OBJECTIVE
To assess a systematic intervention in cases of delirium in elderly inpatients.

DESIGN
Randomized, controlled trial.

SETTING
University-affiliated, primary acute care hospital.

PATIENTS
Patients aged 75 years or over admitted to the medical department. They were screened within 24 hours after admission, and 88 patients with delirium (according to the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, third revised edition) were detected and enrolled in the trial. The patients were randomly allocated to the treatment group (42) or the control group (46); all were followed up until the end of the study.

INTERVENTION
Patients were assessed on enrolment and 1, 2, 4 and 8 weeks later. Those in the treatment group received a consultation by a geriatric internist or psychiatrist and follow-up by a liaison nurse. Those in the control group received regular medical care.

OUTCOME MEASURES
Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ), Crichton Geriatric Behavioural Rating Scale (CGBRS), use of restraints, length of hospital stay, discharge to a setting providing more care than was needed before admission and mortality rate.

RESULTS
Two weeks after admission, patients in the treatment group showed an improvement in their mean SPMSQ scores, from 8.2 (standard deviation [SD] 1.9) to 7.9 (SD 2.5), whereas the control group showed a deterioration, from 8.4 (SD 1.7) to 9.1 (SD 1.1); this difference had disappeared by the end of the 8-week period (p < 0.05). Mean CGBRS scores were higher in the treatment group (32.0 [SD 8.6]) than the control group (28.5 [SD 9.4]) on enrolment and had improved more markedly by the end of the 8-week period (to 23.9 [SD 7.8] v. 25.0 [SD 7.0], p = 0.06). There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in use of restraints, length of hospital stay, discharge to a setting providing more care than was needed before admission or mortality rate.

CONCLUSION
The beneficial effects of systematic detection and intervention in cases of delirium in elderly inpatients were small.


High propulsive efficiencies can be realised from oscillating foil propulsors. Information on these propulsors can be obtained by systematically studying the geometry's and motions of manufactured foils and the fins and flukes of cetacean mammals and fast swimming fish, which propel themselves through oscillations of a high aspect ratio lunate fin or fluke. -- The development of a dynamometer for studying the flow patterns and propulsive characteristics of oscillating foil propulsors is described. The dynamometer was designed to measure the effect of variations in foil parameters such as planform, sweep back, foil section, pitching axis location, and foil flexibility for a series of oscillating motions. It was designed primarily for use in a cavitation tunnel, to study the flow over the foils and their cavitational characteristics and, secondarily, for use in a towing/wave tank, to study the propulsion efficiency of the foils. Two foils were mounted in a central mounting pod which in turn was connected to the drive system. Mounting the foils in this manner did not disturb the flow over the tips of the foils which are thought to play a prime role in the propulsive performance of the foils. The drive system consisted of two numerically controlled direct current servo motors connected to a 80286 computer through a Unidex 14 series multi-axis motion controller. The system was programmed to produce a small sine wave oscillating motion and to allow the oscillating motion to be modified easily. -- The dynamometer was capable of producing a series of motions which were obtained by modifying the motion subroutine in the Unidex control program. The first motion programmed for use with the dynamometer was a small pitch angle sine wave motion with a constant phase angle of 90° between pitch and heave. -- This thesis project was the first in a series of thesis projects aimed at developing a fully functional oscillating foil dynamometer to 1) Oscillate test foils with a substantial variety of oscillating motions; 2) Study the development of the flow over the test foils; 3) study the formation of cavitation on the test foils; and 4) To determine the propulsion efficiency of the test foils. The aim of this thesis was 1) design and fabricate the prototype dynamometer, 2) program its control system to produce the initial oscillating motion, 3) conduct a series of tests to determine the systems abilities and limitations, and 4) make recommendations on how to overcome its limitations. The implementation of the recommendations is left as part of the next thesis project in this series. -- The performance and evaluation of the dynamometer in a series of preliminary tests is described. These tests were aimed at evaluating the performance of the dynamometer and its computer control system and not as a complete study of the foils. The foils which were used in the initial tests had a rectangular planform with an aspect ratio of six and a NACA 0019 section (this section is similar to the section through the flukes of a fin whale). -- The initial test consisted of running the dynamometer with a sine wave motion for a series of pitch and heave amplitudes, pitching axis locations, oscillating frequencies, and water flow velocities. These tests demonstrated the operational capabilities of the dynamometer, the accuracy of the obtained motion compared with the requested motion and the quality of the data retrieved from the data acquisition system.


Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) has been successfully applied to identify software dependencies among packages and subsystems. A number of algorithms were proposed to compute the matrix so that it highlights patterns and problematic dependencies between subsystems. However, existing DSM implementations often miss important information to fully support reengineering effort. For example, they do not clearly qualify and quantify problematic relationships, information which is crucial to support remediation tasks.In this paper we present enriched DSM (eDSM) where cells are enriched with contextual information about (i) the type of dependencies (inheritance, class reference...), (ii) the proportion of referencing entities, (iii) the proportion of referenced entities. We distinguish independent cycles and stress potentially simple fixes for cycles using coloring information. This work is language independent and has been implemented on top of the Moose reengineering environment. It has been applied to non-trivial case studies among which ArgoUML, and Morphic the UI framework available in two open-source Smalltalks, Squeak and Pharo. Solution to problems identified by eDSM have been performed and retrofitted in Pharo main distribution.


Methods for measuring homework performance have been limited primarily to parent reports of homework deficits. The Homework Performance Questionnaire (HPQ) was developed to assess the homework functioning of students in Grades 1 to 8 from the perspective of both teachers and parents. The purpose of this study was to examine the factorial validity of teacher and parent versions of this scale, and to evaluate gender and grade-level differences in factor scores. The HPQ was administered in 4 states from varying regions of the United States. The validation sample consisted of students (n = 511) for whom both parent and teacher ratings were obtained (52% female, mean of 9.5 years of age, 79% non-Hispanic, and 78% White). The cross-validation sample included 1,450 parent ratings and 166 teacher ratings with similar demographic characteristics. The results of confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the best-fitting model for teachers was a bifactor solution including a general factor and 2 orthogonal factors, referring to student self-regulation and competence. The best-fitting model for parents was also a bifactor solution, including a general factor and 3 orthogonal factors, referring to student self-regulation, student competence, and teacher support of homework. Gender differences were identified for the general and self-regulation factors of both versions. Overall, the findings provide strong support for the HPQ as a multi-informant, multidimensional measure of homework performance that has utility for the assessment of elementary and middle school students.


(EN) The functional logic that had for so long guided European member states along the path towards 'ever closer union' has been challenged more and more strongly in recent years by a growing voice of popular dissent. Where previously, matters at the European table were kept out of the realms of domestic electoral politics, more recently they have come to the fore, as European integration has become ever more politicised in the light of a wave of radical right wing populist, single issue parties contesting the 'elite consensus' that more Europe is a good thing. This politicisation of Europe has left incumbents in an uncomfortable situation as they are forced to mobilise on an issue that they would rather see left off the agenda. This paper explores the framing strategies that centre-right parties deploy vis-à-vis Europe in domestic electoral campaigns, to decipher whether the heightened politicisation of European integration has provoked a Eurosceptic response among the erstwhile visionaries of the European project. Using an inductive textual analysis of manifesto data from three centre-right parties of the largest European Union (EU) member states, the present study finds that the politicisation of European integration follows party-systemic logics – but that there is nonetheless a remarkable tendency among the centre-right to frame Europe more and more in cultural-identitarian terms than in economic-utilitarian terms. Whether this alone can be equated to a tendency towards Euroscepticism remains an open question.


Frogs such as Rana temporaria and Litoria aurea secrete numerous closely related antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as an effective chemical dermal defence. Despite the high similarity in physical properties and preference for adopting secondary amphipathic, α-helix conformations in membrane mimicking milieu, their spectrum of activity and potency often varies considerably. Damage or penetration of the bacterial plasma membrane is considered essential for AMP activity and hence distinguishing apparently similar AMPs according to their behaviour in, and effects on, model membranes will inform understanding of species specific effective antimicrobial mechanisms. Here we use a combination of molecular dynamics simulations, circular dichroism and patch-clamp to investigate the basis for differing anti-bacterial activities in representative AMPs from each species; temporin L and aurein 2.5. Despite adopting near identical, α-helix conformations in the steady-state in a variety of membrane models, these two AMPs can be distinguished both in vitro and in silico based on their dynamic interactions with model membranes; the greater conformational flexibility and the higher amplitude channel conductance induced offers a rationale for the greater potency and broader spectrum of activity of temporin L over aurein 2.5. Specific contributions from individual residues are identified that define the mechanisms of action of each AMP. Our findings suggest AMPs in frogs are examples of parallel evolution whose utility is based on apparently similar but subtly distinct mechanisms of action.


We perform scanning photocurrent microscopy on WS2 ionic liquid-gated field effect transistors exhibiting high-quality ambipolar transport. By properly biasing the gate electrode, we can invert the sign of the photocurrent showing that the minority photocarriers are either electrons or holes. Both in the electron- and hole-doping regimes the photocurrent decays exponentially as a function of the distance between the illumination spot and the nearest contact, in agreement with a two-terminal Schottky-barrier device model. This allows us to compare the value and the doping dependence of the diffusion length of the minority electrons and holes on a same sample. Interestingly, the diffusion length of the minority carriers is several times larger in the hole accumulation regime than in the electron accumulation regime, pointing out an electron-hole asymmetry in WS2.


