The paper presents the comparison of optimization-regulation algorithms applied to the secondary cooling zone in continuous steel casting where the semi-product withdraws most of its thermal energy. In steel production, requirements towards obtaining defect-free semi-products are increasing day-by-day and the products, which would satisfy requirements of the consumers a few decades ago, are now far below the minimum required quality. To fulfill the quality demands towards minimum occurrence of defects in secondary cooling as possible, some regulation in the casting process is needed. The main concept of this paper is to analyze and compare the most known metaheuristic optimization approaches applied to the continuous steel casting process. Heat transfer and solidification phenomena are solved by using a fast 2.5D slice numerical model. The objective function is set to minimize the surface temperature differences in secondary cooling zones between calculated and targeted surface temperatures by suitable water flow rates through cooling nozzles. Obtained optimization results are discussed and the most suitable algorithm for this type of optimization problem is identified. Temperature deviations and cooling water flow rates in the secondary cooling zone, together with convergence rate and operation times needed to reach the stop criterium for each optimization approach, are analyzed and compared to target casting conditions based on a required temperature distribution of the strand. The paper also contains a brief description of applied heuristic algorithms. Some of the algorithms exhibited faster convergence rate than others, but the optimal solution was reached in every optimization run by only one algorithm.


Fuzzy time series have been developed during the last decade to improve the forecast accuracy. Many algorithms have been applied in this approach of forecasting such as high order time invariant fuzzy time series. In this paper, we present a hybrid algorithm to deal with the forecasting problem based on time variant fuzzy time series and particle swarm optimization algorithm, as a highly efficient and a new evolutionary computation technique inspired by birds' flight and communication behaviors. The proposed algorithm determines the length of each interval in the universe of discourse and degree of membership values, simultaneously. Two numerical data sets are selected to illustrate the proposed method and compare the forecasting accuracy with four fuzzy time series methods. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm satisfactorily competes well with similar approaches.


We estimate the longer-run effects of attending an effective high school (one that improves a combination of test scores, survey measures of socio-emotional development and behaviours in 9th-grade) for students who are more versus less educationally advantaged (i.e., likely to attain more years of education based on 8th-grade characteristics). All students benefit from attending effective schools. However, the least advantaged students experience the largest improvements in high-school graduation, college-going, and school-based arrests. These patterns are driven by the least advantaged students benefiting the most from school impacts on the non-test-score dimensions of school quality. However, while there is considerable overlap in the effectiveness of schools attended by more and less advantaged students, it is the most advantaged students that are most likely to attend highly effective schools. These patterns underscore the importance of quality schools, and the non-test score components of quality schools, for improving the longer-run outcomes for less advantaged students.


OBJECTIVE
To determine if men with systemic sclerosis (SSc) are at increased risk of developing erectile dysfunction (ED) compared to men with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and to investigate the temporal relationship of ED related to rheumatologic disease.

METHODS
Men with SSc identified from the practices of 2 rheumatologists were age matched to men with RA and were sent a standardized, validated questionnaire (SHIM IIEF-5) to assess ED and related factors. The questionnaire also addressed information on the subject's overall health and rheumatic disease status.

RESULTS
The response rate was 50% (48% in SSc and 55% in RA), thus 43 with SSc and 23 with RA were included. The mean age of respondents was 53 yrs +/- 1.34 (SEM), (range 34 to 83). No statistical differences were found for marital status, alcohol or drug use, or past/present smoking. Men with scleroderma weighed less than men with RA (p < 0.004) and were more likely to have Raynaud's phenomenon (p < 0.0001), and to have fewer biological children (2.0 +/- 0.2 vs 2.7 +/- 0.2, p < 0.01). The prevalence of erectile dysfunction was 81% (SSc) and 48% (RA), (relative risk for SSc vs RA: 4.77; 95% CI: 1.55, 14.66; p < 0.005). In subjects who had ED, 78% (both SSc and RA) reported it occurring after disease onset. Men with SSc noted their ED began 2.7 +/- 1.2 (mean +/- SEM) years after their disease was diagnosed, and similarly, men with RA noted their ED began 3.3 +/- 2.2 years after disease diagnosis, p = 0.82. Eighty-six percent of patients with SSc had Raynaud's phenomenon (RP) compared to 19% RA, p < 0.0001. Eighty percent of subjects with RP (SSc + RA) had ED versus 50% of men without RP, p < 0.01. In RA subjects with RP (n = 4), 75% had experienced ED, versus 39% of RA without RP, p = 0.18. Possible confounding factors for ED were examined including smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and steroid use; all except self-reported history of nerve damage (p < 0.0005) and diabetes (p < 0.02) were insignificant for predicting the likelihood of increased ED. Patients with SSc were not more likely than RA to have experienced nerve damage (p = 0.25), or diabetes (p = 0.19).

