The late Ludlow Lau Event was a severe biotic crisis in the Silurian, characterized by resurgent microbial facies and faunal turnover rates otherwise only documented during the "big five" mass extinctions. This asynchronous late Silurian marine extinction event preceded an associated positive carbon isotope excursion (CIE), the Lau CIE, although a mechanism for this temporal offset remains poorly constrained. Here, we report thallium isotope data from locally reducing late Ludlow strata within the Baltic Basin to document the earliest onset of global marine deoxygenation. The initial expansion of anoxia coincided with the onset of the extinction and therefore preceded the Lau CIE. Additionally, sulfur isotope data record a large positive excursion parallel to the Lau CIE, interpreted to indicate an increase in pyrite burial associated with the widely documented CIE. This suggests a possible global expansion of euxinia (anoxic and sulfidic water column) following deoxygenation. These data are the most direct proxy evidence of paleoredox conditions linking the known extinction to the Lau CIE through the progressive expansion of anoxia, and most likely euxinia, across portions of the late Silurian oceans.


The goal of this research project was to determine if introducing intergenerational interactions would supplement or detract from the use of horticulture as a therapeutic tool when working with elderly adults and preschool children. The program was set up to compare independent group activities with intergenerational activities. A group of elderly adults in the University Adult Day Service and a group of preschool children in the University Child Development Laboratory School took part in both separate age group and intergenerational activities. There were three sessions each week: one for the children's group, a second one for the elderly adults' group, and a third one that combined both groups. The same activity was done during all three sessions each week, with modifications to make the activity appropriate for each age group and to make it more interactive for the intergenerational group. These activities took place in the campus building where the day care centers are located. Four volunteers assisted with the activities. Two worked with the children's group both during separate and intergenerational activities, and two volunteers similarly assisted with the elderly adult group. Video cameras were used to record each session. These videos were viewed and evaluated after the 10-week horticulture therapy program was completed to score attendance and participation during separate age group activities, and attendance, participation, and interaction between the two groups during intergenerational activities. This data was used to determine if introducing intergenerational interactions affected the individual's attendance or participation, and to determine if the interactions between the two groups showed any change over time. iii Several variables were shown to affect the outcome of research. The first variable discussed is the effect of the staff, volunteers, or administration on the participants and the activities. Staff and volunteers can greatly affect intergenerational interactions by: 1) failing to encourage participation from participants of all ages, 2) lacking experience or having discomfort in working with special populations, 3) failure to establish adequate communication with the researcher or with each other, or 4) demonstrating a negative attitude towards the project. The second variable in research is the limitation introduced by data analysis using video. While video recording is useful in evaluating data, it can cause problems due to a limited viewing area, limited viewing angles, blocked screens, or unfamiliarity with recording equipment. Videos were used to assess participation and interaction. Participation scores include three categories: "no participation" for present but inactive participation, and "working with direct assistance" or "independent participation" for active participation. Participation was affected by the horticulture activities' set up, difficulty level, and availability of assistance from volunteers. Children's participation during separate group activities was affected mainly by the difficulty level and set up of activities. Elderly adult's participation during separate age group activities was affected mainly by each individual's abilities and availability of assistance. Children's intergenerational participation scores show an increase in the category of "working with direct assistance", while elderly adults' intergenerational scores show an increase in the categories of "no participation" and "independent participation". In part, the change in intergenerational participation was due to a decrease in the assistance available from volunteers for each individual. Lastly, the percentage of total interaction time between the generations during activities increased over time. However, the introduction of intergenerational interactions detracted from the use of horticulture as a therapeutic tool for elderly adults and preschool children. It is recommended that intergenerational programming may not be useful to fulfill specific horticulture therapy goals for these groups. At the same time, the intergenerational activities involving horticulture plant-based activities were more successful at increasing interactions than the craft-type activities. Therefore horticulture


Abstract Aim: To analyze the side effects of captopril, an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI) in newborn and young infants. Methods: Retrospective analysis of side effects in 43 patients with congenital heart disease after cardiac surgery treated with captopril for heart failure during a two-year period. Results: Median age of the patients was 26 days (range 6–310 days), median weight 3.5 kg (range 1.9–7.9 kg). Initial median dose of captopril was 0.17 mg/kg/day (range 0.05–0.55 mg/kg/day), slowly increased over 3–33 days to a maximal median dose of 1.86 mg/kg/day (range 0.2–2.3 mg/kg/day). All patients were additionally treated with diuretics. Side effects occurred in 17 patients (renal impairment or failure in 6, low blood pressure in 8, and oxygen saturation deficit in 3) requiring cessation or interruption in seven patients with renal impairment/failure (n=4), hypotension (n=1) and aorto-pulmonary shunting with low pulmonary perfusion (n=2). The six children who developed renal impairment or failure did so following a median delay of nine days after reaching the final dose and weighed on average 500 g less than the other patients (P=0.046). All side effects were fully reversible. Conclusion: Side effects due to captopril were not dose-related in newborns and infants in this study. However, renal side effects occurred more often in smaller infants. Routine monitoring of infants on ACEI should include renal function tests, blood pressure and transcutaneous oxygen saturation measurements.


Supplemental Instruction (SI) has undergone many adaptations over its 35 year history as it has evolved to meet new developments in higher education while still maintaining its "original genetic code" (Martin and Blanc, 1995). During this time there have been some additions to its theoretical base to accommodate these developments. However, this paper contends that recent transformations of higher education challenge the adequacy of this base and call for complementing SI's theoretical base with notions of student learning and literacy as situated social practice. It is argued that SI's suite of principles lacks reference to research in what can be broadly termed "multiliteracies" (New London Group, 1996), which takes account of contemporary higher education now marked by heterogeneity in the cultural, linguistic and age profiles of students as well as the structure and assessment types of the new disciplines they study. The addition of a multiliteracies perspective will equip SI and its leaders to more fully support these new cohorts of students in negotiating the ideologically contested ground of higher education.


Breast cancer is the second highest leading cause of mortality among women. There are many factors responsible for promoting breast cancer. One of the risk factor of this malignancy is molecular alterations. The molecular alterations include epigenetic regulations such as regulation by microRNAs (miRNAs). miRNAs are a group of small non-coding RNAs, about 18-25 nucleotides in length. These miRNAs have the potential to regulate mRNA expression by suppressing the translational activity. In this study, we aim to identify miRNAs which might have a role in breast cancer. For this, we analyzed expression data of miRNAs and mRNAs in breast cancer tissues and identified the sets of miRNAs and mRNAs that are differentially expressed in breast cancer. Considering sets of up-regulated miRNA and down-regulated mRNAs, we constructed miRNA-target interaction map and screened few miRNA-target pairs (hsa-miR-27a-3p:ADAMTS5 & hsa-miR-17-5p: CX3CL1) that are hypothesised to play a role in breast cancer malignancy. To confirm the expression of these miRNAs and mRNAs in breast cancer, we performed qRT-PCR of each of the mRNAs and miRNAs in MDA-MB-231 cell line and found that miRNAs- hsa-miR-27a-3p, hsa-miR-17- 5p that target ADAMTS5 and CX3CL1 respectively are up-regulated and the corresponding targets are down-regulated. This inverse correlation in expression of these miRNAs and mRNAs supplemented with presence of target sites identified from target prediction indicate that these two miRNAs might be regulating the expression of these two mRNAs which in turn might be playing a crucial role in breast cancer. miRNA targeting can be further confirmed by luciferase reporter assays. We also performed methylation specific PCR (MSP) of ADAMTS5 to find the possibility whether its expression is modulated by methylation, rather than miRNAs before proceeding for reporter assays.


In this work, a method for statistical analysis of time series is proposed, which is used to obtain solutions to some classical problems of mathematical statistics under the only assumption that the process generating the data is stationary ergodic. Namely, three problems are considered: goodness-of-fit (or identity) testing, process classification, and the change point problem. For each of the problems a test is constructed that is asymptotically accurate for the case when the data is generated by stationary ergodic processes. The tests are based on empirical estimates of distributional distance.


"Social protection involves policies and programs that protect people against risk and vulnerability, mitigate the impacts of shocks, and support people who suffer from chronic incapacities to secure basic livelihoods. It can also build assets, reducing both short-term and intergenerational transmission of poverty. It includes social insurance (such as health, life, and asset insurance, which may involve contributions from employers and/or beneficiaries); social assistance (mainly cash, food, vouchers, or subsidies); and services (such as maternal and child health and nutrition programs). Interventions that provide training and credit for income-generating activities also have a social protection component. Interest in social protection is growing across Africa, fueled by persistent high rates of poverty and malnutrition; the undermining of livelihoods and family-based support systems by shocks such as the AIDS epidemic; volatile food prices and the calamities of weather and war; extensive evidence that denying children basic nutrition, health, and education has lifelong, irreversible, and intergenerational consequences; and growing evidence of the effectiveness of social protection in low-income countries throughout the world—particularly in contributing to poverty reduction and improved health, nutrition, and education. Approaches vary across regions and countries, with a notable introduction or scale-up of cash transfers for the very poor in southern and East Africa. While many programs have been undertaken on a pilot basis, successful implementation of large-scale social protection programs in Ethiopia and South Africa—each with more than 8 million beneficiaries—has demonstrated that social protection systems are no longer only within the reach of rich countries." from Author's text


Abstract Much consideration is rightly given to the design of metadata models to describe data. At the other end of the data-delivery spectrum much thought has also been given to the design of geospatial delivery interfaces such as the Open Geospatial Consortium standards, Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Map Server and Web Feature Service (WFS). Our recent experience with the Climate Science Modelling Language shows that an implementation gap exists where many challenges remain unsolved. To bridge this gap requires transposing information and data from one world view of geospatial climate data to another. Some of the issues include: the loss of information in mapping to a common information model, the need to create 'views' onto file-based storage, and the need to map onto an appropriate delivery interface (as with the choice between WFS and WCS for feature types with coverage-valued properties). Here we summarise the approaches we have taken in facing up to these problems.


