Although the issue of knowledge diffusion has been at the heart of nonproliferation research and policies, no study in the political science field has thus far systematically identified the mechanisms that allow the acquisition and efficient use of specialized knowledge related to bioweapons. This analytical gap has led to the commonly held belief that bioweapons knowledge is easily transferable. Studies of past weapons programs, including the former U.S. and Soviet bioweapons programs, show that gathering the relevant information and expertise required to produce a weapon is not sufficient to guarantee success. The success of a bioweapons program is dependent on intangible factors, such as work organization, program management, structural organization, and social environment, which can enhance the advancement of a program or create obstacles to progress. When assessed within smaller state and terrorist bioweapons programs, such as those of South Africa and the terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, these intangible factors produce the same constraining effects as in larger programs. More important, intangible factors have a significant effect on covert programs, because clandestinity imposes greater restrictions on knowledge diffusion. By taking into account these intangible factors, analysts and policymakers can improve their threat assessments and develop more effective nonproliferation and counterproliferation policies.


Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, the third duke of Alba (1507-1582), is known to history as "the butcher of Flanders". The general who carried out Philip II's repressive policies in the Netherlands, he was responsible for the massacre of thousands of men, women and children, considering it better to lay waste an entire country than leave it in the hands of heretics. Alba came to represent for contemporaries as well as for future generations the unacceptable face of Spanish imperialism. In this intriguing re-evaluation, Henry Kamen narrates the duke's personal history, looking beyond the conventional image to reveal motives and to explain rather than simply to condemn. Kamen examines the early years of Alba's life, his travels over the whole of Europe, and the complex military and political career that made him Spain's leading general of the imperial age. Drawing on the duke's rich and expressive surviving correspondence, Kamen explores Alba's beliefs and considers his infamous actions within the contexts of his time and of the monarchs - Emperor Charles V and King Philip II of Spain - whom he served.


A novel, speed and accurate vortex-assisted magnetic solid-phase extraction procedure for separation–preconcentration and flame atomic absorption spectrometric determination of lead at trace levels has been proposed. Silica-coated magnetic nanodiamonds (SiO2@MNDs) as magnetic solid-phase extractor were fabricated and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy. Pb(II) could be easily separated from the aqueous solution on the SiO2@MNDs by using a neodymium magnet. Analytical factors affecting the recoveries of Pb(II) such as pH, adsorbent amount, type and volume of eluent and sample volume were optimized. The preconcentration factor, the precision (RSD %, n = 5), the limit of detection and the limit of quantification were 5, 5.3%, 40.8 and 135 μg L−1, respectively. The effects of matrix ions have been investigated. The presented extraction method has been applied for the determination of lead in cigarette samples and Bush Branches and Leaves certified reference material. Quantitative recoveries changing from 94 to 106% were obtained for accuracy studies.


| Chahar Taqi is the most frequent and basic volume in the Iranian Architecture. The structure of Mehr Temple, Anahita Temple, and then the fire temple was among the old functions of this element, which has been used as the main structure of the mosque and shrine after the advent of Islam. Many experts consider Chahar Taqi not only a functional element but also, an element with mythical and sacred aspects. Also, the mountain has been a multidimensional, functional, and sacred element among the Iranian myths. That is why many of the ancient rituals were held in the direct relationship with the mountains and the caves inside the mountains were considered as the first temples in Iran as other civilizations, and we witness that the Iranian have founded their own temples considering the sanctity of the mountain and cave. Sometimes, temples were built on the hillside or the top of the mountain, and sometimes, they were built in the form of the ziggurats and inspired by mountains such as Elamites. Therefore, man-made architecture adopts its sanctity from the mountain. Thus, Thus, questions arise on Chahar Taqi as what is the root of its sanctity and whether its mythical and sacred aspects, such as the ziggurat, can be related to the mountain. The current study investigates the common rituals of circumambulation and sacrifice between three elements of mountain, ziggurat (as intermediate) and Chahar Taqi. using qualitative research method, it also examines the relationship of each of these elements with Mehr or Sun through documentary study and exploratory approach. The results show that although ziggurats in Iran have been destroyed, the relationship between mountain and the architecture of the temples of Iran still exists. It can be said that this mythical relationship between Chahar Taqi and mountain has been established and in other terms, Chahar Taqi represents the continuity of the mountain's sanctity in Iranian architecture.


Fructose and simple sugars are a substantial part of the western diet, and their influence on human health remains controversial. Clinical studies in fructose nutrition have proven very difficult to conduct and interpret. NIH and USDA sponsored a workshop on 13-14 November 2012, "Research Strategies for Fructose Metabolism," to identify important scientific questions and parameters to be considered while designing clinical studies. Research is needed to ascertain whether there is an obesogenic role for fructose-containing sugars via effects on eating behavior and energy balance and whether there is a dose threshold beyond which these sugars promote progression toward diabetes and liver and cardiovascular disease, especially in susceptible populations. Studies tend to fall into 2 categories, and design criteria for each are described. Mechanistic studies are meant to validate observations made in animals or to elucidate the pathways of fructose metabolism in humans. These highly controlled studies often compare the pure monosaccharides glucose and fructose. Other studies are focused on clinically significant disease outcomes or health behaviors attributable to amounts of fructose-containing sugars typically found in the American diet. These are designed to test hypotheses generated from short-term mechanistic or epidemiologic studies and provide data for health policy. Discussion brought out the opinion that, although many mechanistic questions concerning the metabolism of monosaccharide sugars in humans remain to be addressed experimentally in small highly controlled studies, health outcomes research meant to inform health policy should use large, long-term studies using combinations of sugars found in the typical American diet rather than pure fructose or glucose.


Scientific evidence indicates that the repercussions of climate change are numerous, severe, and result from human activity. One possible method of curbing climate change may lie with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires that federal agencies gather and disclose information about the environmental impacts of their activities. Shortly after NEPA's passage, California enacted the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a statute similar to NEPA addressing the environmental impacts of state and local agencies' activities. One significant departure from NEPA was that CEQA not only required that agencies disclose the environmental impacts of their activities, but that they avoid significant impacts in many circumstances. This Note discusses why omitting this requirement from NEPA makes it less useful in addressing climate change than its California counterpart, compares NEPA to CEQA, and suggests changes which could make NEPA a more useful tool for regulating climate change.


This letter addresses the problem of generating a super-resolution (SR) image from a single low-resolution (LR) input image in the wavelet domain. To achieve a sharper image, an intermediate stage for estimating the high-frequency (HF) subbands has been proposed. This stage includes an edge preservation procedure and mutual interpolation between the input LR image and the HF subband images, as performed via the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). Sparse mixing weights are calculated over blocks of coefficients in an image, which provides a sparse signal representation in the LR image. All of the subband images are used to generate the new high-resolution image using the inverse DWT. Experimental results indicated that the proposed approach outperforms existing methods in terms of objective criteria and subjective perception improving the image resolution.


Pigeon peas do not respond to the application of fertilizers on soils of low inherent fertility under conditions in Puerto Rico, although sizeable yields, sometimes over 7800 kg/ha of green pods and seeds, with over 20% protein, are obtained with high-yielding cultivars, sound crop protection practices and adequate soil and crop management techniques. It is estimated that in terms of kg/ha a pigeon pea crop of some 7800 kg/ha removes nutrients at approximately the rates of N, 60; P, 15; K, 20; Ca, 20; and Mg, 10. A plausible explanation for the lack of response to N can be based on the known fact that pigeon peas can fix atomospheric N through rhizobial action at a rate of at least 14.5 mg/day/plant to supplement the N provided from the reserves of soil organic matter and root residues. For a plant population of 17,284/ha this fixation would amount to some 45 to 50 kg for the pigeon pea growing period. Large P applications over the years coupled with P fixation on the soil and gradual release afterwards might explain the observed lack of response to fertilizer P. On the other hand, the relatively high K-supplying power of soils where pigeon peas are grown, together with the small demand of the crop, explains the lack of response to fertilizer K. Many acid soils of the tropics can supply enough Ca as a nutrient to meet the demands of pigeon pea crops. Pigeon peas use relatively small amounts of Mg, which appears to be available in many soils of Puerto Rico.


of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Caglar Irmak. No. of pages in text. (122) This dissertation examines how the context in which consumers encounter products shapes perceptions of product efficacy and product efficacy experiences. Contextual influences are recognized as relating to both the product and the consumer. While extant research on product efficacy perceptions has examined a range of factors inherent to products that influence perceived efficacy, less research has examined how the context in which a product appears influences product efficacy judgments, and even scarcer is research on the influence of a consumer's decision context. The present research advances knowledge in both arenas by studying two practically important and theoretically-driven contextual influences on product efficacy—one relating to the product, and one relating to the consumer. The first essay (Chapter 2) examines the context in which a product appears, focusing on the presence or absence of product replicates in product presentations. Although products appear both in isolation and as groups of replicates in a range of marketplace settings, previous research has not examined how this impacts product evaluations. The present research fills this gap, demonstrating that a product is perceived to be more effective when presented as part of a cohesive group of product replicates (vs. in isolation) because such groups highlight the underlying essence of the products and thereby increase attention to product efficacy. The second essay (Chapter 3) studies a common contextual influence on consumers: experiences involving low (vs. high) personal control. Two studies demonstrate that individuals feeling low (vs. high) personal control perceive greater product efficacy. This effect is driven by the motivation to use external sources of control that can help reestablish a control-deprived consumer's own (internal) sense of control; as such, low control increases the perceived efficacy of products that can help a user reach a desired outcome, but does not impact the perceived efficacy of products that are personally irrelevant for restoring control at the time of judgment. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the present research, as well as limitations and directions for future research.


