In this thesis the attraction of women's weekly magazines to their readers was
explored. Three bestselling titles in Britain, Best, Bella and Take a Break, were
analysed for their production, content and reception using Hall's (1980)
encoding/decoding model as a theoretical framework.
The production of the magazines was addressed via interviews with the three
editors and documentary sources, all placed within an environment of postfeminism
which characterised the magazines' launches. The editors claimed their
publications were intended to act as more than entertainment to the readers and
identified Best, Bella and Take a Break as incorporating feminist elements. This
feminism was interpreted as an attempt to support working class women in their
struggles with everyday life via two distinct approaches: first, to offer advice,
reassurance and information in the editorial (for example health, articles on
employment and finance) and second, to give women a voice in the true life stories
from which other readers could draw strength.
The editors' intentions for Best, Bella and Take a Break were realised (although
with different results for each magazine) in the content, which was analysed using
both qualitative and quantitative methods. It was found that despite the potential
ambiguity of certain content, the magazines nevertheless incorporated a supportive
feminist agenda, but this was not always recognised by the readers. Over one
hundred women were interviewed individually or in focus groups and it was found
that they interpreted the magazines in a number of ways. This finding expanded on
Hall's original three decoding positions of accept, negotiate and oppose.
Although readers did not necessarily decode the magazines as intended by the
editors, further evidence for the supportive feminism was apparent in the
community ethos generated by the sharing of magazines amongst readers. It was
also found that the trust and mediated interaction between a reader and her
magazine further encouraged a sense of community. It was concluded that Best,
Bella and Take a Break were offering a supportive feminist agenda to their
readers, some of whom recognised and used this content in their everyday lives.


Controller design for a laboratory circuit heating plant with model feedback delays by means of a branched control system in a robust sense is the aim of this contribution. The reader is concisely acquainted with a mathematical model of then plant that includes all significant delays and latencies first; hence, the model is infinite-dimensional. Relevant algebraic tools, namely, a special ring quasipolynomial functions, Bezout identity and particular controller parameterizations for a feedback control system with additional inner loop follow. Although the controller structure is fixed, its parameters are eventually tuned by introduced robustness principles in order to meet robust stability and performance. For the practical implementation, rather complex controllers' laws, which are of a delayed nature, are simplified by a rationalization and their discrete-time formulation is suggested as well. The results are verified by simulations in MATLAB® and Simulink®. All the obtained results are promising for a future real-life implementation of the presented approach


The project "Facilitating REDD+ benefit sharing in Peru" (2013-2016) aimed to implement early REDD+ actions enabled by appropriate, efficient and equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms that are sufficiently robust to be mainstreamed into long-term national and international REDD+ frameworks. Among the main lessons learnt of the project: The need to establish a clear model of governance between the different actors to potentiate the strengths of sustainable forest management and the need of adaptive management to adjust an initiative at national and local context of the native community are highlighted.


This study provides a tool by means of which a road planner, usually a civil engineer, can achieve a durable infrastructure of high quality, acceptable to all parties concerned. The various elements which facilitate the work of planning are united into a modernized methodology for the elaboration of road projects, called a methodology of concert. After analysing the sort of problems encountered in the planning of road infrastructure (Chapter 1), the author classifies the main causes of these into a hierarchy. This brings to light many factors which may stem from the structure of the project, the environment or from the various participants. The modernization of the working methods of road planners is a highly practical idea based on case studies (Chapter 2). The particular study on which this work is based is the "Comparaison de variantes 1999", made on the A 144 road between the cities of Villeneuve and Le Bouveret. From an initial group of four variants, which were a source of much contention between the interested parties, an optimal and consensual solution, called "Solution COPIL", was evolved in seven months, by means of this study. The choice of this solution was based on a method of multicriteria decision analysis of a completely aggregational form. This used the weightings defined by all the political partners in the study. The present author was allowed to sit in on about fifteen working sessions of the Technical Group and of the Guiding Committee, which consists of the political partners. The examination of this particular case provided him with much valuable information about the process of elaboration of a road plan. The requirements and aims of road infrastructure are analysed (Chapter 3). Here, the focus is on the definition of individual and collective needs and the evolution of social expectation of the general public. The implementation of public policy is then examined. Particular emphasis is laid on the principal public policies whose spatial incidence affects the road plan : land distribution, transport and environment. Some attention is paid to the consideration of mobility, its value, characteristics and future developments. The difference between the standard and the norm of road infrastructure is described explicitly. The various stages of the process of elaboration of a road plan are analysed in depth. (Chapter 4) Particular attention is paid to the initial stages of impulsion for the elaboration of the project and of the identification of needs, since these influence strongly the quality and the acceptability of the project. The author then proposes that the various stages of road infrastructure be presented in the form of a life cycle of which the present study only concerns some aspects. Various special procedures are then analysed critically in order to extract propositions to be integrated into the methodology of concert. The type of partners in the road project and the characteristics of the relationships between them are discussed. (Chapter 5) The set of weightings made by the political partners in the case study "Comparaison de variantes 1999" are used to analyze the relations between the various participants in this study. A "representative profile of a participant" is defined from the examination of their individual weighting profiles. The notion of sustainability is presented (Chapter 6). After a recapitulation of definitions and of the reasons for this new idea, the principles of a durable mobility are presented. The practical aspects of this new paradigm of society for the planner are defined and discussed. They concern the inclusion of the life cycle in the analysis of the effects of a project, the weighing of interests from the three points of view of economy, social utility and the environment, public participation and the use of consultation right from the start of the study. Public participation (Chapter 7) is an important element in the elaboration of a road plan as it ensures its acceptation by the public. It may even allow the phenomenon of appropriation of a project by peripheral partners to develop. The various forms of public participation are presented in a table showing almost seventy which can affect a road project. The detailed description of some of these methods are given in appendix. Rules for applying the methodology of concert are then presented and the advantages and limits of this are discussed. After in-depth consideration of the decision procedure and its participants, with details of the various subjective and objective factors which may influence it, the study describes the methods of multicriteria decision analysis. (Chapter 8) Terminology is defined and the main types of these methods are presented. In this study, partial aggregation methods have been applied to the road infrastructure projects. These methods may be divided into three categories according to whether they are applicable to a situation of choice, of sorting or of order. A complete presentation is then given of the principles and ways of using the various methods of partial aggregation of the Electre family (I, II, III, IV, IS and Tri). For projects of road infrastructure, the method of partial aggregation Electre III is suggested. This method is based on the idea of fuzzy criteria, defined by thresholds of preference, indifference or of veto. It can be used with computer software which greatly simplifies the work of the planner. To illustrate the use of this method, Electre III have been applied to the case of "Comparaison de variantes 1999". The method was used on the set of weightings defined by the members of the Guiding Committee. The specific software is convivial and intuitively simple to use, so that the author was able to recommend it to the road planner. Information systems of spatial reference are described and their relevance for road projects in the establishment of optimal corridors or as a support for a method of multicriteria decision analysis. The methodology of concert for the elaboration of road plans is presented in detail (Chapter 9) in the form of successive flow diagrams illustrating the various stages of the procedure. These diagrams, based on an iterative process of study, provide the basis of the methodology of concert. They are intended for the road planner who follows them through and orients his planning according to his answers to the various questions contained there. In conclusion (Chapter 10), various prospects for the utilization of the proposed modernized methodology are indicated, together with the lines of possible future research suggested by the results and ideas contained in this study.


BACKGROUND
Intentional weight loss in obese older adults is a risk factor for muscle loss and sarcopenia.

OBJECTIVE
The objective was to examine the effect of a high whey protein-, leucine-, and vitamin D-enriched supplement on muscle mass preservation during intentional weight loss in obese older adults.

DESIGN
We included 80 obese older adults in a double-blind randomized controlled trial. During a 13-wk weight loss program, all subjects followed a hypocaloric diet (-600 kcal/d) and performed resistance training 3×/wk. Subjects were randomly allocated to a high whey protein-, leucine-, and vitamin D-enriched supplement including a mix of other macro- and micronutrients (150 kcal, 21 g protein; 10×/wk, intervention group) or an isocaloric control. The primary outcome was change in appendicular muscle mass. The secondary outcomes were body composition, handgrip strength, and physical performance. Data were analyzed by using ANCOVA and mixed linear models with sex and baseline value as covariates.

RESULTS
At baseline, mean ± SD age was 63 ± 5.6 y, and body mass index (in kg/m(2)) was 33 ± 4.4. During the trial, protein intake was 1.11 ± 0.28 g · kg body weight(-1) · d(-1) in the intervention group compared with 0.85 ± 0.24 g · kg body weight(-1) · d(-1) in the control group (P < 0.001). Both intervention and control groups decreased in body weight (-3.4 ± 3.6 kg and -2.8 ± 2.8 kg; both P < 0.001) and fat mass (-3.2 ± 3.1 kg and -2.5 ± 2.4 kg; both P < 0.001), with no differences between groups. The 13-wk change in appendicular muscle mass, however, was different in the intervention and control groups [+0.4 ± 1.2 kg and -0.5 ± 2.1 kg, respectively; β = 0.95 kg (95% CI: 0.09, 1.81); P = 0.03]. Muscle strength and function improved over time without significant differences between groups.

CONCLUSION
A high whey protein-, leucine-, and vitamin D-enriched supplement compared with isocaloric control preserves appendicular muscle mass in obese older adults during a hypocaloric diet and resistance exercise program and might therefore reduce the risk of sarcopenia. This trial was registered at the Dutch Trial Register (http://www.trialregister.nl) as NTR2751.


