This paper describes a positioning technique that can be used for identifying pedestrians in urban environments in which there are large global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning errors because of poor satellite geometry and multipath signals. We propose a technique to realize position estimation based on GNSS and photos taken with a smartphone. We combine GNSS with a 3D map, camera, accelerometer, and magnetic sensor on a smartphone to improve positioning accuracy in urban environments. The main objective of the proposed method is to reduce the GNSS position error distribution, which is biased in the direction pointing across the street because of signal blocking in urban canyons.

First, we calculate a positioning solution and its distribution using normal GNSS point positioning with a strict signal strength threshold and high-elevation mask angles. In GNSS positioning results, the horizontal position error distribution typically extends across the street. Multiple position candidates near the true position are then generated from the GNSS position error distribution. Next, we capture a photo using a smartphone that is aimed at the sky. The likelihood of the position candidates are then determined based on an image-matching technique that uses the captured photo and a virtual photo, which is simulated based on the candidate position, camera attitude, and 3D map. We use Google Earth to generate the virtual photo. Finally, the position candidate that has the highest likelihood is chosen as the final estimated user position. Using this technique, the error distribution of GNSS positioning is corrected by the camera, accelerometer, magnetic sensor, and 3D map. Thus, a more accurate user position can be determined.

To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique, a positioning experiment was performed in a real-world urban-canyon environment. We used a GNSS receiver and a smartphone to collect data from multiple locations and evaluated the accuracy of the proposed technique. In this experiment, similar virtual photos can be generated at the true position from a 3D map. In other words, the likelihood of a position candidate increases when it is near the true position. In conclusion, our proposed method is effective for estimating accurate user positions in urban canyons, where conventional GNSS has large positioning errors.


This article charts new ground by exploring the important increase in awareness surrounding the care-crime connection in recent years. The over-representation of care-experienced individuals in criminal justice settings has long been taken-for-granted. However, there has been a recent surge of interest in England and Wales in the need to avoid unnecessarily criminalising looked after children, and support those with care-experience in prison. Paradoxically, this increased awareness has occurred at the same time as a climate of crisis has threatened both the care system's and the prison system's capacity to function effectively. Despite the current climate, this article argues that things can be done to challenge the care-crime connection. Such strategies include: changing our language, connecting distinct policy priorities and moving beyond the limits of the law. Furthermore, the development of a life-course perspective could significantly improve understanding of the impact of care-experience over time. This article concludes by arguing that in the current climate, continued diversionary push-back from the youth justice system is vital. Crucially, this could help further reduce the number of First Time Entrants in the justice system, and ultimately offer the best prospects for reducing the number of children who move between care and custody.


Intensive forest management practices such as drainage, harvesting, site preparation,
regeneration, and fertilization have been frequently blamed for problems related to excessive
nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment in receiving waters. Two 25 ha experimental watersheds (D1 –
control; D2 – treatment) on a pine plantation in eastern North Carolina have been monitored since
1988 to study the hydrologic and water quality effects of various silvicultural and water management
treatments using a paired watershed approach. Data from a two-year calibration period (1988-90)
and a four-year regeneration period (2000-03) were used for the analysis. This study period
recorded both the highest (2330 mm in 2003) and lowest (850 mm in 2001) rainfall of the 16-years
(1988-2003) of record at this site. Nearly seven years after planting, water table elevations returned
back to pre-treatment conditions. However, peak flow rates and consequently annual outflows were
generally higher on the treatment watershed D2 compared to the control watershed (D1), indicating
that the outflows on the treatment watershed may not have completely returned back to base line
conditions. Average outflow nutrient (NO3-N, TKN, and Total-P) concentrations for the treatment (D2)
watershed for the period from 2000 to 2003 were, however, similar or somewhat lower than their
expected values. Although sediment concentration seems to have slightly increased compared to
the calibration period, regeneration did not seem to have any effect by the third year after planting,
The water quality concentrations were also much lower than the data reported for agricultural lands
in the same region. These results will be evaluated and reported soon in the context of prior data
after harvesting in 1995 and planting in 1997 to detect the actual effects of regeneration.


Agriculture is the main source of income for the poorest people and the pillar of food security in Burkina Faso. However, the producers face the problem of food insecurity each year, due to the effects of climate change and the difficulty of conserving their produce, because of inadequate storage infrastructure. These situ-ations result in the loss of large quantities of products after harvest. Technological advances can provide solutions to this problem of postharvest losses and help many small producers to reduce poverty. Unfortunately, new product conservation techniques implemented in Burkina Faso are less known and poorly adopted. The objective of this chapter is to identify constraints to the valorization of new postharvest technologies of onion and potato and analyze factors influencing farmers' perception of these innovations. The results of the surveys conducted using the Tilgr-Baore technology show that many agricultural producers are analphabet and not yet aware of the existence of the new product conservation technology. The improvement of the level of education of farmers and the availability of information on innovations are needed to improve the perception of innovations and thus increase the probability of adoption of these innovations.


Classic / British English In 1891, the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, disappeared in Switzerland while working on a dangerous case. Everyone thought that he was dead. But three years later, he returned to England. Holmes and his friend, Dr Watson, had many more adventures together. Three of his most interesting cases are in this book. This Pack contains a Book and MP3


The European Community legislative process is still characterized by a certain lack of democracy, even after the Maastricht amendments to the European Community Treaties. It is therefore a matter of great importance that there is an adequate system of judicial review of community acts which will enable private parties to challenge illegal, invalid and unfair community administrative actions. There thus exists a system by which private parties can bring direct and indirect actions to seek redress. The direct actions are the actions for annulment and the action for a failure to act. The indirect action is the plea of illegality. In addition to this system specifically designed to assess the legality of community measures there are two other remedies not intended for this purpose but which are used to effect a consideration of the legality of a certain act: these are preliminary rulings on the validity of acts of the Institutions and actions for damages. The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals extensively with annulment proceedings. The drafters of the EC Treaty attached severe conditions of locus standi to this remedy and it has fallen to the European Court of Justice to interpret and apply these conditions through its Case Law. Commentators have found it difficult to discern a common trend in the approach of the court to the locus standi issue. It appears clear however that the court has followed a very restrictive approach and that many actions have been dismissed as inadmissible. The author of this work re-examines the Case Law and systematizes it to highlight specific areas (particularly anti-dumping, competition and state aids cases) and to a lesser extent in the area of general management of the market where there has evolved a more lenient approach to the determination of the issue of locus standi of natural and legal persons. The second part of the book deals with the alternative means of review (ie via an Article 177 Treaty reference) and suggests that these proceedings do not provide adequate protection of the interests of private parties in all situations where annulment proceedings cannot be brought because the applicants involved lack locus standi even though a certain degree of damage may have been inflicted to their interests. Besides setting out the various remedies and showing how actions can be mounted successfully the book also assesses the extent to which the court may have shifted its approach to the locus standi question. It also reveals the areas where private parties may not always find an adequate or appropriate means of redress against illegal community actions.


This thesis explores the writing life of the Northumbrian labouring-class poet Robert Story (1795-1860) who, during the political turmoil of the 1830s, achieved national celebrity for writing a series of songs and poems for Peel's Conservative party. In his unpublished autobiography (c.1853) he alludes to building an archive of his work. Drawing on these manuscripts, all of which have until now remained hidden, and his published writing, this thesis investigates the relationship between Story's apparent political conservatism and his progressive and experimental approach to writing. The study is organised into three main parts. The first forms a study of Story's biographical manuscripts, using his accounts of reading to raise the wider complex theoretical questions that inform the thesis. It goes beyond Story's connection with the pastoral tradition and hypothesises that Story's writing was always rhetorical. Tracing Story's circle of 'brother' poets, part two locates him in a distinctly labouring-class canon, imagined or otherwise, that he believed was at least equal to the polite realm of literature. This phase of research also resituates Story's satirical modes of writing and his party ballads within the great body of political literature produced by working men during the first half of the nineteenth century. Story's importance lies not only in his pursuit of politics but also in his cultural ambition: the third part of the thesis examines formal hybridity in his writing. It reveals how Story was searching for new forms of self-expression and asks to what extent his pursuit of literature was politicised and predicated on the belief that social and economic emancipation was contingent on cultural equality. Overall this thesis argues that Story was using literature to challenge the political, social and cultural boundaries imposed on him as both a workingman and a labouring-class writer.


Abstract. Monitoring and analyzing the (decreasing) trends in lake freezing provides important information for climate research. Multi-temporal satellite images are a natural data source to survey ice on lakes. In this paper, we describe a method for lake ice monitoring, which uses low spatial resolution (250 m–1000 m) satellite images to determine whether a lake is frozen or not. We report results on four selected lakes in Switzerland: Sihl, Sils, Silvaplana and St. Moritz. These lakes have different properties regarding area, altitude, surrounding topography and freezing frequency, describing cases of medium to high difficulty. Digitized Open Street Map (OSM) lake outlines are back-projected on to the image space after generalization. As a pre-processing step, the absolute geolocation error of the lake outlines is corrected by matching the projected outlines to the images. We define the lake ice detection as a two-class (frozen, non-frozen) semantic segmentation problem. Several spectral channels of the multi-spectral satellite data are used, both reflective and emissive (thermal). Only the cloud-free (clean) pixels which lie completely inside the lake are analyzed. The most useful channels to solve the problem are selected with xgboost and visual analysis of histograms of reference data, while the classification is done with non-linear support vector machine (SVM). We show experimentally that this straight-forward approach works well with both MODIS and VIIRS satellite imagery. Moreover, we show that the algorithm produces consistent results when tested on data from multiple winters.


