Learning about a customer's preferences is a critical first step in the customization process. Broadly, firms adopt two alternative learning approaches: (1) ask, i.e., solicit preference information directly from the customer (S-Learning), or (2) infer, i.e., deduce preference information based on past observations of the customer as well as those of other customers (O-Learning). Most existing research on customization strategy focuses on a firm's marketing mix decisions, implicitly assuming away how the firm learns about customers. We contribute to this literature by examining how a firm's use of a specific learning approach impacts competition, particularly its rival's choice of learning approach. We find that O-Learning provides a credible signal for relaxing price competition, while S-Learning does not. Further, S-Learning by a firm creates a disincentive for rivals to also invest in S-Learning. We survey business customers and find significant evidence supporting our theory. We conclude with several managerial implications of our theory including how a firm can optimally select its learning strategy in order to impact its competitive environment.


Are intellectual property rights (IPRs) really rights? And if so, what kind of rights? Most importantly, what difference does it make that they are rights – what practical import does this carry? These are the questions I take up in this Chapter, which is forthcoming as part of The Oxford Handbook of Intellectual Property Law (Rochelle C. Dreyfuss & Justine Pila, eds., forthcoming 2017).
I begin by clearing up some misunderstandings about legal rights. The primary one is that rights are absolute. A secondary one is that one need do nothing to obtain or exercise a right, and that therefore any legal entitlement that requires affirmative steps to secure cannot be a right. Next I consider a prominent critique of the idea that IP rights are property rights, which holds that they are more akin to government regulation. After that I turn to an enumeration of the details of IP rights, described in the terms laid down by the prominent theorist of legal relations, Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld.
From this I distill the key attributes of property as it applies to IP rights:
1. It is 'good against the world' – no prior contract or other legal relationship is required to create a duty on the part of third parties to respect the right;
2. It defines uses of an asset that are under control of the owner; it demarcates what is 'in' and 'out' of the owner's ambit of authority;
3. It is broadly transferable; yet the owner retains residual rights over those aspects of the right that are not transferred. In addition, it includes a special form of quasi-transfer power, in that it permits the owner alone to decide whether and when to enforce the right.
Taking up the theme of IP as a (non-absolute) form of property, I then consider three key limits. IPRs are:
1. Contingent; they are subject to government processes to acquire or enforce, such as perfection, approval, maintenance, and the like;
2. Time-limited; most IP rights have specified terms, and even those that do not will usually lapse at some time;
3. Bounded in scope; the class of assets the IP rights cover is subject to boundaries drawn with more or less precision.
None of these limits is enough to disqualify IP from being property. But altogether they impose significant restrictions on the strength or power of an IP right.
After these general points, two special problems then draw my attention: injunctions in IP law and constitutional takings of IP rights. Finally, I conclude with some observations about why, when properly framed, engaging in 'rights talk' about IP does not inexorably point to absolutist views. Throughout I emphasize two highly consistent thoughts: IP rights are real rights; but they are limited rights. They dominate some interests but not all, and they are subject to restrictions and limitations that third parties sometimes hold as rights also.


The increasing use of non-woven materials, such as breathable roofing membranes (BRMs) within buildings that either currently contain a bat roost or may do in the future, has led to concerns over bat safety by those involved in bat conservation in the UK. Whilst some information is currently available on the selection of roosts in roofs by bats, along with technical specifications of individual membranes, there is no research that has investigated the interactions between the two. Prior to determining the methods needed to test interactions between bats and BRMs, a series of preliminary investigations were conducted; including research and physical measurements on selected anatomical features of bats commonly found roosting in buildings in the UK. Data on body size and shape were gathered from a combination of experimental measurements of bat specimens (deceased) and information collated from literature. Data on bat claw morphology were collected by applying a method used to measure raptor talons, measurements obtained included; width, length and the curvature (hook ratio) of their claws. The results of this research provide additional information about bat body and claw morphometrics. It was found that bat species/group had a significant effect upon the length, width and curvature of the claws (to varying degrees). Pipistrelle species have the shortest and third narrowest claws, whereas serotines have the longest and widest claws on average. The curvature of the claws does not vary greatly between species; however, more variation was seen in the lower portion of the claws. The results from this research also demonstrate that the current standard industry tests do not represent the fine scale at which a bats claws interact with their roosting surfaces. Consequently, this information can be used to aid the development of industry tests for determining the suitability of BRMs for use in bat roosts.


Objective: To evaluate whether virtual reality interventions, including interactive gaming systems, are effective at improving balance in adults with impaired balance. Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized control trials. Methods: Studies were identified from electronic databases (CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL, PyschINFO, PyschBITE, OTseeker, Ei Compendex, and Inspec) searched to November 2011, and repeated in November 2012. Two reviewers selected studies meeting inclusion criteria and quality of included studies assessed using a Joanna Briggs Institute appraisal tool. Data was pooled and a meta-analysis completed. The systematic review was reported following guidance of the PRISMA statement. Results: A total of 251 articles were screened. Eight randomized control trials were included. These studies presented the results of 239 participants, with various aetiologies, and used a variety of virtual reality systems. The number of falls was documented in only one included study. Meta-analysis was completed on data from the Berg Balance Scale, walking speed, 30 second sit-to-stand test, and Timed Up and Go Test, and favoured standard therapy when compared with standard plus virtual reality interventions. Conclusions: There was a notable inconsistency in the outcome measures, experimental, and control interventions used within the included studies. The pooled results of the studies showed no significant difference. Therefore this review cannot support nor refute the use of virtual reality interventions, rather than conventional physiotherapy, to improve balance in adults with impaired balance.


Being a growing problem, plagiarism is generally defined as "literary theft" and "academic dishonesty" in the literature, and it is really has to be well-informed on this topic to prevent the problem and stick to the ethical principles. This paper presents a survey on plagiarism detection systems, a summary of several plagiarism types, techniques, and algorithms is provided. Common feature of deferent detection systems are described. At the end of this paper authors propose a web enabled system to detect plagiarism in documents , code and images, also this system could be used in E-Learning, E-Journal, and E-Business.


In the post-modern era the global conscience has to deal with various dilemmas, which are made more complex by media interaction. These issues mostly pertain to the bioethical sphere of human experience, i.e. the discursive sphere linked to the necessity to overcome any interpretative routine of marked separation between 'public' and 'private'. A specific effect of such an enunciative claim can be seen in the social debate on euthanasia recently hosted by the media since through subtle argumentative strategies it focuses on different interpretative repertoires of the dignity of human life. The present paper aims to discuss the results of a qualitative study, the aim of which is to investigate certain segments of the "dialogue about euthanasia", collected from the Italian media (press, television, internet). Diatextual analysis has been adopted as a methodological tool to highlight the recurrence of specific rhetorical assets of both pro and contra positions.


Controlling the crystallographic structure in olivine lithium phosphates is crucial for obtaining superior electronic (J. Electrochem. Soc., 2002, 149, A1184-A1189) and ionic conductivities (Electrochem. Solid-State Lett., 2006, 9, A352-A355; Electrochem. Solid-State Lett., 2006, 9, A439-A442; Nat. Mater., 2002, 1, 123-128), and stability, for use as cathodes in lithium batteries. Here, we report a completely new approach to enhance Li+ extraction and transport in LiCoPO4 through Fe doping. We show that preferential Fe occupation of the 4c sites suppresses 4a–4c antisite mixing of Li and Co, thereby stabilizing the olivine structure by compensating for the Co-encapsulating oxygen octahedron shrinkage due to Co2+ oxidation during Li+ extraction. The structural stabilization gives rise to ∼10% higher charge capacity at a two-fold lower resistance than the undoped counterparts besides accelerating the intercalation/extraction kinetics. Our findings provide key atomistic-level insights that pave the way for the rational design and realization of new types of metal-doped cathode materials for lithium batteries and related applications.


This paper describes an attempt to measure resources used to produce Individual Development Accounts in a program run by the Community Action Project of Tulsa County. The experimental design of the program—participants were selected from applicants at random—aims to inform the overall evaluation in the American Dream Demonstration of whether IDAs are likely to achieve their intended purposes costeffectively. Financial benefit-cost analysis is a key part of this evaluation, and the estimates of resource use in this paper are key inputs to the financial benefit-cost analysis. Financial costs are estimated from the points of view of seven groups of stakeholders: IDA participants, non-participants, the federal government, state and local government, the employees of IDA programs, private donors, and society as a whole. This paper documents estimates of cost from the point of view of society as a whole (about $53,000 for 1998 and about $135,000 for 1999) and acts as template to guide cost-measurement for the rest of the years of the project. Resources consumed (costs) by the experimental program are taken as the stock of resources at the start of the year, minus the stock of resources at the end of the year, minus resource inflows during the year. There is no attempt to measure costs that cannot be valued in financial terms nor to measure benefits of any kind. Thus, this paper is not a financial benefit-cost analysis. Subject to a plethora of caveats, qualifications, and assumptions, the broad result derived here that participation in the experimental program cost society about $125 per participant-month. Resources Used to Produce Individual Development Accounts in the First Two Years of the Experimental Program of the American Dream Demonstration at the Community Action Project of Tulsa County


