People perform an ever increasing number of their interactions over electronic communication networks, which has induced a complex space of issues related to data privacy. The transition from manual record keeping to electronic data processing has greatly amplified privacy problems related to personal data processing due to powerful automated processing and knowledge induction capabilities. Users frequently need to reveal excessive amounts of personal data for obtaining access to services, typically being identified, while service providers and third parties extensively profile the users to commercially exploit their data as part of the so-called personal data economy.

The personal data required to be released in online interactions often exceeds the minimum that would be required for the service to be provided, and, worse, it typically identifies the user. This, together with the absence of widely deployed strong authentication systems, creates the risk of identity theft, e.g, based on user data leaked through privacy breaches, with severe consequences for both affected users and service providers. The personal data economy creates, due to the increasingly powerful automated induction of knowledge from (unstructured) data, further privacy problems, which are expected to worsen with the widespread adoption of Big Data analytics. The frequent mergers and acquisitions of service providers or data aggregators and related creation of large-scale databases further worsen the privacy issues.

In this thesis, we address user-centric privacy-enhanced identity management, with a focus on data-minimizing authentication of attribute statements about users, vouched for by third-party identity providers. Authenticated attributes allow for reducing the amount of data to be requested because they make background checks, e.g., for minimum age or creditworthiness verification based on identifying user attributes, obsolete. Data minimization benefits both users through stronger privacy and service providers through the reduction of data-breach-related risks and increased data quality and fraud prevention through the certification of attributes.

Main challenges for an open privacy-enhanced authentication system are realizing data minimization, trust delegation, user accountability, and attribute delegation——all in a single system. That is, revealing exactly the data required for a transaction, deciding on which parties to trust for certifying attributes or for providing other relevant knowledge, being able to hold non-identified users accountable for actions in case they violate agreed terms or for law enforcement, and allowing users to delegate authority over certified attributes to parties they trust. Today's available systems or competing research proposals fail in addressing those challenges in an integrated manner. A system addressing those challenges needs to build upon complex composed cryptographic protocols to achieve the properties we require in a strong trust model, where each such protocol is a function of the data to be released. The cryptographic data release semantics needs to be expressed in a formal language which abstracts from the details of the cryptographic protocols and exposes semantics at the level of identity management concepts, the authentication messaging between parties needs to be integrated with standards, and the human user must be involved in transactions through simple yet effective user interfaces.

The presented work has started, as a foundation, with available cryptographic protocols capable of the data-minimizing release of certified attribute data while reducing the trust assumptions in third parties. Our goal of this work has been bringing those cryptographic protocols towards practice. We address the abovementioned challenges through proposing a comprehensive system, designed around those cryptographic protocols, to make them applicable as part of an open real-world identity management system.

As one main contribution, we propose logic-based languages for representing data requests (policies), statements, protocol interface elements, and knowledge in the form of ontologies. The languages allow for automated processing, e.g., computing a response statement to a data request, in a logic calculus. The languages are used to govern system behavior, while allowing for hiding the underlying cryptographic protocol semantics.

We propose an abstract authentication model for privacy-enhanced authentication which expresses preconditions to authentication transactions and formalizes transformation rules for obtaining authenticated communication channels. The model formally specifies under which preconditions which authenticated communication channels between parties can be established using our authentication protocols. Authenticated attribute statements are expressed through the logic-based statement language.

We discuss how the cryptographic protocols to be executed for authenticating data-minimizing attribute statements are specified through formulae expressed in our logic-based languages and how multiple instances of the protocols relate to each other. We show how the cryptographic protocols realize the transformation rules of our authentication model.

A cryptographic protocol for releasing certified attribute statements is a protocol from a family of protocols and is a function of the statement to be authenticated. Because all protocols for all valid to-be-authenticated statements cannot be exhaustively specified, we propose a subsystem for compiling a protocol at runtime from the logic-based statement to be authenticated. This runtime generation results in cryptographic programs to be executed by a protocol interpreter. This has the advantages of handling the powerful semantics of our statement language through a multi-layer processing approach and allowing for aggressive performance improvements, among other things, through exploiting the instruction-level parallelism inherent to the derived programs at the cryptographic layer.

Those contributions give rise to an integrated system for data-minimizing authentication of certified attribute statements using cryptographic protocols, thereby solving the main challenges of data-minimizing authentication in an open system.

A major contribution of our work is the strong integration, on the one hand on the dimension of data minimization, trust delegation, accountability, and the further functionality crucial for an open privacy-enhanced authentication system, and on the other hand on the dimension of integration of the functionality into a single coherent system. Parts of our results have been validated with implementations and a use case prototype for an end-to-end authentication flow for a simplified system.

In addition to the abovementioned core contributions related to the authentication system, we have obtained complementary contributions in the areas of user interfaces for identity selection as part of the authentication process, a formal-model-based verification of a fragment of the cryptographic protocols, a taxonomy of user centricity in identity management, and a discussion of the various notions of trust in an open identity management system.

Orthogonal to the authentication system, we have, among other issues, addressed the problem of access control in electronic social networks. The results can substantially contribute to user privacy by enforcing user preferences and thereby solve a main problem in the social network space. We also discuss how social networks can be leveraged to bootstrap a public key infrastructure, and how to automate profile management in social networks. We put forth an approach for integrating privacy-enhanced authentication with a virtual world system and for giving presentations in public areas therein while ensuring confidentiality of the content.

With our core contributions related to the privacy-enhanced authentication system and the additional contributions around and orthogonal to it, we address an important fraction of the overall space of privacy issues.


YhcB, an uncharacterized protein conserved across gamma-proteobacteria, is composed predominantly of a single Domain of Unknown Function (DUF 1043) with an N-terminal transmembrane α-helix. Here, we show that E. coli YhcB is a conditionally essential protein that interacts with the proteins of the cell divisome (e.g., FtsI, FtsQ) and elongasome (e.g., RodZ, RodA). We found 7 interactions of YhcB that are conserved in Yersinia pestis and/or Vibrio cholerae. Furthermore, we identified several point mutations that abolished interactions of YhcB with FtsI and RodZ. The yhcB knock-out strain does not grow at 45°C and is hypersensitive to cell-wall acting antibiotics even in stationary phase. The deletion of yhcB leads to filamentation, abnormal FtsZ ring formation, and aberrant septa development. The 2.8 Å crystal structure for the cytosolic domain from Haemophilus ducreyi YhcB shows a unique tetrameric α-helical coiled-coil structure that combines parallel and anti-parallel coiled-coil intersubunit interactions. This structure is likely to organize interprotein oligomeric interactions on the inner surface of the cytoplasmic membrane, possibly involved in regulation of cell division and/or envelope biogenesis/integrity in proteobacteria. In summary, YhcB is a conserved and conditionally essential protein that is predicted to play a role in cell division and consequently or in addition affects envelope biogenesis. Importance Only 0.8 % of the protein annotations in the UniProt are based on experimental evidence and thus, functional characterization of unknown proteins remains a rate-limiting step in molecular biology. Herein, the functional properties of YhcB (DUF1043) were investigated using an integrated approach combining X-ray crystallography with genetics and molecular biology. YhcB is a conserved protein that appears to be needed for the transition from exponential to stationary growth and is involved in cell division and/or envelope biogenesis/integrity. This study will serve as a starting point for future studies on this protein family and on how cells transit from exponential to stationary survival.


Sepsis is an essential issue in critical care medicine, and early detection and intervention are key for survival. We established the sepsis early warning system based on a data integration platform that can be implemented in ICU. The sepsis early warning module can detect the onset of sepsis 5 hours proceeding, and the data integration platform integrates, standardizes, and stores information from different medical devices, making the inference of the early warning module possible. Our best early warning model got an AUC of 0.9833 in the task of detect sepsis in 4 hours proceeding on the open-source database. Our data integration platform has already been operational in a hospital for months.


Electronic properties of ternary skutterudites AX(3/2)Y(3/2) (A=Co, X=Ge, Sn and Y=S, Te) are investigated using first principles calculations to clarify recent experimental results. Band derivatives are computed accurately within an approach based on Maximally Localized Wannier Functions (MLWFs). Band structures exhibit larger effective masses compared to parental binary CoSb(3). Our results also indicate a more parabolic dispersion near the top of the valence band and a multivalley character in both conduction and valence band. Despite the improved thermopower these skutterudites has relatively low power factor due to increased resistivity. The fundamental cause of such large resistivity seems to be associated with the ionicity of the bonding.


In this paper, we present one saliency-based feature selection and tracking strategy in the feature-based stereoscopic panoramic video generation system. Many existing stereoscopic video composition approaches aim at producing high-quality panoramas from multiple input cameras; however, most of them directly operate image alignment on those originally detected features without any refinement or optimization. The standard global feature extraction threshold always fails to guarantee stitching correctness of all human interested regions. Thus, based on the originally commonly identified feature set, we incorporate the saliency map into the distribution of control points to remove the redundancy in texture-rich regions and ensure the adequacy of selected features in visual sensitive regions. Intuitively, under the guidance of saliency change in the video sequence, one grid-based feature updating strategy is operated between consecutive frames instead of the standard global feature updating. The experiments show that our method can improve the stitching quality of visual important region without impairment to the human less-interested regions in the generated stereoscopic panoramic video.