Forest conflict in Asia is on the rise as various stakeholders have different views about and interests in the management of increasingly scarce resources. Unfortunately, in many instances, local communities and indigenous peoples suffer the most when such conflicts play out. The biggest challenge is finding acceptable, fair, and lasting solutions. Focusing on how rights (or a lack thereof) instigate conflict and how collective action plays a role in conflict management, this paper examines eight cases from six countries: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam. Participatory methods including semi-structured interviews, field observation, focus group discussions, and multistakeholder workshops were performed. Conflict was found to emerge in the context of the rapid economic development, where communities' deep connection to the forest and land is being cut by the influx of investors or government agencies. Land historically managed and used by local people becomes contested when investors are granted the rights to develop such land (for example, for oil palm plantations, agricultural production, and mining) or government agencies designate new protected areas. Findings illustrate that conflict can strengthen collective action and enhance the voices of the less powerful actors. However, it may also weaken collective action particularly when local institutions are inadequate. To reduce the incidence of future conflict, local and traditional rights need to be properly respected and strengthened legally. In addition, economic development policies need to have built-in social and environmental safeguards to minimize negative impacts at the local level. While conflict can either make or break collective action (and collective action can either escalate or assuage conflict) the need to strengthen local institutions seems to be a key priority to ensure positive conflict outcomes


This research is a qualitative study carried out for determining the views of teachers carrying on their duties in elementary and secondary education institutions towards the effect of ethical leadership behaviours upon classroom management. The data related to the research was collected through the interviews with the teachers who participated into the research in a period from October 2019 to October 2020 in Turkey. It was noticed that definitions of the teachers who participated into the research related to teacher leadership were shaped in accordance with their personal attitudes and traits. The participants mostly defined teacher leadership as being a role model and orienting the students. Namely, the participants considered that teacher leadership in classroom should be there for being a guide for the students and orienting them, and teachers should present model behaviours. The teachers who participated into the research also considered that teacher leadership in the classroom should be ethical. The participants especially emphasized that this leadership should have an ethical property related to mutual role balance, leadership shared with the students in the classroom, democratic attitude and respect to individuals. When teachers' ways of using their leadership roles in the classroom were analyzed, it was noticed that the teachers mostly presented behaviours for orientation, and focused mostly on student-cantered educational activities. The ethical behaviours participant teachers used mostly in classroom management were concluded to be behaving equally to the students, determining and practicing the classroom rules together, and regarding the individual differences.


The process of determining the language of a speech utterance is called Language Identification (LID). This task can be very challenging as it has to take into account various language-specific aspects, such as phonetic, phonotactic, vocabulary and grammar-related cues. In multilingual speech recognition we try to find the most likely word sequence that corresponds to an utterance where the language is not known a priori. This is a considerably harder task compared to monolingual speech recognition and it is common to use LID to estimate the current language. In this project we present two general approaches for LID and describe how to integrate them into multilingual speech recognizers. The first approach uses hierarchical multilayer perceptrons to estimate language posterior probabilities given the acoustics in combination with hidden Markov models. The second approach evaluates the output of a multilingual speech recognizer to determine the spoken language. The research is applied to the MediaParl speech corpus that was recorded at the Parliament of the canton of Valais, where people switch from Swiss French to Swiss German or vice versa. Our experiments show that, on that particular data set, LID can be used to significantly improve the performance of multilingual speech recognizers. We will also point out that ASR dependent LID approaches yield the best performance due to higher-level cues and that our systems perform much worse on non-native data


The simple input-output dynamics of the Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neuronal model was analyzed using a generic sinusoidal input consisting of a constant current density I0 modulated by a sinusoidal function with amplitude ΔI, and frequency f. The equations governing the HH model is then modified, numerically solved, and analyzed to understand the system's dynamical response. Power spectral density and neural coding techniques such as firing rate and vector strength were employed to observe the dynamics of the system. Using these mechanisms, mode-locking behaviors were observed in a stimulus-parameter plane that stabilizes as the constant bias is increased. An increasing number of action potentials and sustained periodicity measure is observed on mode-locking subregions in the parameter space (ΔI, ω). This proves that using frequency and temporal codings would still show similar characteristics of a neuron.


We present results from a computer simulation of an immiscible two component fluid, using a Lattice Boltzmann BGK D2Q9 scheme. Each fluid component is identified by a colour tag (either red or blue), and the immiscible behaviour arises from the implementation of colour segregation imposed on the lattice fluid. For two dimensional, microcurrent free planar interfaces between the two immiscible fluids we derive expressions for static interfacial tensions and interfacial distributions of the two fluids. Extending our analysis to curved interfaces, we propose a scheme for incorporating the influence of interfacial microcurrents that is based upon general symmetry arguments and is correct to second order in lattice velocity. The analysis demonstrates that the interfacial microcurrents have only second order influence upon the macroscopic behaviour of the model. We find good agreement between our calculations and simulation results based on the microcurrent stream function and surface tension results from the pressure tensor or Laplace law.We examine the tangential stress transmission in the immiscible interface, by the investigation of the relationship between fluid shear and fluid viscosity across a plar nar symmetric interface. We find comprehensive agreement with theory, for the tangential hydrodynamic boundary condition. The examination of normal stress transmission in our two dimensional simulation is facilitated from correct behaviour of tangential stress. We develop a Fourier analysis technique which allows a quanti-tative analysis of the anisotropy of the interface. This technique has facilitated the development of a further modification to the interface perturbation, which improves the macroscopic surface tension isotropy and reduces the magnitude of the parasitic microcurrent.As an application of our model we simulate the induced deformation and burst of neutrally buoyant fluid drops subjected to external simple shear and solenoidal irrotational flow. Qualitatively the drops are seen to deform and orientate correctly, with respect to the external flow. Measuring the dependence of critical shear rate for drop rupture on flow parameters, our results validate the method over a range of simulation variables. The model's interfacial tension parameter < 7, undeformed drop radius R, and BGK relaxation parameter u are all found to have the correct influence upon the burst process as required by hydrodynamic theory. We note that the macroscopic surface tension and fluid viscosity are coupled, however this does not limit the application of the model.


International research suggests that a large proportion of children travel in the front seat of passenger vehicles even though this places them at increased risk of serious injury or death. There are no comparable figures for Australia. This study was conducted to estimate the proportion of Australian children seated in the front seat of passenger vehicles and to explore restraint use. Trained observers noted the seating positions of children, their ages and the types of restraints used for 1295 passenger vehicles carrying child passengers (aged 12 years and under) in Brisbane during March/April 2005. Results suggest that approximately 60% of passenger vehicles carrying children had at least 1 child seated in the front seat. Age was associated with greater likelihood of front seating with most child front seat passengers being aged 7-12 years. While over 90% of child passengers were restrained, around 25% wore restraints that were not optimal for their ages. These figures indicate a clear opportunity for interventions aimed at raising awareness of the risk involved in allowing children to occupy the front seat as well as encouraging parents and drivers to seat them in the rear seat whenever possible. There is also a need to explore parental knowledge of age-appropriate restraints and to encourage more widespread use.


The articles included in these proceedings were presented at a text analysis symposium on 14 and 15 April 2014. The presenters represented a range of educational institutions: Belarusian State University, Belarus; Kristianstad University, Sweden; Linnaeus University, Sweden; Lund University, Sweden; Malmo Academy of Music, Sweden; Malmo Borgarskola, Sweden; Minsk Academy of Public Administration, Belarus; St Petersburg State University, Russia; University of Latvia, Latvia; and West University of Timișoara, Romania.The six sessions covered a range of subjects related to text and discourse analysis. The first session, "Text Analysis and Literature", included papers on Tomas Transtromer, John Fowles and Alice Munro. The second session, "Discourse Analysis", discussed topics as diverse as traditional culture as a discourse, categories of text and discourse and their role in collecting, organising and interpreting data, and analysing song lyrics. Session three, "Text Analysis in Teaching and Literature", considered the appreciation of literature in second language reading, how to teach literary theory through detective stories, and stylistic devices in Somerset Maugham's short story "Louise". The fourth session, "Text Analysis in Teaching and Writing considered issues as diverse as text analysis and teaching writing, plagiarism detection systems in higher education, and teacher feedback and autonomy. The fifth session, "Text and Discourse Analysis for Change", discussed a range of issues including a linguistic perspective on Swedish official documentation on children, linguistic interference and commonly occurring mistakes in Swedish secondary schools, and text analysis at university-level. The final session, "Text analysis and ICT" included papers on Filipino transnational identities in blogs, text analysis in the age of technology, and the contextualisation, organisation, and textualisation of IT operational documentationThe symposium also saw the launching of a new journal, Contemporary Society and its Discourse Representations. Further information may be obtained from Professor Irina Oukhvanova-Shmyrova, Belarusian State University, at email@example.com articles have been peer reviewed and contributors have been invited to edit their papers in accordance with the reviewers' instructions. The final version is the sole responsibility of the contributor.Special thanks go to the participants and contributors to this volume; we hope that you will visit us again. Our grateful thanks also go to Kristianstad University for the use of the university premises and for subsidising the publication of the conference programme and the conference visit to Naturum Nature Centre, as well as for providing refreshments during the breaks. We also wish to thank Anders Hakansson for assisting with the publication of this volume.


