantially by gender.


Weed communities are most strongly affected by the characteristics and management of the current crop. Crop rotation may thus be used to prevent the repeated selection of particular weed species. While weed communities are frequently compared among annual crops, little is known about the differences between annual and perennial crops that may be included in the rotations. Moreover, nearly all existing studies (17 articles reviewed) are based on local field experiments rather than commercial fields. We compared the weed composition in perennial alfalfas (Medicago sativa) and six annual crops: winter wheat (Triticum aestivum), oilseed rape (Brassica napus), pea (Pisum sativum), sunflower (Helianthus annuus), maize (Zea mays) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) using data from 632 commercial fields in western France. Weed species composition showed the strongest dissimilarities between perennial alfalfas and all annual crops, followed by the well-known differences between autumn- and spring/summer-sown annual crops. Indicator Species Analysis showed that most weed species either preferred perennial alfalfas (including Taraxacum officinale, Veronica persica, Crepis spp., Poa trivialis, Silene latifolia, Capsella bursapastoris and Picris spp.) or annual crops (including Mercurialis annua, Galium aparine, Fallopia convolvulus, Chenopodium album and Cirsium arvense). Perennial alfalfas thus suppressed many weeds that are widespread (and sometimes problematic) in annual crops while favouring other species. Shifted weed composition and reduced frequency of several noxious weeds suggest that perennial alfalfas may be used as a valuable part of integrated weed management, reducing the need for herbicides and sustaining plant and animal diversity in agricultural landscapes.