Objective. To study and compare plausible factors that might explain varying sales of lipid-lowering drugs (LLDs) in the two neighbouring counties of Hedmark and Oppland in Norway, with a similar age distribution, socioeconomic structure, and access to healthcare services. Design, setting, subjects. Cross-sectional population study comprising 10 598 attendants aged 40, 45, 60, and 75 years in the OPPHED Health Study, 2000–2001 (attendance rate 61%). Main outcome measure. Treatment eligibility (cardiovascular morbidity and risk score), treatment frequency in treatment-eligible subgroups and treatment intensity in terms of achievement of total cholesterol (TC) goal. Results. Proportions eligible for LLD treatment in Hedmark and Oppland were similar. There was no difference in prevalence of LLD use among participants with cardiovascular disease or diabetes (secondary prevention subgroup). However, LLD use among men in the primary prevention subgroup was higher in Hedmark compared with Oppland, 6.3% and 4.1%, respectively (p < 0.05). The same tendency was seen among women. In both sexes, more LLD users in the primary prevention subgroup achieved the TC goal in Hedmark compared with Oppland (p < 0.05). Conclusion and implications. The proportion of the population eligible for LLD treatment in the two counties should imply similar treatment rates in both. Higher LLD treatment frequency and intensity in the primary prevention subgroup in Hedmark are probably both contributing factors that explain the higher sales of LLDs in Hedmark compared with Oppland. Feasible intervention thresholds for primary prevention with concurrent reimbursement rules should be defined in guidelines to avoid unintentional variation in LLD use in the future.


Abstract The objective of this paper is to design and implement a Dynamic Composite Media Service (DCMS) and monitor its performance through Service Monitor (SM). The media services such as translation, scaling and colour reduction services are combined to design composite Video-on-Demand (VoD) service using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) designer and this composition can be changed during run-time based on the changes in the requirements of the user. Performance of these dynamically composed service-oriented applications has to be monitored at application and system level with the existing BPEL exception handling logic. The proposed SM, a monitoring service executed in parallel with each requested media service using multi-threading technology. SM monitors the execution of DCMS which are represented as a BPEL process. The system and application level QoS parameters such as response time, delay, external errors, Quality of Experience (QoE), Service Level Agreement (SLA) violation, percentage of successful completion of individual media services, time at which response time degrades, and media characteristics include frame rate and frame resolution have been monitored at run time. These monitored results are used to know the performance of media services in their operational environments. The effectiveness of SM has been evaluated for Dynamic Composite VoD Service and its results indicate an improvement in the performance of run-time monitoring of media services.


Since the dramatic events of September 11 and Russian President Vladimir Putin's declaration of support for the United States in its efforts to defeat international terrorism, the meaning and implications of Putin's bold move as well as its impact on the future of US-Russian relations have been hotly debated. Some Russian observers feel that the anti-terrorist coalition has no strategic value and has been formed exclusively as a working body to tackle a specific task. They argue that such a decision to cooperate with the United States needs the approval of the Duma and the main political forces in the country. Hence, Putin's decision appears to them to be a tactical move to exploit the political situation for his own benefit. Others believe that the attack against the United States has created a unique window of opportunity for the Russian leader. This latter point of view has found a sympathetic response in the United States. The Nation magazine contributors Stephen Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel have asserted that Putin "became the Bush administration's most valuable ally in the war against terrorism." However, they noted that although "Russia's contribution to the US counter-terror operation in Afghanistan exceeded that of all of America's NATO allies together ... The promise of a historic US-Russian partnership is being squandered by President Bush's polices." It is inevitable that there will be a public controversy over the anti-terrorist coalition's ability to transform into a fundamental, long-term union based on mutual trust and common goals. Can the coalition survive the turbulent currents of international politics, overcome the lingering Cold War mentality on both sides, and evolve into a true partnership? An overview of the alliances of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in past decades may help answer some of these questions. This essay will focus on one crucial aspect of the issue: cooperation in matters of intelligence and security. To better appreciate the principal stand of the Soviet leadership on these problems, it is helpful to recall the words of Joseph Stalin in December 1952: "at all times, adjust to the world situation ... Our main enemy is America. But the principal effort should not be on America proper. Illegal residences should be created first of all in neighboring states." These words summarize the experience of Soviet intelligence and subversive activities of the two previous decades: the NKVD's (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) assistance to Spain and China in the 1930s, the Grand Alliance with the United States and Britain during World War II, and Soviet state security's crucial role in the creation of the Soviet bloc after the war when Eastern European security services were set up in the image of the KGB (Committee for State Security) and overseen by Soviet advisers. Aiding Friends The first contacts of Soviet security organs with similar foreign entities go back to the 1930s when the NKVD--an early predecessor of the KGB--fearing Japanese incursions into the Soviet Far East, helped create and strengthen security establishments in Outer Mongolia and Tuva, two Asiatic countries bordering the USSR. Tuva was later incorporated into the USSR while Mongolia remained a communist outpost in the region, claiming formal independence. During the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet government, although represented on the "nonintervention committee" at the beginning of the conflict in 1936, sent a considerable amount of aid to the Spanish Republicans. Soviet intelligence regularly provided the Republican government with information on the secret plans of Nazi Germany and Italy against the new regime. It helped in the clandestine transfer of hundreds of "volunteers" and tons of arms to Spain from neighboring counties, and, after the Republicans' defeat, aided in the evacuation of the military and political cadre to the USSR. …


Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps. Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. xii + 352 pp. $39.95 cloth. Beautifully written, meticulously researched, firmly anchored in data drawn from several corpora, and brilliantly insightful from start to finish, Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps's Living Narrative is, in the opinion of this reviewer, one of very best books ever published on the subject of conversational storytelling. To be sure, the book will have special appeal for scholars working in such fields as discourse analysis, communication studies, sociolinguistics, and anthropological linguistics. Recent work in narrative theory, however, posits a scale or continuum stretching between stories told in face-to-face interaction and even the most experimental, ludic narratives produced by avant-garde literary authors.1 Accordingly, Ochs and Capps's book is of vital importance to anyone interested in the forms and functions of narrative, literary as well as nonliterary, artistic as well as quotidian. Characterizing narrative as a mode of communication, a resource for cognition, a means of family-, peer-, and institution-based socialization, and an index as well as catalyst of psychosocial development, the authors' approach has broad interdisciplinary relevance. This book is therefore required reading for researchers in every field in which stories are an actual or conceivable object of inquiry, from sociology and rhetoric, to history and gender studies, to philosophy and education. What is more, Ochs and Capps's study constitutes a touch stone-provides a paradigm-for doing scholarly work that is at once carefully nuanced and eminently readable. Accessible to nonexperts, the book nonetheless provides, for specialists in the study of stories, a synoptic survey of previous scholarship, an innovative combination of research methodologies, and a wealth of new insights into narrative. The first part of the book's title exploits a productive grammatical ambiguity, one that sheds light on the authors' holistic approach to narrative analysis. On the one hand, Living Narrative can be parsed as an adjective phrase, in which case Living functions as a modifier denoting the "living" (i.e., face-to-face, everyday, conversational) subtype of storytelling-as opposed to other subtypes that are fixed or written-down. As the authors put it: Living Narrative focuses on ordinary social exchanges in which interlocutors build accounts of life events, rather than on polished narrative performances. The narrators are not renowned storytellers [...] the narrators often are bewildered, surprised, or distressed by some unexpected events and begin recounting so that they may draw conversational partners into discerning the significance of their experiences. [... The narratives told] are shaped and reshaped turn by turn in the course of conversation. (2) Much of the book is devoted to a careful description of the features of such evanescent, living narratives and of the many contexts in which everyday storytelling plays a more or less overt role. On the other hand, however, Living Narrative can also be parsed as a verb phrase, in which case Living functions as a transitive verb with a progressive aspect.2 In turn, Narrative becomes a grammatical object, by analogy with the dream in a phrase like living the dream. In this second gloss, instead of being something that one encounters, now and again, as a variable and intermittent subtype of communicative practice, narrative becomes something that one lives in, through, or by means of, a constant and ineliminable factor in the process by which humans establish and maintain their (social) life. Note that the subtitle of the book-Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling-spans the semantic continuum linking the two grammatical interpretations just outlined. The first chapter presents "A Dimensional Approach to Narrative" (1-58). …


Pressure drops over a packed bed of a pebble bed reactor were investigated. Measurements of porosity and pressure drop over the bed were carried out in a cylindrical packed-bed facility. Air and water were used for the working fluids. There are several parameters influencing the pressure drop in packed beds. One of the most important factors is the wall effect. The inhomogeneous porosity distribution in the bed and the additional wetted surface introduced by the wall cause variation of the pressure drop. The importance of wall effects and porosity can be explained by using different bed-to-particle-diameter ratios. Four different bed-to-particle-diameter ratios were used in these experiments (D/dp = 19, 9.5, 6.33, and 3.65). A comparison is made between the predictions by a number of empirical correlations including the Ergun equation (1952) and that of the Nuclear Safety Standards Commission (KTA) in the literature. Analysis of the data indicates the importance of the bed-to-particle-size ratio on the pressure drop. The comparison between the present and the existing correlations showed that the pressure drop of large bed-to-particle-diameter ratios (D/dp = 19, 9.5, and 6.33) matched very well with the original KTA correlation. However, the published correlations cannot be expected to predict accurate pressure drop for certain conditions, especially for pebble beds with D/dp ≤ 5. An improved correlation was obtained for a small bed-to-particle-diameter ratio by fitting the coefficients of that equation to experimental databases.


