I will raise up a prophet ... like you (Moses). I will put My words in his mouth, and he will speak to them all that I command them (Deut. 18:18). Moses assures the children of Israel that God will raise up prophets for them. These prophets will be like Moses serving as teachers and guides for their generation, instructing that which the Lord puts in their mouths. However, the exact criteria of what constitutes them as true prophets are very scant. If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the word does not come true, that word was not spoken by the Lord; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of him (Deut. 18:22). According to rabbinic tradition, there were 48 prophets and seven prophetesses (TB Megillah 14a) [69 according to the Vilna Gaon]. Although the only biblical sign of a true prophet is accurately foretelling the future, some prophets seemed to have gained acceptance among the people without this. For example, Samuel was told by God that the house of Eli would be destroyed (I Sam. 3:11-14) which did come to pass (I Sam. 4:16-18), however the popular acceptance of Samuel as a prophet preceded the fulfillment of his dire prediction (I Sam. 3:20). Similarly, Nathan, well known for his courageous denouncement of King David in the sordid affair of Batsheva, is termed a prophet (II Sam. 7:2) even before he foretells the future, that David will defeat his enemies and his son will build the Temple (II Sam. 7:11-13). Since these prophecies would only be proven to be true a long time later, it may be that other, unrecorded prophecies of more immediate events were given to establish the veracity of these prophets. Early prophets had many roles, ranging from helping people find mundane lost objects (I Sam. 9:6) to reviving the dead (I Kgs. 17:22, II Kgs. 4:35). However, the performance of a miracle is not proof that the prophet is true (Deut. 13:2-4). With the latter prophets, from Amos and Hosea to Malachi, prophecy as we understand it today came to full fruition. They shared the following characteristics: 1. They served as the religious and moral conscience of Israel, berating the people for their misdeeds in tones "one octave too high" to use the terminology of A.J. Heschel in his magnum opus The Prophets. 2. They based their ministry on the firm belief that they were in the counsel (sod) of the Lord. To quote Amos: The Lord will do nothing, but He revealeth His counsel to His servants, the prophets (Amos 3:7). This sentiment is shared by Jeremiah (23:18). 3. They warned that disaster would strike as punishment for sins committed, which through true penitence could be avoided. 4. On the strength of being in the counsel of the Lord, they would make predictions for the future. Thus, Jeremiah predicted 70 years in advance the downfall of mighty Babylon. And when the seventy years of Babylon are over, I will take note of you and I will fulfill My promise to bring you back to this place (Jer. 25:12; 29:10). 5. They had a vision of a glorious future, following a Day of Reckoning. Today, looking back in hindsight, we know for sure who the true prophets were. However, projecting ourselves back to the time of their ministry, when two "prophets" were speaking in the name of the Lord, proclaiming contrasting messages, who was to be believed to be the true prophet? A classic example of this dilemma is the confrontation of Micaiah vs. Zedekiah at the end of the reign of King Ahab (I Kgs. 22:6-28). In this incident, Deuteronomy 18:20-22 offers a clear solution. If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the word does not come true, that word was not spoken by the Lord; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of him (Deut. 18:22). MICAIAH VS. ZEDEKIAH How can we know the word which the Lord has spoken? The Talmud (TB Sanhedrin 89a), discussing the question of false prophets, specifically points to Zedekiah who "prophesied what he had not heard", presuming to speak in the name of the Lord, and to Hananiah son of Azzur (Jer. …


Selection for divergent performance optima has been proposed as a central mechanism underlying adaptive radiation. Uncovering multiple optima requires identifying forms associated with different adaptive zones and linking those forms to performance. However, testing and modeling the performance of complex morphologies like the cranium is challenging. We introduce a three‐dimensional finite‐element (FE) model of the cranium that can be morphed into different shapes by varying simple parameters to investigate the relationship between two engineering‐based measures of performance, mechanical advantage and von Mises stress, and four divergent adaptive zones occupied by New World Leaf‐nosed bats. To investigate these relationships, we tested the fit of Brownian motion and Ornstein–Uhlenbeck models of evolution in mechanical advantage and von Mises stress using dated multilocus phylogenies. The analyses revealed three performance optima for mechanical advantage among species from three adaptive zones: bats that eat nectar; generalized insectivores, omnivores and some frugivores; and bats that specialize on hard canopy fruits. Only two optima, one corresponding to nectar feeding, were consistently uncovered for von Mises stress. These results suggest that mechanical advantage played a larger role than von Mises stress in the radiation of New World Leaf‐nosed bats into divergent adaptive zones.


Higher barley yields per acre, along with preferred malting characteristics, are possible through properly balancing nitrogen fertilizer applications with prior cropping and soil management patterns. The recently introduced 6-rowed malting varieties, Larker and Traill, showed the greatest nitrogen yield response, and malting quality was least adversely affected by the highest rate used. The release of the 2-rowed malting variety, Firlbecks III, along with Larker and Traill, provides northern California barley growers with a choice of malting varieties which are directly competitive with the high-yielding feed variety, Wocus. All are significantly higher yielding than the formerly popular 2-rowed Hannchen. Stiff-strawed Firlbecks III minimizes the lodging problem so characteristic of the older, 2-rowed Hannchen. Larker and Traill may shatter if grown in districts with windstorms at harvesttime.


With more than 30 million documented infections and 1 million deaths worldwide, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues unabated. The clinical spectrum of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) 2 infection ranges from asymptomatic infection to life-threatening and fatal disease. Current estimates are that approximately 20 million people globally have "recovered"; however, clinicians are observing and reading reports of patients with persistent severe symptoms and even substantial end-organ dysfunction after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Because COVID-19 is a new disease, much about the clinical course remains uncertain—in particular, the possible long-term health consequences, if any.


Animals and humans are constantly faced with a highly dimensional stream of incoming sensory information. At the same time, they have to command their highly complex and multidimensional bodies. Yet, they seamlessly cope with this situation and successfully perform various tasks. For autonomous robots, this poses a challenge: robots performing in the real world are often faced with the curse of dimensionality. In other words, the size of the sensory as well as motor spaces becomes too large for the robot to efficiently cope with them in real time. In this paper, we demonstrate how the curse of dimensionality can be tamed by exploiting the robot's morphology and interaction with the environment, or the robot's embodiment (see e.g., [1]). We present three case studies with underactuated quadrupedal robots. In the first case study, we look at terrain detection. While running on different surfaces, the robot generates structured multimodal sensory information that can be used to detect different terrain types. In the second case study, we shift our attention to the motor space: the robot is learning different gaits. The online learning procedure capitalizes on the fact that the robot is underactuated and on a "soft" control policy. In the third case study, we move one level higher and demonstrate how - given an appropriate gait - a speed adaptation task can be greatly simplified and learned online.


There are two basic methodologies for portfolio optimization: tracking error variance (TEV) minimization (the industry standard for indexing), and a cointegration–optimal strategy (advocated by econometricians). Cointegration is a statistical tool that seeks to exploit a long–run equilibrium relationship between a portfolio and a benchmark, ensuring that the two are connected in the long term. For simple index tracking, the additional feature of cointegration is found to provide no clear advantages or disadvantages over TEV. Both models produce optimal portfolios that outperform a price–weighted benchmark during market crashes, assuming a long enough model calibration period. When tracking becomes more difficult, ensuring a cointegration relationship enhances performance. Cointegration–optimal portfolios dominate TEV equivalents for all the statistical arbitrage strategies based on enhanced indexation in all market circumstances.


Introduction and Objectives The Optimum Patient Care (OPC) service provides a comprehensive asthma assessment, analysing both GP-recorded and patient-reported outcomes to generate patient-specific management recommendations (based on British guidelines) for considerations by practise staff. This study evaluates the effect of the OPC asthma service evaluation on real-life asthma control outcomes in a UK primary care adult asthma population compared with a control population. Methods Routine and patient-reported questionnaire data were collected for 2952 patients with clinician-diagnosed asthma and 1 year outcome data managed in practises across Surrey and Leicester County and Rutland Primary Care Trusts. The effect of the OPC service was evaluated by assessing change in markers of asthma control between initiation and re-assessment: exacerbation frequency (Read code defined acute exacerbations and number of courses of acute oral steroids in previous 12 months) and risk status (high risk: ≥2 annual exacerbations). The number of OPC management suggestions implemented by each practise was also considered. Change in exacerbations over the 12 month period was compared with a control group of patients from UK practises who did not receive OPC management recommendations. Exacerbation rate ratios (RR) for treatment group were produced (relative to control), adjusted for baseline confounders (95%CI). Results There were 2952 patients in the study from 22 practises. At time of re-assessment 10% of OPC management suggestions had been implemented and 22% of patients managed at British Thoracic Society (BTS) steps 4/5 had improved their risk status. 17.1% of patients in the control group (n=22,952) suffered from ≥1 exacerbation during the baseline year, increasing to 17.3% of patients after 12 months. For patients receiving the OPC management review, 24.8% had ≥1 exacerbation during baseline, decreasing to 15.3% following review. Conclusions OPC's combined patient-reported and practise data assessment allowed thorough patient assessment and the generation of tailored management recommendations. Although only 10% of recommendations were implemented at 12 months, the OPC service appeared to have a beneficial effect on risk status and exacerbation rates. Abstract P276 Table 1 Rate Ratios for treatment group exacerbations, compared to control of patients not receiving the OPC management review service. Exacerbations Control Management review service RR adjusted for age, baseline exacerbations 1.00 0.74(0.66, 0.83) RR adjusted for age, asthma management stage 1.00 0.76(0.68, 0.85)


Introduction: inflammation has been shown to play a major role in the pathogenesis of cancer. Inflammatory process activates the immune system through pro-inflammatory mediators and subsequent triggers transformation into malignant cells. Some tumors or cancers has been associated with chronic infections, such as hepatitis B and C viruses (hepatocellular carcinoma), human papilloma virus (cervical cancer), Helicobacter pylori (gastric cancer and lymphoma), and prostatitis (prostate cancer). A considerable study have investigated the benefits of aspirin for the prevention and treatment of cancer or tumors. Objectives: This paper aims to describe the relationship between inflammation and cancer incidence, so that use of aspirin as an anti-inflammatory agent is a rational choice in the treatment and prevention of cancer. Conclusion: Aspirin potential for chemoprevention of various types of cancer. Considering the high risk of side effects of aspirin, aspirin is not intended as a routine therapy to prevent the occurrence of cancer.