This paper presents a sociophonetic analysis of word-final /n/-elision in Ende (Pahoturi River; Papuan). An analysis of 73 speakers reveals that tense, phonological context, and most significantly, whether or not the speaker is a kawa practitioner, a prestigious type of public oration, are significantly correlated with /n/-retention. A closer look at just five kawa practitioners reveals that age and genre may also play a role. The present study matches Schokkin's analysis of /n/-elision in Idi (this issue). Indeed, the findings support her conclusions that this pattern is one of /n/-elision (not /n/-addition) and show similarities in conditioning factors. Analysing sociolinguistic variation in this region presents a unique set of benefits and challenges. This paper discusses how emically-derived categories relating to age, clan, and orator status may deviate from characterisations of prestige in Westernised and urbanised societies but better fit southern New Guinea's social context.


From the first symptoms of serious unrest - the Divis Street riots of 1964 - to the tortuous political manoeuvrings culminating in the 2003 Assembly elections, the book traces the reality of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. It details the motivation behind the IRA 'armed struggle', the Civil Rights movement, the murder campaigns of various loyalist terror groups, the major incidents of violence and the response of the British security forces and the justice system. It describes what it was like to live with bombs, army searches in the dead of night, death threats to politicians, activists and others. A detailed account of the political and personal toll of the Northern Ireland conflict.


SOMMARIO: 1. Una premessa - 2. Liberta religiosa e secolarizzazione - 3. L'odierna crisi della liberta religiosa - 4. Secolarismo e liberta religiosa - 5. Conclusione. Religious freedom and secularism ABSTRACT: The essay questions about the singular phenomenon for which, in front of the numerous and serious violations that are daily perpetrated in the world, towards the right of religious freedom, the West appears so detached and generally reluctant to political and diplomatic intervention. The fact is even more singular, if one compares this phenomenon with the general commitment that the West demonstrates for the planetary affirmation of the human rights, in a spirit almost of proselytism. In the opinion of the Author, the inactivity must be connected to the dominant secularist culture that has removed the sacred from the horizon of human meaning, with the consequence of the insignificance of the religious sentiment, of the irrelevance of the religious practice and, therefore, of the unreasonableness of fighting for their survival.


OBJECTIVE
To determine functional and morphologic changes in palmar digital nerves after nonfocused extracorporeal shock wave (ESW) treatment in horses.

ANIMALS
6 horses.

PROCEDURES
The medial and lateral palmar digital nerves of the left forelimb were treated with nonfocused ESWs. The medial palmar digital nerve of the right forelimb served as a nontreated control nerve. At 3, 7, and 35 days after treatment, respectively, 2 horses each were anesthetized and nerves were surgically exposed. Sensory nerve conduction velocities (SNCVs) of treated and control nerves were recorded, after which palmar digital neurectomies were performed. Morphologic changes in nerves were assessed via transmission electron microscopy.

RESULTS
Significantly lower SNCV in treated medial and lateral nerves, compared with control nerves, was found 3 and 7 days after treatment. A significantly lower SNCV was detected in treated medial but not lateral nerves 35 days after treatment. Transmission electron microscopy of treated nerves revealed disruption of the myelin sheath with no evidence of damage to Schwann cell bodies or axons, 3, 7, and 35 days after treatment.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Nonfocused ESW treatment of the metacarpophalangeal area resulted in lower SNCV in palmar digital nerves. This effect likely contributes to the post-treatment analgesia observed in horses and may result in altered peripheral pain perception. Horses with preexisting lesions may be at greater risk of sustaining catastrophic injuries when exercised after treatment.


Qatar Research Grand Challenges Areas: 1. Integrated health management; cultivate healthy behaviors through public health, safety... campaigns. 2. Road Safety: Mitigate Accidents. Introduction Motor vehicle collisions (MVC) in Qatar are at epidemic rates and expected to continue to rise to 220,000 per year by 2015 (ElGhanem, 2012). The fatalities and economic costs associated with traffic accidents are high in Qatar, with one out of eight deaths attributed to MVCs according to some estimates (The Peninsula, 2013) and is as high as 18% according to others (MOI, 2012) and estimates of the economic impact to the GDP are about 2.73 billion USD (Nehlawi, 2013). While there are many causes of MVCs in Qatar, over half of the accidents involve drivers with little driving experience (ElGhanem, 2012). Because of societal constraints for young women, young drivers in Qatar tend to be mostly male. These young male drivers lack experience and may engage in risky behaviors such as texting, not wearing seat belts, speeding, playing games such as 'chicken,' and other thrill-seeking practices. Though few scientific studies have been undertaken, those that are released are covered widely in the local press, indicating this is a pressing issue for Qatar residents. Qatari male youth are much more likely to stunt drive as compared to expatriate youth (Doha News, 2012). The costs to families in Qatar are high, with young people's lives ending tragically or with them suffering debilitating injuries (ElGhanem, 2012). Objectives, Materials, Methods. Changing the driving attitudes and behaviors of young Qatari men are the objectives of our study. It uses a tailored message campaign developed from research on the target audience. We will conduct an in-depth formative research study with young Arab men, identifying their driving beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Using the results from the formative research, we will plan and shoot a 7-10 minute persuasive documentary targeting their key beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Such a tailored message is critical to success, as we must adapt it to the particular attitude structures of the audience for it to succeed. For example, we suspect this population is high on the trait 'sensation seeking'; if verified, then the message must be adapted to this trait to be likely to succeed. We will then screen the documentary to the target audience. We will conduct evaluation research to assess the film's influence on beliefs, attitudes and behavioral intentions in the target population. Results and Conclusions We anticipate being in the documentary shooting stage by the conference, thus will present the results of the formative research and the preliminary documentary. We have a UREP grant for funding. References Doha News (2012, June 19). Study: Young Qatari men more prone to risky driving. Retrieved from http://dohanews.co/study-young-qatari-men-more-prone-to-risky-driving/ ElGhanem, N. (2012, May 3). Qatar has world's highest rate of traffic fatalities study reports. Al-Shorfa.com. Retrieved from http://al-shorfa.com/en_GB/articles/meii/features/main/2012/03/05/feature-02 Nehlawi, M. (2013, April 17). The price of Qatar's high road accidents. The Edge. Retrieved from http://www.theedge.me/the-price-of-qatars-high-road-accidents/ West, B. & Naumann, R. (2011). Motor vehicle related deaths United States, 2003-2007. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a10.htm


Educational institutions are under pressure from their competitors. Regulators and community groups need educational institutions to adopt appropriate business and organizational practices. Globally, educational institutions are now using e-learning as the best teaching and learning approach. E-learning is becoming the center of attention to the learning institutions, educational systems and software inventors. North-West University (NWU) is currently using eFundi, a Learning Management System (LMS). LMS are all information systems and procedures that adds value to students learning and support the learning material in text or any multimedia files. With various e-learning tools, students would be able to access all the materials related to the course in electronic copies. The study was tasked with identifying the e-learning components at the NWU, Mafikeng campus. Quantitative research methodology was considered in data collection and descriptive statistics for data analysis. The Activity Theory (AT) was used as a theory to guide the study. AT outlines the limitations amongst e-learning at the macroorganizational level (plan, guiding principle, campus-wide solutions) and micro-organization (daily functioning practice, collaborative transformation, specific adaptation). On a technological environment, AT gives people an opportunity to change from concentrating on computers as an area of concern but also understand that technology is part of human activities. The findings have identified the university's current IT tools and knowledge on e-learning elements. It was recommended that university should consider buying computer resources that consumes less power and practice e-learning effectively. Keywords—E-learning, information and communication technology, teaching, and virtual learning environment.


In contrast to celebratory chronicles that sanitize queer history, Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto casts bad girls as the central protagonists in the drama of social change. Archiving the adolescent urges and puerile political yearnings of degenerate dykes, it shows revolution to be a dirty girl's game.


Allowing to reveal the peculiarities of the perception of the world of each particular native speaker and member of culture, comparative benchmark analysis of texts, including that of the texts of original writing and the translated one, is of current interest within the framework of modern anthropocentric paradigm. Being based on the novel by S. Sanbayev ways of translation of one group of lexemes into English are considered. As a result of analysis it is revealed that there are more than 20 lexemes indicating camels in Kazakh (there are 6 in the novel). The translated text uses only 4 lexemes (calf, camel, dromedary, Bactrian) which are hyperonyms with respect to Kazakh ones. Researched topic permitted to make a conclusion that differentiation of lexical meaning occurs in Kazakh.


