The labor market in the United States is evolving in unexpected ways following the 2007 recession. Career and technical education (CTE) has historically linked young people to the workplace. In this article we examine the U.S. labor market and provide multiple perspectives on its growth and direction and implications for future directions for CTE. We examine the often conflicting data-based arguments and suggest that in a future increasingly dominated by robotics and artificial intelligence, new entrants to the workforce will require very strong social, employability, and work-readiness skills that reflect the behavioral, attitudinal, and character traits highly valued in the workplace and in society. These noncognitive, nontechnical skills can be developed in the CTE classroom, but require both new technical content in these classrooms and changes in how CTE teachers deliver their curriculum.


Mobile cloud computing (MCC) has recently emerged as a state-of-the-art technology for mobile systems. MCC enables portable and context-aware computation via mobile devices by exploiting virtually unlimited hardware and software resources offered by cloud computing servers. Software architecture helps to abstract the complexities of system design, development, and evolution phases to implement MCC systems effectively and efficiently. This paper aims to identify, taxonomically classify, and systematically map the state of the art on architecting MCC-based software. We have used an evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) approach to conduct a systematic mapping study (SMS) based on 121 qualitatively selected research studies published from 2006 to 2019. The results of the SMS highlight that architectural solutions for MCC systems are mainly focused on supporting (i) software as a service for mobile computing, (ii) off-loading mobile device data to cloud-servers, (iii) internet of things, edge, and fog computing along with various aspects like (iv) security and privacy of mobile device data. The emerging research focuses on the existing and futuristic challenges that relate to MCC-based internet of things (IoTs), mobile-cloud edge systems, along with green and energy-efficient computing. The results of the SMS facilitate knowledge transfer that could benefit researchers and practitioners to understand the role of software architecture to develop the next generation of mobile-cloud systems to support internet-driven computing.


Many employers find that graduates and sandwich students come to them poorly prepared for the every day problems encountered at the workplace. Although many university students undertake team projects at their institutions, an education environment has limitations that prevent the participants experiencing the full range of problems encountered in the real world. To overcome this, action was taken on courses at the Plessey Telecommunications company and Loughborough University to disrupt the students' software development progress. These actions appear mean and vindictive, and are labeled 'dirty tricks' in this paper, but their value has been appreciated by both the students and their employers. The experiences and learning provided by twenty 'dirty tricks' are described and their contribution towards teaching essential workplace skills is identified. The feedback from both students and employers has been mostly informal but the universally favourable comments received give strong indications that the courses achieved their aim of preparing the students for the workplace. The paper identifies some limitations on the number and types of 'dirty tricks' that can be employed at a university and concludes that companies would benefit if such dirty tricks were employed in company graduate induction programmes as well as in university courses.


Interest in the patterns and predictability of various types of cancer has been steadily growing over the years (e.g. Steliarova-Foucher et al. 2004). However, comparative studies on geo-ethnic grounds (particularly Africa-specific) have been quite limited. Further, the influence of commonly known predisposing factors on various types of cancer has mainly been studied using conventional statistical analysis approaches which, typically, make assumptions about the underlying data distributions. We critically examine the common methods used in studying cancer predisposing factors and propose a novel triangular approach to detecting patterns in data samples. Three samples of cervix cancer, conjunctival cancer and Kaposi's sarcoma, collected from various regions in the United Republic of Tanzania, are subjected to techniques for graphical visualisation (GDV), association rules (AR) and dimensional reduction (DR). We uncover interesting patterns in the distribution of the three cancer types hinging on Tanzania's basic cultural attributes and geographical diversity. The results are analysed in a multi-disciplinary context - presenting an unprecedented approach to addressing cancer-related research issues. Our findings show that the triangular approach is capable of uncovering subtle cultural-driven relationships among data attributes. The findings present a rigorous basis for assessing and evaluating the impact of predisposing factors on the three types of cancer hence providing some useful guidelines into informed intervention, prevention and treatment of the diseases. On the basis of the results from the analysis, the paper makes recommendations as to how to structure future cancer studies in areas of similar geo-ethnic features. The triangular approach to extracting knowledge from data provides good insights into avoiding knowledge masking effects and highlights the need for formulating and designing a prototype model for updatable cancer-related data sources and storages aimed at connecting cancer registries across the African continent and beyond.


This Policy Essay discusses the emerging security threat of cyberterrorism and the historical impulse to restrict civil rights and civil liberties during times of national crisis. Cyberterrorism poses a significant danger that requires a strong and unequivocal response, but such a response need not sacrifice important constitutional safeguards. Frequently in our past, from the time of the two World Wars to the recent attacks on the World Trade Center, our leaders enacted policies that gave an illusion of enhancing security but in reality failed to provide additional safeguards and in the process abused constitutional rights. We argue that this historical pattern need not continue with regard to cyberterrorism. With proper planning and a sense of urgency, cyberterrorism can be addressed proactively before serious harm is done. This will not only reduce the possibility that the same terrorists who turned commercial airplanes into lethal bombs will turn our vast computer networks against us, but it will


Most studies of executive compensation have data on pay but not total income. Because exchange-listed Japanese firms (unlike exchange-listed U.S. firms) need not disclose executive compensation figures in their securities filings, most studies on Japan lack even good data on pay. Through 2004, however, the Japanese tax office disclosed the tax liabilities of the 73,000 Japanese with the highest incomes. We obtained this data, and match the high-tax list against the list of CEOs of the firms listed on Section 1 of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. We thus estimate salaries and risk exposure in a new way. We confirm survey and anecdotal evidence that Japanese executives earn less than American--- about one-fifth the pay, adjusting for firm size and outside income. Tobit regressions show that pay in Japan depends heavily on firm size (a .22 elasticity) and on accounting profitability, but not on stock returns. Additionally, family-owned firms and those with large lead shareholders pay less to employee CEOs not in the family or with large shareholdings, as do firms whose directors have less tenure on the board.


Despite a general role for the HIF hydroxylase system in cellular oxygen sensing and tumour hypoxia, cancer-associated mutations of genes in this pathway, including PHD2, PHD1, EPAS1 (encoding HIF-2α) are highly tissue-restricted, being observed in pseudohypoxic pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma (PPGL) but rarely, if ever, in other tumours. In an effort to understand that paradox and gain insights into the pathogenesis of pseudohypoxic PPGL, we constructed mice in which the principal HIF prolyl hydroxylase, Phd2, is inactivated in the adrenal medulla using TH-restricted Cre recombinase. Investigation of these animals revealed a gene expression pattern closely mimicking that of pseudohypoxic PPGL. Spatially resolved analyses demonstrated a binary distribution of two contrasting patterns of gene expression among adrenal medullary cells. Phd2 inactivation resulted in a marked shift in this distribution towards a Pnmt−/Hif-2α+/Rgs5+ population. This was associated with morphological abnormalities of adrenal development, including ectopic TH+ cells within the adrenal cortex and external to the adrenal gland. These changes were ablated by combined inactivation of Phd2 with Hif-2α, but not Hif-1α. However, they could not be reproduced by inactivation of Phd2 in adult life, suggesting that they arise from dysregulation of this pathway during adrenal development. Together with the clinical observation that pseudohypoxic PPGL manifests remarkably high heritability, our findings suggest that this type of tumour likely arises from dysregulation of a tissue-restricted action of the PHD2/HIF-2α pathway affecting adrenal development in early life and provides a model for the study of the relevant processes.


Background. Cultural consensus modelling (CCM) is an approach whereby individuals define the boundaries regarding a set of knowledge or behaviours shared by a group within a culture using an ethnographic approach.  Objectives. To provide an overview of CCM methods and the application of CCM to examine South African adolescent girls' contraceptive and HIV prevention practices.  Methods. In phase 1 of a CCM approach, individuals respond to questions about their culture rather than their individual behaviours, allowing individuals to draw upon a shared cultural knowledge. Utilising these identified group beliefs, phase 2 asks individuals to rate the extent to which factors identified in phase 1 are valued. Phase 3 utilises qualitative interviews with key informants from phase 2 to gather in-depth information regarding the identified determinants of the health behaviour. Lastly, phase 4 of this approach conducts a quantitative survey to determine the extent to which cultural consensus model types are associated with differences in actual behaviours.  Results. CCM data analytic approaches are described. Frequencies and descriptive statistics for the free listing are conducted. For phase 2, cultural consensus analysis is conducted to examine whether one or several consensus models exist and competence scores are calculated. Standard qualitative analysis approaches are utilised for phase 3. Phase 4 employs regression to examine the association between cultural models and an outcome of interest.  Conclusion. CCM provides a novel, culturally sensitive understanding of reproductive health practices among South African adolescent girls; CCM also has broad applicability to other adolescent health research domains.


Viral infection of the bloom-forming diatom Chaetoceros tenuissimus was discovered in 2008, and is now assumed to have a significant influence on the dynamics of C. tenuissimus populations in natural environments. Enumeration of C. tenuissimus and its viruses is essential when examining the host-virus relationship in situ; however, the diatom species is so small in size that its identification and counting by optical microscope is almost impossible. To resolve this problem, we have developed a TaqMan-based real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method for detection and quantification of C. tenuissimus. We designed primers and a TaqMan probe to target the D1 region of its 28S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene; the established real-time PCR was specific at the species level by testing 41 microalgal strains including C. tenuissimus. Tris–EDTA buffer-based boiling method was shown to be efficient for extracting DNA from filter-trapped C. tenuissimus cells in this study. The detection range of the established TaqMan-based real-time PCR method for C. tenuissimus was 10 to 10 cells collected on a filter; the method was applicable for C. tenuissimus cells accompanied with natural microorganisms.