The polarity of ionic liquids (ILs), usually denoted as ET(30) by the solvatochromic probe Reichardt's dye, is one of the most fundamental properties that remarkably affect the solvation and chemical reaction in ILs. It was generally accepted that the ET(30) of ILs was dominated by the nature of the cation. However, in this work, it was found that the common ammonium-based ILs showed strongly anion-dependent ET(30). For example, the ET(30) value for [N1124][DCA] and [N1124][NTf2] is 49.0 and 59.0 kcal mol−1, respectively, while the corresponding imidazolium ILs bearing the same anions possess nearly identical ET(30), the ET(30) value for [BMIm][DCA] and [BMIm][NTf2] is 51.4 and 51.6 kcal mol−1, respectively. Moreover, introduction of an ether group was found to increase the ET(30) of imidazolium ILs while having no obvious effect on that of ammonium-based ILs. The Kamlet–Taft parameters and density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicated that the distinct result is related to different stabilization of the ground state of Reichardt's dye 30. In imidazolium ILs, the main interactions between ILs and zwitterionic dye involve both coulombic interaction (between the cation and the phenolate oxygen atom) and H-bonding interaction (between the acidic hydrogen on imidazolium ring and the phenolate oxygen atom). However, with the ammonium ILs lack of active hydrogen, the dye is only stabilized by the coulombic interaction between the cation and the phenolate oxygen atom. Interestingly, in both imidazolium and ammonium-based ILs, the spiropyran–merocyanine equilibrium exhibit obvious anion-dependent photochromism, solvatochromism, and thermal relaxation.


This contribution presents findings from a qualitative and qualitative user survey carried out in residential and office buildings in 2012 and early 2013. Focus is on user behaviour and consumer aspects in highly energy efficient buildings taking into account societal, social, ethnical, and especially gender-related aspects, and analysing the building design concept in comparison with the actual energy consumption during building operation. The survey tackles the day-to-day life of occupants living or working in highly energy efficient buildings. It reveals the attitude of building users concerning energy efficiency standards and innovative HVAC systems, and serves to analyse the impact of occupants' behaviour on building operation and energy consumption. The development towards plus-energy-buildings (buildings which produce more energy than what occupants consume) causes a change in the role of consumers: consumers turn to active stakeholders, because their way of using the building will be decisive whether the building actually achieves plus-energy status, or not. Therefore there is the need to fully understand the motivations and options for actions of building users, in order to make the new concepts work, such as the concept of plus-energy-building and the concept of smart city as a whole. The user survey is part of the research project 'GINGER – gender aspects in using building, energy and resources' funded by FFG. The study started in July 2012 and will be completed in June 2014. It is based on the deep analysis of new and existing buildings which comply with ambitious energy-related criteria and belong to a broad range of building typologies (multi-unit residential buildings, office buildings, schools and kindergartens, educational campus). The results of the extensive user survey will contribute to improving communication measures, design process and product development in order to meet users needs in a better way. As a consequence, this will improve the energy performance of buildings during operation.


Objective: Ang (1-7) recognised as a biologically active component of renin angiotensin system (RAS). It has been documented that peripheral activity of Ang (1-7) gets reduced during diabetic nephropathy (DN) which is one of the most common cause of end stage renal disease. Peripheral activity of RAS is regulated by brain RAS. The purpose of present study is to investigate the role of brain angiotensin (1-7) in chronic hyperglycemia induced nephropathy in wistar rats. Material and methods: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is induced by single dose of alloxan (120 mg/kg: i.p.). The biochemical parameters related to DN was estimated using commercially available kits. Results: Diabetic rat, after 8 weeks of alloxan administration shows elevated serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, protein in urine, kidney weight/body weight and deceased level of serum nitrite. However, intracerebroventricular treatment with Ang (1-7) (4.8 μg/day) and valsartan (100 nmol/ day) (which do not cross blood brain barrier) alone and combination of Ang (1-7) and valsartan for 2 weeks markedly attenuated these changes and increased serum nitrite in DN induced rats. Conclusion: The finding of this study suggests that brain Ang (1-7) play a vital role in controlling the peripheral activity of RAS in diabetic nephropathy which may be due to the decreased central sympathetic outflow and peripheral activity of Ang II.


This work addresses the unsupervised adaptation of an existing object detector to a new target domain. We assume that a large number of unlabeled videos from this domain are readily available. We automatically obtain labels on the target data by using high-confidence detections from the existing detector, augmented with hard (misclassified) examples acquired by exploiting temporal cues using a tracker. These automatically-obtained labels are then used for re-training the original model. A modified knowledge distillation loss is proposed, and we investigate several ways of assigning soft-labels to the training examples from the target domain. Our approach is empirically evaluated on challenging face and pedestrian detection tasks: a face detector trained on WIDER-Face, which consists of high-quality images crawled from the web, is adapted to a large-scale surveillance data set; a pedestrian detector trained on clear, daytime images from the BDD-100K driving data set is adapted to all other scenarios such as rainy, foggy, night-time. Our results demonstrate the usefulness of incorporating hard examples obtained from tracking, the advantage of using soft-labels via distillation loss versus hard-labels, and show promising performance as a simple method for unsupervised domain adaptation of object detectors, with minimal dependence on hyper-parameters.


In the sixteenth century, the kings of Europe were like gods to their subjects. Within 150 years, however, this view of monarchs had altered dramatically: a king was the human, visible sign of the rational state. How did such a momentous shift in political understanding come about? This sweeping book explores the changing cultural significance of the power of European kings from the assassination of France's Henry III to the death of Louis XIV. Paul Kleber Monod draws on political history, political philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and literature to understand the relationship between kings and their political subjects and the interplay between monarchy and religion. He also makes use of 35 paintings and statues to illuminate the changing public images of kings. Discussing monarchies throughout Europe, from Britain to Russia, Monod tells how sixteenth-century kings and queens were thought to heal the sick with a touch, were mediators between divine authority and the Christian self in quasi-religious ceremonies, and were seen as ideal mirrors of human identity. By 1715, the sacred authority of the monarchy had been supplanted by an ideology fusing internal moral responsibility with external obedience to an abstract political authority. Subjects were expected to identify not with a sacred king but with the natural person of the ruler. No longer divine, the kings and queens of the Enlightenment took up a new, more human place in the hearts and minds of their subjects.


The direct initiative process, often referred to as a gun behind the door, provides an incentive for legislators to pass legislation more in line with voters' wishes. Concomitantly, legislative procedures such as the filibuster and executive veto often impede the ability of the legislature to pass policies. We explore the tension between these two forces by incorporating legislative procedures and initiative proposal into a spatial model of the policymaking process. We find that the ability to propose initiatives sometimes breaks legislative gridlock, but that other times pivotal players may prefer the initiative outcome and therefore prevent the legislature from preempting a ballot measure. In particular, we show that initiative use increases with the distance between pivotal actors and the median voter. An empirical analysis of initiative use in the American states provides support for this prediction.


THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM expressed by many writers on the history of restorative justice traces its contemporary origins to victim-offender meetings held in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in 1974. For just a few examples of the numerous authors repeating this idea, see Coates (1990); Immarigeon (1996); Zehr (2002); Peachey (2003); Umbreit and Armour (2010); and Beck, Kropf, and Leonard (2011). In contrast, this article presents evidence for a very different view of the contemporary origins of restorative justice programming, one that traces its roots back to 1972 and the Minnesota Restitution Center (MRC). 1


The possible distinct crystallographic configurations of small vacancy clusters and vacancy-solute clusters in body centred cubic structures have been enumerated and classified. Clusters with up to four point defects have been considered, with the condition that each vacancy or solute has at least one point defect as a first- or second-nearest neighbour. A large number of clusters is possible and each type has a group of crystallographically equivalent variants. Computer simulation techniques have been used to determine the binding energies of these clusters. In this work the well established potentials for alpha-iron due to Johnson and for molybdenum due to Miller have been employed. A modified form of the alpha-iron potential has been used when dealing with host-solute interactions. The possible collapsed structures have also been investigated. The calculations were carried out on an IBM 360/195 computer, using a model containing up to 105 atoms. The migration energies of clusters have also been determined using computer experiments. In particular first-, second-, third- and fourth-neighbour divacancies have been considered in both alpha-iron and molybdenum. Selected clusters of three and four point defects have also been examined in details. The growth and contraction of clusters have been investigated using computer simulation. For selected cases all possible ways in which a vacancy can be attached to or detached from a cluster have been studied. It is found that the growth and contraction mechanisms are very anisotropic. In addition to clusters of up to four point defects a few of the most compact clusters of five and six point defects were also examined. Computer experiments have been performed to investigate some of their relevant properties such as stability, migration, growth and contraction. Time-independent and time-dependent Markov chain analyses relating to the migration of these clusters have been carried out. This allowed the equilibrium distribution of clusters to be determined. The model has been extended to incorporate the different migration energies that have been computed for the vacancy jumps. Equilibrium distributions have been calculated. As these calculations are based on migration mechanisms and the corresponding migration energies, rather than binding energies, the results obtained are different from those deduced using conventional methods of statistical physics.