The ecosystem is used as an evolutionary paradigm of natural laws for the distributed information retrieval via mobile agents to allow the computational load to be added to server nodes of wireless networks, while reducing the traffic on communication links. Based on the Food Web model, a set of computational rules of natural balance form the outer stage to control the evolution of mobile agents providing multimedia services with a wireless Internet protocol WIP. The evolutionary model shows how mobile agents should behave with the WIP, in particular, how mobile agents can cooperate, compete and learn from each other, based on an underlying competition for radio network resources to establish the wireless connections to support the quality of service QoS of user requests. Mobile agents are also allowed to clone themselves, propagate and communicate with other agents. A two-layer model is proposed for agent evolution: the outer layer is based on the law of natural balancing, the inner layer is based on a discrete version of a Kohonen self-organizing feature map SOFM to distribute network resources to meet QoS requirements. The former is embedded in the higher OSI layers of the WIP, while the latter is used in the resource management procedures of Layer 2 and 3 of the protocol. Algorithms for the distributed computation of mobile agent evolutionary behavior are developed by adding a learning state to the agent evolution state diagram. When an agent is in an indeterminate state, it can communicate to other agents. Computing models can be replicated from other agents. Then the agents transitions to the mutating state to wait for a new information-retrieval goal. When a wireless terminal or station lacks a network resource, an agent in the suspending state can change its policy to submit to the environment before it transitions to the searching state. The agents learn the facts of agent state information entered into an external database. In the cloning process, two agents on a host station sharing a common goal can be merged or married to compose a new agent. Application of the two-layer set of algorithms for mobile agent evolution, performed in a distributed processing environment, is made to the QoS management functions of the IP multimedia IM sub-network of the third generation 3G Wideband Code-division Multiple Access W-CDMA wireless network.


It is the same in almost every field of endeavor: the big stars shine so brightly they blot out many others whose efforts are also worthwhile. Over the past century of recordings, we have had many famous and excellent pianists who have made major recording careers: Sviatoslav Richter, Artur Schnabel, Artur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Backhaus, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and many others. But record-collecting pianophiles know that there are also many major pianists who are forgotten by all but a handful of specialists. Here are a few of my favorites. ROSITA RENARD A hardcore pianophile friend of mine once told me that he was listening to my radio program, "The Grand Piano," and heard me doing a preview for the next show. I referred to "the greatest pianist you've never heard of," and he thought immediately of Rosita Renard (1894-1949). And he was right. Renard has one of the sparsest discographies of any major pianist. Although she played several times in the United States and Europe, she spent most of her career in Chile, where she recorded a handful of 78 rpms for Victor and Brunswick. During World War II she was discovered by the conductor Erich Kleiber, and in 1949 she performed in New York, at Carnegie Hall, for the first time in more than two decades. Her concert was a great success, and she returned to Chile to prepare for a United States tour. But she contracted encephalitis, and died at the age of fifty-five. Fortunately, Renard's Carnegie Hall recital was recorded. It was originally issued in a limited LP edition by the Society of Friends of Music of Bogota (perhaps a bogus organization, since the LPs were only issued in the United States), then reissued by International Piano Archives (IPA 120/121, 1977). Its current edition on compact disc (VAI Audio VAIA/IPA 1028-2) is supplemented by a generous selection of Renard's 78s. The recital shows a great pianist at the very highest level. She plays Bach's Partita no. 1, BWV 825, and Mozart's Sonata in A Minor, K. 310, very swiftly and cleanly, and with tremendous drama. Her Chopin etudes are breathtaking. This is, frankly, one of the greatest recorded live piano recitals ever issued. While the material from the 78s is not as exciting, lacking the stimulus of the live audience, it is still consistent with the level of pianism and musicianship heard in the live concert. There are a few more Renard 78s not part of this collection, including a set of the same Mozart sonata. Some Renard Beethoven performances, from 78s and airchecks, were included on a private LP so obscure that it does not have a label name. Until some enterprising label picks up these items for another compact disc, they will be inaccessible to nearly everyone. But the VAL set is enough to convince us of Renard's greatness. RICHARD BUHLIG Buhlig (1880-1952) was an American pianist and teacher. He made no commercial recordings at all, only a few piano rolls. At his home in Los Angeles in 1938, he made some private acetates, playing in his living room, which reveal him to have been a titan. Unfortunately, a serious memory slip mars the fugue in Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata, no. 29, but otherwise (and throughout the Sonata no. 30 as well) the playing is engrossing and mesmerising, as it is in Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue and an excerpt from book 2 of his Well-Tempered Clavier. The sound quality of these old home recordings is quite listenable. All of this material was issued as Dante HPC 015, but the recording has now disappeared from the catalogs with the collapse of the company in 2001. It is well worth searching for. YOURA GULLER This Romanian Jewish pianist (her religion is relevant due to her obscurity during the Second World War) was born in 1895 and died in 1980. In the 1920s, she had a substantial career, including associations with numerous composers and such highlights as performing the cycle of Beethoven violin sonatas with Joseph Szigeti. …


While researchers have conceptualized both dynamic and substantive capabilities in a variety of ways, there are still no established measures for either dynamic or substantive capabilities. Although learning has been referred to as a specific type of process underlying the evolution and development of dynamic capabilities, the deep connection between dynamic capabilities and organizational process research has not yet been adequately explored. There is a need for conceptualization and operationalization of these different aspects of the learning process. In this paper, we address these gaps in the literature by drawing upon concepts from the organizational learning, marketing and strategic management fields to understand better and define dynamic and substantive capabilities concepts. First, we define dynamic and substantive capabilities and form a theoretical foundation for their conceptualization. We then develop and test specific item measures for each construct. Our findings support our conceptualization and measurement of both these important aspects of organizational performance.


Following Ronen Palan's The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the offshore as the 'bifurcation of the nation state': the state splits itself in two by continuing to govern those areas that remain easy to legislate while surrendering to the international realm those which do not. Connell considers how the offshore can be understood as a form of cosmopolitanism, with a particular emphasis on the way that the obligations of the state are stretched to accommodate foreign businesses, foreign capital and even foreign citizens. Yet, as Connell demonstrates, the cosmopolitan promise of the offshore conceals the double nature of the nation-state which functions both as a node for discursive community formation and, simultaneously, as cover for the evasion of any communal responsibilities that this might imply. Reading Lawrence Chua's Gold by the Inch (1998), Rana Dasgupta's Tokyo Cancelled (2006) and Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger (2008) Connell examines how the idea of national belonging struggles to survive in representations of the offshore. In particular Connell's analysis shows that the difficulty that arises from trying to represent the offshore leads these texts to open up new perspectives on global capitalism by focussing upon its differential relationships to the state.


This Article defies the conventional wisdom that all charitable distributions from a class action settlement fund are types of cy pres. Instead, it proposes a radical delineation between "cy pres remainders" (meaning settlement funds left over after individual monetary distributions) and "charitable settlements" (meaning money initially distributed to charities as part of class action settlements). While both have cy pres roots, these two settlement structures have been conflated, jeopardizing the potential utility of charitable settlements. After articulating more precise nomenclature for these distinct distribution methods, this Article justifies why we must preserve charitable settlements. This defense is particularly timely, as charitable settlements face growing attacks spurred by Chief Justice Roberts' comments in the 2014 Marek v. Lane appeal. Once unchained from the strictures of the cy pres doctrine, charitable settlements become a tool to promote the larger regulatory objectives underlying class action procedures, including access to justice and deterrence.


High‐frequency beach water table fluctuations due to wave run‐up and run‐down have been observed in the field [Waddell, 1976]. Such fluctuations affect the infiltration/exfiltration process across the beach face and the interstitial oxygenation process in the beach ecosystem. Accurate representation of high‐frequency water table fluctuations is of importance in the modeling of (1) the interaction between seawater and groundwater, more important, the effects on swash sediment transport and (2) the biological activities in the beach ecosystem. Capillarity effects provide a mechanism for high‐frequency water table fluctuations. Previous modeling approaches adopted the assumption of saturated flow only and failed to predict the propagation of high‐frequency fluctuations in the aquifer. In this paper we develop a modified kinematic boundary condition (kbc) for the water table which incorporates capillarity effects. The application of this kbc in a boundary element model enables the simulation of high‐frequency water table fluctuations due to wave run‐up. Numerical tests were carried out for a rectangular domain with small‐amplitude oscillations; the behavior of water table responses was found to be similar to that predicted by an analytical solution based on the one‐dimensional Boussinesq equation. The model was also applied to simulate the water table response to wave run‐up on a sloping beach. The results showed similar features of water table fluctuations observed in the field. In particular, these fluctuations are standing wave‐like with the amplitude becoming increasingly damped inland. We conclude that the modified kbc presented here is a reasonable approximation of capillarity effects on beach water table fluctuations. However, further model validation is necessary before the model can confidently be used to simulate high‐frequency water table fluctuations due to wave run‐up.