This article seeks to explain why some high-capacity democracies have high levels of internal violence. These regimes present a puzzle: Why are bureaucratically capable states that ostensibly answer to voters failing to provide security? Challenging the "weak states" paradigm, we argue that states with high capacity and significant violence within marginalized populations exhibit a governance pattern in which governing factions deliberately weaken security services and collude with nonstate violent actors to maintain power and ensure extreme levels of privilege and impunity. Although these states do not feature ideal-type institutions, they are not weak. Instead, economic and political elites are complicit in enforcing a system of material inequality and uneven democratic incorporation maintained by violence. As politicized security agencies become incapacitated and repressive, citizens turn to nonstate security providers for protection, from private firms to criminals and insurgents, increasing social vi...


Before he was twenty years old, Louisiana-born Victor Sjour expatriated himself to Paris, where his acclaimed dramas would appear alongside those of Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. His mother a free woman of color, his father of Haitian descent, Sjour grew up a free Creole of color in antebellum New Orleans, but was deeply affected by the alienation and discrimination he encountered as a person of mixed descent. Sjour's inventive transposition of the discrimination of mid-nineteenth-century America to other historical incidents of racial persecution was a device in his fiction and drama, creating a provocative and political metaphor for those whose lives blur the lines of racial and religious identity. Now, for the first time, two of Sjour's plays, "The Jew of Seville" and "The Fortune-Teller", have been translated from the French for contemporary audiences."The Fortune-Teller" was first performed in French in 1859, just one year after six-year-old Edgardo Mortara was removed from his Jewish home by the Bologna inquisitor after being baptized by a maid. The inquisitor, supported by Pope Pious IX, vowed not to return the boy until his parents converted to Catholicism. In Sejour's touching rendering of the Mortara case, the infant girl Nomi is taken from her Jewish family after being baptized by a wet nurse. Seventeen years later, Nomi's widowed and wealthy mother Gema masquerades as a poor fortune-teller in search of Nomi, who, she suspects, is living with the Catholic Lomellini family, under the name Paola. In exchange for money to pay her husband's ransom, Bianca Lomellini reveals to Gema that Paola is indeed the long-lost Nomi. Neither Jew nor Christian, torn between mothers, names, and homes, the young woman grapples with an anomalous identity, testing the bonds of both nature and nurture.With a stirring translation by Norman R. Shapiro and a thoroughly engaging introduction by M. Lynn Weiss, "The Fortune-Teller" is an important and provocative addition to the non-English writings of American-born authors, a historical drama that highlights the discrimination not only of Sjour's time, but of ours as well.


This paper discusses two recent judgments, A Local Authority v H [2012] EWHC 49 (COP) and D Borough Council v AB [2011] EWHC 101 (COP). Both these judgments involve adults with intellectual disability, who are considered as lacking capacity to consent to sex, under the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act. Faced with the dilemma of protecting persons with intellectual disability from sexual abuse or allowing them to engage in sexual relations, English courts have clearly chosen the path of protection. Setting aside criminal law and health risks, the analysis questions whether interferences in the sexual life of persons with intellectual disability can be justified on the grounds of incapacity alone. Sexual relations are not only part of private life, but also a basic human need. The liberal prerequisite of capacity in order to exercise a negative right (such as sexual relations as part of private life) becomes an exercise in paternalism, as the person with intellectual disability is banned from having sex for his/her protection (albeit for the reason that he/she lacks capacity, according to the traditional understanding of liberal autonomy). On the contrary, this paper takes the view that the question of capacity has to be only one part of a much more elaborate examination of the circumstances of each case.


BACKGROUND
Drug non-adherence is one of the major challenges faced by resistant hypertension patients, and identification of this problem is needed for optimizing pharmacotherapy. Dried blood spot (DBS) sampling is a minimally invasive method designed to detect and determine the degree of non-adherence. In this study, a DBS method for qualifying 8 antihypertensive drugs (AHDs) and 4 active metabolites was developed and validated using ultra high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS).

METHOD
The DBS assay was validated analytically and clinically, in accordance with FDA requirements. Analytical validation was accomplished using UHPLC-MS/MS. For clinical validation, paired peak and trough levels of DBS and plasma samples were simultaneously collected and comparatively analyzed using Deming regression and Bland-Altman analyses. All concentrations below the set lower limit were excluded. Deming regression analysis was used to predict comparison bias between the collected plasma and DBS samples, with DBS concentrations corrected accordingly.

RESULTS
The UHPLC-MS/MS method for simultaneously measuring 8 AHDs and their metabolites in DBS, was successfully validated. With Deming regression no bias was observed in N = 1; constant bias was seen in N = 6 and proportional bias in N = 11 of the AHDs and metabolites. After correction for bias, only one metabolite (canrenone) met the 20% acceptance limit for quantification, after Bland-Altman analyses. In addition, amlodipine, valsartan, and [enalaprilate] met the 25% acceptance limit.

CONCLUSIONS
A novel DBS assay for simultaneously qualifying and quantifying 8 AHDs and their metabolites, has been successfully developed and validated. The DBS assay is therefore a suitable method to detect drug non-adherence. However, with the exception of canrenone, the interchangeable use of plasma and DBS sampling to interpret drug quantities should be avoided.


In the current work, the stress concentration and tensile strength degradation of E-glass/epoxy laminates are addressed in the present investigation through a combination of both experimental and numerical studies. The numerical study is performed using finite element method (FEM). The main aim of this work is to improve the ultimate strength of perforated composite plates, by using defense hole system (DHS) technique. The samples are manufactured from commercially avail-able unidirectional (UD) E-glass and clear 1070 resin epoxy. Digital image correlation (DIC) technique is also used to get the full-field surface strain measurements in perforated samples with various open hole diameters and DHS configurations, in order to show their effects on failure strength. Based on the experimental results, the ultimate strength can be improved by introducing two circular auxiliary holes along with the principal stress directions.


Entanglement data were collected from sea turtle stranding reports submitted to the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network from Mustang and North Padre Islands, Texas during 1986 and 1987. Data collected included: month and location of stranding, species stranded, curved carapace length of the turtle and type of entanglement. A general necropsy similar to that described by Wolke and George (1981) was performed on dead sea turtles stranded during 1986 and 1987 on Mustang, North Padre and South Padre Islands, Texas. During necropsy, the curved carapace length and width was measured, sex was determined by external examination of the gonads, the entire digestive tract was removed and all organs were examined for irregularities in an attempt to determine the cause of death of the turtle. The esophagus, stomach and intestinal tract were later opened in the lab. If debris was present, it was removed and its location in the digestive tract was noted. The remaining gut contents were preserved in 10% buffered formalin for later analysis.


OBJECTIVE Certain antihyperglycemic therapies modify cardiovascular and kidney outcomes among patients with type 2 diabetes, but early uptake in practice appears restricted to particular demographics. We examine the association of Medicaid expansion with use of and expenditures related to antihyperglycemic therapies among Medicaid beneficiaries. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We employed a difference-in-difference design to analyze the association of Medicaid expansion on prescription of noninsulin antihyperglycemic therapies. We used 2012–2017 national and state Medicaid data to compare prescription claims and costs between states that did (n = 25) and did not expand (n = 26) Medicaid by January 2014. RESULTS Following Medicaid expansion in 2014, average noninsulin antihyperglycemic therapies per state/1,000 enrollees increased by 4.2%/quarter in expansion states and 1.6%/quarter in nonexpansion states. For sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) and glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA), quarterly growth rates per 1,000 enrollees were 125.3% and 20.7% for expansion states and 87.6% and 16.0% for nonexpansion states, respectively. Expansion states had faster utilization of SGLT2i and GLP-1RA than nonexpansion states. Difference-in-difference estimates for change in volume of prescriptions after Medicaid expansion between expansion versus nonexpansion states was 1.68 (95% CI 1.09–2.26; P < 0.001) for all noninsulin therapies, 0.125 (−0.003 to 0.25; P = 0.056) for SGLT2i, and 0.12 (0.055–0.18; P < 0.001) for GLP-1RA. CONCLUSIONS Use of noninsulin antihyperglycemic therapies, including SGLT2i and GLP-1RA, increased among low-income adults in both Medicaid expansion and nonexpansion states, with a significantly greater increase in overall use and in GLP-1RA use in expansion states. Future evaluation of the population-level health impact of expanded access to these therapies is needed.


Background The specific research aims of this study included: 1) Conduct an epidemiologic analysis of recreational sports injuries among 1500 children, ages 5–11 in Florida: and 2) Utilize the computerized pediatric concussion tool from ImPACT Applications, Inc. for baseline and follow-up testing to better understand these injuries. This research followed a prospective surveillance design utilizing a large cohort of children, ages, 5–11, who play recreational football, soccer, and baseball/softball in Florida. The study venue was a large athletic facility in Hillsborough County, Florida. The sports observed were soccer (girls' and boys'), baseball, softball, and football. Internal and external advisory boards were consulted throughout the study. Methods Certified Athletic Trainers (ATCs) were hired to use High School Reporting Information Online (RIO) for injuries and the Ipad-administered pediatric concussion tool developed by ImPACT Applications, Inc for baseline/follow-up concussion data. Results Over the course of the project, 26 RIO-reported injuries were reported. Football and soccer produced the greatest rate of injuries. There were 12 concussions which comprised nearly half of all the RIO injuries (46%). We conducted 882 baseline concussion tests and 13 follow-up tests over the 2 years. Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time data have been collected and reported on sports injuries in the study population. Future studies built on these findings will allow for the development of targeted guidelines and interventions for coaches, players, and parents so sports injury-related morbidity and mortality decrease in our youngest athletes.