ABSTRACT The new mineral saranchinaite, ideally Na2Cu(SO4)2, was found in sublimates of the Saranchinaitovaya fumarole, Naboko Scoria Cone, Tolbachik volcano, Kamchatka, Russia. Its discovery and study has enabled the characterization of the thermal decomposition of kröhnkite and provided an insight into the high-temperature behaviour of other kröhnkite-type materials. Saranchinaite is monoclinic, P21, a = 9.0109(5), b = 15.6355(8), c = 10.1507(5) Å, β = 107.079(2)°, V = 1367.06(12) Å3, Z = 8 and R1 = 0.03. Saranchinaite is a unique mineral in that two of its four independent Cu sites display a very unusual Cu2+ coordination environment with two weak Cu–O bonds of ~2.9–3.0 Å, resulting in [4+1+2] CuO7 polyhedra. Each of the Cu-centred polyhedra shares common corners with SO4 tetrahedra resulting in a [Cu4(SO4)8]8– framework with a complex channel system occupied by Na atoms. Saranchinaite is sensitive to moisture and transforms into kröhnkite within one week when exposed to open air at 87% relative humidity and 25°C. High-temperature X-ray diffraction studies were performed for both kröhnkite (from La Vendida mine, Antofagasta Region, Chile) and saranchinaite. During thermal expansion kröhnkite retains its strongly anisotropic character up to its full dehydration and the formation of saranchinaite at ~200°C, which then transforms back into kröhnkite after exposure to open air. The thermal expansion of saranchinaite is more complex than that of kröhnkite. Saranchinaite is stable up to 475°C with subsequent decomposition into tenorite CuO, thénardite Na2SO4 and unidentified phases.


We consider a natural notion of search trees on graphs, which we show is ubiquitous in various areas of discrete mathematics and computer science. Search trees on graphs can be modified by local operations called rotations, which generalize rotations in binary search trees. The rotation graph of search trees on a graph $G$ is the skeleton of a polytope called the graph associahedron of $G$.We consider the case where the graph $G$ is a tree. We construct a family of trees $G$ on $n$ vertices and pairs of search trees on $G$ such that the minimum number of rotations required to transform one search tree into the other is $\Omega (n\log n)$. This implies that the worst-case diameter of tree associahedra is $\Theta (n\log n)$, which answers a question from Thibault Manneville and Vincent Pilaud. The proof relies on a notion of projection of a search tree which may be of independent interest.


Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals' ability to justify their behavior, which, in turn, leads to unethical behavior. In five studies, we show that participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals, and that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (Experiment 1). In addition, we find that participants who were primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly than those in a control condition (Experiment 2) and that greater ability to justify their dishonest behavior explained the link between creativity and increased dishonesty (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, we demonstrate that dispositional creativity moderates the influence of temporarily priming creativity on dishonest behavior (Experiment 5). The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity.


Abstract This paper discusses forms of epistemic marking that instantiate multiple perspective constructions (see Evans 2005). Such forms express the speaker's and the addressee's simultaneous epistemic perspectives from the point of view of the speaker, crucially relying on the assumptions of the speaker with regard to the addressee's knowledge. The analysis of forms considers established semanto-pragmatic concepts, such as semantic scope, mitigation strategies and communicative intention (as marked by sentence-type) in the exploration of forms. In addition, the notion of knowledge asymmetry is discussed alongside the concepts of epistemic status and stance as tools for a semantic analysis of investigated forms.


- Man has needed and used energy at an increasing rate for the sustenance and well-being since time immemorial. Due to this a lot of energy resources have been exhausted and wasted. Proposal for the utilization of waste energy of foot power with human locomotion is very much relevant and important for highly populated countries like India where the railway station, temples etc., are overcrowded all round the clock .When the flooring is engineered with piezo electric technology, the electrical energy produced by the pressure is captured by floor sensors and converted to an electrical charge by piezo transducers, then stored and used as a power source. And this power source has many applications as in agriculture, home application and street lighting and as energy source for sensors in remote locations.


Abstract. In order to achieve more robust pose tracking and mapping of visual SLAM, the robotics researcher has recently shown a growing interest in utilising multiple camera, which is able to provide more sufficient observations to fulfil the frame registration and map updating tasks. This implies that better pose tracking robustness can be achieved by extending monocular visual SLAM to utilise measurements from multiple cameras.[1] proposed a visual SLAM method using multiple RGB-D cameras, which integrate the observations from multi-camera for camera tracking. However, they ignored the time-drift between the frames obtained by different cameras, which may result at inaccurate positions of observation used for map updating. Besides, loop closure detection was not been implemented. [2] constructed a multiple RGB-D system with three Kinects V2 camera. This work mainly concentrated on the intrinsic and extrinsic calibration and verify the effectiveness of mapping using multiply RGB-D cameras.


We develop a positive mathematical programming model to investigate the impact of climate change on land use in the prairie pothole region of western Canada, with particular focus on wetlands retention. We examine the effect of climate change and biofuel policies that are implemented to mitigate climate change on wetlands retention. Simulation results indicate that a drier climate could decrease wetlands by as much as 38% if the externality benefits of wetlands are considered, but by nearly 80% if they are not. Reductions in wetlands are most pronounced in the south-central areas of the region.


Most earthquake early warning systems (EEWS) developed so far are conceived as either
'regional' (network-based) or 'on-site' (stand-alone) systems. The recent implementation of
nationwide, high dynamic range, dense accelerometer arrays makes now available, potentially
in real time, unsaturated waveforms of moderate-to-large magnitude earthquakes recorded at
very short epicentral distances (<10–20 km). This would allow for a drastic increase of the
early warning lead-time, for example, the time between the alert notification and the arrival
time of potentially destructive waves at a given target site. By analysing strong motion data
from modern accelerograph networks in Japan, Taiwan and Italy, we propose an integrated
regional/on-site early warning method, which can be used in the very first seconds after a
moderate-to-large earthquake to map the most probable damaged zones. The method is based
on the real-time measurement of the period (τ_c) and peak displacement (Pd) parameters at
stations located at increasing distances from the earthquake epicentre. The recorded values
of early warning parameters are compared to threshold values, which are set for a minimum
magnitude 6 and instrumental intensity VII, according to the empirical regression analyses of
strong motion data. At each recording site the alert level is assigned based on a decisional
table with four alert levels defined upon critical values of the parameters Pd and τ_c, which
are set according to the error bounds estimated on the derived prediction equations. Given
a real time, evolutionary estimation of earthquake location from first P arrivals, the method
furnishes an estimation of the extent of potential damage zone as inferred from continuously
updated averages of the period parameter and from mapping of the alert levels determined at
the near-source accelerometer stations. The off-line application of the method to strong motion
records of the M_w 6.3, 2009 Central Italy earthquake shows a very consistent match between
the rapidly predicted (within a few seconds from the first recorded P wave) and observed
damage zone, the latter being mapped from detailed macroseismic surveys a few days after the
event. The proposed approach is suitable for Italy, where, during the last two decades, a dense
network of wide dynamic-range accelerometer arrays has been deployed by the Department of
Civil Protection (DPC), the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) and other
regional research agencies.


Objectives Most frequently, multimorbidity measures available in the literature are heavily dependent on one outcome. We propose a method to construct a global multimorbidity score that incorporates chronic and non-chronic health conditions as well as health-related behaviours and symptoms, regardless of any specific outcome. Method Cross-sectional study of 373 905 Spanish workers who underwent a standardised medical evaluation in 2006. By applying an algorithm based on the results of a multi-correspondence analysis we computed a multimorbitidy score separated by sex.The score distribution was described by age groups and occupational social class for both sexes. Results Two dimensions were generated by the multi-correspondence analysis that explained around 80% of the total variability in both sexes. The main dimension was related to cardiovascular chronic conditions and personal habits, whereas the second dimension included symptoms, in addition to sleep disturbances in women. As compared to women, men showed a higher prevalence of multimorbidity (78% vs 17%), higher scores [mean 14 (SD 11.9) versus mean 9 (SD 9.5)], and a rising trend with age. No differences were found by occupational social class. Conclusions Multimorbidity can reflect clustering of health-related conditions, providing information on its burden and distribution in a specific population By calculating a multimorbidity score that considers both health-related conditions and symptoms, we provide a more holistic approach to multimorbidity, applicable to any database.