On January 27, 2010, in his State of the Union address, President Obama declared: With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests--including foreign corporations--to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (1) In that succinct comment, the former professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School made three important and accurate observations about the Supreme Court majority's opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2): First, it did reverse a century of law; second, it did authorize unlimited election-related expenditures by America's most powerful interests; and, third, the logic of the opinion extends to money spent by foreign entities. That is so because the Court placed such heavy emphasis on "the premise that the First Amendment generally prohibits the suppression of political speech based on the speaker's identity." (3) Indeed, the opinion expressly stated, "We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers." (4) Somewhat inconsistently, however, the Court also stated that it would not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest "in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation's political process." (5) Today, instead of repeating arguments that I advanced in my dissent from the Citizens United decision, I shall mention four post-decision events that provide a basis to expect that the Court already has had second thoughts about the breadth of the reasoning in Justice Kennedy's opinion for a five-man majority. The first relates to Justice Alito, the second to Chief Justice Roberts, the third to the Court's unanimous summary decision a few months ago in a case upholding the constitutional validity of a prohibition on campaign expenditures by a non-citizen Harvard Law School graduate, (6) and the fourth to my own further reflection about the rights of non-voters to influence the outcome of elections. I. Justice Alito--who was in the audience for the 2010 State of the Union address and had joined the majority opinion in Citizens United--reportedly mouthed the words "not true" in response to the President's comment that I have quoted. (7) Although I have not discussed the matter with him, I think Justice Alito must have been reacting to the suggestion that the opinion would open the floodgates for corporations controlled by foreign entities as well as those wholly owned by American citizens. I draw that inference because, instead of responding directly to my dissenting opinion's comment that the Court's reasoning would have protected the World War II propaganda broadcasts by Tokyo Rose, (8) Justice Kennedy stated that the Court was not reaching the question. (9) Given the fact that the basic proposition that undergirded the majority's analysis is that the First Amendment does not permit the regulation of speech--or of expenditures supporting speech--to be based on the identity of the speaker or his patron, it is easy to understand why the President would not have understood that ambiguous response to foreclose First Amendment protection for propaganda financed by foreign entities. But Justice Alito's reaction does persuade me that in due course it will be necessary for the Court to issue an opinion explicitly crafting an exception that will create a crack in the foundation of the Citizens United majority opinion. For his statement that it is "not true" that foreign entities will be among the beneficiaries of Citizens United offers good reason to predict there will not be five votes for such a result when a case arises that requires the Court to address the issue in a full opinion. …


Cave and karst landforms are distributed widely around the world. They have many values and are an integral component of the world's biodiversity. Some are habitats for a wide range of endemic species of flora and fauna, while others house rare and endangered species. Still others are the sources of rare minerals and some are important for resources such as groundwater, while some are venerated as sites of religious, spiritual and cultural importance. Many such landforms encompass one or many of these values. As special places, cave and karst landforms require special management. This small booklet has been prepared as a brief guide for planners, managers and users of cave and karst estates and provides general information and practical guidelines for the management of cave and karst ecosystems.


An ethnographic analysis of the international community's efforts to democratize postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina argues for greater acknowledgement of the social within the technical aspects of politics. Rather than viewing elections as a ritual symbolically reflecting or producing meaning, the insights of Bruno Latour and other scholars of science are applied to elections as a site that creates democratic knowledge and authority. Technical practices and objects construct elections as an apolitical and acultural event. However, the forms of authority and social relations created through this apparently neutral techne are tremendously social and political. Democracy and elections are firmly embedded in social practices, knowledges, and artifacts.


Climate change has become a major political issue and has become the subject of discussion and debate at all levels and throughout the world. Central Africa, which harbours the second largest forest in the world, is equally at the centre of debates on the role of forests in the fight against climate change. Consequently, workshops on climate change are very common in this region. This study was carried out by Center for International Forestry Research and aimed to understand how people with professional interest in adaptation and REDD+ in Central Africa comprehend key concepts of climate change. Questionnaires on basic knowledge of key climate change concepts were answered by 138 stakeholders from several Central African countries. These tests were intended to establish a baseline from which a programme of capacity-building could be developed. The results demonstrated that: (1) although workshops on REDD+ and adaptation to climate change are held with increasingly frequency in Central Africa, stakeholders in the region are still struggling to understand the key concepts of climate change, (2) the issues of climate change are evolving so quickly that those who are called upon to defend the interests and positions of the central Africa region are lagging behind the discourses, hence the need for continuous capacity-building, (3) decision-makers in the Congo Basin need frequently updated information and knowledge to be up to the task of supporting the regional position held by Central African Forestry Commission and to defend national interests.


Community wireless mesh networks are decentralized and cooperative structures with participation rules that define their freedom, openness and neutrality. The operation of these networks require routing algorithms that may impose additional unnecessary technical restrictions in the determination of routes that can restrict the freedom of community users. We propose a receiver-driven discretionary routing mechanism where each receiver (the intended destination of the packet) can freely specify delivery objectives and remain compatible with the collaborative approach of community networks. Each node has a unique identifier and can announce the description of its offer and also the description of its routing policy with preferences to deliver traffic to it. BMX6 provides a "hash-based profile propagation mechanism" to disseminate descriptions. This receiver-driven routing can be applied to express preferences for desirable nodes and paths, or to restrict traffic to trusted nodes enabling trust and security aware routing. We validate our contributions with a proof of concept implementation of key concepts, as an extension of the BMX6 routing protocol, that confirms its feasibility and scalability.


Comprehension of criminalistic linguistic problems by separate scientists criminalists differs very much, so various conceptions of these problems are presented, sometimes the same items are named differently not only in special literature, but in criminalistics manual too. Frequently only names of tasks groups are presented and nobody explains what tasks form these groups in author's opinion. It was understandable twenty years ago when theory and practice of this examination was in initial stage or the formation, but from the first maintained dissertation in this area till our times many decades past and systematization of linguistic examination tasks become practical and theoretical necessity. Every task arose in practice may be solved if it is scientific validated. So, the creation of tasks system is vital question for the development of scientific basics of this examination. The aim of this investigation is analysis various conceptions of tasks of linguistic examination and presentation the system of Lithuanian texts linguistic examination tasks. Investigated problem research analysis in this work limits itself with Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Russian criminalists works as scientists from countries of Middle and West Europe working in this area pay more attention to possibilities of the application of linguistics science in forensic examination but not to systematization tasks of this examination. Besides, linguistic examination of Lithuanian texts for understandable reasons is traditionally related with East Europe (Ukraine, Russia) school of forensic linguistic examinations and for this reason it was decided to analyse the situation in this medium primarily and more extensive analyse will be left for the future. In this paper the evolution of the formulation of linguistic examination tasks from 1980 is presented and interrelations of these tasks are evaluated. System of Lithuanian texts linguistic examination tasks is presented on the base of analysis of literary sources and examinational practice. Some questions are not discussed in literature as its are novel in examinational practice. Some of its are only mentioned in literary sources. Those of its which in late years become valid in examinational practice for its practical significance were included to some place in the system on the base of its relations with other tasks known in criminalistic examinations. An example is diagnostic task – determination of the author's self-dependence in text creation. In this work such system of Lithuanian texts criminalistic linguistic examination is proposed: Identification tasks: to determine author of text (or to prove that creator of text isn't suspect person). Classification tasks: 1) to determine if Lithuanian text author's mother tongue is Lithuanian or not Lithuanian; 2) to determine author's education and 3) to determine the area of author's activity. Diagnostic tasks: 1) to determine whether author created text in the ordinary or non-ordinary state; 2) to determine if text language was distorted intentionally; 3) to determine if author created text self-dependently and whether the text wasn't by one person dictated to another person. Non-traditional tasks at present differ very much and still aren't determined. This system must be consider as reflecting present requirements and possibilities. Its changes will depend on future requirements of forensic linguistics.


Highly three-dimensional and complex flow structure in the tip gap between a blade tip and the casing leads to significant inefficiency in the aerodynamic performance of a turbine. The interaction between the tip leakage vortex and the main passage flow is a substantial source of aerodynamic loss. The present research deals with the effect of groove type casing treatment on the aerodynamic performance of a linear turbine cascade. Grooved casings are widely used in compressors in order to improve the stall margin whereas limited studies are available on turbines. In this study, various circumferential grooves are investigated using the computational approach for a single stage axial turbine blade. The specific HP turbine airfoil under numerical investigation is identical to the rotor tip profile of the Axial Flow Turbine Research Facility (AFTRF) of the Pennsylvania State University. The carefully measured aerodynamic flow quantities in the AFTRF are used for initial computational quality assessment purposes. Numerical calculations are obtained by solving the three-dimensional, incompressible, steady and turbulent form of the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. A two-equation turbulence model, Shear Stress Transport (SST) k-ω is used in the present set of calculations. Current results indicate that groove casing treatment can be used effectively in axial turbines in order to improve the aerodynamic performance. Detailed flow visualizations within the passage and numerical calculations reveal that a measurable improvement in the aerodynamic performance is possible using the specific circumferential grooves presented in this paper.


Epidemiological evidence shows the association between air pollutants and several mental health outcomes, including depression, sleep disturbance, dementia, childhood neurodevelopment and suicide. Pregnant women are believed to be more susceptible and vulnerable to environmental pollutants, and postpartum depression (PPD) is a prevalent debilitating mental disorder. However, data on the effects of exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and postpartum period on the risk of PPD remain limited. This study aimed to evaluate the association between exposure to ambient air pollution during pregnancy and postpartum period and the incidence of PPD. The Taiwan Birth Cohort Study recruited representative 12% of all newborn in 2005 and their mothers by two-stage stratified sampling, including 21 248 mother–infant pairs. The occurrence of PPD was assessed by a self-reported questionnaire. Exposure to air pollutants during pregnancy and postpartum period was estimated using hybrid kriging/land-use regression (LUR) and integrated LUR-machine learning model based on data from the air monitoring stations. Logistic regression was then conducted to determine adjusted odds ratios (aORs) of PPD in relation to air pollutants. A total of 21 188 women were included in the final analysis, among whom 3,648 (17.2%) developed PPD within 6 months postpartum. The occurrence of PPD was significantly related to exposure to ambient concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) during first trimester after adjustment [aOR: 1.081 per interquartile range (10.67 ppb), 95% confidence interval: 1.003, 1.165], but not to particulate matter ⩽2.5 µm in diameter or carbon monoxide. Exposure to ambient NO2 during early pregnancy was significantly related to the occurrence of PPD among the women investigated in this population-based study.