WC1 is a transmembrane glycoprotein and member of the scavenger receptor cysteine rich (SRCR) family that is uniquely expressed on gammadelta T cells. The WC1 isoforms referred to as WC1.1, WC1.2, and WC1.3 are expressed on discrete subpopulations of gammadelta T cells with WC1.1 and WC1.2 expressed on mostly nonoverlapping gammadelta T cell populations. Studies have demonstrated a potential role for WC1 in modulating the response of gammadelta T cells but have not converged into a single accepted paradigm. Recent investigations that examined changing representation among mononuclear cells with age and patterns of proliferation and cytokine production by subsets bearing one or more of the previously identified variants of the WC1 molecule are summarized here. While the decrease in percentages within blood in the first year of life was found to be precipitous for WC1.1+ gammadelta T cells it was not for WC1.2+ cells. While both populations proliferated to mitogen stimulation there was a bias towards responses by WC1.2+ cells. In leptospira antigen-stimulated cultures and autologous mixed lymphocyte reaction (AMLR) cultures WC1.1+ cells proliferated and produced interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) while WC1.2+ cells did to a much lower extent. This suggested functional differences related to the isoform of WC1 expressed. Under Th1-polarizing conditions, the WC1.1+ cells also made IFN-gamma whereas the vast majority of cells expressing WC1.2 did not. Despite the difference in IFN-gamma production, cells bearing either WC1 isoform had similar transcription levels of the high affinity IL-12 receptor subunit (IL-12Rbeta2) as well as of the transcription factors T-bet and GATA-3 when cultured with IL-12. Both populations transcribed low levels of IL-10 mRNA under Th1-polarizing conditions and TGF-beta transcripts were ubiquitously expressed by each of these cell types. Cloning and sequencing of the cytoplasmic tails of the WC1 isoforms revealed a consensus ITAM in all three isoforms but a DENY sequence adjacent to one of the SH-2 binding sites of WC1.1 only. The results suggest that WC1+ gammadelta T cells differentiated on the basis of WC1 isoform expression play distinct roles in immune responses that may be dictated by WC1 intracellular signaling.


The need for effective education to enhance students' understanding and development of academic integrity has been well established, particularly for international students new to tertiary study in English-speaking countries. Most research recommends the use of methods such as instruction and warnings, as part of a plagiarism education programme. Few studies have looked at the role of formative feedback through tutorial intervention in the process of academic writing, in which use of the text-matching tool Turnitin is made in ways which support learning, rather than guide assessment. This study addresses that gap using data gathered over three years from cohorts of international students in the United Kingdom (UK) with regard to four identified areas of development: avoidance of plagiarism, decrease in over-reliance on some sources, correct use of citation and appropriate paraphrasing. Individual tutorials were held to give formative feedback on students' own writing, with particular regard to their use of sources. A supportive environment was created in which questions about references could be discussed, by using the Turnitin originality reports directly. The tutorial feedback appeared to have a positive effect on students' understanding of academic integrity reflected in improved drafts. This implies that tutorial feedback using Turnitin could be a key factor in plagiarism education. Recommendations for future use are given at the end of the study.


This paper addresses the issue of regionalism - as a form of identity and political mobilization - in the multiethnic northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, which has until today been spared of inter-ethnic violence that has characterized all other constitutive regions of the former socialist federative Yugoslavia. Based on a study of the development and activities of the Vojvodinian political parties and non-governmental organizations that have sought to wrest autonomy of the region vis-a-vis Serbia during both the reign of Slobodan Milosevic's regime and the rule of the democratic coalition that dethroned his party in 2000, as well as numerous surveys on the population's grievances and identities, the following questions are being asked: what is the reason that, despite the steady and rising dissatisfaction with the socio-economic standing of the Province among the ordinary people, and sentiments that manifest regional and inter-ethnic identities, Vojvodinian autonomist parties have failed to mobilize significant political support? Why do they seem to be continuously losing the battle with the Belgrade-based parties for the proclaimed goals of the new constitutional and budgetary autonomy of the Province, which includes greater regulation, and support of its ethnic minority and multiethnic institutions? Why have the autonomist political parties not been able to tie their programs of autonomous status of the Province to the growing socio-economic and cultural grievances of ordinary Vojvodinians Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Croats, Ruthenians, and Rumanians alike? Why have they failed to tie together the long-standing antiwar and anti-ethnonationalist attitudes toward the former Serb-nationalist regime and its 'moderate' successors, which are shared by local elites and ordinary people, and instrumentalize them as a resource in Serbia's post-2000 transition to democracy? Here I will demonstrate that the Vojvodinian autonomist elites' political strategy has consisted primarily of the deal-making with Serbian Belgrade-based parties, where the polity access has favored the choice of horse trading and distribution of sinecures by both multiethnic and ethnic minority party leaderships. Simultaneously, they have been discouraged to organize large support in their locales. The goals of democracy, understood in this context as raising opportunities for broad political participation and advancement of regional ethnic and multiethnic practices, are thus being continuously preempted. The second question that calls for attention here is whether the theory and policies of liberal multiculturalism and liberal nationalism (much studied and praised in the region) can offer a model for construction of democratic polities in multiethnic spaces of the post-Communist East-Central Europe. The following section will briefly outline the main argument of liberal multiculturalism-nationalism and its uses for understanding the break-up and reconstructing of multi- and inter-ethic experiences in the former Yugoslavia, as well as local ZEF Discussion Papers on Development Policy 57 prospects for democratization. It will then draw attention to alternative sociological approaches to the problem of political mobilization and recognition of mass grievances and identities that serve as their background. More elaborated suggestions for a suitable theoretical model that can help understand the specific political and cultural set-up that the province of Vojvodina was and is will be presented in the concluding section. Following the section on theoretical schemes, I will present a brief overview of the position of Vojvodina in the federal Yugoslavia and its social and cultural decline after the abolition of its constitutional autonomy in 1988. In the fourth part I will draw a map of political programs and activities of the local autonomist parties. The fifth section will focus on the nongovernmental organizations, depicting their role in researching and framing the grievances, identities and solidarities of ordinary Vojvodinians in terms of evaluation of the prospects for local democratic development. Before the concluding section, I will outline some newest political developments that, in the aftermath of the 2000 elections, reveal the patterns of intense fights between the members of the Serbian coalition, where the goals of Vojvodinian autonomy and multiethnic identity may be reframed in terms of ethnic divisions and a scramble for sinecures.


Empirical research frequently involves regression analysis with binary categorical variables, which are traditionally handled through dummy explanatory variables. This paper argues that separate category-wise models may provide a more logical and comprehensive tool for analysing data with binary categories. Exploring different aspects of both methods, we contrast the two with a Monte Carlo simulation and an empirical example to provide a practical insight.


The combination of interrelated shifts – policy changes, global knowledge-based economy, shifting characteristics of students, and emerging technologies – suggest that faculty must go beyond the traditional stand-alone, textbook-based instruction and use new media to provide rich learning environments where digital resources are infused into instruction to augment students' learning experiences and interactions. However, there are discrepancies between existing technological resources and faculty's knowledge of such resources to produce the desired outcomes in many universities. The purpose of this study is to assess new media needs of faculty members. Twenty-one faculty from a small university in Southern California responded to a 72-item, 5-point Likert-type attitudinal scale and provided written responses to 11 open-ended questions. The findings suggest that the participants perceive a gap between their optimal performance and actual practice. The study suggests that the university should conduct technology-needs assessments of faculty with a goal of identifying their technology knowledge and needs.


Objective: To explore what is known about organizational processes that determine whether (and the extent and rate at which) new non-pharmaceutical technologies are adopted and assimilated into routine health care. Methods: Electronic searching of four databases, hand searching of six journals and electronic citation tracking searches of three key research papers. A narrative synthesis was conducted. Results: Ninety-nine empirical studies and seven narrative overviews informed the findings. The majority (62%) of the studies took a deterministic approach (mainly using cross-sectional mailed questionnaires) and typically studied the impact of organizational variables - such as organizational size - on the rate of adoption of technological innovations. The remaining studies were process-based using a single- or multi-case study approach. The organizational processes that determine whether and how technological innovations are adopted and assimilated into routine health care practice are dependent upon the specific innovation concerned, the different actors involved at various points in time, and the particular organizational context in which decisions are made. It is important to see 'adoption' and 'assimilation' as part of an ongoing process rather than discrete events, and as a process that comprises both 'formal' organizational and 'informal' decisions by individual users (the latter often shaped by discussions with their peers and colleagues). Conclusions: Further process-based studies are needed to provide a clearer evidence base for recommendations on how to facilitate the adoption and assimilation of beneficial new technologies. Three theoretical perspectives could form the basis of such studies and produce practical advice for managers and practitioners.


This paper presents attitudes of townspeople in the Morgantown, W.Va. area toward the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) System just prior to its opening. The attitudes are derived from home interviews of a representative sample of 305 nonstudent household heads. Two aspects of community acceptance are identified and examined: (1) Whether the respondents think that the PRT will be an efficient means of transportation; and (2) whether the respondents believe that the PRT is an asset to the community. The data indicate that persons who perceive the new system as contributing to a progressive image for the community were generally favorable toward the PRT. In addition, respondents who now use buses or who anticipate using the PRT are especially favorable toward the system as an asset to the community's image.