Yield and yield components, and protein content of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) were compared in traditional and organic production systems since organic farming has many advantages on environment, animal and human health over traditional production systems. In the study, organic production system, green manure, farmyard manure and effective microorganisms and their combinations were tested as six treatments. Seed yield and some yield components were found higher in the traditional production system than those of organic production systems. The highest protein content was obtained in green manure and farmyard manure applications. Among the organic production systems, green manure and farmyard manure applications could be strongly recommended for organic chickpea producer since the highest seed yields with 2729 in 2007 and 3838 kg ha-1 in 2008 were found in green manure + farmyard manure treatment among the organic production systems


A material weakness in internal control is defined as a significant deficiency, or combination of significant deficiencies, that result in more than a remote likelihood that a material misstatement of the annual or interim financial statement will not be prevented or detected. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Management Assessment of Internal Controls) stipulates that management of publicly listed firms has to evaluate the effectiveness of their internal controls over financial reporting and disclose the identified material weakness. Numerous articles aim to find empirical evidence of factors influencing weakness of internal control. In Indonesia, publicly listed firms are yet obliged to disclose their material weakness of internal control. However, BPK (as the state audit agency) report the material weakness of internal control over entities' financial reporting in their audit report of state-owned enterprises (SOE or BUMN). The report enables us to empirically analyze influencing factors of internal control weakness over BUMN financial reporting. There are four independent variables to be hypothesized to influence internal control weakness (WEAK): profitability (PROFIT), firm size (SIZE), growth rate (GROWTH), and the presence of complex transaction (COMPTRANS). Additionally, we also employ one control variable (FORM or legal form of SOE: Persero or non-Persero). Empirical results show that without control variables, only SIZE is significantly associated with WEAK (for univariate and multivariate analysis). However, the direction of effect of SIZE on WEAK (positive) is contradictory with the hypothesized direction (negative). After including control variables, the power of regression equation is slightly increasing. However, still only SIZE significantly affect WEAK with contradictory direction.


A GIS-based web-mapping system is presented, aimed at providing specialists, stakeholders and population with a simple, while scientifically rigorous, way to obtain information about people exposure to air pollution in the city of Rome (Italy). It combines a geo-spatial visualization with easy access to time dimension and to quantitative information. The study is part of the EXPAH ( Population Exposure to PAHs ) LIFE+ EC Project, which goal is to identify and quantify children and elderly people exposure to PM2.5-bound Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the atmosphere of Rome, and to assess the impact on human health. The core of the system is a GIS, which database contains data and results of the project research activity. They include daily indoor and outdoor ground measurements and daily maps from simulation modeling of atmospheric PAHs and PM2.5 concentration for the period June 2011-May 2012, and daily and average exposure maps. Datasets have been published as time-enabled standard OGC Web Map Services (WMS). A set of web mapping applications query the web services to produce a set of interactive and time-aware thematic maps. Finding effective ways to communicate risk for human health, and environmental determinants for it, is a topical and challenging task: the web mapping system presented is a prototype of a possible model to disseminate scientific results on these items, providing a sight into impacts of air pollution on people living and working in a big city, and shipping information about the overall exposure, its spatial pattern and levels at specific locations.


Double exposure: 'pataphysics' and the Rural in Barry Flanagan's Sculptural Practice

The lecture considers implicit and explicit traces of the land, of landscape, 'pataphysics' and folklore in Barry Flanagan's work, drawing particular attention to his film making between 1968-71. From the outset, when as a student Flanagan claimed Alfred Jarry as his 'anti-father figure' whose presence remained constant throughout his life, he questioned expectations and value structures; literally through his experimentation to test the limits of the genre through material investigations in sand, cloth, happenings and performance, light and film to redefine sculpture's conventions. The forms he created were allusive but abstract. They played games with minimalism and formalism. This continued in his film-making where his use of the medium extends the sculpture's reach to include light and duration as vehicles for creating work.

I will explore the significance of materiality in these films to show how he uses the processes of production to critique the conventions of drawing, modelling, casting, and carving. Only two out of ten films from this period are known to remain intact. They are a hole in the sea (1969) and Sand girl (1970). By referring to these and the diverse forms of documenting the other eight, my presentation will demonstrate possibilities for a tangential reconstruction of filmic affect combing archives, anecdotes, interviews with their ephemeral traces.


This article investigates the extent to which the cognitive science of religion (CSR) and Donald Davidson's semantic holism (DSH) harmonize. We first characterize CSR, philosophical semantics (and more specifically DSH). We then note a prima facie tension between CSR and DSH's view of First-Person Authority (that we know what is meant when we speak in a way that we do not when others speak). If CSR is correct that the causes of religious belief are located in cognitive processes in the mind/brain, then religious insiders might have no idea what they are talking about: only the scholar of CSR would have a chance of knowing what they 'really' mean. The article argues that the resolution to this problem is to take seriously DSH's rejection of semantic bifurcation, specifically rejecting the idea that religious and non-religious language can be sharply distinguished. We conclude by supporting the following claims: (i) common cognitive neural/psychological processes are explanatorily relevant in proposed meaning-theories for any discourse, and (ii) those processes need semantic supplementation with reference to external and naturalistic factors (biological, cultural, environmental etc.). Keywords: cognitive science of religion, cognitive theory, holism, semantics, philosophy of language, religious studies, theory of religion.


Development of an eating disorder involves an interplay of factors, which may be environmental, biological, developmental, genetic, and/or psychological. All eating disorders are more prevalent in females, have an increased propensity for adolescent onset, and are, in most instances, precipitated by stressful life events. The value inherent in using an animal model to investigate the etiology of disordered eating lies in the real-life validity of such a model. Despite clinical evidence that early-life stress and heightened anxiety frequently precede the onset of pathological eating, animal models of eating disorders have not incorporated these findings to any great extent. Nor do most models take into account that the largest population of eating-disordered individuals is comprised of adolescent females and young women. The goals of this thesis were: (i) to present an overview of the physiological mechanisms that underlie stress-induced alterations in feeding systems and eating behaviours; and (ii) to examine potential factors that influence susceptibility to develop binge eating and anorexia using the most well-established animal models of these disorders. The research presented demonstrates that low levels of maternal care in early life are associated with greater vulnerability to the later development of stress-induced binge eating of highly-palatable food and, further, that this heightened vulnerability manifests in females during adolescence. In an activity-based animal model of anorexia nervosa (ABA), young adult animals that experienced early-life maternal separation lost weight faster, ate less, ran more, and required fewer days to reach removal criterion compared to their handled counterparts, with females, in particular, showing increased vulnerability. Finally, using a milder version of the ABA paradigm, early-life maternal separation increased females' susceptibility to ABA during adolescence, but not in adulthood, whereas males' susceptibility to ABA was increased only in adulthood. Together, these findings highlight the interplay between environmental, biological, and developmental factors in the etiology of binge eating and ABA.


All bridges in the United States are required to complete a detailed scour analysis in accordance with the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Hydraulic Engineering Circular Number 18 (HEC-18) standards using predetermined design flood events. Proper scour depth predictions are essential, as over conservative estimates may lead to a bridge being classified as scour critical, leading to a required plan of action and possible costly remediation efforts. Conversely, under conservative estimates could lead to reduced performance of a bridge or even complete failure (Arneson et al. 2012). In Rhode Island there are 127 bridges that are classified as scour critical, requiring the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) to create a detailed plan of action for each bridge and regularly monitor them. Following historic floods in 2010, an evaluation of the scour critical bridges throughout the state was performed, and this study suggested that the current HEC-18 methodology to evaluate scour is over conservative (AECOM 2013). The experiments used to develop the current scour equations found in HEC-18 do not include detailed site characteristics such as complex hydrology, vegetation, cobbles, or soil cohesion which are all common features in Rhode Island. The objective of this study is to evaluate the current scour methodology on selected scour critical bridges in Rhode Island. Four bridges were selected: Three riverine bridges and one bridge crossing a tidal inlet. To estimate information such as flow, velocity, and depth, each bridge site must be modeled using the US Army Corps of Engineer's Hydraulic Engineering Center's River Analysis System (HEC-RAS). Conditions from the 2010 flooding event were used to model the riverine bridges and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was used to model the marine bridge. Scour at each site was predicted using the equations presented in HEC-18 and compared with both past and present scour observations. Finally, the sensitivity of multiple parameters within the HEC-18 equations were evaluated to create an upper and lower bound for the scour prediction during the event of interest. To support the modeling effort, a detailed field testing program was conducted. At each bridge, the local bathymetry and topography was obtained using a combination of interferometric sonar, real-time kinematic, and total station surveying. Information about the bed conditions and existing scour features was obtained from analysis of grab samples, side scan sonar images, and CHIRP sub-bottom profiler. From this data, any existing scour features were noted. Minor scour was present at one of the riverine bridges. Prominent scour features were observed at the tidal bridge. Both features observed in this study have occurred in the past and have been slightly in-filled according to documentation. Cross sections were created from the survey information to accurately model the bridge sites. Steady, one-dimensional HEC-RAS models of the 2010 flooding event were created at the three riverine sites and the associated scour was estimated. For the tidal site, complex unsteady one-dimensional models were created for Hurricane Sandy and the resulting scour was predicted. Predicted and observed values of scour were compared and it was concluded that the scour prediction equations over estimated scour at all four sites where scour analyses were completed. A sensitivity analysis identified variations in the predicted scour depths, providing an upper and lower limit with regards to grain size, angle of attack, Froehlich's length of active flow, and the Manning friction coefficient. It was determined that the selected median grain size plays a significant role on the prediction of scour, varying the estimates by about five feet. The angle of attack significantly affected pier scour, but had minimal effects on abutment scour. Froehlich's length of active flow had an average change of 2.4 feet on abutment scour at the four bridge sites. Finally, the Manning friction coefficient had the smallest changes with an average change in scour of 1.1 feet. It was easily seen that the scour predictions over-predicted the depth of scour as compared to the observed, indicating that the scour prediction equations overestimate scour features in Rhode Island.


miRNAs are important regulators of biological processes in many tissues, including the differentiation and function of brown and white adipocytes. The endoribonuclease dicer is a major component of the miRNA-processing pathway, and in adipose tissue, levels of dicer have been shown to decrease with age, increase with caloric restriction, and influence stress resistance. Here, we demonstrated that mice with a fat-specific KO of dicer develop a form of lipodystrophy that is characterized by loss of intra-abdominal and subcutaneous white fat, severe insulin resistance, and enlargement and "whitening" of interscapular brown fat. Additionally, KO of dicer in cultured brown preadipocytes promoted a white adipocyte-like phenotype and reduced expression of several miRNAs. Brown preadipocyte whitening was partially reversed by expression of miR-365, a miRNA known to promote brown fat differentiation; however, introduction of other miRNAs, including miR-346 and miR-362, also contributed to reversal of the loss of the dicer phenotype. Interestingly, fat samples from patients with HIV-related lipodystrophy exhibited a substantial downregulation of dicer mRNA expression. Together, these findings indicate the importance of miRNA processing in white and brown adipose tissue determination and provide a potential link between this process and HIV-related lipodystrophy.