Neural sequence-to-sequence models are finding increasing use in editing of documents, for example in correcting a text document or repairing source code. In this paper, we argue that common seq2seq models (with a facility to copy single tokens) are not a natural fit for such tasks, as they have to explicitly copy each unchanged token. We present an extension of seq2seq models capable of copying entire spans of the input to the output in one step, greatly reducing the number of decisions required during inference. This extension means that there are now many ways of generating the same output, which we handle by deriving a new objective for training and a variation of beam search for inference that explicitly handles this problem. In our experiments on a range of editing tasks of natural language and source code, we show that our new model consistently outperforms simpler baselines.


The antimalarials are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for conditions such as lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis, and the side effects, though infrequent, are well known. The antimalarial agent chloroquine diphosphate usually causes pigmentary changes in the oral mucosa characterized by a bluish-grey to black discolorations mainly in the hard palate. Considering only the hard palate hyperpigmentation caused by chloroquine, to the best of our knowledge, only 13 cases have been reported in the English language literature. We described an additional case of palate hyperpigmentation related to the chronic use of chloroquine diphosphate in a 60-year-old Mexican woman. Although the diagnosis is usually made based on medication history and clinical presentation, a biopsy specimen may be helpful to confirm the diagnosis. Clinicians must be aware of these drugs and their adverse effects in order to make the correct diagnosis and decide on the optimal treatment for the condition. Key words:Oral cavity, hard palate, hyperpigmentation, chloroquine, antimalarials.


A 20‐m‐wide trench was excavated to bedrock on a hillslope at the Panola Mountain Research Watershed in the Piedmont region of Georgia to determine the effect of upslope drainage area from the soil and bedrock surfaces on the geochemical evolution of base cation concentrations in subsurface flow. Samples were collected from ten 2‐m sections and five natural soil pipes during three winter rainstorms in 1996. Base cation concentrations in hillslope subsurface flow were generally highest early and late in the storm response when flow rates were low, but during peak flow, concentrations varied little. Base cation concentrations in matrix flow from the 10 trench sections were unrelated to the soil surface drainage area and weakly inversely related to the bedrock surface drainage area. Base cation concentrations in pipe flow were lower than those in matrix flow and were also consistent with the inverse relation to bedrock surface drainage area found in matrix flow. The left side of the trench, which has the highest bedrock surface drainage area, had consistently lower mean base cation concentrations than the right side of the trench, which has the lowest bedrock surface drainage area. During moderate size rain events of about 20–40 mm, subsurface flow occurred only on the left side of the trench. The greater volume of water that has flowed through the left side of the trench appears to have resulted in greater leaching of base cations from soils and therefore lower base cation concentrations in subsurface flow than in flow from the right side of the trench. Alternatively, a greater proportion of flow that bypasses the soil matrix may have occurred through the hillslope on the left side of the trench than on the right side. Flushing frequency links spatial hillslope water flux with the evolution of groundwater and soil chemistry.


As global solar radiation forecasting is a very important challenge, several methods are devoted to this goal with different levels of accuracy and confidence. In this study we propose to better understand how the uncertainty is propagated in the context of global radiation time series forecasting using machine learning. Indeed we propose to decompose the error considering four kinds of uncertainties: the error due to the measurement, the variability of time series, the machine learning uncertainty and the error related to the horizon. All these components of the error allow to determinate a global uncertainty generating a prediction bands related to the prediction efficiency. We also have defined a reliability index which could be very interesting for the grid manager in order to estimate the validity of predictions. We have experimented this method on a multilayer perceptron which is a popular machine learning technique. We have shown that the global error and its components are essentials to quantify in order to estimate the reliability of the model outputs. The described method has been successfully applied to four meteorological stations in Mediterranean area.


This thesis presents detailed laboratory based research on solid-state atom and radical addition reactions aimed to increase our understanding of the chemistry that occurs in interstellar ices. The focus here is on the chemistry of nitrogen-bearing species as well as on the formation of molecules of astrobiological importance. An attempt to provide a link between the formation of the simplest nitrogen-bearing molecules and simplest amino acids is made. In addition to amino-acid formation routes, the simplest representatives of two other classes of prebiotic compounds - aldoses (polyhydroxy aldehydes) and polyols - with their corresponding formation routes are presented.


Economic development practitioners and scholars recognize the link between universities and regional economic development. It is predicated on the spillover of knowledge from universities to commercialization. The literature has focused on the supply side, which involves university research and technology transfer mechanisms. We examine the role played by the demand for university-based knowledge and university-developed technology. We identify links between businesses and the university as a key conduit facilitating the spillover of knowledge using data on the Department of Energy's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. We provide supply-side evidence on university research relationships and how the use of knowledge and technologies that flow from a university affect economic growth. We identify the role that SBIR-funded businesses play in the spillover of knowledge from the creating organization to where that knowledge is used and commercialized. Our results suggest that knowledge is systematically transmitted through university-related research.


This article reports the third-year findings of a longitudinal evaluation in England of Success for All (SFA), a comprehensive literacy program. Eighteen SFA schools across England and 18 control schools, matched on prior achievement and demographics, were included in this quasi-experimental study. The results of hierarchical linear modeling analysis reveal a statistically significant positive school-level effect for SFA schools compared with control schools on standardized reading measures of word-level and decoding skills, and there were directionally positive but nonsignificant school-level effects on measures of comprehension and fluency. Practical and policy implications of these findings are discussed, particularly as they relate to recent English government policies encouraging schools to implement research-proven approaches.


The growth of robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery has led to sizable datasets of fixed-camera video and kinematic recordings of surgical subtasks. Segmentation of these trajectories into locally-similar contiguous sections can facilitate learning from demonstrations, skill assessment, and salvaging good segments from otherwise inconsistent demonstrations. Manual, or supervised, segmentation can be prone to error and impractical for large datasets. We present Transition State Clustering with Deep Learning (TSC-DL), a new unsupervised algorithm that leverages video and kinematic data for task-level segmentation, and finds regions of the visual feature space that correlate with transition events using features constructed from layers of pre-trained image classification Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). We report results on three datasets comparing Deep Learning architectures (AlexNet and VGG), choice of convolutional layer, dimensionality reduction techniques, visual encoding, and the use of Scale Invariant Feature Transforms (SIFT). We find that the deep architectures extract features that result in up-to a 30.4% improvement in Silhouette Score (a measure of cluster tightness) over the traditional "shallow" features from SIFT. We also present cases where TSC-DL discovers human annotator omissions. Supplementary material, data and code is available at: http://berkeleyautomation.github.io/tsc-dl/.


Elemental carbon (EC), as one of the primary light-absorbing components in the atmosphere, has a significant impact on both regional and global climate. The environmental impacts of EC are strongly dependent on its particle size. Little is known about the size distribution characteristics of EC particles in China's ambient environments. We report size distributions of EC particles in the urban area of Shenzhen in Southern China. In our samples, EC was consistently found in two modes, a fine mode and a coarse mode. The majority of EC mass (~80%) in this coastal metropolitan city resided in particles smaller than 3.2 μm in diameter. The fine mode peaked at around either 0.42 μm or 0.75 μm. While the mode at 0.42 μm could be ascribed to fresh vehicular emissions in the region, the mode at 0.75 μm was likely a result of particle growth from smaller EC particles. We theoretically investigated the particle growth processes that caused the EC particles to grow from 0.42 μm to 0.75 µm in the atmosphere. Our calculations indicate that the EC peak at 0.75 μm was not produced through either coagulation or H 2 SO 4 condensation; both processes are too slow to lead to significant EC growth. Hygroscopic growth was also determined to be insignificant. Instead, addition of sulfate through in-cloud processing was found to cause significant growth of the EC particles and to explain the EC peak at 0.75 μm. We also estimated the mixing state of EC from the EC size distributions. In the droplet size, at least 45–60% of the EC mass in the summer samples and 68% of the EC mass in the winter samples was internally mixed with sulfate as a result of in-cloud processing. This information on EC should be considered in models of the optical properties of aerosols in this region. Our results also suggest that the in-cloud processing of primary EC particles could increase the light absorbing capacities through mixing EC with sulfate.


Metal evolution in a composite granitic pluton was tracked by analyzing melt inclusions in 11 quartz samples from 7 zones at the Timbarra gold deposit, Australia. We present the first quantitative microanalyses of gold (Au) in granitic silicate melt inclusions using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass-spectrometry and show how Au and other metals become enriched during fractional crystallization in a granite intrusion. Au was enriched during fractionation from a monzogranite to a highly fractionated alkali-feldspar granite. Similar enrichment behavior for other metals implies that no gold-enriched precursor melt is required and fractional crystallization can enrich the Au concentration to economic levels. The low content of accessory oxides and sulfides, the absence of early Cl-bearing fluids, the volatile content in the melt, and a prolonged crystallization constitute important factors for extensive metal enrichment during crystal fractionation. These characteristics play a crucial role in felsic, highly fractionated plutons and their associated deposits such as intrusion-related Au deposits. The gold enrichment during fractionation also implies that Au is directly sourced from the granites.