ABSTRACT In a previous work we developed GISwaps, a novel method for geospatial decision-making based on Even Swaps. In this paper, we present the results of an evaluation of a visualization framework integrated with this method, implemented within a decision support system. This evaluation is based on two different studies. In the quantitative study, 15 student participants used GISwaps with no visual features, and 15 participants used GISwaps with the integrated visual framework, as the tool in a solar farm site location case study. The results of the quantitative evaluation show positive impact of the visualization in terms of increased coherency in trade-offs. The results also show a statistically significant difference in average trade-off values between the groups, with users from the non-visual group setting on average 20% higher trade-off values compared with the users in the visual group. In the qualitative study, we had one expert in GIS, two experts in decision-making and two experts in solar energy as a focus user group. Data in this study were obtained by observations and semi-structured interviews with the participants. The impact of the visualization framework was assessed positively by all participants in the expert group.


This thesis reports on a study of the experiences of women who work, paid and unpaid, in three feminist organisations. The research aims to identify the issues that impact on this experience and to particularly consider issues of difference and inclusion in feminist organisations. The research also aims to examine what strategies women use through their participation in feminist organisations to influence their own work experience. The thesis explores the assertions of the literature that discusses traditional organisational life and the role of organisations in social movements. The feminist critiques of each of these fields and the alternatives proposed are examined to provide background and context.
This research employs a feminist qualitative methodology embedded within the theoretical framework of feminist standpoint. Data was primarily collected through semi structured interviews with twenty six women who worked with three different feminist organisations in Darwin, Northern Territory. The content of relevant organisational documentation was also analysed to enhance and provide context to the interview data.
The findings presented in this thesis identify a number of significant issues which impact on women's experience as workers in feminist organisations. Issues about structure and process are resolved by each organisation through informed, purposeful action that is relevant to their unique history and context, including the relationship of each organisation with the external political environment. Organisational strategies for attracting women from diverse backgrounds are experienced as not particularly successful, despite a collective and individual commitment to inclusion. A number of reasons for this are suggested including the limitations imposed by the white western definition of terms like 'activism' and 'exclusion'.
Close, friendship based relationships with other women workers are identified as the most significant single element that influences women's experience in feminist organisations. These relationships are understood by these women as simultaneously a source of pleasure and of pain. Undertaking work that 'makes a difference' is also very important in the way women understand their experience.
The thesis concludes that while working in feminist organisations is hard, demanding and potentially exploitative, the experience of these women is that being part of a feminist organisation is preferable to any other work environment and allows them an opportunity to pursue the political goals of the women's movement even at times when feminism as an ideology is under siege or in abeyance.


Prior to the 1912 Townsend Amendment in US copyright law, motion pictures could not be registered as such for copyright protection. Seeking protection against competitors, filmmakers in the formative years of the film industry printed their films to photographic paper and deposited them for copyright as a series of individual photographs. This method of complying with a technicality in the copyright law inadvertently led to the preservation of the earliest chapter in US motion picture history, a chapter that otherwise might have been lost. The so- called Paper Print Collection, still housed at the Library of Congress, encompasses approximately 3,000 film titles. This article examines the significance of the relation between copyright, archival practices and the consequences for the study of film history. It demonstrates how (circumventions of) mandatory copyright formalities were instrumental in the safeguarding of the film titles. In turn, they played a pivotal role in the 1978 International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) Congress in Brighton, UK, the landmark event that constituted a turning point in film historiography. An examination of the Paper Print Collection provides new insights into the relationship between copyright, registration systems, and media
historiographies.


The essays in this special issue by Jack R. Friedman, Sándor Horváth, Peter Heumos, and Eszter Zsófia Tóth, reflect a growing interest in the social history of industrial labor and industrial communities in postwar Central and Eastern Europe. While they approach their subjects in different ways and employing distinct methodologies, the essays suggest how the history of the working class and its relationship to postwar socialist state formation across the region might be rethought. They illustrate how the protracted construction and consolidation of socialist states in the region was negotiated on an everyday level by working-class citizens, and that this was a dynamic process in which state projects interacted with a variety of working-class cultures, that were in turn segmented by notions of gender, skill, generation, and occupation. The essays all demonstrate, in their different ways, how working-class Eastern Europeans were not simply acted upon by the operation of dictatorial state power, but played a role in state formation across the region. This role was characterized by an ambiguous relationship between workers and those in power who sought legitimacy by claiming that their states represented the interests of the "working class." Yet the policies those in power pursued often confronted working-class communities directly in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, as these essays suggest. This produced a complex relationship characterized by consent, accommodation and conflict that varied from locality to locality, state to state, and from period to period.


The purpose of this study is to analyze the regional difference of spatial distribution of residential satisfaction by extracting the elements of residential satisfaction in the text of tweet data. We determined three themes such as "safety", "amenity" and "convenience", base search terms by theme. And we detailed the search terms by base search term in order to retrieve the tweets related to the satisfaction of residential environments. We analyzed the selected tweets and visualized the results of analysis on the map and then investigated the satisfaction of residential environments through the index analysis which was a proportion of tweet ratio of theme to whole tweet ratio by region This study shows that it may replace the offline survey method by the analysis of tweets on SNS in investigating the satisfaction of residential environments by regions in South Korea.


mCRM (Mobile Customer Relationship Management) system is one of the recent advancements in CRM systems which combines the ubiquitous computing and CRM to enable organizations improve their customer services. This study investigates how various organizational resources influence the benefits organizations gain from their mobile CRM system. Drawing upon resource-based view of the firm and the IS success model proposed by DeLone & McLean, we have proposed a research model linking various resources in an organization to enhance benefits gained from mCRM system. To validate the proposed model, we have developed a survey to collect empirical data from companies using mCRM. We expect that the study help both academic and professionals to understand what organizational resources influence and how organizational benefits of mCRM systems are improved by employing the appropriate resources.


This paper is based on the practical experiences implementing batch projects on both new build and control system replacement projects. In particular, a technical and management framework specifically for exception handling is essential to ensure a known, proven, safe and maintainable validated batch system is delivered. The practical challenges are significant, projects following the classic specification lifecycle either fail to deliver the quality of information or the safety assessment tasks are conducted in parallel and therefore not available at the early stages. Working methods must be defined to allow the batch control system to accommodate exceptions with a high degree of transparency and flexibility.


Decreases in intrinsic NO cause cerebral vasospasms because of the dysregulation of cGMP formation by NO-mediated pathways. Because 5-cyclopropyl-2-{1-(2-fluorobenzyl)-1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridin-3-yl}pyrimidin-4-ylamine (BAY 41-2272) is a potent soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) stimulator in an NO-independent manner, this study aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying the relaxant effects of BAY 41-2272 in the rat basilar artery. BAY 41-2272 (0.0001 to 1 &mgr;mol/L) induced relaxations in a concentration-dependent manner, with pEC50 values of 8.13±0.03 and 7.63±0.05 in intact and denuded rings, respectively. The sGC inhibitor 1H-[1,2,4] oxadiazolo [4,3,-a]quinoxalin-1-one (ODQ) markedly displaced the curve for BAY 41-2272 to the right in intact or denuded rings (≈10-fold). The NO synthesis inhibitor NG-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester caused a rightward shift in the curve for BAY 41-2272 (4-fold), whereas the phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor sildenafil enhanced BAY 41-2272–induced relaxations (3- to 4-fold). The Na+-K+-ATPase inhibitor ouabain caused 3-fold rightward shifts in the curves for BAY 41-2272. Ca2+-induced contractions in K+ depolarized rings were significantly attenuated by BAY 41-2272 in an ODQ-insensitive manner. The NO donor glyceryl trinitrate and BAY 41-2272 caused rightward shifts in the contractile responses to serotonin. Their coincubation caused a synergistic inhibition of serotonin-induced contractions. BAY 41-2272 and glyceryl trinitrate increased cGMP levels (but not cAMP) by 10-fold and 4-fold above baseline, respectively, in an ODQ-sensitive manner. cGMP levels increased by 50-fold after coincubation. BAY 41-2272 potently relaxes the rat basilar artery in a synergistic fashion with NO. Targeting the sGC with selective activators, such as BAY 41-2272, may represent a new therapy to treat cerebrovascular disease.


The paper explores the possibilities of representing the semantics of eventualities in continuation semantics framework. It focuses on providing an analysis for quantification over eventualities and for anaphora to eventualities. We give specific lexical entries for the adverbial quantifiers always and never and for a silent adverbial quantifier we consider responsible for the meaning of expressions with no overt adverbial quantifiers. We point out that quantificational adverbs usually have an implicit restriction (i.e. the contextually relevant eventualities), as opposed to the nominal quantifiers where the restrictor is the noun phrase. This eventuality restriction is a set of eventualities that cannot be completely specified or enumerated. Nevertheless, the human mind has no problem to operate with this kind of vagueness. Also, we argue that the Scope Domain Principle, which says that the eventuality quantifier always takes lowest possible scope with respect to other quantifiers, is too strong.