Developing an approach to governing adaptation to climate change is severely hampered by the dictatorship of the present when the needs of future generations are inadequately represented in current policy making. We posit this problem as a function of the attributes of adaptation policy making, including deep uncertainty and nonstationarity, where past observations are not reliable predictors of future outcomes. Our research links organizational decision-making attributes with adaptation decision making and identifies cases in which adaptation actions cause spillovers, free riding, and distributional impacts. We develop a governing framework for adaptation that we believe will enable policy, planning, and major long-term development decisions to be made appropriately at all levels of government in the face of the deep uncertainty and nonstationarity caused by climate change. Our framework requires that approval of projects with an expected life span of 30 years or more in the built environment include minimum building standards that integrate forecasted climate change impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) intermediate scenario. The intermediate IPCC scenario must be downscaled to include local or regional temperature, water availability, sea level rise, susceptibility to forest fires, and human habitation impacts to minimize climate-change risks to the built environment. The minimum standard is systematically updated every six years to facilitate learning by formal and informal organizations. As a minimum standard, the governance framework allows jurisdictions to take stronger actions to increase their climate resilience and thus maintain system flexibility.


while monitoring the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides bo- realis) in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, the authors incidentally found nesting pairs of Sharp-shinned Hawks (Accipiter striatus). All nesting pairs were located in similar stands with an overstory of either longleaf pine (Pinus palustris), or a mix of loblolly (P. tuedu) and shortleaf pine (P. echinatu). Most of these areas were maintained by frequent prescribed burning and had an open understory of little bluestem (Schizuchyrium scoparium). Four of the five areas with hawk nests were on national forests and are managed for the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker. The fifth area was on private timber industry land managed for timber production. These probably constitute the first confirmed nests ever'of this species in the pineywoods region of eastern Texas and the first in many decades in the pineywoods region of western Louisiana.


The significance of the figure of Osiris cannot be overemphasized. Architectural remains witness to his importance in the past, and stories about him to the interest he has aroused throughout the Ages. Calris was a historical personage, a king who defied after his death. Osiris, the creator sun-god rules supreme. is a god, Osiris took over the functions of the other created gods of nature. He was water, the 'life of the Soul', or Nun; and earth, the nourieher of the body, or the Primaval Hill. Both created by the Sun 'at the first time'. With Osiris, Nun became the inuniation or his exudations, and the Hill the land of Egypt or his burial-place. His death was a violent one: by murder and dismemberment, but followed by resurrection, which gave hope to every Osirlan believer. Water was used, which could ritually rejoin the scattered limbs of the deceased, and provide him with the efflux to live again. In the case of be water led sorely to rebirth. Osiris' death and resurrection are reformed to in the such Osirian narratives as the tale of the two brothers and the story of the blinding of truth, which were in vogue in Pharaonic times. In course of time Osiris won a prominent place in the Egyptian pantheon. When finally Christianity vanquished the ancient religion, certain observances of the Osirian cult were still practices by some Christians in Egypt. The Osiris legend was also interpreted anew by the all-pervading philosophy of Plato. Features of the legend can be traced in certain folk-tales all over the world. These contain the moral: good remains, while evil vanishes. To the Egyptians, Osiris' death meant Nature's death, and his revival her revival, and these two vicissitudes were mythopocically understood as the struggle between Osiris and Seth. The conflict was enacted in myster-plays and ritual in ancient and modern Egypt and Greece, and even in Great Britain. If such folk-tales and customs are carefully scrutinized, their patterns reveal the main Osirian elements of death by mutilation, retreat in vegetation and final resurrection by water.


Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (WM) is a rare disorder of lymphoid and plasma cells characterized by an immunoglobulin M (IgM) monoclonal gammopathy, clinical and immunopathologic similarities with other lymphoproliferative neoplasms, but the etiology of which is unknown. We undertook the first case-control study of this disorder among 65 cases, comprising 87% of all WM patients diagnosed during 1969-1983 in the greater Baltimore, Maryland area. Compared with 213 hospital controls without cancer, cases were slightly better educated, but there were otherwise no differences in sociodemographic factors, history of prior medical conditions, medication use, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, specific occupational exposures, employment in any particular industries or occupations, or familial cancer history. Cases were more likely than controls to have first-degree relatives with a history of pneumonia, diphtheria, rheumatic fever, and diabetes mellitus. An exploratory evaluation of immunologic profiles of first-degree relatives of 48% of families of cases revealed that relatives of two cases had asymptomatic IgM (> 750 mg/dl) monoclonal gammopathy and close to 40% of the 109 evaluated had diverse immunologic abnormalities. Larger population-based case-control studies are needed to further evaluate the suggestive evidence of immune dysfunction among families of WM cases.


The IT Analysis Working Group (AWG) has been formed at CERN across individual computing units and the experiments to attempt a cross cutting analysis of computing infrastructure and application metrics. In this presentation we will describe the first results obtained using medium/long term data (1 months — 1 year) correlating box level metrics, job level metrics from LSF and HTCondor, IO metrics from the physics analysis disk pools (EOS) and networking and application level metrics from the experiment dashboards. We will cover in particular the measurement of hardware performance and prediction of job duration, the latency sensitivity of different job types and a search for bottlenecks with the production job mix in the current infrastructure. The presentation will conclude with the proposal of a small set of metrics to simplify drawing conclusions also in the more constrained environment of public cloud deployments.


Climate change is one of the most important challenges of the 21st Century. As greenhouse gas concentration of the atmosphere has reached the
400ppm threshold of a 2°C global warming on 9 May 2013 and irreversible
tipping points of the climatic system at some point of time have got even more likely, the question of the individual contribution
to climate change becomes more and more virulent. For a long time, the absorption
capacity of the environment has been regarded as limitless, and based on this
perception, the economic entities used the environment for hundreds of years
without constraints. Today, with progress of scientific knowledge, we are now
aware of the possible negative impacts of climate change to environmental,
economic and social systems on Earth. This awareness, however, did not lead to
a significant change of individual behavior, because the perceived individual
contribution to both the anthropogenic cause of climate change and its
mitigation is still regarded as marginal. To encounter this misperception or "diffusion
of environmental responsibility", this article presents an alternative
calculation of the individual contribution to climate change taking the incremental
approach to a tipping point or a 2°C global warming threshold into account.


Introduction Preclinical testing of endovascular devices in an in-vivo environment provides a more realistic simulation of critical vessel viscoelastic and physiologic responses. In comparison, in-vitro and cadaveric models, though indispensible, can only assess structural and mechanical responses. Replicating the tortuosity of the carotid siphon in an in vivo model is a challenging endeavor. Models created by complex surgical maneuvers have previously been described1, often requiring the expertise of a skilled surgical team and considerable expense. We describe a novel porcine model of arterial tortuosity with a quantitative comparison of its geometric features with a population representative carotid siphon acquired from a patient dataset. Materials and Methods Three Yorkshire swine (sex: male, mean weight 46.6 kg) were used for the purposes of the study. The animals were anesthetized and femoral artery access was obtained through a 6F sheath. The microcatheter was successfully navigated to the brachial branch of the axillary artery and a selective digital subtraction angiogram was acquired in both extended and flexed right and left forelimb positions. Three dimensional rotational angiograms (3DRA) were also acquired. The vessel segmentation and centerline was generated using Mimics (Materialise, Leuven, Belgium) and a quantitative measurement of the geometric parameters was obtained as previously described. This was compared with a realistic population representative human carotid siphon model.2 Results The mean average curvature (AC), length and diameter calculated for the arterial segments (average±SE of the mean) in the extended (0.28±0.06 mm−1, 13.99±1.66 mm and 2.60±0.19 mm) and the flexed (0.29±0.02 mm−1, 17.59±0.77 mm and 2.59±0.12 mm) position are similar. In comparison, the values calculated for the population representative carotid siphon are 0.34±0.02 mm−1, 22.60±0.79 mm and 4.15±0.09 mm, respectively. However, positioning the forelimb in the flexed position (Abstract O-023 figure 1A, arrows) increased the number of tortuous bends in comparison to the extended position (Abstract O-023 figure 1B, arrow).Abstract O-023 Figure 1 Conclusion We have described a reproducible in vivo model of arterial tortuosity in the brachial artery in the flexed forelimb position in the swine. This model offers a challenging target for the assessment of guidewires, microcatheters and endovascular implants since it closely mimics the curvature experienced at the carotid siphon.