The individual members of 35 UK learned societies were surveyed on their attitudes to open access (OA); 1,368 responses were received. Most respondents said they knew what OA was, and supported the idea of OA journals. However, although 60% said that they read OA journals and 25% that they published in them, in both cases around one‐third of the journals named were not OA. While many were in favour of increased access through OA journals, concerns were expressed about the cost to authors, possible reduction in quality, and negative impact on existing journals, publishers, and societies. By contrast, less than half knew what self‐archiving was; 36% thought it was a good idea and 50% were unsure. Just under half said they used repositories of self‐archived articles, but 13% of references were not in fact to self‐archiving repositories. 29% said they self‐archived their own articles, but 10% of references were not to publicly accessible sites of any kind. The access and convenience of self‐archiving repositories were seen as positive, but there were concerns about quality control, workload for authors and institutions, chaotic proliferation of versions, and potential damage to existing journals, publishers, and societies.


Standard views about the factors that determine verb position and subject position predict that there should be Subject-Verb-Object languages in which tense and aspect are indicated by a particle or auxiliary that comes before the subject. Julien's (2000) large-scale survey of the languages of the world, however, indicates that this word order is never found. This striking gap suggests that the theory of how verbs are related to tense needs to be rethought. I suggest that the gap can be explained by abandoning Chomsky's (1993, 1995) checking theory, in which the relationship between the T node and the inflected verb can be established abstractly. The correct word order typology follows if the computational system of human language can combine tense and verb only by overt head movement (Baker 1988, Pollock 1989) or by the PF merger of morphemes under adjacency (Marantz 1988, Bobaljik 1994).


BACKGROUND
In the present study we hypothesized that leptin-induced lipolytic effects show depot-specific differences.

MATERIAL/METHODS
Three-month-old male lean (+/+) and obese fa/fa rats were used. Lipolysis was determined in the absence or presence of leptin (0.63, 6.25 and 62.5 nM) together with agents acting at the A1 adenosine receptor of fat cells isolated from both subcutaneous and omental depots. The glycerol released into the incubation medium was taken as the lipolytic rate index.

RESULTS
The highest dose of leptin produced a 57.5 +/- 7.3% and 70.3 +/- 3.8% increase in omental and subcutaneous glycerol release, respectively, compared to the basal lipolytic rate (P<0.001). The addition of the three leptin concentrations in the ligand-free state produced a significantly greater stimulation of lipolysis in subcutaneous fat cells (P=0.0331; P=0.0003 and P=0.0015, respectively) compared to omental adipocytes. Under adenosine A1 receptor agonism and antagonism the same pattern of response was observed between visceral and subcutaneous adipocytes of lean rats. Although adenosine deaminase produced near maximum lipolysis in the adipocytes of lean animals, only half of the maximum lipolytic rate (50.9 +/- 3.2%) was achieved in fat cells from fa/fa rats (P=0.0034). Leptin had no effect on the lipolytic activity of adipocytes from either localization in fa/fa rats.

CONCLUSIONS
It can be concluded that decreased sensitivity to the lipolytic effect of leptin in omental adipocytes compared to subcutaneous fat cells may underlie, at least in part, the association of visceral fat accumulation with increased co-morbidities.


A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand in
fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Johannesburg 2016


Two librarians at a small STEM academic library have partnered with professors to develop and teach chemistry and writing courses. These librarians have successfully worked with professors to serve as an active presence within the classroom. This article describes the challenges of navigating the typical obstacles librarians face when attempting to integrate information literacy into the curriculum, reflects on the benefits of these collaborations, and touches on strategies for implementing similar programs at other institutions. It outlines two distinct approaches to collaborating with professors on credit-bearing information literacy courses, along with the key steps involved in planning and implementing these courses, including generating institutional buy-in, identifying potential collaborators, negotiating workload and responsibilities with collaborators, and planning to sustain courses beyond a single academic year. Suggestions for overcoming obstacles, supplemented by experience-based recommendations, are discussed.


A comparison of radial immunodiffusion and functional (hemolytic) assays for C4 revealed a highly significant correlation between the two methods in patients with a variety of immunologic disorders. Immunodiffusion technics are more convenient than hemolytic assays for most clinical laboratories. C4 assays are useful for the presumptive diagnosis of hereditary angioneurotic edema, whereas C3 is usually normal in such patients. C4 is usually more sensitive than C3 in a variety of immunologic disorders, although in some patients the opposite is true, especially in hypocomplementemic nephritis.


This work describes more than 2000 selected print, electronic and expert sources for modern technical services, practice, research and education. It features instructive chapter introductions and annotations that evaluate as well as cite resources, drawing on all formats, including electronic. Certain fundamental works are represented, but the emphasis is on contemporary materials, data and resource networks. Areas covered include: acquisitions; descriptive cataloguing; classification; subject analysis systems; authority work; filing and indexing; serials; collection management and development; preservation; reproduction of library materials; database management and access services. Systems are treated within the appropriate areas.


It is widely believed that land tenure insecurity under a customary tenure system leads to socially inefficient resource allocation. This article demonstrates that land tenure insecurity promotes tree planting, which is inefficient from the private point of view but could be relatively efficient from the viewpoint of the global environment. Regression analysis, based on primary data collected in Sumatra, indicates that tenure insecurity in fact leads to early tree planting. It is also found that customary land tenure institutions have been evolving towards greater tenure security responding to increasing scarcity of land.


Recalling specific past experiences is critical for most formal social interactions, including when being interviewed for employment, as a witness or defendant in the criminal justice system, or as a patient during a clinical consultation. Such interviews can be difficult for autistic adults under standard open questioning, yet applied research into effective methods to facilitate autistic adults' recall is only recently beginning to emerge. The current study tested the efficacy of different prompting techniques to support autistic adults' recall of specific personal memories; 30 autistic and 30 typically developing adults (intelligence quotients > 85) were asked to recall specific instances from their past, relevant to criminal justice system, healthcare, and employment interviews. Questions comprised 'open questions', 'semantic prompting' (where semantic knowledge was used to prompt specific episodic retrieval) and 'visual–verbal prompting' (a pie-diagram with prompts to recall specific details, for example, who, what, and where). Half the participants received the questions in advance. Consistent with previous research, autistic participants reported memories with reduced specificity. For both groups, visual–verbal prompting support improved specificity and episodic relevance, while semantic prompting also aided recall for employment questions (but not health or criminal justice system). Findings offer new practical insight for interviewers to facilitate communication with typically developing and autistic adults. Lay abstract During many types of interviews (e.g. in employment, with the police, and in healthcare), we need to recall detailed memories of specific events, which can be difficult for autistic people in response to commonly used questions. This is especially because these tend to be open questions (i.e. very broad). Autistic people have disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health conditions, are more likely to interact with police, and are the most underemployed disability group. However, interviewers are often unsure about how to adapt their communication for autistic people. Our research tested whether different types of prompts enabled autistic people to recall specific memories (memories of a single event within one day). Participants were asked about situations relating to witnessing a crime (e.g. at the bank), physical or mental health scenarios and employment interviews (e.g. a time you've met a deadline). We tested the following: Open questions: basic questions only (e.g. 'tell me about a time you went to the cinema'), Semantic prompting: a general prompt (e.g. 'do you enjoy going to the cinema?') before asking for a specific instance ('tell me about a time you went to the cinema?'), Visual–verbal prompting: asking participants to recall when it happened, who was there, the actions that occurred, the setting, and any objects. With visual–verbal prompting, autistic and typically developing participants' memories were more specific and detailed. Semantic prompting was also effective for employment questions. Our study shows that autistic people can recall specific memories when they are appropriately prompted. Visual–verbal prompting may be effective across different situations.