Maharashtra state is accepting bids to redevelop Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia. A real estate developer assesses the risks and tenders a bid. The bid conditions include providing new free housing to tens of thousands of slum dwellers, which is anticipated to be paid for from the revenues from developing and selling market rate housing. While the primary concerns are cost of construction, cost of capital, and revenues from sale of units, the analysis must consider many aspects of risk including political risk, foreign exchange risk, market risk, and execution risk. Further, the discussion covers social aspects including whether the slum should be redeveloped at all, whether it should be redeveloped by government or by the private sector, and whether to accomplish it in large chunks or in smaller increments. Additional topics that can be covered include consideration of what happens to commercial activities formerly run from slum dwellings, whether the market rate units will indeed sell for high prices if there are tens of thousands of former slum dwellers housed nearby, and whether the slum dwellers will be allowed to resell their units or whether they must remain in them. Other issues include timing of the project, guarantees to and from the government and the private parties to mitigate risk, and whether this model, if successful, can be extended to other slums in Asia.


This paper presents an experiment on judgments of the perceived complexity of corridor layouts, experienced within a CAVE™-based virtual reality. This work built upon an earlier experiment (Holscher and Dalton, 2008) in which identical stimuli(the layouts of corridor systems in buildings) were presented in two modes: plan views and movies of simulated walkthroughs. By reproducing the earlier study data has now been gathered for three modes of presentation, the final being a virtual environment. After an initial training level, six randomly ordered stimuli were presented to 20 subjects: 'experts' (architects or students currently enrolled on an architectural course) and 'lay people' (all others). In each of these corridor systems, subjects were instructed to walk from the starting location ('A') to a distant goal ('B'), and to return unaided. Pointing tasks were undertaken at both locations A and B. They were then asked to judge the complexity of the layout and estimate the difficulty or ease of navigating in that environment. Finally they were asked to identify the correct corridor-layout from a series of similar plans. The aims were to investigate whether there were differences between these two groups in terms of their judgments of building complexity, effects of modality of stimuli (as compared to the earlier experiments) and if any environmental measures (for example information theoreticbased) correlated with the assessments of the two groups. The results were, first, that there is a significant effect of modality, and that the CAVE™ appeared to produce far better correlations with environmental measures of complexity (compared to the plan and movie views) and, second, that the differences between the judgments of the experts and non-experts were far less pronounced in this study, compared to the earlier study, possibly due to the limited number of layout-stimuli or to the relative simplicity of the corridor systems.


Inhibition of the tumor-promoting effects of transforming growth factor beta receptor (TGFβR) in carcinogenesis provides a better therapeutic intervention. Various natural compounds, inhibitors of TGFβR have been used for in vitro and in vivo anticancer study. Although very few TGFβR inhibitors are now intensifying in preclinical studies. In this study our aim to investigate TGFβR1, TGFβR2 and TAK1 inhibitor by using molecular docking and in vitro study. Our result revealed that some compounds have better docking energy. Moreover, the effect of two lead molecules epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and myricetin on the mRNA expression of TGFβR1 was reported after the 48 hrs treatments in HepG2 and PC3 cancer cell lines. The RT-PCR showed that compound EGCG and myricetin reduced the mRNA expression of TGFβR1 at 80 μM concentration. This molecular docking study provides a better understanding of binding of compounds to the active site of proteins and to summarize the various binding energy, hydrophobic, hydrogen, an electrostatic bond that are decisive for the protein-ligand interactions. Further experimental work will be required for validation of our results.


Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a major inflammatory and demyelinating disease of the central nervous system that is dependent on both environmental and genetic susceptibility factors. Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) of the vitamin D receptor gene (VDRG) may be related to MS risk. Material and Methods: The BsmI, FokI, ApaI and TaqI polymorphisms in the VDRG were studied on the DNA of 80 Iranian MS patients and 50 age-matched healthy controls by polymerase chain reactionrestriction fragment length polymorphism (PCRRFLP) method. Results: Our results demonstrated that genotypes frequency of the ApaI and BsmI VDR polymorphisms were significantly different between MS patients and controls (p=0.042, OR=2.5, 95%CI: 1.146-5.40 and p=0.023, OR=2.7, 95%CI: 1.08-6.75, respectively). The genotype and allele distribution of the FokI and TaqI VDRG polymorphisms did not differ between MS patients


This Interim Report provides first results from case studies of innovative rural development initiatives in Europe. They were conducted by IIASA's European Rural Development (ERD) project during 2001 -- primarily to test the feasibility of the research concept and to get a first realistic impression of rural development problems and possibilities at the IDeal level.

These reports are only the first round of a much larger sample of some 40 to 50 case studies, which are planned for the next two years. The results from these initial investigations will be used to streamline the research procedure for the larger sample of case studies.

The rural development initiatives in this report include the following projects: a project to promote direct marketing of organic farming products in Eastern Germany ("Scheunenhof"); an eco-tourism project in Estonia ("Viljandimaa"); a Hungarian project to promote environmental protection and tourism ("SPANC"); an EU-network project to promote integrated participatory planning in Finland, Sweden and Norway ("CROSSPLAN"); a private imitative to establish a rural high-tech company in Carinthia, Austria ("me.chanic"); a project in Finland to improve the social competence and labor qualifications of rural delinquents ("KEHYPAJA"); the project of a Swedish farmer to build a small-scale wind power plant ("PITCH WIND"); and the initiatives of a mother and son in a small Polish village to start a farm-tourism agency and an eco-technology center ("Sunflower Farm").


Mobile payment has been a payment option in the market for a long time now and was predicted to become a widely used payment method. However, over the years, the market penetration rate of mPayments has been relatively low, despite it having all characteristics required of a convenient payment method. The primaryrnreason for this has been cited as a lack of customer acceptance mainly caused due to the lack of perceived security by the end-user. Although biometric authentication is not a new technology, it is experiencing a revival in the light of the present day terror threats and increased security requirements in various industries. The application of biometric authentication in mPayments is analysed here and a suitable biometric authentication method for use with mPayments is recommended. The issue of enrolment, human and technical factors to be considered are discussed and the STOF business model is applied to a BiMoP (biometric mPayment) application.


A computer-designed hydropathically complementary peptide to human interleukin 1 beta (IL1 beta) precursor sequence 204-215 recognized the 204-215 peptide as well the entire IL1 beta protein with binding affinities in the micromolar range. Interaction between the complementary pair was characterized by analytical high-performance liquid affinity chromatography on columns derivatized with the computer-generated peptide. Recognition selectivity was clearly shown by the ability of the computer-generated complementary peptide columns to purify the IL1 beta-(204-215)-peptide from complex synthetic mixtures with high yields, independently of the type of solid support used. Recognition specificity was demonstrated by the inability of the IL1 beta-(204-215)-peptide and IL1 beta molecules to interact with blank columns or columns derivatized with other non-related peptides. Furthermore, scrambling the sequence of the computer-generated peptide or the IL1 beta-(204-215)-peptide in such a way as to alter their hydropathic profiles had the effect of abolishing binding. The complementary pair failed to interact in the presence of competing peptide, thus providing further evidence of specificity. Computer-generated complementary peptide affinity columns also proved useful for purification of recombinant human IL1 beta protein directly from crude Escherichia coli lysates.


The JT-60U data processing system is a large computer complex gradually modernized by utilizing progressive computer and network technology. A main computer using state-of-the-art CMOS technology can handle ~550 MB of data per discharge. A gigabit ethernet switch with FDDI ports has been introduced to cope with the increase of handling data. Workstation systems with VMEbus serial highway drivers for CAMAC have been developed and used to replace many minicomputer systems. VMEbus-based fast data acquisition systems have also been developed to enlarge and replace a minicomputer system for mass data. The JT-60U data analysis system is composed of a JT-60U database server and a JT-60U analysis server, which are distributed UNIX servers. The experimental database is stored in the 1TB RAID disk of the JT-60U database server and is composed of ZENKEI and diagnostic databases. Various data analysis tools are available on the JT-60U analysis server. For the remote collaboration, technical features of the data analysis system have been applied to the computer system to access JT-60U data via the Internet. Remote participation in JT-60U experiments has been successfully conducted since 1996.


About the book:
Leadership has proved a tricky beast to pin down and the subject has been approached from a variety of perspectives over the years. The beauty of this textbook lies in its role as an illustrative guide though the wilds of an elusive discipline. This second edition of Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Key Trends offers a balanced combination of theory and practice to provide an up-to-date account of this multi-faceted topic. Looking at the international and comparative aspects of leadership, Storey also discusses new modes of leadership that will be required to steer organizations to success in a recessive environment. Topics include: Changing theories of leadershipStrategy and leadershipEthics and leadershipLeadership development in public sector organizationsFollowership and distributed leadershipLeadership development in multi-national firms With improved pedagogical features, this new edition is the ideal text for students of leadership studies, as well as practitioners looking to enhance their leadership skills.


This paper reviews a series of clinical, post mortem and imaging studies on exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhage (EIPH) performed on 26 Thoroughbred racehorses. Post mortem techniques included routine gross, subgross and histological examination; coloured latex perfusions of pulmonary and bronchial circulations; and microradiography and computerised tomography scans of lungs with contrast injected vasculature. The major lesions were multiple, separate and coalescing foci of moderately proliferative small airway disease accompanied by intense neovascularisation of the bronchial circulation. As a result of bronchial artery angiogenesis, the systemic circulation dominated the vascular supply of the air exchange structures in affected areas, producing an apparent left to right shunt. Extensive areas of sequestered haemosiderophages indicated previous haemorrhage from vessels apparently supplied by the bronchial arteries. Diffuse and focal parenchymal destruction and connective tissue reactions in affected areas were considered to be secondary to localised haemorrhage and macrophage-induced damage. The aetiology of EIPH was not determined, but the multifocal, small airway-centred lesions indicated that low grade bronchiolitis, possibly of viral origin, was a factor. Gravitational effects also appear to contribute to dorsal distribution of the lesions. The mild focal and subclinical lesions confined to secondary lobules are thought to evolve into the serious lung pathology observed in EIPH cases through the effects of localised hypoxia induced by maximal exercise and partial airway obstruction. Once initiated, a vicious cycle of increasing inflammatory damage and further local bleeding is set in motion.