Spermatogenesis uses mitotic and meiotic cell cycles coordinated with growth and differentiation programs to generate functional sperm. Our analysis of a Drosophila mutant has revealed that asunder (asun), which encodes a conserved protein, is an essential regulator of spermatogenesis. asun spermatocytes arrest during prophase of meiosis I. Strikingly, arrested spermatocytes contain free centrosomes that fail to stably associate with the nucleus. Spermatocytes that overcome arrest exhibit severe defects in meiotic spindle assembly, chromosome segregation, and cytokinesis. Furthermore, the centriole-derived basal body is detached from the nucleus in asun postmeiotic spermatids, resulting in abnormalities later in spermatogenesis. We find that asun spermatocytes and spermatids exhibit drastic reduction of perinuclear dynein-dynactin, a microtubule motor complex. We propose a model in which asun coordinates spermatogenesis by promoting dynein-dynactin recruitment to the nuclear surface, a poorly understood process required for nucleus-centrosome coupling at M phase entry and fidelity of meiotic divisions.


Much has been written about the impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) in Africa and its transformational socio-economic potential. The penetration of mobile phones in particular has been particularly marked in recent years. This paper seeks to interrogate the hypothesis of transformation by examining the ways in which Africa is integrated into global mobile phone value chain, and the uses to which this technology is put on the continent. While mobiles are having significant, and sometimes welfare enhancing impacts, their use is also embedded in existing relations of social support, resource extraction and conflict. Consequently their impacts are dialectical, facilitating change but also reinforcing existing power relations. As Africa is still primarily a user, rather than a producer or creator of ICT, this represents a form of thin integration ("thintegration") into the global economy, which does not fundamentally alter the continent's dependent position.


This paper covers three distinct but inter-related topics. These are: (1) the functions served by characterizing breach of fiduciary duty as a tort; (2) how best to define a fiduciary relationship in light of the range of situations in which one party is subject to a fiduciary duty to another; and (3) implications and questions that follow from the fact that many contemporary fiduciaries are organizations that assign individual employees or other agents to act on behalf of clients to whom the organization itself owes fiduciary duties. The paper begins by examining how breach of fiduciary duty is characterized by Restatement (Second) of Torts. In Section 874, Restatement (Second) treats breach of fiduciary duty as a tort that subjects a fiduciary to liability to the beneficiary for harm caused by the breach. The definition of a "fiduciary" relation articulated in Section 874 is both under- and over-inclusive, leaving out some well-established categories of fiduciaries but also potentially encompassing many non-fiduciary relationships. Nonetheless, the paper argues that it's useful to situate breach of fiduciary duty within tort law to anchor the basic availability of damages for harm caused by the breach. This anchoring has practical as well as theoretical significance because some breaches of fiduciary duty, although productive of loss to the beneficiary, generate no identifiable profit for the fiduciary to which restitutionary remedies might apply. The paper then articulates a proposed approach for defining when a relationship is fiduciary in character. This is whether the plaintiff (or claimed beneficiary of a fiduciary duty) could justifiably expect of loyal conduct on the part of an actor. Breach of fiduciary duty then turns on whether the actor's conduct contravened that expectation. This test turns on what's distinctive about fiduciary duties, as opposed to the wider range of duties recognized by the law. The paper uses this approach as a framework to evaluate a series of recent cases that assess whether one party owed another a fiduciary duty when the parties' relationship was not one conventionally characterized as fiduciary, such as agent-principal, trustee-trust beneficiary, director-corporation, or lawyer-client. Within this framework, the paper articulates characteristics that define patterns of relationships in which expectations of loyalty may be justified. Finally, the paper explores implications of the fact that many contemporary actors who are subject - on one basis or another - to fiduciary duties are themselves corporations or other legally-constituted organizations. On the ground level, the conduct that constitutes a breach of fiduciary duty is conduct of an employee or other agent of the organization. The paper examines the bases on which the agent's wrongful conduct may be attributed to the organization for purposes of imposing liability and awarding remedies. It is necessary to consider principles of agency law and restitution, in addition to tort law, to reach a complete answer.


Technologies such as email, chatrooms and web logs allow individuals to communicate in a number of new ways, and new forms of communications are continually appearing. As vast amounts of digital communication data are collected, communication logs may potentially contain millions of pieces of information, which must be pre-processed in order to present an intelligence analyst with a set of communication groups. We call these groups "hidden groups" since their membership is not explicit, but is implicitly implied in their communication structure. We present a strategy for discovering hidden groups within a communication network; through searching for significant correlations, which may be temporal or structural. The temporal algorithms discover hidden groups connected over any range of time in the dataset. We find that a temporal hidden group must choose between two options: trust individuals outside the group to relay information, or else impose a structure upon themselves which is more easily detected by our algorithms. For structural hidden groups, we propose a novel approach to the problem of graph clustering, where we allow clusters to overlap by letting them extend to local optima with respect to a generic density metric. We compare and contrast different algorithms for finding clusters in this way, and show that a particular algorithm combination, LA→IS, performs well on both simulated and real-world data. The software system SIGHTS incorporates these algorithms into a single framework, along with associated visualizations.


Dedicated bus lanes and bus streets have, in recent years, become common measures for prioritisation of public transport. By ensuring free path along routes, they increase average speed and travel time reliability of buses. However, a major drawback is that the total traffic capacities of the roads decrease. Hence, these measures are only suitable when the total traffic flow is low enough to allow for a reduction of lanes; if it is possible to reroute adjacent traffic; or if it is possible to extend the road with additional lanes. A supplementary priority measure could be to utilize dynamic bus lanes (also called intermittent bus lanes and bus lanes with intermittent priority). Dynamic bus lanes are only dedicated for buses when and where the buses need them, and otherwise open for all vehicles to use. At any given point, adjacent traffic is only permitted from using the dynamic bus lanes at the stretches where buses are in the vicinity. This report presents the results from a pre-study, investigating the potential that dynamic bus lanes could have as a priority measure for public transport in a Swedish context. Knowledge of situations in which dynamic bus lanes have the highest potential, and their implementation requirements is scarce. It is moreover uncertain how they would affect traffic safety, level of service and user experience. Two real world field tests have been conducted; one in Lisbon and one in Melbourne. The installation in Melbourne is now permanently applied for trams on one street. The field test in Lisbon was on the contrary not made permanent, although the results showed large benefits for buses and limited adverse effects on other vehicles. Dynamic bus lanes have also been investigated by means of traffic analysis and traffic simulation experiments. In general, these studies show that the effects on travel time for buses are in general positive and delays for other vehicles are limited. Results from example calculations in this pre-study show that this also could be true for a Swedish context. It has also been identified that the effects on travel times are highly dependent on factors such as: the total traffic flow; the bus flow, the capacity of roads and junctions; the distance between junctions and bus stops; the type of bus stops and the yielding rules at bus stops. The effects on travel time variations are unclear and need to be further investigated. Few rigorous research studies have in general been undertaken to measure the user experiences or road safety implications of bus priority schemes, and evidence from those that do exist are mixed. Anyhow, the experiences from Lisbon and Melbourne suggest that drivers in adjacent lanes in general understand and accept that they are deprived of the right to use the lane when the buses need it, and that they will behave appropriately. Neither of the field tests has observed any negative impact on road safety. A workshop was conducted within this pre-study in order to further investigate plausible user experiences. The results indicate that bus drivers' stress levels could be reduced; the relative attractiveness of travelling by bus might rise; and that motorists probably would experience the introduction of dynamic bus lanes as neither good nor bad, as long as the system is fairly intuitive. Technical solutions for implementing dynamic bus lanes exist. A dynamic bus lane system would require development of a system control unit and integration with bus sensors, sensors for traffic flow measurement, variable message signs (to inform road users of the current status of the dynamic bus lane) and traffic signals. It is moreover, in Sweden, possible to develop a local traffic rule that regulates dynamic bus lanes. However, the rule needs to be properly specified, designed, communicated, signed and marked on the road. The overall conclusion form the pre-study is that dynamic bus lanes could be a useful complementary priority measure for public transport vehicles in Sweden, especially when dedicated bus lanes are not feasible or desirable. However, a real world installation in Sweden, including pre implementation traffic analysis, is needed, in order to further investigate the potential and consequences. Thus, the next step is to plan for an implementation on a specific road stretch. That would include both estimation of costs, and generate input to further studies of effect on level of service and user experience. Driving simulators and traffic simulation experiments are applicable methods for investigating these issues.


INTRODUCTION
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have demonstrated long survival for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the effect and safety of ICI rechallenge have not been fully evaluated. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy and safety of ICI rechallenge in NSCLC patients.

METHODS
We defined 'rechallenge' as re-administration of ICIs for patients who were previously treated with ICIs and discontinued treatment for any reason, and received subsequent chemotherapy. We retrospectively analyzed the histories of 434 patients with advanced NSCLC who received ICIs from December 2015 to December 2017 at seven centers.

RESULTS
A total of 317 patients discontinued the ICI treatment, and 14 patients (4.4%) received ICI rechallenge. All 14 patients discontinued the first ICI due to disease progression. Eight patients received the same kind of ICIs, and six patients received different ICIs. Median progression-free survival and overall survival were 1.5 months [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.8-2.6] and 6.5 months [95% CI: 1.4-19.0], respectively. The objective response rate was 7.1%, and the disease control rate was 21.4%. Two of three patients who achieved at least a stable disease, received radiotherapy between the first and second ICIs. Adverse events were not significantly different compared with the first ICIs.

CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the effect of ICI rechallenge was limited. Careful consideration of the administration of ICI rechallenge is necessary. This report involved a small number of cases, so further large prospective studies are warranted to confirm the efficacy of ICI rechallenge and to investigate predictive markers to identify a patient population in which ICI rechallenge is effective.


Recent weakness in the manufacturing sector has clearly contributed to cutbacks in employment. However, manufacturing job growth has been stagnant for much of the last half century. A number of economic trends explain the shrinkage of the manufacturing sector. These include the growing importance of the service sector and productivity improvements in manufacturing, which have facilitated output growth with stable employment. ESSAYS ON ISSUES THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK JUNE 2003 OF CHICAGO NUMBER 190


[1] Measurement capabilities of five meteor radars are assessed and compared to determine how well radars having different transmitted power and antenna configurations perform in defining mean winds, tidal amplitudes, and gravity wave (GW) momentum fluxes. The five radars include two new-generation meteor radars on Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (53.8°S) and on King George Island in the Antarctic (62.1°S) and conventional meteor radars at Socorro, New Mexico (34.1°N, 106.9°W), Bear Lake Observatory, Utah (∼41.9°N, 111.4°W), and Yellowknife, Canada (62.5°N, 114.3°W). Our assessment employs observed meteor distributions for June of 2009, 2010, or 2011 for each radar and a set of seven test motion fields including various superpositions of mean winds, constant diurnal tides, constant and variable semidiurnal tides, and superposed GWs having various amplitudes, scales, periods, directions of propagation, momentum fluxes, and intermittencies. Radars having higher power and/or antenna patterns yielding higher meteor counts at small zenith angles perform well in defining monthly and daily mean winds, tidal amplitudes, and GW momentum fluxes, though with expected larger uncertainties in the daily estimates. Conventional radars having lower power and a single transmitting antenna are able to describe monthly mean winds and tidal amplitudes reasonably well, especially at altitudes having the highest meteor counts. They also provide reasonable estimates of GW momentum fluxes at the altitudes having the highest meteor counts; however, these estimates are subject to uncertainties of ∼20 to 50% and uncertainties rapidly become excessive at higher and lower altitudes. Estimates of all quantities degrade somewhat for more complex motion fields.


Abstract The 35Cl NMR spectroscopy of Cl--intercalated hydrotalcite and the Ca-aluminate hydrate hydrocalumite (Friedel's salt) demonstrates dynamical behavior of interlayer Cl-, the presence of dynamical order-disorder phase transitions in these phases, and significant differences in the transition temperatures and temperature interval over which the transitions occur. In hydrocalumite, the Ca,Al distribution is ordered, the interlayer water is directly coordinated to Ca in the hydroxide layer (creating sevenfold-coordinated Ca), and the interlayer Cl- and water sites are well ordered. The 35Cl NMR data show that the interlayer Cl- site has uniaxial or nearly uniaxial symmetry above about 0 °C and reduced (triaxial) symmetry at lower temperatures. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) data show this change to be due to a structural phase transition at about 6 °C. The NMR and XRD data suggest that this phase transition is due to dynamical order-disorder involving a rigid interlayer atomic arrangement at low temperatures and dynamically averaged interlayer species at high temperatures. In contrast, in hydrotalcite Mg and Al are disordered over the octahedral sites, and the interlayer is disordered. The 35Cl NMR data for it show poorly resolved signal indicating a range of Cl⁻ environments and a change from triaxial to uniaxial or nearly uniaxial symmetry at Cl⁻ occurring over a broad temperature interval below -40 °C. DSC data for our sample shows a broad and poorly defined endothermic anomaly in the -100 to -75 °C range. These data suggest the presence of a phase transition that occurs over a larger temperature range due to its disordered interlayer structure. The results suggest that similar variable temperature NMR behavior previously observed for interlayer cations in smectites can be thought of as due to comparable phase transitions that lack well-defined critical temperatures due to the disordered interlayer structures.


How the brain integrates visual information across time into coherent percepts is an open question. Here, we investigated this integration using a feature fusion paradigm. In feature fusion, two stimuli are presented in immediate succession. The stimuli are not perceived individually but as one fused stimulus. For example, a left and a right offset Vernier presented in rapid succession are perceived as one Vernier that is nearly aligned. It has been shown that feature fusion can be modulated by transcranial magnet stimulation (TMS) over the occipital cortex for a surprisingly long duration of 400 ms, showing that neural representations interact for this duration. Here, we show that these Vernier stimuli are perceived individually if separated by interstimulus interval (ISI) of only 20 ms. TMS has no effect on the perception of either of the two Verniers. If instead of an ISI a pattern mask is presented for 20 ms, Verniers fuse again and fusion can be modulated by TMS. Our results suggest that TMS can affect Vernier representations only when features are bound into one object, but not when the very same features belong to different objects. [Johannes Ruter is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation]


Datasheets of different commercially available integrated sensors for vector measurements of magnetic fields provide typical specifications, such as measurement range, sampling rate, resolution, and noise. Other characteristics of interest, such as linearity, cross-sensitivity, remanent magnetization, and drifts over temperature, are mostly missing. This letter presents testing results of those characteristics of integrated three-dimensional (3-D) sensors working with different sensor principles and technologies in a reproducible measuring process. The sensors are exposed to temperatures from −20 °C to 80 °C and are cycled in hysteresis loops in fields up to 2.5 mT. For applying high-accuracy magnetic fields, a calibrated 3-D Helmholtz coil setup is used. Commercially available integrated 3-D magnetic field sensors are put in operation on a printed circuit board using nonmagnetic passive components. All sensors are configured for best measurement accuracy according to their datasheets. The results show that sensors based on anisotropic magnetoresistance have high accuracy and low offsets yet also a high degree of nonlinearity. Hall-based sensors show good linearity but also high cross-sensitivity. A magnetic remanence appears for Hall-based sensors with integrated magnetic concentrators as well as for sensors using anisotropic magnetoresistance. Nearly all sensors show remaining drifts over temperature regarding offset and sensitivity up to several percentages.


— Science parks are often established to drive regional economic growth, especially in countries with emerging economies. However, mixed findings regarding the performances of science park firms are found in the literature. This study tries to explain these mixed findings by taking a relational approach and exploring (un)intended knowledge transfers between new technology-based firms (NTBFs) in the emerging South African economy. Moreover, the innovation outcomes of these NTBFs are examined by using a multi-dimensional construct. Results show that science park location plays a significant role in explaining innovative sales, but is insignificant when a different indicator of innovation outcomes is used. Furthermore, only for innovations that are new to the firms, both science park location and intended knowledge transfer via informal business relationships have a positive impact; whereas social relationships have a negative impact.


Recent decades have seen a wave of institutional changes of the core democratic rules in advanced democracies. These changes include reforms of electoral systems; decentralization of power to sub-national governments; the creation or enhancement of direct-democratic institutions; a rise in public subsidies to political parties; and shifts in the balance of power between executive and legislature. Nevertheless, political science has developed a limited understanding of what explains institutional change in democracies that are already consolidated. This is partly due to the lack of comparative data on the subject, with most studies of institutional change focusing on a single country, or on a single type of reform (e.g. electoral system change). Our paper seeks to bridge this gap by presenting the preliminary findings of an international research project that compared seven dimensions of institutional change in 18 consolidated European democracies between 1990 and 2008, producing a unique dataset whose content has been fully verified by national experts. This dataset provides the empirical basis for evaluating the type and extent of institutional change in consolidated European democracies, as well as developing hypotheses about the motivations and calculations behind these reforms.


A well-designed sampling plan can greatly enhance the information that can be produced from a survey. Once a broad sample design is identified, specific design parameters such as sample sizes and selection probabilities need to be chosen. This is typically achieved using an optimal sample design, which minimises the variance of a key statistic or statistics, expressed as a function of design parameters and population characteristics, subject to a cost constraint. In practice, only imprecise estimates of population characteristics are available, but the effects of this variability are usually ignored. A general approach to sample allocation allowing for imprecise design data is proposed and evaluated. The approach is based on the availability of two sets of design data which can act as a check on each other. One application is to stratified sampling, where estimated stratum variances may be highly variable. Pooling strata into groups may reduce this variability, at the possible cost of some inefficiency. Proportional allocation, ignoring differences between stratum variances, could also be used. The new approach enables a datadriven compromise between all three. Simulation results based on real data show useful gains in a hypothetical farm survey, business survey and household survey of a subpopulation. Robert Clark is Associate Professor at the Centre for Statistical and Survey Methodology, University of Wollongong, NSW Australia 2522 (email email@example.com).


Standard monopolized the petroleum industry during the 1870s by cartelizing the stage of production where entry was difficult--petroleum transportation. Standard enforced the transportation cartel by shifting its refinery shipments among railroads to stabilize individual railroad market shares at collusively agreed-on levels. This method of cartel policing was effective because Standard possessed a dominant share of refining, a dominance made possible with the assistance of the railroads. The railroads facilitated Standard's refinery acquisitions and prevented new refiner entry by charging disadvantageously high rates to non-Standard refiners. While Standard used its dominant position in refining to sell refined product at a monopoly price and to purchase crude oil at a monopsony price, Standard did not possess independent market power in refining. Whenever the transportation cartel broke down, Standard's pricing power vanished.