This paper discusses the potential long-term effects of micronutrient malnutrition in early childhood on obesity and related disease outcomes. The links between early micronutrient malnutrition, stunting, and subsequent short adult stature — emerging risk factors for obesity and associated chronic diseases—are reviewed. This paper also explores recent literature linking micronutrient malnutrition in adults to increased risk and severity of chronic disease. Finally, this paper discusses the program and policy implications of these relationships. This paper is not the result of a systematic literature review, but rather discusses relevant literature to bring attention to links between under- and over-nutrition that have not been widely considered. Conclusions: In children, micronutrient malnutrition is a cause of stunting and may be accompanied by metabolic adaptations that increase the risk of later obesity and related disease. In adults, deficiencies in key micronutrients may promote oxidative stress, folate deficiency may increase risk for heart disease, and zinc deficiency may be exacerbated in the presence of diabetes while also affecting glucose transport. Low fruit and vegetable consumption may additionally increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer through a variety of mechanisms. The importance of supporting programs and policies that address the spectrum of malnutrition, including micronutrient malnutrition and emerging obesity together, is stressed.". -- Author's Abstract


There has been a recent concern over polarization of family life among the younger Canadians; that is, differences in family life are accentuated by the differences in their social and economic situations. Using the retrospective data on life course events gathered through the 2001 General Social Survey, we show that there is basis for this concern the timing of transitions and early life trajectories of Canadian women born from 1966 to 1975 do differ by parental socio-economic status. However, the influence of social inequality on the life course is not a recent phenomenon results of our analysis show that the timing of transitions have also differed by social status among women born from 1926 to 1945. What is unique to younger cohorts is that, through a process of diffusion, similar influence of social status is also seen in the other life events such as cohabitation. We discuss the implications of these findings for policies.


Almost 50% of patients are malnourished on admission; many others develop malnutrition during admission. Malnutrition contributes to hospital morbidity, mortality, costs, and readmissions. The Joint Commission requires malnutrition risk screening on admission. If screening identifies malnutrition risk, a nutrition assessment is required to create a nutrition care plan. The plan should be initiated early in the hospital course, as even patients with normal nutrition become malnourished quickly when acutely ill. While the Harris-Benedict equation is the most commonly used method to estimate calories, its accuracy may not be optimal in all patients. Calculating the caloric needs of acutely ill obese patients is particularly problematic. In general, a patient's caloric intake should be slightly less than calculated needs to avoid the metabolic risks of overfeeding. However, most patients do not receive their goal calories or receive parenteral nutrition due to erroneous practices of awaiting return of bowel sounds or holding feeding for gastric residual volumes. Patients with inadequate intake over time may develop potentially fatal refeeding syndrome. The hospitalist must be able to recognize the risk factors for malnutrition, patients at risk of refeeding syndrome, and the optimal route for nutrition support. Finally, education of patients and their caregivers about nutrition support must begin before discharge, and include coordination of care with outpatient facilities. As with all other aspects of discharge, it is the hospitalist's role to assure smooth transition of the nutrition care plan to an outpatient setting.


Michio Kaku, the international bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible, gives us a stunning and provocative vision of the future of the mind. Recording memories, mind reading, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis - no longer are these feats of the mind solely the province of overheated science fiction. As Michio Kaku reveals, with the latest advances in brain science and recent astonishing breakthroughs in technology, they already exist. In The Future of the Mind, the New York Times-bestselling author takes us on a stunning, provocative and exhilarating tour of the top laboratories around the world to meet the scientists who are already revolutionising the way we think about the brain - and ourselves. "Summons up the sheer wonder of science". (Daily Telegraph). "Compelling...Kaku thinks with great breadth, and the vistas he presents us are worth the trip". (New York Times Book Review). Michio Kaku is a professor of physics at the City University of New York, cofounder of string field theory, and the author of several widely acclaimed science books, including Hyperspace, Beyond Einstein, Physics of the Impossible, and Physics of the Future.


ABSTRACT The colposcope is an optical system that offers illumination and magnifications between 10 and 16 times. Colposcopy is the diagnostic test to evaluate patients with an abnormal cervical cytological smear, abnormal VIA (visual inspection with acetic acid application) or VILI (visual inspection with Lugo's Iodine application), abnormal appearing cervix and directing biopsies. The colposcopic examination of the cervix starts with "General Assessment" to immediately recognize the level of examination reliability. Examination should assessed for three variables: 1) adequate or inadequate, with the reason given; 2) squamocolumnar junction visibility; and 3) transformation zone type. Colposcopic features and patterns will correspond with underlying specific histological features. The greater the expertise and experience of the colposcopist, the greater the confidence in the assessment of the atypical transformation zone (TZ). For practical purposes, the most important aspect is always the recognition or exclusion of underlying actual invasive disease. The presence or absence of precancerous lesions can confirm with colposcopy.


Application-level protocol specifications are useful for many security applications, including intrusion prevention and detection that performs deep packet inspection and traffic normalization, and penetration testing that generates network inputs to an application to uncover potential vulnerabilities. However, current practice in deriving protocol specifications is mostly manual. In this paper, we present Discoverer, a tool for automatically reverse engineering the protocol message formats of an application from its network trace. A key property of Discoverer is that it operates in a protocol-independent fashion by inferring protocol idioms commonly seen in message formats of many application-level protocols. We evaluated the efficacy of Discoverer over one text protocol (HTTP) and two binary protocols (RPC and CIFS/SMB) by comparing our inferred formats with true formats obtained from Ethereal [5]. For all three protocols, more than 90% of our inferred formats correspond to exactly one true format; one true format is reflected in five inferred formats on average; our inferred formats cover over 95% of messages, which belong to 30-40% of true formats observed in the trace.


1. Post-heparin lipolytic activity was determined in the plasma of thirteen patients with malabsorption and fourteen healthy controls, with a coconut-oil emulsion (Ediol), triolein and very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) as substrates. 2. Significantly lower post-heparin lipolytic activities were found in malabsorbers, whichever substrate was used. Lipolysis was inhibited by 0–5 mol/l sodium chloride when VLDL was the substrate but not when the two artificial substrates were used. 3. Plasma post-heparin lipolytic activities rose in malabsorbers after therapeutic doses of an intravenous fat emulsion (Intralipid), especially when assayed against VLDL. 4. The abnormal fatty acid composition of VLDL from malabsorbers did not affect its properties as a substrate for lipolysis by post-heparin plasma from normal subjects. 5. These findings support the concept that PHLA is heterogeneous in origin. They also suggest that if reduced clearance is a factor in the hypertriglyceridaemia sometimes seen in malabsorption, it is due to an enzyme deficit rather than a substrate defect.


This article presents a model for product design in an interdisciplinary way with participation of the university, private company and the user. The proposal was implemented in the design of an assistive product for mobility according to the ISO9999: 2007 standard. The structure considers the user as the central axis of the design process. In the application, the interdisciplinary team was made up of engineers, industrial designers, an occupational therapist and a psychologist. In the model, the creative phase of the design process is supported with the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving -TRIZ and the analytical phase, with an expanded model of Axiomatic Design, which involves perceptual requirements. In the design of the assistive product, four main requirements were found: the first, to move the technical system; the second, to carry the user; the third, to switch between sitting and semisitting positions; and finally, to fold the system. It is concluded that the model favors the interaction of disciplines and organizations from the moment of the conception of the problem and not in sequential stages. This contributes to an integrated view of the problem from an ergonomic, technical, aesthetic and commercial point of view. The use of the theory of inventive problem solving contributes to the systemic analysis of the problem, to the technological surveillance of the product and to the determination of the product requirements. Finally, the use of the expanded model of axiomatic design structures the design process, takes into consideration in a rational way the perceptual requirements, and facilitates the transition from the conceptual design to the manufacturing of the product. The application of the proposed model in an assistive product for mobility made it possible to conceive a technical system that gives more autonomy to the user that changes the propulsion paradigm, that favors the standing position and which does not use external sources of energy to perform different functions.


Despite the availability of elaborate methods for defining data and business processes, huge amounts of time and effort are wasted on system projects that produce disappointing results. An important contributing factor is the difficulty business and IT professionals experience when they try to describe, evaluate, and/or analyze systems in organizations even at a cursory level. Between 1997 and 2003, the author's information system courses for evening MBAs and EMBAs required students to write two group papers that present a business-oriented analysis of a real world system in an organization and propose preliminary recommendations for improvements. If these working students are representative of the types of business professionals who are involved in systems in organizations, it is plausible that the major types of pitfalls demonstrated by their papers are representative of common pitfalls that contribute to disappointing results with systems. An examination of 202 group papers submitted by evening MBA and EMBA students between 1997 and 2003 revealed pitfalls in 9 categories related to system and information definition, performance measurement, treatment of personal and organizational issues, susceptibility to techno-hype and jargon, inadequate critical thinking, and difficulty applying abstractions and formal methods. This paper illustrates these pitfalls using examples from student papers. Assuming that typical business professionals encounter the same types of pitfalls, both MBA programs and analysis and design methods should provide concepts and techniques that help in identifying and minimizing the related problems.