Background Because of the development of resistance in trypanosomes to trypanocidal drugs, the livelihood of millions of livestock keepers in sub-Saharan Africa is threatened now more than ever. The existing compounds have become virtually useless and pharmaceutical companies are not keen on investing in the development of new trypanocides. We may have found a breakthrough in the treatment of resistant trypanosomal infections, through the combination of the trypanocide isometamidium chloride (ISM) with two affordable veterinary antibiotics. Methodology/Principal Findings In a first experiment, groups of mice were inoculated with Trypanosoma congolense strains resistant to ISM and either left untreated or treated with (i) tetracycline, (ii) ISM or (iii) the combination of the antibiotic and the trypanocide. Survival analysis showed that there was a significant effect of treatment and resistance to treatment on the survival time. The groups treated with ISM (with or without antibiotic) survived significantly longer than the groups that were not treated with ISM (P<0.01). The group treated with the combination trypanocide/antibiotic survived significantly longer than the group treated with ISM (P<0.01). In a second experiment, groups of cattle were inoculated with the same resistant trypanosome strain and treated with (i) ISM, (ii) ISM associated with oxytetracycline or (iii) ISM associated with enrofloxacine. All animals treated with ISM became parasitaemic. In the groups treated with ISM-oxytetracycline and ISM-enrofloxacine, 50% of the animals were cured. Animals from the groups treated with a combination trypanocide/antibiotic presented a significantly longer prepatent period than animals treated with ISM (p<0.001). The impact of the disease on the haematocrit was low in all ISM treated groups. Yet, it was lower in the groups treated with the combination trypanocide/antibiotic (p<0.01). Conclusions/Significance After optimization of the administration protocol, this new therapeutic combination could constitute a promising treatment for livestock infected with drug resistant T. congolense.


In August 2008, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses' (AACN's) Evidence-Based Practice Resource Work Group met to review current AACN Practice Alerts and to identify new Practice Alerts to be created. The work group was also tasked with reassessment of the grading system used by AACN that evaluates evidence associated with the Practice Alerts and other AACN resources. This article details the effort of this national volunteer work group, specifically highlighting the development of the new AACN evidence-leveling hierarchy system.


Modern technological advancements in our lifestyle have caused a significant increase in the consumption of energy. With this growing demand, people are more concerned about the rational use of existing limited energy and searching for alternative forms of environmentally friendly energy sources to reduce polluting emissions. Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell has shown and demonstrated that potential to be a suitable alternative power source because of its simplicity of design, load following capabilities, efficiency, feasibility and quick start-up. Although having these splendid advantages, cost and durability of PEM fuel cells are one of the major challenges that needed to be overcome. Three-dimensional single-phase and multi-phase isothermal PEM fuel cell models have been developed to investigate the transport limitations of fresh reactants and its effect on cell performance. The governing equations (continuity, momentum and species transport) with appropriate source terms were solved using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. A user defined function (UDF) code was developed considering source terms for porous zones, effective diffusivity models for species transport inside cells and electrochemical reactions at catalyst layers to predict cell voltage at an average current density. The average current density and net water transfer coefficient, used to calculate the source terms, were calculated using auxiliary equations and linked to the solver through UDFs. Parametric studies were performed to determine the optimal operating conditions and geometrical design of PEM fuel cell. The simulation results show that gas diffusion layer permeability has no effect on cell performance for a value lower than 10-11 m2. GDL porosity is one of the major design parameters which have significant influence on limiting current density, hence on cell performance. Land area width of PEM fuel cell shows influence on cell performance. Low membrane thickness provides higher cell performance and approximately 50% reduction in membrane thickness results approximately 100% improvement in cell performance at high current density of 1.0 Acm-2. Bruggeman correlation was used in most of previous modelling work for explaining the diffusion of species though porous GDL and CL, but this thesis considered other types of effective diffusion models and investigated the effect of diffusion models on cell performance at high current densities. Tomadakis and Sotirchos (1993) anisotropic model produces cell voltage much closer to the experimental values. Therefore, anisotropic diffusion model should be utilized in PEM fuel cell modelling to minimize modelling uncertainties. A two-phase flow, steady-state, three-dimensional PEM fuel cell model considering the phase change effect of water has been developed in the final phase of the thesis. Flooding inside the cell was captured at high current density using the model for a condensation value of 10.0 s-1. Finally, parametric studies were performed based on isotropic and anisotropic GDL permeability cases. Modelling results suggest that isotropic permeability cases have strong influence on cell performance compared to anisotropic cases at high current density.


The Internet is essential for education, employment, information, and cultural and democratic participation. For tens of millions of people with disabilities in the United States, barriers to accessing the Internet, including the visual presentation of information to people who are blind or visually impaired, the aural presentation of information to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and the persistence of Internet technology, interfaces, and content without regard to prohibitive cognitive load for people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities collectively pose one of the most significant civil rights issues of the information age. Yet disability law lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach for fully facilitating Internet accessibility. The prevailing doctrinal approach to Internet accessibility seeks to treat websites as metaphorical "places" subject to Title III of the ADA, which requires places of public accommodations to be accessible to people with disabilities. While this place-centric approach to Title III has succeeded to a significant degree in making websites accessible over the last two decades, large swaths of the Internet — more broadly construed to include Internet technologies beyond websites — remain inaccessible to millions of people with a variety of disabilities.

As limitations of a place-based approach to Title III become clearer, a new framework for disability law is needed in an increasingly intermediated Internet. Leveraging the Internet law literature on perspectives, this article recognizes the place-centric approach to Title III as normatively and doctrinally "internal," in the terminology of internet law scholars It offers a framework for supplementing this internal approach with an external approach that contemplates the layered architecture of the Internet, including its constituent content, Web and non-Web applications, access networks operated by Internet service providers, and devices and the role of disability and other bodies of law, particularly including telecommunications law and attendant policy issues, such as net neutrality, in making them accessible.


Human trafficking is a high-profile issue in the United States (US). The country is regarded as a leader in combating trafficking in persons and its efforts are viewed as revolutionary. The crime of trafficking is tackled on a federal as well as state level in a multi-disciplinary manner and with a coordinated, integrated and sustained approach. Legislation such as the Victims of Trafficking, and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) and its reauthorisations has contributed tremendously to fight sex- and labour trafficking. South Africa (SA) has enacted the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act 7 of 2013 (TIP Act) on 29 July 2013. However, the legislation is as yet not fully implemented. Because of its slow response to introduce legislation to criminalise the conduct, South Africa has had the unique opportunity to learn from the errors of other countries that may have responded too hastily to the United Nations' Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol). Although the Act draws from international-best practices and is also modelled on the TVPA, it is still lacking in certain aspects when compared to the US's efforts in abolishing human trafficking. This article will elucidate the anti-trafficking legal framework of the US as exemplar for the newly-enacted SA TIP Act. In a brief comparison, the merits as well as the shortcomings in the TIP Act will also be highlighted.


Identification of non-linear FIR-models is studied. In particular the selection of model structure, i.e., to find the contributing input time lags, has been examined. A common method, exhaustive search among models with all possible combinations of the input time lags, has some undesired drawbacks, as a tendency that the minimization algorithm gets stuck in local minima and heavy computations. To avoid these drawbacks we need to know the model structure prior to identifying a model. In this report we show that a statistical method, the multivariate analysis of variance, is a good alternative to exhaustive search in the identification of the structure of non-linear FIR-models. We can reduce the risks of getting an erroneous model structure due to the non-convexity of the minimization problems, reduce the computation time needed and also get a good estimate of how far we can enhance the fit of the desired model.


Purpose: To generate a transgenic mouse that when crossed with spontaneous mouse models of lymphoma will allow for quantitative in vivo measurement of tumor burden over the entire spectrum of the disease and or response to therapy in a "disease" or lymphoma subtype-specific manner. Experimental Design: We developed a novel genetically engineered transgenic mouse using a CherryLuciferase fusion gene targeted to the CD19 locus to achieve B-cell–restricted fluorescent bioluminescent emission in transgenic mouse models of living mice. The use of a dual function protein enables one to link the in vivo analysis via bioluminescence imaging to cell discriminating ex vivo analyses via fluorescence emission. Results: The spatiotemporal tracking of B-cell lymphoma growth and the response of an established B-cell lymphoma to a drug known to induce remission was evaluated in a double transgenic animal obtained by crossing the CD19CherryLuciferase transgenic mouse to a mouse model of an aggressive B-cell lymphoma. The observations validated the use of the CD19CherryLuciferase transgenic mouse in the assessment of an active drug routinely used in the treatment of lymphoproliferative malignancies. Conclusions: The transgenic mouse described here is the first of its kind, intended to be used to hasten translational studies of novel agents in lymphoma, with the intent that understanding the relevant pharmacology before clinical study will accelerate successful development in clinical studies. Clin Cancer Res; 18(14); 3803–11. ©2012 AACR.


We introduce BEHAVIOR, a benchmark for embodied AI with 100 activities in simulation, spanning a range of everyday household chores such as cleaning, maintenance, and food preparation. These activities are designed to be realistic, diverse, and complex, aiming to reproduce the challenges that agents must face in the real world. Building such a benchmark poses three fundamental difficulties for each activity: definition (it can differ by time, place, or person), instantiation in a simulator, and evaluation. BEHAVIOR addresses these with three innovations. First, we propose an object-centric, predicate logic-based description language for expressing an activity's initial and goal conditions, enabling generation of diverse instances for any activity. Second, we identify the simulator-agnostic features required by an underlying environment to support BEHAVIOR, and demonstrate its realization in one such simulator. Third, we introduce a set of metrics to measure task progress and efficiency, absolute and relative to human demonstrators. We include 500 human demonstrations in virtual reality (VR) to serve as the human ground truth. Our experiments demonstrate that even state of the art embodied AI solutions struggle with the level of realism, diversity, and complexity imposed by the activities in our benchmark. We make BEHAVIOR publicly available at behavior.stanford.edu to facilitate and calibrate the development of new embodied AI solutions.