Despite the large number of active programs breeding improved forage plants, relatively little is known about the weightings that breeders consciously or subconsciously give to specific traits when selecting individual plants or that agronomists and producers use when assessing the relative merits of contrasting cultivars. This is in contrast to most modern animal breeding programs where the relative merits of novel genetics may be assessed against an index-based breeding objective. These technologies have not been widely used in crop or forage plant breeding but their use in forest tree breeding is relatively common. We have assessed the usefulness of discrete choice experiment techniques in the development of weightings for specific traits in forage plant improvement based on the views of an expert panel (plant breeders and non-breeders – agronomists, nutritionists, senior managers in breeding companies and consultants) asked to consider the requirements in four species (white clover, lucerne, perennial ryegrass and tall fescue). The results indicate that criteria related to abiotic stress tolerance, adaptation or the costs of pasture (root growth, drought tolerance, persistence, resistance to invertebrate pests, tolerance of hostile soil conditions) were deemed to be particularly important for white clover, while the highest-rated criteria for lucerne were not dissimilar, being tolerance of hostile soil conditions, persistence and tolerance of transient water-logging. For perennial ryegrass, three of the five highest-weighted criteria (drought tolerance, root growth, rate of recovery of pasture after water) are related to yield in environments where too much or too little water is a problem, highlighting the importance that the experts placed on the ability of the plant to withstand this important abiotic stress. For tall fescue, the highest-rated criteria were seedling vigour, drought tolerance, and persistence. Overall the preference weightings tended to reflect the perceived limitations of the various species, such as the priority of seedling vigour in tall fescue. This focus on the importance of abiotic stress is especially interesting as previous attempts to identify priorities have focused on the forage quality traits rather than analysing their importance relative to traits related to herbage yield or stress tolerance. This study highlights the importance of further work to help determine the focus of breeding objectives and selection criteria for different pasture species across production systems.


The Data Dependent Triangulation algorithm which represents image as the triangulation mesh, and then take Gouraud interpolation internal triangles. For the less operation efficiency of the Gouraud interpolation, propose a improved triangle internal interpolation method based on the barycentric coordinates properties. It reduces the operation time efficiently. At the same time, employ the edges overlap determination, improve the triangulations accuracy rating. The experimental results show that the improved algorithm is better to improve the image edge smoothness and operation speed.


The experiences of the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe highlight the failures of the current model of having the EU and its members states share responsibility for asylum policies. Based on standard criteria of fiscal federalism, this paper analyses the shortcomings of the status quo. We show that European asylum policies stand in sharp contradiction to the optimal assignment of tasks within a federal system. For example, the current system creates substantial incentives for free-riding and foregoes the potential benefits of European economies of scale. Given this diagnosis, we explore the pros and cons of different options for a more European approach. In particular, we analyze and provide estimates of the quantitative implications for the options of: (A) quotas that would distribute refugees across countries according to a pre-determined calculation of reception capacity; (B) EU financing of national service provision; and (C) EU service provision in asylum policies.


Inhibitors of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) have recently entered the clinic for the treatment of homologous recombination–deficient cancers. Despite the success of this approach, resistance to PARP inhibitors (PARPis) is a clinical hurdle, and it is poorly understood how cancer cells escape the deadly effects of PARPis without restoring BRCA1/2 function. By synergizing the advantages of next-generation sequencing with functional genetic screens in tractable model systems, novel mechanisms providing useful insights into DNA damage response (DDR) have been identified. BRCA1/2 models not only are tools to explore therapy escape mechanisms but also yield basic knowledge about DDR pathways and PARPis' mechanism of action. Moreover, alterations that render cells resistant to targeted therapies may cause new synthetic dependencies that can be exploited to combat resistant disease.


Since 2003, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), subtype H5N1, has spread across the Asian, African and European continents at an exceptional rate. To date, H5N1 remains primarily a pandemic within poultry populations with limited onward transmission to humans. Since there have been a limited number of human cases throughout the world, epidemiologic uncertainties exist regarding the extent of contact necessary to result in successful transmission between infected poultry and humans. In this thesis I undertook two large-scale surveys to evaluate poultry movement and the extent of interaction between humans and poultry to better define the risks of sustained transmission of H5N1 in poultry and onward transmission to humans. The thesis begins with a review of current knowledge on the epidemiology of HPAI, specifically subtype H5N1, and current options for its control worldwide and specifically within Cambodia. The first half of the thesis presents the methodology and results from a large-scale cross sectional survey of 3,600 rural subjects from 115 villages in six provinces throughout Cambodia. The results from this survey are used to explore animal ownership and husbandry, poultry mortality experienced and poultry mortality reporting, and the extent and frequency of poultry handling behaviours of subjects and how they differ by age and gender. The second half of the thesis presents results from a second cross-sectional survey of 715 rural villagers, 123 rural, peri-urban and urban market sellers and 139 middlemen from six Provinces and Phnom Penh, which was conducted to evaluate poultry movement and trading practices. The results from this survey are used to construct poultry movement networks using social network analysis techniques, to identify critical points for surveillance and to understand the potential transmission and control of HPAI over this network and to identify a spatial model to predict poultry movements. Finally in the last chapter the key findings are presented and discussed in the context of HPAI transmission in the region.


This research was initiated in the belief that new product development requires the integration of diverse knowledge located in different units or organizations. In recent decades, evolutionary scholars have emphasized the importance of coherent systems and regional scientists have highlighted the importance of geographical proximity for easier transfer of tacit knowledge. Despite the strength of these explanations, they do not adequately address the balance between tacit and explicit knowledge, ignoring different types of knowledge conversion process (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
My research aims to bring a greater understanding of the integration of diverse knowledge for innovation achievements among different actors. Specifically, this thesis deals with project organization for new product development, exploring three main research areas: (1) company utilization of external companies and freelancers for project formation in relation to resource mobilization of companies; (2) types of knowledge conversion among employees within and between departments; and (3) the impacts of several meditating factors on clustering orientations of companies. These meditating factors include knowledge codification, IT technology for communication, and trust mechanisms that help to mobilize external knowledge and reduce friction among team members.
In this study, data are collected from questionnaire survey (104 firms) and interviews with 34 persons in the Korean game industry. Probit model, tobit model, and OLS regression model were used. The main findings are as follows. First, codified knowledge—concept reports, prototypes, and manuals—is produced through externalization as a game development project is in progress. Second, among several indicators of internal capability of companies, the type of initial industry—whether game companies started their business in the game industry—and expenditures on the purchase of intellectual property rights from other cultural industries have significant and positive impacts on the utilization of external partners. Third, information communication technology has a significant, negative impact on clustering orientation of companies while reliance on "communities of practice" and "built-in trust" have significant, positive impacts on that.


Abstract Objective To assess the acceptability of a Tdap vaccination program for partners of pregnant women. Study Design Pregnant women and their partners were enrolled in a prospective acceptability study. For partners absent during the initial encounter, an introductory letter inviting the partner to participate was sent home. Tetanus and diphtheria toxoids and acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap) was offered to vaccine-eligible partners while vaccine-eligible pregnant women were offered Tdap immediately postpartum, as per national recommendations at the time the study was conducted. Tdap acceptance was defined as vaccination during study participation. Results A total of 69 pregnant women and 63 partners were enrolled. Excluding the 19 partners reporting prior receipt, 61.4% of partners (27/44) accepted Tdap during the study. Those who enrolled following the introductory letter were more likely to accept Tdap than those enrolled at the initial encounter (84 vs. 44%, p = 0.005). Excluding the 29 pregnant women reporting prior receipt, 65% (26/40) received Tdap postpartum. Demographic factors and vaccine beliefs were not associated with Tdap acceptance. Conclusion Tdap vaccination for partners of pregnant women during prenatal care is acceptable. Large-scale implementation would require substantial interest and willingness of obstetrician-gynecologists to administer Tdap not only to pregnant women but also to their partners. Such a program would provide improved "cocooning" of vulnerable infants against pertussis.


This study explored the stories of critical moments experienced by applied sport psychology practitioners. The 13 recruited practitioners (eight male and five female) were in different stages of their development (trainee, neophyte, and experienced) and were asked to tell one story about a critical moment that significantly contributed to their development as applied practitioners. Narrative analysis was used to explore the stories of critical moments. Four distinct narrative structures were evident: Rebirth, Rags to Riches, Tragedy, and The Quest. There was one consistent narrative feature that supported these plots: Critical moments contribute toward an alignment between a practitioner's beliefs and behavior, which supports the development of a congruent philosophy of practice and the environment they choose to work within. The authors recommend future research, such as the use of narrative analysis, to explore alternative narrative structures and the investigation of successful and unsuccessful consultancy experiences.


Scour phenomenon around piles could endanger the stability of the structures placed on them. Therefore, an accurate estimation of the scour depth around piles is very important for engineers. Due to the complexity of the interaction between the current, seabed and pile group; prediction of the scour depth is a difficult task and the available empirical formulas have limited accuracy. Recently, soft computing methods such as artificial neural networks (ANN) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) have been used for the prediction of the scour depth. However, these methods do not give enough insight into the generated models and are not as easy to use as the empirical formulas. In this study, new formulas are given that are compact, accurate and physically sound. In comparison with the other soft computing methods, this approach is more transparent and robust. Comparison between the developed formulas and previous empirical formulas showed the superiority of the developed ones in terms of accuracy. In addition, the given formulas can be easily used by engineers to estimate the scour depth around pile groups. Moreover, in this study, design factors are given for different levels of acceptable risks, which can be useful for design purposes.


Research in network traffic measurement and analysis is a long-lasting field with growing interest from both scientists and the industry. However, even after so many years, results replication, criticism, and review are still rare. We face not only a lack of research standards, but also inaccessibility of appropriate datasets that can be used for methods development and evaluation. Therefore, a lot of potentially high-quality research cannot be verified and is not adopted by the industry or the community. The aim of this paper is to overcome this controversy with a unique solution based on a combination of distinct approaches proposed by other research works. Unlike these studies, we focus on the whole issue covering all areas of data anonymization, authenticity, recency, publicity, and their usage for research provability. We believe that these challenges can be solved by utilization of semi-labeled datasets composed of real-world network traffic and annotated units with interest-related packet traces only. In this paper, we outline the basic ideas of the methodology from unit trace collection and semi-labeled dataset creation to its usage for research evaluation. We strive for this proposal to start a discussion of the approach and help to overcome some of the challenges the research faces today.