This paper introduces inverse geodynamo modelling, a framework imaging flow throughout the Earth's core from observations of the geomagnetic field and its secular variation. The necessary prior information is provided by statistics from 3-D and self-consistent numerical simulations of the geodynamo. The core method is a linear estimation (or Kalman filtering) procedure, combined with standard frozen-flux core surface flow inversions in order to handle the non-linearity of the problem. The inversion scheme is successfully validated using synthetic test experiments. A set of four numerical dynamo models of increasing physical complexity and similarity to the geomagnetic field is then used to invert for flows at single epochs within the period 1970–2010, using data from the geomagnetic field models CM4 and gufm-sat-Q3. The resulting core surface flows generally provide satisfactory fits to the secular variation within the level of modelled errors, and robustly reproduce the most commonly observed patterns while additionally presenting a high degree of equatorial symmetry. The corresponding deep flows present a robust, highly columnar structure once rotational constraints are enforced to a high level in the prior models, with patterns strikingly similar to the results of quasi-geostrophic inversions. In particular, the presence of a persistent planetary scale, eccentric westward columnar gyre circling around the inner core is confirmed. The strength of the approach is to uniquely determine the trade-off between fit to the data and complexity of the solution by clearly connecting it to first principle physics; statistical deviations observed between the inverted flows and the standard model behaviour can then be used to quantitatively assess the shortcomings of the physical modelling. Such deviations include the (i) westwards and (ii) hemispherical character of the eccentric gyre. A prior model with angular momentum conservation of the core–mantle inner-core system, and gravitational coupling of reasonable strength between the mantle and the inner core, is shown to produce enough westward drift to resolve statistical deviation (i). Deviation (ii) is resolved by a prior with an hemispherical buoyancy release at the inner-core boundary, with excess buoyancy below Asia. This latter result suggests that the recently proposed inner-core translational instability presently transports the solid inner-core material westwards, opposite to the seismologically inferred long-term trend but consistently with the eccentricity of the geomagnetic dipole in recent times.


The scientific challenges of the 21st century will increasingly involve competing interactions, geometric frustration, spatial and temporal intrinsic inhomogeneity, nanoscale structures, and interactions spanning many scales. We will focus on a broad class of emerging problems that will require new tools in non-equilibrium statistical physics and that will find application in new material functionality, in predicting complex spatial dynamics, and in understanding novel states of matter. Our work will encompass materials under extreme conditions involving elastic/plastic deformation, competing interactions, intrinsic inhomogeneity, frustration in condensed matter systems, scaling phenomena in disordered materials from glasses to granular matter, quantum chemistry applied to nano-scale materials, soft-matter materials, and spatio-temporal properties of both ordinary and complex fluids.


The public health risks of physical inactivity have led many national governments to develop policies that aim to increase population levels of physical activity. There is however, little evidence available about the effectiveness of such strategies and physical activity leaders may also face challenges in securing sufficient levels of political will and lasting investment for physical activity. This article reports on a review of a national physical activity strategy in Scotland after 5 years of implementation and offers lessons that may assist policymakers, practitioners and communities seeking to mobilise political commitment and leadership for physical activity in their own countries.


Objective To understand the prevalence of healthcare students' witnessing or participating in something that they think unethical (professionalism dilemmas) during workplace learning and examine whether differences exist in moral distress intensity resulting from these experiences according to gender and the frequency of occurrence. Design Two cross-sectional online questionnaires of UK medical (study 1) and nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy and pharmacy students (study 2) concerning professionalism dilemmas and subsequent distress for (1) Patient dignity and safety breaches; (2) Valid consent for students' learning on patients; and (3) Negative workplace behaviours (eg, student abuse). Participants and setting 2397 medical (67.4% female) and 1399 other healthcare students (81.1% female) responded. Main results The most commonly encountered professionalism dilemmas were: student abuse and patient dignity and safety dilemmas. Multinomial and logistic regression identified significant effects for gender and frequency of occurrence. In both studies, men were more likely to classify themselves as experiencing no distress; women were more likely to classify themselves as distressed. Two distinct patterns concerning frequency were apparent: (1) Habituation (study 1): less distress with increased exposure to dilemmas 'justified' for learning; (2) Disturbance (studies 1 and 2): more distress with increased exposure to dilemmas that could not be justified. Conclusions Tomorrow's healthcare practitioners learn within a workplace in which they frequently encounter dilemmas resulting in distress. Gender differences could be respondents acting according to gendered expectations (eg, males downplaying distress because they are expected to appear tough). Habituation to dilemmas suggests students might balance patient autonomy and right to dignity with their own needs to learn for future patient benefit. Disturbance contests the 'accepted' notion that students become less empathic over time. Future research might examine the strategies that students use to manage their distress, to understand how this impacts of issues such as burnout and/or leaving the profession.


The COVID-19 pandemic presented wide-ranging challenges for businesses. Not the least of these is compliance with the federal securities laws, including the prohibition – most notably under SEC Rule 10b-5 – on materially deceptive statements made to the public. Both the SEC, in its role as enforcer of the law, and private parties, seeking to represented classes of aggrieved investors, have filed complaints asserting that corporations and others have engaged in deception of investors regarding matters pertaining to COVID-19. Some of these claims relate to disclosures regarding testing kits for the virus as well as development of vaccines. Other complaints allege faulty disclosure on the effect of the pandemic on the market for a company's products and services that are not themselves related to the pandemic, such as claims against cruise lines that suspended operations.

This article presents the legal framework for claims based on Rule 10b-5, SEC guidance on how COVID-19 affects compliance with disclosure requirements for public companies, and the issues that have emerged in the claims already filed This analysis demonstrates that almost any public reporting company faces the risk of inadequate disclosure and the temptation to withhold or misstate material facts in a time of financial stress.


The study of back-to-work schemes involving forms of economic activity such as work experience demonstrates that far from helping people escape precarious financial and professional situations, these schemes maintain and even reinforce them. The back-to-work approach depoliticises un- and underemployment, and transforms it into a psychological rather than social issue. Furthermore, by creating a hierarchy of job-seekers according to their employability, it makes forms of collective action all but impossible and contributes to the institutionalisation of precarious employment.


The main objective of this study was to validate Pender's Health Promotion Model (HPM) as a motivational model for exercise/physical activity self-management for people with spinal cord injuries (SCIs). Quantitative descriptive research design using hierarchical regression analysis (HRA) was used. A total of 126 individuals with SCI were recruited through the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, other SCI support groups, and professors in rehabilitation counseling across the United States. Outcome measures used were the International Physical Activity Questionnaire and the Physical Activity Stages of Change Instrument. The HRA results indicated that preinjury physical activity/exercise level, severity of SCI, and commitment to a plan for exercise and physical activity were predictive of postinjury exercise and physical activity level. In addition, friend/family support, perceived self-efficacy, and perceived benefits were the strongest predictors of commitment to a plan of action for exercise and physical activity. The research findings support the applicability of Pender's HPM as a motivational model for exercise/physical activity for people with SCI. The information can be used to design health promotion behavioral interventions for people with SCI living in the community.


There has been increasing interest in the transformative power of not only crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, but also the technology underlying them—namely blockchain. To the uninitiated, a blockchain is a sophisticated, distributed online ledger that has the potential, according to Goldman Sachs, to "change 'everything.'" From making businesses more efficient to recording property deeds to engendering the growth of 'smart' contracts, blockchain technology is now being investigated by a huge range of organizations and is attracting billions in venture funding. Even the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investigating blockchain technology to "create an unhackable messaging system." However, the legal literature has largely ignored the rise of blockchain technology outside of its finance, securities, and copyright implications. This Article seeks to address this omission by analyzing the potential impact of blockchain technology on advancing the cybersecurity of firms across an array of sectors and industries with a particular focus on certificate authorities and the critical infrastructure context. Moreover, we examine the rise of blockchains through the lens of the literature on polycentric governance to ascertain what lessons this research holds to build trust in distributed systems and ultimately promote cyber peace.


The legal treatment of resale price maintenance (RPM) in the United States had a major switch in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 551 U.S. 877 (2007)(Leegin). Rule of reason analysis was applied to certain category of RPM practice. While RPM in the European Union is prohibited as a hardcore restriction of competition. Seen from the effects of RPM, it is aimed at controlling price and distribution, legal rules against RPM are highly sector-specified, namely, they are designed for markets that featured of price and distribution competition. There are many other markets that price restraint is not always an important element for competition. Such a market is the software market, where although distribution is an inherent part of market competition, the decisive competitive advantage is an innovative product. Price restraint is less likely to contribute to the process of innovation. On the contrary, RPM is likely to be used as a way of foreclosing intro-brand competition in the distribution procedure. After reviewing the theory of RPM and competition in the software market, this article concludes that RPM is less likely to be considered pro-competitive in the software market and therefore rule of reason analysis cannot be applied in these circumstances, per se rule fits software RPM.


Tissue-engineering was important and popular which combine medical applications and engineering materials knowledge, just like cell extraction process was employed to remove the cellular components from porcine costal cartilages, leaving a framework of largely insoluble collagen, elastin, and tightly bound glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) in this work. A cell extraction process of supercritical carbon dioxide (ScCO 2 ) and acidic treatments was used to remove cellular components by porcine costal cartilages. Varying pore sizes and porosities of the acellular tissues were then created using enzymes and collagenase after acidic treatments. The porcine costal cartilages must remove lipids and other impurities almost by ScCO 2 , otherwise adipose tissue will become rot immediately. For collagen scaffold samples, porcine costal cartilages were hydrolyzed by enzymes and pH reagents, in this way it can gain state completely and clearly. Electron microscopy revealed effect in decellularized extracellular matrix (ECM) of porcine costal cartilages via supercritical fluid and enzymes after acidic treatments.