Students of American history know of the law's critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere. Ranging across such topics as slavery, emancipation, scientific racism, immigration policies, racial classifications, and legal processes, Cottrol unravels a complex odyssey. By the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. slave system was rooted in a legal and cultural foundation of racial exclusion unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. That system's legacy was later echoed in Jim Crow, the practice of legally mandated segregation. Jim Crow in turn caused leading Latin Americans to regard their nations as models of racial equality because their laws did not mandate racial discrimination-- a belief that masked very real patterns of racism throughout the Americas. And yet, Cottrol says, if the United States has had a history of more-rigid racial exclusion, since the Second World War it has also had a more thorough civil rights revolution, with significant legal victories over racial discrimination. Cottrol explores this remarkable transformation and shows how it is now inspiring civil rights activists throughout the Americas.


The abrasion mechanism in solid-solid contact mode of the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process is investigated in detail. Based on assumptions of plastic contact over wafer-abrasive and pad-abrasive interfaces, the normal distribution of abrasive size and an assumed periodic roughness of pad surface, a novel model is developed for material removal in CMP. The basic model is MRR=/spl rho//sub w/NVol/sub removed/, where /spl rho//sub w/ is the density of wafer N the number of active abrasives, and Vol/sub removed/ the volume of material removed by a single abrasive. The model proposed integrates process parameters including pressure and velocity and other important input parameters including the wafer hardness, pad hardness, pad roughness, abrasive size, and abrasive geometry into the same formulation to predict the material removal rate (MRR). An interface between the chemical effect and mechanical effect has been constructed through a fitting parameter H/sub w/ a "dynamical" hardness value of the wafer surface, in the model. It reflects the influences of chemicals on the mechanical material removal. The fluid effect in the current model is attributed to the number of active abrasives. It is found that the nonlinear down pressure dependence of material removal rate is related to a probability density function of the abrasive size and the elastic deformation of the pad. Compared with experimental results, the model accurately predicts MRR. With further verification of the model, a better understanding of the fundamental mechanism involved in material removal in the CMP process, particularly different roles played by the consumables and their interactions, can be obtained.


Bangkok Metropolitan is a rapidly growing city with both industrial and urban area expansion resulting in the generation of a significant air pollutant; Nitrogen Oxide (NOx = NO + NO2). This research studied the variation of Nitrogen Oxide concentration in an urban area at 30 m and 110 m above ground by applying the HYSPLIT model to simulate the backward trajectories movement of air mass using the past 3 days of data from an air quality and microclimate monitoring station at Kasetsart University, Bangkok from January 2016 to February 2017. The results showed that the concentration of Nitrogen Oxide at 30 m above ground is higher than the concentration at 110 m above ground. The concentration trended to increase in winter (October 2016 to February 2017). According to the backward trajectories modeling, the major direction of air mass movement at 30 m above ground, category 1 (N-NE) and category 2 (NE-E), occupying 86% of total movement direction (concentration of NOx ranged from 4.02 to 96.35 ppb) meanwhile the major direction of air mass movement at 110 m above ground, category 1 (N-NE) and category 2 (NE-E), occupying 79% of total movement direction (concentration of NOx ranged from 3.93 to 51.50 ppb). The air mass moved through the different land use types, human activities and industrial areas. This study can be applied as a guideline for microclimate surveillance and monitoring of NOx concentration influenced by air mass movement.


More than 300 active gravity-driven faults intersect the Earth's surface in the Houston metropolitan area on the northern edge of the Gulf of Mexico Basin. These surface faults have caused damage to roads, pipelines, and buildings. Lidar has proved an effective tool for mapping fault scarps and topographic changes related to potential faults. Near-surface techniques such as seismic and GPR have proven effective in determining whether topographic features that resemble scarps are faults or related to some other natural or anthropogenic surface features.


A modified lifting line theory is developed which supports the form of skeg-rudder experimental free-stream data obtained previously, and forming the subject of separate reports. It is demonstrated that satisfactory predictions of the form of the spanwise loadings for different skeg and rudder angles can be made using lifting line theory with the effect of the skeg being incorporated as local incidence reduction and the effects of the mid-span and tip trailing vortices being incorporated as twist corrections to the local incidence. The correct magnitude of the distributions is obtained by applying suitable empirical corrections. Chordwise centre of pressure is derived empirically. It is concluded that whilst the theoretical approach is relatively simple and requires empirical correction, it gives very realistic predictions of skeg-rudder performance characteristics. The theory is used to provide a limited extension to the experimental data. Predictions using the modified theory show that, for fixed aspect ratio and taper ratio, changes in the skeg depth have the largest influence on the production of lift whereas changes in the skeg chord and sweep mainly affect the stock position and the required balance area.


The RV Sonne cruise SO-169 of project CAMP took place from 17 Jan. to 24 Feb. 2003 with a geophysical-geological survey and sampling program of the Campbell Plateau and Bounty Trough of the Southern Pacific, southeast of New Zealand. The Campbell Plateau off New Zealand, as part of the greater New Zealand continent called Zealandia, is one of the world's largest submarine plateaus. The relation between magmatic events and tectonic and structural evolution of the Campbell Plateau is one of the significant remaining questions in the framework of reconstructing the evolution of Zealandia and the southwest Pacific region.The leg consisted of the following main work programs:(1) Analysis of the tectonic structure and geodynamic evolution of the Campbell Plateau by means of a deep seismic traverse from the South Island to the centre of the plateau. In addition to acquiring seismic reflection multi-channel data, ocean-bottom seismographs (OBS) were deployed and provided detailed wavefield information about the seismic velocity distribution and physical properties of the crust and upper mantle. By integrating the seismic data with simultaneously recorded gravity and magnetic records and with petrological information from basaltic dredge samples, a structural-dynamic model of the plateaus evolution will be developed.(2) Understanding the break-up process of Campbell Plateau from Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica: A seismic refraction OBS profile and reflection profiling across two segments of the Bounty Trough provide evidence for the structural characteristics of the trough and the influence of magmatic phases on the extensional and break-up processes along the plateau margin. A first analysis of the data indicates that initial rifting between New Zealand and Antarctica occurred along the Bounty Trough.(3) Volcanological, geochemical and geochronological studies of magmatic rocks dredged from the Campbell Plateau will contribute to an improved understanding of the geodynamic processes during the break-up of the continents. The sample analyses will contribute to the question whether the Cenozoic volcanism of the plateau results from an asthenospheric upwelling or a swarm of episodic plumes. They also might reveal the existence of a fossil plume head underneath the New Zealand micro-continent.In total, 1284 km of seismic reflection data, 818 km of seismic refraction data (with 45 OBS and 7 land stations), and about 10,000 km of gravity, magnetic, swath-bathymetric and sub-bottom profiler data were collected during this leg. In addition, 16 successful petrological dredge operations were undertaken.


Background/context Over the past 40 years, the composition of the professoriate has changed substantially across all institutional types. Once predominantly tenure track, now nontenure-track faculty (NTTF) constitute more than 70% of the faculty. While these major changes have occurred, we know little about key stakeholders' views (accreditors, policy makers, presidents) of these changes. Purpose In this article, we explore the following research question: What are the belief systems (logics) related to the changing professoriate of the key entities within the higher education organizational field? Population/description of participants Thirty-five individuals from key stakeholder groups were included: accreditation agencies; disciplinary societies; faculty stakeholder groups such as New Faculty Majority; unions; state or system leadership and state compacts such as National Association of System Heads; voluntary regional consortia such as those representing deans; governing boards; and individual and institutional membership associations, including the American Council on Education and American Association of Community Colleges. Research design In order to better understand the perspectives of key stakeholders in higher education's organizational field related to the nature of the professoriate, we conducted a modified Policy Delphi study. Findings The findings indicate one of the major reasons that the organizational field did not provide a shield to the decline of tenure or mobilize to combat the deteriorating conditions of nontenure-track faculty is because no new decided upon logic has been created as it relates to the professoriate. Great disagreement exists about what the future professoriate should look like and the four distinctive views are presented. Conclusions There is some opportunity for consensus and mobilization around two key points: (a) All groups believe the current three-tiered model (shrinking tenure track, large part time, and full-time nontenure track) is not working; and (b) there is broad consensus about a few principles for a new model such as greater job security, shared governance, greater academic freedom than most faculty currently have, and more focus on the educational function of faculty.