Semi-structured interviews of 76 Sami mothers and 58 Sami fathers, and 86 Norwegian mothers and 58 Norwegian fathers of four-year olds, revealed consistent cross-cultural differences in parenting. ANCOVA results showed that parental permissiveness was higher in the Sami group. Moreover, the effect of ethnicity was different for boys and girls (mothers' reports). Co-sleeping and self-regulation of food and sleep were commonly practiced in the Sami, but not in the Norwegian families. Sami children were more socially independent than their Norwegian peers. Indirect or internal types of control were used more by Sami parents, and they were less tolerant of child aggression, in the form of temper tantrums and displays of jealousy. These patterns are similar to those found in other indigenous cultures in the circumpolar region. The results are discussed with reference to the Individualism-Collectivism dimension. The study challenges the Individualism-Collectivism construct for apparently confounding the individualism common in European liberalism with the individual autonomy commonly encountered among hunting-gathering peoples.


The prevalence and characteristics of small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) have not been well characterized for Bacillus subtilis, an important model system for Gram-positive bacteria. However, B. subtilis was recently found to synthesize many candidate sRNAs during stationary phase. In the current study, we performed deep sequencing on Hfq-associated RNAs and found that a small subset of sRNAs associates with Hfq, an enigmatic RNA-binding protein that stabilizes sRNAs in Gram-negatives, but whose role is largely unknown in Gram-positive bacteria. We also found that Hfq associated with antisense RNAs, antitoxin transcripts, and many mRNA leaders. Several new candidate sRNAs and mRNA leader regions were also discovered by this analysis. Additionally, mRNA fragments overlapping with start or stop codons associated with Hfq, while, in contrast, relatively few full-length mRNAs were recovered. Deletion of hfq reduced the intracellular abundance of several representative sRNAs, suggesting that B. subtilis Hfq-sRNA interactions may be functionally significant in vivo. In general, we anticipate this catalog of Hfq-associated RNAs to serve as a resource in the functional characterization of Hfq in B. subtilis.


Massive spectroscopic survey are becoming trendy in astrophysics and cosmology, as they can address new fundamental knowledge such as understanding the formation of the Milky Way and probing the nature of the mysterious dark energy. To enable massive spectroscopic surveys, new technology has been developed to place thousands of optical fibres at a given position on a focal plane. This technology needs to be: (1) accurate, with micrometer positional accuracy; (2) fast to minimize overhead; (3) robust to minimize failure; and (4) low cost. In this paper, we present the development, properties, and performance of a new single 8-mm in diameter fibre positioner robot, using two 4-mm DC-brushless gearmotors, that allows us to achieve accuracies up to 0.07 arcsec (5 mu m). This device has been developed in the context of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument.(1)


A physical movement can be construed in many ways. For some researchers of mathematics education informed by embodiment theories this is important, as they perceive a mathematical concept as a polysemous structure grounded in multiple interrelated sensorimotor constructions. In this dance is no different. Similarly in both disciplines, the more ways one has of thinking about a movement and the more connections one builds across these different constructions, the deeper and richer one's understanding and proficiency in enacting the movement and the greater one's capacity to transpose the learning to new contexts. In both mathematics and dance, instructors thus seek to create conditions for students to develop diverse subjective constructions of the movements they are learning to enact and to explore relations across these different constructions. Any pedagogical discussion of movement, whether in dance or mathematics, must be a discussion of the individual's subjective phenomenology and increasing awareness. In reflection, the very possibility of the authors' interdisciplinary dialogue is testimony to the cohesive potential in systemic conceptualizations of human movement.


Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a disease state resulting from an abnormal inflammatory response of the lungs to irritant particles and gases, with resultant progressive airflow limitation, that is partially reversible. It is associated with lung hyperinflation and systemic effects, such as chronic cough, exertional dyspnoea, expectoration, and wheezing. COPD causes physical impairment, debility, and reduced quality of life. Symptoms such as coughing or wheezing can be treated with medication. Respiratory infections should be treated with antibiotics, if appropriate. The pathological correlates are chronic bronchitis and emphysema.


This chapter is an attempt to survey the predictions of some of the most important factors involved in attrition and to discuss them with respect to empirical data from L1 attrition. The factors discussed include biological aspects (plasticity, activation thresholds, inhibition and emotional implication), cognitive aspects (memory, aptitude, literacy and task dependency) and external factors (the role of language use, the cultural context and attitudes). The discussion shows that (a) many of these factors are closely linked, (b) some of them may be considered cluster factors which are more influent and more strongly interrelated than others, and (c) none of the factors may alone be considered responsible for attrition. This may be accounted for by a multicomponential view of language attrition.


Of the published reviews of Natural Law and Natural Rights, one of the most, and most enduringly, influential was Ernest Fortin's review-article "The New Rights Theory and the Natural Law" (1982). The present essay takes the occasion of that review's latest republication to respond to its main criticisms of the theory of natural law and natural or human rights that is articulated in Natural Law and Natural Rights. The response deals with a number of fundamental or strategically important issues: the freedom of thought and/or the intellectual autonomy and integrity of work within an intellectual tradition that overlaps with a "faith tradition"; the hierarchies among the basic human goods; the place of virtue in the book, and the relation between rights and freedom, and rights and virtue; the unsoundness of the Straussian bifurcation between natural right and natural rights; whether natural law is only analogically law, and the relation between moral law and sanctions; and the possibility of true exceptionless negative moral precepts.


In an article which appeared in The Philosophical Review Karl Ameriks argues in favour of the rather surprising thesis that Husserl, his own statements and a host of commentators and critics notwithstanding, was a realist, i.e., a philosopher who held that "there are physical objects which exist outside consciousness and are not wholly dependent on it" (498). More recently, Harrison Hall, in his contribution to the volume Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science, has argued that in Husserl's view there is no legitimate philosophical issue between realism and idealism, because philosophy is concerned exclusively with meanings. Both interpretations are careful, documenting each point with texts, and contain several elements that are illuminating. Yet they are fundamentally mistaken as regards their main thesis, as I shall argue in this paper.


The study examined the determinants of informal credit delinquencies among food crop farmers in rural Niger Delta of Nigeria using Akwa Ibom State as a case study. A multi-stage random sampling technique was adopted to select 96 beneficiaries and structured questionnaires as well as personal interview were used to collect data. Probit and logit models were used to analyse the factors influencing credit delinquency among food crop farmers in the state. Result of the descriptive analysis of the socio-economic characteristic of respondents revealed that 93% of male and 72% of female food crop farmers had one form of formal education ranging from primary to tertiary education. Empirical result from the Probit and logit models were similar and showed that borrower's non-farm income, credit amount received, household size, net farm profit and farm size are determinants of credit delinquencies among food crop farmers in Akwa Ibom state. The study also discovered that the probability of food crop farmers being credit delinquent is about 0.427 ceteris paribus. It is recommended that food crop farmers should form marketing co-operative societies as a means of generating additional income to augment loan obtained. Furthermore, local government authorities should set up credit programmes that should focus on soft loans to rural farmers at a subsidize interest rate.


We have developed an integrated simulation system for soft materials named OCTA. OCTA is developed for the meso-scale simulation, which is important to study the material properties such as rheological properties. OCTA consists of four simulation programs (COGNAC, PASTA, SUSHI, MUFFIN) and a simulation platform (GOURMET), and is designed for collaborative operations of multi programs. Various application studies using OCTA are conducted, e.g. rheological properties of polymer melt, structure and dynamics of polymer melt confined between nano-scale gap, interfacial strength of polymer blends, phase separation of polymer blend under shear flow, and the brief results are introduced in this paper.


We present an analysis of an understudied construction found in Philadelphian and Canadian English, and also in certain Vermont varieties. In this construction, the participle of certain verbs can appear along with a form of the verb be and a DP complement, producing strings like I'm done my homework, I'm finished my fries, and (in Vermont) I'm started the project. We show that the participle in the construction is an adjectival passive, not a perfect construction. We further argue that the internal argument DP in the construction is receiving Case from the adjectival head a, similar to what happens in all English dialects with the adjective worth, and that the internal argument is interpreted via a mechanism of complement coercion. The microparametric variation we find across English dialects with respect to the availability of this construction is accounted for by variation in the selectional restrictions on the a head.


In this article we consider a finite queue with its arrivals controlled by the random early detection algorithm. This is one of the most prominent congestion avoidance schemes in the Internet routers. The aggregate arrival stream from the population of transmission control protocol sources is locally considered stationary renewal or Markov modulated Poisson process with general packet length distribution. We study the exact dynamics of this queue and provide the stability and the rates of convergence to the stationary distribution and obtain the packet loss probability and the waiting time distribution. Then we extend these results to a two traffic class case with each arrival stream renewal. However, computing the performance indices for this system becomes computationally prohibitive. Thus, in the latter half of the article, we approximate the dynamics of the average queue length process asymptotically via an ordinary differential equation. We estimate the error term via a diffusion approximation. We use these results to obtain approximate transient and stationary performance of the system. Finally, we provide some computational examples to show the accuracy of these approximations.