Through experiments in design, this research explores the role of smartphones for mothers and young children. Forming part of the material paraphernalia surrounding mother and child, smartphones are used as connection with work or social realms, as entertainment, pacification and educational resource, thus blurring boundaries between the private and the public and between work and play. As a result, smartphones offer competing discourses that this research explores. Through the processes of drawing and making, a series of experimental designs were created to develop this research space. Evoking behaviours brought by the use of smartphones during childcare, these designs present mothers as complex users and explores the possibilities for design to reshape our relationship with technologies in family life. The development of these proposals formed a first exploratory stage in this research. A second stage took place in the encounters between people and the designs. Through narratives that were suggestive and open to multiple interpretations, the proposals encouraged conversations about motherhood and the implicated role of smartphones. As research objects, they allowed for discoveries both for me as researcher and for those that encountered them. Paulina Yurman Department of Design Goldsmiths, University of London London, United Kingdom firstname.lastname@example.com


We constructively prove the existence of almost complete problems under logspace manyone reduction for some small complexity classes by exhibiting a parametrizable construction which yields, when appropriately setting the parameters, an almost complete problem for PSPACE, the class of space e! ciently decidable problems, and for SUBEXP, the class of problems decidable in subexponential time. Our construction also implies the existence of almost complete problems under logspace manyone reductions for bigger classes, such as E or EXP. We also investigate almost completeness for smaller time complexity classes, such as P and QP, and clearly identify and explain the reasons (which are not the same for P and QP) why our approach fails for these complexity classes.


Understanding how reef-associated sharks utilise coastal reef habitats throughout their ontogeny is essential for their effective management. In this study, we assessed the distribution of sharks in the northern Caribbean Netherlands (Saba, Saba Bank and St Eustatius) and ontogenetic shifts in habitat and depth use of the 2 most observed species: Caribbean reef shark Carcharhinus perezi and nurse shark Ginglymostoma cirratum. We used stereo baited remote underwater video (stereo-BRUV) surveys at 376 sites. A total of 126 shark sightings (6 species) were recorded, with C. perezi (n = 72) and G. cirratum (n = 42) most frequently observed. The probability of recording at least 1 shark per deployment ranged from 0.19 to 0.37 and is comparable with shark occurrences in the small number of other stereo-BRUV studies in the Wider Caribbean Region. Habitat type was the most important factor driving reef-associated shark occurrences, with the highest probability of observing C. perezi and G. cirratum in soft-coral habitat. Additionally, occurrences of C. perezi were significantly influenced by the management zone, with highest probabilities of occurrence in no-fishing zones. Almost all observed reef-associated sharks (95.6%) were juveniles, indicating that the study area may be a nursery area. Overall, both species were observed in deeper waters with increasing size, indicating ontogenetic shifts in depth use. Our findings imply that protected areas should not be limited to a single habitat or depth, but focus on protecting a large area with the range of habitats and depths necessary for reef-associated sharks to complete their life cycle.


Few-shot algorithms aim at learning new tasks provided only a handful of training examples. In this work we investigate few-shot learning in the setting where the data points are sequences of tokens and propose an efficient learning algorithm based on Transformers. In the simplest setting, we append a token to an input sequence which represents the particular task to be undertaken, and show that the embedding of this token can be optimized on the fly given few labeled examples. Our approach does not require complicated changes to the model architecture such as adapter layers nor computing second order derivatives as is currently popular in the meta-learning and few-shot learning literature. We demonstrate our approach on a variety of tasks, and analyze the generalization properties of several model variants and baseline approaches. In particular, we show that compositional task descriptors can improve performance. Experiments show that our approach works at least as well as other methods, while being more computationally efficient.


ABSTRACT Heart failure is divided into heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Additional studies are required to distinguish between these two types of HF. A previous study showed that HFrEF is less likely when ECG findings are normal. This study aims to create a scoring system based on ECG findings that will predict the type of HF. We performed a cross-sectional study analyzing ECG and echocardiographic data from 110 subjects. HFrEF was defined as an ejection fraction ≤40%. Fifty people were diagnosed with HFpEF and 60 people suffered from HFrEF. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed certain ECG variables that were independent predictors of HFrEF i.e., LAH, QRS duration >100 ms, RBBB, ST-T segment changes and prolongation of the QT interval. Based on ROC curve analysis, we obtained a score for HFpEF of -1 to +3, while HFrEF had a score of +4 to +6 with 76% sensitivity, 96% specificity, 95% positive predictive value, an 80% negative predictive value and an accuracy of 86%. The scoring system derived from this study, including the presence or absence of LAH, QRS duration >100 ms, RBBB, ST-T segment changes and prolongation of the QT interval can be used to predict the type of HF with satisfactory sensitivity and specificity


The return expectations of public pension funds are positively related to cross-sectional differences in past performance. This positive relation operates through the expected risk premium, rather than the expected risk-free rate or inflation rate. Pension funds act on their beliefs and adjust their portfolio composition accordingly. Persistent investment skills, risk-taking, efforts to reduce costly rebalancing, and fiscal incentives from unfunded liabilities cannot fully explain the reliance of expectations on past performance. The results are consistent with extrapolative expectations, as the dependence on past returns is greater when executives have personally experienced longer performance histories with the fund.


Sympathetic nervous system overdrive with chronic release of catecholamines is the most important neurohormonal mechanism activated to maintain cardiac output in response to heart stress. Beta-adrenergic signaling behaves first as a compensatory pathway improving cardiac contractility and maladaptive remodeling but becomes dysfunctional leading to pathological hypertrophy and heart failure (HF). Cardiac remodeling is a complex inflammatory syndrome where macrophages play a determinant role. This study aimed at characterizing the temporal transcriptomic evolution of cardiac macrophages in mice subjected to beta-adrenergic-stimulation using RNA sequencing. Owing to a comprehensive bibliographic analysis and complementary lipidomic experiments, this study deciphers typical gene profiles in early compensated hypertrophy (ECH) versus late dilated remodeling related to HF. We uncover cardiac hypertrophy- and proliferation-related transcription programs typical of ECH or HF macrophages and identify lipid metabolism-associated and Na+ or K+ channel-related genes as markers of ECH and HF macrophages, respectively. In addition, our results substantiate the key time-dependent role of inflammatory, metabolic, and functional gene regulation in macrophages during beta-adrenergic dependent remodeling. This study provides important and novel knowledge to better understand the prevalent key role of resident macrophages in response to chronically activated beta-adrenergic signaling, an effective diagnostic and therapeutic target in failing hearts.


Abstract Potentially fatal arrhythmias add to the mental health challenges of adolescence. This systematic review sought to summarise current knowledge regarding the mental health of adolescents and pre-adolescents diagnosed with inherited arrhythmia syndromes. Searches combining psychological problems with inherited cardiac arrhythmia diagnoses identified 16 studies with paediatric (<18 years) inherited arrhythmia patients. All studies were cross-sectional; 8/16 required an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. Methods were quantitative (n=11), qualitative (n=4), or mixed (n=1), with 14–100% of participants having an inherited arrhythmia syndrome. Mean/median age in 13/16 studies was 12–16 years. Patients and parents reported lower quality of life, particularly in relation to physical function, social relationships, restriction of peer activities, bodily pain, and mental and emotional health. Self-perceptions and behaviour were similar to healthy populations. Rates of anxiety and depression (15–33% of these patients) were not increased in these studies where patients were assessed 2+ years after diagnosis. Higher mental health risk occurred among patients who have a diagnosed sibling, those with cardiomyopathy, and those who report decreased quality of life. Mental health research among youth with inherited arrhythmias is extremely limited and of low quality. Data, primarily from patients 2–4 years after diagnosis or treatment with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, indicate that quality of life may be decreased and 15–33% experience mental health issues. Future research is required to examine the mental health and quality of life of paediatric patients with inherited arrhythmia syndromes, whether or not they have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, from time of diagnosis.


Research in automatic analysis of sign language has largely focused on recognizing the lexical (or citation) form of sign gestures as they appear in continuous signing, and developing algorithms that scale well to large vocabularies. However, successful recognition of lexical signs is not sufficient for a full understanding of sign language communication. Nonmanual signals and grammatical processes which result in systematic variations in sign appearance are integral aspects of this communication but have received comparatively little attention in the literature. In this survey, we examine data acquisition, feature extraction and classification methods employed for the analysis of sign language gestures. These are discussed with respect to issues such as modeling transitions between signs in continuous signing, modeling inflectional processes, signer independence, and adaptation. We further examine works that attempt to analyze nonmanual signals and discuss issues related to integrating these with (hand) sign gestures. We also discuss the overall progress toward a true test of sign recognition systems--dealing with natural signing by native signers. We suggest some future directions for this research and also point to contributions it can make to other fields of research. Web-based supplemental materials (appendicies) which contain several illustrative examples and videos of signing can be found at www.computer.org/publications/dlib.