This paper explores the concept of instructional leadership and principals' perceptions of the practices of instructional leadership. Despite the emphasis on the effects of school leadership regarding teaching practices and learning outcomes, research on direct instructional leadership is scarce. It is focused either on identifying overall leadership practices or on measuring the effect of various intangible school level variables, such as school climate, on student learning. The concepts related to instructional leadership are ambiguous and vague, and challenged by contemporary understandings of school leadership (transformative and distributed leadership). The data consists of narratives written by principals from Norway, Sweden and Finland on successful and unsuccessful efforts of guiding teachers' work in the classroom. These narratives are used for enabling principals to communicate their experiences of the complexity of interacting with teachers in instructional matters. A theoretical framework of practice architectures is used to elucidate the material, discursive and relational aspects of instructional leadership. A three-step analysis of the data suggests that successful instructional leadership is characterized by solidity, co-production and direction. Interestingly, principals' narratives on instructional leadership lack an explicit vocabulary of didactics, examples of face-to-face guidance of teaching as well as direct professional relationships for strengthening teaching practices.


During the Presidential administrations of William J. Clinton and George W. Bush changes in the political climate made politics increasingly visible in judicial appointments. This trend has continued into the first two years of President Barack Obama's administration and his judicial appointments. Most of the public attention with regard to judicial appointments is focused on nominees to serve as judges on the Article III courts: the United States District Courts, United States Courts of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. However, other courts are affected by this trend, specifically, the courts created by legislative enactment pursuant to Article I of the Constitution, including the United States Tax Court. As an Article I court, the Tax Court has a number of differences from Article III courts. The most important of which is likely the lack of life tenure afforded to the judges appointed to the Tax Court bench, Tax Court judges are appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate to serve 15 year terms, and judges may be reappointed. As the only prepayment forum for tax controversies, the majority of all civil tax litigation goes through the Tax Court. As a result, the Tax Court's decisions play an important role in the economic life and health of all taxpayers. As a consequence, the effectiveness of the mechanism by which quality appointments and reappointments to the Tax Court are made should be of great concern to all. This Article explores the appointment of Tax Court judges and the reappointment of Tax Court judges. In exploring these issues, this Article focuses on the processes historically used to appoint and reappoint Tax Court judges. This Article also considers the impact that recent changes in the appointment and reappointment process have had on both the quality of judges and the court itself. As this Article demonstrates, delays in the reappointment process have had a significant effect on the efficient and effective disposition of justice to taxpayers. This negative effect has been noted by many who are close the tax administration system, including the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, and the American Bar Association Committee, Taxation Section. This Article concludes that politicizing the selection of Tax Court judges, or the conditions under which a Tax Court judge is reappointed, would weaken the legitimacy of the Tax Court. However, under recent circumstances, such politics have been only a symptom of underlying problems. In practice, appointments have worked well, but reappointments have proven problematic. Recent experiences demonstrate that the appointment process works well to ensure that Tax Court judges are well qualified, as demonstrated by the withdrawal of unqualified candidates during the Bush Administration. However, changes are needed to the reappointment process, as the political use of that process has weakened the Tax Court by reducing the availability of experienced, established, well qualified presidentially appointed Tax Court judges. This Article explores options to prevent this weakening of the Tax Court. Short of permitting life tenure, which seems unlikely given the historic resistance to turning the Tax Court into an Article III court, the Tax Court's statutes should be amended to allow judge's who are serving as senior judges on recall because of the expiration of their first term to continue to exercise the power's of a judge, including participation in court review of a case. This power should continue when a judge is qualified for and interested in reappointment. The power to act in this manner would be withdrawn in the event that the president indicated that he or she did not intend to fill the vacancy or intended to nominate another person to the position.


Abstract In the wake of Italy's surrender to the Allies on 8 September 1943, the Italian high command made efforts to reorganize the Italian armed forces located in the regions not yet occupied by the Germans and their Italian Fascist allies. But the state of co-belligerence declared lulled the king, the government and generals into a false sense of security that led them to assume that they would now be free to re-deploy their units on the battlefield alongside the Allies. In reality, the authorities of the Kingdom of the South found themselves caught between the contending pressures exerted by the Allies, who were deeply hostile to all Italians, whom they treated as a defeated nation, by the local population suffering from famine and mistrustful of all public institutions, and by the tens of thousands of disbanded soldiers who showed very little desire to fight again. The difficulties facing the First Motorized Unit (1° Raggruppamento Motorizzato) were emblematic; the calls on the first co-belligerent Italian unit to fight against the Germans and make further sacrifices on the battlefield were complicated by the social and political situation of liberated Italy.


Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline compounds consisting of rigid organic molecules held together and organized by metal ions or clusters. Special interests in these materials arise from the fact that many are highly porous and can be used for storage of small molecules, for example H2 or CO2. Consequently, the materials are ideal candidates for a wide range of applications including gas storage, separation technologies and catalysis. Potential applications include the storage of hydrogen for fuel-cell cars, and the removal and storage of carbon dioxide in sustainable technical processes. MOFs offer the inorganic chemist and materials scientist a wide range of new synthetic possibilities and open the doors to new and exciting basic research. Metal-Organic Frameworks Materials provides a solid basis for the understanding of MOFs and insights into new inorganic materials structures and properties. The volume also reflects progress that has been made in recent years, presenting a wide range of new applications including state-of-the art developments in the promising technology for alternative fuels. The comprehensive volume investigates structures, symmetry, supramolecular chemistry, surface engineering, recognition, properties, and reactions. The content from this book will be added online to the Encyclopedia of Inorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry: http://www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/ref/eibc


Urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon has become a common problem in many major cities worldwide including Singapore. As a small island state, it is very important for Singapore to carefully plan its urban development. However, urban planners have no assessment tool to evaluate their planning impacts on the environment, especially the impact on air temperature due to the change of land use. This paper discusses the development of an empirical model for air temperature prediction to evaluate the impact of estate development by means of Geographical Information System (GIS). Empirical models of minimum (Tmin), average (Tavg) and maximum (Tmax) air temperature for Singapore estate have been developed and validated, based on the long-term field measurement between the period of September 2005 and March 2008. The independent variables that were used in the models are daily minimum (Ref Tmin), average (Ref Tavg) and maximum (Ref Tmax) temperature at reference point, average of daily solar radiation (SOLAR), percentage of pavement area over R 50m surface area (PAVE), average height to building area ratio (HBDG), total wall surface area (WALL), Green Plot Ratio (GnPR), sky view factor (SVF) and average surface albedo (ALB). Sensitivity analyses were carried out to observe the dependence of the air temperature due to the variations of each variable. An ideal type of urban canyon was used to simplify the variation of building, pavement and greenery distributions. The sensitivity analyses were carried out by varying some of the following important parameters: the greenery density (GnPR), which may affect the SVF; the building height, which affects the SVF, WALL and HBDG values; and canyon width, which affects the SVF, PAVE AND HBDG values. The Screening Tool for Estate Environment Evaluation (STEVE) was developed with the motivation to bridge between research findings, especially the air temperature prediction models and the urban planners.


The story extracts presented here reflect the experiences of five teacher candidates from Japan on a short-term study abroad program focusing on developing English-language skills while exploring Canadian culture and English-language teaching methods. Narrative inquiry techniques were employed to gather data related to the participants' program experiences. These data were crafted into stories with participant input and review. The story extracts relate to intercultural interactions, First Nations culture, teaching methods, meals, and extracurricular activities. On reflection, the narrative inquiry process employed in this study worked as both a research and pedagogical tool to uncover meaningful program experiences.


ABSTRACT According to modernization theory, enforcement schemes that rely on end-of-the-pipe regulation are not as effective at achieving improved environmental performance as market-based approaches that encourage pollution prevention. Consistent with that observation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency transitioned to the use of self-policing to encourage pollution prevention. Other studies note that environmental compliance is significantly affected by traditional "command-and-control" strategies. Using Prais Winston regression we examine these contrasting views by estimating the relationship between toxic releases, self-policing, and criminal prosecutions from 1988 through 2014. Initial correlations suggest that (1) self-policing is not associated with toxic releases but that (2) criminal prosecutions may reduce toxic releases through general deterrence signals. Subsequent analyses controlling for gross domestic product revealed that neither self-policing nor criminal enforcement correlate with toxic releases but that gross domestic product was the strongest predictor of emissions. The implications of these findings for the control of toxic emissions are discussed.


Introduction: This study was conducted with aim of investigating the relationship between religious orientation and self-esteem of students. Methods: The present research was of a correlational study. The research population consisted of all students (boys and girls) studying at Islamic Azad University, Payam Noor and Applied Science universities in Darehshahr city in the academic year of 2013-2014. 200 students were randomly selected as samples. The research tools included Allport Religious Orientation Scale, and Coppersmith Self-Esteem Scale. In order to analyze the data, the statistical tests of Pearson correlation coefficient and Spearman correlation coefficient were used. Results: The results showed a positive relationship between extrinsic religious orientation and self-esteem and also a negative relationship between intrinsic religious orientation and self-esteem. Conclusion: All in all, it can be concluded that internal religious orientation is associated with high self-esteem. These results pave the way for future research in a direction to determine whether the individual societies that ascribe higher respect to their religion possess higher self-esteem or not. It is clear, of course, that achieving such findings requires extensive studies. Keywords: religious orientation, self-esteem, students.


"The article reconstructs the genesis of Casa Balmelli, designed and built in Rovio
(Canton Ticino) in 1956-1957 by Tita Carloni and Luigi Camenisch. Among Carloni's
first works in Ticino after the completion of his studies at the ETH Zurich, Casa
Balmelli has often been presented as an example of the current of Organic Architecture
that developed in Ticino in the 1950s and saw a particularly flourishing phase
in the following decade. However, while the house certainly embodies organic features
by aiming at a perfect integration with its surroundings through the use of natural
materials and the geometric reinterpretation of the landforms of its setting, its
internal spatial qualities have little to do, for instance, with Wrightian models. Rather,
the ordering function attributed to geometry is its most notable quality and is a
common denominator of the research conducted in Ticino on the organic architecture front: a geometry that relates to the characteristics of the site and seeks a certain degree of formal abstraction."