We characterize the realized ecological niches of 133 phytoplankton taxa in the open ocean based on observations from the MAREDAT initiative and a statistical species distribution model (MaxEnt). The models find that the physical conditions (mixed layer depth, temperature, light) govern large‐scale patterns in phytoplankton biogeography over nutrient availability. Strongest differences in the realized niche centers were found between diatoms and coccolithophores. Diatoms (87 species) occur in habitats with significantly lower temperatures, light intensity and salinity, with deeper mixed layers, and with higher nitrate and silicate concentrations than coccolithophores (40 species). However, we could not statistically separate the realized niches of coccolithophores from those of diazotrophs (two genera) and picophytoplankton (two genera). Phaeocystis (two species) niches only clearly differed from diatom niches for temperature. While the realized niches of diatoms cover the majority of niche space, the niches of picophytoplankton and coccolithophores spread across an intermediate fraction and diazotroph and colonial Phaeocystis niches only occur within a relatively confined range of environmental conditions in the open ocean. Our estimates of the realized niches roughly match the predictions of Reynolds' C‐S‐R model for the global ocean, namely that taxa classified as nutrient stress tolerant have niches at lower nutrient and higher irradiance conditions than light stress tolerant taxa. Yet, there is considerable within‐class variability in niche centers, and many taxa occupy broad niches, suggesting that more complex approaches may be necessary to capture all aspects of phytoplankton ecology.


Study question What has been the effect on purchases of beverages from stores in Mexico one year after implementation of the excise tax on sugar sweetened beverages? Methods In this observational study the authors used data on the purchase of beverages in Mexico from January 2012 to December 2014 from an unbalanced panel of 6253 households providing 205 112 observations in 53 cities with more than 50 000 inhabitants. To test whether the post-tax trend in purchases was significantly different from the pretax trend, the authors used a difference in difference fixed effects model, which adjusts for both macroeconomic variables that can affect the purchase of beverages over time, and pre-existing trends. The variables used in the analysis included demographic information on household composition (age and sex of household members) and socioeconomic status (low, middle, and high). The authors compared the predicted volumes (mL/capita/day) of taxed and untaxed beverages purchased in 2014—the observed post-tax period—with the estimated volumes that would have been purchased if the tax had not been implemented (counterfactual) based on pretax trends. Study answer and limitations Relative to the counterfactual in 2014, purchases of taxed beverages decreased by an average of 6% (−12 mL/capita/day), and decreased at an increasing rate up to a 12% decline by December 2014. All three socioeconomic groups reduced purchases of taxed beverages, but reductions were higher among the households of low socioeconomic status, averaging a 9% decline during 2014, and up to a 17% decrease by December 2014 compared with pretax trends. Purchases of untaxed beverages were 4% (36 mL/capita/day) higher than the counterfactual, mainly driven by an increase in purchases of bottled plain water. What this study adds The tax on sugar sweetened beverages was associated with reductions in purchases of taxed beverages and increases in purchases of untaxed beverages. Continued monitoring is needed to understand purchases longer term, potential substitutions, and health implications. Funding, competing interests, data sharing This work was supported by grants from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública and the Carolina Population Center. The authors have no competing interests. No additional data are available.


i»?Private higher education institutions (PrHEIs) are utilized to complement public provision due to financial constraints faced in public provision. However, increasing private provision has raised interesting questions as to who gets educated in these PrHEIs. Is increasing private supply enlarging the circle of opportunity to reach those who might otherwise have been unable to enter university or college? In other words, has the explosion in private supply translated into greater inclusion or increased exclusion? This paper explores the access and equity issues in Malaysia's private higher education system. Malaysia is an interesting case study due to the significant presence of PrHEIs in the country and their contribution toward student enrolment. The findings show that the Malaysian government has provided considerable financial support for the development of PrHEIs, through the provision of incentives, subsidized loans, and scholarships. Quality assurance efforts further enhance the development of private provision, as student loans and scholarships are only provided for students on accredited programs. Therefore, PrHEIs have widened access and equity, with the help of government support. Despite this, Malaysia's model of providing access and equity through private provision may be unsustainable, due to the poor repayment record of student loans and the economic need to reduce the fiscal deficit of the government.


The Manned Underwater Vehicles industry has evolved since the launch of DSV ALVIN in 1964 and the establishment of tourist passenger submersibles in the 1980's and 1990's. The emergence of the tourist passenger submersible sector in 1993 prompted the US Coast Guard to regulate commercial marine operations in the interest of public safety through NVIC 5-93. The rules were designed specifically for submersibles selling seats to members of the general public. To ensure public safety, the USCG helped define safeguards for those participants. Submersibles owned by the government, research institutions and corporations; or submersibles used for purposes other than selling rides to members of the general public, were not wholly addressed because growth in that sector was unforeseen. Almost 25 years after its release, the industry is regulated across all sectors of MUV operations by definitions established for the operation of a narrow segment of the industry, the tourism submersibles. However, construction over the past 23 years is 18% tourism submersibles, 8% government and 7% research. The remaining 67% of vessels, fall into an "other" category which does not have adequate definition. This white papers proposes that the Marine Technology Society committee on Manned Underwater Vehicles conduct a study for an updated Manned Underwater Vehicle Operations Safety Guideline with broad participation of the MUV stakeholders; International MUV industry members, Marine Technology Society, ASME PVHO, ABS, DNVGL, US Coast Guard and Navy. The challenge is to find the correct balance of regulatory control and commercial freedom to promote commercial growth while having a robust regulatory framework to manage the various concepts.Paper published with permission.Compilation Copyright © 2018 ASME


Many Web applications require efficient querying of large Knowledge Graphs (KGs). We propose KOGNAC, a dictionary-encoding algorithm designed to improve SPARQL querying with a judicious combination of statistical and semantic techniques. In KOGNAC, frequent terms are detected with a frequency approximation algorithm and encoded to maximise compression. Infrequent terms are semantically grouped into ontological classes and encoded to increase data locality. We evaluated KOGNAC in combination with state-of-the-art RDF engines, and observed that it significantly improves SPARQL querying on KGs with up to 1B edges.


Strengthening Human Resources for Primary Health Care This chapter reviews the progress made in recent years to strengthen human resources to deliver health care within a Primary Health Care approach. It focuses specifically on the availability and preparedness of old and new cadres of health workers, their distribution within the South African health system, as well as their training and development. Findings suggest that overall the health workforce is substantially weaker today than it was in the mid-1990s. There are fewer doctors and nurses available for the vast majority of public sector dependent population, as production has not kept up with population growth, increasing care needs and attrition. Disparities between provinces remain, and disparities between the private and public sectors have grown. The nursing sector faces a serious crisis brought on by an aging professional population. Progress with the development of mid-level cadres has been slow, with pharmacy being the exception. Furthermore, the implementation of community health worker programmes remains fragmented and uneven. Importantly, while there has been curriculum reform in many medical schools, there has been no fundamental shift in the orientation and resourcing of health professions. Health workers entering primary or community care services, thus, often remain illprepared and find themselves poorly supported and resourced. It is suggested that the following areas must be a priority in the human resource agenda in coming years: an accelerated production of professionals and mid-level cadres; comprehensive curriculum audits; the regulation and integration of community health workers; and an integrated and comprehensive reconfiguration of Primary Health Care teams. Uta Lehmanni i School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape 11


In the late 1990s, some observers began to make comparisons between the rapid rise in stock prices then taking place in the United States and the escalation in asset values in Japan in the late 1980s. Did Japan's experience, which was followed by more than a decade of stagnation, contain any cautionary lessons for the United States? With the recent slowing in the pace of U.S. economic activity, the question has been asked more earnestly; and while the prevailing view remains that the United States is not Japan, the denials have been less forceful. ; This article compares Japan's experience during the 1980s with U.S. prosperity in the 1990s, trying to discern the extent of similarities and differences. It then provides an overview of how Japanese policymakers responded once economic conditions began to deteriorate. On balance, the author notes, the conclusions are reassuring. Although similarities exist between Japan's economic performance in the 1980s and U.S. experience in the late 1990s, land values, as well as stock prices, rose very rapidly in Japan. Bank lending backed by land also rose very rapidly. This is a critical difference, she stresses, as the subsequent decline in Japanese land values crippled the Japanese banking system and economic activity generally.


Yields of rough rice increased from 3,830 to 7,950 kg/ha when N rates were increased from 0 to 224 kg/ha in one application. Rice yields increased from 3,830 to 8,210 kg/ha when N rates were increased from 0 to 112 kg/ha, used in two applications. Yields were not increased further by heavier applications of N. The N rates from the single applications did not affect yields of a subsequently planted rice crop that received no N fertilizer. The split applications, however, did increase yields of the following crop. In another experiment, applications of more than 112 kg of N/ha sharply increased damage by blast, when the fungus was not controlled by spraying, and limited yield response to N applications.


Despite contractors adopting building information modelling reporting positive results on profitability and return on investment, there is little standardization in the way building information modelling is being adopted in the industry. This research proposes the application of failure mode and effects analysis as part of a methodology aiming to conduct clash detection using building information modelling and evaluate the impact of doing so on the constructability of commercial projects and the return on investment to contractors. It applies it to a case study of a commercial construction project designed using building information modelling. The methodology involved conducting clash detection analysis using building information modelling software and evaluating clashes detected using failure mode and effects analysis. It also involved analyzing the project's actual requests for information and change orders to investigate whether they addressed issues that were visible in the design models, would have been detected as clashes and could have been prevented. The methodology also compared the results from the clash detection and failure mode and effects analysis processes to the ones from analyzing the project's requests for information and change orders to determine the extent to which these processes could have predicted constructability issues. It finally entailed calculating the project's return on investment by determining its direct cost savings, indirect costs and the cost of adopting building information modelling. Failure mode and effects analysis proved to be an efficient platform for organizing and presenting clash data and highlighting critical issues. It identified several design issues that would have prevented 4.8% of the project's requests for information and 7% of design-related change orders. The latter would have reduced the cost of design-related change orders by 9% and total project costs by 0.1%., resulting in a 127% return on investment. This moderate return on investment is generally consistent with the ones reported in some research studies conducting similar detailed assessments of direct project savings, but in contrast with other studies using less rigorous assessments and reporting drastically higher values.