The research examines the dynamic process of inference updating. The authors present a framework that delineates two mechanisms that guide the updating of personality trait inferences about brands. The results of three experiments show that chronics (those for whom the trait is accessible) updated their initial inferences on the basis of the trait implications of new information. Notably, nonchronics (those for whom the trait is not accessible) also update their initial inferences, but they do so on the basis of the evaluative implications of new information. The framework adds to the inference-making literature by uncovering two distinct paths of inferences updating and by emphasizing the moderating role of trait accessibility. The findings have direct implications for marketers attempting to understand the construction of brand personality, and they emphasize the constantly evolving nature of brand perceptions and the notion that both the consumer and the marketer have important roles to play in this process.


Low cost of labor has been one of the major incentives that foreign firms invest in many developing countries. Yet, many developing countries including China and ASEAN have recently experienced a rapid increase in labor costs. Using the wage information provided by JETRO, this study examines how Korean FDI outflow is affected by the increase in labor costs of the manufacturing industry in host countries. The results indicate that the worker's and engineer's wages in Asian developing countries, who accumulated at least 3 and 5 years of work experience, have generally a negative impact on Korean FDI outflow. However, there exist positive relationships between the wages and FDI when the wages stay at very low levels. We do not find evidence that labor costs make a significant impact on Korean FDI outflow to European or Developed countries.


Intensive management of wetlands to improve wildlife habitat typically includes the manipulation of water depth, duration, and timing to promote desired vegetation communities. Increased societal, industrial, and agricultural demands for water may encourage the use of alternative sources such as wastewater effluents in managed wetlands. However, water quality is commonly overlooked as an influence on wetland soil seed banks and soils. In four separate greenhouse trials conducted over a 2-yr period, we examined the effects of municipal wastewater effluent (WWE) on vegetation of wetland seed banks and soils excavated from a wildlife management area in Missouri, USA. We used microcosms filled with one of two soil materials and irrigated with WWE, Missouri River water, or deionized water to simulate moist-soil conditions. Vegetation that germinated from the soil seed bank was allowed to grow in microcosms for approximately 100 d. Vegetative taxa richness, plant density, and biomass were significantly reduced in WWE-irrigated soil materials compared with other water sources. Salinity and sodicity rapidly increased in WWE-irrigated microcosms and probably was responsible for inhibiting germination or interfering with seedling development. Our results indicate that irrigation with WWE promoted saline-sodic soil conditions, which alters the vegetation community by inhibiting germination or seedling development.


The extensive wave erosion which has occurred in many parts of the Lake Michigan shoreline since I9I4.3 has centered interest on the materials composing the bluffs above the water line and on the amount and grain size of beach sediments yielded by wave erosion of these bluffs. The present study grew out of a preliminary mapping of the landform types and shore materials of the Lake Michigan basin carried out in 1952-53 for the Beach Erosion Board of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The report prepared for the Beach Erosion Board summarized the geology of the Lake Michigan shoreline. Types of bedrock were indicated not only where such rocks form cliffs or reefs above water level but also beneath the unconsolidated materials which form three-quarters of the actual shoreline. Such unconsolidated materials were also mapped as to type and present form, and on these bases the shoreline was divided into physiographic units. These physiographic units and materials will be evaluated with respect to the total proportion of each type along the shoreline and the sediments yielded to the beach zone by wave erosion.


The study uses a qualitative case study framed within a socio-cultural framework to investigate Vietnamese English language university teachers' difficulties in their research engagement. The study was conducted among 21 English language university teachers in Hong Duc University in Vietnam. Skype semi-structured interview was employed to collect necessary data to explore teacher participants' perceived obstacles to research. The findings of the study show that there was a gap between Vietnamese authorities' expectations of research outputs and the realities of English language university teachers' research capabilities. Such gap has caused serious challenges to those teachers and prevented them from effectively engaging in research. On the one hand, Vietnamese authorities hope to increase universities' research output to keep up with the international academic ranking. On the other hand, the working realities of university teachers hinder their engagement in research. However, no official investigation has been done to reduce such gap and the enforcement of research activity in universities has been taken for granted. In this sense, the significance of this study is an opportunity for English language university teachers to voice their opinions about the enforced nature of research activity in universities in Vietnam.


Increasingly, corporations are championing the cause of gender equality and women's empowerment in the Global South. Tapping into notions about women's role as caregivers, empowerment promotion is simultaneously meant to lead to family and community development, profitability for those who invest in women and girls and economic growth. While emerging feminist scholarship on this kind of 'transnational business feminism' (TBF) (Roberts, 2012, 2015) has largely scrutinised gender governance based on visual and textual materials produced by corporations themselves, this article expands the methodological engagement with TBF by reflecting on how we translated the concept into two distinct field-based research projects. The article compares and contrasts our situated fieldwork experiences, focusing in particular on accessing corporate elites and development partners and the epistemological rifts that emerged in conversations with them. It documents how our experiences of blockages, hostile relations and miscommunications have shaped our critical feminist research, and points to some of the power relations at work within TBF.


Abstract. Sediment-routing systems continuously transfer information and mass from
eroding source areas to depositional sinks. Understanding how these systems
alter environmental signals is critical when it comes to inferring
source-area properties from the sedimentary record. We measure cosmogenic
 10 Be and 26 Al along three large sediment-routing systems
( ∼  100 000 km 2 ) in central Australia with the aim of
tracking downstream variations in 10 Be– 26 Al inventories and
identifying the factors responsible for these variations. By comparing 56 new
cosmogenic 10 Be and 26 Al measurements in stream sediments with
matching data ( n=  55) from source areas, we show that 10 Be– 26 Al
inventories in hillslope bedrock and soils set the benchmark for relative
downstream modifications. Lithology is the primary determinant of
erosion-rate variations in source areas and despite sediment mixing over
hundreds of kilometres downstream, a distinct lithological signal is retained.
Post-orogenic ranges yield catchment erosion rates of ∼  6–11 m Myr −1 and silcrete-dominant areas erode as slow as
 ∼  0.2 m Myr −1 . 10 Be– 26 Al inventories in
stream sediments indicate that cumulative-burial terms increase downstream to
mostly ∼  400–800 kyr and up to
 ∼  1.1 Myr. The magnitude of the
burial signal correlates with increasing sediment cover downstream and
reflects assimilation from storages with long exposure histories, such as
alluvial fans, desert pavements, alluvial plains, and aeolian dunes. We
propose that the tendency for large alluvial rivers to mask their
 10 Be– 26 Al source-area signal differs according to geomorphic
setting. Signal preservation is favoured by (i) high sediment supply rates,
(ii) high mean runoff, and (iii) a thick sedimentary basin pile. Conversely,
signal masking prevails in landscapes of (i) low sediment supply and (ii) juxtaposition of sediment storages with notably different exposure histories.


Many models of markets are based on assumptions of rationality, transparency, efficiency, and homogeneity in various combinations. They assume, at least implicitly, that decision makers understand the structure of the market and how it produces the dynamics which can be observed or might potentially occur. Are these models acceptable simplifications, or can they be seriously misleading? The research described in this article explains why markets routinely and repeatedly make 'mistakes' that are inconsistent with the simplifying assumptions. System Dynamics models are used to show how misestimating demand growth, allowing financial discipline to lapse, unrealistic business planning, and misperception of technology trajectories can produce disastrously wrong business decisions. The undesirable outcomes could include vicious cycles of investment and profitability, market bubbles, accelerated commoditization, excessive investment in dead-end technologies, giving up on a product that becomes a huge success, waiting too long to reinvent legacy companies, and changes in market leadership. The article illuminates the effects of bounded rationality, imperfect information, and fragmentation of decision making. Decision makers rely on simple mental models which have serious limitations. They become increasingly deficient as problems grow more complex, as the environment changes more rapidly, and as the number of decision makers increases. The amplification and tipping dynamics typical of highly coupled systems, for example, bandwagon, network, and lemming effects, are not anticipated. Examples are drawn from airlines, telecommunications, IT, aerospace, energy, and media. The key conclusions in this article are about the critical roles of behavioral factors in the evolution of markets.


Immune cells are involved in virtually every aspect of the wound repair process, from the initial stages where they participate in haemostasis and work to prevent infection to later stages where they drive scar formation. Immunotherapy is being developed offers some advantageous immunomodulation factors that are known in the field of alternative medicine, such as mushroom beta-glucan, anti-microbial peptides and triterpenoid; these factors represent a novel therapeutic approach for anti-inflammation to promote the wound healing.