This paper presents a Keynesian critique of Steve Keen's treatment of the aggregate demand–credit–endogenous money nexus. It argues his analytic intuition is correct but is developed in the wrong direction. Keen's fundamental relation describing determination of AD in an endogenous credit money economy suffers from two flaws. First, it neglects the core Keynesian problematic of leakages from and injections into the circular flow of income. Second, it falls into the theoretical morass regarding the black box of velocity of money via its adoption of a form of Fisher equation to determine AD. The paper contrasts Keen's treatment with a Keynesian structural framework.


"Descending Hollywood adaptations of Japanese stories derived from manga have failed to connect with a Western audience, and not for a lack of fan interest. Instead, the core issues one encounters are matters of mistranslation, which construct the fatal flaws of American adaptations of manga. In my research, I identify three major errors in adaptation typically present in these narratives. First, I discuss mistranslations of story via analysis of Netflix's 2017 adaptation of Death Note , which includes plot reduction for the sake of time and budget restraints, as well as conflict rearrangement to fit the traditional Hollywood mold. Next, I discuss mistranslations of cultural values, as successful adaptations of Japanese manga that are accessible in an American context require a trans-cultural fluency American studios seem to lack; I use Paramount Pictures' Ghost in the Shell (2017) to illustrate this point. Finally, mistranslations of form are present in these failed adaptations. In order to bring the spirit of a manga to life on-screen, many directors have tried to replicate the style of this apparatus to film, often with unsuccessful results due to its jarring deviation from the Western norm. Spike Lee's Oldboy (2013) becomes case-in-point in this section as I contrast the apparatus of anime to film. Ultimately, I conclude that successful adaptations are quite possible; one merely needs to select the right story and cater it to what American fans of manga find fascinating about the genre—its cultural authenticity and wholly original (and decidedly non-American) ideas.


We develop an on-wafer waveform calibration technique that combines a frequency-domain mismatch correction to account for the effects of the probe on the measurement with an oscilloscope calibration. The mismatch correction is general and can be applied to any type of microwave probe, including scanning and internal-node probes for noninvasive integrated-circuit tests. We show that, for the commercial high-impedance probe we used, this calibration approach allows accurate on-wafer waveform reconstruction for a variety of probe ground configurations.


Humans are able to learn and compose complex, yet beautiful, pieces of music as seen in e.g. the highly complicated works of J.S. Bach. However, how our brain is able to store and produce these very long temporal sequences is still an open question. Long short-term memory (LSTM) artificial neural networks have been shown to be efficient in sequence learning tasks thanks to their inherent ability to bridge long time lags between input events and their target signals. Here, I investigate the possibility of training LSTM networks to learn and reproduce musical sequences and eventually better understand some of the mechanisms neural networks deploy to learn and compose long time scale structures. To be able to learn music with LSTM networks requires representing musical sequences in these networks. The musical representation developed for this work is inspired by the tonotopic representation of sounds in the auditory system. It is shown that LSTM networks are able to learn each note transitions of the monophonic and polyphonic versions of a simple song using a particular network architecture where both input and output of LSTM networks are musical notes in the developed network representation. However, this architecture for LSTM networks fail to learn longer and more complex musical sequences (e.g. the J.S. Bach cello suites). To solve this problem, I introduce the separation of time scales model, which consists in two connected LSTM networks, operating on different time scales. On one hand, trained slow time scale LSTM networks produce transitions between unique identifiers of musical patterns, which resemble a compressed memory of the pattern akin to neural memory. This gives the long time structure of music. On the other hand, trained fast time scale LSTM networks are producing the note-to-note transitions of each musical patterns. The latter receives as additional inputs the identifiers from slow time scale networks, akin to feed- forward input from memory regions of the brain. These unique identifiers bias fast time scale LSTM networks toward the production of the corresponding musical pattern. The most efficient identifiers of musical patterns are found to be a representation of how similar patterns are from one another. Finally, when unlearned pattern identifiers are given to trained fast time scale networks, novel musical patterns are created from the learned production rules. I show that the introduction of a separation of time scales greatly improves the capacity of LSTM networks to learn a larger body of musical sequences. Finally, I demonstrate that previously unseen input biases can be used to induce the network into the generation of new musical sequences, akin but not similar to known patterns. This presents a possible first step towards the generalization of previously learnt musical knowledge to the creation and composition of new music by artificial neural networks.


Objectives Although coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, treatment studies to date have primarily enrolled men and may not reflect the benefits and risks that women experience. Our systematic review of the medical literature assessed the comparative effectiveness of major treatment options for CAD specifically in women. The comparisons were (1) percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) versus fibrinolysis/supportive pharmacologic therapy in ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), (2) early invasive versus initial conservative management in non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) or unstable angina, and (3) PCI versus coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) versus optimal medical therapy in stable or unstable angina. The endpoints assessed were clinical outcomes, modifiers of effectiveness by demographic and clinical factors, and safety outcomes. Data Sources MEDLINE®, PubMed®, Embase®, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Review Methods Randomized controlled trials published in English from January 1, 2001, to December 12, 2011, comparing the treatment options for CAD listed above and containing sex-specific outcomes. Clinical outcomes were classified as short term (≤30 days), intermediate term (1 year), or long term (>1 year). Random-effects meta-analysis was performed for studies with similar outcomes measured at similar time points. Results Twenty-eight comparative studies contributed evidence about effectiveness, modifiers of effectiveness, or safety for the comparisons described above. For women with STEMI, five studies showed a reduction in composite outcomes (primarily death/MI/stroke) at 30 days for PCI over fibrinolysis (odds ratio [OR] 0.50; 95% CI, 0.36 to 0.72; high strength of evidence [SOE]); there was insufficient evidence for assessing outcomes at 1 year. For women with NSTEMI or unstable angina, the included studies, although not showing statistical significance, suggested a benefit of early invasive over initial conservative management for the composite outcome of primarily death/MI at 6 months and 1 year (2 studies, OR 0.77; CI, 0.28 to 2.12; low SOE; 5 studies, OR 0.78; CI, 0.54 to 1.12; low SOE). Evidence, however, suggested a small benefit of initial conservative management at 5 years (2 studies, OR 1.05; CI, 0.81 to 1.35). Given the small suggested benefit at 5 years, the wide confidence interval crossing 1, and the trend favoring early invasive therapy suggested at earlier time points and across time points in men—we cannot support firm conclusions (insufficient SOE). For women with stable angina randomized to revascularization (PCI or CABG) or medical therapy, three studies showed a reduction in the composite outcome of death/MI/repeat revascularization at 5 years for revascularization with either PCI (OR 0.64; CI, 0.47 to 0.89; moderate SOE) or CABG (OR 0.56; CI, 0.32 to 0.96; low SOE). For stable and unstable angina trials comparing PCI with CABG, two studies suggested a nonsignificant benefit of PCI in mortality at 30 days (low SOE). At 1 year and beyond, although suggestive of a benefit of CABG in for the composite outcomes of death/MI/stroke for women, this finding was not statistically significant and represented wide confidence intervals (low SOE at 1 year and at >2 years). Five studies assessed modifiers of effectiveness in women due to demographic factors (≥65 or ≥80 years of age) or clinical factors (risk stratification or diabetes). Strength of evidence for modifiers of effectiveness for STEMI, NSTEMI, and stable/unstable angina was insufficient. Four studies assessed safety outcomes in women: two STEMI studies (PCI versus fibrinolysis) and two NSTEMI studies (PCI versus CABG) assessed transfusion rates, incidence of intracranial hemorrhage, and bleeding rates. Strength of evidence for safety outcomes for all the CAD presentations was insufficient. Conclusions From a limited number of studies reporting results for women separately from the total study population, our findings confirm current practice and evidence for care in one of the three areas evaluated. For women with STEMI, we found that an invasive approach with immediate PCI is superior to fibrinolysis for reducing cardiovascular events, which is similar to findings in previous meta-analyses combining results for both women and men. For women with NSTEMI or unstable angina, evidence suggested that an early invasive approach reduces cardiovascular events; however, it was not statistically significant. Previous meta-analyses of studies comparing early invasive with initial conservative strategies on a combined population of men and women showed a significant benefit of early invasive therapy. We also found that the few trials reporting sex-specific data on revascularization compared with optimal medical therapy for stable angina showed a greater benefit with revascularization for women, while the men in the study fared equally well with either treatment. In contrast, previous meta-analyses that combined results for men and women found similar outcomes for either treatment. Limitations include a small number of trials with data for women available for meta-analysis, varying definitions of composite outcomes, and variable timing of followup. Future studies should collect and report clinical outcomes and harms in women by treatment strategy and at each followup time point—including subgroup data on important demographic and clinical factors that may modify clinical effectiveness—so that firmer conclusions can be reached about the risk and benefit of these therapies in women.