OBJECTIVE
The authors' aim was to investigate whether antecedent nutritional routes influence immune responses after surgical insult.

SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA
Total parenteral nutrition (TPN) may influence host responses to infection. To the best of the authors' knowledge, however, no study has focused on the mechanisms underlying the influence of nutritional route on local, systemic, and remote organ (lung) responses after surgical insult.

METHODS
Sixty-eight rats were divided into TPN and total enteral nutrition (TEN) groups. The two groups received identical nutrients for 7 days and were then challenged intraperitoneally with 3 x 10(8) Escherichia coli. In the first experiment, the rats were observed for survival. In the second experiment, the rats were killed before (0 hours) challenge or 2 or 6 hours after challenge. Peritoneal exudative cells (PEC) and bronchoalveolar cells (BALC) were harvested and cultured in vitro. Colony-forming units of bacteria in the peritoneal lavage fluid (PLF) were determined. Tumor necrosis factor (TNF), interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1 alpha), interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) levels in serum, PLF, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), and cell culture supernatants were measured.

RESULTS
The 48-hour survival rate was higher in TEN than in TPN rats. Local immunity was depressed in the TPN group. Bacterial colony counts in PLF were significantly higher in the TPN group than in the TEN group after challenge. The number of PECs was significantly lower, and at 2 hours, local cytokine (TNF and IL-1 alpha) responses were diminished in the TPN group compared with the TEN group at 2 hours. The number of PECs showed a significant positive correlation with levels of local cytokines in the TEN group but not in the TPN group. Elevation of local IFN-gamma was significant from 0 to 6 hours in the TEN group but not in the TPN group. In vitro production of TNF by PEC was impaired in the TPN rats before challenge. Remote organ (lung) responses were suppressed in the TPN group. The number of BALCs and the TNF levels in BALF declined significantly between 0 and 2 hours in the TEN group but not in the TPN group. Interferon-gamma levels in BALF were higher in the TEN group than in the TPN group at 2 hours. Systemic cytokine responses were disturbed in the TPN group. Production of systemic TNF was greater, but the IFN-gamma response was diminished in the TPN group compared with the TEN group after intraperitoneal bacterial challenge.

CONCLUSION
Local, systemic, and remote organ (lung) immune responses to intraperitoneal bacterial challenge are suppressed in TPN-treated animals, leading to poor survival after challenge. Enteral nutrition before surgical insult may enhance host immune responses after the insult as compared to parenteral nutrition.


Abstract The collision of liquids of different densities is studied theoretically for the case of liquids having wedge-shaped configuration before the impact. Both liquids are assumed to be ideal and incompressible, and the velocity potential theory is used for the flow of each liquid. Surface tension and gravity effects are neglected. The problem is decomposed into two self-similar problems, one for each liquid. Across the interface between the liquids, continuity of the pressure and the normal component of the velocity is enforced through iteration. This determines the shape of the interface and other flow parameters. The integral hodograph method is employed to derive the solution consisting of analytical expressions for the complex-velocity potential, the complex-conjugate velocity, and the mapping function. They are all defined in the first quadrant of a parameter plane, in which the original boundary-value problem is reduced to a system of integro-differential equations in terms of the velocity magnitude and the velocity angle relative to the flow boundary. They are solved numerically using the method of successive approximations. The results are presented through streamlines, interface and free-surface shapes, the pressure and velocity distributions. Special attention is given to the structure of the splash jet rising as a result of the impact.


Stalking is a well-recognized social phenomenon, one that particularly affects health care professionals, especially psychiatrists and other mental health workers; however, the nature and effects of stalking of psychiatrists have not been examined in detail. This study is a qualitative thematic analysis of the free-text responses of 2,585 psychiatrists in the United Kingdom (approximately 25% of all U.K. psychiatrists), almost 11 percent of whom described being stalked according to a strict research definition, and 21 percent of whom perceived themselves as having been stalked. It demonstrates that threat minimization, negative psychological impact, awareness of vulnerability, and difficulty obtaining help were major themes in how psychiatrists viewed their experiences of being stalked. It shows how some psychiatrists coped better than others and makes suggestions for appropriate professional support.


Abstract Denovo is a new, three-dimensional, discrete ordinates (SN) transport code that uses state-of-the-art solution methods to obtain accurate solutions to the Boltzmann transport equation. Denovo uses the Koch-Baker-Alcouffe parallel sweep algorithm to obtain high parallel efficiency on O(100) processors on XYZ orthogonal meshes. As opposed to traditional SN codes that use source iteration, Denovo uses nonstationary Krylov methods to solve the within-group equations. Krylov methods are far more efficient than stationary schemes. Additionally, classic acceleration schemes (diffusion synthetic acceleration) do not suffer stability problems when used as a preconditioner to a Krylov solver. Denovo's generic programming framework allows multiple spatial discretization schemes and solution methodologies. Denovo currently provides diamond-difference, theta-weighted diamond-difference, linear-discontinuous finite element, trilinear-discontinuous finite element, and step characteristics spatial differencing schemes. Also, users have the option of running traditional source iteration instead of Krylov iteration. Multigroup upscatter problems can be solved using Gauss-Seidel iteration with transport, two-grid acceleration. A parallel first-collision source is also available. Denovo solutions to the Kobayashi benchmarks are in excellent agreement with published results. Parallel performance shows excellent weak scaling up to 20000 cores and good scaling up to 40000 cores.


This document describes the symmetric encryption algorithm called Puzzle. It is free and open. The objective of this paper is to get an opinion about its security from the cryptology community. It is separated in two parts, a technical description of the algorithm and its cryptanalysis. The algorithm has some interesting properties :
The block size is variable and unknown from an attacker. The size of the key has no limit and is unknown from an attacker. The key size does not affect the algorithm speed (using a 256 bit key is the same as using a 1024 bit key). The algorithm is much faster than the average cryptographic function. Experimental test showed 600 Mo/s - 4 cycles/byte on an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.40GHz and 1,2 Go/s - 2 cycles/byte on an Intel i5-3210M 2.50GHz. Both CPU had only 2 cores.


Traditionally, text classifiers are built from labeled training examples. Labeling is usually done manually by human experts (or the users), which is a labor intensive and time consuming process. In the past few years, researchers investigated various forms of semi-supervised learning to reduce the burden of manual labeling. In this paper, we propose a different approach. Instead of labeling a set of documents, the proposed method labels a set of representative words for each class. It then uses these words to extract a set of documents for each class from a set of unlabeled documents to form the initial training set. The EM algorithm is then applied to build the classifier. The key issue of the approach is how to obtain a set of representative words for each class. One way is to ask the user to provide them, which is difficult because the user usually can only give a few words (which are insufficient for accurate learning). We propose a method to solve the problem. It combines clustering and feature selection. The technique can effectively rank the words in the unlabeled set according to their importance. The user then selects/labels some words from the ranked list for each class. This process requires less effort than providing words with no help or manual labelillg of documents. Our results show that the new method is highly effective and promising.


This paper explores law enforcement in a federal system to address the reality that the level of deterrence often results from decision making at different levels of the system. In this setting, the presence of interregional externalities in the form of crime diversion induces socially excessive law enforcement incentives at the local level. We show that the adverse repercussions of uncoordinated enforcement decisions at the local level may be ameliorated by the strategic choice of the sanction at the central level. A nonmaximal sanction may be optimal, even though a maximal sanction would be optimal when the central level chooses all law enforcement variables. This conclusion shows that optimal law enforcement in a federal system must take account of the strategic interdependencies of relevant actors. We also discuss whether other arrangements of decision-making powers may be associated with higher levels of welfare.


Browser extensions enrich users' browsing experience, e.g., by blocking unwanted advertisements on websites. To perform these functions, users must grant certain permissions during the installation process. These permissions, however, give very limited information about the fact that they allow the extension to access user's personal data and browsing behaviour, posing security and privacy risks. To understand users' awareness of these privileges and the associated threats, we conducted an online survey with 353 participants, focusing on users' attitude, knowledge, and preference towards extensions' permission requests. We found that users report interest in seeking information, trust the developers but do little to protect their data. They have limited knowledge about the technical abilities of browser extensions and prefer permission statements that evoke a clear mental model. Based on our findings we derive recommendations for the improvement of browser extension permission dialogues through clear language, technical improvements and distinct responsibilities.


This research considers the nature of social integration between individuals living in desegregated neighbourhoods in post-apartheid Cape Town. Social integration is understood as a dynamic process between individuals from apartheid's different racial classifications as opposed to the common emphasis in the literature on the static outcome of a neighbourhood being integrat ed . The research was based on both quantitative and qualitative methods. A quantitative analysis of South Africa's 2001 census results was conducted. From this analysis neighbourhoods in Cape Town with "multiple population dominance', where no single group comprises more than 50% of the suburb population and at least one other group comprises over 25%, were identified. Qualitative fieldwork (semi-structured interviews and mental maps) was conducted in two of these 'multiple population dominance' suburbs. Based on research in these neighbourhoods I conclude that labelling a suburb as physically desegregated implies a level of social cohesion that was not found, and masks the reality of division based on length of tenure and socio-economic status. Within the specific South African context of racial inequality, such opposition to desegregation that is not matched by a shared class is likely to restrict the potential for social integration to develop beyond the confines of black middle-classes moving into 'White' areas, and poor Coloureds and Black Africans living in low-cost housing, thus affecting only a handful of the population.