[1] We developed a robust Bayesian inversion scheme to plan and analyze laboratory creep compaction experiments. We chose a simple creep law that features the main parameters of interest when trying to identify rate-controlling mechanisms from experimental data. By integrating the chosen creep law or an approximation thereof, one can use all the data, either simultaneously or in overlapping subsets, thus making more complete use of the experiment data and propagating statistical variations in the data through to the final rate constants. Despite the nonlinearity of the problem, with this technique one can retrieve accurate estimates of both the stress exponent and the activation energy, even when the porosity time series data are noisy. Whereas adding observation points and/or experiments reduces the uncertainty on all parameters, enlarging the range of temperature or effective stress significantly reduces the covariance between stress exponent and activation energy. We apply this methodology to hydrothermal creep compaction data on quartz to obtain a quantitative, semiempirical law for fault zone compaction in the interseismic period. Incorporating this law into a simple direct rupture model, we find marginal distributions of the time to failure that are robust with respect to errors in the initial fault zone porosity.


Abstract: Today, electronic contracting is at the forefront of how consumers, governments, and businesses conduct their affairs. Over the last several decades, electronic contracting has taken on new forms that have raised doubts about contract formation and enforceability. In order to facilitate commerce, the federal government and forty-nine states have responded by passing legislation that gives broad legal recognition to electronic signatures. Washington State is currently the only state that has not updated its electronic signature statute to comport with modern technology and ways of doing business. As a result, Washington's Electronic Authentication Act is likely preempted by federal law, and it presents an uncertain environment for electronic contracting. This Comment argues that Washington should join the overwhelming majority of states in adopting the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act to optimize its statutory framework for facilitating electronic contracting.INTRODUCTIONUnique like a thumbprint, pen-and-paper signatures have historically been essential to creating binding legal documents and commercial transactions.1 Today, the forms that modern signatures take would be unrecognizable to our great-grandparents' generation. The modern pledge may now be made by sending an email, clicking a button on a website, or using sophisticated asymmetric cryptography technology, among others.2Congress and state legislatures have tried to keep pace with this technology in order to create parity between electronic and pen-andpaper signatures.3 Around the mid-1990s, states began adopting laws giving legal recognition to various forms of electronic signatures.4 States like Utah5 and Washington6 only narrowly recognized "digital signatures" that followed specific security protocols to confirm a signer's identity.7 Other states took a broader approach and gave legal recognition to any type of electronic signature.8 In response to this patchwork of state laws, the Uniform Law Commission issued a model state law in 1999, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA),9 which broadly recognized all kinds of electronic signatures.10Despite the promulgation of UETA, the federal government feared that states would be slow to adopt UETA, and it sought to speed the adoption of a uniform, nationwide law.11 In 2000, Congress passed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN),12 which gives broad legal recognition to electronic signatures13 and governs all interstate and international electronic transactions.14 While ESIGN borrowed similar concepts and provisions from UETA, the two are not identical.15 For example, ESIGN adds heightened consumer consent requirements,16 but it lacks other guidelines found in UETA, such as provisions regarding attribution disputes.17 In light of these similarities and differences, Congress added a unique preemption provision to ESIGN: a state that enacts the official version of UETA is exempt from federal preemption under ESIGN; a state that enacts anything other than the official version of UETA is preempted to the extent that the law either conflicts with ESIGN or prefers certain technologies over others.18To date, all states have enacted UETA except for Illinois, New York, and Washington.19 Washington's law was originally drafted to give legal effect to digital signatures20-a subset of electronic signatures that uses specific, secure technology-and it has been amended only superficially to incorporate all types of electronic signatures.21 While Illinois22 and New York23 have laws that more closely mirror UETA and ESIGN respectively, Washington's Electronic Authentication Act (WEAA) remains a relative outlier; this outlier status creates uncertainty as to whether the statute, if challenged, would survive a preemption analysis under ESIGN. Of particular concern to UETA advocates is that Washington State-home to such e-commerce pioneers as Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Expedia-trails behind all other states in its electronic signature laws. …


This book aims to cover the sorts of issues that managers constantly face: competencies; empowerment; chaos; culture change; survival; and competition. How do they understand these terms and apply them in their everyday lives? Tony Watson looks at the nature of managerial skill and organizational effectiveness, asking managers what it is they think they do, what power do they really have, how they manage under increasing pressure and whether they feel in control. By searching for a definition of management from managers themselves, Tony Watson draws a picture of the way managers shape their own lives and identities at the same time as shaping the organization's work activities. This book should be of interest to all those studying management, particularly MBA and other post-experience qualifications, as well as the general manager. The author has also published "Sociology, Work and Industry" (Routledge 1987), "Management, Organization and Employment Strategy" (Routledge, 1986), "Sociology, Work and Industry" (Routledge, 1980), and "The Personnel Managers" (Routledge, 1977).


Urban space, as a place for social interaction, has a very important role in image of the cities and also in place competition between them. These issues along with the outstanding demands of citizens for the quality of urban spaces have led the urban authorities to reconsider such spaces, as Marvi Alley, Naser Khosrow, and Sabzeh Meidan, through definition and implementation of urban projects as well as organization of the public spaces. Some of these projects have been pursued with approaches of organizing and rehabilitation and some others through the approach of creation of places. The aim of this study is to assess the environmental quality of the new urban design experiences implemented in Tehran. This assessment will lead to achieve the most significant intellectual paradigm in these experiences. Case studies will include Naser Khosrow Street, Marvi Alley, Sabzeh Meidan, Bab Homayoun Street, Haft Howz Square, Bagh – e Ferdows, Chitgar Lake, Imam Hussein Square, Ab-o-Atash Park, Farahzad, Shohada Walk-Street and Saf Street. The research method is based on using place-check technique in field analysis, by urban design experts, at the first step. Then, survey research method was accomplished though collecting the questionnaires from 360 residents in the twelve case studies. The obtained Data were also analyzed by SPSS. v19 software. The results indicate that the pedestrian-oriented paradigms, as well as the environmental urban design, have been more influential in Marvi Alley, Naser Khosrow Street, Bab Homayoun Street, Imam Hussein Square, Sabzeh Meidan, Saf Street and Shohada Walk-Street, Abo- Atash Park, as well as Chitgarlake, generally more than other approaches


Orphan and vulnerable children (OVC) often have worse educational, developmental, nutritional, and behavioral outcomes than non-OVC. Much of these disparities come from reduced household earnings due to the loss of parental income. The present study used conditional process analysis to evaluate income and savings among OVC households, using cross-sectional data from 1,060 OVC in a 3-year Kenyan empowerment program that combined elements of cash transfer, psychosocial support, and small business entrepreneurship. Higher monthly earnings were significantly associated with program participation in a graded fashion. Approximately one-third of the association was mediated by material inputs, indicating that a substantial portion may be explained by other unobserved program elements. Eighty-five percent of increased rates of saving money in the past year were mediated by improved monthly income, cash transferred and improved food consumption. Data analysis highlights the need for multisectoral approaches and the need for more research to understand how to improve household economic stability among OVC.

Key Practitioner Message: • Orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) are at risk of greater poverty, leading to multiple developmental and health challenges; • Current policy in Kenya to offset costs of caring for OVC utilizes monthly cash transfers to households providing care for OVC; • The present study found that increases in monthly income in an OVC multisectoral empowerment program were largely due to factors beyond the material inputs.


Microfabricated capacitive sensors prepared with elastomeric foam dielectric films and stretchable metallic electrodes display robustness to extreme conditions including stretching and tissue-like folding and autoclaving. The open cellular structure of the elastomeric foam leads to significant increase of the capacitance upon compression of the dielectric membrane. The sensor sensitivity can be adjusted locally with the foam density to detect normal pressure in the 1 kPa to 100 kPa range. Such pressure transducers will find applications in interfaces between the body and support surfaces such as mattresses, joysticks or prosthetic sockets, in artificial skins and wearable robotics.


Numerous studies in the last decade have used ground-based views of scenes to investigate the process of scene gist recognition. Conversely, few if any studies have investigated scene gist recognition of aerial (i.e., satellite) views. This study asks the question, how much of what we know about scene gist recognition from ground-based views directly translates to aerial views?

Fifty-two participants were randomly assigned to Aerial and Ground-based conditions, with processing times (SOA) and scene categories varied within-subjects. Stimuli were monochrome photographs from 10 categories: 5 Natural: coast, desert, forest, mountain, river; 5 Man-made: airport, city, golf-course, residential, stadium. Aerial images were from Google Earth©. Both target and mask images were presented for 24 ms, with SOAs of 24-94 ms plus a no-mask condition. Participants then chose between all 10 categories.

As predicted, ground-based views were recognized more accurately than aerial views. However, contrary to predictions, aerial view recognition did not benefit more from additional processing time than ground-based view recognition. Aerial view performance with no mask was worse than ground-based view performance at 24 ms SOA. Thus, gist perception of aerial views is more data (information) limited than resource (time) limited, perhaps because they are "accidental views" (Biederman, 1987). An additional analysis collapsed all 10 basic level categories into 2 superordinate level "Natural" and "Man-made" categories. For ground-based views, Natural categories were consistently high, whereas Man-made categories benefited from additional processing time. However, for aerial views, both Natural and Man-made categories benefited equally from additional processing time. Nevertheless, confusion matrices for the 10 basic level categories and responses showed a correlation of .80 across the Aerial and Ground-based views, suggesting that discriminability between categories is similar across aerial and ground-based views. Further research will investigate what information both aerial and ground-based views contain, and what information aerial views lack.