CONCLUSION
ED occurs frequently in SSc, is more common than in RA, and occurs on average 3 years after disease onset. RP appears to be associated with ED in both SSc and RA, but is not necessarily an independent risk factor for ED in SSc alone.


Arbitration is cool. Everybody's doing it. In the eighty-five years since the passage of the Federal Arbitration Act, that seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Recent decades have seen the meteoric rise of arbitration as a form of alternative dispute resolution. Arbitration is widely regarded as a less expensive, more expeditious alternative to litigation. Courts frequently note that federal policy clearly favors arbitration. No judicial enthusiasm for arbitration seems more complete than that evidenced in the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court. Along with the rise of arbitration, however, there has also been a rise in the amount of criticism of arbitration. Some suggest that nothing short of a complete overhaul of the Federal Arbitration Act will correct problems that have arisen in the arbitration context. One of the main focuses of the criticism has been against mandatory binding pre-dispute arbitration in the consumer context. The United States has condoned this species of arbitration in an unparalled fashion, and some suggest that our country has gone too far. One of the major concerns in this area is that it is unlikely that a consumer can knowingly agree to arbitrate claims that have not yet arisen. This Article focuses on mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements in the context of a situation involving a vulnerable party. As the discussion will illustrate, there is no precise definition of vulnerability. Although most of the cases discussed herein involve older vulnerable adults, the concerns in this area frequently arise in other contexts as well. Thus, the author suggests that the discomfort exhibited by courts in dealing with these cases may suggest a broader discomfort with mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements in the consumer context.


According to life history theory, development times have evolved to an optimum solu- tion of the trade-offs between rapid development and high fecundity: rapidly developing individuals have a higher chance of surviving to maturity than do slowly developing ones, but they mature at a smaller size and, thus, have lower fecundity. Here we develop a model to predict egg-to-adult times in marine pelagic marine copepods that maximizes fitness, quantified either as lifetime reproductive output or population growth rate. The model is tested against global data sets of development time as a function of temperature. The optimum development time increases when the enhancement of fecundity with delayed maturation increases, and it decreases with increasing juvenile mortality. Our predictions match the patterns in nature for broadcast spawners, for which most data are available, but appear to underpredict development times for sac-spawning copepods. The partial uncoupling of growth and development rates in copepods demonstrated in laboratory experiments, the substantial variation in age at maturity observed in copepod field populations, as well as the fair match of pre- dicted and observed development times together suggest that development rates in marine pelagic copepods are tuned to the prevailing predation mortality. Observations in freshwater zooplankton suggest that life histories may be adapted to local conditions of growth and predation mortality. The striking lack of similar observations in marine zooplankton calls for work to explore the significance of environmental modulation of life histories of marine zooplankton. Possible future research avenues are proposed, including studies of the effects of seasonal environments, variable presence of preda- tors and the effects of sexual selection on life histories of marine planktonic copepods.


Summary 1. Trends and fluctuations in populations are determined by complex interactions between extrinsic forcing and intrinsic dynamics. As an example, the dynamics of many marine fish are characterized by age-structured dynamics forced by stochastic recruitment. 2. In this study we develop stochastic age-structured models for two case studies, the Atlantic bluefin tuna and the Atlantic cod. The former exemplifies intracohort interactions and density-dependent reproduction, the latter exemplifies density-dependent survival and intercohort interactions. 3. We use transfer functions and delay-coordinate models to study how the combination of age-structured interactions and stochastic recruitment can induce low-frequency variability. 'Cohort resonance', as we dub this effect, can induce apparent trends in abundance and may be common in age-structured populations. 4. Our study complements the theory of structured populations that focuses on cycles and chaos (high-frequency dynamics). 5. The innate low-frequency fluctuations we describe can potentially mimic or cloak critical variation in abundance linked to environmental change, over-exploitation or other types of anthropogenic forcing. 6. From a management and conservation viewpoint, it will be important to find ways to separate anthropogenic forcing from cohort resonant effects and/or to understand the way they interact.