Background: Medicinal and aromatic plants are a considerable source of active substances which are exploited in the treatment of several diseases. This study was carried out in the Rif (North of Morocco), it aimed to identify medicinal and aromatic plant used by the local people to treat digestive system diseases, together with the associated ethnomedicinal knowledge. Methods: The ethnomedical information collected was from 732 traditional healers using semi-structured interviews, free listing and focus group. Family use value (FUV), use value (UV), plant part value (PPV), fidelity level (FL) and Informant Agreement Ratio (IAR) were employed in data analysis. Medicinal and aromatic plant were collected, identified and kept at the natural resources and biodiversity laboratory, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra. Results: During the present study 87 medicinal plant species belonging to 43 families has been documented. The most frequent ailments reported were gastric ulcers (IAR = 0.97). The majority of the remedies were prepared from decoction (42.12%). Leaves were the most frequently used plant part (PPV = 0.344) and Thymus saturejoides Coss. (UV = 0.240) was the specie most commonly prescribed by local herbalists. Conclusions: The results of this study showed that people living in the Rif of Morocco are still dependent on medicinal and aromatic plants. The documented plants can serve as a basis for further studies on the regions medicinal plants knowledge and for future phytochemical and pharmacological studies.


Increased biofuel production has prompted concerns about the environmental tradeoffs of biofuels compared to petroleum-based fuels. Biofuel production in general, and feedstock production in particular, is under increased scrutiny. Water footprinting (measuring direct and indirect water use) has been proposed as one measure to evaluate water use in the context of concerns about depleting rural water supplies through activities such as irrigation for large-scale agriculture. Water footprinting literature has often been limited in one or more key aspects: complete assessment across multiple water stocks (e.g., vadose zone, surface, and ground water stocks), geographical resolution of data, consistent representation of many feedstocks, and flexibility to perform scenario analysis. We developed a model called BioSpatial H2O using a system dynamics modeling and database framework. BioSpatial H2O could be used to consistently evaluate the complete water footprints of multiple biomass feedstocks at high geospatial resolutions. BioSpatial H2O has the flexibility to perform simultaneous scenario analysis of current and potential future crops under alternative yield and climate conditions. In this proof-of-concept paper, we modeled corn grain (Zea mays L.) and soybeans (Glycine max) under current conditions as illustrative results. BioSpatial H2O links to a unique database that houses annual spatially explicit climate, soil, and plant physiological data. Parameters from the database are used as inputs to our system dynamics model for estimating annual crop water requirements using daily time steps. Based on our review of the literature, estimated green water footprints are comparable to other modeled results, suggesting that BioSpatial H2O is computationally sound for future scenario analysis. Our modeling framework builds on previous water use analyses to provide a platform for scenario-based assessment. BioSpatial H2O's system dynamics is a flexible and user-friendly interface for on-demand, spatially explicit, water use scenario analysis for many US agricultural crops. Built-in controls permit users to quickly make modifications to the model assumptions, such as those affecting yield, and to see the implications of those results in real time. BioSpatial H2O's dynamic capabilities and adjustable climate data allow for analyses of water use and management scenarios to inform current and potential future bioenergy policies. The model could also be adapted for scenario analysis of alternative climatic conditions and comparison of multiple crops. The results of such an analysis would help identify risks associated with water use competition among feedstocks in certain regions. Results could also inform research and development efforts that seek to reduce water-related risks of biofuel pathways.


Series Connected Synchronous Motor (SCSM) is a slip-ring induction motor with stator and rotor windings connected in series. This motor runs synchronously at double the rated speed when runs as a normal induction motor. This paper presents theoretical and experimental investigation for steady state performance based on the d-q model as derived for a synchronously rotating frame. The model is extended to include saturation.


[Text in French] Around the tenth century AD, the Chimu culture emerged along the arid northern coast of Peru. In the fifteenth century AD, at its peak, the Chinu kingdom expanded over hundreds of kilometres, was controlled by a network of administrative centres from Chan Chan, the capital. In this volume the analysis of settlement patterns and the exploitation of the valley of Chicama sheds light on different mechanisms that have contributed to the growth of Chan Chan, the political capital and ceremonial centre of the Chimu. Among the 167 sites identified in this region, 88 were occupied during the Late Intermediate Period (1000 to 1470 A.D.). The investigation of these sites, composed of concentrations of archaeological material, buildings and infra-structures, offers a partial view of the human settlement pattern, supplemented by previously published archaeological data. This study shows that the heart of the coastal plain of Chicama was cultivated by the local communities, for whom historical records can be found in sixteenth century archives, while in the margins, the expanding irrigation and the agriculture were managed from administrative centres relaying the authority of Chan Chan. The installation of Chimu groups from the coast upstream to the middle valley allowed for effective control the water resources, essential for the crops in an arid environment.


Medicinal plants serve as unlimited source for phytoconstituents that possess potent antioxidant and antiproliferative properties. Artemisia nilagirica L. is a potent medicinal plant widely found in India and has been used to treat human diseases for centuries. The present investigation was conducted to investigate the antioxidant and antiproliferative abilities of different crude extracts of A. nilagirica. A detailed study was performed on the antioxidant activity and antiproliferative activity of the methanol extract of A. nilagirica by in vitro chemical analysis. The chemical composition of extracts, studied in terms of phenolics, total flavonoids, triterpenoids, tannins and alkaloids were also determined. Results suggested that the amounts of different phytoconstituents in extracts vary based on polarity of solvents. The extracts possessed different antioxidant and radical-scavenging activities in different assays. Among the extracts, ethyl acetate and alcohol extracts showed the most potent radical-scavenging activities. Ethyl acetate and alcohol extracts showed cytotoxicity towards eight different human cancer cell lines in vitro with IC50 values ranging between 30.43±0.86 and 982.46±14.40 μg/ml and they were less toxic to normal cell lines. The findings of this study provide evidence that A. nilagirica extracts can be used potentially as ready accessible and valuable bioactive source for isolation of antioxidant and anticancer agents.


As the international society faces unprecedented challenges associated with resource scarcity, governance scandals, increasing injustice and inequality, new opportunities for higher education institutions are emerging. This paper aims to investigate the association between national governance standards and education quality across nine western European countries, namely, the UK, Germany, France, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland.,Using panel data from 2002 to 2017, this paper uses fixed-effects and random-effects models to examine the relationship between national governance (proxied by voice and accountability (V&A) indicator) and education quality (proxied by human development index: education index). This analysis is supplemented with conducting instrumental variable (IV) estimations to address any concerns regarding the expected occurrence of endogeneity problems.,The findings are suggestive of a significant and positive relationship between national governance and education quality in Europe. This implies that national governance standards, such as V&A, are essential actors in the enhancement of the quality of educational institutions' outcomes.,Policymakers should implement stricter regulations and ensure that accountability indicators are motivated if they wish to increase the spending on education, which is associated with better qualities of educational institutions. A culture of continuous review of education policies needs to be upheld in the Western Europe region to be watchful of any emerging problems while maintaining a sustainable relationship between the rule of law and the education administration.,So far, a minimal number of studies focussed on examining the role of country-level governance in advancing education quality. This study, therefore, extends the body of prior literature by investigating the possible effect of national governance structures on education quality across a sample of Western European countries.


Comparative information is needed on differences between grass species regarding dry matter production, root growth, water use, and response to N fertilization, as affected by both age of stand or years of N fertilization. The research reported here was conducted on a Temvik silt loam (fine-silty, frigid, mixed Typic Haploboroll) at Mandan, ND. Ammonium nitrate was surface broadcast at 0, 45, or 225 kg N/ha for 9 years on established stands of western wheatgrass [Pascopyrum smithii Rydb. (Love)], crested wheatgrass [Agropyron desertorum (Fisch. ex Link) Schult.], intermediate wheatgrass [Elytrigia intermedia (Host) Nevski], smooth bromegrass (Bromus inermis Leyss.), Russian wildrye [Psathyrostachys juncea (Fisch.) Nevski], green needlegrass (Stipa viridula Trin.), and Garrison creeping foxtail (Alopecurus arundinaceus Poir). Dry matter production was usually greatest for E. intermedia. Production for B. inermis, P. smithii, and A. desertorum averaged 85 to 90% that of E. intermedia, and about 65 to 72% for the other species. Dry matter production for all species was generally doubled by 45 kg N/ha, and increased three-to fourfold with 225 kg N/ha. At 45 kg N/ha, N-use efficiency varied from an average of 51 kg dry matter per kg N for E. intermedia to 22 for Ps. juncea. Corresponding values at 225 kg N/ha dropped to 16 and 12 kg/kg N. Root dry weights were generally increased 50 to 100% by both N rates, but consistent differences among species were not evident. Annual water use was increased about 20 mm by fertilization, except in extreme drought years. Water-use efficiency (WUE) was also increased about threefold by fertilization, ranging from 22.6 kg/mm for fertilized E. intermedia to 3.2 for nonfertilized Al. arundinaceus. Water-use efficiency was highly correlated with dry matter production, increasing about 2.8 kg/mm for each 1000 kg/ha increase in production, with no effect of species, time, or N fertilization.


Virtual collaboration has become an essential part of how work gets done in organizations today and knowing how to collaborate virtually is an important skill for success. Courses with team projects may include a virtual component, but rarely is there any explicit education on how best to engage in virtual collaboration. The topic is a complex one that takes into account a wide variety of issues, including behavioral, social, and technological dimensions. Our research addresses this need by developing modules for teaching and learning of virtual collaboration. The modules are based on underlying theory in this field and have practical application in education and training. We describe an initial application of the modular approach to teaching and learning of virtual collaboration that took place during the Fall Semester 2008.