The value created by learning in communities of practice or networks is not always easy to articulate in ways that make sense to participants, sponsors, and stakeholders. Yet it is something that needs to be done, not only for monitoring and evaluation, but also for optimizing the learning of the community. We have developed a "value-creation framework" that focuses on how social learning makes a difference in the world via its effect on practice. The framework helps structure convincing accounts of the value of social learning by framing learning in terms of different cycles of value creation and loops between them. It integrates quantitative and qualitative data and can be used by professional evaluators as well as participants. In this paper we demonstrate the use of the framework in a project supported by the World Bank in Southern and Eastern Africa where it was used both for evaluation and for strategic renewal of a regional network of members of parliament and their clerks.


Increasingly our critical infrastructures are reliant on computers. We see examples of such infrastructures in several domains, including medical, power, telecommunications, and finance. Although automation has advantages, increased reliance on computers exposes our critical infrastructures to a wider variety and higher likelihood of accidental failures and malicious attacks. Disruption of services caused by such undesired events can have catastrophic effects, such as disruption of essential services and huge financial losses. The increased reliance of critical services on our cyberinfrastructure and the dire consequences of security breaches have highlighted the importance of information security. Authorization, security protocols, and software security are three central areas in security in which there have been significant advances in developing systematic foundations and analysis methods that work for practical systems. This book provides an introduction to this work, covering representative approaches, illustrated by examples, and providing pointers to additional work in the area. Table of Contents: Introduction / Foundations / Detecting Buffer Overruns Using Static Analysis / Analyzing Security Policies / Analyzing Security Protocols


On November 8, 2013, several members of the British House of Lords' Subcommittee A conducted a hearing at the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany, on "Genuine Economic and Monetary Union and its Implications for the UK". Professors Otmar Issing and Jan Pieter Krahnen were called as expert witnesses. The testimony began with a general discussion on the elements considered necessary for a functioning internal market. Do economic union and monetary union require a fiscal union or even a political union, beyond the elements of the banking union currently being prepared? In this context, also the critique of the German current account surplus and the international expectations that Germany stimulate internal demand to support growth in crisis countries, were discussed. With regard to the monetary union, the members of the subcommittee asked for an assessment of how European nations and the banking industry would have fared in the banking crisis that followed the Lehman collapse, had there not been a common currency. Given the important role that the ECB has played in the course of the crisis management, the members further asked for an evaluation of the OMT-program of the ECB and also if the monetary union is in need of common debt instruments, in order to provide the ECB with the possibility of buying EU liabilities, comparable to the Fed buying US Treasury bonds. Finally, the dual role of the ECB for monetary policy and banking supervision was an issue touched on by several questions.


The THIRD POLICE DISTRICT, better known as the "Roaring Third," was situated in the older neighborhood northeast of PUBLIC SQUARE at the turn of the century. As the commercial and residential activity of the city moved farther out, this inner-city area became the center of the city's gambling, drinking, and prostitution district. By 1900 gambling houses operated along Superior Ave. between Public Square and Erie (E. 9th) St. Saloons in the district routinely stayed open after hours, and east of Erie St. was the city's "tenderloin," or red-light district. In Cleveland, as elsewhere, this district was tolerated by local authorities and the general public. The operations were a source of considerable payoffs to corrupt politicians and police. These payoffs became a popular method of raising campaign funds for local officeholders. It was a common practice for a newly elected politician to have the police raid any establishment that had supported his opponent. It was in raids of this type that police lieutenant FRED KOHLER first came to public attention. During the bitter 1899 reelection campaign of Republican mayor ROBT. E. MCKISSON, Kohler's raiding squad destroyed many illegal establishments that were aligned with the Democratic opposition. While spectacular, these occasional raids did little to alter the character of the area. By the early 1900s, the entire area from Bond (E. 6th) St. to Erie St. from Vincent Ave. north to the lakefront was saturated with gambling houses, illegal saloons, and brothels. In 1901 newly elected mayor TOM L. JOHNSON pledged to eliminate graft in the city. He appointed Fred Kohler as chief of police in 1903 and instructed him to drive the gamblers out of business through the simple device of stationing a uniformed policeman at the door of each establishment. The policeman was to take no action other than recording the names of those who entered. Though simple, this tactic was extremely effective, and many gambling houses closed. In 1906 Chief Kohler caused a major outcry when he proposed to shift the city's red-light district from Hamilton Ave. south to Chestnut (now Chester Ave.). Despite the powerful objections of Rev. Patrick Farrel of ST. JOHN CATHEDRAL, the resorts were relocated. It was later revealed that the city was buying up the land of the "tenderloin district" for the Group Plan. Public Hall was built on the site of the former district. The saloons, gambling houses, and brothels were driven from the area for good by the later development of E. 9th St. as the city's financial district.


It is frequently claimed that high ATM surcharges actually attract customers to the banks that impose them, particularly if they operate large ATM networks. By exploiting as natural experiments two events associated with the lifting of surcharge bans in Iowa and in the states that neighbor Iowa, this paper seeks to test for the implications of this phenomenon as it applies to the market shares of banking institutions and to several aspects of market structure. Consistent with these implications, results of difference-in-difference analyses suggest that the shares of larger market participants increase, the shares of smaller market participants decrease, market concentration increases, and the number of market competitors decreases after the lifting of surcharge bans.


he role of polymeric additives such as PVP and PEG is studied with respect to the morphology of PES porous layer as a sublayer of nanofiltration composite membranes based on PES/PA. Results show that by phase inversion process of quaternary systems comprised of four components of polymer/solvent/nonsolvent/additive and the diffusion of intertwined polymers some changes occur in membrane morphology with changes in their concentration. With addition of PVP, tear-like pores, finger-like and channel-like morphology change to enlarged channel cavities and by adding more PVP, membrane morphology changes further and spongy regions are extended in the membrane. Presence of PEG in casting solution delayed the precipitation time. By adding PEG, the solution viscosity is increased which is followed by decreases in diffusion rates of solvent/non-solvent in coagulation bath. Therefore, membrane morphology shifts to small pores and spongier region. Another effect of increased PEG content would be deformed PA layer formation in PES sublayer which affects membrane performance. However, PVP as an additive does not change membrane salt rejection very much while it leads to higher fluxes. A membrane with 2.5 percent PVP would perform by 40 percent flux increases, while a membrane with 5% PVP shows flux reductions even below the initial value. Contrary to PVP, the PEG content of 20 percent leads to 4 folds flux increases and in a membrane with 50 percent PEG, there is a flux increase by 7 folds and drop in salt rejection occurs by 50 percent and 70 percent, respectively. composite membranes, phase separation, polyether sulfone, polyvinyl pyrrolidone, polyethylene glycol


Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Although no definitive cure exists, lowering of the intraocular pressure decreases the rate of progression in the majority of patients with glaucoma. Antiglaucomatous treatment modalities consist predominantly of chronic use of eye drops. It has become increasingly evident that long-term exposure to eye drops has a significant impact on the ocular surface, and thereby on patient compliance and quality of life. Maintenance of the ocular surface is highly dependent on a stable tear film. Conjunctival goblet cells (GCs) of the ocular surface play an important role in providing the innermost mucin layer of the tear film and are essential for maintaining the ocular surface homeostasis. Recent studies have reported severe side effects of antiglaucomatous drops on GCs. In particular, a preservative containing antiglaucomatous drops have been shown to affect the viability and functions of the GCs. Furthermore, GC density has been suggested as a potential predictor of surgical outcome after filtration surgery. The present review provides an overview of the current literature on the impact of antiglaucomatous eye drops on GCs as well as the impact on the ocular surface. Moreover, the existing evidence of a possible association between GC density and glaucoma filtration surgery outcome is summarized. We conclude that prostaglandin analogs spare the conjunctival GCs more compared with other antiglaucomatous drops and that GCs may be a good predictor of surgical outcome after filtration surgery. Overall, given the multiple functions of GCs in the ocular surface homeostasis, dedicated strategies should be adopted to preserve this cell population during the course of glaucoma.


Single cells were prepared from the luteinized rat ovary, and the characteristics of progesterone synthesis
by these cells were examined. The isolated luteal cells were viable and functional, and respond to
luteinizing hormone (LH) stimulation by synthesizing progesterone in vitro. In the absence of exogenous
glucose, the rate of progesterone synthesis was 0.23 ng/ml/min. LH increased this rate 2-fold, and the duration
of the initial linear phase of this reaction was sustained for up to 60 min, compared to the controls
which were linear for only 15 min. This effect was dose-related: maximal stimulation was achieved with
1 J1g LH/ml, while a minimal but significant stimulation was elicited with 61 pg/ml. This steroidogenic
activity was also increased by the addition of exogenous glucose and bovine serum albumin. These data
serve to establish the optimum conditions for the use of single cells in studies pertaining to mechanism
of LH action.