Abstract Even though the Yugoslav Communists were expelled from the Soviet bloc in 1948, the Communist regime in Yugoslavia headed by Josip Broz Tito had embraced many of the repressive policies associated with Stalinist dictatorships. Based on newly available archival materials from Bosnia and Herzegovina, this article examines policies related to the incarceration of "enemies of the state" during the first several years of Tito's regime. By focusing on policy discussions and implementation, the article shows how government, state security, and prison officials dealt with questions relating to prison conditions, penal policy, and rehabilitation. These documents permit scholars to begin moving beyond the existing focus on well-documented events of mass killing and oppression during the early years of Communist rule—such as the Goli Otok prison camp for alleged Cominformists and mass executions in late 1944—to gain a better understanding of how Yugoslav officials viewed and debated penal policies.


In diverse fields of empirical research—including many in the biological sciences—attempts are made to decompose the effect of an exposure on an outcome into its effects via a number of different pathways. For example, we may wish to separate the effect of heavy alcohol consumption on systolic blood pressure (SBP) into effects via body mass index (BMI), via gamma‐glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT), and via other pathways. Much progress has been made, mainly due to contributions from the field of causal inference, in understanding the precise nature of statistical estimands that capture such intuitive effects, the assumptions under which they can be identified, and statistical methods for doing so. These contributions have focused almost entirely on settings with a single mediator, or a set of mediators considered en bloc; in many applications, however, researchers attempt a much more ambitious decomposition into numerous path‐specific effects through many mediators. In this article, we give counterfactual definitions of such path‐specific estimands in settings with multiple mediators, when earlier mediators may affect later ones, showing that there are many ways in which decomposition can be done. We discuss the strong assumptions under which the effects are identified, suggesting a sensitivity analysis approach when a particular subset of the assumptions cannot be justified. These ideas are illustrated using data on alcohol consumption, SBP, BMI, and GGT from the Izhevsk Family Study. We aim to bridge the gap from "single mediator theory" to "multiple mediator practice," highlighting the ambitious nature of this endeavor and giving practical suggestions on how to proceed.


The buffeting loads acting on the wing and horizontal tail of a 1/4-scale model of the X-1E airplane have been measured in the Langley 16-foot transonic tunnel in the Mach number range from 0.40 to 0.90. When the buffeting loads were reduced to a nondimensional aerodynamic coefficient of buffeting intensity, it was found that the maximum buffeting intensity of the horizontal tail was about twice as large as that of the wing. Comparison of power spectra of buffeting loads acting on the horizontal tail of the airplaneand of the model indicated that the model horizontal tail, which was of conventional force-test-model design, responded in an entirely different mode than did the airplane.This result implied that if quantitative extrapolation of model data to flight conditions were desired a dynamically scaled model of the rearward portion of the fuselage and empennage would be required. A study of the sources of horizontal-tail buffeting of the model indicated that the wing wake contributed a large part of the total buffeting load. At one condition it was found that removal of the wing wake would reduce the buffeting loads on the horizontal tail to about one-third of the original value.


Cognitive diagnosis models received growing attention in recent psychometric literature in view of the potentiality for fine-grained analysis of examinees' latent skills. Although different types and aspects of these models have been investigated in some detail, application to real-life data had so far been sparse. This paper aims at addressing different topics with respect to model building from a practitioner's perspective. The objective is to draw conclusions about examinees' performance on the Austrian baseline testing of educational standards in math 2009. Although there is a variety of models at hand, the focus is set on the easy to interpret deterministic input, noisy 'and' gate model. A possible course of action with respect to model fit is outlined in detail and some conclusions with respect to test results are discussed.


The heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) is the extension of the coronal magnetic field carried out into the solar system by the solar wind. It is the means by which the Sun interacts with planetary magnetospheres and channels charged particles propagating through the heliosphere. As the HMF remains rooted at the solar photosphere as the Sun rotates, the large-scale HMF traces out an Archimedean spiral. This pattern is distorted by the interaction of fast and slow solar wind streams, as well as the interplanetary manifestations of transient solar eruptions called coronal mass ejections. On the smaller scale, the HMF exhibits an array of waves, discontinuities, and turbulence, which give hints to the solar wind formation process. This review aims to summarise observations and theory of the small- and large-scale structure of the HMF. Solar-cycle and cycle-to-cycle evolution of the HMF is discussed in terms of recent spacecraft observations and pre-spaceage proxies for the HMF in geomagnetic and galactic cosmic ray records.