This paper presents evidence obtained from a survey of 182 high school students. The evidence shows that, younger students in age range of 14 -16 years are more positive than the other year cohorts towards household work and towards the teaching of Home Economics in schools.
Results also show that all respondents of both sexes have a lot of interest in cooking and baking because they said they use the end products immediately after.
Home Economics was ranked fourth in order of importance behind Maths, Science and English by all age groups.
There is also evidence that after exposure to Home Economics courses, youths are more positive towards household chores.


This paper examines the use of market consultants and market information systems by grain and cotton producers. A model of producer demand for marketing information and consultants is proposed that decomposes price received into exogenous and endogenous components. The analysis is based on a survey of over 1,600 producers. The results suggest that expenditures on market information systems and market consultants are not independent and, more specifically, expenditures on marketing consultants substitute for expenditures on market information systems.


Integrated Kerr micro-combs are a powerful source of multiple wavelength channels for photonic radio frequency (RF) and microwave signal processing, particularly for transversal filter systems. They offer significant advantages featuring a compact device footprint, high versatility, large numbers of wavelengths, and wide Nyquist bands. We review progress photonic RF and microwave high bandwidth temporal signal processing based on Kerr micro-combs with comb spacings from 49GHz to 200GHz. We focus on integral and fractional Hilbert transforms, differentiators as well as integrators. The future potential of optical micro-combs for RF photonic applications in terms of functionality and ability to realize integrated solutions is also discussed.


Glutamate-operated ion channels (GluR channels) of the L-alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA)-kainate subtype are found in both neurons and glial cells of the central nervous system. These channels are assembled from the GluR-A, -B, -C, and -D subunits; channels containing a GluR-B subunit show an outwardly rectifying current-voltage relation and low calcium permeability, whereas channels lacking the GluR-B subunit are characterized by a doubly rectifying current-voltage relation and high calcium permeability. Most cell types in the central nervous system coexpress several subunits, including GluR-B. However, Bergmann glia in rat cerebellum do not express GluR-B subunit genes. In a subset of cultured cerebellar glial cells, likely derived from Bergmann glial cells. GluR channels exhibit doubly rectifying current-voltage relations and high calcium permeability, whereas GluR channels of cerebellar neurons have low calcium permeability. Thus, differential expression of the GluR-B subunit gene in neurons and glia is one mechanism by which functional properties of native GluR channels are regulated.


Arabidopsis thaliana is a plant that does not like the shade. If it is overshadowed, a response known as shade avoidance syndrome (SAS) is triggered. This involves adaptations, such as stem elongation, that give the plant a growth advantage over its neighbors. The growth hormone auxin is implicated in the early stages of SAS, but the mechanisms involved are poorly characterized. Tao et al. performed a genetic screen of Arabidopsis mutants and identified plants that did not adapt to shaded conditions. These plants had mutations in TAA1, which encodes the enzyme tryptophan aminotransferase of Arabidopsis. In response to shade treatment, the abundance of auxin was lower in TAA1 mutants than in wild-type plants; auxin target gene expression was also lower in TAA1 mutants. In wild-type plants, TAA1 was highly expressed in the leaves. Reporter assays performed in the presence of an auxin transport inhibitor showed the initial production of auxin in the leaves in response to shade treatment. Further biochemical studies showed that TAA1 catalyzed the conversion of tryptophan to indole-3-pyruvic acid (IPA), an initial step in the pathway to synthesize indole-3-acetic acid (auxin) that had been predicted but not previously biochemically characterized. In another study, Stepanova et al. performed an alternative genetic screen and identified an Arabidopsis mutant with defective root growth in response to the gaseous hormone ethylene. The mutant gene responsible for the defect was TAA1. As well as showing the tryptophan aminotransferase activity of TAA1 in vitro, the authors demonstrated a critical role for TAA1 in tissue-specific ethylene-dependent production of auxin in plants. As Palme and Nagy discuss in commentary, these studies have identified a critical step in how both environmental and hormonal signals stimulate the localized production of auxin, which then triggers appropriate responses. Y. Tao, J.-L. Ferrer, K. Ljung, F. Pojer, F. Hong, J. A. Long, L. Li, J. E. Moreno, M. E. Bowman, L. J. Ivans, Y. Cheng, J. Lim, Y. Zhao, C. L. Balleré, G. Sandberg, J. P. Noel, J. Chory, Rapid synthesis of auxin via a new tryptophan-dependent pathway is required for shade avoidance in plants. Cell 133, 164-176 (2008). [Online Journal] A. N. Stepanova, J. Robertson-Hoyt, J. Yun, L. M. Benavente, D.-Y. Xie, K. Doležal, A. Schlereth, G. Jürgens, J. M. Alonso, TAA1-mediated auxin biosynthesis is essential for hormone crosstalk and plant development. Cell 133, 177-191 (2008). [Online Journal] K. Palme, F. Nagy, A new gene for auxin synthesis. Cell 133, 31-32 (2008). [Online Journal]


#### Summary points

Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a common speech disorder of neural speech processing that typically begins during the first years of life. An Australian cohort study (n=1619) of children recruited at 8 months of age found that 8.5% had begun to stutter a 36 months of age, and 12.2% by 48 months.1 A review of 44 studies shows a prevalence of around 1% for schoolchildren worldwide (range 0.03-5.2%).w1 Stuttering is essentially a movement disorder of speech, with observable effects on the jaw and mouth, but also facial muscles and sometimes upper limbs. Those who stutter are at risk of developing social anxiety or mental health problems.

Evidence from randomised trials has shown that treatment before 6 years of age reduces the chance of stuttering becoming intractable. Children can recover without formal intervention, but it is not possible to predict who will recover spontaneously. It is therefore best to take advantage of the window of opportunity within which children may be treated with best effect, which is within one year of onset. For adults with long term stuttering, early randomised trials of behavioural and cognitive interventions show promise.

#### Sources and selection criteria

We consulted our own archive and searched the Institute …


Objectives: Profound racial/ethnic immunization rate disparities exist among young children in Chicago. We created BIRTH PIP, a program combining immunization education at birth with ongoing reminder-recall, to achieve greater than 90% on-time adherence with AAP/ACIP immunization recommendations among inner-city children aged 0-35 months. The study also examines the cost of this effort. Study Design: Outreach workers met with post-partum mothers who were English speaking, Chicago residents and receiving Medicaid, to provide immunization education and determine a contact strategy. Parents were reminded of each well-child appointment. Those missing appointments were re-contacted and rescheduled. Home visits were made when there was no contact by phone and mail. Enrollees and immunizations were tracked until all recommended immunizations were received. On-time immunization rates were compared with city-wide immunization data. Costs were calculated by assessing outreach worker effort and other programmatic costs. Results: A total of 400 neonates were enrolled. At all examined time points, on-time immunization rates exceeded city-wide data. Of those completing the program, 92% of children had 100% compliance with prescribed immunizations by 24 months. No child required follow-up past 29 months. Retention was an important problem, primarily due to pre-set eligibility requirements. Mean cost per child to complete recommended immunizations was $288. Compliant families were less expensive to maintain. Conclusions: BIRTH PIP is effective in improving immunization rates in underserved children. Economies of scale will decrease the per child cost. Preventing even a few cases of vaccine-preventable illness would likely render this initiative cost-effective.


Smart home assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home are primarily used for day-to-day tasks like checking the weather or controlling other IoT devices. Securitysensitive use cases such as online banking and voicecontrolled door locks are already available and are expected to become more popular in the future. However, the current state-of-the-art authentication for smart home assistants consists of users saying low-security PINs aloud, which does not meet the security requirements of security-sensitive tasks. Therefore, we explore the design space for future authentication mechanisms. We conducted semi-structured interviews with N = 16 Alexa-users incorporating four high-risk scenarios. Using these scenarios, we explored perceived risks, mitigation strategies, and design-aspects to create secure experiences. Among other things, we found that participants are primarily concerned about eavesdropping bystanders, do not trust voicebased PINs, and would prefer trustworthy voice recognition. Our results also suggest that they have context-dependent (location and bystanders) requirements for smart home assistant authentication. Based on our findings, we construct design recommendations to inform the design of future authentication mechanisms.


The Western world sees Timbuktu as the archetypal fantasy land--somewhere mysterious and exotic. Recent events in this very real city in Mali, though, demand the close attention of the outside world. Jihadism, separatism, ethnic strife, and loose weapons have come together in the Azawad region of ethnically-Tuareg northern Mali to create a volatile security situation and a growing humanitarian crisis. Given these circumstances, European powers have begun to move toward a military solution: France plans to send surveillance drones into Mali, while the United Kingdom and Germany have both hinted at armed intervention. This approach involving foreign military intervention is misguided. Rather, the government of south Mali, with diplomatic and financial aid from the international community, must win over the Tuareg rebels through social programs and an invitation to participate in government. This approach of reconciliation may not end the conflict, but it will throw a wrench into the plans of the separatists. The resistance groups that now control northern Mali are not monolithic and have within their ranks both extremists and moderates, the latter of which are more open to a peaceful resolution, There are at least five distinct and apparent factions present: Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Boko Hamm, and the Movement for Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). Ansar Dine is a Malian and predominantly Tuareg Islamist group which may or may not have ties to AQIM. The MOJWA is an offshoot of AQIM whose ideology is similar to Al Qaeda's, but whose focus is on a black African brand of jihad. There has also been speculation that the Nigerian terrorist organization Boko Haram and Al Qaeda itself have entered Mali. The MNLA was once the driving force behind the separatist movement, but has since violently broken with its Islamist partners. Journalist and author Andy Morgan estimates that each group has two to three thousand members among its ranks. These groups fall into two categories. Ansar Dine, the MOJWA, Boko Haram., and AQPVI are ideologically and religiously driven and generally not receptive to diplomatic talks or cooperation. On the other hand, the MNLA is not hard-line. Much like the "accidental guerrillas" David Kilcullen described in his 2009 book on the insurgency in Afghanistan, the members of the secular Tuareg separatist movement likely feel forced into violent resistance by an indifferent government and unlivable conditions. This makes bargaining with members of the MNLA much easier than with members of the other groups. The Tuareg goal is not violent insurrection for its own sake, but for improved political and economic status for their region. The government of Mali should be ready to offer the Tuareg population of northern Mali the essential services that they have requested in the past. Specifically, the government should provide famine and drought relief to a hungry and thirsty region, grant some degree of provincial self-governance to northern Mali, and encourage Tuareg participation in the government and the military. …


The strontium magneto optical trap followed by a Zeeman slower has been demonstrated. The isotope selective characteristics of the trap have been investigated. The fluorescence spectrum of the MOT was compared with those of other high resolution spectroscopic methods. The red detuned deflection beam is also considered for a more selective spectrum.