Human language learners are exposed to a trickle of informative, context-sensitive language, but a flood of raw sensory data. Through both social language use and internal processes of rehearsal and practice, language learners are able to build high-level, semantic representations that explain their perceptions. Here, we take inspiration from such processes of"inner speech"in humans (Vygotsky, 1934) to better understand the role of intra-agent speech in embodied behavior. First, we formally pose intra-agent speech as a semi-supervised problem and develop two algorithms that enable visually grounded captioning with little labeled language data. We then experimentally compute scaling curves over different amounts of labeled data and compare the data efficiency against a supervised learning baseline. Finally, we incorporate intra-agent speech into an embodied, mobile manipulator agent operating in a 3D virtual world, and show that with as few as 150 additional image captions, intra-agent speech endows the agent with the ability to manipulate and answer questions about a new object without any related task-directed experience (zero-shot). Taken together, our experiments suggest that modelling intra-agent speech is effective in enabling embodied agents to learn new tasks efficiently and without direct interaction experience.


As higher performance is demanded in 5G networks, energy consumption in wireless networks increases along with the advances of various technologies, so enhancing energy efficiency also becomes an important goal to implement 5G wireless networks. In this paper, we study the energy efficiency maximization problem focused on finding a suitable set of turned-on small cell access points (APs). Finding the suitable on/off states of APs is challenging since the APs can be deployed by users while centralized network planning is not always possible. Therefore, when APs in small cells are randomly deployed and thus redundant in many cases, a mechanism of dynamic AP turning-on/off is required. We propose a device-assisted framework that exploits feedback messages from the user equipment (UE). To solve the problem, we apply an optimization method using belief propagation (BP) on a factor graph. Then, we propose a family of online algorithms inspired by BP, called DANCE, that requires low computational complexity. We perform numerical simulations, and the extensive simulations confirm that BP enhances energy efficiency significantly. Furthermore, simple, but practical DANCE exhibits close performance to BP and also better performance than other popular existing methods. Specifically, in a small-sized network, BP enhances energy efficiency 129%. Furthermore, in ultra-dense networks, DANCE algorithms successfully achieve orders of magnitude higher energy efficiency than that of the baseline.


This article introduces non-linear dynamics to assess the interactions in duopoly competition between two rivals. The generic competition is considered here to be the competition for quality between two consumer durable products. The authors have used a system dynamics approach to develop the model of interactions and simulate the behaviour over time. The outcomes of several hundred simulations have shown that the recognition and implementation lags in quality improvement strongly influence the qualitative behaviour of the system. When the speed of adaptation to customer demand reaches a certain value, a Hopf bifurcation occurs and the system converges into a limit cycle. Quasi-periodicity and chaos emerge when further increasing the speed of the response. Instead of tending to equilibrium around an optimal quality value the model exhibits complex counter-intuitive behaviours.


The origins of the optical effects and the chemical stability of BiB3O6 are studied by gradient-corrected hybrid B3PW density functional theory within the Gaussian-orbital-based CO-LCAO scheme. Including spin-orbit coupling, B3PW yields an estimate of the indirect band gap of 4.29~4.99 eV which is closer to the experimental value of 4.3 eV than the HF, LDA or GGA results. The crystal orbital overlap population is carried out to give a detailed first-principles analysis of chemical bonding. It is found that the Bi 6s couples with the O 2p in the primary interaction, which eventually forms both bonding and antibonding orbitals below the Fermi level. The Bi 6p is further involved in the secondary interaction with the filled Bi 6s-O 2p antibonding orbitals. The stereochemical activity of the Bi lone-pairs mainly originates from the primary interaction for the occupied Bi 6s-O 2p antibonding orbitals. It is found that the Bi 6p orbitals are not critically responsible for the non-spherical shape of the Bi lone-pairs. The densities of optical absorptions for the total BiB3O6 crystal, [BiO4]5- and [BO3]3- and [BO4]5- subunits are individually calculated by convoluting the total occupied density of states and the virtual densities of states of the corresponding unit. It is found that the [BiO4]5- units are mainly responsible for the optics of BiB3O6 in the long wavelength region. The reason is that the Bi-O covalent bonds lead to large spatial orbital overlappings and thus favor the electronic transfer from the occupied O 2p to the empty Bi 6p orbitals. The relativistic and correlation effects lead to fundamental differences of the band structure, chemical bonds and optical effects for BiB3O6 compared with non-relativistic and uncorrelated calculations. The harmonic frequencies of BiB3O6 are calculated by applying the numerical-difference technique. The complete 13 A and 14 B vibrational modes are assigned, graphically visualized and classified according to the Bi-O and B-O motions. Comparisons with previous experimental reports are discussed in detail. Crystal orbital adapted Gaussian (4s4p3d), (5s5p4d) and (6s6p5d) valence primitive basis sets are derived, in line with relativistic energy-consistent 4f-in-core lanthanide pseudopotentials of the Stuttgart-Koln variety, for calculating periodic bulk materials containing trivalent lanthanide ions, particularly in this thesis for the investigation of the relative stability of C2 and I2 phases of LnB3O6. Different segmented contraction schemes are calibrated on A-type Pm2O3 studying the basis set size effects. Further applications to the geometry optimization of other A-type Ln2O3 (Ln=La-Nd) show a satisfactory agreement with experimental data using the lanthanide valence basis sets (6s6p5d)/[4s4p4d]. The cohesive energies of A-Ln2O3 within both conventional Kohn-Sham DFT and the a posteriori-HF correlation DFT schemes are evaluated by using the corresponding augmented sets (8s7p6d)/[6s5p5d] with additional diffuse functions for the atomic energies of free lanthanide atoms. The I2 phases of LaB3O6 and GdB3O6 crystals are more stable than C2 phases according to both of the calculated energetic data and first-principles bond analysis. This is in agreement with the experimental results. A new method is developed to calculate the optical properties for large systems based on available wavefunction correlation approaches in the framework of the incremental scheme. The convergence behaviors of first- and second-order polarizabilities with respect to the domain distances and incremental expansion orders are examined and discussed for the model system Ga4As4H18.


Japanese Players under contract with Nippon Professional Baseball Teams are currently allowed to enter Major League Baseball through a posting process. The process begins with a first-price sealed-bid auction that determines the transfer fee paid to the Japanese team. The player and the winning Major League team then have 30 days in which to negotiate a contract. Recently, the Boston Red Sox bid a record $51.1 million to the Seibu Lions for the exclusive right to negotiate with Daisuke Matsuzaka. Using this transfer fee and the resulting contract between the Red Sox and Matsuzaka, I show that Seibu received 76.7 percent of Matsuzaka's value. A simple bargaining model reveals that were Matsuzaka allowed to negotiate fairly with Seibu, Seibu would have received no more than 54.3 percent of Matsuzaka's value. By precluding the player from negotiating over this transfer fee, Major League Baseball's current posting process can over-compensate the Japanese team for the contractual right it holds. Alternative posting processes that correctly determine the player's value and fairly compensate the incumbent team are then developed.


The explosive growth in the number of documents produced daily necessitates the development of effective alternatives to explore, analyze, and discover knowledge from documents. Document mining research work has emerged to devise automated means to discover and analyze useful information from documents. This work has been mainly concerned with constructing text representation models, developing distance measures to estimate similarities between documents, and utilizing that in mining processes such as document clustering, document classification, information retrieval, information filtering, and information extraction.
Conventional text representation methodologies consider documents as bags of words and ignore the meanings and ideas their authors want to convey. It is this deficiency that causes similarity measures to fail to perceive contextual similarity of text passages due to the variation of the words the passages contain, or at least perceive contextually dissimilar text passages as being similar because of the resemblance of words the passages have.
This thesis presents a new paradigm for mining documents by exploiting semantic information of their texts. A formal semantic representation of linguistic inputs is introduced and utilized to build a semantic representation scheme for documents. The representation scheme is constructed through accumulation of syntactic and semantic analysis outputs. A new distance measure is developed to determine the similarities between contents of documents. The measure is based on inexact matching of attributed trees. It involves the computation of all distinct similarity common sub-trees, and can be computed efficiently. It is believed that the proposed representation scheme along with the proposed similarity measure will enable more effective document mining processes.
The proposed techniques to mine documents were implemented as vital components in a mining system. A case study of semantic document clustering is presented to demonstrate the working and the efficacy of the framework. Experimental work is reported, and its results are presented and analyzed.


The objective of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the NGO TECHO's emergency housing programme on multidimensional poverty. It employs a quasi-experimental 'pipeline' evaluation design and is based on household survey data from 34 informal settlements in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The aim is to demonstrate the additional insights that can be gained from using a multidimensional framework based on the Alkire and Foster (2011) method to evaluate a programme's impact. The results indicate that the programme reduces both the incidence and the intensity of poverty and causes the multidimensional poverty measure to fall by more than half. The magnitude of the effect is greater for the households that initially were the poorest. Privacy, interpersonal relations and psychological health are the dimensions that contribute the most to explaining the decline in multidimensional deprivation.