These data are qualitatively derived interpretive polygon shapefiles defining sediment type and distribution, and physiographic zones of the sea floor from Nahant to Salisbury, Massachusetts. Many of the geophysical data used to create the interpretive layers were collected under a cooperative agreement among the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Initiated in 2003, the primary objective of this program is to develop regional geologic framework information for the management of coastal and marine resources. Accurate data and maps of seafloor-geology are important first steps toward protecting fish habitat, delineating marine resources, and assessing environmental changes because of natural or human effects. The project is focused on the inshore waters of coastal Massachusetts. Data collected during the mapping cooperative involving the USGS have been released in a series of USGS Open-File Reports (http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/coastal_mass/geophydata.html). The interpretations released in this study are for an area extending from the southern tip of Nahant north to Salisbury, Massachusetts. A combination of geophysical and sample data including high-resolution bathymetry and lidar, acoustic-backscatter intensity, seismic-reflection profiles, bottom photographs, and sediment samples was used to create the data interpretations. Most of the nearshore geophysical and sample data (including the bottom photographs) were collected during several cruises between 2000 and 2008. More information about the cruises and the data collected can be found at the Geologic Mapping of the Massachusetts Sea Floor Web page: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/coastal_mass/.


Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) images rely on en face data projections for both qualitative and quantitative interpretation. Both maximum value and mean value projections are commonly used, and many researchers consider them essentially interchangeable approaches. On the contrary, we find that maximum value projection achieves a consistently higher signal-to-noise ratio and higher image contrast across multiple vascular layers, in both healthy eyes and for each disease examined.


This study identifies social interactions and multiple value attachments as key motivators in participation in informal recycling networks in St. John's. Social interactions are defined as opportunities to engage in positive interactions within a network whose value outcomes and personal outcomes for participants are multiple, and which offer multiple value attachment motivations. In the future, formally linking professional recycling with social justice values as well as environmental is recommended.

For professional recyclers, identified value attachments are: Productivity, Community Interaction, Financial Incentive, Personal Freedom and Environmental Stewardship. For customers identified value attachments are: Environmental Stewardship, Hard Work and Inclusive Community.

The multiplicity of values and outcomes ensure the long-term stability of a network through time and through alteration of network conditions. Because the network does not rely upon one motivation and/or value system, its existence is not threatened when one of these motivations and/or values is weakened or absent.

It appears that the professional recyclers in St. John's work within a different context than that of the British Columbian and American recyclers or binners studied in the research highlighted in this report. Because of this, waste management policy makers in St. John's have an opportunity to create unique programs and responses which emerge from the particular everyday contexts within which the informal recycling networks exist in the city. Keeping in mind differences between St. John's professional recycling networks and those studied previously, future policy initiatives can re-imagine the role of recycling in St. John's.


We present a method to predict collisions with objects thrown at a quadrotor using a pair of dynamic vision sensors (DVS). Due to the micro-second temporal resolution of these sensors and the sparsity of their output, the object's trajectory can be estimated with minimal latency. Unlike standard cameras that send frames at a fixed frame rate, a DVS only transmits pixel-level brightness changes ("events") at the time they occur. Our method tracks spherical objects on the image plane using probabilistic trackers that are updated with each incoming event. The object's trajectory is estimated using an Extended Kalman Filter with a mixed state space that allows incorporation of both the object's dynamics and the measurement noise in the image plane. Using error-propagation techniques, we predict a collision if the 3σ-ellipsoid along the predicted trajectory intersects with a safety sphere around the quadrotor. We experimentally demonstrate that our method allows initiating evasive maneuvers early enough to avoid collisions.


The social activity of individuals within communities are limited by their ability to maintain stable relationships with their peers. From a network perspective, this observation translates into empirical limits (Dunbar's number) on the maximal degrees that nodes can have within each of the communities to which they belong. It has been proposed that this constraint arises as a consequence of an individual's limited cognition resources. We show that such group behavior can also be understood as an emerging property of a simple system of two social mechanisms, independent of the actual nature of the network's nodes. Our idea is based on the simple assumption that each individual can, for every social group to which it belongs, develop connections and introduce new members. The resulting model accurately reproduces the limited internal degrees that are observed in real social networks. In fact, using our growth mechanism within a recently introduced structural preferential attachment (SPA) model [1], we reproduce with unprecedented accuracy the community structure, the degree distribution and the realistic internal structure of the communities of actual complex networks. This combined stochastic growth model yields an important additional insight into the community structure of networks: it suggests that vast, sparse, and therefore undetectable, communities are naturally occurring in social networks.


Larvae of marine reef organisms settling into benthic habitats may vary greatly in individual quality. We evaluated potential effects of variation in larval growth rate (1 metric of quality) on larval duration, size-at-settlement, and post-settlement survival of recently settled kelp bass Paralabrax clathratus. We sampled kelp bass daily and weekly from standardized collectors located near the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, Santa Catalina Island, to characterize larval traits of settlers and surviving recruits. Using growth models to fit trajectories of larval otolith growth, we estimated instantaneous larval growth rates and found that these values were good predictors of larval duration and juvenile survival. Kelp bass that grew rapidly as larvae settled ∼8.5 d sooner than the slowest growing individuals; both groups had similar sized individuals at settlement, but fast growing larvae experienced enhanced survival during the first 5 d after settlement relative to slower growing larvae. There is growing evidence suggesting that larval experience continues to exert demographic consequences on subsequent life stages. This helps to explain some of the spatial and temporal variability that characterizes recruitment in marine systems.


This Article explores the concept of intellectual infrastructure in intellectual property law. It makes three principal contributions. First, it builds upon prior work to elaborate an infrastructure-based theory of productivity that encompasses trademark, copyright, and patent law. It is well-recognized that intellectual property law promotes productivity through allowing exclusive rights on refined intellectual creations such as source-identifying marks, particularized expressions, and specific inventions. Somewhat less appreciated, these bodies of law also promote productivity through ensuring wide access to productivity-enabling intellectual infrastructure, such as generic words, ideas, and natural principles, by making these assets ineligible for exclusive rights. This Article argues that this distinction between refined applications, which are eligible for exclusive rights, and foundational infrastructure, which remains subject to liberal access, is critical to promoting commercial, creative, and inventive activity throughout intellectual property law. Second, this Article offers a social account of the definition and evolution of intellectual infrastructure. Infrastructure is a dynamic entity, and intellectual creations subject to exclusive rights can evolve into infrastructure through widespread social appropriation. For example, trademarks can evolve into generic words, particularized expressions can develop into stock literary devices, and inventions can become standard platforms for technological development. This Article argues that trademark and copyright law employ social feedback mechanisms to relax exclusive rights on assets that become intellectual infrastructure and further contends that the absence of such mechanisms in patent law may inhibit technological progress. Trademark and copyright doctrines such as genericide, the idea-expression dichotomy, and the scenes a faire doctrine dynamically relegate refined intellectual creations to the public domain as they achieve infrastructural status. Patent law lacks an analogous mechanism for liberalizing access to patented inventions that achieve this status, such as isolated, purified human embryonic stem cells and information technology standards. While patent law's relatively short term of protection mitigates the harshness of exclusive rights on foundational technologies, this one-size-fits-all approach ignores the reality that certain inventions can become infrastructure well before expiration of the patent term, particularly in rapidly advancing industries such as biotechnology and information technology. Third, this Article draws on the Supreme Court's recent decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. to propose a social feedback mechanism for liberalizing access to patented infrastructure. Specifically, it argues that courts in patent infringement cases should deny injunctions and allow liability rule protection for patented inventions used as infrastructure. Rather than simply relegating these foundational technologies to the public domain, this approach enhances access to patented infrastructure while maintaining incentives to invent.


Providing excellent reference service at the University of Minnesota's Bio-Medical Library has always been a source of pride and a goal to those of us who work at the reference desk. With tightening budgets and shrinking staff numbers, who works at the reference desk is drastically changing. The Bio-Medical Library has always been in a unique position to offer the opportunity of working at the reference desk to staff members across all departments, including those who at other libraries would not normally be given the option to staff the desk. From circulation staff to technical services staff to our fee-based services staff (InfoNOW) to our current project of training a few undergraduate student workers, the Bio-Medical Library staff has created a unique reference desk environment. This article will discuss the many different ways the Bio-Medical Library keeps the reference desk functioning with its unique and multi-departmental staff.


"This thesis is a collection of poems that have developed through the need and hope to bridge gaps of experience, sense, and manifestations of the self. They range widely while sharing threads of sentiment. In this collection I hope to explore the world, that is itself constantly elusive."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


In the Claytronics project, we have used Meld, a logic programming language suitable for writing scalable and concise distributed programs for ensembles. Meld allows declarative code to be compiled into distributed code that can be executed in thousands of computing units. We are now using Meld to program more traditional algorithms that run on multicore machines. We made several modifications to the core language, to the compiler and to the runtime system to take advantage of the characteristics of the target architecture. Our experimental results show that the new compiler and runtime system are capable of exploiting implicit parallelism in programs such as graph algorithms, neural networks and belief propagation algorithms.