Respiratory infections can cause wheezing episodes in children and can influence the onset and severity of asthma via complex and intersecting mechanisms. Infections can trigger atopic asthma, and atopy can cause wheezing during airway infections and modify the course of airway infections. Mycoplasma pneumoniae (M. pneumoniae), primarily recognized as a causative agent of community-acquired pneumonia, has recently been linked to asthma. Infections with M. pneumoniae can precede the onset of asthma, exacerbate asthmatic symptoms, and cause difficulties with asthma management.1

The clinical association between M. pneumoniae infection and exacerbation of asthma symptoms has been suspected for longer than two decades; however, the nature of the correlation is still far from clear. In 1970, Berkovich et al.2 provided the first prospective study showing serological evidence of infection with either M. pneumoniae or a respiratory virus in 27 of 84 (32%) asthma patients. Huhti et al.3 analyzed 63 patients after severe episodes of acute asthma and found that 19% had associated viral or mycoplasma infections. Biscardi et al.4 reported that 20% (24/119) of the patients with previously diagnosed asthma had simultaneous acute M. pneumoniae infection and asthma exacerbation; of 51 patients experiencing their first episode, acute infection with M. pneumoniae was identified in 26 (50%) of the patients. Therefore, based on the current literature, M. pneumoniae appears to be an important trigger for the acute exacerbation of asthma, accounting for 3.3%-50% of exacerbations.

Several recent studies have implicated M. pneumoniae infection in the pathophysiology of asthma in subsets of patients. In two of the most influential studies, Kraft et al.5 and Martin et al.6 used polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) to detect M. pneumoniae in the lower pulmonary airways in 25 of 55 (45%) adult patients with chronic stable asthma, compared with 1 of 11 (9%) controls. Using serology and PCR, Esposito et al.7 found M. pneumoniae significantly more often in children with acute episodes of wheezing than in controls, and infection was significantly associated with a history of recurrent wheezing. Lieberman et al.8 showed in a prospective study using serological detection that M. pneumoniae infection was significantly associated with acute exacerbation of bronchial asthma. Furthermore, treatment with antibiotics against M. pneumoniae significantly improved pulmonary function in asthmatics with M. pneumoniae infection, suggesting a role for infection in chronic asthmatics.9

Although the evidence linking M. pneumoniae infection with exacerbation and chronic asthma is convincing, the role of M. pneumoniae as the cause of the initial onset of asthma remains unclear. In 1994, Yano et al.10 was first to describe a patient in whom a previous acute mycoplasmal respiratory infection led to an initial onset of bronchial asthma. In a follow-up study in 50 children, Mok et al.11 reported that five children (10%) with M. pneumoniae respiratory illness developed clinical signs of asthma. All five children, however, had a family and personal history of atopy. It seems that acute infection with M. pneumoniae can initiate asthma in some previously asymptomatic patients and in some individuals with atopy. However, regarding a quantitative role of these bacteria or a direct cause-and-effect association as asthma initiators, additional large population-based prospective or cohort studies are necessary before definitive conclusions can be drawn.

The mechanisms of M. pneumoniae interactions with human airways are complex and multifactorial. Underlying mechanisms of M. pneumoniae infection-induced or exacerbated asthma may involve the stimulation of predisposing immune responses. Factors involved in these immune responses may include the induction of Th2 cytokines, immune cells, and IgE production; physiological changes such as bronchial obstruction, angiogenesis, edema, and cell wall thickening; and even neural mechanisms.5,6,10-12 Further elucidation of these mechanisms may enable the development of novel therapeutic strategies for the prevention and treatment of infection-induced asthma. The immune cells of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid in children with M. pneumoniae pneumonia were found to comprise high percentages of neutrophils and lymphocytes.12 Thus, the exacerbation of asthma may be related to neutrophil cytokine signaling and degranulation, and cell lysis at the respiratory epithelial cell surface.13,14 In addition, asthmatics with infection had a significantly greater number of mast cells than asthma patients without infection.6 These observations suggest that M. pneumoniae infections, particularly in children, may result in a dominant Th2 response that induces increased IgE release, thereby predisposing patients to atopy.

Increased airway wall thickness has been observed in several different studies in asthma patients. Continued function requires extensive microvascular systems, and adding thickness to the airway wall further reduces airway conductance.15 Angiogenesis and edema have been associated with airway remodeling in asthma. These responses to M. pneumoniae infection of the airways may induce chronic asthma.16 However, studies about how this feature of asthma is affected during bacterial infection and the impact on treatment of the disease have only recently commenced.

Animal models of chronic airway infection with M. pulmonis (the murine equivalent of human M. pneumoniae) have been used to describe the mechanisms underlying angiogenesis, vascular remodeling, and airway wall thickening observed in asthma.15 Airway remodeling results from inflammatory responses that allow the movement of leukocytes and plasma proteins into the airway epithelium. This vascular leakage is promoted by vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF).15

As presented in this issue of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Research, Jeong et al.17 investigated the changes in VEGF and interleukin-5 (IL-5) serum levels in atopic children with M. pneumoniae pneumonia. The authors showed that the serum levels of VEGF and IL-5 were increased in atopic children with mycoplasma pneumonia compared with levels in other groups. Furthermore, the serum levels of VEGF and IL-5 were increased at the recovery phase compared with the admission phase. These results suggest an association between M. pneumoniae infection and VEGF or IL-5 in the pathogenesis of atopic asthma in children. A limitation to this study was the reliance on the past and family history of allergic diseases and IgE concentration to define atopy. Future studies will require a more definitive definition of atopy in study subjects. In addition, a long-term follow-up study examining the development of asthma in non-atopic individuals with mycoplasma infection would be interesting. Further research will be required to demonstrate a link between the development of hypersensitivity and M. pneumoniae infection.

Despite recent advances in diagnostic technology and the development of animal models representative of human disease, well-designed and controlled human clinical studies and experimentation with animal models are needed to elucidate the role of M. pneumoniae infection in the predisposition for or protection from asthma. Future large, general population-based prospective studies will be necessary to investigate the development of asthma induced by M. pneumoniae infection in humans.


Natural resources account for 20% of world trade, and dominate the exports of many countries. Policy is used to manipulate both international and domestic prices of resources, yet this policy is largely outside the disciplines of the WTO. The instruments used include export taxes, price controls, production quotas, and domestic producer and consumer taxes (equivalent to trade taxes if no domestic production is possible). We review the literature, and argue that the policy equilibrium is inefficient. This inefficiency is exacerbated by market failure in long run contracts for exploration and development of natural resources. Properly coordinated policy reforms offer an avenue to resource exporting and importing countries to overcome these inefficiencies and obtain mutual gains.


In this paper, we consider the problem of Gaussian process (GP) optimization with an added robustness requirement: The returned point may be perturbed by an adversary, and we require the function value to remain as high as possible even after this perturbation. This problem is motivated by settings in which the underlying functions during optimization and implementation stages are different, or when one is interested in finding an entire region of good inputs rather than only a single point. We show that standard GP optimization algorithms do not exhibit the desired robustness properties, and provide a novel confidence-bound based algorithm StableOpt for this purpose. We rigorously establish the required number of samples for StableOpt to find a near-optimal point, and we complement this guarantee with an algorithm-independent lower bound. We experimentally demonstrate several potential applications of interest using real-world data sets, and we show that StableOpt consistently succeeds in finding a stable maximizer where several baseline methods fail.


With the development of ultra-high-throughput technologies, the cost of sequencing bacterial genomes has been vastly reduced. As more genomes are sequenced, less time can be spent manually annotating those genomes, resulting in an increased reliance on automatic annotation pipelines. However, automatic pipelines can produce inaccurate genome annotation and their results often require manual curation. Here, we discuss the automatic and manual annotation of bacterial genomes, identify common problems introduced by the current genome annotation process and suggests potential solutions.