We present a single-handed and eyes-free Japanese kana text input system on touch screens of mobile devices. We first conducted preliminary experiments to investigate the accuracy with which subjects could single-handedly point to and flick without using their eyes. We found from the results that users can point at a screen that was divided into 2 x 2 with 100% accuracy and that users can flick at a 2 x 2 grid without using their eyes with 96.1% accuracy using our algorithm for flick recognition. The system used kana letter input based on two-stroke input with three keys to enable accurate eyes-free typing. First, users flick for consonant input, and then similarly flick for vowel input. We conducted a long-term user study to measure basic text entry speed and error rate performance under eyes-free conditions, and readability of transcribed phrases. As a result, the mean text entry speed was 51.2 characters per minute (cpm) in the 10th session of the user study and the mean error rate was 0.6% of all characters. The mean text entry speed was 33.9 cpm in the 11th session, which was conducted under totally eyes-free conditions and the mean error rate was 4.8% of all characters. We not only measured cpm and error rate, but also measured error rate of reading, which we devised as a novel metric to measure how accurately users can read transcribed phrases. The mean error rate of reading in the 11th session was 5.7% of all phrases.


One of our nation's most valuable assets is our roads and bridges, and its ability to move people and goods. The prosperity of our nation is dependent on the quality of our infrastructure and system, which is directly dependent on the condition of our highways. State and federal departments of transportation realize the importance of Quality Assurance (QA). From experience they have learned that non-conforming material or construction practices can result in premature failure of highway components. Major attention and resources have been devoted to the development of QA programs to address this concern. State Highway Agency's (SHA) across America are faced with the challenge of addressing a deteriorating infrastructure system under constrained financial budgets, reduction in staffing levels, increasing public demand for better and faster construction of projects and the public scrutiny of how State funds are spent. Demands on state work forces have never been greater. With limited resources and ever-increasing demands for services, SHA's are implementing new technologies and innovations for the purpose of improving and optimizing their QA programs under existing conditions and available resources. The objective of the dissertation is to provide SHA's with recommendations for the development of an effective, efficient and sustainable QA program. 0428 To achieve the project objective a comprehensive literature review was conducted, with a focus on the ingredients in which SHA's differ most, Quality Control (QC) and Acceptance. The purpose of the literature review was to determine the state of practice of SHA's QC and Acceptance practices and policies. An evaluation into the use of Contractor Performed Quality Control (CPQC) test results to supplement agency Acceptance testing was performed. A detailed investigation was conducted on the use of consultant engineering testing services to supplement agency QA staffing. The cost effectiveness was evaluated through a cost analysis of RIDOT in-house acceptance testing versus consultant engineering testing services. The findings indicate that the evolution of QA programs which started back in the 1960's is still very much ongoing today. The result is a large spectrum of QA programs, resulting in QA programs which differ significantly from one state agency to another. The area where QA programs differ most is in the QC and Acceptance arena. How SHA's have delegated QC roles and responsibilities to the contractor significantly impact the overall efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of a QA program. QC policies and requirements, including a QC plan requirement, should be consistently implemented, monitored and enforced on each and every project that a SHA puts out for bid. The contractor's QC role and responsibilities cannot begin and end at the plant. It was found that the use of CPQC is essential to a successful QA program. The use of CPQC test results to supplement agency Acceptance testing will reduce the number of test that an agency must perform. The use of consultant engineering testing services to supplement agency QA staffing will allow SHA's to meet peak workload demands more cost effectively. The recommendations derived from this dissertation can help SHA's improve the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of its QA program.


The "Theology in Dialogue" Series explores the relationship between theology and different, secular academic disciplines which appear within the degree programs of colleges and universities. Each volume begins with a chapter and a reply, providing a thoughtful justification for the interaction of theology and the particular subject. This is followed by a theoretical analysis of this interaction, and a range of case studies illustrating the situation in the classroom. "English Literature, Theology and the Curriculum" explores the nature and authority of religious writings and their influence on secular literature. What makes it distinctive is the manner in which it investigates the textual dynamic between the two disciplines by combining both theory and case study in a single collection of writings. It discusses interdisciplinary dialogue, offers case studies on literature and theology from Anglo-Saxon verse to the twentieth-century novel, and looks at curriculum considerations. The eminence and breadth of the contributors is outstanding.


While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots - in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists - the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately, she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.


Martin Daunton provides a clear and balanced view of the continuities and changes that occurred in the economic history of Britain from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the Festival of Britain in 1951. In 1851, Britain was the dominant economic power in an increasingly global economy. The First World War marked a turning point, as globalisation went into reverse and Britain shifted to 'insular capitalism'. Rather than emphasizing the decline of the British economy, this book stresses modernity and the growth of new patterns of consumption in areas such as the service sector and the leisure industry.


In recent years there have been two important changes among the myriad of political and policy initiatives that occur throughout the world. First, we have entered a new era in which national and foreign policy is no longer dominated by attention to monolithic Cold-War style opponents. This has brought about a new form of "globalization" and a push to engage the nations of the world as trade partners. Second, many commentators have noticed the ubiquity of advanced communications tools, most notably the internet. For the most part, however, these two new discussions rarely intersect in meaningful ways. In fact, however, the drive to globalization is being fueled by the sorts of economies that are possible in a world in which such advanced communications tools exist. Likewise, the companies who have invested the most in building these communications tools also have a great interest in spreading their ubiquity: thus promoting globalization to an extent not seen in earlier portions of the century. This paper has as its broadest aim to investigate how the two discussions are related. Making reference to the current popular and scholarly literature about the internet and about globalization, the essay describes how both discussions are weakened by the fact that although they supposedly describe revolutionary change, neither does so in a satisfactory manner. It is through the study of these two discourses and their relation to one another that the revolutionary potential of recent developments can be assessed.


At divergent tectonic plate boundaries magma, produced in the Earth's upper mantle, rises towards the crust, where it crystallises to a solid rock – also called a 'basalt'. These rocks carry information about the geological history and composition of their source, allowing to gain knowledge of the Earth's upper mantle through their analysis. In this thesis, basalts from the Arctic Ocean floor, which exposes a variety of these former magmas, were investigated. The results strengthen the current understandings of the geochemical diversity of ocean floor lavas focusing on the magmatic journey from the mantle to the crust.


Abstract. Three events are discussed from the declining phase of the last solar cycle when the magnetopause and/or the bow shock were observed unusually close to the Earth due to major interplanetary disturbances. The observed extreme locations of the discontinuities are compared with the predictions of three magnetopause and four bow shock models which describe them in considerably different ways using statistical methods based on observations. A new 2-D magnetopause model is introduced (based on Verigin et al., 2009) which takes into account the pressure of the compressed magnetosheath field raised by the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) component transverse to the solar wind flow. The observed magnetopause crossings could be predicted with a reasonable accuracy (0.1–0.2 RE) by one of the presented models at least. For geosynchronous magnetopause crossings observed by the GOES satellites, (1) the new model provided the best predictions when the IMF was extremely large having a large negative Bz component, and (2) the predictions of the model of Shue et al. (1998) agreed best with the observations when the solar wind dynamic pressure was extremely large. The magnetopause crossings close to the cusp observed by the Cluster spacecraft were best predicted by the 3-D model of Lin et al. (2010). The applied empirical bow shock models and the 3-D semi-empiric bow shock model combined with magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) solution proved to be insufficient for predicting the observed unusual bow shock locations during large interplanetary disturbances. The results of a global 3-D MHD model were in good agreement with the Cluster observations on 17 January 2005, but they did not predict the bow shock crossings on 31 October 2003.


BACKGROUND
The aim of this study was to establish the oncological and functional results of organ preservation with a watch-and-wait approach (W&W) and selective transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM) in patients with a clinical complete or near-complete response (cCR) after neoadjuvant chemoradiation for rectal cancer.

METHODS
Between 2004 and 2014, organ preservation was offered if response assessment with digital rectal examination, endoscopy, and MRI showed (near) cCR. Watch-and-wait was offered for cCR, and two options were offered for near cCR: TEM or reassessment after three months. Follow-up included endoscopy and MRIs every three months during the first year, and every six months thereafter. Long-term outcome was assessed with Kaplan-Meier curves. Functional outcome was assessed with colostomy-free survival and Vaizey incontinence score (0 = perfect continence, 24 = totally incontinent).

RESULTS
One hundred patients were included, with median follow-up of 41.1 months. Sixty-one had cCR at initial response assessment. Thirty-nine had near cCR, of whom 24 developed cCR at the second assessment and 15 patients underwent TEM (9 ypT0, 1 ypT1, 5 ypT2). Fifteen patients developed a local regrowth (12 luminal, 3 nodal), all salvageable and within 25 months. Five patients developed metastases, and five patients died. Three-year overall survival was 96.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 89.9% to 98.9%), distant metastasis-free survival was 96.8% (95% CI = 90.4% to 99.0%), local regrowth-free survival was 84.6% (95% CI = 75.8% to 90.5%), and disease-free survival was 80.6% (95% CI = 70.9% to 87.4%). Colostomy-free survival was 94.8% (95% CI = 88.0% to 97.8%), with a good continence after watch-and-wait (Vaizey = 3.4, SD = 3.9) and moderate after TEM (Vaizey = 9.7, SD = 5.1).