The work contained herein is an analysis of the political ideology of the Indian nationalist politician Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945). The work critiques the present historiography in defining accurately the ideology of Subhas Chandra Bose, since at present Bose is variously described as either a fascist or a socialist, or both by modern historians, who cite his similarities to western politicians and politics of the time, and his links with them.
The work subsequently explains in detail the individual aspects of Bose's political maturation, by examining the primary sources on the subject, including declassified sources held within the India Office Library in London, and the numerous papers and articles held by the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. These primary sources are used to re-contextualise the existing arguments of the secondary literature. The work then presents a new interpretation of Bose's ideology: it argues that Bose's ideology far from being a product of his western experience, was effectively formed mainly on the basis of the teachings of Indian philosopher Narendranath Datta (Vivekananda) and the nationalist philosopher Aurobindo Ghose, and other Indians, only accreting aspects of western ideologies where they fitted this Asian whole,
modernising but not negating the essentially Indian origin of Bose's ideological thought. The work explicates through interpretation of the sources the nature of Bose's belief system and describes Bose's political thought from an Indian philosophical perspective, rather than from that of the existing western basis, which it is asserted here is flawed and contradictory. The outcome contributes to the field by synthesising the present ideological .discourse, and delineating a separate, distinctive ideology that defines both the thought and actions of Bose in a more comprehensive manlier.


The transport and contamination of suspended solids in a wood pool were quantitatively studied as a case study for the environmental assessment of an enclosed sea area. To assess the present contamination of Shimizu Port (Japan), seawater, suspended solids, and settling particles were collected from three rivers, the wood pool, and Shimizu Port. Physical and chemical properties of the samples were analyzed. In addition, tidal currents were observed to investigate the transport process of chemical substances by suspended solids. The results showed that the amount of lithogenic particles discharged into Shimizu Port was approximately 12 000 kg/day. Suspended solids discharged from rivers and the biological particles produced in the port caused a reduction in seawater transparency and an increase in chemical oxygen demand. Trace metals, such as Mn, Co, and Pb, were highly concentrated in suspended solids. Tributyltin adsorbed onto settling particles was approximately 300 µg/kg. Concentration factors for Mn, Fe, Cd, and Pb from water and settling particles are comparable to those of plankton. Hydroxides were found in suspended solids from the wood pool, which locates in the inner part of Shimizu Port. The results showed that these suspended particles could accumulate metals from seawater as effectively as biogenic particles. After particle deposition, trace metals are regenerated into seawater under anaerobic conditions. This process plays an important role in the accumulation of chemicals in seawater and sediments, especially in enclosed sea areas.


The Genus Trichantha Hooker of the neotropical Gesneriaceae has been re-instated and redefined in this first issue of Selbyana (p. 33; cf. Wiehler, 1973, sub Ortholoma). Elements of this group of over 70 species came from Columnea Linnaeus and Alloplectus Martius, but many species of Trichantha are still new to science and await description. The three new species treated here form a unit because they are closely related one to another and to Tri- chantha illepida (H. E. Moore) Morton from Panama. All four species grow in the same type of habitat as epiphytes, have the same general plant habit, the same degree of leaf anisophylly, the same corolla shape, the same type of maroon-purple design on the lemon yellow corolla, and the same odd ap- pendages by the sinuses of the corolla lobes. Yet the corolla of each species shows also some specific difference; in one species the flowers are signifi- cantly smaller but more numerous than in the others. The calyx is rather distinct in each of the novelties, and one of them possesses a unique leaf texture. All three new species have horticultural value as hanging basket plants.


Wetland delineation is important because federal and local government regulations limit permissible uses of wetlands. Federal delineation regulations are based upon the use of a manual jointly agreed upon by EPA, USACOE, and NRCS. The manual provides for classifcation of land as either wetland or non-wetland based upon the 3 criteria of soil, vegetation, and hydrology. No provision is made for gradation between categorical wetland and categorical non wetland. Controversy has sometimes developed between landowners and environmentalists as to proper wetland classification; some delineations have been considered arbitrary. The analytical method of wetland appraisal provides a means of assigning continuous numerical values to each of the 3 criteria, for the purpose of minimizing occasion for controversy over categorical distinctions. Twenty sites were studied; each site was appraised as potential wetland or non-wetland based upon the methodology in the federal manual; results were compared with the evaluations provided by the analytical system. These evaluations suggested that all sites with average relative wetness values greater than 30 be considered wetland candidates; they call for the following minimum values for each of the 3 relevant criteria; soil (30), vegetation (60), and hydrology (14).


In order to lead lives of personal meaning and value, the victims of economic exploitation and military oppression in Gravity's Rainbow must strive to band together into groups whose languages and structures have not been dictated to them by the purveyors of technology and the strategists of war. Similarly, in order to read Gravity's Rainbow in a meaningful way, its would-be interpreters must liberate themselves from some of the conventional constraints governing their reading behavior, thus enabling themselves to enter into a fresh dialogue with the novel. What I would like to suggest, therefore, is that for both characters and readers a "folk consciousness" must come to supplant what may be termed, following the language of the novel, a "firm consciousness." The rewards of the former and the ill-effects of the latter--within and without the novel--will be explored in this essay.


In Japan, the suburbs face issues of depopulation, loss of culture, identical and interchangeable scenery due to the prevalence of chain stores and weak relationships between members of the community, contrast to the heavy concentration of populations in major cities. In tackling these issues, the conventional approach of community revitalisation leans heavily on economic, technological and administrative measures. This study proposes a new paradigm to address community autonomy of suburbs in order to accommodate contemporary values and lifestyles. The proposed paradigm is based on the concept of the apron diagram developed by Arne Naess in deep ecology, one of the theories of environmental ethics. The diagram induces a paradigm shift in the way of thinking where individuals with different fundamental philosophies can share the principle and take diverse action for community autonomy. Also, the concept of Self-realisation proposed in deep ecology is applied to the premise of community governance. Self-realisation is the extension of the individual self to the larger Self and encompasses the essence of community autonomy. This theoretical approach is supported by an interview survey conducted by the authors in Itoshima City, Fukuoka. The survey observed Self-realisation in the voluntary actions of community members.  Keywords: community autonomy, deep ecology, apron diagram, Self-realisation, suburb


Banded iron-formations (BIFs) occur in the Precambrian geologic record over a wide time span. Beginning at 3.8 Ga (Isua, West Greenland), they are part of Archean cratons and range in age from about 3.5 until 2.5 Ga. Their overall volume reaches a maximum at about 2.5 Ga (iron-formations in the Hamersley Basin of Western Australia) and they disappear from the geologic record at about 1.8 Ga, only to reappear between 0.8 and 0.6 Ga.

The stratigraphic sequences in which BIFs occur are highly variable. Most Archean iron-formations are part of greenstone belts that have been deformed, metamorphosed, and dismembered. This makes reconstruction of the basinal setting of such BIFs very difficult. The general lack of metamorphism and deformation of extensive BIFs of the Hamersley Range of Western Australia and the Transvaal Supergroup of South Africa allow for much better evaluations of original basinal settings. Most Archean iron-formations show fine laminations and/or microbanding. Such microbanding is especially well developed in the Brockman Iron Formation of Western Australia, where it has been interpreted as chemical varves, or annual layers of sedimentation. BIFs ranging in age from 2.2 Ga to about 1.8 Ga (e.g., those of the Lake Superior region, U.S.A., Labrador Trough, Canada, and the Nabberu Basin of Western Australia) commonly exhibit granular textures and lack microbanding.

The mineralogy of the least metamorphosed BIFs consists of combinations of the following minerals: chert, magnetite, hematite, carbonates (most commonly siderite and members of the dolomite-ankerite series), greenalite, stilpnomelane, and riebeckite, and locally pyrite. Minnesotaite is a common, very low-grade metamorphic reaction product. The Eh-pH stability fields of the above minerals (and/or their precursors) indicate anoxic conditions for the original depositional environment.

The average bulk chemistry of BIFs, from 3.8 through 1.8 Ga in age, is very similar. They are rich in total Fe (ranging from about 20 to 40 wt%) and SiO2 (ranging from 43 to 56 wt%). CaO and MgO contents range from 1.75 to 9.0 and from 1.20 to 6.7 wt%, respectively. Al2O3 contents are very low, ranging from 0.09 to 1.8 wt%. These chemical values show that they are clean chemical sediments devoid of detrital input. Only the Neoproterozoic iron-formations (of 0.8 to 0.6 Ga in age) have very different mineralogical and chemical make-ups. They consist mainly of chert and hematite, with minor carbonates.

The rare-earth element profiles of almost all BIFs,with generally pronounced positive Eu anomalies, indicate that the source of Fe and Si was the result of deep ocean hydrothermal activity admixed with sea water.

The prograde metamorphism of iron-formations produces sequentially Fe-amphiboles, then Fe-pyroxenes, and finally (at highest grade) Fe-olivine-containing assemblages. Such metamorphic reactions are isochemical except for decarbonation and dehydration.