ABSTRACT Objective: To study the clinico-microbiological profile of oral candidiasis in head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) patients undergoing curative radiotherapy (cRT). Methods: Patients undergoing cRT and developing oral candidiasis were enrolled. Clinical features such as pain and xerostomia were recorded. Candida isolates from lesions were speciated using CHROMagar (Himedia Inc.), and antifungal susceptibility was determined using microbroth dilution (MBD). Patients were followed up to study the clinical course of infection. Results: Of the 100 patients undergoing cRT, 79 developed oral candidiasis. Median duration to development of infection was 4 weeks (range: 1-6.5 weeks). Mucositis was observed in 76 (96.2%) and xerostomia in 53 (67.1%) patients; 61 patients (77.2%) had symptoms attributable to candidiasis. However, there was no correlation between severity of infection and mucositis (p=0.84) or xerostomia (p=0.51). Candida albicans was the most frequent (47 patients, 59.4%) isolate, followed by Candida tropicalis (23 patients; 29.1%). All isolates were sensitive to nystatin, but fluconazole resistance/dose-dependent susceptibility was noted in 26 (32.9%) isolates. Both Candida krusei and two of four Candida glabrata isolate exhibited fluconazole resistance. All patients received treatment for Candidiasis. On follow-up, 1 month after cRT, oral candidiasis resolved with gradual recovery of mucositis in all patients. Conclusion: Candida albicans was the most common cause of oral Candidiasis in HNSCC cRT, and all isolates were susceptible to nystatin in-vitro. All lesions resolved with recovery from mucositis. In addition, as no patient developed systemic candidiasis, it appears that oral candidiasis though troublesome is curable with treatment. Keywords : Radiation mucositis, CHROMagar, Microbroth dilution, Antifungal susceptibility.


Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is often diagnosed in childhood but persists into adulthood in many cases. This disorder, which is defined by the core symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, is also associated with impairment in academic settings, interpersonal relationships, and behavioral risk taking. While ADHD is most often treated with medication (e.g., stimulants), brief psychosocial treatments have also been shown to produce improvement in adults with ADHD, although these have not been adequately tested in college-aged populations. The current study tested a brief, eight-session cognitive-behavioral protocol in a case-series design with four college students with ADHD. Participants completed measures tapping ADHD symptoms as well as symptoms of anxiety and depression, and others which tapped general impairment in academic, social and employment domains. The findings indicate that the protocol may be an effective, short-term treatment option for college students with ADHD.


Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was one of only a handful of women who exhibited both at the famed Paris Salon and with the French Impressionists. Her exquisite work depicts the world of the Parisian bourgeoisie: their clothes, their life-styles, their surroundings, and their relationships. Over one hundred full-color paintings, graphic works, watercolors, and pastels are reproduced in this volume, and are accompanied by original commentaries that follow the artist's career from her training with Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot to her final work. Included in the volume is an essay that Morisot wrote about her nephew-in-law Paul Valery in 1948-a seminal text that has never been included in his collected works-as well as extensive correspondence and sketchbooks held at the Musee Marmottan Monet, which have rarely been accessible. Morisot has been hailed by historians as one of the forgotten women artists of the 19th century, and this volume helps to reveal her artistic influence on her better-known peers.


A shape grammar defines a procedural shape space containing a variety of models of the same class, e.g. buildings, trees, furniture, airplanes, bikes, etc. We present a framework that enables a user to interactively design a probability density function (pdf) over such a shape space and to sample models according to the designed pdf. First, we propose a user interface that enables a user to quickly provide preference scores for selected shapes and suggest sampling strategies to decide which models to present to the user to evaluate. Second, we propose a novel kernel function to encode the similarity between two procedural models. Third, we propose a framework to interpolate user preference scores by combining multiple techniques: function factorization, Gaussian process regression, autorelevance detection, and l1 regularization. Fourth, we modify the original grammars to generate models with a pdf proportional to the user preference scores. Finally, we provide evaluations of our user interface and framework parameters and a comparison to other exploratory modeling techniques using modeling tasks in five example shape spaces: furniture, low-rise buildings, skyscrapers, airplanes, and vegetation.


Cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises and whales) have been of greatest interest to the astrobiology community and to those interested in consciousness and selfawareness in animals. This interest has grown primarily from knowledge of the intelligence, language and large complex brains that many cetaceans possess. The study of cetacean and primate brain evolution and cognition can inform us about the contingencies and parameters associated with the evolution of complex intelligence in general, and, the evolution of consciousness. Striking differences in cortical organization in the brains of cetaceans and primates along with shared cognitive capacities such as self-awareness, culture, and symbolic concept comprehension, tells us that cetaceans represent an alternative evolutionary pathway to complex intelligence on this planet.


The adverse effects of prolonged exposure to microgravity can be predicted by observations in astronauts and animals on short duration space flight. Long term space travel to Mars and beyond will demand countermeasures to microgravity habitation and theoretically the most promising is living in an environment in the presence of simulated or artificial gravity. An international roadmap for artificial gravity research clearly sets a bold ambition for the next 8 years plus and one small step, namely proof that artificial gravity generated in space can attenuate soft and hard tissue atrophy in mice has just been taken.


Parallax, a new operating system, implements scalable, distributed, and parallel computing to take advantage of the new generation of 64-bit multi-core processors. Parallax uses the Distributed Intelligent Managed Element (DIME) network architecture, which incorporates a signaling network overlay and allows parallelism in resource configuration, monitoring, analysis and reconfiguration on-the-fly based on workload variations, business priorities and latency constraints of the distributed software components. A workflow is implemented as a set of tasks, arranged or organized in a directed acyclic graph (DAG) and executed by a managed network of DIMEs. These tasks, depending on user requirements are programmed and executed as loadable modules in each DIME. Parallax is implemented using the assembler language at the lowest level for efficiency and provides a C/C++ programming API for higher level programming.


National organizations recommend cholesterol screening in children to prevent vascular disease in adulthood. There are currently no recommendations for cholesterol and lipoprotein (a) testing in children who experience an arterial ischemic stroke. While dyslipidemia and elevated lipoprotein (a) are associated with ischemic stroke in adults, the role of atherosclerotic risk factors in childhood arterial ischemic stroke is not known. A review of the literature was performed from 1966 to April 2012 to evaluate the association between childhood arterial ischemic stroke and dyslipidemia or elevated lipoprotein (a). Of 239 citations, there were 16 original observational studies in children (with or without neonates) with imaging-confirmed arterial ischemic stroke and data on cholesterol or lipoprotein (a) values. Three pairs of studies reported overlapping subjects, and two were eliminated. Among 14 studies, there were data on cholesterol in 7 and lipoprotein (a) in 10. After stroke, testing was performed at >three-months in nine studies, at ≤three-months in four studies, and not specified in one study. There were five case-control studies: four compared elevated lipoprotein (a) and one compared abnormal cholesterol in children with arterial ischemic stroke to controls. A consistent positive association between elevated lipoprotein (a) and stroke was found [Mantel-Haenszel OR 4.24 (2.94–6.11)]. There was no association in one study on total cholesterol, and a positive association in one study on triglycerides. The literature suggests that elevated lipoprotein (a) may be more likely in children with arterial ischemic stroke than in control children. The absence of confirmatory study on dyslipidemia should be addressed with future research.


Abstract Background. Due to the non-specific nature of symptoms of UTI in children and low levels of urine sampling, the prevalence of UTI amongst acutely ill children in primary care is unknown. Objectives. To undertake an exploratory study of acutely ill children consulting in primary care, determine the feasibility of obtaining urine samples, and describe presenting symptoms and signs, and the proportion with UTI. Design. Exploratory, observational study. Setting. Four general practices in South Wales. Subjects. A total of 99 sequential attendees with acute illness aged less than five years. Main outcome measure. UTI defined by >105 organisms/ml on laboratory culture of urine. Results. Urine samples were obtained in 75 (76%) children. Three (4%) met microbiological criteria for UTI. GPs indicated they would not normally have obtained urine samples in any of these three children. However, all had received antibiotics for suspected alternative infections. Conclusion. Urine sample collection is feasible from the majority of acutely ill children in primary care, including infants. Some cases of UTI may be missed if children thought to have an alternative site of infection are excluded from urine sampling. A larger study is needed to more accurately determine the prevalence of UTI in children consulting with acute illness in primary care, and to explore which symptoms and signs might help clinicians effectively target urine sampling.


Objectives
Federal food assistance programs target low-income and nutritionally-vulnerable Americans, with the dual goals of reducing food insecurity and improving diet quality. Individuals on limited food budgets may face constraints on their ability to purchase healthy foods when their prices increase, which could mitigate the intended impact of federal feeding programs. To better understand the effect of food price changes on healthy food purchases, we use a laboratory-based grocery store experiment to estimate the own- and cross-price elasticity of foods among individuals participating in federal food assistance programs (participants) and those not participating in these programs (non-participants). We focus on eggs, which are rich in many important nutrients and can be a healthy part of a wide range of cultural food menus.

Methods
Participants (n = 40) and non-participants (n = 40) were recruited to participate in this study. Subjects were assigned a food budget based on the USDA Thrifty Food Plan, and were asked to purchase enough food for their families for a one week period using our laboratory-based grocery store. Questionnaires and body measurements were used to collect information on demographic characteristics, psychosocial factors, and body mass index. Mixed linear regression models were used to assess the relationship between food price changes and food purchases (price elasticity).

Results
Subjects in both groups decreased their egg purchases by 6.9-8.6% for every 10% increase in egg price, although no difference in price elasticity was observed between groups. For every 10% increase in the price of all non-egg foods, egg purchases increased by 3.3% among participants but not non-participants, and purchases for foods such as lean meats, low-fat dairy, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains decreased by up to 14% among both groups.

Conclusions
Subjects in both groups purchased fewer eggs when their price increased. When the price of non-egg foods increased, participants moderately increased their purchase of eggs, and subjects in both groups drastically decreased their purchase of many healthy foods. Efforts to emphasize healthy eating strategies on limited budgets will be especially important during times of food price increases.