For the past 25 years UK Higher Education Institutions have forged research and teaching partnerships with their counterparts overseas. Many of these links were funded by the British Government and managed by the British Council's Higher Education Links Scheme.
This book takes an informed and critical look at issues and trends in global higher education over the past 25 years with an in-depth, and at times, personal account of how these links were managed and led.
Ten experts representing a variety of disciplines from areas such as conserving the natural environment, the promotion of human rights, and education and gender present an "insider's" view of their link, reflecting upon the successes and challenges in promoting research, developing institutional capacity at home and abroad, and the lessons they have learned.
This book will especially interest those working in higher education and international development generally, as well as students, researchers and professionals engaged in bilateral and multi-lateral development assistance programmes.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine sexually active adolescents' perceptions of which factors they believe could have influenced postponement of their first and current sexual intercourse experiences, and to explore demographic differences by using a diverse sample. Design and methods were descriptive. Many adolescents reported that "nothing" could have postponed their first sexual intercourse, though common factors that could have postponed intercourse were also identified. Demographic differences in patterns were also apparent. Implications for schools and parents are discussed. Approximately 50% of teens have had sexual experiences by age 15 (Massennan & Uribe, 1989), but fewer than 5% of K-12 students in the United States were provided with comprehensive sex education (Haffner, 1995). American sex education programs have been described by experts as too little too late, and criticized for focusing on biology more than emotions (Steinberg, 2002). Adolescents in the United Kingdom have reported dissatisfaction with timing and content of sex and relationships education (Alien, 1987; Procter & Blake, 2000). The need for a more comprehensive approach has been strongly emphasized by the National Children's Bureau's Sex Education Forum (1999) which describes school sex education in the U.K. as "patchy: excellent in some places, almost non-existent in others (Scott, I999) Clearly, improvements in sex education are warranted. Studies of sex education programs have investigated the need for education, how and by whom it is provided, and the independent impacts of information learned within school, peer group, and home contexts, all of which are important aspects of an ecological approach to understanding sexual socialization (Bronfenbrenner, 1989). There is evidence to indicate that such programs help children and adolescents learn about these important developmental issues. However, adolescents' perceptions of what would be effective in helping them to postpone sexual debut has been minimally addressed. This will be the focus of this manuscript after a brief review of sex education research. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Research on the impact of school-based sex education programs has demonstrated overall positive effects, both direct and indirect, on sexual behavior in the United States (Coyle, Basen-Enquist, & Kirby, 1999; Zabin, Hirsch, Smith, Streett, & Hardy, 1986). Research in the United Kingdom has also demonstrated positive effects of Adolescents' perceptions school-based sex education programs (Dicenso, 2002; Health Education Authority, 1988; Sex Education Forum, 1999; Wellings, Wadsworth, Johnson, Field, Whitaker, & Field,1995). Studies also show that effectiveness is to some degree a function of how well sex education is delivered (Buston, Wight, Hart, & Scott, 2002). School-based sex education has been demonstrated to be an effective way to educate adolescents about sexuality. Especially noteworthy are findings involving onset of sexual activity, use of contraception, and increased communication with parents (Hubbard, Giese, & Rainey (1998). Kvalem, Sundet, Rivo, Eilertsen, and Bakketeig (1996) reported increased use of contraceptives following sex education about contraceptives. Comprehensive reviews of American-based studies (Kirby, Short, Collins, Rugg, Kolbe, Howard, Miller, Sonenstein, & Zabin, 1994; Kirby, 2001) have found consistently positive behavioral impacts of school sex education in terms of postponing sexual intercourse onset or increasing contraceptive use. However, American studies of school-based sex education programs (Finkel, Finkel, 1985; Melchert, Burnett, 1990) have reported mixed findings including positive effects on sexual knowledge and increased contraceptive use, but also an absence of influence on various attitudes and behaviors. Taylor, Wang, Jack, and Adam (1989) found that sex education about contraceptives had no correlation with use of contraceptives. …


The contribution deals with the interactive structure of doctor-patient-communication. After a short discussion about the relevance of doctor-patient-communication within the public health policy, an outline is given on the medical and linguistic research on doctor-patient-communication in Germany. Basic features of conversations and the conversation analytic methodology are presented then. Conversation analyses of doctor-patient-communication reveal five main interactive components which are discussed in detail. Finally, some considerations concerning implementation of linguistic research in medical practice are discussed.


While exploring possibilities to efficiently forecast medical and automotive waste generation on national (Lithuania's) level, series of tests and calculations were made to analyze mentioned types of waste generation itself. In this attempt it was decided to separate medical and automotive waste each in two flows – total and hazardous waste. These waste flows composition and its changes over the period of 2004-2015 were analyzed to learn more about possible reasons for waste data fluctuations and dependability to predetermined socio-economic indicators. Annual total medical waste growth rate during 2004-2015 was 13,6%, hazardous medical waste – 19,19%. Total automotive waste generation experienced 9,41% annual growth and hazardous automotive waste – 23,33%. Spearman's rho test, scatterplots and PLS or MLR regression methods were used to determine waste generation data sensitivity and compare how sensitivity shifted when comparing observed and forecasted data to determined socio-economic indicators. Most of independent variables used for certain waste data set were highly collinear when counting monotonic correlation. Changes between independent and dependant variables sensitivity were noticed as developed statistical modelling methods that demonstrated highest efficiency strengthened variables sensitivity to develop better and more efficient structure for accurate forecasting.


Establishing generalisable humour style profiles promises to have significant value for educational, clinical, and occupational application. However, previous research investigating such profiles has thus far presented inconsistent results. To determine the generalisability and value of humour style profiles, a large and geographically diverse examination of humour styles was conducted through a cross-sectional questionnaire methodology involving 863 participants from across three world regions. Findings identify inconsistencies in the humour style profiles across countries tested and the extant literature, possibly indicative of cultural differences in the behavioural expression of trait humour. Furthermore, when directly compared, humour types, rather than humour styles, consistently provide the greatest predictive value for friendship and well-being outcomes. As such, with respect to both consistency and value, capturing humour style profiles appears to represent a relatively reductionist approach to appreciating the nuances in the use and consequences of humour.


Recently, the use of mobile devices to run multimedia applications is becoming more popular. Such applications are known to be energy consuming. Since these devices are mostly battery powered with a limited battery life, energy saving strategies becomes vital for such systems operation. WiMAX systems utilize a standard sleep mode in order to reduce the mobile station (MS) power usage. It is also used to reduce the usage of base station (BS) air interface resources. IEEE 802.16e proposes three power saving classes (PSCs), depending on the type of the application(s) running on the device. However, when multiple applications that belong to different service types are operating simultaneously, the power consumption may increase due to overlapping among the used PSCs. In this work, a new mechanism is proposed to minimize power consumption of mobile WiMax devices. The proposed mechanism tries to eliminate the overlapping of PSCs by synchronizing the different PSCs. A simulation study is conducted and the simulation results indicate that the proposed mechanism can significantly reduce power consumption of MS; OPNET 14.5 modeler is the simulation tools that used in this work. However, this version of OPNET does not support sleep mode, but the sleep protocol is programed (in this work) using C Language inside the modeler, in order to show the effect of the proposed mechanism to enhance the power saving.


Sea ice melt processes during the Arctic summer affect the sea-air-interactions dramatically. The determination of puddles and quantification their morphology, size distribution and life cycle provides important information to the study of physical processes of sea ice, heat budget, total ice concentration etc.During the summer cruise of ARK IX/2 and 3 of the RV "POLARSTERN" in June and July 1993, a helicopter survey of sea ice for different times and locations was carried out using a Line Scan Camera (LSC) with a reselution of 2 m^2. An area between 78°N-82°N and 2°E-14°W was covered.Indication of the appearance of free water within the snow pack is usually observed in the surface layers first. This occurred on day 146 (26 May) ranging in the amount of free water present between 0.5 and 2.5%. The first melt puddles on first year ice (FY) were visually observed on June 13 day 164. The subsequent indication of the general onset of melt occurred on 17 June (Julian day 168) in the polynya region as observed on the SSM/I ice charts. This continues for about a week (Julian day 175) until the free water has increased to 6-10% within the surface layer. This period of significant free water production through melt processes coincides with a sharp increase in the melt puddles coverage, based on visual observations from the helicopter, going from 3% (Julian day 164) to 10-80% melt water on FY ice (Julian day 185-190) and 30-40% melt puddles on old ice for the same period. About 10-15 days after the brightness temperature reaches nearly black body behaviour, the maximum melt puddles coverage is reached. The refreezing period started at the end of July. The minimum of puddles concentration was detected between 80°N and 81°N. No other geographical correlation was found.Size of the puddles was between 2 m2 to more than 1 km2 and the depth was between a few centimeters to full thickness of the ice floe (thaw hole). The maximum frequency of the puddles size distribution was by a 1000 m2 category at the beginning, then shifted to 1 km2 in the middle, and finally to 100 m2 at the end of the campaign.The average depth of the snow at the beginning of ARK IX/2 varied significantly over old ice (OI) as compared to first-year ice. The mean depth during the first 10 days (Julian day 144 - 154) was 38.1 - 21.8 cm over OI and 14.6 - 8.1 cm over FY ice. The maximum-minimum range over OI varied between 62-8 cm and 26-6 cm for FY ice. By Julian day 180 the snow over FY ice had disappeared, while the snow over old ice reached that state around day 188.The comparison between SSMI and LSC ice date shows, that SSMI derived total ice concentration was higher than that from LSC but lower than the sum of both fractional concentrations of puddles and ice derived from LSC. This is what should be expected and means, that the SSMI derived ice concentrations should be corrected due to the melt features.Using the LSC provides useful ice data on small scale (resolution about 2 m2 ), which could be used for better understanding the physical processes of the sea ice.