We assess the effect of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws on public corruption in the United States. Specifically, we investigate the impact of switching from a weak to a strong state-level FOIA law on corruption convictions of state and local government officials. The evidence suggests that strengthening FOIA laws has two offsetting effects: reducing corruption and increasing the probability that corrupt acts are detected. The conflation of these two effects led prior work to find little impact of FOIA on corruption. We find that conviction rates approximately double after the switch, which suggests an increase in detection probabilities. However, conviction rates decline from this new elevated level as the time since the switch from weak to strong FOIA increases. This decline is consistent with officials reducing the rate at which they commit corrupt acts by about 20%. These changes are more pronounced in states with more intense media coverage, for those that had more substantial changes in their FOIA laws, for FOIA laws which include strong liabilities for officials who contravene them, for local officials, and for more serious crimes. Conviction rates of federal officials, who are not subject to the policy, show no concomitant change.


Mutant mice deficient in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase were used to induce teratomas. This enzyme is linked to the X chromosome, which can be inactivated in female embryo. The differences in the enzyme activity between yolk sac mesoderm and embryo versus yolk sac endoderm can be detected in female concepti by using appropriate crosses of wild-type and G6PD-deficient mice. Histochemical study showed that the dual cell population was observed in heterozygous embryos and in the embryomas derived from them. The teratomas derived from the corresponding yolk sac, however, were G6PD-positive from wild-type and G6PD-negative from homozygous enzyme-deficient mothers. We conclude that yolk-sac-derived teratomas are of endodermal origin because of the fact that the paternal X chromosome is inactivated in the yolk sac endoderm, whereas in the yolk sac mesoderm, as in the embryo, the inactivation is at random.


Hydrogen is a sustainable, non-polluting and low carbon alternative to fossil fuels; its use can reduce the negative effects of climate change. However, whilst there is public concern over climate change and support for the use of renewable energy sources, there is also distrust of using hydrogen as a fuel. New and safer methods for storing hydrogen are needed for transportation systems. In addition, generating and storing hydrogen at times when there is excess energy production capacity on the electricity grid can help balance the variability of demand and prevent wastage of surplus energy. This brief outlines research programmes within the University of Bath's Department of Chemical Engineering, focused on the development and evaluation of new materials for safe hydrogen storage for use in transport and grid systems. In particular, it highlights the work of University Prize Fellow Dr Valeska Ting.


Prior empirical and theoretical work has discussed the role of dominant search engine plays in the function of information gatekeeping on the Web, and there are reports on the high ranking of Wikipedia website among the search engine result pages (SERP). However, little research has been conducted on nonGoogle search engines and non-English versions of user-generated encyclopedias. This paper proposes a method to quantify the "display" gatekeeping differences of the SERP ranking and presents findings based on the Chinese SERP data. Based on 2,500 mainly-Chinese-language search queries, the data set includes the SERP outcome of four Chinese-speaking regions (mainland China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) provided by three major search engines (Baidu, and Google and Yahoo), covering over 97% of the search engine market in each region. The findings, analysed and visualized using network analysis techniques, demonstrate the followings: major user-generated encyclopedias are among the most visible; localization factors matter (certain search engine variants produce the most divergent outcomes, especially mainland Chinese ones). The indicated strong effects of "network gatekeeping" by search engines also suggest similar dynamics inside user-generated encyclopedias.


Portable X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry was used to collect elemental data for in situ hypocaust tiles and floors at an archaeological excavation site near Orvieto, Italy. Data obtained from 2009 to 2011 using three different XRF instruments are compared. Both quantitative results and spectral data were utilized for graphical and chemometric evaluation of the samples' elemental compositions. Despite the different instrumental conditions, changes in data collection protocols, and various data evaluation procedures used with each instrument, conclusions about the archaeological relationships among the tiles remained the same across the three-year study. Utilization of fused data did provide some improvements in differentiation of the materials but at the cost of significantly increased analysis times. The robustness of portable XRF instruments for differentiation of in situ archaeological samples is clearly demonstrated.


Drought is a defining characteristic of many grasslands worldwide. Yet we have little understanding of how drought structures grassland communities and the degree to which physiological drought tolerance advantages plants in grasslands. We characterized physiological drought tolerance (Ψcrit) for a large number of species in a mesic grassland community (Konza Prairie, KS, USA). We then examined the relationships between Ψcrit and a number of other key functional traits, and tested whether physiological tolerance of drought underlay success across a number of ecological contrasts—topographic position, burn frequency, and grazing—with 17 years of abundance data. Physiological drought tolerance of Konza species covered almost the full range known to plants globally. Consistently, physiologically drought-tolerant species had thin roots, while associations with other traits were inconsistent across functional groups. In this mesic grassland, physiological drought tolerance appears to increase the abundance of plants in xeric uplands, but does not in the mesic lowlands. Physiological drought tolerance did not alter species responses to changes in burning or grazing. In contrast to Ψcrit, species with high root tissue density were more abundant in uplands and lowlands than species with low root tissue density largely irrespective of grazing or burning regimes. In all, drought appears to have a limited role in structuring the Konza plant community. As such, more severe or frequent droughts in the region would likely restructure the Konza plant community in ways that are currently not observable.


Our ability to identify the timing and extent of past major climate fluctuations is central to understanding changes in the global climate system. Of the events that have occurred in recent geological time, the Younger Dryas (YD, 13–11.5 ka), an abrupt return to near-glacial conditions during the last glacial–interglacial transition (ca. 18–11.5 ka), is one of the most widely reported. While this event is apparent throughout the Northern Hemisphere ([Peteet, 1995][1]), evidence for its occurrence in the Southern Hemisphere remains equivocal due to a lack of well-dated terrestrial records. Here we report high-resolution stable carbon and nitrogen isotope records obtained from a rock hyrax midden, revealing the first unequivocal terrestrial manifestation of the YD from the southern African subtropics. These results provide key evidence for the relative influence of the YD, and suggest that a subtropical-temperate transition zone existed along the oceanic Subtropical Front (∼41°S) across the Southern Hemisphere, with the Northern Hemisphere exerting a strong influence on all but the higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere after the Heinrich Stadial 1 (15 ka).

 [1]: #ref-22


To a death in sweating wakefulness. is an exhibition by Dawn Cole, Johanna Love, and Monica Petzal. Each artist traces back through their own family archives, German and British, to explore the emotional and physical impact of the conflict during the First and Second World War. All three artists share a fascination with looking back to the impact of war and conflict present in their familial pasts. Each draws on family photographic archives and oral histories to make work that embodies the inescapable emotional and physical uncertainties of living within conflict.

Dawn Cole responds to the experiences of her Great Aunt, a WW1 Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse who volunteered in September 1915 and was posted to France where she served for the duration of the war. Cole uses both personal archives and further research both in the UK and France. Cole's works have a strong narrative content and includes print and textiles.

Johanna Love re-examines her grandmother's experiences of living through the bombing of Hamburg and the areas around Schleswig-Holstein, Germany throughout World War Two. Love draws on both personal archives and the archives at the Imperial War Museum, London to create paradoxical landscape images using printmaking and photography. She is interested in resonant images more akin with the complexities of human experience and perception.

Monica Petzal focuses on her parent's experience as German Jewish refugees from the Nazis. This work references her father's profession as a metallurgist, his role in the British war effort and his return to a devastated Germany in 1946 to trade the detritus of war as scrap metal to the USA. It also refers to the bombing of Dresden, her mother's home city by the Allied air forces. The work is chiefly based on contemporary film and her father's annotated photos and includes print, painting and found objects.


The current increase in the amount of seafood wastes produced by the shrimp industry has led to the finding of new methods for shrimp waste disposal or its recycle. Chitinaseproducing fungi is investigated to be used as a biocontrol agents in particular their potential for waste degradation of shrimps and crab shells from fishing industry. Locally isolated Trichoderma virens UKM1 expressing chitinases enzyme was used in this study. Three types of media were selected namely Medium 4, Medium 5 and
Trichoderma minimal medium (TMM) for the degradation study. The substrate used was colloidal chitin as control substrate, ground and unground sun-dried shrimp shell wastes. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) studies showed penetration of fungus mycelium into the colloidal chitin as compared to ground and unground sun-dried shrimp shells. Trichoderma virens UKM1 in TMM produced the less biomass and highest chitinase enzyme and in Medium 4 the protein concentration is the highest if compared with other media used. The results obtained suggested that colloidal chitin was the best carbon source for modelling the degradation of chitin materials. Stereo microscope studies showed that the mechanism of chitinous materials degradation by the chitinase enzyme is via sequential degradation. Shrimp wastes were further analysed for end products in the crude media using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Results showed that the Trichoderma virens UKM1 secretes a significant amount of exochitinase compared to endochitinase by the identification of monomeric N- acetylglucosamine (NAG) from the chitinous substrate. Trichoderma virens UKM1 produced more NAG using TMM with colloidal chitin as the substrate.