There is an increasing demand for distance education to be implemented nowadays by most educational organizations. The Internet has become the medium for course delivery, and Web Course Management Systems (WCMS) are widely used to deploy distance courses which need to provide appropriate support to both students and instructors. The instructors play a central role in managing the course, and their success in dealing with reported problems in distance learning, such as students� isolation and disorientation in hyperspace, depends on the understanding the instructors have about what is happening in distance classes. Based on tracking data, most WCMS provide statistical information to help instructors monitor their students. However, there is a lack of automatic features to guide instructors by pointing at important situations and highlighting possible problems. Such features may help instructors, and reduce the workload and communication overhead needed for managing distance classes effectively. In this thesis, an approach is proposed where an artificial advisor is built to inform course instructors and facilitators about possible problems and needs of individuals and groups of students, as well as to suggest appropriate actions, when possible. A framework named TADV (Teacher ADVisor) has been developed to build fuzzy student, group, and class models based on the tracking data generated by WCMS. A taxonomy containing three main categories of advice related to the performance of individual students, groups of students, and the whole class is proposed, and an advice generator mechanism is developed. Important situations are highlighted to instructors and, when appropriate, possible actions are recommended. A prototype of TADV is implemented and integrated within an existing WCMS. An empirical evaluation of the prototype has been conducted in a Discrete Mathematics course at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Egypt. The evaluative study has shown that TADV provides practical and effective advice. It allows advice generation and informing of instructors, which, in turn, made it easy to send help and feedback to distance students. The instructors confirmed the appropriateness of the generated advice and appreciated the knowledge they gained about their students. The students appreciated the feedback received from the instructors, which was a result of TADV recommendations. The study showed better overall satisfaction and social aspects for the students who used TADV advising features.


Cyanophycin is a nitrogen/carbon reserve polymer present in most cyanobacteria as well as in a few heterotrophic bacteria. It is a non-ribosomally synthesized polyamide consisting of aspartate and arginine (multi-l-arginyl-poly-l-aspartic acid). The following chapter provides an overview of the characteristics and occurrence of cyanophycin in cyanobacteria. Information about the enzymes involved in cyanophycin metabolism and the regulation of cyanophycin accumulation is also summarized. Herein, we focus on the main regulator, the P II signal transduction protein and its regulation of arginine biosynthesis. Since cyanophycin could be used in various medical or industrial applications, it is of high biotechnological interest. In the last few years, many studies were published aiming at the large-scale production of cyanophycin in different heterotrophic bacteria, yeasts and plants. Recently, a cyanobacterial production strain has been reported, which shows the highest so ever reported cyanophycin yield. The potential and possibilities of biotechnological cyanophycin production will be reviewed in this chapter.


We present a novel interactive learning protocol that enables training request-fulfilling agents by verbally describing their activities. Unlike imitation learning (IL), our protocol allows the teaching agent to provide feedback in a language that is most appropriate for them. Compared with reward in reinforcement learning (RL), the description feedback is richer and allows for improved sample complexity. We develop a probabilistic framework and an algorithm that practically implements our protocol. Empirical results in two challenging request-fulfilling problems demonstrate the strengths of our approach: compared with RL baselines, it is more sample-efficient; compared with IL baselines, it achieves competitive success rates without requiring the teaching agent to be able to demonstrate the desired behavior using the learning agent's actions. Apart from empirical evaluation, we also provide theoretical guarantees for our algorithm under certain assumptions about the teacher and the environment.


The current thesis aimed to investigate the effects of breakfast and snack on children's cognitive performance. Chapter 1 presents an overview of cognitive development followed by a review of previous literature investigating the effects of breakfast and snack consumption on cognitive performance. An overview of glycaemic index (GI) is then provided and linked to breakfast and snack intake.

Chapter 2 set out to investigate the effects of a mid-morning snack on attention and memory in children. The chapter also examines whether there were any systematic variations in cognitive performance following a mid-morning snack as a consequence of the calorific content of breakfast. Children were tested on a battery of cognitive tests 90 minutes following the consumption of an apple, banana or no snack. The results did not reveal any significant effects on any measures. Chapter 3 was the same as Chapter 2, except that attention and memory were assessed at 30 and 60 minutes post-snack rather than 90 minutes and prior breakfast intake (kcal) was changed to a covariate. The results showed a significant decline in performance from 30 to 60 minutes postsnack on a visuospatial task. However, there were no other significant results.

The main aim of Chapters 4, 5 and 6 was to investigate the effects of the glycaemic index (GI) of two breakfast cereals on children's attention and memory. Chapter 4 assessed attention and memory in children at 0, 60 and 120 minutes after the consumption of a high GI breakfast (CoCo Pops), a low GI breakfast (All Bran) or no breakfast. The results revealed a main effect of assessment time and a time x breakfast interaction on Choice Reaction Time although post hocs revealed no further significant differences. Chapter 5 set out to replicate Chapter 4 but adopted a repeated measures design and also examined if there were any differential effects of breakfast depending on the children's age. The results revealed some contradictory effects of both assessment time and of age. No other effects were found. Chapter 6 was a replication of Chapter 5 with the exception of the test battery. The test battery (CDR) employed in Chapter 6 was different from the battery in the previous chapters (CAMBA) and was considered to be more cognitively demanding and hence more sensitive to the effects of breakfast intake. The result showed some conflicting effects of assessment time and age. The results also showed a significant main effect of breakfast on Secondary Memory with better performance after the low GI cereal and an interaction between breakfast and time on Accuracy of Attention with better performance after the low GI at 180 minutes post-breakfast.

In summary, snack was not found to have any significant effects on performance. Breakfast had an effect on two measures in Chapter 6 but other than that there were no effects of breakfast. There were also some mixed findings of assessment time and age.


ABSTRACT Purpose: To describe the clinical features of uveitis in children treated at two ophthalmologic centers in Bogotá, Colombia, in a 13 year-period. Methods: Retrospective observational clinical record review of pediatric children with diagnosis of uveitis. Results: In total, 310 children were evaluated, 51.9% were female, mean age of 10.1 years. Posterior uveitis was the most common location (58.7%), of insidious onset (87.4%) and chronic course (78.1%). The most common etiology was infection (58.4%) caused by toxoplasmosis (76.8%). There was a statistically significant difference in visual acuity between anterior (20/68) and intermediate uveitis (20/70), compared with posterior uveitis (20/434) (p<0.05). Conclusions: This is the first study to report the clinical features of pediatric uveitis in Colombia, where infectious etiologies are the leading cause. It will improve awareness and knowledge of pediatric uveitis in developing countries, and contribute to the development of public health policies of pediatric visual health. Received 12 September 2015; revised 23 February 2016; accepted 25 February 2016; published online 18 May 2016


Written in 1992, this article attempts to provide guidance to states seeking to improve the judicial system through increased use of alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") mechanisms. The format most often selected is the establishment of statewide mediation offices. Part I of this article identifies the issues that should be addressed by any group wishing to establish a statewide court-connected mediation program. Part II presents an analysis of Florida's experience in establishing a statewide court mediation program as an example of how these issues were resolved in practice by a state that has implemented a court-connected mediation program. This article concludes with a section that encourages the adoption and development of court-connection mediation programs throughout the country.


Organizational behavior theories generally agree that human capital is critical to teams and organizations, but little guidance exists on the extent to which such theories accurately explain the relative contributions of individual actors to overall performance.The experience also demonstrates that there are evidences that combination of cognitive, behavior and psychological perspectives those drive the performance boosting of the firm as well. Very recently, the knowledge sharing among the employee also has been envisaged as one of the strong imperative of enhancing the efficacy of the team. Using soft computing tools, social network measures and simulations based on data obtained from a software development firm, we investigate the relative effectiveness of cognitive social network theory and resource dependency theory as predictors of individuals contributions to team performance. We have also been inspired by the behavior of social insect in team building and communication, which is called a stigmergy. Our results indicate that individual impacts on team's performance are more closely associated with knowledge and task dimensions than with social network structure.


While the fast-paced inception of novel tasks and new datasets helps foster active research in a community towards interesting directions, keeping track of the abundance of research activity in different areas on different datasets is likely to become increasingly difficult. The community could greatly benefit from an automatic system able to summarize scientific results, e.g., in the form of a leaderboard. In this paper we build two datasets and develop a framework (TDMS-IE) aimed at automatically extracting task, dataset, metric and score from NLP papers, towards the automatic construction of leaderboards. Experiments show that our model outperforms several baselines by a large margin. Our model is a first step towards automatic leaderboard construction, e.g., in the NLP domain.


If you spend time at work checking Facebook or shopping online you might be violating your employer's computer policy. But you might also be committing a federal crime. For the past decade or so, courts have disagreed over the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Some courts have found that an employee who violates a workplace policy, breaches a contract, or breaches a duty of loyalty to his employer may be both civilly and criminally liable under this Act. Computers provide new opportunities for distraction at work; they also provide opportunities for dishonest behavior. While some behavior is clearly criminal, it is not always clear what type of behavior should be criminal under the Act, particularly as social norms about workplace habits and computer use are constantly evolving.This article focuses on the variety of ways courts construe the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which criminalizes some types of access to computers, detailing how courts continue to struggle with an accepted interpretation of what is, and what is not, criminal. A recent highly anticipated case, the Ninth Circuit's en banc United States v. Nosal decision, reflects this discord. In a 9-2 decision, the court held that the ambiguous criminal statute should be given limited applicability because its general purpose is to punish hacking rather than acts such as misappropriation of confidential information. The decision expresses concern that a broad interpretation of the statute would criminalize a range of acts we all engage in on employer networks. The Ninth Circuit's interpretation creates a notable split of opinion with the First, Fifth, Seventh and Eleventh circuit courts of appeal. More recently, the Fourth Circuit followed the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit's narrow interpretation theory thereby furthering the division of opinion on this issue.