Our paper will describe the creative process of Zaum: Beyond Mind an interactive sound theater performance, and examine the role of improvisation in shaping the piece. Zaum is a modular performance for voice, bandoneon, piano and electronics- integrating both live interactive elements and fixed sounds – with lighting, and video projection. While the creative process included traditional modes of composition, a significant aspect in melding the contribution of two composers - each with a different approach to composition - shares important attributes with improvisation. It is to do with creative listening, adjusting our individual contribution in response to changing contexts, and developing a shared sense of musical pacing and narrative. Improvisation also played a significant role in developing the technological, interactive elements of the piece with a co-evolution of the programming and the performance over a lengthy process of exploration and adjustments. This process, therefore, entails multiple dialogues, musical as well as verbal, between us as a duo and between us and our instruments. On the way we discovered that analytical reflection, despite its connotations of cerebral processes popularly portrayed as in opposition to the spontaneity required in improvisation, played a crucial role in the shaping of the piece.


BACKGROUND: Anthropological and epidemiological studies have identified
infertility as a significant health and social problem, yet it remains largely overlooked in
reproductive and sexual health policy and practice in developing countries. This study
examined the effects of infertility across women's lives in rural northern Malawi.
METHODS: Qualitative data were collected during in-depth life history interviews with
forty-nine fertile and infertile women. These data were supplemented by key informant
interviews, group discussions, field notes and observations. Demographic survey data
were analysed to contextualise findings and quantify selected outcomes related to
infertility. The importance of infertility for current understandings of sexual and fertility
related behaviour was evaluated.
FINDINGS: Women experienced infertility within a complex social and metaphysical
context, in which they had few alternative life course options apart from marriage and
childbearing. Little help was available at hospitals, and most women took long courses
of traditional medicine. Infertile women were more likely to be HIV positive, but only a
minority of infertile women reported 'risky' sexual behaviour. Divorce was more
common among infertile women, as children stabilised marriages in a variety of ways,
but infertile women were no more likely to be polygynously married. Many infertile
women had supportive marriages, often with polygynous men who had children with
other wives. Infertile women negotiated marriages and living arrangements to make the
most of their compromised situation, and were unwilling to tolerate secondary social
status. Infertility was on a continuum of risks to successful childbearing: most fertile
women had also experienced reproductive health problems and/or marital disruptions.
IMPLICATIONS: Routine health services and information are inaccessible and
inappropriate for infertile women. Current reproductive and sexual health programmes
focus on fertility reduction, but there are feasible ways to improve infertility
management in resource-poor settings, which could contribute to meeting other
objectives such as tackling STIs and building trust around contraceptive use.


Dibenzo[a,e]pentalene-embedded thienoquinoidals with dicyanomethylene termini were synthesized as new π-extended thienoquinoidals for n-type organic semiconductors. Single crystal X-ray analysis demonstrated that the target molecule has an all trans-polyene structure with reasonable bond-length alternation in the thienoquinoidal strand, indicative of effective extension of the π-conjugation system. Thanks to their π-extended structures, not just the low-lying LUMO energy levels (−4.2 to −4.3 eV) but also relatively high HOMO energy levels (∼−5.6 eV) were characterized by means of cyclic voltammetry. Interestingly, depending on the position of the solubilizing long alkyl groups, they formed H- or J-aggregate-like structures in the thin-film state testified by the thin film absorption spectra. These distinct intermolecular interactions in the thin film state could cause different behaviours in thin-film field-effect transistors; for the former ambipolar characteristics were observed, whereas only n-type response was detected for the latter.


As a surveillance technology, speed cameras have produced significant levels of resistance from the general (driving) public. This resistance has not, however, drawn on the kinds of civil liberties or 'Big Brother' narratives that might be expected. Using this context as a case study, this paper suggests that significant resistance to surveillance practices may emerge when surveillance technologies produce data doubles that are antagonistically incompatible with those identities which have emerged 'organically' from the resisting individuals and communities. In this example, the self-ascribed identity of normal, respectable, non-criminal drivers is threatened by technologies of risk and 'techno-fixes' which (through their operation) construct identities as risk-carrying, deviant, and criminal  The sense of unfairness generated by this conflict between how we see ourselves and how the disciplining state sees us generates a sense of injustice. This sense of injustice is fertile ground for resistance. The paper identifies three main narrative themes in discourses of resistance to speed cameras, including the rejection of the official expertise used to justify surveillance and punishment, and the construction of a narrative which positions the drivers as an ordinary person resisting an oppressive state. The final narrative highlights the danger posed by other groups which, being constructed as genuinely and uncontroversially deviant, are more worthy of surveillant attention. As such, the paper suggests that, while offering fertile ground for the generation of resistant strategies, the speed camera context produces a very particular, very individualised, type of resistance which may actually contribute to existing processes of discrimination and 'othering' amongst surveilled populations.


DOI: 10.5530/jscires.5.3.7 This book depicts about the issues of vaccine innovation and immunization in India. It has multidisciplinary dimension approach which try to assimilate the national innovation system to international system of innovation. Basically, this approach has occurred due to international collaboration in Science and Technology (S&T) which leads to involvement of new actors especially from developing countries i.e., India and China. The effect of this approach can be seen in flow of FDI in R&D, global knowledge networks, migration and circulation of knowledge workers. Moreover, the author argues that the innovation process is intervened through dependencies arising from international S&T order and interdependencies generated by the globalization process and emerging technologies. Beside this, it also focuses on the growth of the vaccine based on existing pattern and socio-economic dimensions of vaccine in India. It also covers the issues of access, transfer of technology in terms intellectual property rights, the collaboration, and networking and changing trend in vaccine innovation system.


This paper investigates the design of winglet tips for unshrouded high pressure turbine rotors, considering aerodynamic and thermal performance simultaneously. A novel parameterization method has been developed to alter the tip geometry of a rotor blade. A design survey of un-cooled, flat-tipped winglets is performed using RANS calculations for a single rotor at engine representative operating conditions.Compared to a plain tip, large efficiency gains can be realized by employing an overhang around the full perimeter of the blade, but the overall heat load rises significantly. By employing an overhang on only the early suction surface, significant efficiency improvements can be obtained without increasing the overall heat transfer to the blade.The flow physics are explored in detail to explain the results. For a plain tip, the leakage and passage vortices interact to create a three-dimensional impingement onto the blade suction surface, causing high heat transfer. The addition of an overhang on the early suction surface displaces the tip leakage vortex away from the blade, weakening the impingement effect and reducing the heat transfer on the blade. The winglets reduce the aerodynamic losses by unloading the tip section, reducing the leakage flow rate, turning the leakage flow in a more streamwise direction and reducing the interaction between the leakage fluid and endwall flows. Generally these effects are most effective close to the leading edge of the tip, where the leakage flow is subsonic.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


The ACVP/ASVCP Concurrent Annual Meetings are a unique convergence of veterinary pathologists and other biomedical professionals from all around the world . A blend of educational sessions, social events, career networking, and the exhibit area draw a consistently growing attendance of pharmaceutical scientists, diagnosticians, researchers, academics, and top business managers . The Annual Meeting is a central part of the veterinary pathology community's efforts to maintain professional competency . Attendees come to learn what's new in science, as well as in products and services that help them at their work . The Exhibitor Showcase offers an unmatched opportunity for suppliers to reach the broad market serving our members . The restricted number of booths ensures that exhibitors don't get lost in a crowd of competitors . Social events held in the exhibit area facilitate maximum traffic flow .


Nowadays, one of the main reasons that contribute towards the worsening of air pollution is the growing expansion of transportation. The necessity of managing and controlling the air pollution by carrying out a scientific research and applying numerical methods to maintain a stable system is undeniable. In this research, the analysis and modelling of SO2 and NO2 pollutants were studied. The parameters that influenced the concentration of the pollutants were determined in accordance with the traffic (the amount of traffic and speed), and climate (precipitation, humidity, temperature and wind velocity) and their relationship was investigated by regression modelling analysis (using SPSS16 software), then, to estimate the amount of these pollutants in the future years a mathematical model was introduced. As a result, the amount of meaningfulness of regression was equal to 95% and the amount of participation of data in the model was equal to 91.5%. Currently, this model has proven to be successful.


In this study, the effect of different boriding parameters on some mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of AISI H11 steel, which is extensively used in hot and cold processing applications, was investigated. The grown boride layers were compact and crack-free for all boriding conditions, and they were detected as single phase (Fe2B) at 800 °C and dual phase (FeB + Fe2B) at 900 and 1000 °C. Depending on the treatment condition, the thickness, surface hardness, and Ra values of the coatings were ranged 10.25–94.5 µm, 1704–2015 HV, and 0.285–0.650 µm, respectively. The corrosion resistance was observed to be related to the phase structure, coating thickness, surface roughness, and the density of the boride layers. There is found to be an increase in the corrosion resistance up to almost 65 times after the boriding process, due to the barrier effect of the grown boride layers (such as B2O3).


Recent advances in the fields of Cognitive Radio and the proliferation of open spectrum access promise that spectrum-agile wireless communication will be widespread in the near future, and will bring significant flexibility and potential utility improvements for end users. With spectrum efficiency being a key objective, most relevant research focuses on smart coexistence mechanisms. However, wireless nodes may behave selfishly and should be considered as rational autonomous entities. Selfishness, pure malice or even faulty equipment can lead to behavior that does not conform to sharing protocols and etiquette. Thus, there is a need to secure spectrum sharing mechanisms against attacks in the various phases of the sharing process. Identifying these attacks and possible countermeasures is the focus of this work.