Reality in most criminal cases is so puzzling and specific, that in order to solve different problems during the procedure of providing evidence we need to apply for knowledge from various fields of human activity. Special knowledge involves any kind of knowledge and skills in science, technology or any other human activity, which is acquired during special studies and/or professional activity and is used for providing evidence and information to investigate a criminal case. The article discusses about problems of codification of special knowledge application in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Lithuanian Republic and the Law of Forensic Expertise of May 1, 2003. The participants of criminal procedure – experts and specialists – have been also indicated as the providers of special knowledge in crime investigation. However, their role has been radically changed. The article analyses forms of special knowledge application: decisions of experts and specialists. The emphasis is laid on the problems of expertise provision. The procedure of application for expertise has been criticised. A multi–stage application has become a serious obstacle in the way of the legal reform in order to achieve certain goals – to avoid a long– lasting preparation of a criminal case for a criminal court trial. Finally, possible optimization of special knowledge application and some amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code have been suggested. The amendments might optimize the application of special knowledge during criminal procedure.


Buoyancy is a major determinant of locomotory cost in diving animals. As seabirds have a large amount of air in their feathers and respiratory system, they should work hard against buoyancy to descend in the water column. Since buoyancy decreases with increasing hydrostatic pressure, shallow divers, especially, should work against buoyancy during both the descent and bottom phases of their dives. We deployed miniaturised depth and acceleration recorders on freeranging, foot-propelled divers (great cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo) and flipper-propelled divers (little penguins Eudyptula minor) foraging in shallow waters, where both are positively buoyant. We monitored the diving strategies of the birds to assess how they manage to counteract buoyancy using 2 alternative locomotory modes. Cormorants decreased the stroke frequency and surge amplitude during descent and maintained constant swim speed. In contrast, penguins did not change their stroke frequency or heave amplitude; as a result, their swim speed increased during the descent phase. During the bottom phase, cormorants had a low stroke frequency and tilted towards the bottom, while penguins actively stroked in a horizontal position. Furthermore, intensive acceleration periods during the bottom phase were often recorded for penguins, but rarely for cormorants. Great cormorants and little penguins used different strategies to feed underwater. Great cormorants, having lower specific buoyancy, were less active than little penguins, thus adopting an energysaving strategy. We conclude that both foot- and wing-propelled birds diving in shallow waters have developed efficient locomotory strategies to counteract buoyancy, these alternative characteristics being linked to different foraging niches.


"We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul." Robert Musil Best known as author of the novel "The Man without Qualities, " Robert Musil wrote these essays in Vienna and Berlin between 1911 and 1937. Offering a perspective on modern society and intellectual life, they are concerned with the crisis of modern culture as it manifests itself in science and mathematics, capitalism and nationalism, the changing roles of women and writers, and more. Writing to find his way in a world where moral systems everywhere were seemingly in decay, Musil strives to reconcile the ongoing conflict between functional relativism and the passionate search for ethical values. Robert Musil was born in 1880 and died in 1942. His first novel, "Young Torless, " is available in English. A new two-volume translation by Burton Pike and Sophie Wilkins of "The Man without Qualities" is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. "Now we have these thirty-one invaluable and entertaining pieces, from an article on 'The Obscene and Pathological in Art' to the equally provocative talk 'On Stupidity, ' which, with a new translation of "The Man without Qualities" forthcoming . . . amount to a literary event for the reader of English comparable to Constance Garnett's massive translation of Chekhov's stories." Joseph Coates, "Chicago Tribune" "Musil is one of the few great moderns, one of the handful who ventured to confront the issues that shape and define our time. . . . He has a range and a striking capacity every bit as great as that of Mann, Joyce, or Beckett." "Boston Review" "These essays are crucial in understanding a writer and critic whose lifelong task was an attempt to resolve the dichotomy between the precision of scientific form and the soul the matter of life and art." "Choice""


This article analyzes how the writer and publisher Carlos Barral (Barcelona, 1928–89) talks about his relationship with the Catalan language in many of his autobiographical texts. Examining the close connections that Barral establishes between Catalan and masculinity, I argue that the relationship between language and masculine models is essential for Barral in explaining why Spanish—and not Catalan—was the language in which he chose to write. Barral associates Catalan with his childhood, an important language needed to understand the self and closely related to Calafell, a small town situated on the Catalan coast where he spent time as a child. Catalan is also the language of the father and the fishermen from Calafell, men Barral considered role models during his childhood but who disappeared as he grew up. The article considers how Barral's choosing Castilian over Catalan as a literary language and as the language of his publishing business is explained in the author's texts as related to the disappearance of the father and the fishermen of Calafell, popular men who vanish in favor of the bourgeois and urban intellectuals who are Barral's literary colleagues of the generación de medio siglo and who also wrote in Spanish. With this analysis, I aim to highlight how, in Carlos Barral's texts, linguistic subjectivity is constructed vis-à-vis ideas of class and gender and how certain personal and libidinal elements are presented as essential in explaining Barral's decision to use Spanish as a literary language.


Clinical legal education emerged in the United States in the 1960s to give valuable skill-based instructions to law students while providing legal services to people who could not otherwise afford them. This essay proposes another reason why both Indian and American law schools should support the development of law clinics. Drawing on the works of John Dewey and Martha Nussbaum, I argue that clinical legal education promotes democracy. Both elite American and Indian universities are largely unrepresentative of the respective population demographics of their countries. In clinics, law students bridge this divide by undertaking representation for people from different racial, caste, and income backgrounds than themselves. These exchanges generate empathy and knowledge among students about the challenges marginalised groups in the society face. Consequently, they learn to recognise other citizens as equals and to formulate policies that will enhance the welfare of society as a whole. There is an urgent need to formalise clinical legal education programs in Indian law schools both for purposes of enhancing the democracy as well as providing skill-based training to law students and much-needed legal services to the poor.


In order to incorporate seismic risk of facilities into a decision making framework, procedures are needed to quantify such risk for stakeholders. Seismic loss estimation methods combine seismic hazard, structural response, damage fragility, and damage consequences to allow quantification of seismic risk. This paper presents a loss estimation methodology which provides various measures of seismic risk for a specific facility. The methodology is component-based and can therefore distinguish between different structural configurations or different facility contents and is consistent with state-of-the-art loss assessment procedures. Loss is measured in the forms of direct structural and non-structural repair costs, and although not considered in the example, business disruption and occupant injuries can also be considered. This framework has been packaged in a computer code available for future dissemination in the public domain so that users need only to have a basic understanding of the methodology and the input data that is required. Discussion is given to the flexibility of the framework in terms of the rigour which can be employed at each of the main steps in the procedure. Via a case study of a high-rise office building, the use of the methodology in decision-making is illustrated. Methodological requirements and further research directions are discussed.


With Web 2.0, we have once again changed how we use computers. That change has brought with it new intermediaries who sit at the crossroads of the matching and coordination that define how we use the Internet today. Those intermediaries - Google first and foremost - have access to extraordinarily detailed information about their customers. That information arises naturally from the very services provided. We will see a similar pattern as cloud computing becomes more important, and cloud service providers will also have available to them a rich datastream that arises from their customer's activities.To date, these intermediaries have faced few limitations in how they use the information that they see. That information can be used to improve their core businesses - adding collective intelligence to search to increase relevance - and to finance - through advertising backed by rich databases that allows ads to be matched to individual customers - virtually any content or service that can be provided through a screen. To focus on Google as the largest player in this space, there is no obvious limit to its scale and an advertising-supported business adds revenue with each additional screen that is viewed.In the past, we have regulated intermediaries at these transactional bottlenecks - banks, cable companies, phone companies and the like - and limited the ways in which they can use the information that they see. Presumably the same forces that animated those rules - fundamental concerns about customer privacy - need to be assessed for our new information intermediaries. In doing that, we need to be acutely aware of how our choices influence competition. An uneven playing field - allowing one firm to use the information that it sees while blocking others from doing the same thing - creates market power through limiting competition. We rarely want to do that. And privacy rules that limit how information can be used and shared across firms will artificially push towards greater consolidation, something which again usually works against maintaining robust competition.


The objectives of this study were to investigate the potential biological activities of black cumin seed oil (BCSO) and wheat germ oil (WGO) on different cell lines. Initially, commercially available BCSO and WGO obtained by supercritical carbon dioxide extraction were analyzed in terms of tocopherol, aliphatic alcohols, and thymoquinone content via HPLC and GC analysis. Cell free antioxidant activities and total phenolic content of both oils were detected by DPPH assay and Folin-Ciocalteu method, respectively. As well as the DPPH assay, the protective effect against reactive oxygen species (ROS) was determined by microscopic observation of ROS generation in NIH-3T3 cells with or without oil samples by using an oxidation-sensitive fluorescent dye, H2DCFDA. Cytotoxicity was assessed using an MTT assay. In the case of BCSO, after exposing cells to 0.025--1.0 mg/mL and 1.0-100 $\mu $g/mL concentrations for 24 h, the IC$_{50}$ values of BCSO were 0.58, 0.51, 0.47, and 0.36 mg/mL for NIH-3T3, A549, U87, and HeLa cells, respectively. On the other hand, concentrations of WGO lower than 0.1 mg/mL did not cause a decrease in cell viability for all cell lines. Apoptotic and necrotic rates of these cell lines were investigated via flow cytometry. BCSO also exhibited proliferative efficacy for NIH-3T3 cells.