CONCLUSIONS
Organ preservation appears oncologically safe for selected rectal cancer patients with a cCR or near cCR after neoadjuvant chemoradiation when applying strict selection criteria and frequent follow-up, including endoscopy and MRI. The low colostomy rate and the good long-term functional outcome warrant discussing this option with the patient as an alternative to major surgery.


Copyright © 2004. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK All rights reserved. The material in this work is copyrighted. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or inclusion in any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the World Bank. The World Bank encourages dissemination of its work and will normally grant permission promptly. P ub lic D is cl os ur e A ut ho riz ed


Systems-biology inspired identification of drug targets and machine learning-based screening of small molecules which modulate their activity have the potential to revolutionize modern drug discovery by complementing conventional methods. To utilize the effectiveness of such pipelines, we first analyzed the dysregulated gene pairs between control and tumor samples and then implemented an ensemble-based feature selection approach to prioritize targets in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) for therapeutic exploration. Based on the structural information of known inhibitors of CXCR4-one of the best targets identified in this study-a feature selection was implemented for the identification of optimal structural features (molecular descriptor) based on which a classification model was generated. Furthermore, the CXCR4-centered descriptor-based classification model was finally utilized to screen a repository of plant derived small-molecules to obtain potential inhibitors. The application of our methodology may assist effective selection of the best targets which may have previously been overlooked, that in turn will lead to the development of new oral cancer medications. The small molecules identified in this study can be ideal candidates for trials as potential novel anti-oral cancer agents. Importantly, distinct steps of this whole study may provide reference for the analysis of other complex human diseases.


Shocking, witty and eccentric, the designs of Elsa Schiaparelli are among the most innovative and influential in the history of fashion. Black gloves with golden fingernails, buttons shaped like lips, trompe l'oeil images, brightly coloured zips and perfume bottles in the shape of a torso would not be out of place in fashion today, but they were created by Schiaparelli in the 1930s. A true original, she collaborated with artists such as Salvador Dali and Man Ray, pioneered the runway show and designed costumes for film-stars from Mae West to Marlene Dietrich. She used film and stage as a publicity vehicle for her label, and her advertising graphics were far ahead of their time. Through the photographs and illustrations of Vogue that championed Schiaparelli from the first picture of her revolutionary Bow-knot sweater in 1927 to the Surrealist Tears dress and Shoe hat of the late 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli presents the enduring legacy of this daring and visionary designer. Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.


Autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance systems are critically relevant and important for visually impaired people, assisted driving applications, and autonomous robots. Even though there has been significant amount of work on obstacle detection and avoidance using LiDAR and camera data, there has not been much effort focusing on providing a lightweight, cost conscious, energy efficient, reliable, and portable solution for the visually impaired. We propose a new method for autonomous obstacle detection and classification, which incorporates a different and novel type of sensor, namely, patterned light field, with camera. The proposed device is small in size, easily carried, as well as low cost. The grid, projected by the patterned light source, is apparent and differentiable as the sensing system is hand carried in natural indoor and outdoor environments over and toward different types of obstacles. Our proposed approach exploits these patterns, without calibration, by employing deep learning techniques, including a convolutional neural network-based classification on individual frames. We further refine our approach by smoothing the frame-based classifications over multiple frames using long short-term memory units. The proposed method provides very promising results with overall detection and classification accuracies of 98.37% for the binary case as well as 95.97% and 92.62% for two different multi-class scenarios. These results represent the average number of sequences correctly detected and classified and were obtained on a sequence-based analysis of over 120 sequences from four different users.


With the important exception of critiques of rehabilitation, philosophers of punishment do not often have probation as their focus. This (relative) neglect is mutual: when probation policymakers, scholars and practitioners reflect upon their own work, practices and values, the insights of the philosophy of punishment are rarely among their chosen resources. This paper attempts to make some connections and to point to some ways in which a fuller engagement might shed a different light on some familiar questions in the philosophy of punishment and enrich thinking about the work of probation.


There is a marked contrast between historical and sociological constructs of the religious experience of Indians in the Caribbean and its portrayal in fiction. The historical evidence is that whilst there have been major changes away from the cultural practices and world view that Hindus and Muslims brought with them as indentured labourers to the Caribbean, a majority of Indians in Trinidad and Guyana adhere in some way to the rites, beliefs and values of Hinduism and Islam. Even today, despite determined Christian proselytization and the material advantages which conversion offered in the past, less than twenty percent of Indians are Christians. Hindus and Muslims worry about the state of their religions and the Pundits and Mulvis complain about the increasing secularization of their flocks, but it is clear that being a Hindu or Muslim is central to many Indians' personal identity and to the survival of IndoCaribbeans as a distinct cultural group. Though Indian attitudes to Christianity and converts are by no means uniform, in general they have tended to be relaxed. There was gratitude for the role of the Christian missions in championing Indian education in the past, though resentment and active opposition to aggressive attempts at conversion. Those Christian Indians who became socially prominent aroused a mixture of pride and envy, pity and contempt for 'abandoning' their own culture. In the past, popular Hinduism borrowed and absorbed elements of Christianity (just as Indian Presbyterianism became progressively rehinduised); in the present one senses a measure of ecumenical indifference. This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol8/iss2/16


DISTORTION, DISPARITY, AND DUBIOUS DATA: THE IMPACT OF ACCOUNTABILITY ON INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICE This study examined the impact that state and federal accountability systems have had on instructional practice in two large Texas school districts by comparing the performance of students at these schools on individual items from the 2011 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) and relating performance to item difficulty and the schools' accountability risk as determined by prior accountability performance. To make this comparison, schools were placed into accountability risk groups based on past performance on the No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability instrument. The researcher then calculated the mean differences between average performance on each item and compared them against the item difficulty score to determine if the relationship was significant. The relationship was tested for all groups, both isolating and excluding economically disadvantaged students and those with limited English proficiency. Inclusion in these groups was based on the coding the students were assigned in the state's assessment data file. This comparison used a simple regression analysis performed on SPSS statistical software, version 20. The findings of the study revealed a statistically significant positive relationship between the gap in performance for each risk group and the item difficulty level, meaning that as item difficulty increased the gap between students in the various risk groups grew larger as well. Based on this study, the researcher questions how effective the federal accountability system is at determining school achievement.


A specially commissioned commentary piece responding to an article in the Public Philosophy Journal (USA) exploring the contrasting traditions and philosophies of firearm regulation in the UK and USA. The original article in the Public Philosophy Journal was: A Tale of Two Nations: School Shootings and the Right to Bear Arms in the US and the UK by Grif Peterson & Tom Preston.


It is known that the Clarke generalized directional derivative is nonnegative along the limit directions generated by directional directsearch methods at a limit point of certain subsequences of unsuccessful iterates, if the function being minimized is Lipschitz continuous near the limit point. In this paper we generalize this result for non-Lipschitzian functions using Rockafellar generalized directional derivatives (upper subderivatives). We show that Rockafellar derivatives are also nonnegative along the limit directions of those subsequences of unsuccessful iterates when the function values converge to the function value at the limit point. This result is obtained assuming that the function is directionally Lipschitzian with respect to the limit direction. It is also possible under appropriate conditions to establish more insightful results by showing that the sequence of points generated by these methods eventually approaches the limit point along the locally best branch or step function (when the number of steps is equal to two). The results of this paper are presented for constrained optimization


In the mid-1820s, Anglo-American fur trappers, known as "mountain men," entered Arizona and began trapping beaver (Castor canadensis). In Arizona there have been a number of famous mountain men such as Sylvester and James Pattie, Ewing Young, Jededia Smith, and Bill Williams who trapped along the waterways in northern and southern Arizona. Although the heyday of mountain men lasted only a few decades due to a population decline of beaver, management of these animals continues to this day. The purpose of managing beavers shifted from monetary gain to controlling wildlife damage. During the late 1900s, beaver were still widely distributed in limited numbers throughout much of the state. We provide a historical overview of beaver management in Arizona with emphasis on the mountain men, recreational trapping, wildlife damage management, and beaver research in Arizona.


This study investigated a professional learning community of cooperating teachers and university‐based teacher educators. To examine our roles and perspectives as colleagues in teacher education, we drew on frameworks in teacher learning and complexity science. Monthly group meetings of this inquiry community were held over two school years in a suburban school district in British Columbia. Participants' current and prior experiences in the role of cooperating teacher provided rich topics for conversation. Our analysis illustrates how aspects of complexity thinking both enable and promote teacher learning, in this instance, the professional development of cooperating teachers. The study highlights (a) key tensions that allow for deeper exploration of issues, (b) the need for flexibility that is open to contingency, (c) the importance of reducing hierarchical structures to enable networks to develop, and (d) improvisation as a key ingredient for teacher learning.