Importance
Palmoplantar pustulosis (PPP) is a is a chronic, orphan disease with limited epidemiological data.

Objective
To describe the clinical characteristics, treatments, longitudinal disease course, and health care utilization in adults with PPP across the US.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This retrospective, longitudinal case series from 20 academic dermatology practices in the US included a consecutive sample of 197 adults who met the European Rare and Severe Psoriasis Expert Network consensus definition for PPP between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2018. Data analysis was performed June 2020 to December 2020.

Main Outcomes and Measures
The primary outcome was to describe the patient characteristics, associated medical comorbidities, treatment patterns, complications, and PPP-specific health care utilization.

Results
Of 197 patients, 145 (73.6%) were female, and the mean (SD) age at presentation was 53.0 (12.6) years, with a mean (SD) follow-up time of 22.1 (28.0) months. On initial presentation, 95 (48.2%) patients reported skin pain, and 39 (19.8%) reported difficulty using hands and/or feet. Seventy patients (35.5%) were treated with systemic treatments, and use of more than 20 different systemic therapies was reported. In patients with at least 6 months of follow-up (n = 128), a median (IQR) of 3.7 (4-10) dermatology visits per year were reported; 24 (18.8%) patients had 5 or more visits during the study period.

Conclusions and Relevance
In this case series, PPP was associated with persistent symptoms, continued health care utilization, and a lack of consensus regarding effective treatments, emphasizing the unmet medical need in this population. Additional research is necessary to understand treatment response in these patients.


The creation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has not brought significant gains to the Portuguese economy in terms of real convergence with wealthier eurozone countries. We analyze the causes of the underperformance of the Portuguese economy in the last decade, discuss its growth prospects within the EMU, and make two proposals for urgent institutional reform of the EMU. We argue that, under the prevailing institutional framework, Portugal faces a long period of stagnation, high unemployment, and painful structural reform, and conclude that, in the absence of institutional reform of the EMU, getting out of the eurozone represents a serious political option for Portugal.


The primordial curvature perturbation \zeta may be generated by some curvaton field \sigma, which is negligible during inflation and has more or less negligible interactions until it decays. In the current scenario, the curvaton starts to oscillate while its energy density \rho_\sigma is negligible. We explore the opposite scenario, in which \rho_\sigma drives a few e-folds of inflation before the oscillation begins. In this scenario for generating \zeta it is exceptionally easy to solve the \eta problem; one just has to make the curvaton a string axion, with anomaly-mediated susy breaking which may soon be tested at the LHC. The observed spectral index n can be obtained with a potential V\propto \phi^p for the first inflation; p=1 or 2 is allowed by the current uncertainty in n but the improvement in accuracy promised by Planck may rule out p=1. The predictions include (i) running n'\simeq 0.0026 (0.0013) for p=1 (2) that will probably be observed, (ii) non-gaussianity parameter f_NL \sim -1 that may be observed, (iii) tensor fraction r is probably too small to ever observed.


Abstract Fire plays a large role in structuring sagebrush ecosystems; however, we have little knowledge of how vegetation changes with time as succession proceeds from immediate postfire to mature stands. We sampled at 38 sites in southwest Montana dominated by 3 subspecies of big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.). At each site we subjectively located 1 sample plot representing the burned area and an unburned macroplot in similar, adjacent, unburned vegetation. Canopy cover of sagebrush was estimated, and plants were counted in 10 microplots. Age and height of randomly chosen sagebrush plants in each size class were determined from 5 microplots. Average postfire time to full recovery of mountain big sagebrush (ssp. vasseyana [Rydb.] Beetle) canopy cover was 32 years, shorter for basin (ssp. tridentata) and much longer for Wyoming (ssp. wyomingensis Beetle & Young) big sagebrush. Height recovered at similar rates. There was no difference in canopy cover or height recovery between prescribed fires and wildfires in stands of mountain big sagebrush. We found no relationship between mountain big sagebrush canopy cover recovery and annual precipitation, heat load, or soil texture. Nearly all unburned sagebrush macroplots were uneven-aged, indicating that recruitment was not limited to immediate postfire conditions in any of the subspecies. Average canopy cover of three-tip sagebrush (A. tripartita Rydb.) did not increase following fire, and many three-tip sagebrush plants established from seed instead of sprouting. Our results suggest that the majority of presettlement mountain big sagebrush stands would have been in early to midseral condition in southwest Montana assuming a mean fire interval of 25 years. Only long fire-return intervals will allow stands dominated by Wyoming big sagebrush to remain on the landscape in our study area. We speculate that effects of site-specific factors conducive to sagebrush recovery are small compared to stochastic effects such as fire.


Solvent degradation is a major factor in the cost associated with carbon capture using aqueous amine solutions. Heat stable salts (HSS) from oxidative amine degradation and acidic flue gas components, including SO2, NOx and HCl can accumulate in amine solvents and lead to corrosion, extra energy requirements and reduced capture efficiency. Accurate and reliable quantitation of HSS concentration is essential to monitor solvent degradation and corrosion potential inside the system. Two separate amine solvents were tested in a 0.1 MWth carbon capture pilot plant. 30% Monoethanolamine (MEA) was used as a baseline solvent and compared to a developed amine solvent, CAER-B2. Six HSS were identified in each solvent and the accumulation rates were determined. The observed HSS build-up was similar in magnitude to other published amine based CO2 capture plant data. The 30% MEA solvent accumulates HSS at a higher rate (48 ppm/hr vs. 22 ppm/hr) as the CAER-B2 which can be attributed to higher input SO2 levels during the solvent test campaign. Corrosion benchmark levels of HSS were exceeded for CAER-B2 and 30% MEA within a few days of normal operation.


The spawning period can be a period of particular vulnerability for a species. In hermaphroditic species like the long-lived pen shell Pinna nobilis different costs could be associated with female, male or hermaphrodite stages. Here we evaluate gonad development in a population with few anthropogenic pressures and describe the timing and succession of developmental stages, determine the ratio of the sexes and the condition of the animals. We assess resource mobilisation and associated costs through the relationship between stable isotopes and condition indexes with reproductive parameters and evaluate the role of the adductor muscle as storage organ used in gonad maturation. In our study area only one spawning season is observed, starting in May and peaking in June-July. The onset of spawning coincides with water temperatures of 20 °C. Condition indexes drop during the spawning period and recover afterwards to reach pre-spawning values in November. Stable isotope signals are negatively related to the gonadal condition index, while the CN ratio shows a positive correlation with the same index. Additionally, the muscle condition index sharply decreases after the start of the spawning season, which suggests that P. nobilis uses the reserves stored in the adductor muscle for reproduction as in other Pinnidae species. Reproductive indices and stable isotopes ratios indicate 'capital breeding' as reproductive strategy of the pen shell. Decreased muscle force could mean a higher vulnerability during the summer period, coinciding with the peak in recreational activities involving poaching and anchoring.


Electronic networks have provided new intellectual environments where people can accumulate their cognitive power and have increased the necessity to provide students opportunity to learn together in online CoI (Community of Inquiry) beyond classroom walls. In this respect, this study, as a design experiment, investigated the applicability of the Wiki as a collaborative problem solving tool in Korean secondary gifted educational environments. Fourteen Korean secondary gifted students enrolled in a calculus II course, including two females, in a gifted school in Korea collaboratively solved ten calculus problems for 70 days. In this study, the Wiki functioned as a collective cognitive tool by coalescing individual thinking processes into collective thinking processes on the one hand and by distributing cognitive loads of problem solving over individual cognitions along the logic of solutions and refutations on the other hand. This study provides evidence that the Wiki provided Korean secondary gifted students opportunity to experience collaborative learning and growth of school mathematics and thus realized connected knowing via mathematical contents in online CoI in spite of the inconvenience of writing mathematical expressions using the Wiki. CHAPTER


Purpose: To determine how alterations in segmental intervertebral stiffness at different locations affect passive posteroanterior movements (PAs). Relevance: Passive movements such as PAs are common techniques intended to assess stiffness of individual intervertebral motion segments. PAs were originally considered to produce isolated accessory glides between vertebrae and were described as if the PA movement occurred entirely at the target location. It is now known that PAs involve both local and regional structures, but it is not known, how PAs might be affected by altered mobility in different structures. Methods: A simplified two dimensional computer-based model of the cervical spine was constructed using size and stiffness values from the literature. The model consisted of eight bodies corresponding to the head and cervical vertebrae linked by seven uniaxial joints. Stiffness-displacement curves were plotted for simulations of PA movements to C4/5 with the joints first modelled as constant stiffness (linear springs). The simulations were repeated with the joints modelled as minimal stiffness in the neutral zone and linear interpolations between the known data points at 0.33, 0.66 and 1.00 Nm (non-linear springs). For the linear model, the stiffness of C4/5 (target level) and C3/4 (adjacent level) were separately increased by 50%. For the non-linear model the intervertebral stiffness was increased in two ways for both the target and adjacent intervertebral levels; the size of the neutral zone was decreased and the stiffness within the neutral zone was increased. For each simulated PA movement, the stiffness was plotted against displacement. Results: For the linear model, altering the intervertebral stiffness at either location simply altered the constant stiffness of PA movements. The PA stiffness from the non-linear model consisted of an area of constant stiffness followed by successive 'steps' to levels of greater stiffness. Decreasing the size of the neutral zone resulted in all of the steps occurring earlier in the PA movement, but the height of the steps remaining unchanged. Increasing the stiffness within the neutral zone on the other hand resulted in an increase in the height of the steps rather than a change in their location. For both the linear and non-linear simulations, the target level had a much greater impact on PA stiffness than the adjacent level. Conclusions: If intervertebral stiffness is modelled as linear, it is not possible to differentiate between differences in PAs resulting from increased stiffness in the target and adjacent levels as both have a uniform effect throughout the PA movement. If intervertebral stiffness is modelled as non-linear, reducing the intervertebral mobility in two ways each results in characteristic differences in the pattern of PA stiffness. Implications: The results of this study are consistent with pilot data we have collected where differences in PA mobility of the cervical spine in painful and less painful locations were suggestive of both of the patterns described from the non-linear simulations. Further studies are underway to clarify the relationship between symptoms and PA mobility. Recognising the non-linear behaviour of intervertebral stiffness may result in greater accuracy in the assessment and interpretation of both manual and instrumented assessment of passive movements.