The compounds Re(CO)3Br[CH2(S-tim)2] (1) and {Re(CO)3(CH3CN)[CH2(S-tim)2]}(PF6) (2), where tim is 1-methylthioimidazolyl, were prepared in high yields and characterized both in the solid state and in solution. The solid-state structures show that the ligand acts in a chelating binding mode where the eight-member chelate ring adopts twist-boat conformations in both compounds. A comparison of both solid-state IR data for CO stretching frequencies and the solution-phase voltammetric measurements for the Re(1+/2+) couples between 1, 2, and related N,N-chelates of the rhenium tricarbonyl moiety indicate that the CH2(S-tim)2 ligand is a stronger donor than even the ubiquitous dipyridyl ligands. A combination of NMR spectroscopic studies and voltammetric studies revealed that compound 1 undergoes spontaneous ionization to form {Re(CO)3(CH3CN)[CH2(S-tim)2]+}(Br-) in acetonitrile. Ionization does not occur in solvents such as CH2Cl2 or acetone that are less polar and Lewis basic (less coordinating). The equilibrium constant at 293 K for the ionization of 1 in CH3CN is 4.3 x 10(-3). The eight-member chelate rings in each 1 and 2 were found to be conformationally flexible in all solvents, and boat-chair conformers could be identified. Variable-temperature NMR spectroscopic studies were used to elucidate the various kinetic and thermodynamic parameters associated with the energetically accessible twist-boat to twist-boat and twist-boat to boat-chair interconversions.


The current development plan system in Malaysia provides minimal protection for
protected areas. Shortcomings can be seen in policies, decision making
processes, and implementation and enforcement. In addition, existing legislation,
development plan procedures, policies, and guidelines do not support integrated
planning and management for protected areas. This raises concern for those
involved with all aspects of protected area planning and management.
Within this thesis international best practices have been critically reviewed and an
in depth case study of the Klang Gates Ridge National Monument conducted. This
research has confirmed that there is a lack of emphasis on the planning and
management of protected areas in the Malaysian development plan system and
what protection exists is ineffective, poorly managed and not fully implemented.
This situation was further exacerbated by the lack of development plan documents
and guidelines related to protected areas that promote an integrated approach to
development control, decision making and enforcement. The research also
identified that there was a lack of personal to advise on and take good decisions in
relation to environmental matters. Poor consultation with stakeholder and the
public also contribute to the situation in Malaysia.
These shortfalls need immediate remedy. There is already a development plan
system in place to attend to environmental matters but at present it has not been
developed comprehensively. By including planning and management of protected
areas in the development pan it could become a comprehensive and important tool
to ensure protection and conservation of natural resources. Proposals to amend
the legislation, develop a comprehensive environmental management plan, set up
a lead agency to enforce planning and management of protected areas, enhance
public consultation and recruit qualified staff to advise and take good
environmental focused decisions are presented.


Introduction Since 1918, public universities have assumed a central role in educating and equipping social workers with the initial qualifications needed to provide behavioral health support to military service members and their families (Freeman and Bicknell 2008). However, the physical and emotional toll that the War on Terror has taken on soldiers, coupled with the specific licensure requirements for practicing social work in the army, has created the need to develop competent and committed social workers well-versed in military culture. As a result, in 2006 the army and the army surgeon general decided to modify a process that had been in place for nearly a century by establishing a partnership with an accredited university that would allow the army to develop social workers from within the army system. Soon afterward, in June 2007, Colonel Elspeth Ritchie informed CBS News that the army planned to hire at least 25 percent more psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers (DeVries 2007). The need for additional behavioral health providers was recognized following research that revealed that 17 (Hoge et al. 2004) to 20 percent (DeVries 2007) of the soldiers returning home were traumatized. Furthermore, the RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research estimated that the military health care system would receive up to 300,000 new cases involving service members with mental health problems related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Tanielian and Jaycox 2008). The RAND study also discovered that there was a severe shortage of behavioral health providers in the military system. This article describes the relevance of an army-university partnership in view of the cultures of both public higher education and the military graduate education system. The article also outlines the planning model used to navigate through the various issues that should be considered when a university partners with a federal or military agency to deliver an educational program. The intention is to share the experience of forming a partnership with the army rather than to discuss how such a partnership should be formed. The Culture of Higher Education: Economic Efficiency and Shrinking Resources Today, many universities and colleges are feeling the effects of high inflation. Tuition costs and student fees are increasing, certain academic programs are faced with lower student enrollments and smaller budgets, federal and state appropriations are dwindling, and private giving is declining. These problems often result in faculty and staff cutbacks, the termination of academic programs, and even more tightly controlled university spending. The situation is compounded by the higher expectations that today's students and employers have of what universities should offer them. Students are shopping not only for quality academic programs, excellent faculty, and university prestige, but also for convenience, affordability, and accessibility. Employers expect higher education institutions to produce graduates who have the necessary qualifications and skills to do their jobs. However, in certain industries and federal and state organizations, the required employee qualifications and skills are rapidly changing. As a result, employers have discovered that it is often less costly to train their employees on site using distance education than it is to send those employees to university campuses. In this environment of economic change and higher costs, students and employers are making more sophisticated and informed choices about which educational models are most appropriate (Eoyang 2004). In response, higher education administrators are changing their view from the university as an ivory tower, in which students learn through the traditional face-to-face classroom lecture, to one of higher education as intellectual entrepreneurship. This type of entrepreneurship is defined as bringing together academic disciplines and intellectuals from both on and off campus as well as the public and private sectors to promote the integration of intellectual energy and talent. …


The current study aimed to validate the Japanese version of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT-J), a new burnout measure. We conducted an Internet survey to confirm the validity and reliability of the BAT-J, using registered monitors from a Japanese survey company. The first-wave survey was conducted in May 2018, with 1,032 monitors. Of these, 498 participated in the second-wave survey in June 2018 to confirm 1-month test–retest reliability. We examined the factorial validity of the BAT-J core symptoms (BAT-JC) and BAT-J secondary symptoms (BAT-JS), as well as their reliability (internal consistency and test–retest reliability) and construct validity. Factorial validity was examined using confirmatory factor analyses and exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analyses. Convergent and discriminant validity were examined using multitrait–multimethod frameworks well as the average variance explained. Exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor solutions for the BAT-JC, BAT-JS, and BAT-J demonstrated the best fit to the data. They also indicated that the general factor accounted for over two-thirds of the common variance explained. Internal consistency and test–retest reliability were confirmed. Convergent and internal discriminant validity of the BAT-JC were confirmed vis-ȧ-vis burnout, as assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory – General Survey. Moreover, external discriminant validity of the BAT-J was demonstrated for work engagement and workaholism. Finally, both BAT scales showed significant positive relationships with job demands and turnover intention. All validity results were in line with the job demands–resources model. The results of the current study provide the first evidence for the BAT-J's reliability and factorial and construct validity.


The essay presents some examples of women and mystics who have read the Bible differently from the age-old male tradition. They have been able to reinterpret their own experience of faith using a new language, showing a doubtful subjectivity skillfully expressed through irony. They are: Domenica Narducci da Paradiso (+1553), who courageously comments on the famous prohibition ofSt. Paul that "Women must be silent in the assembly" (1Cor 14,34); Arcangela Tarabotti (+1652), who does not fear to denounce the scandal of compulsory wows; Sarah Grimke (+1873), who carries out a reading of the Holy Texts in the light of the emancipation and equality; Elisa Salerno (+1957), who characterizes the roots of female marginalization in the tendentious interpretation of the Bible and accuses the Catholic church of "anti-feministic heresy". Such a presence, which has never exhausted itself throughout the centuries, is becoming more and more important today thanks to the studies and the reflection of female theologians, who are pushing their churches into finding new ways of pursuing equality and diversity, acknowledging an absolute need for the faith in the Trinity.


Size and sex of 'trap-caught lobsters (Homarus americanus) were recorded on commercial and chartered boats from selected areas in the Bay of Fundy during 1979-88. Size-frequency distributions varied considerably between geographic areas, over fishing seasons and between years. A higher proportion of large, mature lobsters was caught in the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy and Passamaquoddy Bay. In contrast, areas off Chance Harbour showed evidence of high recruitment and lobster landings were characterized by a large proportion of smaller lobsters close to the legal minimum size (81 mm carapace length). Some of the factors contributing to changes in size-sex of lobster catches were identified as: (1) seasonal deep-shallow migrations of mature lobsters during summer and autumn (June-November); (2) molting of prerecruits to recruits during summer; and (3) fishing mortality removing legal size lobsters during the fishing season. Egg hatching and egg extrusion in ovigerous females occurred 1-2 weeks earlier in the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy (Alma), compared to the lower reaches (Chance Harbour).


Industrial applications of Ti-based alloys, especially in aerospace, marine and offshore industries, have grown significantly over the years primarily due to their high strength, light weight as well as good fatigue and corrosion-resistance properties. A combination of experimental and numerical studies is necessary to predict a material behavior of such alloys under high strain-rate conditions characterized also by a high level of strains accompanied by high temperatures. A Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) technique is a commonly used experimental method to characterize a dynamic stress-strain response of materials at high strain rates. In a SHPB test, the striker bar is shot against the free end of the incident stress bar, which on impact generates a stress pulse propagating in the incident bar towards the specimen sandwiched between the incident and transmitted bars. An experimental study and a numerical analysis based on a three-dimensional finite element model of the SHPB experiment are performed in this study to assess various features of the underlying mechanics of deformation processes of the alloy tested at high-strain and -strainrate regimes.