In this paper, we consider multi-carrier systems with multiple transmit antennas under the power balancing constraint, which is defined as the constraint that the power on each antenna should be limited under a certain level due to the linearity of the power amplifier of the RF chain. Applying transmit antenna selection and fixed-power variable-rate transmission per subcarrier as a function of channel variations, we propose an implementation-friendly antenna selection method which offers a reduced complexity in comparison with the optimal antenna selection scheme. More specifically, in order to solve the subcarrier imbalance across the antennas, we operate a two-step reallocation procedure to minimize the loss of spectral efficiency. We also provide an analytic lower bound on the spectral efficiency for the proposed scheme. From selected numerical results, we show that our suboptimal scheme offers almost the same spectral efficiency as the optimal one.


In Growing up with Tanzania. Karim Hirji, a renowned Professor of Medical Statistics and Fellow of the Tanzania Academy of Science, presents a multi-faceted, evocative portrait of his joyous but conflicted passage to adulthood during colonial and early-Uhuru Tanzania. His smooth style engages the reader with absorbing true tales, cultural currents, critical commentary and progressive possibilities. By vibrantly contrasting the hope-filled sixties with the cynical modern era, he also lays bare the paradoxes of personal life and society, past and present.


The aggregation principles of IEC 61000-4-30 is a well-known concept implemented in Power Quality (PQ) recorders. Only rms data is retained. Harmonic emission assessment requires the analysis of harmonic phasors. Continuous measurement of harmonic phasors is constrained by the volume of data resulting if the measurement period is longer. An innovative approach to also aggregate harmonic phase angles has been introduced and this paper evaluates how the aggregation interval affect the application of this concept in harmonic emission. Two different types of harmonic emission sources are evaluated in a distribution network. Results from this field data are used to demonstrate that although it is not possible to use a standard aggregation interval as in the IEC 61000-4-30, that the concept of aggregating harmonic phasors present an improved understanding of harmonic emission.


PurposeThe purpose of this review was to summarize the literature on the relationship between obesity and survival in persons with heart failure (HF). In particular, the article examines the ways in which studies define body size/composition (body mass index [BMI], body composition, weight, cachexia, fluid retention, or albumin) and the relationship of BMI and survival after controlling for factors such as HF severity, etiology of the HF, gender, race, age, and/or time since HF diagnosis. Data sourcesThe keywords heart failure and body mass index, heart failure and obesity, and heart failure and body composition were indexed in PubMed. Articles published from 1999 to 2006 that used multivariate analyses to examine the relationship between obesity and survival in persons with HF were included in the review. ConclusionsBMI is the standard most often used for measuring body weight in patients with HF. Yet, BMI does not address other major components of body weight (fat, lean body mass, and fluid) that may factor into the mortality of patients with HF. Four of the six studies reviewed reported a positive relationship between obesity and improved survival. However, the studies are limited by design, with the majority being cross-sectional. Furthermore, most of the data were collected through secondary data analysis from patient records in the 1990s, before contemporary HF treatment was used. Implications for practiceUntil further research solidifies a clear association between higher BMIs and improved survival in patients with HF, nurse practitioners and others should continue to counsel their patients with HF who are overweight to lose weight. Assessing BMI alone as a predictor of survival for patients with HF may be misleading and should be performed in the context of other factors. Moreover, care should be taken in managing patients with HF who are cachexic because these patients have a worrisome prognosis.


An increasing number of innovative applications use data from online social networks. In many cases data analysis tasks, like opinion mining processes, are applied on platforms such as Twitter, in order to discover what people think about various issues. In our view, selecting the proper data set is paramount for the analysis tasks to produce credible results. This direction, however, has not yet received a lot of attention. In this paper we propose and discuss in detail a platform for supporting processes such as opinion mining on Twitter data, with emphasis on the selection of the proper data set. The key point of our approach is the representation of term associations, user associations, and related attributes in a single model that also takes into account their evolution through time. This model enables flexible queries that combine complex conditions on time, terms, users, and their associations.


Linguistic Networks are structures that allow us to model the characteristics of human language through a graph-like schema. This kind of modelization has proven to be useful while dealing with natural language processing tasks. In this paper, we first present and discuss the state of the art of recent semantic relatedness methods from a network-centric point of view. That is, we are interested in the types of networks used to solve practical semantic tasks. In order to address some of the short-comings in the studied approaches, we propose a hybrid linguistic structure that takes into account lexical and syntactical language information. We show our model's practicality with a proof of concept: we set to solve word sense disambiguation and induction while using the presented network schema. Our modelization aims to shed light into ways of combining distinct types of linguistic information in order to take advantage of each of its components' unique characteristics.


The topic of social equity in transport planning has been dealt with, in particular, by authors such as Martens (2012) and Martens and Golob (2012) using a social justice based-approach. However, such an approach, whilst valuable and analytically rigorous (based as it is on accessibility modelling), does not consider a wide range of possible other social impacts of transport, as set out in a framework first put forward by Geurs et al. (2009). This paper uses Geurs' analytical framework to consider two empirical case studies: The National Transport Strategy for Scotland, adopted in January 2016, together with associated national level spending plans; and Sweden's 2014–2025 National Transport Plan. The paper will first summarise the contents of each document before analysing them in relation to the categories of social impact that Geurs (2009) identifies, and assess how, in relation to each category of impact, various social groups will benefit or disbenefit. A range of projects (planned) to be delivered by the two national strategies is then analysed in relation to the criteria. This analysis shows that the two national strategies/plans are in their distribution of spending, and the projects funded are generally working away from greater social equity in their distributional impacts.


This study investigated the fitness of the Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT) Choice scale in a Kurdish educational setting among undergraduate teacher-training students (N=1335) encompassing nursery, primary and secondary education. The factors motivating this population to become teachers were examined in the Iraqi-Kurdish educational context. The-FITChoice scale was translated into the Kurdish language and its reliability and validity were measured. Intrinsic/altruistic and social utility values were found to be the most important factors behind the choice of the teaching profession as a career. Intrinsic career value, social contribution, the experience of prior learning and teaching were also influential motivational factors in this choice, as were social influences and social status factors compared to similar research conducted in Australian and Turkish educational settings, however, fall back career, job security, time for family, job transferability, the opportunity to shape the future of children and enhance social equity did not demonstrate meaningful value as motivational factors in this survey. One of the most important results differentiating this from other studies was that the addition of moral value factors to the original scale revealed that these values played an important role in students' perceptions towards the teaching profession as a career.


The main topic of this thesis is the fabrication and characterization of structures smaller than the wavelength of light, for operation in the visible or near infrared spectral range. In the first part of this thesis, the fabrication of periodic structures in one and two dimensions with an interference photolithography technique is described in detail. The structure periodicities that have been fabricated with this process ranges between 270 nm and a few microns on areas that can be as large as 100 cm. Typical structure thicknesses are approximately equal to the period. In particular, a square lattice of pillars with a period of 270 nm has been created on the (non-flat) surface of a quartz microlens array and exhibits anti-reflective properties. Experimental results show a 15 % attenuation of the reflectivity and a 3 % enhancement of the transmissivity over the visible spectral range. In the second part of the thesis the structures are fabricated by e-beam lithography to ensure very precise devices shapes. The experimental results are obtained in the infrared range with two different structures, called photonic crystals. The first structure, a superprism, is a triangular lattice of pillars infiltrated by liquid crystals. A displacement of the output light spot is measured to be 20.5 1m for a wavelength variation of 27 nm. The structure length is 70 1m. The device, based on standard silicon technology, should allow integration of the device as a multiplexer/demultiplexer system into optical microcircuits. The second structure, a tunable resonant cavity, is a wavelength filter working in the near infrared spectrum. The active area is composed of a photonic waveguide with a triangular lattice made of sub-micrometer holes. Additional nanostructuring in the light waveguide acts as a resonant cavity. The tunability of the device is obtained due to the liquid crystals which are infiltrated into the nanostructure. A 32 nm shift of the transmitted light peak inside the photonic band gap is measured by changing the temperature from room temperature to 45 ∘C.


Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spread globally leading to over 3,700,000 deaths. As COVID-19 cases stabilized, the re-opening of endoscopy centers potentially exposed patients and healthcare workers to viral infection. This study aims to determine risk of COVID-19 exposure among patients undergoing outpatient endoscopies in a tertiary care setting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Patients undergoing outpatient endoscopy were contacted post-procedure for any new COVID-19 symptoms or COVID-19 test results. Patient experiences and perception of personal safety were also determined. Results Of the 1,584 patients who completed elective endoscopy, 996 (62.9%) completed the survey. Two patients were diagnosed with COVID-19 within 14 days of procedure. The majority (99.7%) felt safe during their procedure and apprehension regarding endoscopy decreased over time. Conclusion Thus, the risk of COVID-19 transmission during outpatient endoscopy is extremely low when following recommended society guidelines. Patients felt safe during the procedure and experienced less fear of exposure over time.