The common fine lamination (and/or microbanding) as well as the lack of detrital components in most BIFs suggest that such are the result of deposition, below wave base, in the deeper parts of ocean basins. Those with granular textures are regarded as the result of deposition in shallow water, platformal areas. Carbon isotope data suggest that for a long period of time (from Archean to Early Proterozoic) the ocean basins were stratified with respect to δ13C (in carbonates) as well as organic carbon content. In Middle Proterozoic time (when granular BIFs appear) this stratification diminishes and is lost.

The Neoproterozoic BIFs occur in stratigraphic sequences with glaciomarine deposits. These BIFs are the result of anoxic conditions that resulted from the stagnation in the oceans beneath a near-global ice cover, referred to as "Snowball Earth."

All of the most "primary" mineral assemblages appear to be the result of chemical precipitation under anoxic conditions. There are, as yet, no data to support that BIF precipitation was linked directly to microbial activity. The relative abundance of BIF throughout the Precambrian record is correlated with a possible curve for the evolution of the O2 content in the Precambrian atmosphere.


It is argued that a more comprehensive, systematic understanding of the nature of the alphabet, its three identities (letters/graphemes, letters/nomenemes, sounds/phonemes), and their specific functions in the teaching of various language skills and subskills should be an integral part of the language'arts curriculum and instructional plan, particularly in situations involving language minority students. The curriculum and instruction should clearly outline the objectives and the teaching/learning strategies most appropriate for recognizing and implementing the three identities and their functions, both within one language and across languages. Such an approach not only secures a more realistic understanding of this major tool of language instruction but may also minimize misconceptions held by teachers and learners. The alphabet-spelling connection is multidimensional, not unidimensional as commonly assumed. The connection is both graphic and oral, a dichotomy that can help highlight the intricate relationship between the alphabet as a tool and spelling as a process. Language arts teacher training programs should be updated to promote use of this knowledge in the language classroom. Contains 20 references. (MSE) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************


Abstract. In recent years, research on climate change and human security has received much attention among policy makers and academia alike. Communities in the Global South that rely on an intact resource base and struggle with poverty, existing inequalities and historical injustices will especially be affected by predicted changes in temperature and precipitation. The objective of this article is to better understand under what conditions local communities can adapt to anticipated impacts of climate change. The empirical part of the paper answers the question as to what extent local women engaged in fish processing in the Chilwa Basin in Malawi have experienced climate change and how they are affected by it. The article assesses an adaptation project designed to make those women more resilient to a warmer and more variable climate. The research results show that marketing and improving fish processing as strategies to adapt to climate change have their limitations. The study concludes that livelihood diversification can be a more effective strategy for Malawian women to adapt to a more variable and unpredictable climate rather than exclusively relying on a resource base that is threatened by climate change.


Volatility prediction plays an important role in the financial domain. The GARCH family of prediction models is very popular and efficient in using past returns to forecast volatility. It has also been observed that news, scheduled and unscheduled, have an impact on return volatility of assets. An enhanced GARCH model, called News Augmented GARCH (NAGARCH) includes an additional component for news sentiment. With the rise in popularity of the world wide web and social media, it has become a rich source for opinions and sentiments. Twitter is one such platform. It is a micro-blogging site and a popular source for public view on different topics. StockTwits is a social media platform that started as an application built using Twitter's API. It has since grown into an independent financial social media platform for news and sentiment. StockTwits is a rich source of opinions from subject experts and analysts. This data provides first systematic exploration of social media. It reflects raw sentiments of traders, investors, media, public companies, and investment professionals as opposed to sentiments from curated news wires. This research attempts to determine if the sentiment on stocks from StockTwits micro-blogs can improve volatility prediction. The experiment is performed on 9 NASDAQ100 stocks. The GARCH model with stock returns, and the NA-GARCH model with stock returns and micro-blog sentiment are tuned and their prediction results are evaluated. NA-GARCH, with the sentiment data from StockTwits performed better than the GARCH model in 7 out of the 9 cases.


In the realm of knowledge management, great emphasis has been put on intellectual capital (IC) as an important and, partially, intangible asset for achieving economic value and competitiveness. This has led to many attempts to measure the economic value of IC. These methods, however, are to some extent questionable and do not seem to be recognized in practice, scholars claim. This might be due to the intangible character of IC. Even though scholars have conducted studies on IC, more research on IC practice and the value creation process with IC is called for; especially in the context of a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME). Based on an empirical and qualitative case study of an SME, the current paper explores the process of IC practice creation and how IC practice is related to value in tangible-intangible dynamics in the SME. The current paper applies practice theorising and the community of practice (CoP) approach to propose how IC practice can create value by integrating intangible knowing about end consumers in the practice of producing tangible output. The empirical results illustrate how establishing communities of practice and fostering knowledge brokers facilitating meaning-negotiating processes is crucial to developing IC practice as intangible assets in the SME, and the paper discusses how making the intangible knowing tangible may increase the value of intangibility in the process of creating IC value and IC practice.


The antigenicity of altered structures induced by Plasmodium falciparum in the membranes of infected Aotus monkey and human erythrocytes was examined. Antisera were obtained from monkeys made immune to malaria. Bound antibodies were shown to be localized on the knob protrusions of infected erythrocytes of both human and monkey origin and from both in vitro and in vivo infections. Therefore, P. falciparum infection has produced similar antigenic changes in the erythrocyte surfaces of both man and monkey. Uninfected erythrocytes and all knobless-infected erythrocytes bound no antibody from immune sera. Strains of P. falciparum from widely different geographic areas that were cultured in vitro in human erythrocytes induced structures (knobs) which have common antigenicity. Merozoites were agglutinated by cross-linking of their cell coats when incubated with immune sera. The binding of ferritin-labeled antibody was heavy on the coats of both homologous and heterologous strains of the parasite, indicating that the merozoite surfaces of these strains share common antigens.


Few-cycle pulses offer a wide range of interesting applications, for example in time-resolved studies of ultra-fast phenomena in physics, chemistry and biology. Nonlinear spectral broadening in photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) followed by dispersive compression allows for the generation of extremely short optical pulses. By employing this technique pulse durations of only 5.5 fs (2.4 optical cycles) have been achieved so far. In this contribution we take advantage of SC generation in all-normal dispersion PCF (ANDi PCF), which features only positive group-velocity dispersion across the spectral region of interest. Spectral broadening therefore is dominated by self-phase modulation and optical wave breaking, leading to smooth and highly coherent SC spectra. We show generation of SC spectra covering more than one optical octave around 810 nm central wavelength. Active phase control and spectral shaping were employed to compress the pulses to 3.64 fs (1.3 optical cycles), which is the shortest pulse duration achieved from SC compression in solid core fibers to date. In contrast to other approaches, the presented concept delivers pulses with an excellent temporal pulse quality and can be extended to even larger bandwidths to reach the sub-cycle regime, provided an adequate compressor is employed.


Objectives: The objectives of this study were to determine basic oral pharmacokinetics, and assess safety and analgesic efficacy of a cannabidiol (CBD) based oil in dogs with osteoarthritis (OA). Methods: Single-dose pharmacokinetics was performed using two different doses of CBD enriched (2 and 8 mg/kg) oil. Thereafter, a randomized placebo-controlled, veterinarian, and owner blinded, cross-over study was conducted. Dogs received each of two treatments: CBD oil (2 mg/kg) or placebo oil every 12 h. Each treatment lasted for 4 weeks with a 2-week washout period. Baseline veterinary assessment and owner questionnaires were completed before initiating each treatment and at weeks 2 and 4. Hematology, serum chemistry and physical examinations were performed at each visit. A mixed model analysis, analyzing the change from enrollment baseline for all other time points was utilized for all variables of interest, with a p ≤ 0.05 defined as significant. Results: Pharmacokinetics revealed an elimination half-life of 4.2 h at both doses and no observable side effects. Clinically, canine brief pain inventory and Hudson activity scores showed a significant decrease in pain and increase in activity (p < 0.01) with CBD oil. Veterinary assessment showed decreased pain during CBD treatment (p < 0.02). No side effects were reported by owners, however, serum chemistry showed an increase in alkaline phosphatase during CBD treatment (p < 0.01). Clinical significance: This pharmacokinetic and clinical study suggests that 2 mg/kg of CBD twice daily can help increase comfort and activity in dogs with OA.