Assessment of strain in the longitudinal direction of the arterial wall has been suggested to improve the evaluation of arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis. Recently, we showed the feasibility of ultrasound speckle tracking to assess carotid longitudinal strain in-silico and in-vitro. However, validation in the more challenging in-vivo setting is still lacking. The aim of this study was to validate longitudinal strain assessment in the common carotid artery (CCA) in an animal setup. The left CCAs of five sheep were exposed during Isoflurane anesthesia and sonomicrometry crystals were sutured onto the artery wall to obtain reference longitudinal strain. Ultrasound long-axis images were recorded at baseline and hypertension (Phenylephrine) and an in-house speckle tracking algorithm was applied to estimate longitudinal strain. The estimated strain curves varied cyclically throughout the cardiac cycles, showing a lengthening of the arterial segment in systole. A significant correlation between peak systolic estimated and reference strain was found (r=0.95, p <; 0.001). The results indicate the feasibility of arterial longitudinal strain assessment in-vivo using ultrasound speckle tracking.


Michalska, G., J. Nowachowicz, T. Bucek, P. D. wasilewski and M. kMiecik, 2014. Performance test of young crossbred boars from the Bydgoszcz breeding region in Poland. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 20: 1255-1260 The aim of presented research was performance test analysis of young crossbred boars came from 6 crossing variants conducted in years 2009 and 2010 in Poland, in The Bydgoszcz Breeding Region. The research covered the performance test results of 1911 young crossbred boars conducted with accordance to obligatory modified methodology. The animals came from the following crossing variants (sows breed given in the first position): Hampshire x Duroc (H x D), Hampshire x Pietrain (H x P), Duroc x Hampshire (D x H), Duroc x Pietrain (D x P), Pietrain x Hampshire (P x H) and Pietrain x Duroc (P x D). Duroc x hampshire young crossbred boars had the highest growth rate, the thinnest backfat, the highest height of loin eye and the highest selection index value. The highest meat content in 2009 had animals of Pietrain x Duroc and Hampshire x Pietrain, and in 2010 Duroc x Hampshire pigs. Analysing the results from years 2009 and 2010 it was obsered that the increase of performance test selection index value occurred in crossbreds of Hampshire x Duroc, Hampshire x Pietrain and Pietrain x Duroc (by 4, 4 and 2 points, respectively). In case of the remaining groups of pigs deterioration (by 1-2 points) of performance test selection index has been observed or there was no change.


Fast searching a particular subset in a large number of products attached with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags is of practical importance for a variety of applications, but not yet thoroughly investigated. Since the cardinality of the products can be extremely large, collecting the tag information directly from each of those tags could be highly inefficient. To address the tag searching efficiency in large-scale RFID systems, this paper proposes several algorithms to meet the stringent delay requirement in developing fast tag searching protocols. We formally formulate the tag searching problem in large-scale RFID systems. We propose utilizing compact approximators to efficiently aggregate a large volume of RFID tag information and exchange such information with a two-phase approximation protocol. By estimating the intersection of two compact approximators, the proposed two-phase compact approximator-based tag searching protocol significantly reduces the searching time compared to all possible solutions we can directly borrow from existing studies. We further introduce a scalable cardinality range estimation method that provides inexpensive input for our tag searching protocol. We conduct comprehensive simulations to validate our design. The results demonstrate that the proposed tag searching protocol is highly efficient in terms of both time efficiency and transmission overhead, leading to good applicability and scalability for large-scale RFID systems.


Spectral yield models based on Vegetation Index (VI) and the mechanistic crop simulation models are being widely used for crop yield prediction. However, past experience has shown that the empirical nature of the VI based models and the intensive data requirement of the complex mechanistic models has limited their use for regional and spatial crop yield prediction especially for operational use. The present study was aimed at development of an intermediate method based on the use of remote sensing and the physiological concepts such as the photo-synthetically active solar radiation (PAR) and the fraction of PAR absorbed by the crop (fAPAR) in Monteith's radiation use efficiency based equation (Monteith, 1977) for operational wheat yield forecasting by the Department of Agriculture (DoA). Net Primary Product (NPP) has been computed using the Monteith model and stress has been applied to convert the potential NPP to actual NPP. Wheat grain yield has been computed using the actual NPP and Harvest index. Kalpana-VHRR insolation has been used for deriving the PAR. Maximum radiation use efficiency has been collected from literature and wheat crop mask was derived at MNCFC, New Delhi using RS2-AWiFS data. Water stress has been derived from the Land Surface Water Index (LSWI) which has been derived periodically from the MODIS surface reflectance data (NIR and SWIR1). Temperature stress has been derived from the interpolated daily mean temperature. Results indicated that this model underestimated the yield by 3.45 % as compared to the reported yield at state level and hence can be used to predict wheat yield at state level. This study will be able to provide the spatial wheat yield map, as well as the district-wise and state level aggregated wheat yield forecast. It is possible to operationalize this remote sensing based modified Monteith's efficiency model for future yield forecasting with around 0.15 t ha-1 RMSE at state level.


Education and morality have been essential codes of the Cuban ideological apparatus since the victory of the Revolution in 1959. Rooted deep in the political traditions that created that ideology, drove the rebellion and shaped the Revolution, but reinforced by the following radicalisation and mobilisations, these interrelated codes also informed the seminal experiences of the 1960s educational revolution and underpinned the ethos of the 'New Man'. The same codes, somewhat downplayed in the late 1970s and 1980s, re‐emerged out of the 1990s crisis and the Elián González campaign, to drive the post‐2001 nationwide programme of educational reform, with its explicit goal to reinforce the ideological (and therefore moral) impulse of the revolutionary process and to reinvigorate Cuba's youth as part of the current 'Battle of Ideas'. This article analyses this latest campaign within the historical context of Cuba's ideological development, the perceived moral crisis of the 1990s and the underlying principles guiding the notions of participation, responsibility and character formation.


AbstractNatural fracture networks (NFNs) are used in unconventional reservoir simulators to model pressure and saturation changes in fractured rocks. These fracture networks are often derived from well data or well data combined with a variety of seismic-derived attributes to provide spatial information away from the wells. In cases in which there is a correlation between faults and fractures, the use of a fault indicator can provide additional constraints on the spatial location of the natural fractures. We use a fault attribute based on fault-oriented semblance as a secondary conditioner for the generation of NFNs. In addition, the distribution of automatically extracted faults from the fault-oriented semblance is used to augment the well-derived statistics for natural fracture generation. Without the benefit of this automated fault-extraction solution, to manually extract the fault-statistical information from the seismic data would be prohibitively tedious and time consuming. Finally, we determine, on...


Drawing on discussions of neoliberalism, immaterial labour and exploitation of reality television participants, this article argues that the patients on the British reality show 'Embarrassing Bodies' are exploited because they receive no monetary return for their performances and are frequently shamed on camera. It then seeks to theorize exploited labour on reality television through Debord's notion of the Spectacle. The author argues that in contemporary reality television the Spectacle is amplified through shame and affect. This is particularly evident in programmes that are about health and the body. The spectacular labour depicted in such programmes may serve to attract audiences for entertainment purposes, as well as to discipline them so that they remain healthy and productive workers.


OBJECTIVE
The subunit vaccine strategies and development of various diagnostic reagents for Mycobacterium avium infection relies on the presence of secreted, species-specific mycobacterial antigens. The M. avium 35 kDa protein has been suggested as a candidate for vaccine/diagnostic reagent, specifically for M. avium infection. The present study was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic specificity of the M. avium 35 kDa protein in the Indian population.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Culture filtrate proteins were isolated by growing the bacilli in modified Youman's medium. The 35 kDa protein was purified by high-resolution preparative sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and a blast search was carried out. Western blotting was performed with either monoclonal antibody CS-38 or serum samples of tuberculosis (TB) patients. The 35 kDa-specific immunoglobulin G antibody titer was estimated in the sera of TB patients and healthy individuals by indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

RESULTS
Despite the absence of gene for the 35 kDa protein, the sera of TB patients and TB patient's contacts nonspecifically recognize it. Of 109 TB patients tested, the sera of 84 patients in ELISA (percentage recognition = 87.5%) and 27 of 29 TB patients tested in western immunoblotting (percentage recognition = 93.10%) recognized the M. avium 35 kDa protein, while with sera of TB patient's contacts, the recognition was 50%.

CONCLUSION
Contrary to Western studies, the M. avium 35 kDa protein does not seem to be a good candidate for the specific diagnosis of M. avium infection in the Indian population.