Coffee with different types and concentrations of milk was digested with pepsin (2 h) and pancreatin (2 h) to simulate gastropancreatic digestion. Chlorogenic acids (CGAs) were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry in ultrafiltrate (cutoff 3 kDa) to evaluate their bioaccessibility. After digestion, bioaccessible CGAs decreased from 80.2 to 53.0 and 69.5 μmol/200 mL in coffee without milk and coffee-whole milk, respectively. When whole, semiskimmed, skimmed, or diluted milk were present, the increase in bioaccessibility was dependent on fat content (r = 0.99, p < 0.001). No relationship was observed between bioaccessibility and proteins, carbohydrates, and calcium content. The addition of milk to coffee caused an immediate decrease in the bioaccessibility due to CGAs binding to proteins. After digestion, 86-94% of bound CGAs remained in the high molecular weight fraction. Casein bound 5-caffeoylquinic acid with high affinity (K(D) of 37.9 ± 2.3 μmol/L; n = 0.88 ± 0.06).


: Change and reform in the Healthcare system, and policy determination to reduce costs has now necessitated a rethink and more innovation for this sector. In the healthcare sector, leadership needs to strengthen professionals who have the dual responsibility for ensuring the quality and effectiveness of healthcare and this requires new organisational forms beyond the traditional hierarchical organisational structures. Drawing upon strategic management and leadership discourse to underpin the study into sustainable and high performing systems, we then look at seven key lessons (propositions) from a mixed-methods study of a live city-wide large-scale collaborative in Leeds, UK. These seven propositions are framed in the context of leadership and strategy, however interesting and emergent findings also emerged as a result of the study. We thereby illuminate the challenges and opportunities to the collaboratives development in the context of global government calls for better healthcare management within the sector. We found that in the sustainability of such collaboratives, requires a more effective structure could be local city-wide collaborative in contrast to national or regional collaborative, however there are also several unknowns in such novel organisational structures. The shared and distributive form of leadership is underpinned with an energetic strategic leader who holds the centre whilst inspiring and empowering the collective nature of all members. This is also effectively achieved through promotion of a professional culture that is sustained through structured organisational learning. This paper adds to the small but growing body of knowledge in Improvement Collaboratives in the Health sector.


Children tend to omit functional categories in early language. The present thesis considers the production of such function words as articles and monosyllabic prepositions in child English. The analysis is conducted within a framework of the prosodic account. The development of early articles has received a lot of attention in the literature, while monosyllabic prepositions have not been discussed in detail in previous studies of child English. To examine the issues, spontaneous speech productions of one English child are investigated from the age of 1;10.06 to 2;6.04. The data are drawn from the Manchester corpus in CHILDES. The study reveals that the child's early articles in footed contexts are realized at a higher rate than those in unfooted contexts. The footed contexts for the following article present a Sw trochaic foot where the article constitutes a weak syllable, while in the unfooted contexts the article falls outside a Sw trochaic pattern typical for English. The results also show that monosyllabic prepositions in nonfinal sentence positions appear to constitute a stressed syllable in the child's speech. That is supported by the following. In an indirect analysis of article realization in PPs with monosyllabic prepositions, the latter was compared to the realization of articles in straightforward footed and unfooted contexts. The production of articles in the contexts with monosyllabic prepositions showed similar development as that in the other footed contexts. The production of monosyllabic prepositions investigated on their own reveals a high proportion of realizations of the latter in both footed and unfooted contexts. The current study presents evidence for the influence of phonological factors on the production of articles and monosyllabic prepositions in child English, thereby supporting the prosodic account of acquisition of functional categories in early language.


Article discussing the acute dying experience (ADE), which incorporates peritraumatic dissociation and hyperarousal into an experiential continuum lasting seconds to minutes. It is instantly triggered by the sudden, clear perception of threat of significant injury and/or death and followed, at times, by physical trauma, physiological derangement, and loss of consciousness. Results from this and other studies show that paradoxically the more terrifying and traumatic an accident may appear, the more peaceful and painless it may actually be experienced.


. In this paper, we present a practicable chosen ciphertext timing attack retrieving the secret key of HQC. The attack exploits a correlation between the weight of the error to be decoded and the running time of the decoding algorithm of BCH codes. For the 128-bit security parameters of HQC, the attack runs in less than a minute on a desktop computer using roughly 6000 decoding requests and has a success probability of approximately 93 percent. To prevent this attack, we provide an implementation of a constant time algorithm for the decoding of BCH codes. Our implementation of the countermeasure achieves a constant time execution of the decoding process without a significant performance penalty.


Gains and losses from trade liberalization are often unevenly distributed inside a country. For example, if budget shares vary according to household income, changes in commodity prices will redistribute an overall welfare change between household types. Household incomes will also be differentially affected. Sectoral differences in factor-intensity mean that changes in industrial structure cause redistribution of income between primary factors. Particular primary factors (such as capital, or less skilled labour) may contribute disproportionately to the incomes of certain household types. The fortunes of such households indirectly depend on the prospects of particular sectors. We emphasize these distributive issues, especially those arising from the income side. At the same time we distinguish households by regions (within the country). The regional distinction sharpens the contrast between groups of households. Particular regions have their own patterns of economic activity and so are differently affected by changes in the industrial protection structure. Since regional household incomes depend closely on value-added from local industries, economic change will tend to redistribute income between regional households. If the regional concentration of poverty is more than we could predict by regional primary factor endowments and industry structure, the addition of a regional dimension will add power to our analysis of income distribution beyond the mere addition of interesting regional detail. The paper deals with these issues more fully. We extend previous regional modeling of Brazil to include the intra-household dimension, addressing poverty and income distribution issues that may be caused by trade integration. An applied general equilibrium (AGE) inter-regional model of Brazil underlies our analysis, with a detailed specification of households. The model is static and solved with GEMPACK. The Representative Household (RH) hypothesis is abandoned; instead a micro-simulation (MS) model is used to track changes in household income and expenditure patterns. This micro-simulation model is built upon two Brazilian household studies: (1) the Household Budget Survey (POF, IBGE, 1999) covers detailed expenditure patterns for 16,013 households and 11 regions in Brazil in 1996; (2) the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD, IBGE, 1997) is a yearly survey that includes detailed information about household employment and income sources, with 331,263 observations. We integrate the two data sources to produce a detailed mapping of expenditure and income sources for 250,000 Brazilian households, distinguishing 50 activities, 80 commodities, and 27 regions. We link the AGE and MS models together, solving them iteratively to get consistency between results. After a shock the AGE model communicates changes in wages and employment by industry and labour type to the MS model that individually simulates the changes in employment, income and expenditure patterns for each household. The new expenditure pattern is then communicated to the AGE model, and the process is repeated until the two models converge. The final results from the MS model enable us to estimate changes in poverty and income distribution measures, both nationally and for regions within Brazil. We use the model to analyze poverty and income distribution impacts of the Free Trade Area of Americas formation upon the Brazilian economy. In the particular simulation we examine, freer trade leads to increased employment, especially for lower-paid workers. Poor households, which contain more enemployed adults, benefit most. This leads to a reduction in poverty in all 27 Brazilian states.


The effects of several inspired oxygen fractions (FiO2) on the bispectral index in spontaneously breathing dogs submitted to continuous infusion of propofol were evaluated. Eight adult mongrel dogs were used. Each animal was submitted to five anesthesias. In each procedure, the patient was allowed to breathe a different FiO2, thereby resulting in five groups, namely: G100 (FiO2 = 1), G80 (FiO2 = 0.8), G60 (FiO2 =0.6), G40 (FiO2 = 0.4), and G20 (FiO2 = 0.21). To induce anesthesia, propofol was given until the animals allowed orotracheal intubation, followed by immediate continuous infusion of drug. The initial measurement (M0) was recorded 30 minutes after the infusion of propofol onset. Additional recordings were performed at 15-minute intervals during 60 minutes (M15, M30, M45, and M60). No significant differences on BIS parameters were recorded. Regarding arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide (PaCO2), the mean of G100 was greater than G20 at M30, whereas arterial partial pressure of oxygen (PaO2) varied according to the changes in oxygen. The mean intervals of BIS were: for G100, from 68 to 62; for G80, from 71 to 58; for G60, from 72 to 62; for G40 from 76 to 68; and for G20, from 77 to 68. In conclusion, different FiO2 does not impair BIS parameters. However, it is suggested that BIS was able to detect changes in the balance of cerebral blood flow, which was a result of changes in respiratory dynamic by the use of several inspired fractions.


Within the English language teaching profession there is now general acceptance of the advantages of integrating language and content teaching. Yet challenges continue over how such integration can be accomplished within individual classrooms. In Asian universities using English as the medium of instruction (EMI), one of the key barriers to integration is the alleged reticence of learners to participate in spoken discourse within the classroom. If the language policy aims of these institutions are to be realized, these constraints need to be acknowledged. This paper uses a multidimensional investment framework to investigate the oral participation of one group of foreign language learners within their English for academic purposes (EAP) classroom at an EMI university in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from interviews, classroom observations, audiovisual recordings of classroom interaction, and documentary analysis, this paper argues that the successful integration of language and content teaching should include an appreciation of the institutional forces that constrain and enable learners' oral investment, how learners deploy a variety of knowledge, skills and understandings in support of this investment, and the degree of freedom learners enjoy in shaping the processes and products of their investments. The implications of this research for classroom practices are explored.