Background & Aim: It is important for dentists and specialists to know about impacted wisdom teeth before and after surgery. In this surgery, postoperative complications like infection, bleeding and etc occur by the extraction of this kind of teeth. In this study, the post operative wound infection associated with 100 surgical operations performed during 2000 at OMFS Dept. Shahid Beheshthi Dental School, are reported (4 weeks follow up). Method & Material: This descriptive epidemiological study is performed by completing a data form after observation. This investigation is performed on 100 patients who were physically in a fair status. The patients were accessible easily and they examined at the end of the second and third weeks and the existing signs have been registering. The patients who were suspected of the infection have been following within the next 24 hours. At the end, the last following was performed to evaluating the subperiostal infection after one month. Antibiotics were used in the cases which the surgeon had been used micromotor during the surgery. T-test and one – way and chi – square analysis were used for calculation of the data. The conclusion is announced by p value and if the finding were less than 0.05, they were valuable. Results: The post surgical wound infection rate overall was 6% and the other 94% have passed the usual procedure of recovery. The incidence of infection in the mandible was more than maxilla, and also there was a higher probability of infection in the hard tissue surgery specially in which the surgeon had used micromotor. The triangular flap is caused to infection more than the envelope flap. Conclusion: Most important findings in 100 impacted third molars (100 patients) were:1. In the complicated impacted third molars (like a Cl III or Cl C depth impaction) a new technique with a high concentration are needed. 2. There was relationship between tooth position, flap design, micromotor using and incidence of wound infection that means in all cases with the symptoms of wound infection, impacted wisdom teeth was in the lower jaw, flap design was triangular and practitioner had been used micromotor for removal of third molar. 3. Rate of wound infection not related to the prophylactic use of antibiotic. Beheshti Univ. Dent. J. 2004; 22(2):347-354 347


This book belongs to the collection "Practica tu espanol" that shows the most difficult aspects of Spanish as a second language. These self-study workbooks deal with some of the most difficult aspects of Spanish. Grammatical and lexical contents are explained (in Spanish) accompanied by abundant examples. An answer key is included. The series consists of: Los tiempos de passado (level B1); El lexico de los negocios (level B2); Practica la conjugacion (level A10); El subjuntivo (level B1); Las preposiciones (level B1); Las expresiones coloquiales (level B1); Ejercicios de pronunciacion (level B1 - comes with its own CD); Ser y estar (level B1); and, Marcadores del discurso (level C1) and Ortografia (levels A2-B1).


Bone disease with persistent reduced bone mineralisation is common in premature infants. To test the hypothesis that enhancement of nutritional intake after discharge from hospital improves bone mineralisation, 31 formula fed preterm infants were randomly assigned to receive standard or multinutrient enriched milk from the time of discharge. The calcium and phosphorus contents of the enriched milk were 70 and 35 mg/100 ml v 35 and 29 mg/100 ml for the standard formula. Bone mineral content was measured before discharge from hospital in 21 of the infants; there was no difference in the bone mineral content between the groups at that time (35 mg/cm for the two groups). There was a significant increase in bone mineral content for those infants receiving the enriched v standard formula at 3 and 9 months corrected postnatal age: at 3 months the bone mineral content was 83 v 63 mg/cm and at 9 months 115 v 95 mg/cm. The difference between the groups was thus maintained although not increased at a corrected age of 9 months, when the bone mineral content of infants fed the enriched but not the standard formula was no longer significantly different from that of normal infants after adjusting for body size. The difference was not explained by the larger body size in infants fed the enriched formula. The results suggest that the use of a special nutrient enriched postdischarge formula has a significant positive effect on bone growth and mineralisation during a period of rapid skeletal development.


The German Aerospace Center (DLR) enabled German participation in the joint space campaign on the unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft in November 2011. In this report, the effect of microgravity on Euglena gracilis cells is described. Custom-made dual compartment cell fixation units (containing cells in one chamber and fixative - RNA lysis buffer - in another one) were enclosed in a small container and placed in the Simbox incubator, which is an experiment support system. Cells were fixed by injecting them with fixative at different time intervals. In addition to stationary experiment slots, Simbox provides a 1 g reference centrifuge. Cell fixation units were mounted in microgravity and 1 g reference positions of Simbox. Two Simbox incubators were used, one for space flight and the other as ground reference. Cells were fixed soon after launch and shortly before return of the spaceship. Due to technical problems, only early in-flight samples (about 40 min after launch microgravity and corresponding 1 g reference) were fully mixed with fixative, therefore only data from those samples are presented. Transcription of several genes involved in signal transduction, oxidative stress defence, cell cycle regulation and heat shock responses was investigated with quantitative PCR. The data indicate that Euglena cells suffer stress upon short-term exposure to microgravity; various stress-induced genes were up-regulated. Of 32 tested genes, 18 were up-regulated, one down-regulated and the rest remained unaltered. These findings are in a good agreement with results from other research groups using other organisms.


'She has many rare and charming qualities, but Sobriety is not one of them.' A selection of Austen's dark and hilarious early writings - featuring murder, drunkenness, perjury, theft, poisoning, women breaking out of prison, men forging wills and babies biting off their mothers' fingers...Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Jane Austen (1775-1817). Austen's works available in Penguin Classics are Emma, Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon, Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.


The demand on techniques, approaches and processes that have a positive impact on courage, fear and anxiety is very high in general population. The evidence-based and theoretical literature supporting life coaching as a successful approach building individual courage and helping with fear and anxiety is scarce. This integrative literature review synthesises data from previous research studies about the impact of life coaching as an intervention to enhance courage and decrease fear and anxiety. Findings obtained in this study suggest that life coaching is a reliable approach that may enhance individual courage and decrease fear and anxiety.


Air quality is a serious problem in modern cities due to the significant impact of air pollution on the health of the population, the global environment and economy. Recent studies point to the crucial role of information about pollution on micro level, which translates into direct exposure of people to air pollutions. To provide such information, it is necessary to create real-time systems with large spatio-temporal resolution, since such information cannot provide conventional measurement systems performing measurements according to the legislative regulations of particular countries. Current researches focus on the concept of a next-generation air pollution monitoring systems that use new measurement technologies and techniques for communicating and delivering data. These systems can be complementary to traditional air quality monitoring systems. The article presents current trends in the world in this area – the example of static, social and vehicle measurement systems. There are also shown Polish initiatives related to environmental quality monitoring.


The Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion connects research, education and business to support, inspire and create innovative approaches to fashion. The building of an industry that can flourish, communicating positive change throughout supply chains and beyond, impacts radically on the societal and economic triggers that fashion is able to influence.

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion provokes, challenges and questions the fashion status quo. Through collaboration we design transforming solutions that balance ecology, society and culture.


IZA DP No. 14452 JUNE 2021 Transitory Income Changes and Consumption Smoothing: Evidence from Mexico We study how 3,534 beneficiaries of PROSPERA, Mexico's cash transfer program, smooth food consumption around the transfer payday, an anticipated and transitory income shock. We find that food consumption and food security do not change around the transfer payday, including for recipients with impatient or time-inconsistent preferences and households with higher than median transfer dependence. Conversely, health and employment shocks (unexpected and less transitory income changes) reduce food security. The transfer's relative illiquidity may act as a commitment device, helping time-inconsistent and less experienced debit card holders smooth consumption. JEL Classification: D12, D91, E21, I12, I38


This paper proposes a dual-bridge (DB) LLC resonant converter for wide input applications. The topology is an integration of a half-bridge (HB) LLC circuit and a full-bridge (FB) LLC circuit. The fixed-frequency pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) control is employed and a range of twice the minimum input voltage can be covered. Compared with the traditional pulse frequency modulation (PFM) controlled HB/FB LLC resonant converter, the voltage gain range is independent of the quality factor, and the magnetizing inductor has little influence on the voltage gain, which can simplify the parameter selection process and benefit the design of magnetic components as well. Over the full load range, zero-voltage switching (ZVS) and zero-current switching (ZCS) can be achieved for primary switches and secondary rectifier diodes, respectively. Detailed analysis on the modulation schedule and operating principle of the proposed converter is presented along with the converter performance. Finally, all theoretical analysis and characteristics are verified by experimental results from a 120-V to 240-V input 24 V/20 A output converter prototype.


Rockfill dams have better stability than homogeneous soil dams. It allows to design the dam more slim with a higher slope. The disadvantage of rockfill dam is in the core zone as an impermeable zone. Zoned vertical core rockfill dam is a combination of various material properties. Geometry and drainage design will affect the seepage and phreatic line properties that occur. Numerical modeling and calculations are used to calculate the seepage profile more accurately. The combination of the parameters of the permeability coefficient (K), reservoir water level (Δh) and the length of the seepage path (L) can be used to determine the relationship between parameters with the same unit. 2D modeling take into account saturated/unsaturated conditions with steady state on each parameter. This study uses the Jatibarang-Indonesia dam as a basic model. The seepage profile at condition K1 (k = 1x10-5cm/sec) is q/k = -0.0018 (h2/L)2 + 1.3496h2/L + 53.241 and the seepage profile K2 (k=1x10-7cm/s) is q/k = -0.1521 (h2/L)2 + 90.402h2/L + 5480.2. This equations can be used to estimate seepage that occurs in a dam of other rock fill zoned vertical core dam based on the permeability coefficient value (K) more practically for all values of Δh and L reviewed. Keywords: Seepage, Rockfill Dam, Permeability, FEM, Numerical Analysis


Background: Methods: Results: Conclusion: Abstract There has been increasing interest in using social robots in clinical settings for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Notably, studies with encouraging results were mostly conducted in highly-controlled and specific settings. We conducted a feasibility trial on the use of a social robot to interact with children with ASD ( n = 8) in a clinical therapeutic setting. Children's level of interest and engagement, and social responsiveness were assessed via self-reports and parent ratings before and after the sessions. Trained observers rated the children's behaviours during the sessions. Sustainability of the children's interest was also measured by the number of sessions they chose to interact with the robot. While most children did not continue beyond four sessions, their reported level of engagement did not decline across the sessions. However, ratings of their social responsiveness did not differ significantly across sessions. Our findings suggest that the use of a social robot to facilitate interaction with children with ASD may be encouraging, but a longer trial with specific targets for improvement in social skills may be required. In addition, the expectation of gains should be moderated in view of the technical capabilities and application of the robot.