This article argues that courts should approach the Fourth Amendment with caution when technology is in flux. When a technology is new or developing rapidly, courts should adopt modest formulations of Fourth Amendment protections that recognize the effectiveness and institutional advantages of statutory privacy protections.The cautious approach is justified on three grounds. First, caution is consistent with existing judicial practice. The reasonable expectation of privacy test generally has been used by the courts as a term of art that remains closely tied to property law concepts. When a technology implicates privacy but not property, current judicial practice tends to avoid broad interpretations of the Fourth Amendment. Second, legislative privacy protections are significantly stronger than most commentators appreciate. The case of wiretapping is instructive. While Fourth Amendment scholars often view wiretapping as a constitutional field under Katz v. United States and Berger v. New York, wiretapping has long been a primarily statutory field. Even today, wiretapping practice is governed by statutory commands, not constitutional ones. More broadly, Congress has created a wide range of statutory privacy laws that protect privacy in developing technologies where the courts have declined to offer protection.Third, legislatures have considerable institutional advantages that enable the legislative privacy rules regulating new technologies to be more balanced, comprehensive, and effective than judicially created rules. Rapid technological change makes it difficult for courts to clarify the law. Courts also lack the institutional capacity to readily appreciate existing technology and the impact of different legal rules. In contrast, courts are well equipped to respond to technological change in the context of criminal procedure rules.


Description of the physical characteristics of livestock breeds is very important for developing a breeding strategy in a particular production system. Doyogena sheep are among the potential breeds of Ethiopia reared in the mixed perennial crop and livestock production system of Southern Ethiopia. This research was conducted to characterise the morphological features of Doyogena sheep in an attempt to develop a breeding strategy that suits the production system of the area. A total of 512 sheep were characterized for different morphological features. Most (74.6%) of the sheep in the flock were females and 34.4% were old sheep of four and above dentition classes. Light red and red coat colour was abundant (71.5%) and 74% of the colour pattern was plain. Doyogena sheep are long fat-tailed (100%) and short haired (93.4%). The overall least square mean body weight was 31.64±0.43 kg and was affected by sex and age of sheep. The mean heart girth (74.08±0.39 cm), body length (58.84±0.30 cm), and height at rump (69.71±0.29 cm) were also affected by sex and dentition. Positive and significant correlations were obtained between body weight and other linear body measurements. The highest correlation coefficient was between body weight and heart girth. The positive and significant correlation of weight with linear body measurements indicate that linear body measurements can be used as a marker to estimate weight for different purposes. Different models can be used for different purposes. For simplicity, models with one variable can be used for marketing and by farmers. For breeding and selection purposes, since there is a need to be more precise, use of models involving more number of variables is important.

 Key words: Doyogena sheep, morphological characteristics, rump height, regression equation.


This thesis' primary aims were to characterise the what, where and how of vestibular cortical processing. A secondary aim was to assess the effects of early visual deprivation on vestibular perception, in particular the what and where.;The What: Using an angular vestibular navigation paradigm with physiological range stimuli, we quantitatively demonstrated that healthy subjects were able to actively reproduce spatial and kinetic parameters of a passively travelled trajectory (displacement, time, velocity and acceleration). Early blind subjects showed no deficit in the perception of raw vestibular signals but were relatively impaired in more complex spatial vestibular navigation tasks. Congenitally blind subjects did not show the normal prolongation of the vestibular signal coming from the labyrinth (i.e. velocity storage mechanism) at perceptual level and two blind subjects who had superior navigational ability also had ultra-short vestibular time constants. Based upon a questionnaire assessment of these subjects, we concluded that frequent exposure to specific activities (e.g. down-hill skiing for one subject!) may be protective in allowing a normal navigational capacity in these subjects. The mechanism for the ultra-short time constants and their role in superior navigational performance remains unclear.;The Where: Using repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS) to the right posterior parietal cortex we disrupted the perceptual encoding of vestibular signals during a passive yaw-plane rotation. We found no effect of rTMS on vestibular encoding with occipital cortical stimulation in sighted or blind subjects.;The How: We hypothesised that vestibular signals may be encoded via an internal model at perceptual level. Using a novel paradigm, we found that by perturbing the internal estimate of displacement of a previously travelled trajectory (yaw plane rotation), we could alter the perception of motion duration but not velocity, of the rotation, a finding consistent with our hypothesis. The last experiment in this thesis was developed in an attempt to bridge the gap between brainstem and perceptual vestibular function. We quantitatively show that brainstem thresholds to angular acceleration are lower than for cortical (perceptual) thresholds. The hypothesis that we aim to test in the future is that patients who show a large dichotomy between brainstem and cortical thresholds to angular acceleration may be either objectively compromised by worse balance function or subjectively worse as defined by their symptoms of dizziness and disorientation.


Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) may rarely present with paraneoplastic syndromes. Among the most frequent ones are the appearance of diarrhea and ectopic Cushing syndrome (ECS). The ECS in the context of MTC is usually present in patients with distant metastatic disease. The use of drugs such as ketoconazole, metyrapone, somatostatin analogs and etomidate have been ineffective alternatives to control hypercortisolism in these patients. Bilateral adrenalectomy is often required to manage this situation. Recently, the use of tyrosine kinase inhibitors has been shown to be a useful tool to achieve eucortisolism in patients with metastatic MTC and ECS. We present a patient with sporadic advanced persistent and progressive MTC with lymph node and liver metastases, which after 16 years of follow-up developed an ECS. After one month of 300 mg/day vandetanib treatment, a biochemical and clinical response of the ECS was achieved but it did not result in significant reduction of tumor burden. However the patient reached criteria for stable disease according to response evaluation criteria in solid tumors (RECIST 1.1) after 8 months of follow-up.


Objective: To document the existence of a relationship between apnea of prematurity (AOP) and gastroesophageal reflux (GER) in preterm infants.
Setting: One Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Patients: Twenty-six preterm infants (gestational age<32 weeks) with recurrent apneas.
Intervention: Simultaneous and synchronized recording of polysomnography and pH-impedance monitoring (pH-MII). Polysomnography detects and characterizes apneas, by recording of breathing movement, nasal airflow, electrocardiogram, pulse oximeter saturation. pH-MII is the state-of-theart methodology for GER detection in preterm newborns.
Main outcome measures: Relationship between AOP and GER, which were considered temporally related if both started within 30 seconds of each other.
Results: One-hundred-fifty-four apneas out of 1136 were temporally related to GER. The frequency of apnea during the one-minute time around the onset of GER was significantly higher than the one detected in the GER-free period (p=0.03). Furthermore, the frequency of apnea in the
30 seconds after GER (GER-triggered apneas) was greater than that detected in the 30 seconds before (p=0.01). A great inter-individual variability was documented in the proportion of GERtriggered apneas. A strong correlation between total number of apneas and the difference between
apneas detected 30 seconds after and before GER was found (p=0.034).
Conclusions: Our data show that a variable rate of apneas can be triggered by GER in very preterm infant. Further studies are needed to recognise clinical features which identify those patients who are more susceptible to GER-triggered apneas.


Staphylococcus aureus is a highly versatile, opportunistic pathogen and the etiological agent of a wide range of infections in humans and warm-blooded animals. The epithelial surface is its principal site of colonization and infection. In this work, we investigated the cytopathic effect of S. aureus strains from human and animal origins and their ability to affect the host cell cycle in human HeLa and bovine MAC-T epithelial cell lines. S. aureus invasion slowed down cell proliferation and induced a cytopathic effect, resulting in the enlargement of host cells. A dramatic decrease in the number of mitotic cells was observed in the infected cultures. Flow cytometry analysis revealed an S. aureus-induced delay in the G2/M phase transition in synchronous HeLa cells. This delay required the presence of live S. aureus since the addition of the heat-killed bacteria did not alter the cell cycle. The results of Western blot experiments showed that the G2/M transition delay was associated with the accumulation of inactive cyclin-dependent kinase Cdk1, a key inducer of mitosis entry, and with the accumulation of unphosphorylated histone H3, which was correlated with a reduction of the mitotic cell number. Analysis of S. aureus proliferation in asynchronous, G1- and G2-phase-enriched HeLa cells showed that the G2 phase was preferential for bacterial infective efficiency, suggesting that the G2 phase delay may be used by S. aureus for propagation within the host. Taken together, our results divulge the potential of S. aureus in the subversion of key cellular processes such as cell cycle progression, and shed light on the biological significance of S. aureus-induced host cell cycle alteration.


The bottom-up synthesis of titanate nanoflakes in ionic liquid solvents was carried out by heating mixtures of titanium isopropoxide (TIP), 40% tetrabutylammonium hydroxide (TBAOH) aqueous solution, and ionic liquids with a molar ratio of 1TIP : xTBAOH : (10 − x)ionic liquid : 22xH2O. Using tetrabutylammonium chloride (TBACl) as an ionic liquid, layered titanate crystals with TBA+ as an interlayer cation were synthesized by the acid–base reaction of TBAOH and titanic acid, which was formed by the hydrolysis of TIP, in the range of 0.5 ≤ x ≤ 2.5. The use of 1,2,3-trimethylimidazolium (mmmIm+) methylsulfate as an ionic liquid also led to the formation of layered titanate with mmmIm+ ions as an interlayer cation, although the amount of layered titanate was smaller than that in the case using TBACl. The solvent exchange from ionic liquids to aqueous solution by dialyzing the products caused the exfoliation of layered titanate, providing titanate nanoflakes with a lateral size of about 3 nm. Moreover, by comparing the bottom-up syntheses of layered titanate in ionic liquids and in water, the crystallization behavior of layered titanate was examined. The amount of TBA+ or mmmIm+, which acts as an interlayer cation of layered titanate, influenced the nucleation of layered titanate rather than the solubility of titanate. A significant amount of TBA+ or mmmIm+ in the ionic liquid solvents accelerated the nucleation of layered titanate crystals, providing small titanate nanoflakes. Furthermore, the formed titanate species existed as exfoliated nanosheets or nanoflakes in water solvent, but were present as layered titanate crystals in ionic liquids. However, this difference in the state of titanates had little influence on the growth rates of layered titanate crystals. Thus, the bottom-up synthesis of layered titanates in ionic liquids was useful for the formation of very small titanate nanoflakes.