We consider a novel method to design an observer for a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems with unknown inputs. Based on Lyapunov functional, we derive a sufficient condition for existence of the designed observer which requires solving a nonlinear matrix inequality. In light of linear algebra, the achieved condition will be formulated in terms of linear matrix inequality (LMI) that can be solved by popular methods easily. Compared to recent researches, the developed approach shows a significant better performance than other techniques previously published in literature and is less conservative in terms of Lipschitz constant. Finally, the proposed observer is illustrated by implementing the proposed method on a single-link flexible manipulator and the results are compared to some recent similar researches in terms of performance and conservativeness.


Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) is the task of associating a word in context with one of its meanings. While many works in the past have focused on raising the state of the art, none has even come close to achieving an F-score in the 80% ballpark when using WordNet as its sense inventory. We contend that one of the main reasons for this failure is the excessively fine granularity of this inventory, resulting in senses that are hard to differentiate between, even for an experienced human annotator. In this paper we cope with this long-standing problem by introducing Coarse Sense Inventory (CSI), obtained by linking WordNet concepts to a new set of 45 labels. The results show that the coarse granularity of CSI leads a WSD model to achieve 85.9% F1, while maintaining a high expressive power. Our set of labels also exhibits ease of use in tagging and a descriptiveness that other coarse inventories lack, as demonstrated in two annotation tasks which we performed. Moreover, a few-shot evaluation proves that the class-based nature of CSI allows the model to generalise over unseen or under-represented words.


Epidemiological evidence suggests that due to its high isoflavone (genistein and daidzein) content a diet rich in soy could protect against breast cancer, particularly tumours expressing oestrogen receptor alpha (ERα+). Isoflavones are weakly oestrogenic, and have other wide ranging cellular activities. Contradictory in vitro evidence means that isoflavones' mechanism(s) of action remain to be elucidated.
ERα+ MCF7 and ERα-/ERβ+ MDA-MB-231 cell proliferation and apoptosis were quantified at a range of achievable serum concentrations of genistein or daidzein (0.01nM to 31.6μM) with or without pre-/post-menopausal 17β-oestradiol (E2) levels (1nM and 1pM). Additionally, cell volume regulation and macroscopic K+ current modulation by isoflavones and E2 in MCF7 cells were investigated.
In MCF7 cells isoflavones (≥1μM) induce apoptosis, even in the presence of E2, but this did not reverse the synergistic effect of postmenopausal E2 and isoflavones on proliferation. Isoflavones slightly reduced MDA-MB-231 proliferation at all concentrations, dropping dramatically at 31.6μM. This response was partially maintained in the presence of postmenopausal E2. Isoflavones also induced markers of apoptosis. Treating MCF7 with 1nM E2 or 1μM genistein resulted in cell swelling, and a significant increase in whole cell current (E2 only), indicating a proliferative response. Conversely, treatment with 31.6μM genistein resulted in shrinkage, and inhibition of outward K+ current (not statistically significant). Daidzein treatment inhibited current to a lesser extent. Co-treatment with K+ channel blockers indicated the hEAG channel as a potential molecular target of genistein in MCF7.
These results suggest that in ERα+ breast cancers, isoflavones may act by inducing apoptosis, shrinkage, and inhibition of hEAG current. There was no evidence suggesting that isoflavones reduce E2-promoted ERα+ cancer cell proliferation. Importantly, the inhibition of K+ channel activity by isoflavones represents a novel target for anti-cancer therapies. However, even low levels of isoflavones may be beneficial chemotherapeutic agents against ERα-/ERβ+ breast cancer, indicating an urgent requirement for further characterization of the effects of isoflavones in these breast cancers.


Prior research indicates that there is much spatial variation in applications' memory access patterns. Modern memory systems, however, use small fixed-size cache blocks and as such cannot exploit the variation. Increasing the block size would not only prohibitively increase pin and interconnect bandwidth demands, but also increase the likelihood of false sharing in shared-memory multiprocessors. In this paper, we show that memory accesses in commercial workloads often exhibit repetitive layouts that span large memory regions (e.g., several kB), and these accesses recur in patterns that are predictable through code-based correlation. We propose spatial memory streaming, a practical on-chip hardware technique that identifies code-correlated spatial access patterns and streams predicted blocks to the primary cache ahead of demand misses. Using cycle-accurate full-system multiprocessor simulation of commercial and scientific applications, we demonstrate that spatial memory streaming can on average predict 58% of LI and 65% of off-chip misses, for a mean performance improvement of 37% and at best 307%


This chapter documents and analyzes an instance in North Sami of spatial morphology (directional case and adpositions) interacting with temporal interpretation (change of state). In effect, in North Sami one can sleep on a floor or swim in a river, but one falls asleep 'onto' the floor, and drowns 'into' the river. The analysis relates the phenomenon to the Talmian dichotomy of satellite-framed and verb-framed expressions of path in directed motion. Specifically, I provide an analysis in which the illative gives the location of result states, assuming a decomposition of complex events including motion events. This provides a unified analysis of different uses of the North Sami illative, at the expense of a unified analysis of directed motion constructions across English and North Sami.


As the largest log import country in the world, China undoubtedly faces a severe challenge from the reduction in global forest resources. Based on the fact that a flow of ecological elements embodied in the process of import can cause extra ecological stress to the source regions, the authors assessed the ecological effect of China's log imports on the source countries' forest sustainability. The ecological footprints embodied in China's log imports from 1995 to 2010, and then introduce the model of ecological tension index to assess the ecological security status of the forests in major source countries. Results demonstrate that, overall, China's import of log has posed no serious threat to world forests. Most of the source countries have safe forest ecological states due to their huge forest bio-capacity, although China's log import has increased their forest ecological stress by more than 14%. While for some developed source countries, China has increased the ecological tension less than 1%. The risk of forests reduction was probably caused by its own resource consumption.


Aim: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the knowledge, attitude and practices of the general dental dentists working in Turkey on the dental x-rays in pregnant women; and to develop awareness for the purpose of not delaying their dental treatments.
Methodology: The questionnaire that was used in the study was applied to 270 dental dentists who worked in Turkey in electronic medium. The questionnaire consisted of 2 sections each of which had 11 questions. In the first section, the demographical data were questioned. In the second section, there were questions to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices of the dentists on x-ray in pregnant women. The questionnaires that were completed were examined and analyzed statistically by using the results and the Chi-Square Test and the Chi-Square Test. Data analysis was performed by using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 23.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, the USA).
Results: A total of 71.1% of the dental practitioners who participated in the study stated that they did not request radiography from pregnant women. A total of 62.2% of the dental dentists stated that they preferred the 2nd Trimester for requesting radiography. A total of 38.9% of the general dentists who participated in the study stated that the diagnostic radiographies used in dentistry caused anomalies in the fetus, 18.9% stated that they did not have any information.
Conclusion: Further training courses must be planned to increase and update the awareness of the dental dentists on the precautions and procedures for radiography practice in pregnant women; and brochures must be prepared for pregnant women to provide information about this subject. Also, dental dentists and obstetricians should work in agreement about dental procedures in pregnancy and diagnostic radiography in terms of its being safe when necessary.

How to cite this article: Temur KT, Temur İ, Hatipoğlu Ö.  The knowledge, attitude and practices of Turkish general dentists on dental x-rays in pregnant women. Int Dent Res 2019;9(1):9-15.

Linguistic Revision: The English in this manuscript has been checked by at least two professional editors, both native speakers of English.


This Adelphi volume brings together senior scholars as well as rising analysts of Egypt to examine the tumultuous period from the January 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak, via the election and ouster of Muhammad Morsi, to the consolidation of presidential power under Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi by late 2015. The nine authors provide a sober, in-depth look at the country's contested politics, institutional and political players, struggling economy, constant foreign policy and evolving security challenges. The nine chapters are written by Professor Nathan J. Brown, Professor Ellis Goldberg, Dr Zeinab Abul-Magd, Yasser El-Shimy, Michael Wahid Hanna, Dr H.A. Hellyer, Gamal Hassan, Hebatalla Taha and Mohamed El Dahshan.


Objective To examine the effect of proton pump inhibitors on adverse cardiovascular events in aspirin treated patients with first time myocardial infarction. Design Retrospective nationwide propensity score matched study based on administrative data. Setting All hospitals in Denmark. Participants All aspirin treated patients surviving 30 days after a first myocardial infarction from 1997 to 2006, with follow-up for one year. Patients treated with clopidogrel were excluded. Main outcome measures The risk of the combined end point of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke associated with use of proton pump inhibitors was analysed using Kaplan-Meier analysis, Cox proportional hazard models, and propensity score matched Cox proportional hazard models. Results 3366 of 19 925 (16.9%) aspirin treated patients experienced recurrent myocardial infarction, stroke, or cardiovascular death. The hazard ratio for the combined end point in patients receiving proton pump inhibitors based on the time dependent Cox proportional hazard model was 1.46 (1.33 to 1.61; P<0.001) and for the propensity score matched model based on 8318 patients it was 1.61 (1.45 to 1.79; P<0.001). A sensitivity analysis showed no increase in risk related to use of H2 receptor blockers (1.04, 0.79 to 1.38; P=0.78). Conclusion In aspirin treated patients with first time myocardial infarction, treatment with proton pump inhibitors was associated with an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events.