We consider models of inflation with U(1) gauge fields and charged scalar fields including symmetry breaking potential, chaotic inflation and hybrid inflation. We show that there exist attractor solutions where the anisotropies produced during inflation becomes comparable to the slow-roll parameters. In the models where the inflaton field is a charged scalar field the gauge field becomes highly oscillatory at the end of inflation ending inflation quickly. Furthermore, in charged hybrid inflation the onset of waterfall phase transition at the end of inflation is affected significantly by the evolution of the background gauge field. Rapid oscillations of the gauge field and its coupling to inflaton can have interesting effects on preheating and non-Gaussianities.


Trust in a brand is consumers' willingness to rely on the brand in the face of risks, hoping that the brand can give positive results for them.  For the reason, it is important to give more attention to consumers' trust in a brand. The benefit of the trust is that marketers can retain the position in the competition and reduce the costs to get consumers. Marketers, therefore, must entrust a name or a symbol namely a brand to build relationship with consumers. Most probably, the consumers would not directly trust a brand because each consumer has consideration upon making a purchase. Thus, the marketers must trace and identify factors that influence or build consumers' trust.  Some factors that may influence consumers' trust in a brand can be categorized into three characteristics, namely brand characteristic, company characteristic, and consumer-brand characteristic. This research is a replication of the research by Lau and Lee (1999) stating that those three characteristics are antecedent of the trust in a brand.  The aim of this research was to identify those three characteristics in building the trust in a brand and to identify the influence of the trust in a brand to loyalty. With multiple regression analysis method, it was found that brand characteristics that consist of brand reputation, brand predictability, and brand competence influence the trust in a brand. All company characteristics that consist of trust in the company, company reputation, and motives of the company, except company integrity, influence trust in a brand.  Consumer-brand characteristics consisting of brand liking, brand experience, and brand satisfaction influence the trust in a brand, while the similarity of consumers' self-concept and brand personality and the peer support do not. Key words: Trust, loyalty, brand.


This article discusses how the teaching of qualitative research in higher education is threatened by the effects of new public management, by academic culture wars and by a growing belief in big data. The controversy over Alice Goffman's book On the Run presents one recent example of this. In an effort to counterbalance these developments, this article stresses the importance in social science curricula of 'naturalistic inquiry' – the artisanal core of qualitative research. Explicitly acknowledging emic viewpoints, naturalistic inquiry upholds the emancipatory ideal of making society transparent to its members. Teaching naturalistic inquiry as a craft may be the best way to assure 'qualitative literacy' among graduates in their various careers as socially responsible professionals.


Many chemical toxicants and/or their active metabolites are electrophiles that cause cell injury by forming covalent bonds with nucleophilic targets on biological macromolecules. Covalent reactions between nucleophilic and electrophilic reagents are, however, discriminatory since there is a significant degree of selectivity associated with these interactions. Over the course of the past few decades, the theory of Hard and Soft, Acids and Bases (HSAB) has proven to be a useful tool in predicting the outcome of such reactions. This concept utilizes the inherent electronic characteristic of polarizability to define, for example, reacting electrophiles and nucleophiles as either hard or soft. These HSAB definitions have been successfully applied to chemical-induced toxicity in biological systems. Thus, according to this principle, a toxic electrophile reacts preferentially with biological targets of similar hardness or softness. The soft/hard classification of a xenobiotic electrophile has obvious utility in discerning plausible biological targets and molecular mechanisms of toxicity. The purpose of this perspective is to discuss the HSAB theory of electrophiles and nucleophiles within a toxicological framework. In principle, covalent bond formation can be described by using the properties of their outermost or frontier orbitals. Because these orbital energies for most chemicals can be calculated using quantum mechanical models, it is possible to quantify the relative softness (σ) or hardness (η) of electrophiles or nucleophiles and to subsequently convert this information into useful indices of reactivity. This atomic level information can provide insight into the design of corroborative laboratory research and thereby help investigators discern corresponding molecular sites and mechanisms of toxicant action. The use of HSAB parameters has also been instrumental in the development and identification of potential nucleophilic cytoprotectants that can scavenge toxic electrophiles. Clearly, the difficult task of delineating molecular sites and mechanisms of toxicant action can be facilitated by the application of this quantitative approach.


The copper/zinc superoxide dismutase (Cu/Zn-SOD) is a representative antioxidant enzyme that is responsible for the conversion of superoxide to oxygen and hydrogen peroxide in aerobic organisms. Cu/Zn-SOD mRNAs have been cloned from many species and employed as useful biomarkers of oxidative stresses. In the present study, we cloned Cu/Zn-SOD cDNA from the cladoceran Daphnia magna, analyzed its catalytic properties, and investigated mRNA expression patterns after exposure to known oxidative stressors. The full-length Cu/Zn-SOD of the D. magna (Dm-Cu/Zn-SOD) sequence consisted of 703 bp nucleotides, encoding 178 amino acids, showing well-conserved domains that were required for metal binding and several common characteristics. The deduced amino acid sequence of Dm-Cu/Zn-SOD showed that it shared high identity with Daphnia pulex (88%), Alvinella pompejana (56%), and Cristaria plicata (56%). The phylogenetic analysis indicated that Dm-Cu/Zn-SOD was highly homologous to D. pulex. The variation of Dm-Cu/Zn-SOD mRNA expression was quantified by real-time PCR, and the results indicated that the expression was up-regulated after 48-h exposure to copper, un-ionized ammonia, and low dissolved oxygen. This study shows that the Dm-Cu/Zn-SOD mRNA could be successfully employed as a biomarker of oxidative stress, which is a common mode of toxicity for many other aquatic hazardous materials.


OBJECTIVE: To determine nationwide general practitioner (GP)-diagnosed prevalence and pediatrician–diagnosed incidence rates of adolescent chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and to assess CFS morbidity. DESIGN AND SETTING: We collected data from a cross-sectional national sample among GPs and prospective registration of new patients with CFS in all pediatric hospital departments in the Netherlands. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Study participants were adolescents aged 10 to 18 years. A representative sample of GPs completed questionnaires on the prevalence of CFS in their adolescent patients. Pediatric hospital departments prospectively reported new cases of CFS in adolescent patients. For every new reported case, a questionnaire was sent to the reporting pediatrician and the reported patient to assess CFS morbidity. Prevalence was estimated through the data from GP questionnaires and incidence was estimated on the basis of cases newly reported by pediatricians from January to December 2008. RESULTS: Prevalence was calculated as 111 per 100 000 adolescents and incidence as 12 per 100 000 adolescents per year. Of newly reported patients with CFS, 91% scored at or above cutoff points for severe fatigue and 93% at or above the cutoff points for physical impairment. Forty-five percent of patients with CFS reported >50% school absence during the previous 6 months. CONCLUSIONS: Clinically diagnosed incidence and prevalence rates show that adolescent CFS is uncommon compared with chronic fatigue. The primary adverse impact of CFS is extreme disability associated with considerable school absence.


Background Clubfoot is a common congenital birth defect with complex inheritance patterns. Currently, the genetic and morphological basis of clubfoot is poorly understood. To identify genetic risk factors associated with clubfoot, we performed a genome-wide association study of common genetic variants. Methods The DNA of 396 isolated clubfoot patients and 1000 controls of European descent was genotyped for >600 000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) using the Affymetrix 6.0 array. Replication was performed with an independent cohort of 370 isolated clubfoot cases and 363 controls of European descent. Results Strongest evidence for an association of clubfoot was found with an intergenic SNP on chromosome 12q24.31 between NCOR2 and ZNF664 (rs7969148, OR=0.58, p=1.25×10−5) that was significant on replication (combined OR=0.63, p=1.90×10−7). Additional suggestive SNPs were identified near FOXN3, SORCS1 and MMP7/TMEM123 that also confirmed on replication. Conclusions Our study suggests a potential role for common genetic variation in several genes that have not previously been implicated in clubfoot pathogenesis.


Initial enthusiasm for the parallel kinematics in the eighties of the last century slumped significantly during the last twenty years. There were found some disadvantages of standard parallel kinematic structures. The experts around the world began to seek new solutions of outlined problems. They defined several possible ideas which could eliminate the drawbacks and improve the properties and advantages of parallel machines. One of these ways was also the application of mechanisms based on the kinematic structure that consisted of serial and parallel substructures as well. This article is focused on the development of mechanism with hybrid kinematic structure called Trivariant. This mechanism is similar to the well-known and succesful concept called Tricept, represented by various machines.


BACKGROUND
Evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) have been published and disseminated by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. Few studies have examined the rates of adherence to these guidelines in eligible populations and the influence of age and gender on highly effective AMI treatments in community hospital settings.

METHODS
Medical records of 2409 individuals admitted to 37 Minnesota hospitals between October 1992 and July 1993 for AMI, suspected AMI, or rule-out AMI, and meeting electrocardiographic, laboratory, and clinical criteria suggestive of AMI were reviewed to determine the proportion of eligible patients who received thrombolytic, beta-blocker, aspirin, and lidocaine hydrochloride therapy. The effects of patient age, gender, and hospital teaching status on the use of these treatments were estimated using logistic regression models.