Abstract. The angular distribution of the light reflected by the Earth's surface
influences top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance values. This surface
reflectance anisotropy has implications for UV/Vis satellite retrievals of
albedo, clouds, and trace gases such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2). These
retrievals routinely assume the surface to reflect light isotropically. Here
we show that cloud fractions retrieved from GOME-2A and OMI with the FRESCO
and OMCLDO2 algorithms have an east–west bias of 10 % to 50 %, which
are highest over vegetation and forested areas, and that this bias originates
from the assumption of isotropic surface reflection. To interpret the
across-track bias with the DAK radiative transfer model, we implement the
bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) from the Ross–Li
semi-empirical model. Testing our implementation against state-of-the-art
RTMs LIDORT and SCIATRAN, we find that simulated TOA reflectance generally
agrees to within 1 %. We replace the assumption of isotropic surface
reflection in the equations used to retrieve cloud fractions over forested
scenes with scattering kernels and corresponding BRDF parameters from a daily
high-resolution database derived from 16 years' worth of MODIS measurements.
By doing this, the east–west bias in the simulated cloud fractions largely
vanishes. We conclude that across-track biases in cloud fractions can be
explained by cloud algorithms that do not adequately account for the effects
of surface reflectance anisotropy. The implications for NO2 air mass
factor (AMF) calculations are substantial. Under moderately polluted
NO2 and backward-scattering conditions, clear-sky AMFs are up to 20 %
higher and cloud radiance fractions up to 40 % lower if surface
anisotropic reflection is accounted for. The combined effect of these changes
is that NO2 total AMFs increase by up to 30 % for backward-scattering
geometries (and decrease by up to 35 % for forward-scattering
geometries), which is stronger than the effect of either contribution alone.
In an unpolluted troposphere, surface BRDF effects on cloud fraction
counteract (and largely cancel) the effect on the clear-sky AMF. Our results
emphasise that surface reflectance anisotropy needs to be taken into account
in a coherent manner for more realistic and accurate retrievals of clouds and
NO2 from UV/Vis satellite sensors. These improvements will be
beneficial for current sensors, in particular for the recently launched
TROPOMI instrument with a high spatial resolution.


In cooperation with the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a stream-sediment-based environmental geochemical study in and near Yellowstone National Park (the Park). The main goals of the study were to (1) determine background concentrations for as many as 49 elements in samples of rock and stream sediment, (2) establish a geochemical baseline during the 1990s for future reference, (3) identify the source(s) of anomalies for selected elements, and (4) identify potential chemical impacts on the Park environment, especially on wildlife. Two areas of the Park containing identified environmental geochemical problems were selected for detailed study: (1) an area in the western part of the Park that includes the Gibbon, Firehole, and Madison River basins, and (2) an area in the northeastern part that includes the Soda Butte Creek and Lamar River basins and part of the Yellowstone River basin. The geology of the first area is characterized mainly by Quaternary felsic volcanic rocks. Localities with major geothermal activity are present in this area. The second area has more complex geology that consists primarily of Tertiary volcanic rocks of intermediate composition and Precambrian schists and gneisses. Also present are scattered exposures of Paleozoic clastic and carbonate rocks and Quaternary felsic volcanic rocks. Geothermal activity is very limited in this area. Both study areas contain extensive deposits of glacial, fluvial, or lacustrine origin. Analyses for as many as 49 elements in 393 samples of stream sediment collected from throughout the Park were evaluated statistically, including factor analysis. A five-factor model classified the elements on the basis of two lithologic factors, one mineral-deposit-related factor, one geothermal-process-associated factor, and one "miscellaneous" factor. Data from the factor analysis, when combined with the distributions of anomalies for the elements determined in this study, show that most (34) of the elements are best correlated with rock chemistry. Many of these elements can be used to discriminate between major lithologic units and can therefore be used to assist geologic mapping studies in the Park area. Anomalies of As, Cs, F, Hg, Mo, S, Sb, T1, and W were determined to be associated with areas of geothermal activity. Of these nine elements, cesium is the best discriminator between anomalies related to geothermal activity and those related to outcrops of mineralized rock and to past mining activity near the Park. The effects of mineralization and past mining activity in the Cooke City, Mont., area, outside but near the northeastern boundary of the Park, are defined by anomalies of Ag, As, Au, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mo, Pb, S, Sb, Se, Te, T1, W, and Zn, and possibly F. The effects are delineated best by anomalies of Au, Cu, and Te. Relatively weak anomalies of some of these elements extend as far as 18 km inside the Park. In the area of Slough Creek, in the northeastern area of the Park, the source for a high concentration of lead was determined to be anthropogenic because of the sample location and a lack of anomalies of other elements that commonly are associated with natural lead anomalies. This anomaly probably is related to past fishing activity. In high concentrations, a number of the elements associated with geothermal activity in the Park are potentially toxic to animals.


The number of red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scoticus) shot in the UK has declined by 50% during the 20th century. This decline has coincided with reductions in the area of suitable habitat and recoveries in the populations of some avian predators. Here we use long–term records of shooting bags and a large–scale manipulation of raptor density to disentangle the effects of habitat loss and raptor predation on grouse populations. The numbers of grouse harvested on the Eskdale half of Langholm Moor in southern Scotland declined significantly during 1913–1990 and grouse bags from the whole moor from 1950 to 1990 exhibited an almost identical but non–significant trend. Hen harriers (Circus cyaneus) and peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) were absent or bred at low densities on this moor throughout this period but heather–dominant vegetation declined by 48% between 1948 and 1988. Harrier and peregrine breeding numbers on Langholm Moor increased to high levels following protection in 1990 whilst grouse density and grouse bags declined year after year until shooting was abandoned in 1998. The prediction of a peak in grouse bags on Langholm Moor in 1996 based on the patterns of bags during 1950–1990 was supported by the observed peaks in 1997 on two nearby moors with few raptors which formerly cycled in synchrony with Langholm Moor. This study demonstrates that, whilst long–term declines in grouse bags were most probably due to habitat loss, high levels of raptor predation subsequently limited the grouse population and suppressed a cycle. This study thus offers support to theoretical models which predict that generalist predators may suppress cycles in prey populations.


The article discloses the definition of the substatutory legal act in the rulings of the Constitutional Court, analyses the reasons for recognising these acts as contradicting the Constitution and laws, presents arguments and motives of the Constitutional Court. So far the Constitutional Court has mainly investigated the compliance of the Government resolutions with the Constitution and laws, therefore, the basic attention is paid to the constitutionality of these substatutory acts, alongside considering the problems of the compliance of the Seimas resolutions with the Constitution and laws. A substatutory legal act may be in conflict with the Constitution and laws according to the contents of norms, scope of regulation, the form, as well as the procedure of adoption, signing, promulgation and coming into force established by the Constitution and laws. Legal norms established by the substatutory legal act may not compete in their contents with the norms established by the law. Substatutory legal acts are recognised as contradicting the Constitution and laws in most cases because they establish different legal norms from those established by laws, and because legal norms established by substatutory acts compete in their contents with norms established by laws. If there exists such a legal situation when the earlier adopted substatutory legal act is not in compliance with the later adopted law, the state institution which adopted such a substatutory legal act has the duty to amend and supplement its previously adopted legal acts so that they would be in compliance with the later adopted law or to abolish its previously adopted substatutory legal acts if legal norms established therein are in conflict with norms of the law. Substatutory legal acts establishing legal norms not based on those of law would be also inconsistent with the Constitution if, according to the Constitution, the respective relationships should be regulated by law. The Government may not broaden by its resolutions the competence established to it by laws and resolutions of the Seimas. The wording "in a manner prescribed by the Government" employed in the laws means that only the Government itself, and not any other entity, must establish that procedure. The Government may not, by its resolution, delegate the powers established for it by the law to another public institution. Only published substatutory legal acts are effective, their power is prospective. A substatutory legal act, designated to implement a law, may not come into force before the law itself becomes effective. Such a substatutory legal act may not implement provisions of a law which is not valid yet.


PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: THE MAJOR WORKS INCLUDING POETRY, PROSE AND DRAMA. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xxviii + 845. ISBN 13 978 0 19 281 374 9. £12.95 (pb). In many ways, editing Shelley is starting to look like a task of almost Ozymandian presumption. It is not as if the history of the field gives much cause for optimism. To be sure, Mary Shelley herself faced huge problems - emotional, legal and political - in assembling her pioneering edition of the poetry and prose, but at least she managed to finish the job. From Neville Rogers' hugely controversial Oxford edition (axed by Clarendon Press after two volumes in 1975) to Matthews' and Everest's Longman edition (first volume published in 1989 and still no end in sight), the recent history of Shelley textual scholarship is littered with incomplete edifices, shattered visages and deserts stretching as far as the eye can see. Perhaps it is best not to even mention the state of the prose - only one volume of the Murray edition has been published and that some 15 years ago - or the Notebooks. What budding editor would look back on such a history and not remember the warning of the King of Kings? Look on Shelley's collected works, ye mighty, and despair! It is with some trepidation, then, that the reader opens Zachary Leader's and Michael O'Neill's new edition of Shelley's Major Works but, thankfully, all fears prove groundless. As readers of this journal know very well, Michael O'Neill is arguably our leading Shelley scholar and so it is difficult to imagine anyone better qualified for the task of producing a single-volume edition of the works. To start with, I have to say that the editors' own introduction to the volume is quite simply the best short account of the poet's life and work I have had the pleasure to read. In the space of a dozen pages or so, we are treated to an elegant summation of the poet's life and work that is both immediately accessible to the general reader and steeped in the history of Shelley scholarship: this is certainly the place to start for anyone coming to Shelley for the first time. Yet what really matters here, of course, is the poems, and this Major Works manages to be incredibly comprehensive for a single-volume paperback edition. For me, this is as close as one can reasonably expect to a 'one stop shop' for Shelley students and scholars alike and represents something of a bargain, too, at £12. …


One of the base concepts of object-oriented programming is that of "method". In languages supporting inheritance, this concept is realized by three different actions: (i) the introduction of a new method; (ii) the implementation/override of an existing method; (iii) the method call. The bindings between (ii) and (i), and between (iii) and (i) are typically based on method names, which are not guaranteed to be unique, thus such bindings might cause some ambiguities. As a result, modifications of existing code may cause errors in some other parts of the code, especially in programs written by third party developers; overall, a programmer cannot predict the moment in the execution when such ambiguities will arise. In this paper, we describe the nature of these problems and propose a general mechanism to overcome ambiguities in a safe, straightforward, and flexible way. To study the details of this mechanism, and make the reader more familiar with it, we show how to apply this mechanism to Java, and also to a mixin-oriented language called MixedJava.


Thick calcrete profiles occur in the Late Devonian–early Carboniferous Kinnesswood Formation of the Midland Valley of Scotland. These profiles consist of highly brecciated peloidal and coated grain fabrics with laminar calcrete horizons and linings to fractures. The profiles resemble supermature calcretes associated with late Cenozoic surfaces in the southwestern United States and reflect pedogenesis over periods of several hundred thousand years or more. The possible origins of the highly complex fabrics seen are reviewed and the polygenetic nature of such profiles is stressed. It is suggested that brecciation takes place co-incident with subaerial exposure of the calcrete. Mature profiles may be predisposed to brecciation and surficial weathering because of their susceptibility to soil erosion as a result of changes in vegetation cover. The calcretes underwent phreatic cementation, burial dolomitization and silicification.


This article examines the economic effect of education in terms of its impact on the earnings of workers in an information technology (IT)–diffusing economy, based on data from Hong Kong's 2006 by-census and survey on the usage and penetration of IT in industries. Education enhances the productivity of workers and increases their lifetime incomes. However, technological advances, if deskilling, may exert an adverse effect on workers' earnings. The analysis of the economic effect of education is complicated by the increasing application of technologies in the workplace. This study shows that the earnings effect of education and the interaction between education and IT penetration in the workplace are positive and significant, whereas IT by itself brings about a significant negative earnings effect.


Tourniquets are often used in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) to improve visualization of structures, shorten operative time, reduce intraoperative bleeding, and improve cementing technique. Despite these advantages, controversy remains regarding the safety of tourniquet use. Tourniquets have been associated with nerve palsies, vascular injury, and muscle damage. Some have hypothesized they may also cause deep vein thrombosis. Last, increased incidence of postoperative wound complications has been reported with use of tourniquets. We conducted a retrospective cohort study to determine whether tourniquet use in TKA in patients with preexisting radiographic evidence of vascular disease increases the risk for wound complications or venous thromboembolism (VTE). Patients (N = 373) were placed in 2 groups: One had no preoperative radiographic evidence of knee arterial calcification (n = 285), and the other had arterial calcifications (n = 88). Overall, arterial calcification did not increase the risk for wound complication or VTE (P > .05). Furthermore, location of arterial calcification did not affect risk for wound complication or VTE. There were no arterial injuries. Diabetes, hypertension, prior VTE, coronary artery disease, and male sex were linked to higher wound complication rates (P < .05). Patients who have preoperative radiographic evidence of arterial calcification can safely undergo tourniquet-assisted TKA.


The Community IT centre (CITC) is a place where people engage in informal and formal activities leading to positive change in their lives. I undertook a multimodal, qualitative, participant-voice study based on the biographical narrative interpretive method (BNIM) at a CITC on a large housing estate in southern England, with 24 participants; 11 people provided extended life stories. The study addresses the conspicuous silence of learners' voices in the literature about community education and gives space to the voices of users of the CITC. In the UK and elsewhere, the dominant route to social inclusion is presumed to be employment, for which IT skills are needed. The analysis, using a Third Space conceptual framework informed by Activity Theory, challenges this assumption. The study makes specific and important contributions to knowledge about what people do with a CITC and makes policy recommendations in line with the findings (Ch 9, section 9.5). The thesis shows that the CITC is a social learning space, which supplies critically more IT access to those who don't have "enough" and basic facilities to those who don't have IT at all. Positive change is manifested in an emergent, instrumental and interpersonal value system, discovered by this research, consisting of compassion, determination, professionalism, resourcefulness, respect and solidarity. CITCs are shown to provide invaluable spaces within which identity projects may be pursued and the formation of selfeffective identities and communities supported. Through association with the CITC people can be enabled to be more effective managers (and self-managers) of the institutions of society. Engagement with the CITC also appears to be associated with critical reflexivity concerning social presence and participation. People are discovered to have a broad range of motivations for using the centre and to do many things with computers. Affective factors are shown to be significant in determining people's use of IT. Although they do engender strong feelings, people's relationship with computers is not fetishised nor do they form a particularly important aspect of identity. Despite assertions in policy about the importance of computers this thesis shows that IT is not the magnet that draws people into uncomfortable spaces; comfortable spaces draw people into IT use, and comfort is a factor of community. A common-sense of the self as the subject of a personal activity system – the institution of the individual – is a useful unit of analysis however this is a complex notion. So too is the notion of community. People express forms of shared experience and interest, and negotiate concerns about identity on multiple scales (Panelli & Welch 2005). I take community as a consistent "intersubjective network" (Žižek 2008, p.12), which, as for Bhabha, "... enables a division between the private and the public, the civil and the familial." But, which also, "... enacts the impossibility of drawing an objective line between the two" (2004, p. 330). The stories of the participants reveal extensive hybridisation in respect of many factors including: nationality, occupation, domesticity, social class, locale/neighbourhood, and expectations of outcomes in life. Occupational identity: I am what I do – broadly conceived – is an important feature of participants' stories and there is wide community support for creative aspects of employment and for the transformative potential for individuals and communities of working together, whether or not money is involved. Wider social institutions (family, education, work) are discovered to be highly productive in shaping people's engagement with the CITC. Domestic circumstances and parenthood contribute significantly to people's use of the centre. In particular, lone parenthood has a profound impact on people but can be a positive choice leading to a fulfilled sense of self and strong bond with the child, which can be facilitated by the CITC. Importantly, some people do not want the Internet in their homes. They resent its intrusion for strongly held reasons which need not be subject of argument or coercion. The thesis shows that participants in this study have a rich conceptualisation of learning, education, IT, qualifications and work, and clear understandings of the differences between formal and informal learning as well as an understanding of the multiply inscribed role of qualifications in social inclusion. The thesis provides specific local evidence for the OfCom (2010) findings about people's preference for informal learning about ICT. The thesis recommends that communities take it upon themselves, with encouragement and support, to provide community IT centres.


The paper introduces a simplified structural model for the numerical investigation of bump-type foil bearings. This analytical model is based on an efficient nonlinear contact procedure with consideration of friction, small deformations, and elasticity. The bump foil is modeled with a truss structure, while the top foil uses two-dimensional (2D) beam elements. In this present model, the normal and tangential contact forces between the bump foil and the bearing sleeve and between the foils are dealt with the penalty method. Even for a simple loading, the contact state might change between separation, stick, and slip. To avoid convergence problems caused by the discontinuity, the regularized smooth friction model is used instead of the Coulomb friction model. In addition, due to contact problems depend on time and are accompanied by nonlinear evolution, the solution of the system equation using the incremental iterative method and the Newton-Raphson method is presented. The deflection of the top foil is added to the film controlled by the Reynolds equation (RE) to obtain the air pressure distribution. The theoretical predictions of the rotor push-pull tests agree well with results from the literature, which verifies the validity of the model. Using this present model, the quasi-static behaviors of the foil structure are mainly discussed. And the parametric studies concerning environmental pressure and radial clearance are also conducted.


Intuitively, it is clear why languages have anaphoric relations: anaphora reduces redundancy, thereby shortening (and hence simplifying) sentences. In order for this simplification to be possible, however, it is necessary that the speaker of a language be able to identify correctly the elements participating in an anaphoric relation and to determine correctly the meaning of the anaphor on the basis of meaning of the antecedent. If a grammar is to reflect the linguistic competence of a native speaker of a language, it must include mechanisms of associating anaphor and antecedent. In this volume the following questions will be considered: What sorts of mechanisms are best suited for representing anaphora in a grammar? What are the conditions on the rule(s) associating anaphors with antecedents? Do the various cases of anaphora form a linguistically significant class of phenomena, and, if so, how can the grammar capture this fact? And what do these answers entail for linguistic theory?