Funding Sources
This research was funded by the Egg Nutrition Center/American Egg Board and USDA-ARS.


Many verification tools build on automated solvers. These tools reduce problems in a specific application domain (e.g., compiler optimization validation) to queries that can be discharged with a highly optimized solver. But the correctness of the reductions themselves is rarely verified in practice, limiting the confidence that the solver's output establishes the desired domain-level property. This paper presents SpaceSearch, a new library for developing solver-aided tools within a proof assistant. A user builds their solver-aided tool in Coq against the SpaceSearch interface, and the user then verifies that the results provided by the interface are sufficient to establish the tool's desired high-level properties. Once verified, the tool can be extracted to an implementation in a solver-aided language (e.g., Rosette), where SpaceSearch provides an efficient instantiation of the SpaceSearch interface with calls to an underlying SMT solver. This combines the strong correctness guarantees of developing a tool in a proof assistant with the high performance of modern SMT solvers. This paper also introduces new optimizations for such verified solver-aided tools, including parallelization and incrementalization. We evaluate SpaceSearch by building and verifying two solver-aided tools. The first, SaltShaker, checks that RockSalt's x86 semantics for a given instruction agrees with STOKE's x86 semantics. SaltShaker identified 7 bugs in RockSalt and 1 bug in STOKE. After these systems were patched by their developers, SaltShaker verified the semantics' agreement on 15,255 instruction instantiations in under 2h. The second tool, BGProof, is a verified version of an existing Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) router configuration checker. Like the existing checker, BGProof scales to checking industrial configurations spanning over 240 KLOC, identifying 19 configuration inconsistencies with no false positives. However, the correctness of BGProof has been formally proven, and we found 2 bugs in the unverified implementation. These results demonstrate that SpaceSearch is a practical approach to developing efficient, verified solver-aided tools.


A two-step thermo-chemical cycle for solar production of hydrogen from water has been developed and investigated. It is based on metal oxide redox pair systems, which can split water molecules by abstracting oxygen atoms and reversibly incorporating them into their lattice. After proof-of-principle, successful experimental demonstration of several cycles of alternating hydrogen and oxygen production, and elaboration of process strategies presented in previous contributions, the present work describes a thermodynamic study aiming at the fine tuning of the redox system, at the improvement of process conditions, and at the evaluation of the potential of the process. For the redox material the oxygen uptake capability is an essential characteristic, because it is directly connected to the amount of hydrogen which can be produced. In order to evaluate the maximum oxygen uptake potential of a coating material and to be able to find new redox materials theoretical considerations based on thermodynamic laws and properties are helpful and faster than actual tests. Through thermodynamic calculations it is possible to predict the theoretical maximum output of H2 from a specific redox-material under certain conditions. Calculations were focussed on the two mixed iron oxides nickel-iron oxide and zinc-iron oxide. In the simulation the amount of oxygen in the redox-material is calculated before and after the splitting step on the basis of laws of thermodynamics and available material properties for the mixed-iron oxides used. For the simulation the commercial Software FactSage and available databases for the necessary material properties were used. The analysis showed that a maximum hydrogen yield is achieved if the regeneration temperature is raised to the limits of the operation range, if the temperature for the water splitting is lowered below 800 °C and if the partial pressure of oxygen during regeneration is decreased to the lower limits of the operational range. The increased hydrogen yield at lower splitting temperature of about 800 °C could not be confirmed in experimental results, where a higher splitting temperature led to a higher hydrogen yield. As a consequence it can be stated that kinetics must play an important role especially in the splitting step.Copyright © 2008 by ASME


Causal models can compactly and efficiently encode the data-generating process under all interventions and hence may generalize better under changes in distribution. These models are often represented as Bayesian networks and learning them scales poorly with the number of variables. Moreover, these approaches cannot leverage previously learned knowledge to help with learning new causal models. In order to tackle these challenges, we represent a novel algorithm called \textit{causal relational networks} (CRN) for learning causal models using neural networks. The CRN represent causal models using continuous representations and hence could scale much better with the number of variables. These models also take in previously learned information to facilitate learning of new causal models. Finally, we propose a decoding-based metric to evaluate causal models with continuous representations. We test our method on synthetic data achieving high accuracy and quick adaptation to previously unseen causal models.


Emerging developments in communications and computing technology may transform the nature of human identity, in the process rendering obsolete the traditional philosophical and scientific frameworks for understanding the nature of individuals and groups. Progress toward an evaluation of this possibility and an appropriate conceptual basis for analyzing it may be derived from two very different but ultimately connected social movements that promote this radical change. One is the governmentally supported exploration of Converging Technologies, based in the unification of nanoscience, biology, information science and cognitive science (NBIC). The other is the Transhumanist movement, which has been criticized as excessively radical yet is primarily conducted as a dignified intellectual discussion within a new school of philosophy about human enhancement. Together, NBIC and Transhumanism suggest the immense transformative power of today's technologies, through which individuals may explore multiple identities by means of online avatars, semi-autonomous intelligent agents, and other identity expansions.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To determine the effects of delivering a reflexology intervention on health outcomes of informal caregivers, and to explore whether intervention effects are moderated by caregiver characteristics.
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DESIGN
Two-group, randomized clinical trial.
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SETTING
Eight oncology clinics in urban and rural regions of Michigan and Illinois.
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SAMPLE
180 informal caregivers of patients with advanced breast cancer.
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METHODS
Caregivers were randomized to provide reflexology to individuals with cancer during a four-week period or to attention control. Data collection occurred at baseline and at weeks 5 and 11. Linear mixed-effects modeling was used to test intervention effects among all participants and the effects of the number of sessions delivered in the reflexology group.
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MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Caregiver characteristics; psychological, physical, and social outcomes.
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FINDINGS
Caregiver fatigue in the reflexology group was reduced compared to controls at weeks 5 (p = 0.02) and 11 (p = 0.05). No differences were found for anxiety, depression, pain, physical function, sleep disturbance, satisfaction with participation in social roles, and pain interference between caregivers who delivered reflexology and those who did not.
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CONCLUSIONS
Informal caregivers who provided reflexology to individuals with cancer did not have negative psychological, physical, or social outcomes. Fatigue levels were lower among caregivers who provided reflexology.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Clinicians need to be aware that providing supportive care interventions, such as reflexology, to reduce symptom burden does not increase negative outcomes on informal caregivers who provide this care, and it may even lead to reduced fatigue.


We present a systematic process of theoretical design and experimental fabrication of the large mode area and large negative dispersion photonic crystal fiber. An easily fabricated fiber structure is proposed. The influence of structure parameters deviations from the design on the chromatic dispersion are evaluated and a design rule is given. Finally our fabricated fiber and test results are demonstrated. The measured effective area of inner core mode is 40.7 mum(2) which is the largest effective area of high negative dispersion photonic crystal fibers that have been experimentally fabricated. The measured peak dispersion is -666.2ps/(nm.km) and the bandwidth is 40nm.


Following Paul Ricoeur's formulation of narrative identity as the dialectic of sameness ( idem- ) and change ( ipse -)identity, this chapter explores the trope of incompleteness in extracts from two artists' life stories to suggest that the synthesizing totality of the life history is continually interrupted, or broken, by accounts of new creative directions and the search for symbolic expression which mark the ipse -identity of the artist's selfhood. A coherent identity does not just refer to the singularity of that self but must also contend with the ascription of 'artist', the historical and cultural contingency of which is made manifest in the testimony of the life stories. Rather than seeing narrative emplotment leading towards a culmination or conclusion ["I became an artist"], narrative constitutes the means whereby the 'discordant concordance' of the temporal aporia of becoming and being an artist is enabled via the reflective ipseity that marks narrative identity's fractures and disruptions.


Low‐frequency (20 kHz–180 kHz) ultrasonic measurements have been performed in numerous air‐saturated acoustic materials, i.e., various foams and felts. By using a standard pulse‐echo technique, very precise wave‐speed measurements were achieved with either a cross‐correlation procedure or by using the Hilbert transform of the transfer function between a reference signal (with no sample) and the signal transmitted through the sample. The amplitude measurements were done in the Fourier domain via the cross power. The signal processing routines were implemented in the LabVIEW 2.0 environment. Some significant physical properties (e.g., tortuosity) related to the propagation of acoustic waves in porous media [e.g., J.‐F. Allard, Propagation of Sound in Porous Media (Elsevier, New York, (1993)] were obtained. Preliminary results made at 500 kHz, with the aim of measuring the viscous as well as thermal characteristic lengths, on water‐saturated sandstone specimens will also be reported.


This document discusses a few versatile, tool-like crowd performance algorithms necessary for humans to employ internet technologies to make better decisions collectively. This document also readily acknowledges that true collective intelligence approaches are foremost about organizational culture change and encouraging shared group norms (i.e., values) of sharing, openness, transparency, and collaboration. Humans will need to buy-in to the approaches and technology tools for any collective intelligence approach to work. The scope of this document has two sections: The first section dives into some of the known theory and empirical evidence supporting a case that collective intelligence does, in fact, lead to better decision outcomes - specifically that collective intelligence employing recent advances in internet technologies can provide greater advantages than traditional organizational methods of making decisions. The second section takes these underpinnings and then extends them to consider a tool and associated crowd performance algorithms that could be coupled into a packaged generic system that serves as a staging ground for an organization to launch collective intelligence efforts. This discussion considers how different features would be aligned with desired human and organizational factors, as well as what outcomes could be expected from such a generic system approach.