In contrast to the rather network-centric notion of Quality of Service (QoS), the concept of Quality of Experience (QoE) has a strongly user-centric perspective on service quality in communication networks as well as online services. However, related research on QoE so far has largely neglected the question of how to operationalize quality differentiation and to provide corresponding solutions tailored to the end users. In this paper, we argue that the introduction of Experience Level Agreements (ELA) as QoE-enabled counterpiece to traditional QoS-based Service Level Agreements (SLA) would provide a key step towards being able to sell service quality to the user. Hence, we investigate various ideas to exploit QoE awareness for improving SLAs (ranging from internal aspects like SLOs by service providers to completely novel definitions of ELAs which are able to characterize QoE explicitly), and discuss important problems and challenges of the proposed transition as well.


Organic viticulture is an important part of the European Union organic farming sector, and, according to the most recent surveys, 1.5% of European Union wine originates from organic farms, with an upward trend. This paper describes an environmental impact of an organic viticulture indicator (EIOVI) that can be reliably used in the management of organic vineyards. The EIOVI can be used as a decision support system for farmers and other property managers by evaluating the potential ecological impact of their choices, thus optimizing management options. The tool allows the simulation of vineyard management based on six agricultural and ecological modules. The EIOVI is a fuzzy expert system that calculates the relationship between the modules on the basis of a set of 64 decision rules. Initial testing (validation) has been performed using 20 simulations for six Swiss wine-growing estates. The results of these tests were promising; the EIOVI motivates managers to consider the wine-growing estate as a whole by subsummarizing all aspects of management. The visualization of results is very tangible and clearly shows that the use of this indicator could improve the management of the vineyard. With some improvements, the EIOVI will be a helpful assessment tool for vine growers, consultants, environmental agencies, and scientists.


ecause of advances in prenatal sonographic examinations, it is now possible to detect subtle facial dysmorphology in the second trimester. The detection of fetal craniofacial anomalies has resulted in the ability to prenatally diagnose genetic syndromes that might otherwise have gone undetected until birth. Marshall syndrome (MS) is a rare autosomal, dominantly inherited disorder that has a 50% recurrence risk in the offspring of an affected individual. First described by Marshall1 in 1958 in a multigenerational family with 7 affected individuals, the condition includes ophthalmologic abnormalities (hypertelorism, myopia, and cataracts), midface anomalies (flat or retruded nasal bridge, anteverted nares, and the appearance of large eyes with ocular hypertelorism), sensorineural hearing loss, and anhidrotic ectodermal dysplasia. Other frequent findings include short stature, cleft palate with or without Pierre Robin syndrome, spondyloepiphyseal abnormalities, and calcification of the falx cerebri. Since Marshall's initial publication,1 only 8 additional families have been described in the English literature, illustrating the rarity of MS.2 Below we report the prenatal diagnosis of MS based on close assessment of the cranial features.


Driving is a complex behavior that requires the integration of multiple cognitive functions. While many studies have investigated brain activity related to driving simulation under distinct conditions, little is known about the brain morphological and functional architecture in professional competitive driving, which requires exceptional motor and navigational skills. Here, 11 professional racing-car drivers and 11 "naïve" volunteers underwent both structural and functional brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Subjects were presented with short movies depicting a Formula One car racing in four different official circuits. Brain activity was assessed in terms of regional response, using an Inter-Subject Correlation (ISC) approach, and regional interactions by mean of functional connectivity. In addition, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to identify specific structural differences between the two groups and potential interactions with functional differences detected by the ISC analysis. Relative to non-experienced drivers, professional drivers showed a more consistent recruitment of motor control and spatial navigation devoted areas, including premotor/motor cortex, striatum, anterior, and posterior cingulate cortex and retrosplenial cortex, precuneus, middle temporal cortex, and parahippocampus. Moreover, some of these brain regions, including the retrosplenial cortex, also had an increased gray matter density in professional car drivers. Furthermore, the retrosplenial cortex, which has been previously associated with the storage of observer-independent spatial maps, revealed a specific correlation with the individual driver's success in official competitions. These findings indicate that the brain functional and structural organization in highly trained racing-car drivers differs from that of subjects with an ordinary driving experience, suggesting that specific anatomo-functional changes may subtend the attainment of exceptional driving performance.


To evaluate the partial contributions and interaction of three vasopressor systems in blood pressure maintenance, nephrectomized rats and rats with intact kidneys were submitted sequentially to catecholamine depletion, elimination of vasopressin's vasoconstrictor action, and (for those with kidneys in situ) angiotensin blockade. Catecholamine depletion decreased blood pressure and stimulated vasopressin levels in all rats, but significantly more so in the anephric ones. Subsequent injection of an antagonist to the vasopressor effect of vasopressin produced a lasting fall of blood pressure in anephric rats, but only transient fall in those with intact kidneys. Infusion of teprotide — an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor — in the latter animals also produced transient blood pressure fall, but if this were followed by injection of the vasopressin antagonist, the pressure remained low for several hours. Blood pressure levels were closely correlated with those of plasma catecholamines throughout these maneuvers. Catecholamine levels were inversely correlated with those of plasma vasopressin, which were far greater in anephric rats through both stimulation and accumulation. Plasma renin activity was increasingly stimulated by falling blood pressure after each maneuver in rats with intact kidneys. Thus, it appears that in the resting state the sympathetic nervous system is more involved in the maintenance of blood pressure, whereas vasopressin and renin are important backup mechanisms. (Hypertension 4: 400–405, 1982)


Warped Gaussian processes (WGP) [1] model output observations in regression tasks as a parametric nonlinear transformation of a Gaussian process (GP). The use of this nonlinear transformation, which is included as part of the probabilistic model, was shown to enhance performance by providing a better prior model on several data sets. In order to learn its parameters, maximum likelihood was used. In this work we show that it is possible to use a non-parametric nonlinear transformation in WGP and variationally integrate it out. The resulting Bayesian WGP is then able to work in scenarios in which the maximum likelihood WGP failed: Low data regime, data with censored values, classification, etc. We demonstrate the superior performance of Bayesian warped GPs on several real data sets.


ABSTRACT The ability of insects to cope with stressful temperatures through adaptive plasticity has allowed them to thrive under a wide range of thermal conditions. Developmental plasticity is generally considered to be a non-reversible phenotypic change, e.g. in morphological traits, while adult acclimation responses are often considered to be reversible physiological responses. However, physiologically mediated thermal acclimation might not follow this general prediction. We investigated the magnitude and rate of reversibility of developmental thermal plasticity responses in heat and cold tolerance of adult flies, using a full factorial design with two developmental and two adult temperatures (15 and 25°C). We show that cold tolerance attained during development is readily adjusted to the prevailing conditions during adult acclimation, with a symmetric rate of decrease or increase. In contrast, heat tolerance is only partly reversible during acclimation and is thus constrained by the temperature during development. The effect of adult acclimation on heat tolerance was asymmetrical, with a general loss of heat tolerance with age. Surprisingly, the decline in adult heat tolerance at 25°C was decelerated in flies developed at low temperatures. This result was supported by correlated responses in two senescence-associated traits and in accordance with a lower rate of ageing after low temperature development, suggesting that physiological age is not reset at eclosion. The results have profound ecological consequences for populations, as optimal developmental temperatures will be dependent on the thermal conditions faced in the adult stage and the age at which they occur. Summary: Using Drosophila melanogaster, we show how developmental plasticity of cold tolerance is completely reversible in the adult stage, while adult acclimation in heat tolerance is constrained by developmental temperature.


In 16 rural communities of the Canton of Zurich, school-children of all age groups participated in dental examinations conducted at intervals of 4 years since 1963/64. The same standardised method was used throughout the entire period. This study documents the caries experience over a period of 45 years. From 1964 to 2009, the DM*FT per 14-year-old child fell from 12.50 to 1.31, corresponding to a caries reduction of 90%. The caries experience in 8-, 10- and 12-year-olds decreased by 90% to 92%. From 1964 to 2009, the "Significant Caries Index" (the mean DM*FT in the third of 12-year-olds with the highest DM*FT values) fell from 13.09 to 2.20, corresponding to a caries reduction of 83%. The observed caries decline was unexpectedly high. The effect of fluorides may explain a caries reduction of roughly 50%. A large part of the decline, however, remains unexplained. Possible causes are discussed in this paper.


In this paper the methodology of biplots is introduced as a means for monitoring the behaviour of process systems. This sophisticated methodology allows for the projection of high-dimensional data to a low-dimensional subspace that can be visualised by a human operator. The projections are highly graphical in nature, and rich in information regarding variation in process variables, correlations among these variables, as well as class separation, taking into account the multivariate character of the data. Moreover, as is shown by way of two case studies, process disturbances can be visualised and explored quantitatively by superimposing alpha-bags on biplots.


Based on interviews with converts to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the United States, this article documents and analyzes a narrative form in which conversion is described as the progressive discovery of a latent religious self that was part of one's life all along, or what I term a conversion to continuity. These findings contrast markedly with those of most contemporary conversion research, which emphasize the narration of a dramatic temporal break between converts' past and present religious selves (epitomized by the evangelical "born-again" genre). I examine how and why temporal continuity was a characteristic feature of these conversion accounts and demonstrate how such narratives helped constitute forms of religious experience and self-identity that differ in important respects from those documented in previous studies. In light of these findings, I argue for a reconceptualization of continuity and discontinuity within processes of religious identity change as an institutionally anchored figure/ground relationship as opposed to an either/or dichotomy. I also highlight promising avenues for future comparative research on the relationships between time, narrative, and subjectivity across religious and secular contexts.


Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2009.; Includes bibliographical
 references. Government policies designed to protect families and public institutions dedicated
 to providing for the health and welfare of women and children are a relatively recent
 development. Child welfare, particularly high infant mortality rates, emerged as a public
 concern across the globe in the mid-19th century. In Brazil maternal and infant hygiene reform
 became part of a larger movement to improve Brazilian society through science, creating a
 healthy, "progressive" population. With slavery abolished and the Republic
 founded, Brazil began the 20th century hoping to enter the world stage with a working
 population strong in quality and in quantity. Reform campaigns of the period sought to improve
 the physical health of people on society's margins, attempting to maximize their economic
 potential so as to benefit the growth of the nation. While maternal welfare advocates
 campaigned for "proper motherhood," millions of poor Brazilian women
 negotiated family life and wage labor within the constraints of a racially unequal and
 gender-inequitable society. This dissertation analyzes the origins and outcomes of the
 movement for healthier mothers and babies in the northeastern state of Bahia from the
 1880s-1945. It argues that the Bahian movement was a crucial resource for national reform that
 illustrated the tensions of nation-building and the deconstruction of slavery, building upon
 continuities and transformations in social understandings of race and gender. It demonstrates
 that maternal and child welfare were key aspects of the integration of the popular classes
 into the vision of a modern state. This dissertation explores the intellectual and political
 contradictions as well as the lived experiences of Brazilian families and public health
 institutions as motherhood was redefined and health became a corollary to citizenship. These
 transformations rhetorically elevated the poor family as the cornerstone of moral and social
 change without fundamentally disrupting long-held and carefully guarded social
 hierarchies.


Background: Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) has been proposed as a risk factor for ovarian cancer. However, the existing literature on the association between PID and ovarian cancer risk is inconclusive, and only few cohort studies have been conducted. Methods: Using nationwide Danish registries, we conducted a population-based cohort study including all women from the birth cohorts 1940 to 1970 in Denmark during 1978–2012 (n = 1,318,929) to investigate the association between PID and subsequent risk of epithelial ovarian cancer. Among women in the cohort, 81,281 women were diagnosed with PID and 5,356 women developed ovarian cancer during follow-up through 2012. Cox regression models were used to estimate HRs and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the association between PID and ovarian cancer, both overall and according to histotype. Results: For ovarian cancer overall, we observed no association with PID (HR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.92–1.20). However, in histotype-specific analyses, we found a statistically significantly increased risk of serous ovarian cancer among women with PID (HR, 1.19; 1.00–1.41; P = 0.047). Conversely, PID was not convincingly associated with risk of any of the other histotypes of ovarian cancer. Conclusions: PID was associated with a modestly increased risk of serous ovarian cancer, but not other histotypes. Impact: Our results indicate that PID is not a strong risk factor for ovarian cancer. Whether PID is slightly associated with risk of serous ovarian cancer has to be confirmed in other studies. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 26(1); 104–9. ©2016 AACR.


The availability of 12 complete genomes of various species of genus Drosophila provides a unique opportunity to analyze genome-scale chromosomal rearrangements among a group of closely related species. This article reports on the comparison of gene order between these 12 species and on the fixed rearrangement events that disrupt gene order. Three major themes are addressed: the conservation of syntenic blocks across species, the disruption of syntenic blocks (via chromosomal inversion events) and its relationship to the phylogenetic distribution of these species, and the rate of rearrangement events over evolutionary time. Comparison of syntenic blocks across this large genomic data set confirms that genetic elements are largely (95%) localized to the same Muller element across genus Drosophila species and paracentric inversions serve as the dominant mechanism for shuffling the order of genes along a chromosome. Gene-order scrambling between species is in accordance with the estimated evolutionary distances between them and we find it to approximate a linear process over time (linear to exponential with alternate divergence time estimates). We find the distribution of synteny segment sizes to be biased by a large number of small segments with comparatively fewer large segments. Our results provide estimated chromosomal evolution rates across this set of species on the basis of whole-genome synteny analysis, which are found to be higher than those previously reported. Identification of conserved syntenic blocks across these genomes suggests a large number of conserved blocks with varying levels of embryonic expression correlation in Drosophila melanogaster. On the other hand, an analysis of the disruption of syntenic blocks between species allowed the identification of fixed inversion breakpoints and estimates of breakpoint reuse and lineage-specific breakpoint event segregation.


This chapter discusses salient concepts of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) in respect of analyzing organizational communication and discourse with a focus on decision-making. More specifically, this chapter juxtaposes Process Theory with the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) in CDS. The chapter claims that these two approaches complement each other well and that systematic linguistic analysis could contribute to a more macro-oriented process approach. Some key patterns of interaction in meetings and some discursive strategies which are highly influential in decision-making are illustrated while drawing on the range of meeting data from EU organizations from ethnography and fieldwork. Finally, in the conclusion, the salient implications of such an integrated approach are discussed.


The paper reports an experimental investigation of heat transfer in the closed-tube aerosyphon (aerated-thermosyphon) for a range of conditions representative of northern field applications. In particular, attention is focused on the effect of using tubes with heated lengths not only greater than the cooled lengths, but very much greater than the tube diameter. Using three heated sections and one cooled section, the geometry of the device has been varied systematically with 10 < L H /d < 50 and 1 < L H /L C < 20. For any given geometry, the effect of air bubbling rate has been studied in the range of 0 < V < 5 × 10−5 m3 /S. Using these ranges it has been possible to make comparisons with other thermosyphon and aerosyphon data. The results indicate that heat transfer coefficients are reduced by increasing either length-diameter ratio or heated-cooled length ratio. They also reveal that, in general terms, the aerosyphon is almost an order-of-magnitude more effective than the single-phase thermosyphon. Some obervations on the flow regimes are offered, and an empirical correlation is presented.


In this paper, the influence of mixed-type (impressed-current and sacrificial-anode) cathodic protection on an underwater electromagnetic field was investigated using the boundary element method. The current applied for cathodic protection was reduced by installing sacrificial anodes in the stern region. Also, the potential difference produced by the propeller in the stern region was decreased, due to the effective potential distribution generated by the sacrificial anode. The underwater electromagnetic signature decreased at 18 °C and 5 m/s, but not at 6 °C. The difference in current density produced by the environment influenced the intensity of the electromagnetic field. The dramatic decrease in applied current at 6 °C increased the maximum electromagnetic signature. Thus, while the mixed-type cathodic protection effectively reduced the underwater electromagnetic signature, the design of the mixed-type cathodic protection should be optimized based on the environmental conditions, due to the sacrificial anode effect. †(Received March 7, 2017; Accepted May 8, 2017)


Although home automation (HA) systems in the wired domain are widely accepted by consumers, in today's industry, the mega trend is steering HA systems along a wireless way. Theoretically, wireless solutions are able to provide HA systems with more flexibility and thus reducing engineering costs. In practice, however, deploying wireless HA systems actually requires more costs and efforts due to the lack of versatile software tools to support the whole engineering process. This paper defines and evaluates the engineering workflow and architecture for home automation systems. The proposed architecture is studied and implemented based on web technologies and graphical configuration environments, with the aim of reducing workloads of HA engineers at every stage. A prototype has been implemented to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the proposed architecture.


Background: Typhoid is one of the most important diseases of human beings caused by Salmonella Typhi. There are many vaccine reported against Salmonella Typhi, but search for new candidate vaccine antigens is still going on because presently available vaccines have several limitations such as short-term immunity, high cost, and allergic reaction. Several approaches such as subunit vaccines, Vi polysaccharide, mutant vaccines, and r-DNA vaccines have been tested. r- DNA vaccines have shown some promising potential (targeted Omp). Omp 28 had shown very promising results and suggests that it should be used in further studies of animal protection against the disease. Objective: Cloning, Sequencing and In silico analysis of Omp 28 gene to develop r-DNA vaccine of S. Typhi. Materials and Methods: Omp 28 is made up of three identical subunits of 9.6 kDa showing PCR amplicon of 330 bp which has been cloned in the pJET vector. Recombinant clones has been sequenced, and data submitted to NCBI. Secondary structure was deduced by the Chou Fasman and Garnier method. The sequence of Omp 28 was studied for antigenic indexing, epitope mapping, and MHC mapping using various bioinformatics tool. Results and Conclusion: The sequence of Omp 28 has been assigned accession no GQ 907044.1 by NCBI. Secondary structure has shown it has more alpha region. Hydrophobic plot and surface probability plot shows most amino acids are surface exposed which is a requirement to develop a r-DNA vaccine. Antigenic sites are located within surface exposed regions and eight antigenic determinants are present in Omp 28. On Prosite analysis of Protein shown two motifs i.e. anaphylatoxin domain signature motif at position 219-252 and other one was iron sulphur binding region signature motif at position 36-44. On epitope analysis total six major B cell epitopes were observed which can provoke humoral immunity. On T cell epitope mapping several major epitopes has been found in case of MHC class I and MHC class II. It indicates that Omp 28 can provoke cell mediated as well as humoral immunity and can be proven a promising candidates of Salmonella Typhi.