Indoor air particulate (PM) exposure is several folds more dangerous than  outdoor air  owing to burning of different materials. Burning biomass emits toxic fumes that are found to be associated with  numerous health problems  such as respiratory diseases, etc. In our study area,  approximately 80% of the population of Chhattisgarh state, central India use biomass  such as wood, and cow dung as a primary source of domestic energy and  therefore require proper study about indoor emission. Thus, the PM10 and associated eight ions i.e. Cl-, NO3-, SO42-, NH4+, Na+, K+, Mg2+ and Ca2+ from the burning of wood and cow dung  in indoor in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, central India is investigated. The highest mean concentration of PM10 (17697 µg m-3) and the sum of eight ions, ∑ion8 (38.4 mg m-3),  were found from the  burning of wood. The indoor concentration of PM10 exceeds the guidelines levels. The wood like Mangifera indica emits the  highest concentration of PM10. However, Acacia arabica is found to be acidic in nature. Thus, this result helps us to be aware of the adverse effects of indoor emission from burning. Therefore, the improved models, alternative for energy source and sufficient ventilation are supposed to be recommended option for the future.


Purpose of review A recent international collaboration has updated the clinical definition and diagnostic recommendations for hypersensitivity pneumonitis, focusing on fibrotic and non-fibrotic phenotypes. However, how these transfer to clinical practice and their impact upon clinical management and prognosis of hypersensitivity pneumonitis is unclear. This review will focus on recent advances in the understanding of the clinical aspects of hypersensitivity pneumonitis, predominantly its epidemiology, diagnosis, classification and treatment. Recent findings Hypersensitivity pneumonitis is a rare disease within the general population, with variable geographical incidence because of environmental, cultural and occupational factors. Confidence in diagnosis relies upon the presence of clinical features with a temporal relationship to an associated exposure, radiological and histopathological features, bronchiolo-alveolar lavage lymphocytosis and precipitating antibodies/specific immunoglobulin G to antigens. Although emerging evidence regarding nintedanib use in progressive fibrotic interstitial lung disease is promising, the majority of therapies (corticosteroids and immunosuppressive agents) used traditionally in hypersensitivity pneumonitis lack a robust evidence base. Summary With a clear definition of fibrotic and nonfibrotic hypersensitivity pneumonitis phenotypes now established, clinical research trials (predominantly randomized controlled trials) should clarify and resolve the discussion regarding antigen avoidance, corticosteroid therapy, immunosuppressive therapy and antifibrotic therapy in fibrotic and nonfibrotic subtypes of hypersensitivity pneumonitis.


Egg-laying in many bird species is believed to be energetically limited. We then expect egg-size to be strongly affected by environmental conditions during egg formation. When the ambient temperature is low or food availability is poor the females might not have enough resources for both thermoregulation and the formation of a large egg and hence lay smaller eggs. We measured egg-volumes of almost all first clutches in two populations of Great Tits Parus major during the breeding seasons 1989 to 1992. We also measured ambient temperature during the egg formation period and for some individuals food abundance at the locality where they bred. There were no significant differences in egg-volume among years and study areas. Egg-volume did not change seasonally and did not differ between young and old females. Egg-volume increased with female body weight but heavier females laid proportionally smaller eggs. At low temperatures Great Tits laid smaller eggs and early in the season young females were affected more strongly by temperature than older birds. Females only laid smaller eggs at low food abundances when the temperature was also low. Therefore, environmental conditions only explained a small proportion of the observed variation in egg-volume. Clearly, other not yet understood factors contribute to variation in egg-size of Great Tits. Zoologisches Institut, Basel, Switzerland. Present address: CNRS/CEFE, B.P. 5051, 34033 Montpellier Cedex, France.


Foundations of Mac OS X Leopard Security is written in part as a companion to the SANS Institute course for Mac OS X. It contains detailed Mac OS X security information, but also walkthroughs on securing systems. By using the SANS Institute course as a sister to the book, the focus includes both the beginning home user and the seasoned security professional not accustomed to the Mac, and allows this title to establish the best practices for Mac OS X for a wide audience. Additionally, the authors of the book are seasoned Mac and security professionals, having built many of the largest network infrastructures for Apple and spoken at both DefCon and Black Hat on OS X security. What youll learn Security overview Walkthroughs to secure systems Walkthroughs and suggestions for thirdparty applications on systems Mac forensics Mac hacking Apple wireless security Mac OS X security Who is this book for? A wide audience of users, power users, and administrators who wish to make sure their Mac platform is secure. Related Titles Getting StartED with Mac OS X Leopard Mac OS X Leopard: Beyond the Manual Foundation Mac OS X Web Development AppleScript: A Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X


Aluminum alloys, such as Al 6061-T6 and Al 7075-T6, are widely used in industry due to their high strength to weight ratio and good mechanical properties. The corrosion of these alloys, however, is an expensive and critical problem since the alloys are susceptible to pitting and crevice corrosion in marine environments. The most significant environmental factor, which contributes to the corrosion of these alloys, is the chloride ion found in marine environments or water condensed from humid air contaminated with soluble chloride salts. Traditionally, chromate based conversion coatings have been used for many years for the protection of aluminum alloys. Chromates are efficient corrosion inhibitors for aluminum and its alloys in near neutral marine environments containing aggressive anions such as chlorides. Although the hexavalent chromium ion, Cr, may be a superior corrosion inhibitor and used in numerous industrial systems, it is environmentally unsafe. Over the past several years, federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Defense (DoD), have increasingly limited the use of chromium containing compounds due to their toxic and carcinogenic effects. In addition, there is a direct economic challenge associated with costs for environmental compliance along with increased liability for claims of exposure in the workplace with the continued use of chromates. Therefore, there is a need to identify new corrosion inhibitors for aluminum alloys. As an alternate conversion coating, a new titanate conversion coating was researched and developed for the Al 2024-T3 alloy and was shown to be effective. The objective of this research was to determine if the coating process could be applied to Al 6061-T6 and Al 7075-T6. The coating process involves immersion of the alloy in a titante solution bath, which produces a passive film. The corrosion resistance of coated samples has been evaluated using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and potentiodynamic electrochemical techniques. Electrochemical testing and energy dispersive X-ray analysis indicated that the titanate ion would retard corrosion in a similar manner to the chromate ion if fluoride ions (F) were not present on the surface. A study was also conducted to determine if Al 6061-T6 and Al 7075-T6 were easily susceptible to crevice corrosion in a marine environment. The study yielded important results regarding protection of the alloy against crevice corrosion by the titanate ion. Corrosion was only seen on samples not exposed to the titanate ion. A conclusion may be made that titanate coatings appear to be viable alternatives to chromate coatings but further investigation will be required in order to determine an optimum conversion coating bath, which will produce impedance magnitudes comparable to those measured for the Al 2024-T3 alloy.


SUMMARY. A LC-MS method was developed and validated for simultaneous determination of 6, 7-di-hydroxyligustilide and gastrodin in rat plasma, and which was subsequently applied in the pharmacokinetic analysis of an administration of a Chinese herbal extract containing Chuanxiong Rhizoma and Gastrodia Elata Rhizome, i.e. TianShu capsule against migraine. The analytes were separated on a Kromasil C18 column with a gradient elution program and detected without interference in the selected ion monitoring mode with positive electrospray ionization. The linear range was 0.010-10.0 μg/mL for 6,7-di-hydroxyligustilide and 0.025-25.0 μg/mL for gastrodin with the limit of quantitation of 0.01 and 0.025 μg/mL, respectively. The intra-day and inter-day precisions for the entire validation were less than14.7 % of RSD. The pharmacokinetic parameters indicated that 6, 7-di-hydroxyligustilide and gastrodin are absorbed rapidly and reached a maximum concentration within one hour, which was consistent with the clinical requirements for the rapid relieving the symptoms of migraine.


How to leverage cross-document interactions to improve ranking performance is an important topic in information retrieval research. The recent developments in deep learning show strength in modeling complex relationships across sequences and sets. It thus motivates us to study how to leverage cross-document interactions for learning-to-rank in the deep learning framework. In this paper, we formally define the permutation equivariance requirement for a scoring function that captures cross-document interactions. We then propose a self-attention based document interaction network that extends any univariate scoring function with contextual features capturing cross-document interactions. We show that it satisfies the permutation equivariance requirement, and can generate scores for document sets of varying sizes. Our proposed methods can automatically learn to capture document interactions without any auxiliary information, and can scale across large document sets. We conduct experiments on four ranking datasets: the public benchmarks WEB30K and Istella, as well as Gmail search and Google Drive Quick Access datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed methods lead to significant quality improvements over state-of-the-art neural ranking models, and are competitive with state-of-the-art gradient boosted decision tree (GBDT) based models on the WEB30K dataset.


Purpose of reviewTo define the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and nasal obstruction, we have reviewed the literature on epidemiological, physiological, and randomized controlled studies in which the relationship between nasal obstruction and OSA was investigated. Recent findingsData from observational studies suggest that nasal obstruction contributes to the pathogenesis of OSA. Recently, studies have mainly focused on the effects of therapeutic interventions on the nose and OSA. Eleven trials with randomized controlled designs were found; external nasal dilators were used in five studies, topically applied steroids in one, nasal decongestants in three, and surgical treatment in two studies. Data from these studies showed only minor improvement in the symptoms and severity of OSA. SummaryThe current evidence suggests that the nose may not play a significant role in the pathogenesis of OSA. The impact of treating nasal obstruction in patients with OSA on long-term outcome remains to be defined more accurately through randomized controlled trials of medical and surgical therapies with large numbers of patients.


The problem of high-frequency diffraction by a smooth lossy body with high conductivity is considered. In addition to the geometrical optics approximation, additional asymptotic terms are derived to take into account the curvature of the boundary and material properties. Since these higher-order terms are derived by taking into account exact boundary conditions, it is easy to learn about the limitations of impedance conditions and to determine more accurate approximate conditions. The obtained higher-order boundary conditions and their limitations are numerically validated by solving Muller's second-kind integral equations.