Park and open space give so many advantages for human beings like for integration and socialization, human well-being, economic and environmental. The objective of the study is to rejuvenate Taman Tasik Seri Serdang as a heart of community area to connect Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang commercial area and residential to become livable Serdang Green Town. By analyzing Taman Tasik Seri Serdang, there are some main issues that related to design
such as underutilized green space, insufficient public facilities-jogging track and bicycle lane as well as space for rollerblade and inadequate of connectivity between nodes, greatest extent users to enter the park ; potential green space area not well expanded and utilised, lack of
space for outdoor activity and no special characteristics and a potential of eco linear linkage for institutional and residential purposes. Edu-eco park is picked as a concept for my landscape design by offering more facilities and
activities that interconnected to education and environmental design approach towards Taman Tasik Seri Serdang. This concept is to enhance the lake park that is related to human activities and the current biodiversity and ecosystem in consideration to provide a solution to
the inadequate of connectivity, underutilisation of green space and lack of space for outdoor activity users. Hence, it believes strongly this 850 m perimeter of lake park can maintain and sustain for up- coming genesis and to be a new tourist spot and transit focusing at institutional areas and public park as also a landmark in 2020 together with the first Edu-eco park in Selangor.


Over the last decade there have been a number of attempts to both imagine Manhattan's pre-colonial past and to envisage new ways in which the metropolitan island (and the greater New York area) might more productively relate to its location within a major estuarine environment. Rising sea levels associated with global warming have given a particular focus, not to say sense of urgency, to this enterprise. This essay reviews several of the aforementioned projects and discusses their conceptual parameters with reference to recent debates in Island Studies concerning the concept of the aquapelago. Consideration is given to aspects of the cultural imagination of place and conceptions of the integration of human/urban and natural ecosystems. Drawing on these discussions, the essay outlines the manner in which established analyses of aquapelagic assemblages can be expanded to embrace metropolitan island environments.


The following article is an attempt to provide a coherent theory that international tribunals may use to ground the imposition of vicarious liability for collective crimes. Currently, the case law and the literature is focused on a debate between the Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) doctrine applied by the ICTY and the co-perpetration doctrine applied by the ICC, which defines co-perpetrators as those who have joint control over the collective crime. The latter doctrine, influenced by German criminal law theory, has recently won many converts, both in The Hague and in the Academy, because it allegedly avoids many of the pitfalls and excesses associated with the JCE doctrine, including vicarious liability for actions that fall outside the scope of the criminal plan, the most expansive version of the JCE doctrine (JCE III). The following Article subjects the control theory, the new darling of the professoriate, to renewed scrutiny and questions whether "control" is the most important criteria for collective crimes. This Article defends the claim that the most essential aspect to ground vicarious liability for members of a criminal gang is the mens rea of its individual members. These individuals share with each other what the philosopher Michael Bratman calls a joint or shared intention -- in this case a joint intention that the group commit a collective crime. Through a series of hypothetical examples, I argue that this fact ought to be the most central aspect of the legal doctrine. The original version of JCE doctrine did little to analyze these joint intentions, though it implicitly relied on them, and the co-perpetration theory has sought to sidestep them by emphasizing "control" instead. But this is an overreaction. The proper course is to return mens rea to the center of the debate and develop a nuanced account of joint intentions that avoids the excesses of the JCE doctrine. Instead of replacing JCE with the control theory of perpetration, international courts should reform JCE by eliminating JCE III because it fails to comply with the underlying theory supporting the doctrine.


Existing sequence prediction methods are mostly concerned with time-independent sequences, in which the actual time span between events is irrelevant and the distance between events is simply the difference between their order positions in the sequence. While this time-independent view of sequences is applicable for data such as natural languages, e.g., dealing with words in a sentence, it is inappropriate and inefficient for many real world events that are observed and collected at unequally spaced points of time as they naturally arise, e.g., when a person goes to a grocery store or makes a phone call. The time span between events can carry important information about the sequence dependence of human behaviors. In this work, we propose a set of methods for using time in sequence prediction. Because neural sequence models such as RNN are more amenable for handling token-like input, we propose two methods for time-dependent event representation, based on the intuition on how time is tokenized in everyday life and previous work on embedding contextualization. We also introduce two methods for using next event duration as regularization for training a sequence prediction model. We discuss these methods based on recurrent neural nets. We evaluate these methods as well as baseline models on five datasets that resemble a variety of sequence prediction tasks. The experiments revealed that the proposed methods offer accuracy gain over baseline models in a range of settings.


Background: Headache is a common symptom and sometimes makes patients worry about stroke. Some stroke patients actually have headache. However, the frequency of headache at the onset of stroke and the relationship between headache and outcomes are not fully clarified. Objective: The aim of the study is to clarify frequency of headache, and to compare patients with headache with patients without headache in their characteristics, risk factors and early mortalities. Methods: We confirmed the presence or absence of onset headache in 1671 patients in the Kyoto Stroke Registry. We studied frequencies of headache, age, sex, blood pressure, arrhythmia, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipemia, tobacco and alcohol use and mortality of stroke patients. Results: Headache was observed in 21.4% of stroke patients; 12.0% in cerebral infarction (CI), 29.8% in cerebral hemorrhage (CH), and 93.9% in subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Blood pressure at the first medical examination after stroke was higher in patients with headache. Factors associated with headache were age, diastolic blood pressure, hypertension and hyperlipemia histories, alcohol use, and paresis in CI, age, alcohol and tobacco use and paresis in CH and systolic blood pressure in SAH. The mortality rate 30 days after the stroke event was higher by 6.8% in CI and by 11.4% in CH in patients with headache than that in patients without headache. The hazard ratios for death between patients with headache and patients without headache were 4.94 (1.73 - 14.08, p = 0.003) in CI, and 3.20 (1.10 - 9.36, p = 0.033) in CH. Conclusions: Headache is common in stroke and predicts outcome. Headache is associated with younger age and alcohol use in CI and CH. Patients who could express presence of headache at the onset of CI or CH have higher mortality than patients who could express absence of headache. Headache is important both as an identifier of stroke and as a poor prognostic indicator in stroke.


1. Normal subjects showed an average increase in serum ionized calcium (Ca2+) concentration of 0·11 mmol/l in peripheral venous blood 10 min after onset of bicycle exercise at 70% of maximum aerobic capacity. The corresponding mean rise in serum total calcium concentration was 0·21 mmol/l. 2. The change in serum Ca2+ as result of acidification was studied in 20 normal subjects by carbon dioxide equilibration in vitro followed by measurement of serum Ca2+. The log serum Ca2+ was inversely proportional to serum pH. 3. The Δlog serum Ca2+/ΔpH in vitro was similar to the Δlog serum Caa+/ΔpH in vivo during exercise, this ratio, however, being somewhat greater during the first minute of exercise. 4. Serum Ca2+ returned to normal values about 20 min after stopping exercise as the pH returned to normal, but the fall immediately after stopping exercise was more pronounced than that due to the change in pH, as predicted from the studies in vitro. 5. Blood lactate concentration rose from 0·86 to 8·41 mmol/l after 10 min exercise, but the rise in blood lactate during exercise was slower than the rise in serum Ca2+. Also the fall during the recovery period was delayed compared with the fall in serum Ca2+. 6. It is suggested that the rise in serum Ca2+ during severe muscular exercise might be important for the physiological adaptations during work, and for bone metabolism.


We carried out a study to monitor the time evolution of microstructural and physical properties of snow during temperature gradient metamorphism: a snow slab was subjected to a constant temperature gradient in the vertical direction for 3 weeks in a cold room, and regularly sampled in order to obtain a series of three-dimensional (3-D) images using X-ray microtomography. A large set of properties was then computed from this series of 3-D images: density, specific surface area, correlation lengths, mean and Gaussian curvature distributions, air and ice tortuosities, effective thermal conductivity, and intrinsic permeability. Whenever possible, specific attention was paid to assess these properties along the vertical and horizontal directions, and an anisotropy coefficient defined as the ratio of the vertical over the horizontal values was deduced. The time evolution of these properties, as well as their anisotropy coefficients, was investigated, showing the development of a strong anisotropic behavior during the experiment. Most of the computed physical properties of snow were then compared with two analytical estimates (self-consistent estimates and dilute beds of spheroids) based on the snow density, and the size and anisotropy of the microstructure through the correlation lengths. These models, which require only basic microstructural information, offer rather good estimates of the properties and anisotropy coefficients for our experiment without any fitting parameters. Our results highlight the interplay between the microstructure and physical properties, showing that the physical properties of snow subjected to a temperature gradient cannot be described accurately using only isotropic parameters such as the density and require more refined information. Furthermore, this study constitutes a detailed database on the evolution of snow properties under a temperature gradient, which can be used as a guideline and a validation tool for snow metamorphism models at the micro- or macroscale.