RESULTS
Eligibility for treatment ranged from 68% (n=1627) for aspirin therapy, 38% (n=906) for lidocaine therapy, and 30% (n=734) for thrombolytic therapy to 19% (n=447) for beta-blocker therapy. Seventy-two percent of patients eligible to receive a thrombolytic agent received this therapy; 53% received beta-blockers; 81% received aspirin; and 88% received lidocaine. Among patients ineligible for lidocaine therapy (n=1503), 20% received this agent. Use of study drugs was lower among eligible elderly patients, especially those older than 74 years (thrombolytic agent: odds ratio, 0.2; 95% confidence interval, 0.1 to 0.4; aspirin: odds ratio, 0.4, 95% confidence interval, 0.3 to 0.6; beta-blocker: odds ratio, 0.4; 95% confidence interval, 0.2 to 0.8). Female gender was associated with lower levels of aspirin use among eligible patients (odds ratio, 0.7; 95% confidence interval, 0.6 to 0.9); and there was a trend toward lower levels of beta-blocker and thrombolytic use among eligible women.

CONCLUSIONS
Use of lifesaving therapies for eligible patients with AMI is higher than previously reported, particularly for aspirin and thrombolytic use in nonelderly patients. Lidocaine is still used inappropriately in a substantial proportion of patients with AMI. Increased adherence to AMI treatment guidelines is required for elderly patients and women.


The concept of the 'Smart City' is seen as double edged sword that should alleviate societal and environmental problems as well as fuel economic growth. Literature has identified many important characteristics of Smart Cities but has not yet provided a systemic approach that describes the interdependencies between these characteristics. The current study was conducted in support of an integrated approach for developing Smart City initiatives. We used group model building and interviews together with the MARVEL method to describe the interrelations between People, Environment, Living condition, Governance, Economy and Mobility. MARVEL is a method and a tool for developing CLD like causal models. The model forms the basis for a systemic framework to supports diverse sets of stakeholders in the development and analysis of future smart city initiatives. We demonstrate how various functions of MARVEL can be used to perform qualitative analysis to this end.


Carl June and others have engineered patients' own T cells to proliferate inside their bodies and seek and destroy cancer. In a small number of patients, the strategy has worked beyond the doctors' wildest expectations, although it doesn't work in everyone and there can be serious side effects. Now the researchers are on a quest to turn this experimental therapy into a treatment success.


In this paper, by using new linear linearization method we present an optimization algorithm for globally solving a class of multiplicative problems which have a broad application in biotechnology, information technology, and so on. By utilizing characteristic of quadratic function, a series of linear relaxation programming problem of the initial problem can be derived and which can provide a reliable lower bound. By means of the subsequent solutions of a sequence of linear relaxation programming problems, the proposed optimization algorithm converges to the global optimal solution of the initial problem. Numerical experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is feasible and effective


Migrating by sea from Holland as an eight-year-old, Dirk de Bruyn went on to be a doyen of Australian experimental cinema. But as this intimate film reveals, his work is suffused with the trauma of migration, and the struggle to recognise himself as a 'new Australian'. In conversation with documentarian Steven McIntyre, Dirk guides us through more than 40 years of his filmmaking: the early years exploring technique and technology, a subsequent phase of unflinching self-examination brought on by upheaval and overseas travel, and more recent projects where he attempts a fusion of personal, cultural, and historical identity. What emerges is an inspiring, rugged, and at times poignant portrait of an artist committed to self-expression and self-discovery through the medium of film. The House That Eye Live In features spectacular footage of Dirk's renowned expanded-cinema performances, and newly transferred excerpts from his extensive filmography, some of which are seen here for the first time.


Abstract : From 1899-1902, the United States Army waged a successful counter-insurgency campaign in the Philippines. For over two years, Army strategic leaders endeavored to employ a policy of benevolent assimilation to attract the Philippine populace. Due to insurgent resistance, varying levels of attraction and chastisement policies were actually utilized. In 1901, the massacre of a U.S. infantry company at Balangiga, Samar, acted as a catalyst for the Army to end the waning insurgency in the two remaining un-pacified provinces. Resultantly, the Army undertook punitive operations to reduce the last major rebel strongholds in the Philippines-the Batangas Province on Luzon and the island of Samar. Several scholars assert that the Samar Expedition, commanded by BG Jacob H. Smith, was based on a harsh policy of devastation. Smith's expedition undeniably resulted in significant public outrage over charges of excessive cruelty and war crimes. In contrast, the Batangas campaign plan, under the direction of BG J. Franklin Bell, is remembered as a balanced strategy of coercion and attraction. Nevertheless, both campaigns provide an opportunity to analyze the proper balance of attraction and retribution policies necessary to carry out a successful counter-insurgency campaign.


The study was premised on a comparative analysis of institutionalised and non-institutionalised orphaned children with reference to their wellbeing .A sample of 5 rural primary school teachers, where most of the institutionalised orphans learn and another purposively selected 5 primary school teachers where most of the non-institutionalised orphans learn, was made. Another part of sample comprised 10 orphans, 5 from the local orphanage centre and another 5 from non-institution. All the 20 participants were individually interviewed and audiotape. Data was transcribed and thematically anaysed. It was found out that non-institutionalised orphaned children had worse academic challenges and were often burdened by problems and chores at home and their keenness to learn was hindered by absenteeism and sometimes coming to school on empty stomachs thereby losing concentration. They lacked resources to meet the basic needs, education and health care all of which resulted in poor school attendance and educational achievement was negatively impacted upon. Orphans from both institutions reported being abused emotionally, physically, and sexually by the caregivers, school teachers and the guardians (relatives). Poor health and malnutrition negatively affected orphaned children. Other children looked down upon orphans and in the process disassociating themselves from them (orphaned children) and this negatively affected their intention to be in the same academic groups when they are marginalized, sidelined especially when sharing materials. This negatively affected their self-perception and image. It was concluded that non-institutionalised orphaned
children were marred with more challenges than the institutionalised orphaned children. It was recommended (among others) stiff penalties to be applied by Government on child abuse perpetrators.


Empirical research on the determinants of corruption has made substantial progress over the last decade. To date, the consequences of different structures of the legal enforcement institutions have, however, only played a marginal role. This contribution deals with both the determinants of corruption in the judiciary and the consequences of judicial organization for corruption at large. Regarding the latter, it is shown that the actual independence of the judiciary as well as that of prosecution agencies is correlated with lower levels of corruption. This is also true for a third indicator that measures the degree to which judges are held accountable for their decisions ("judicial accountability"). Furthermore, independence and accountability function as complements in preventing corruption – judicial accountability without independence appears to be ineffective, whereas judicial or prosecutorial independence alone can even have adverse effects.


With 3 figures and 4 tables

Abstract
Alternaria blotch, caused by Alternaria alternata apple pathotype, is an economically important disease of apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.). Information on the resistance level of apple cultivars to Alternaria blotch is the key to a strategy for integrated control of the disease, however, such information on new apples recently released or on scab-resistant apples is lacking. The aim of this study was to develop an advanced technique, which allowed one a reliable assessment of apples for resistance to Alternaria blotch, and to evaluate resistance levels of various apple genotypes, especially scab-resistant apples. Detached-leaves, youngest opened leaf (leaf 1), second (leaf 2), third (leaf 3), fourth (leaf 4) and fifth (leaf 5) at shoot tip removed from growing shoots of four cultivars, were inoculated with conidial suspension of A. alternata apple pathotype, and the responses were rated at 48-hour postinoculation; a modified six-class disease scale was established for the rating system of Alternaria blotch. Leaf 1–3 were suitable for the evaluation and discrimination of resistance level of apple genotypes to the disease. Reliability of assessment was demonstrated in successive 3-year inoculation tests with detached-leaves of leaf 2 on 16 cultivated apples; incidence of the disease caused by natural infection of A. alternata at a field was well correlated with the resistance levels determined by the detached-leaf method among 11 apples. Two-year inoculations using detached-leaf method on 41 apple genotypes revealed that 17 scab-resistant apples, 'Freedom', 'Orlovim', 'Orlovski Pioner, 'Pervinka, 'R12740-7A', 'Regrindis', 'Antonovka', 'Dayton', 'Florina-Querina', 'Galarina', 'Liberty', 'Redfree', 'Reanda', 'Remo', 'Priam', 'Regine' and 'Priscilla', showed no visible symptoms and were regarded as resistant (R) to A. alternata apple pathotype. In addition to the above genotypes, five scab-resistant genotypes, 'GoldRush', 'Prima', 'Renora', 'Rewena' and 'Retina', showed pit-type small spots on a few inoculated leaves and were also included in this category of resistance level. Three scab-resistant genotypes, 'Jonafree', 'Reka' and 'Co-op 25,' exhibited extended necrotic lesions in the inoculated leaves and were regarded as susceptible (S) to the disease. Among 38 cultivated apples and selections of Japanese origin, 27 genotypes were R; 'Kitaro', 'Kotaro', 'Santaro', 'Chinatsu', 'Shinano Sweet', 'Shinano Red', 'Shinano Gold', 'Aori 13', 'Akibae', were included in this category, seven genotypes were S; 'Beninomai', 'Natsumidori' and several selections were included in S category, and the remaining four genotypes were moderately resistant. Parentage information clearly indicated that source of the susceptibility in the cultivated apples and selections developed in Japan were 'Delicious' or 'Indo'. In contrast to the genotypic differences for levels of resistance to A. alternata apple pathotype in cultivated apples, all Malus spp. tested exhibited complete resistance to A. alternata.