Photorefractive polymer composites are an unusually sensitive class of photopolymers. Physics of Photorefraction in Polymers describes our current understanding of the physical processes that produce a photorefractive effect in key composite materials. Topics as diverse as charge generation, dispersive charge transport, charge compensation and trapping, molecular diffusion, organic composite structure, and nonlinear optical wave coupling are all developed from a physical perspective. Emphasis is placed on explaining how these physical processes lead to observable properties of the polymers, and the authors discuss various applications, including holographic archiving.


Our work examines the relationship between knowledge/familiarity with shale gas development in a comparative context. The Uni ted States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) represent very different cases of shale gas development, with development relatively mature in the US whilst, no extraction of shale gas has yet commenced in the UK. Comparing results from two national level survey efforts in 2014, we find higher levels of knowledge abou t the shale gas industry in the UK than in the US, as well as higher levels of support in the US (opposition levels were similar, but US respondents were much less likely than UK respondents to say that they did not know whether they supported or opposed development). With respect to the relationship between knowledge and support, increased knowledge in the UK is associated with increased support, while knowledge was unrelated to support in the US. We anchor these results within the inf ormation deficit model of science, suggesting that concentrated media and governance in the UK have played an important role in producing the demonstrated effects.


Fraud, like other crime, can best be explained by three factors: a supply of motivated offenders, the availability of suitable targets and the absence of capable guardians-control systems or someone "to mind the store", so to speak (Cohen & Felson 1979). In this, the first of two papers, the authors focus on motivation and other psychological aspects of fraud. They identify a number of psychological correlates of fraud offending, but note that these are by no means unique to fraud, and do not necessarily differentiate fraudsters from law-abiding citizens. The other two factors, opportunities and guardianship, provide more scope for fraud control and will be addressed in a companion paper on "red flags", or situational indicia, of fraud risk. Adam Graycar Director Defining Fraud In its broadest terms, fraud means obtaining something of value or avoiding an obligation by means of deception. This embraces many and varied forms of conduct, ranging from false claims against an insurance policy to some corporate frauds that are meticulously planned and intricate in their execution. The variety and complexity of fraud necessitates that, for purposes of explanation, the concept of fraud be "broken down" into manageable categories. This paper categorises fraud in terms of the organisational context in which it occurs, and the nature of the relationship between offender and victim. It then explores what the perpetrators of these different types of fraud have in common, and what distinguishes them from each other. For the purposes of comparison, the following categories of fraud have been set out. * Fraud committed against an organisation by a principal or senior official of that organisation. Examples of this include offences against shareholders or creditors by errant "high-flying entrepreneurs" (Sykes 1994) or corrupt practices by senior public officials. * Fraud committed against an organisation by a client (an "outsider") or employee (an "insider"). This category includes embezzlement, insurance fraud, tax evasion and other fraud against government. * Fraud committed against one individual by another in the context of direct face-to-face interaction. This would include classic "con games" (Maurer 1940), frauds by sales staff, and predatory activities against clients or customers by unethical investment advisers, shady roof repairers and others who prey directly on a consumer. * Fraud committed against a number of individuals through print or electronic media, or by other indirect means. This would include Nigerian advance fee frauds (Smith, Holmes & Kaufmann 1999), share market manipulation, and deceptive advertising or investment solicitations pitched at a relatively large number of prospective victims. The above categories are neither definitive nor mutually exclusive, but they do provide a useful starting point for explanation. Explaining Fraud Like other crime, fraud can best be explained by three factors: a supply of motivated offenders, the availability of suitable targets and the absence of capable guardians (Cohen & Felson 1979; Krambia-Kapardis 2001). The three are inextricably linked. As Nettler (1974) observes: The intensity of desire and the perception of opportunity are personality variables. The balance between desire and opportunity moves. Temptation to steal fluctuates with individual temperament and situation, (p. 75) Motivation is therefore a combination of an individual's personality and the situation in which they find themselves. Conversely, psychological factors will influence the way a person interprets the situation they are in and this, in turn, will influence the action they choose to take. Psychological Factors in Fraud At first glance, a psychological explanation for fraud would appear simple-greed and dishonesty. Such an explanation is, however, overly simplistic. There are many in society who are aggressively acquisitive but generally law abiding. …


Objective: urbanization and migration to large centers has caused changes in the behavior of meat consumers, not only with regards to product choice based on product quality and safety, but also the purchasing process. In this sense, factors such as proximity, product availability, and price are also factors affecting the purchase choices. This work aims to analyze the main factors associated with the consumption of these meats in the Federal District, Brazil, in an attempt to broaden our understanding of what consumers consider important, and to provide guidance. Method: this research was carried out in three different hypermarket networks. A socioeconomic evaluation of the interviewees was carried out, followed by the application of a survey, through structured affirmative sentences that were categorized in sociocultural, economic, health/food and environmental dimensions. The sentences were evaluated using the seven-point Likert scale. Socioeconomic data pertaining the interviewees were analyzed by Chi-square tests and the responses obtained through the Likert scale were transformed into Mean Item Score (MIS). Results and Conclusions: the results indicate that the quality control of the meat exposed in supermarkets and the possibility of finding the same type of meat in several different places are the main factors influencing the purchasing decisions of consumers of these meats.


In many countries, governments are pushing for the introduction of competition in the organization of public services and more broadly in public procurement. The development of public-private partnerships throughout the world is a good illustration of this trend. In order to foster competition, competitive tendering through the use of auctions is now common. Nevertheless, competition for the field must be organized. Depending on the rules of the game chosen, introducing competition for the field may or may not be successful. In this paper we investigate two alternative models for organizing local public services, namely the French and the London models of urban public transport. Few competitors and collusive behaviours, with increasing costs, characterize the French model, while the London model, as far as we have seen, exhibits better results, by using the transparency of auction procedures and the discretionary power of the regulator as two complementary instruments to foster competition and prevent anti-competitive behaviours.


This paper examines two methods for analyzing nonresponse bias using establishment indexed data sets from the 2005 Survey of Workplace Violence Prevention (WVP), the 2003 Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII), and the BLS Longitudinal Database (LDB). First, comparisons were made using 2003 SOII and LDB frame data conditional on response status to the 2005 WVP survey. The data indicated WVP responders had higher SOII incidence rates than WVP nonrespondents, response rates were higher for larger establishments, and for industries with relatively higher risk for workplace violence. Our second method used a two-stage logarithmic regression procedure to investigate the correlation of efforts to contact respondents (mailings and non-response calls) to the likelihood of actually contacting the respondent and securing participation. Additional effort past the first non-response mailing and first round of non-response calls did not appear to improve the chances of contacting a given respondent. Conditional on making confirmed contact with the respondent, repeated efforts to obtain cooperation were negatively correlated with participation rates. Based on these findings, we conclude that WVP respondents tended to be establishments that were predisposed to cooperating, most likely had familiarity with occupational hazards, and tended to be those most likely to have programs and training. Therefore, the estimates produced by the Survey of Workplace Violence Prevention of program and training utilization should be regarded as conservatively high estimates despite their low levels. 1. The Survey of Workplace Violence Prevention


Bacterial leaf streak disease (BLS) caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv oryzicola is one of the emergent biotic constraints to rice production in Africa. The disease, which can cause yield loss of up to 60% on susceptible cultivars, was observed in Uganda in the rice growing districts of Namutumba, Butaleja and Iganga in 2014. As such there is limited data on the distribution of bacterial leaf streak disease in rice growing areas of Uganda. Using a systematic sampling survey, 176 rice fields at tillering to panicle initiation stages in 14 rice growing districts of Uganda were assessed for the prevalence of BLS disease. Results show a high prevalence of bacterial leaf streak disease, where 71.4% of the districts surveyed had the disease. Data collected also revealed significant differences (P < 0.001) in BLS incidence and severities between the districts surveyed. The results further indicated that rice fields where improved varieties and clean seeds were planted had very low incidences and severity. The high prevalence of BLS disease in the rice growing districts may be due to existence of highly virulent BLS pathogens, favourable environment (high humidity and warm temperature) and cultivation of susceptible local rice genotypes. Poor rice residue management, poor field hygiene and utilization of home saved rice seeds by majority of the farmers could also account for the wide occurrence of BLS disease since these lead to the build-up of primary inoculum. For sustainable management of this disease, there is need to create awareness on the wide occurrence of BLS disease in Uganda, educate farmers on management of the disease, understand the population structure of BLS pathogen in Uganda and identify genetically stable sources of resistance to the pathogen under Uganda's conditions.