Magnetic monopoles, predicted by Dirac, entered a new paradigm with the discovery of emergent monopoles within dipole lattices known as bulk and artificial spin ices. The observation of monopoles in certain artificial systems, and their absence from other similar structures, is a significant puzzle. Connected artificial spin-ice structures attract much attention in terms of the possibility to read states electrically, and offer the possibility of monopole defect control via well-understood domain wall processes. Nevertheless, full comprehension of the underlying processes is lacking. Here, we establish one of the overriding components. We demonstrate using high-resolution scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) the cooperative process associated with two transverse domain walls that creates the monopole defect in NiFe. The feature size of the array is large compared to the exchange length in the ferromagnet, and the two transverse domain walls give a rich internal structure to the monopole defect vertex. The magnetic Coulomb repulsion between two domain walls carrying the same sign of magnetic charge stabilizes the monopole defects at fields greater than the depinning field for a single wall at that vertex. These observations allow us to form an overview of monopole defect control possibilities from extrinsic pinning as in Co arrays (the extreme extrinsic limit being isolated bar structures) to intrinsic pinning captured here.


We investigate identification of causal parameters in case-control and related studies. The odds ratio in the sample is our main estimand of interest and we articulate its relationship with causal parameters under various scenarios. It turns out that the odds ratio is generally a sharp upper bound for counterfactual relative risk under some monotonicity assumptions, without resorting to strong ignorability, nor to the rare-disease assumption. Further, we propose semparametrically efficient, easy-to-implement, machine-learning-friendly estimators of the aggregated (log) odds ratio by exploiting an explicit form of the efficient influence function. Using our new estimators, we develop methods for causal inference and illustrate the usefulness of our methods by a real-data example.


We examine the effect of total annual food abundance and seasonal availability on the biomass and species richness for frugivorous primates on three continents (n=16 sites) by data on fruit fall. We reveal that the best-fit models for predicting primate biomass include total annual fruit fall (positive), seasonality (negative) and biogeography (Old World>New World and mainland>island) and that these factors explain 56–67% of the variation. For the number of species, the best-fit models include seasonality (negative) and biogeography (Old World>New World and mainland>island) but not total annual fruit fall. Annual temperature has additional effects on primate biomass when the effects of fruits and biogeography are controlled, but there is no such effect on species richness. The present results indicate that, measured on local scales, primate biomass and number of species is affected by the seasonal variation in food availability.


Korlai Portuguese (KP), a Portuguese-based creole only recently discovered by linguists, originated around 1520 on the west coast of India. Initially isolated from its Hindu and Muslim neighbors by social and religious barriers, the small Korlai community lost virtually all Portuguese contact as well after 1740. This volume is the first-ever comprehensive treatment of the formation, linguistic components, and rapidly changing situation of this exotic creole. The product of ten years of research, Korlai Creole Portuguese provides an exciting, in-depth diachronic look at a language that is now showing the strain of intense cultural pressure from the surrounding Marathi-speaking population. Framed in Thomason and Kaufman's 1988 model of contact-induced language change, the author's analysis is enriched by numerous comparisons with sister creoles, apart from medieval Portuguese and Marathi. This book contrastively examines the following areas: phonemic inventories, phonological processes, stress assignment, syllable structure, paradigm restructuring, paradigm use, lexicon, word formation, semantic borrowing, loan translations, grammatical relation marking, pre- and postnominal modification, negation, subject and object deletion, embedding, and word order.


Monitoring fetal wellbeing is a significant problem in modern obstetrics. Clinicians have become increasingly aware of the link between fetal activity and its well-being. Using data acquired by accelerometry sensors, we use TFDs such as the spectrogram and modified B distribution (MBD) to characterize fetal movements in the time-frequency (TF) domain. This paper reports a fetal activity detection method based on the root-mean-square (RMS) of time series and evaluates its performance against real-time ultrasound imaging, taken as the gold standard. The evaluation showed better performance with the RMS-based detector as compared to maternal perception. The evaluation also showed that the detector performance is age-dependent and that fetal movement is characterized by different TF morphology. Time-frequency distributions (TFDs) with better resolution such as MBD are investigated for TF-based techniques for the detection of fetal movements.


This paper illustrates the considerable variation among states in Medicaid eligibility standards for the aged, blind, and disabled. Even within a single state, several income and resource standards may apply to these populations. In addition to Medicaid?s administrative structure and piecemeal evolution, variations are due to states? choices regarding available coverage options. Many states do not take advantage of the broadest options. Financial and political considerations may limit states? choices. Federal rules may also limit state flexibility to expand or simplify coverage in some areas, particularly medically needy programs. Still, the existing options are powerful tools available to states that want to expand or simplify coverage for the aged, blind, and disabled. The authors recommend that the federal government reconsider the link between medically needy income levels and states? AFDC payment levels.


MARINOVA, P., T. POPOVA, V. BANSKALIEVA, E. RAICHEVA, M. IGNATOVA and V. VASILEVA, 2007. Effect of fish oil supplemented diet on the performance, carcass composition and quality in lambs. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 13: 729-737 Two groups of 7 animals (age 75 days ) each of local Zapadnostaroplaninska sheep breed were fed for 28 days controlled iso-nitrogenous diets, containing either no added fat (control) or fish oil (experimental) added at 2.5 % of wet weight of concentrate. Dietary fish oil supplementation did not induce significant changes in the feed intake and average daily gain of the animals. Carcasses from both groups were light <13 kg according to (S) EUROP system and classified in category (B). The carcasses from the fish oil supplemented animals had lighter colour and increased thickness (by 33.16%) of the back fat over m.Longissimus dorsi at the 11th rib. Half carcass weight and the weights of separate carcass cuts tended to be lower in the lambs fed fish oil. The percentage distribution and the weight of the meat, bones and fats in the half carcass did not differ significantly among the groups. The subcutaneous fat deposition differed among the separate cuts in response to fish oil supplementation. Its content was significantly reduced in the loin of the animals from the experimental group (P<0.05). Fish oil increased the intramuscular fat content in the half carcass of the lambs by 16 % and stimulated its deposition in the separate cuts, significantly in the shoulder (P<0.05). The deposition and distribution of body fat observed in this study suggest that the polyunsaturated fatty acids from the fish oil could be a repartitioning factor for carcass fats in lambs and could have a favorable effect on the carcass fatness and quality.


PURPOSE
To demonstrate an objective approach to determining if a negative report from the Radiological Physics Center (RPC) of greater than 10% error is valid or has clinical significance.

METHODS
The discrepancy involved the clinical activity (mgRaEq) of Cs-137 sources, some manufactured by 3M and some by Amersham. Measurements were made in the proprietary RPC Well Counter calibrated by the MD Anderson ADCL and our Well Counter (CNMC, Model 44D) calibrated by the same laboratory as well as the University of Wisconsin ADCL. In addition, we possess an Amersham Cs-137 Check Source that had been calibrated by the UW-ADCL in 2002. All clinical sources were checked in both Well Counters on the first visit. One clinical source and the Check Source were measured in a second visit that occurred 51 days later.

RESULTS
On the initial RPC visit, 9 of 25 sources had a minimum of an 8% discrepancy between the RPC and the Institution, with a maximum of 11%. Contributing errors included using the incorrect straw position by us, an unexplained 2.3% error in the RPC data identified 73 days post-visit, a 2% variation in Chamber Factors for our Well Counter from the two ADCL's. When we use the 2004 value of Air Kerma Strength for the Check Source to determine a Calibration Factor of the Well Counter, all sources were within 0.5% of their decayed value established in 2002.

CONCLUSIONS
This work emphasizes the value of having simple Constancy Check systems in a Quality Assurance program as 'Accuracy' has error bars. The disagreement in calibration data between the ADCL Laboratories, which was at the 2% maximum quoted in their Calibration Reports, is a reminder that there is uncertainty in measurements. Constancy Checks allow one to sort out discrepancies and to answer challenges to the validity of your program.


Development of the osteoblast phenotype requires transcriptional mechanisms that regulate induction of a program of temporally expressed genes. Key components of gene activation, repression, and responsiveness to physiologic mediators require remodeling of the chromatin structure of a gene that renders promoter elements competent for the assembly of macromolecular transcriptional complexes. Here we review evidence that the Runx transcription factors support tissue-specific gene expression and bone formation by contributing to promoter structure, chromatin remodeling, and the integration of independent signaling pathways. In addition, we discuss the role of Runx2 in both activation and negative regulation of gene promoters (osteocalcin, bone sialoprotein, and Runx2/Cbfa1) in relation to the interaction of Runx with co-regulatory proteins in distinct subnuclear foci. The modifications in chromatin organization and transcription of the osteocalcin gene that are influenced by the activities of Runx2/Cbfa1 mediated by interacting proteins (YAP, TLE, SMAD, C/EBP) are emphasized. These functional properties of Runx2 provide novel insights into the requirements for multiple levels of transcriptional control within the context of nuclear architecture to support the convergence of regulatory signals that control tissue-specific gene expression.