A description of the initiation of the program of epidemiologic appraisal of malaria in the United States in 1947 has been presented elsewhere (Quinby 1950). At the 1950 meeting of the National Malaria Society, the results of appraisals of reported malaria for 1949 and preliminary data for the first nine months of 1950 were presented. Since then, data for 1950 cases appraised through March 1951 have been assembled and analyzed for this paper.
Scope of Coverage. The primary function of the appraisal program was to measure the actual incidence of malaria. Later this became an integral part of the Malaria Surveillance and Prevention Program of the Communicable Disease Center and the state health departments concerned. Although this program is carried out principally through the investigation of officially reported cases, more and more emphasis has been given to finding and confirming unreported malaria.


Under certain environmental conditions, some varieties of wheat synthesize the enzyme alpha amylase late in grain ripening, even in the absence of rain or sprouting. The resulting grain has a sound appearance but can be unsuitable for end-product applications due to the presence of late maturity alpha amylase (LMA) activity. Reduction of LMA and the development of cultivars tolerant to boron toxic soils are high priority traits in the WA wheat breeding program and the use of molecular markers closely linked to these traits for marker assisted selection (MAS) is highly desirable. The aims of this study were to take a genomics approach to provide detailed structural information for the region on wheat chromosome 7BL in which quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for LMA and boron tolerance (Bo1) have been mapped. Once the structure had been determined, this then laid the foundation for further studies to investigate the function of putative candidate genes identified within this region. The research involved the use of bioinformatic tools and rice/wheat synteny to investigate the structure of this chromosome region, followed by the use of molecular probes to isolate genomic DNA clones (BAC clones) corresponding to this region.

A two-step bioinformatics strategy was used, involving (1) alignment of portions of the wheat and rice genomes, to identify rice genomic regions syntenic to wheat group 7L and (2) selection of candidate genes from those regions of the rice genome. The selected candidate genes included an anion transporter, as a candidate gene for boron tolerance, and GAMYB-like genes, as candidate genes for LMA. The GAMYB class of transcription factors identified were of particular interest because of published literature indicating its importance in controlling alpha-amylase levels in cereal grains. The key phenotype of interest in this thesis is LMA and different levels of expression of ±-amylase are a key feature of this phenotype.

Molecular markers and candidate genes were then used to screen two BAC libraries, one derived from the French cultivar, 'Renan' and the other derived from Aegilops tauschii (the source of the D genome of wheat). About 300 BAC clones corresponding to the chromosome region of interest were obtained. Of these, 8 BAC clones (6 chosen through hybridization to a GAMYB-like probe, and 2 from wheat ESTs anchored to the rice genome) were selected for sequencing, allowing for the development of new microsatellite and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and for the discovery of novel transposable elements that provide a rich source of polymorphism for the development of additional markers. Novel microsatellite and SNP markers that were identified from the BAC clone sequence were mapped on the Cranbrook/Halberd doubled haploid (DH) mapping population. Markers were located to chromosomes 7AL, 7BL and 7DL. New markers derived from the BAC sequence information were used to anchor the BAC clones to the genetic map and develop a framework physical-genetic map. An automated annotation pipeline has been established and was used to annotate selected contigs of the sequenced BAC clones.

A new marker assisted selection strategy, termed Multiplex Trait Signature (MuTs) analysis, was developed and tested on 39 wheat cultivars of known LMA phenotype. MuTs provides a graphical genotype of individuals for a particular chromosomal region and is a convenient tool for interrogating genetic similarity in the individuals surveyed. Based on assays of 22 markers (12 spanning the LMA QTL on chromosome 7BL and 10 spanning the LMA QTL on chromosome 3BS) on these 39 wheat cultivars, it was found that the varieties can be grouped according to pedigree and provides a tool for interpreting LMA status for a variety. Validation of the 7BL LMA and boron tolerance (Bo1) QTL regions was achieved using a targeted mapping approach using the doubled haploid population Pastor/RAC891 using published molecular markers and markers developed in this thesis. The main outcome of this study is that the genomic organisation of this region on chromosome 7BL is complex, and that the identification of candidate genes in wheat controlling 1) tolerance of cultivars to boron toxic soils and 2) pathways regulating the expression of LMA, is likely to involve the interplay of a network of regulatory genes.


The aim of this meta-synthesis is to deepen the understanding and knowledge of qualitative research focusing on education for mentors of newly qualified teachers. Altogether, 10 studies were included and synthesised. Four common themes emerged in the initial analysis: School and mentoring context, Theory and practice, Reflection and critical thinking and Relationships. Furthermore, three overarching dimensions were found as a final synthesis guiding the further development of mentor education: 1) Contextual dimensions, 2) Theoretical-analytical dimensions, and 3) Relational dimensions. The synthesis stresses the importance of a systematic, long-term and research-informed mentor education that develops mentors' (self-)understanding of teaching and mentoring. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).


A formula for the photoelectron-counting distribution for a two-photon detector is derived quantum mechanically assuming that the ionising transitions in the atoms of the detector take place through the simultaneous absorption of two photons. It is assumed that the incident light is quasimonochromatic. It is shown that the distribution of the photoelectrons is given by the average of a Poisson distribution, the parameter of the distribution being proportional to the time integral of the square of the instantaneous light intensity. Counting distributions for the thermal (gaussian) light and for some models of laser light are obtained for the limiting case when the counting-time interval T is short compared to the coherence time Tc of the light. An approximate formula for arbitrary time intervals for the counting distribution of thermal light is also proposed.


Abstract Most functional interpretations of ziphodont dentition are based on limited morphometric, behavioral, and taphonomic studies, but few are based on controlled observations of a modern ziphodont consumer. The purpose of this study is to determine through controlled feeding observations if the behaviors indicative of a ziphodont consumer are reflected by tooth marks left on bone surfaces by Varanus komodoensis, the Komodo monitor. We document feeding behavior, expand upon dental function, and correlate these aspects with tooth mark production. We also discuss the significance and limits of applying these data to fossil assemblages. Goat carcasses were fed to 11 captive individuals. V. komodoensis modifies bone surfaces extensively. Individuals exhibit a "medial-caudal arc" when defleshing, followed by inertial swallowing. Bone crushing was not observed. The vast majority of tooth marks are scores, with pits being significantly less common. Tooth furrows and punctures are rare. "Edge marks" are produced on flat elements. Marks are elongate and narrow, with variable lengths and curvature. Over one-third of the marks occur within parallel clusters. Striations are evident on 5% of all marks. Both feeding behavior and tooth marks indicate that ziphodont crowns are ideal for defleshing by being drawn distally through a carcass. Crowns are poorly built for crushing, and within-bone nutrients are acquired through swallowing. Mark production is a by-product of the distal crown movement during the flesh removal process. Scores are the consequence of apical dragging. Edge marks and striated scores result respectively from distal and mesial carinae contact. Mark curvature is the consequence of arcing motions. Parallel clusters may result from repetitive defleshing strokes and/or from multiple crown contacts during a stroke. These observations can be used to draw functional, behavioral, and taphonomic interpretations from fossil assemblages. When they are provisionally applied to theropod tooth marks, similar crown function and defleshing behavior with little bone crushing is apparent. Differences occur concerning mark frequency and curvature, relating potentially to taphonomic biases and rostral motion, respectively.


Object pose (location and orientation) estimation is a common task in many computer vision applications. Although many methods exist, most algorithms need manual initialization and lack robustness to illumination variation, appearance change, and partial occlusions. We propose a fast method for automatic pose estimation without manual initialization based on shape matching of a 3D model to a range image of the scene. We developed a new error function to compare the input range image to pre-computed range maps of the 3D model. We use the tremendous data- parallel processing performance of modern graphics hardware to evaluate and minimize the error function on many range images in parallel. Our algorithm is simple and accurately estimates the pose of partially occluded objects in cluttered scenes in about one second.


Retrospective clinical reports suggesting that traumatic stress populations display an increased propensity for glucose metabolism disorders were examined in a controlled prospective animal model. Stress‐induced behavioural and hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal (HPA) axis response patterns were correlated to central and peripheral parameters of glucose metabolism and signalling, and to body measurements in Sprague–Dawley rats exposed to predator scent stress. Forty days post‐exposure, fasting blood glucose and insulin levels, oral glucose tolerance test, body weight and white adipose tissue mass, systemic corticosterone levels and brain expression of insulin receptor (IR) and insulin‐sensitive glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) protein levels were evaluated. In a second experiment inbred strains with hyper‐ (Fischer) and hypo‐ (Lewis) reactive HPA axes were employed to assess the association of metabolic data with behavioural phenomenology versus HPA axis response profile. For data analysis, animals were classified according to their individual behavioural response patterns (assessed at day 7) into extreme, partial and minimal response groups. The exposed Sprague–Dawley rats fulfilling criteria for extreme behavioural response (EBR) (20.55%) also exhibited significant increases in body weight, abdominal circumference and abdominal white adipose tissue mass; a hyperglycaemic oral glucose tolerance test; and fasting hyperglycaemia, hyperinsulinaemia and hypercorticosteronemia, whereas minimal responders (MBR) and control animals displayed no such disturbances. Hippocampal and hypothalamic expression of IR and GLUT4 protein were significantly lower in EBR than in MBR and control rats. The inbred strains showed no metabolic differences at baseline. Exposed Fischer rats displayed hyperglycaemia and hyperinsulinaemia, whereas Lewis rats did not. A significant protracted disorder of glucose metabolism was induced by exposure to a stress paradigm. This metabolic response was associated with the characteristic pattern of HPA axis (corticosterone) response, which underlies the behavioural response to stress.