IMPORTANCE
Adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often experience difficulties with executive function and participation in life roles. Ecologically valid performance-based tests (PBTs) are needed to assess functional cognition in this population.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the known-groups, concurrent, and ecological validity of a functional cognition PBT, the Hebrew version of the Weekly Calendar Planning Activity (WCPA) Middle/High School Version, among adolescents with and without ADHD.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional between-groups design.

SETTING
Community.

PARTICIPANTS
One hundred two adolescents (ages 12-18 yr), with (n = 52) and without (n = 50) ADHD.

OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
The Hebrew version of the WCPA Middle/High School Version, MOXO™-Continuous Performance Test (MOXO-CPT), Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) parent form, and Child and Adolescent Scale of Participation (CASP).

RESULTS
The results showed significant between-groups differences with medium to large effect sizes for scores on most WCPA measures, with the ADHD group receiving significantly lower scores. Significant correlations in the expected direction were found between scores on the MOXO-CPT Attention and Hyperactivity indices and WCPA measures. Significant correlations were also found between most WCPA measures and the BRIEF Global Executive Composite (GEC) and the CASP. Multiple linear regression on the CASP indicated that the WCPA strategy score and the BRIEF GEC were significant predictors in the model.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Results support the known-groups validity of the WCPA Middle/High School Version between adolescents with and without ADHD. Concurrent and ecological validity were supported by significant associations with measures of cognition and participation. What This Article Adds: These results reinforce the premise that the WCPA Middle/High School Version can be implemented as a valid measure of functional cognition among adolescents with ADHD.


The first aim of the current study was to explore if emotion socialization (ES) constructs, (egocentrism, structure, reward, match/magnify, override, punish, acknowledge, argue, and direct to interviewer) could be identified in and reliably measured during a task in which adolescents who were at-risk for aggression at a young age and their female caregivers discussed a shared tornado experience. The second aim of the study was to investigate the degree to which caregiver ES behaviors during conversations were associated with variables thought to represent how adolescents were reflecting on, processing emotion and cognitions related to, and making meaning out of events (elaborativeness, coherence, internal states language, and meaning). Two hundred and twelve adolescents (ages 12 to 17, 66% male, 77% African American) and their female caregivers who experienced an EF4 tornado provided joint recollections and adolescents provided independent interviews in 2014 (38 to 42 months post-tornado) and 2015 (50 to 54 months post-tornado). Verbatim caregiver-adolescent transcripts were coded for indicators of ES and adolescent individual interviews were coded for recollection qualities. Several ES constructs were found to be present and vary in caregiver-adolescent conversations, could be reliably coded, and were related to adolescent individual recollection qualities. Results indicate that caregivers use certain ES behaviors during caregiver-adolescent conversations about a tornado (which can be reliably measured in a low-income population of at-risk youth) and that these ES behaviors may be relevant to how adolescents recollect, process, and made meaning out of natural disaster experiences, above and beyond the level of distress and exposure experienced during the event. Implications for the future study of ES processes during caregiver-child corecollections are discussed.


This thesis develops a framework of methods and techniques for distributed systems development. This framework consists of two related domains in which design concepts for distributed systems are defined: the entity domain and the behaviour domain. In the entity domain we consider structures of functional entities and their interconnection, while in the behaviour domain we consider behaviour definition and structuring. An interaction in which we abstract from the particular responsibilities of the participating functional entities is considered as an action. Behaviours consist of actions, interactions and their relationships. Relationships between actions and interactions are defined in terms of causality relations. In each causality relation the conditions and constraints for an action or interaction to occur are defined. Two important behaviour structuring techniques have been identified from the possible ways causality relations can be distributed: causality-oriented behaviour composition and constraint-oriented behaviour composition. Causality-oriented behaviour composition consists of placing some conditions of an action and the action itself in different sub-behaviours. Constraint-oriented behaviour composition consists of placing parts of the conditions and constraints of an action in different sub-behaviours, such that this action is shared by these sub-behaviours. This thesis identifies milestones in the design process of distributed systems, as well as the design steps to move from one milestone to another. These design steps are characterized using the concepts of the entity and the behaviour domain. We identified two crucial design operations of the behaviour domain that support these design steps: behaviour refinement and action refinement. Behaviour refinement consists of introducing (internal) structure in the causality relations of reference actions of an abstract behaviour, but preserving their causality and exclusion relationships and their attribute values. Action refinement consists of replacing abstract actions by activities, such that the completion of these activities correspond to the occurrence of the abstract actions. One important characteristic of action refinement is the possibility of distributing attribute values of the abstract actions over actions of the activities that replace them in the concrete behaviours. The area of research, scope and objectives of this thesis are discussed in Chapter 1. The concept of design culture and its elements is introduced in this chapter in order to provide an overview of the important aspects of the design process. Entity domain, behaviour domain, and design milestones are introduced and discussed in Chapter 2. This chapter also discusses the global objectives of design steps, and the abstraction obtained by considering interactions between cooperating functional entities as actions of the interaction system between these entities. Action, action attributes, causality and exclusion are discussed in Chapter 3. This chapter shows how a behaviour can be defined in terms of the causality relations of its actions in a monolithic form. Causality-oriented behaviour composition is discussed in Chapter 4. Entries and exits of a behaviour are the mechanisms that make it possible to assign parts of a condition of an action and the action itself to different sub-behaviours. Constraint-oriented behaviour composition is discussed in Chapter 5. Decomposition possibilities of monolithic behaviours are systematically studied in this chapter. Behaviour refinement is discussed in Chapter 6. This chapter defines a method to obtain an abstraction of a concrete behaviour. This method can be used to check whether the concrete behaviour corresponds to a certain abstract behaviour. Action refinement is discussed in Chapter 7. This chapter identifies some activity forms, and define the rules for considering these activities as implementations of an abstract action. These rules are used in a method to derive an abstraction of a concrete behaviour in which the abstract actions are implemented as activities. This method can be used to check whether the concrete behaviour corresponds to a certain abstract behaviour. Chapter 8 discusses a design example that is meant to illustrate the use of our design concepts. The example is an interaction server, which is a component that supports the interaction between multiple functional entities. Chapter 9 draws some conclusions and revisits the design milestones of Chapter 2, showing alternatives for the design trajectory which have been created with the use of actions and interactions in a single framework.


The concept of cloud computing is a very vast concept which is very efficient and effective security services. The cloud computing methodology is a conceptual based technology which is used widely now a day. But in data privacy protection and data retrieval control is one of the most challenging research work in cloud computing, because of users secrete data which is to be stored by user. An enterprise usually store data in internal storage and then tries to protect the data from other outside source. They also provide authentication at certain specific level. To overcome this limitation, we are presenting some approaches that do not require complete dependency on the external security provider. In cloud computing, the data will be stored in storage provided by service providers which has no control of user. Service provider must provides the authentication for valid user otherwise the security must reduce and the cloud computing system may collapse. It"s a service provider"s responsibility to save the end user"s private data. For the above issues regarding security and privacy, this paper implies some efficient ways to overcome the limitations and drawbacks of cloud computing. This paper mainly proposes the core concept of secured cloud computing i.e. it suggests the cloud computing based on separate encryption and decryption services from the storage service. This paper introduces a user interface model i.e. Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The CRM is actually a connecting application which connects user to any system. So we purposefully uses CRM for user interface. A CRM service is described in this paper as an example to proposed business model and usability for end user. This service consists of three cloud systems, which are an encryption, and decryption system, a storage system, and a CRM application system. One service provider operates the encryption and decryption system while other providers operate the storage Even for security and data integrity we supposed to implement the One Time Password Authentication (OTP) including email updates and application systems, according to the core concept of the proposed computing model. General Terms: Private Key, Public Key, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, Authentication ID, cipher text.


This paper presents an experience of using digital design tools in the character design classroom. These materials have become a necessity for a classroom instruction. However, it can be found that although the character design classroom needs effective digital design tools that are easier to use for design working, these tools should be used based on appropriateness. The teacher should have enough knowledge and skill in the digital design tools because the teacher must be able to advise the appropriate digital tools for students that can help the students to work well in this area. Publication Details This conference paper was originally published as Thienmongkol, R, Using digital design tools in the character design classroom, Proceedings of the Emerging Technologies Conference, University of Wollongong, 18-21 June 2008. This conference paper is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/etc08/22


Sports medicine practitioners often consider athletes' self-reports of recovery for the management of concussion, and it is not clear which factors (i.e., neurocognitive performance and symptoms) athletes consider when forming perceptions of recovery from concussion. The current study assessed the relationship of perceptions of recovery to neurocognitive performance on the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT) battery and to symptoms using the Post-Concussion Symptom Scale (PCSS). A total of 101 concussed athletes (62 males, 39 females) aged 12 to 18 years old were included in the study (M age = 14.75, SD = 1.76). Athletes were asked to rate their "percent back to normal" (i.e., perception of recovery) at the time of evaluation. A multiple regression for neurocognitive performance and symptoms revealed a significant model that accounted for 58% of the variance in perceptions of recovery. Adolescent athletes base their perceptions primarily on somatic symptoms (e.g., headache, nausea, vomiting, etc.), and these perceptions may be incongruent with objective neurocognitive measures. Athletes' tendency to overlook several factors when forming their perceptions of recovery should caution the sports medicine practitioner from relying on self-reported symptoms as their primary criterion for return-to-play decisions. These data further support the need for valid and reliable measures for concussion management.