This research examines the relationship between Cognitive Style and Learning Styles of senior officers in the Fire Service and their preferences for different training delivery methods. Data has been gathered from students attending courses at the Fire Service College, in particular those attending the Divisional Command Course (DCC), which is a personal and professional development course for officers aspiring to a senior role in the Fire Service.
Three data gathering instruments were used in the research, the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) (Riding, 1991), the Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) (Honey & Mumford, 1982), and a questionnaire specifically designed to gather students' preference ratings across a range of 14 training delivery methods.
The research examines the psychological and educational derivations of models that underpin the CSA and LSQ instruments in order to help clarify the construct systems used to describe both cognitive and learning style; and to examine their relationships with other psychological constructs.
Further exploration of the relationships between cognitive and learning styles attempts to answer the question as to whether they have similar attributes and also whether the instruments have any practical predictive utility in predicting suitable delivery methodologies for training.
The data findings suggest that the officer students formed a homogeneous group with regard to cognitive style on the 'wholist–analytic' dimension, the tendency for bias towards the analytic end of the scale, but were evenly distributed on the 'verbaliser–imager' dimension. The sample exhibited a more normal distribution of type with regard to learning style (using the LSQ), although there was a tendency for them to be more 'reflector' orientated than a standardized group in the general population.
The sample group showed preferences for certain delivery methods that encouraged interactive participation in the learning process but these did not appear to show any significant correlation with either cognitive style or learning style.


1,2,3,4B. Tech Students, Dept of CSE, Tirumala Engineering College, Narasaropet, Guntur, A.P., India ---------------------------------------------------------------------***---------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract Investor sentiment plays an important role on the stock market. User-generated textual content on the Internet provides a precious source to reflect investor psychology and predicts stock prices as a complement to stock market data. This paper integrates sentiment analysis into a machine learning method based on SVM. Furthermore, we take the day-of-week effect into consideration and construct more reliable and realistic sentiment indexes. Empirical results illustrate that the accuracy of forecasting the movement direction of the SSE 50 Index can be as high as 89.93% with a rise of 18.6% after introducing sentiment variables. And, meanwhile, our model helps investors make wiser decisions. These findings also imply that sentiment probably contains precious information about the asset fundamental values and can be regarded as one of the leading indicators of the stock market.


Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision in Obergefell v. Hodges is the watershed civil rights decision of our time. Since U.S. v. Windsor, each recent victory for same-sex couples in the federal courts evidenced that the legal recognition of same-sex marriages in the U.S. was becoming increasingly secure. Meanwhile, momentum was growing for the visibility of sexual minorities nationally. Yet, is marriage equality the last stop in the pro-LGBTQ movement, or should we expect sexual minorities to advance in other legal arenas? Should we expect that the recent strides in marriage equality from Windsor to Obergefell can somehow leverage broader protections for LGBTQ individuals beyond their marital relationships? This Article begins from the perspective that the marriage equality movement is an increment in the longer process for securing legal protections for sexual minorities. Currently advancements in sexual orientation antidiscrimination have been less even, and now that marriage equality is finally secured, progress for protecting sexual minorities should navigate toward reforms reflected in federal anti-discrimination laws. Although many of the judicial victories in the marriage cases have been specifically effective toward recognizing the relationships of same-sex couples, there have also been some significant judicial strides from post-Windsor cases and Obergefell that could be instrumental for furthering progress in areas of sexual orientation anti-discrimination. This Article discusses how such judicial advances ultimately bolster autonomy rights in sexual identity that anti-discrimination laws, specifically Title VII, ought to protect, but currently do not.


This textbook explores the different aspects of data mining from the fundamentals to the complex data types and their applications, capturing the wide diversity of problem domains for data mining issues. It goes beyond the traditional focus on data mining problems to introduce advanced data types such as text, time series, discrete sequences, spatial data, graph data, and social networks. Until now, no single book has addressed all these topics in a comprehensive and integrated way. The chapters of this book fall into one of three categories: Fundamental chapters: Data mining has four main problems, which correspond to clustering, classification, association pattern mining, and outlier analysis. These chapters comprehensively discuss a wide variety of methods for these problems. Domain chapters: These chapters discuss the specific methods used for different domains of data such as text data, time-series data, sequence data, graph data, and spatial data. Application chapters: These chapters study important applications such as stream mining, Web mining, ranking, recommendations, social networks, and privacy preservation. The domain chapters also have an applied flavor. Appropriate for both introductory and advanced data mining courses, Data Mining: The Textbook balances mathematical details and intuition. It contains the necessary mathematical details for professors and researchers, but it is presented in a simple and intuitive style to improve accessibility for students and industrial practitioners (including those with a limited mathematical background). Numerous illustrations, examples, and exercises are included, with an emphasis on semantically interpretable examples. Praise for Data Mining: The Textbook - As I read through this book, I have already decided to use it in my classes. This is a book written by an outstanding researcher who has made fundamental contributions to data mining, in a way that is both accessible and up to date. The book is complete with theory and practical use cases. Its a must-have for students and professors alike!" -- Qiang Yang, Chair of Computer Science and Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology"This is the most amazing and comprehensive text book on data mining. It covers not only the fundamental problems, such as clustering, classification, outliers and frequent patterns, and different data types, including text, time series, sequences, spatial data and graphs, but also various applications, such as recommenders, Web, social network and privacy. It is a great book for graduate students and researchers as well as practitioners." -- Philip S. Yu, UIC Distinguished Professor and Wexler Chair in Information Technology at University of Illinois at Chicago


Background Patient participation in research and in development of interventions has become a hot topic. Research on health beliefs of stakeholders shows that patients do have other views on health and well-being than health professionals without any experience of a chronic condition themselves (Ubel 2003, Huber 2014). Additionally, including the patients' perspective in research is a necessary condition for reaching patient-related-outcomes (De Wit 2014). Moreover, active involvement of patients is a critical factor for the actual use of an intervention in healthcare (Van Gemert-Pijnen 2011). Thus, including the patients' perspective has significant value. EULAR recommendations aim to stimulate the collaboration with patient (research) partners. Sharing examples may help both patients as health professionals to undertake these valued steps. Objectives To share experiences of the collaboration between patient research partners and health professionals in building an online self-management training, and in developing the framework and outcome measures of research on the efficacy of the intervention. Methods Patient partners and health professionals formed a research team who collaborated in all stages of development and research. The team conducted online focus groups among adult patients, a card sorting task and cluster analyses, all focusing on patients' needs and preferences. Results of this study were used to develop the content and structure of the online intervention. Results Throughout the process experiences and perspectives of patients were used to guide the development and research. Consequently, the results yielded in an online expert-patient guided intervention, tailored to the needs, life, disease stage, and goals of the patient. Hence, the framework of research is customized to these results. In sustaining constructive collaboration in development and research, we found it important to be clear about expectations and roles of all involved in the research team. Conclusions The involvement of patients had major influences on input, the details of the intervention, the framework of research including outcome measures customized to individual needs. To secure collaboration agreement about the roles and (load-taking) capacities of each research partner is essential. Concurrently, it is important to be clear about expectations, responsibilities, and ways of communication between all involved. Including patients in the development of interventions and research benefits all stakeholders and the product that results from the collaboration. References Gemert-Pijnen, J. E. van, Nijland, N., et al. (2011). A holistic framework to improve the uptake and impact of eHealth technologies. Journal of medical Internet research, 13(4). Huber, M. A. S. (2014). Towards a new, dynamic concept of health: Its operationalisation and use in public health and healthcare and in evaluating health effects of food. Ubel, P. A., Loewenstein, G., & Jepson, C. (2003). Whose quality of life? A commentary exploring discrepancies between health state evaluations of patients and the general public. Quality of life Research, 12(6), 599–607. Wit, M. P. de (2014). Patient participation in rheumatology research: A four level responsive evaluation. Disclosure of Interest None declared


Millions of computer end users need to perform tasks over large spreadsheet data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. We present a programming by example methodology that allows end users to automate such repetitive tasks. Our methodology involves designing a domain-specific language and developing a synthesis algorithm that can learn programs in that language from user-provided examples. We present instantiations of this methodology for particular domains of tasks: (a) syntactic transformations of strings using restricted forms of regular expressions, conditionals, and loops, (b) semantic transformations of strings involving lookup in relational tables, and (c) layout transformations on spreadsheet tables. We have implemented this technology as an add-in for the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet system and have evaluated it successfully over several benchmarks picked from various Excel help forums.


Purpose To assess the relationship of intraocular pressure (IOP) to age, sex, and other demographic and health characteristics in a Korean cohort. Methods This retrospective cross-sectional study included subjects (n = 155,198) without glaucoma. All participants underwent health screening at the Kangbuk Samsung Hospital from August 2012 to July 2013. Anthropometric measurements, systemic health characteristics, and ocular examination including noncontact tonometry were performed on all participants. Additionally, sociodemographic and behavioral questionnaires were obtained. The systemic variables were analyzed by multiple regression analysis to identify their relationship with IOP. Results The mean IOP tended to be highest in subjects in their 50s and lowest in subjects in their 20s and 60s for both Korean men and women. This pattern remained the same after adjusting for several demographic and health characteristics. The mean IOP for men was significantly higher than that for women (p < 0.001), but the difference between sexes decreased with increasing age. In the univariate analysis, almost all systemic factors showed a positive association with IOP except for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. By multiple regression analysis, IOP was positively associated with sex (male), current smoking status, systolic blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, body mass index, total cholesterol, and high-density lipoprotein (p ⩽ 0.001). Conclusions In a Korean cohort, the mean IOP was highest in subjects in their 50s. The mean IOP for men was significantly higher than that for women. Several systemic factors were significantly correlated with IOP.