Randomized Controlled Clinical Studies in Latin American Pediatrics Objective: To analyze the production of RCS among children and adolescents in Latin American countries, between 1996 and 2005. Method: In an observational bibliometric study, all available RCS in PUBMED and LILAC data bases for that period were reviewed. Included were studies of children between 0 and 18 years of age, from 19 Latin American countries; 400 references were included. As a control, all pediatric research from the State of New York, USA, for that same period of time was collected. The following parameters were evaluated: number of RCS per country, affiliation, pediatric area, and adjustments were made for population and GNP for each country. Results: Countries with the highest number of publications per year (RCS/yr) were: Brazil (14.6), Mexico (8.6), Chile (5.5), Argentina (3.9). During that same period of time, the State of New York published 26.7 RCS per year. Overall, in Latin America most published specialities were Nutrition (16%), Respiratory Diseases, Dental problems, Vaccinations, Neonatology. In New York, the most frequent specialty reviewed was Psychiatry/Psychology (23.6%). In Chile and Brazil, more than 85% of the studies were performed in Universities, in Mexico and Argentina in Hospitals and other organizations either public or private. Over 90% were published in Journals with ISI impact index. Conclusions: Random studies are rare in Latin America compared to developed countries, mostly conducted in Universities in few countries and focusing on pediatric topics of relevance to them. (Key words: Research report, controlled, randomized, pediatrics, Latin America). Rev Chil Pediatr 2009; 80 (5): 420-426


We investigated how well structural features such as note density or the relative number of changes in the melodic contour could predict success in implicit and explicit memory for unfamiliar melodies. We also analyzed which features are more likely to elicit increasingly confident judgments of "old" in a recognition memory task. An automated analysis program computed structural aspects of melodies, both independent of any context, and also with reference to the other melodies in the testset and the parent corpus of pop music. A few features predicted success in both memory tasks, which points to a shared memory component. However, motivic complexity compared to a large corpus of pop music had different effects on explicit and implicit memory. We also found that just a few features are associated with different rates of "old" judgments, whether the items were old or new. Rarer motives relative to the testset predicted hits and rarer motives relative to the corpus predicted false alarms. This data-driven analysis provides further support for both shared and separable mechanisms in implicit and explicit memory retrieval, as well as the role of distinctiveness in true and false judgments of familiarity.


Fine root acclimation to different environmental conditions is crucial for growth and sustainability of forest trees. Relatively small changes in fine root standing biomass (FRB), morphology or mycorrhizal symbiosis may result in a large change in forest carbon, nutrient and water cycles. We elucidated the changes in fine root traits and associated ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungi in 12 Norway spruce stands across a climatic and N deposition gradient from subarctic‐boreal to temperate regions in Europe (68°N–48°N). We analysed the standing FRB and the ectomycorrhizal root tip biomass (EcMB, g m−2) simultaneously with measurements of the EcM root morphological traits (e.g. mean root length, root tissue density (RTD), N% in EcM roots) and frequency of dominating EcM fungi in different stands in relation to climate, soil and site characteristics. Latitude and N deposition explained the greatest proportion of variation in fine root traits. EcMB per stand basal area (BA) increased exponentially with latitude: by about 12.7 kg m−2 with an increase of 10° latitude from southern Germany to Estonia and southern Finland and by about 44.7 kg m−2 with next latitudinal 10° from southern to northern Finland. Boreal Norway spruce forests had 4.5 to 11 times more EcM root tips per stand BA, and the tips were 2.1 times longer, with 1.5 times higher RTD and about 1/3 lower N concentration. There was 19% higher proportion of root tips colonized by long‐distance exploration type forming EcM fungi in the southern forests indicating importance of EcM symbiont foraging strategy in fine root nutrient acquisition. In the boreal zone, we predict ca. 50% decrease in EcMB per stand BA with an increase of 2 °C annual mean temperature. Different fine root foraging strategies in boreal and temperate forests highlight the importance of complex studies on respective regulatory mechanisms in changing climate.


Recent research suggests that there are large variations in a cache's spatial usage, both within and across programs. Unfortunately, conventional caches typically employ fixed cache line sizes to balance the exploitation of spatial and temporal locality, and to avoid prohibitive cache fill bandwidth demands. The resulting inability of conventional caches to exploit spatial variations leads to suboptimal performance and unnecessary cache power dissipation. We describe the spatial pattern predictor (SPP), a cost-effective hardware mechanism that accurately predicts reference patterns within a spatial group (i.e., a contiguous region of data in memory) at runtime. The key observation enabling an accurate, yet low-cost, SPP design is that spatial patterns correlate well with instruction addresses and data reference offsets within a cache line. We require only a small amount of predictor memory to store the predicted patterns. Simulation results for a 64-Kbyte 2-way set-associative Ll data cache with 64-byte lines show that: (1) a 256-entry tag-less direct-mapped SPP can achieve, on average, a prediction coverage of 95%, over-predicting the patterns by only 8%, (2) assuming a 70 nm process technology, the SPP helps reduce leakage energy in the base cache by 41% on average, incurring less than 1% performance degradation, and (3) prefetching spatial groups of up to 512 bytes using SPP improves execution time by 33% on average and up to a factor of two.


We investigate the theoretical feasibility of near-optimal, distributed sleep scheduling in energy- constrained sensor networks with pairwise sensor redundancy. In this setting, an optimal sleep schedule is equivalent to an optimal fractional domatic partition of the associated redundancy graph. We present a set of realistic assumptions on the structure of the communication and redundancy relations; for the family of networks meeting these assumptions, we develop an efficient distributed approximation scheme for sleep scheduling. For any e > 0, we demonstrate that it is possible to schedule the sensing activities of the nodes in a local and distributed manner so that the ratio of the optimum lifetime to the achieved lifetime of the network is at most 1+ isin. The computational effort (time, memory and communication) required at each node depends on e and the parameters of the network family, but given so-called anchor nodes (a set of nodes meeting certain density constraints) and locally unique node identifiers, the effort is independent of the actual network at hand; in particular, the required effort at each node remains constant as the size of the network is scaled up.


Amphibian diversity and distribution patterns in Sinaloa state (north-western Mexico) were assessed from the Global Amphibian Assessment database (GAA-2010). A geographic information system (GIS) was used to evaluate diversity based on distribution maps of 41 species, associated with environmental data. The highest α and γ-diversities were identified in the south-eastern portion of the state, in mountain zones with a warm sub-humid climate, whereas the greatest β-diversity (multiplicative formulation) was aggregated in patches in the western portion of the state in mountains with temperate climates. A cluster analysis and Mantel test showed a strong association of Sorensen's dissimilarity (additive formulation of β-diversity) with climate and soil moisture categories rather than physiographic categories. Additionally, the partition of Sorensen´s dissimilarity into its components (turnover and nestedness) showed a gradient of species turnover related to contrasting climate units and a marked pattern of nestedness between the middle mountains and the coastal plain. The results of the study suggest that the highest α and β-diversity values occur in the middle-humidity range as well in the transitional-climate categories. This pattern is unusual for amphibian distributions because the highest global and regional amphibian diversities are typically related to high humidity values and climate stability (warm and wet most of the year). This particular pattern, occurring in a transitional area, encourages further biological and ecological studies to clarify the status of amphibian populations and support conservation measures.


Ph.D. students take our advanced mathematics course plus three courses in econometrics, both theory and applied. We also offer a distinctive, one-semester teaching practicum, which prepares students to become effective instructors. We hold a yearly workshops for our Ph.D. students to perfect their presentations skills and we have courses designed to teach dissertation writing and research methods. We also have a detailed job market preparation guide and twice yearly meetings for our students to prepare them for the job market.


This paper studies the practicality of network coding to facilitate cooperative content distribution. Network coding is a new data transmission technique which allows any nodes in a network to encode and distribute data. It is a good solution offering reliability and efficiency in distributing content, but network coding has not been widely used because of its dubious performance gains and coding overhead in practice. With the implementation of network coding in a real-world application, this paper measures the performance and overhead of network coding for content distribution in practice. This study also provides a lightweight yet efficient encoding scheme which allows network coding to provide improved performance and robustness with negligible overhead.


Recent evidence from industrialized countries shows that men and women tend to exhibit different voting preferences, with greater proportions of women favoring left-wing parties. This phenomenon, known as the 'modern gender gap', has been observed in recent Israeli elections as well. After discussing the history of the 'traditional gender gap', the article examines the gender gap in the 2013 and 2015 Israeli elections from a geographical and socio-economic perspective, using Israel National Election Studies (INES) data. We focus on two main hypotheses concerning these elections: first, that the gender gap in voting varies according to the geographic location of voters; second, that the modern gender gap affects voters residing in affluent localities. Our findings indicate that both hypotheses hold for the 2013 election but not for the 2015 election.


Consider a network where nodes are websites and the weight of a link that connects two nodes corresponds to the average number of users that visits both of the two websites over longer timescales. Such user-driven Web network is not only invaluable for understanding how crowds' interests collectively spread on the Web, but also useful for applications such as advertising or search. In this paper, we manage to construct such a network by 'putting together' pieces of information publicly available from the popular analytics websites. Our contributions are threefold. First, we design a crawler and a normalization methodology that enable us to construct a user-driven Web network based on limited publicly-available information, and validate the high accuracy of our approach. Second, we evaluate the unique properties of our network, and demonstrate that it exhibits small-world, seed-free, and scale-free phenomena. Finally, we build an application, website selector, on top of the user-driven network. The core concept utilized in the website selector is that by exploiting the knowledge that a number of websites share a number of common users, an advertiser might prefer displaying his ads only on a subset of these websites to optimize the budget allocation, and in turn increase the visibility of his ads on other websites. Our websites elector system is tailored for ad commissioners and it could be easily embedded in their ad selection algorithms.