Abstract. Soil carbon stored in high-latitude permafrost landscapes is threatened by warming and could contribute significant amounts of carbon to the atmosphere and hydrosphere as permafrost thaws. Thermokarst and permafrost disturbances, especially active layer detachments and retrogressive thaw slumps, are present across the Fosheim Peninsula, Ellesmere Island, Canada. To determine the effects of retrogressive thaw slumps on net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO2 in high Arctic tundra, we used two eddy covariance (EC) tower systems to simultaneously and continuously measure CO2 fluxes from a disturbed site and the surrounding undisturbed tundra. During the 32-day measurement period in the 2014 growing season, the undisturbed tundra was a small net sink (NEE  =  −0.1 g C m−2 d−1); however, the disturbed terrain of the retrogressive thaw slump was a net source (NEE  =  +0.4 g C m−2 d−1). Over the measurement period, the undisturbed tundra sequestered 3.8 g C m−2, while the disturbed tundra released 12.5 g C m−2. Before full leaf-out in early July, the undisturbed tundra was a small source of CO2 but shifted to a sink for the remainder of the sampling season (July), whereas the disturbed tundra remained a source of CO2 throughout the season. A static chamber system was also used to measure daytime fluxes in the footprints of the two towers, in both disturbed and undisturbed tundra, and fluxes were partitioned into ecosystem respiration (Re) and gross primary production (GPP). Average GPP and Re found in disturbed tundra were smaller (+0.40 µmol m−2 s−1 and +0.55 µmol m−2 s−1, respectively) than those found in undisturbed tundra (+1.19 µmol m−2 s−1 and +1.04 µmol m−2 s−1, respectively). Our measurements indicated clearly that the permafrost disturbance changed the high Arctic tundra system from a sink to a source for CO2 during the majority of the growing season (late June and July).


Over the last several years, mechanical alloying/milling (MA/MM) process has been applied to produce different types of metastable or non-equilibrium materials such as metallic glasses, quasi-crystalline materials, nanocrystalline metals, compounds and supersaturated solid solutions. It appears that MA offers greater latitude in controlling the microstructure than other non-equilibrium processing methods such as rapid solidification. Despite a considerable number of experiments using MA/MM, many questions regarding the mechanisms of phase transformations induced by MA, especially the mechanism of amorphization, remain to be answered. In this thesis, the sequence of phase transformations induced by the mechanical alloying of aluminum and zirconium has been studied. The structural analysis indicated that none of the thermodynamically stable intermetallic compounds found in the phase diagram are formed during MA of the Al-Zr system. Instead, the nanocrystalline supersaturated [alpha]-Zr solid solution and amorphous phase are synthesized depending on the initial composition of the powder mixture. The thermodynamic and structural properties of these ball-milled materials have been characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).

As we know, one of the crucial aspects of nanophase and amorphous phase materials is the stability against grain growth and crystallization. In Chapter 4, the metastability of nanocrystalline materials based on the thermodynamics and grain boundary segregation arguments proposed by Johnson has been discussed. The thermal stabilities of the nanostructured [alpha]-Zr solid solutions and amorphous materials have also been studied. The experiments found that the grain size of nanocrystalline supersaturated solid solution is stable under heat treatment until reaching a temperature where the crystallization of an equilibrium compound phase occurs.

In Chapter 5, the temperature effects on the mechanical alloying of Al and Zr have been studied by milling at different ambient temperatures. The experiments reveal that the ultimate grain size of nanostructured materials prepared by ball milling is determined by two main factors. One is densities of structural defects which depends on the competition between the severe plastic deformation induced by MA and the recovery behavior of the materials. Another is chemical effects which are related to the composition of the sample and the interactions among the components. Obviously, the recovery or relaxation behavior is temperature dependent, so the milling temperature could influence the average grain size. The chemical effects on grain size may also change with the milling temperature. The experimental results suggest that the steady state obtained by ball milling at higher temperature is much closer to a chemical equilibrium state compared with the state formed by milling at room temperature. A faster alloying rate is obtained at higher temperature milling. This is consistent with the solid state reaction mechanism by MA.

The mechanisms of amorphizations by MA of aluminum and zirconium under different experimental conditions have been discussed in Chapter 6. The emphasis is to argue the possibility of polymorphic amorphization.


Background: It is not clear whether peritoneal dialysis (PD) and home hemodialysis (HHD) have similar outcomes, and little is known about how mortality associated with HHD versus PD differs according to the duration of dialysis. Methods: We examined a national cohort of incident end-stage renal disease patients that was comprised of 1,993 and 16,514 patients transitioning to HHD and PD, respectively, from 2007 to 2011. The HHD patients were matched with PD patients using propensity score (PS). Demographics, comorbidities, duration of dialysis, and body mass index were adjusted for in logistic regression models using PS matching. We matched 1,915 HHD patients with 1,915 PD patients based on the PS. The patients were categorized by their vintage (duration of dialysis) at the time of the transition to HHD or PD (<3, 3 to <12, and ≥12 months). Results: In the matched cohort, 237 and 359 deaths occurred in the HHD and PD patients, respectively (cumulative incidence 9.6 vs. 12.9/100 patient-years, p < 0.001). PD patients who transitioned within 12 months of starting dialysis had similar mortality risks, while PD patients who transitioned >12 months after starting dialysis had an 83% higher risk for mortality (hazard ratio 1.83; 95% CI 1.33–2.52). Conclusions: Whereas there was no meaningful survival difference in the first 12 months between HHD and PD, patients who transitioned to PD after 12 months of dialysis had worse survival than their HHD counterparts. Additional studies are warranted to investigate clinical implications of these differences.


The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) media strategy is a successful one. It has enabled a small group of social media users to amplify impressions of the organization far beyond its actual effect, capturing global attention. This terrorist group has proven quite effective in using Twitter to spread their evil ideas, recruit followers and post obscene videos depicting the most egregious cruelty imaginable. In this exploratory research, an observational research was undertaken to explore the strategies and tactics deployed by the group in their use of Twitter. The results show that ISIS has successfully utilized this social media platform as a tool to achieve its goals and implement its media strategy.


In Ovid's Metamorphoses women suffer from pathological grief and undergo metamorphosis as a result of this emotional state much more frequently than men. In these narratives depicting women's all-consuming grief, Ovid focuses on spontaneous transformation rather than divine intervention. This is in contrast to Ovid's depiction of masculine grief. The metamorphosis of the female mourner represents the power of grief to transform and subsume the individual while making her permanent sorrow a feature of the physical landscape. Voicelessness, tears, and petrifaction are common distinguishing features of those women whose grief has alienated them from society and rendered them unable to communicate with the living. In contrast to these stories, there are four individuals who grieve but are not transformed. They are depicted as sharing their grief and stories with others. All-encompassing grief is a prevalent characteristic of women in the Metamorphoses that narrative alone has the possibility of alleviating.


Question: How are competing foragers expected to distribute their lifetime foraging effort on a gradient of resource types that differ in abundance, quality, foraging costs, and associated mortality risks? Mathematical method: Population dynamics of foragers and resources coupled with adaptive dynamics of foraging strategies based on continuous, function-valued traits. Key assumptions: We start from generalizing the classical patch-based theory of optimal foraging to continuous resource gradients following the traditional assumptions of constant renewal rates of resources, spatially homogeneous mortality risks, and of foragers that are omniscient, free to move without costs, equal, and not experiencing any saturation of intake. We then relax the restrictive assumptions of the classical model, thus accounting for non-linear functional responses of the foragers, heterogeneous mortality risks and resource qualities, energetically costly foraging, genetic covariances constraining foraging, feedbacks between foraging and resource dynamics, and different types of competition between foragers. Results: (1) When expressed as instantaneous rates with the same units (time-1), mortality risks (d), foraging costs (c), and resource qualities (q) all influence the evolutionarily stable distribution of foraging effort through the dimensionless expression (d + c)/q. (2) Functional responses that imply intake saturation may result in a subset of resources remaining entirely unused. (3) Coupling foraging to resource dynamics results in a rich array of evolutionary outcomes, depending on the type of competition among foragers and the interplay between forager and resource characteristics. (4) Genetic constraints may cause foraging effort to track the resource gradient more coarsely than classical models predict.


Awareness of evapotranspiration (ET) and crop coefficient (Kc) is necessary for irrigation management in coffee crops. ET and Kc spatial variabilities are disregarded in traditional methods. Methods based on radiometric measurements have potential to obtain these spatialized variables. The Kc curve and spatial variability of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) were determined using images from Landsat 8 satellite. We used images of young and adult coffee plantations from OLI (Operational Land Imager) and TIRS (Thermal Infrared Sensor) sensors over a two-year period. Evapotranspiration was estimated using the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL). Moreover, the reference evapotranspiration (ETo) was estimated through the Penman-Monteith method. We obtained the values for the evapotranspiration fraction (ETf), analogous to Kc, according to ET and ETo values. The study was conducted in Buritis, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, in areas cropped with Coffea arabica irrigated by central pivots. A comparative analysis was made using different statistical indices. Average ETa was 2.17 mm d –1 for young coffee plantations, , and the Kc mean value was 0.6. For adult coffee plantations, average ETa was 3.95 mm d–1, , and the Kc mean value was 0.85. The ETc and Kc data obtained based on the SEBAL algorithm displayed similar values to studies that used traditional methods. This model has huge potential to estimate ET of different stages of coffee plantation for the region studied.