We show theoretically that velocity-selective coherent population trapping in one dimension may be realized in atomic transitions other than Jg = 1 ↔ Je = 1. The atomic momentum distribution resulting from irradiation by counterpropagating σ+–σ− waves on the Jg = 3/2 ↔ Je = 1/2 and the Jg = 2 ↔ Je = 1 atomic transitions is investigated through solution of the optical Bloch equations and determination of the effective loss rates for atomic eigenstates. An inverted-W atomic level configuration is also used to investigate the features of velocity-selective coherent population trapping. The momentum distribution exhibits peaks at the ±ħk or the ±ħ2k and the 0 momenta, depending on the atomic transitions and the laser intensity. These structures, generated by atomic states that do not interact with the laser radiation, are stable when associated with eigenstates of the kinetic energy, or metastables; i.e., the structures last several hundred spontaneous lifetimes when generated by nonexact kinetic-energy eigenstates.


Electronic data interchange (EDI), direct link-ups with suppliers, internet, extranet, electronic catalogue ordering and e-mail are variety of forms of e-commerce.In today environment, e-commerce or electronic commerce has become one of the important forces to shaping business.Recent research has shown that, despite technology
facilitating improve business practice in term of developing electronic markets, electronic data interchange and internet commerce (Whiteley, 2000), a number of SMEs have not taken advantage of this new mode of carrying out business
(Smyth and Ibbotson, 2001).This research is to investigate and to know the degree of adoption, awareness and level of implementation of e-commerce in Malaysia Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs).Finally, some suggestions have
been made, which might be followed by such firms in seeking to enhance their performance in e-commerce.


: A robust attitude tracking control algorithm is suggested in this paper in the presence of environmental disturbances and fault occurrence in the actuators. For this, it is assumed that the moments of inertia and the upper bounds of disturbances are unknown. Also, there is no data about the fault type. The presented solution is a novel idea in which the unknown parameters and the constant or slow changing disturbances (including the environmental effects and the actuators faults) are obtained using the adaptive updating law. The variable part of disturbances is compensated by the sliding mode control. The suggested control algorithm is continuous and has no unwinding and singularity problems. Also, the unstable equilibrium point and the ambiguity problem in the display of attitude determination outputs (the quaternions) have been solved. To develop this methodology, a three stages scenario is presented to calculate the satellite moment of inertia, the disturbances and the fault detection thresholds. This algorithm can also determine the faulty actuator. Using this feature, the fault extent in the wheels are determined and based on, the 1 - unwinding suitable correction actions are selected. In this paper, the stability of all designed algorithms is proved. At the end, different simulations are conducted to validate the algorithms. The results of these simulations verify the expected performance.


Probabilistically-Checkable Proofs (PCPs) form the algorithmic core that enables fast verification of long computations in many cryptographic constructions. Yet, despite the wonderful asymptotic savings they bring, PCPs are also the infamous computational bottleneck preventing these powerful cryptographic constructions from being used in practice. To address this problem, we present several results about the computational efficiency of PCPs. We construct the first PCP where the prover and verifier time complexities are quasi-optimal (i.e., optimal up to poly-logarithmic factors). The prover and verifier are also higly-parallelizable, and these computational guarantees hold even when proving and verifying the correctness of random-access machine computations. Our construction is explicit and has the requisite properties for being used in the cryptographic applications mentioned above.
 Next, to better understand the efficiency of our PCP, we propose a new efficiency measure for PCPs (and their major components, locally-testable codes and PCPs of proximity). We define a concrete-efficiency threshold that indicates the smallest problem size beyond which the PCP becomes "useful", in the sense that using it is cheaper than performing naive verification (i.e., rerunning the computation); our definition accounts for both the prover and verifier complexity.
 We then show that our PCP has a finite concrete-efficiency threshold. That such a PCP exists does not follow from existing works on PCPs with polylogarithmic-time verifiers.
 As in [Ben-Sasson and Sudan, STOC '05], PCPs of proximity for Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are the main component of our PCP. We construct a PCP of proximity that reduces the concrete-efficiency threshold for testing proximity to RS codes from 2683 in their work to 243, which is tantalizingly close to practicality.


An 8-wk progressive resistance training program for the lower extremity was performed twice a week to investigate the time course for skeletal muscle adaptations in men and women. Maximal dynamic strength was tested biweekly. Muscle biopsies were extracted at the beginning and every 2 wk of the study from resistance-trained and from nontrained (control) subjects. The muscle samples were analyzed for fiber type composition, cross-sectional area, and myosin heavy chain content. In addition, fasting blood samples were measured for resting serum levels of testosterone, cortisol, and growth hormone. With the exception of the leg press for women (after 2 wk of training) and leg extension for men (after 6 wk of training), absolute and relative maximal dynamic strength was significantly increased after 4 wk of training for all three exercises (squat, leg press, and leg extension) in both sexes. Resistance training also caused a significant decrease in the percentage of type IIb fibers after 2 wk in women and 4 wk in men, an increase in the resting levels of serum testosterone after 4 wk in men, and a decrease in cortisol after 6 wk in men. No significant changes occurred over time for any of the other measured parameters for either sex. These data suggest that skeletal muscle adaptations that may contribute to strength gains of the lower extremity are similar for men and women during the early phase of resistance training and, with the exception of changes in the fast fiber type composition, that they occur gradually.


Adam Smith's contribution to economics is well-recognised but in recent years scholars have been exploring anew the multidisciplinary nature of his works. The Adam Smith Review is a refereed annual review that provides a unique forum for interdisciplinary debate on all aspects of his Adam Smith's works, his place in history, and the significance of his writings for the modern world. It is aimed at facilitating debate between scholars working across the humanities and social sciences, thus emulating the transdisciplinary reach of the Enlightenment world which Smith helped to shape.

The fourth volume of the series contains contributions form a multidisciplinary range of specialists, including, Henry C. Clark, Douglas J. Den Uyl, Ryan Patrick Hanley, Neven B. Leddy, David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart, Robert Mankin, Leonidas Montes, James R. Otteson, Andrew S. Skinner, and Gloria Vivenza, who discuss:

the sources and influences of Smith's work in the classics, the Scottish Enlightenment and eighteenth-century France

the Glasgow Edition of Smith's Works and the Wealth of Nations


Face detection has been one of the most studied topics in the computer vision literature. In this technical report, we survey the recent advances in face detection for the past decade. The seminal Viola-Jones face detector is first reviewed. We then survey the various techniques according to how they extract features and what learning algorithms are adopted. It is our hope that by reviewing the many existing algorithms, we will see even better algorithms developed to solve this fundamental computer vision problem.


This article comments on National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976) and the role played by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. It argues that the decision did not constitute any "return" to "constitutional federalism" and that, despite claims to the contrary, its inspiration came from the political goals of the Court's conservative Justices. More specifically it argues that Justice Powell's role was not influenced simply by contemporary critiques that undermined the "political safeguards of federalism" theory but, rather, that Justice Powell's political views likely shaped both his understanding of the "political safeguards" thesis and his rejection of its conclusion that the courts should not enforce "constitutional federalism." The article concludes by suggesting that, as a matter of history, the role of legal doctrines and principles, whatever their influence might be in any given case, cannot be evaluated without taking into account the ideological views and values of the Justices involved.


If your self-driving Volvo suddenly must decide whether to swerve into one pedestrian in order to avoid crashing into five others, what should it do? The thought experiment known as the "trolley problem" — long invoked in controversies from bioethics to capital punishment to climate change — has enjoyed a recent surge of attention, thanks to its uncanny resemblance to choices that driverless cars may have to face. In this essay, first I review Frances Kamm's book, The Trolley Problem Mysteries, which reveals the unsettled state of philosophical debates about this classic dilemma.Next I report findings from randomized experiments I conducted, addressing this basic question: Can our intuitions about such moral dilemmas be influenced by the presence of the law? The findings suggest that the law can indeed exert an influence over our moral intuitions about the trolley problem. Telling subjects that turning the trolley (sacrificing one life to save more lives) constitutes criminal homicide increases the number who say that doing so is morally prohibited. In comparison, telling subjects that the law requires minimizing casualties during such accidents reduces the number who say that turning the trolley is morally prohibited; it also increases the number who say that doing so is morally required. Moreover, the content of the law can influence moral intuitions even when subjects are told that it will not be enforced.This evidence motivates further inquiry into the feedback loops between our moral intuitions and the law (what if the moral intuitions we can observe have already been shaped by people's impressions, however vague or subconscious, about what the law expects?) and into the potential mechanisms of the law's halo (do people sometimes look to the law as a source of moral guidance — and if so, when?).


We theoretically analyze the diffraction of light by gratings that are photogenerated in Fabry–Perot microcavities. The coupled-wave theory of volume gratings is combined with appropriate boundary conditions to yield expressions for the diffraction efficiency. Multiple round trips within the cavity are seen to increase the effective grating thickness and therefore the efficiency. Numerical calculations specific to GaAs microcavities show that the diffraction efficiency can be enhanced by more than 2 orders of magnitude at the resonant wavelengths.