Top-down mass spectrometry (MS) analyzes intact proteins at the proteoform level, which allows researchers to better understand the functions of protein modifications. Recently, top-down proteomics has increased in popularity due to advancements in high-resolution mass spectrometers, increased efficiency in liquid chromatography (LC) separation, and advances in data analysis software. Some unique protein proteoforms, which have been distinguished using top-down MS, have even been shown to exhibit marked variation in biological function compared to similar proteoforms. However, the qualitative identification of a particular proteoform may not be enough to determine the biological relevance of that proteoform. Quantitative top-down MS methods have been notably applied to the study of the differing biological functions of protein proteoforms and have allowed researchers to explore proteomes at the proteoform, rather than the peptide, level. Here, we review the top-down MS methods that have been used to quantitatively identify intact proteins, discuss current applications of quantitative top-down MS analysis, and present new areas where quantitative top-down MS analysis may be implemented.


There is a need for new materials that can stimulate the body's own regenerative mechanisms and heal tissues. Porous templates (scaffolds) are thought to be required for three-dimensional tissue growth. This article discusses bone regeneration and the specifications of an ideal scaffold and the materials that may be suitable. Bioactive glasses have high potential as scaffold materials as they stimulate bone cells to produce new bone, they are degradable in the body and they bond to bone. The two types of bioactive glasses, their mechanisms for bioactivity and their potential for scaffold production are reviewed. Examples of their current clinical use are highlighted.


Digital modules for online resources and good metadata help teachers find the museum's rich, authoritative science content to use in their classrooms. Field trips to science institutions offer an opportunity for teachers to spark student interest and to supplement their classroom teaching with vivid experiences of science and nature. At the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, education is central to our mission, and all content is developed to support learning. Museum exhibition and education staff produce media-rich content that is scientifically authoritative, thanks to collaboration with members of the museum's research staff of more than 200 active scientists. Digital technology opens new avenues to bring these resources into the classroom to extend a class field trip or to bring the museum to classrooms outside the New York City region.


We detail the propagation characteristics of a solitonlike single nonlinear pulse in an average normal group-velocity dispersion (GVD) region under two-step dispersion management. We compare the pulse characteristics with numerical results obtained by the variational method. Even when the dispersion swing is large, a steady-state solitonlike solution can be obtained only when the average effective dispersion becomes anomalous. We describe a pulse–pulse interaction based on a pair of nonlinear pulses and show that there is a large pulse interaction in the average normal GVD region. We show with a Q-mapping technique that such a nonlinear pulse train is unsuitable for high-speed, long-distance optical communication because of this strong pulse interaction.


This article discusses the contention between the state and local Guji people on issues of development and conservation of a Protected Area—Nech Sar National Park in southern Ethiopia. The park, which covers over 514 square kilometers, is a contested space between different actors, not only for its economic values, but it is also an arena of contestation over development and conservation perspectives. Since its inception as a national park in 1974, it has been administered with strict protectionist conservation approach, and later in 1990s, the 'modernist' development program was introduced in the form of ecotourism. On the contrary, the Guji people had strong determination for conservation embedded deep in their worldviews and beliefs. By tracing the genesis of the philosophies behind protected areas in Africa, particularly how it was adopted by the Ethiopian state and its implications, I argue that contrasts in environmental cosmologies between the western and indigenous perspectives have ultimately resulted in unsustainable resource management and also disrupted local livelihood conditions. Despite its existence as an independent country, Ethiopia also experienced similar conservation models that were imported to colonial Africa. In this article, I argue that conservation, particularly in the form of protected areas, is a form of hegemonic control over territories, people and their spaces (historical, economic, cultural and political spaces).


This study investigates the effect of electronic banking, as measured by the extent to which banks make use of automatic teller machine (ATM), on their cost efficiency, before and after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We use stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach to investigate the cost efficiency of 35 commercial banks in Taiwan from 1995 to 2001 and compare their operating performance before and after the Asian financial crisis. A bank's efficiency cannot be improved by merely increasing its ATM numbers: It should perhaps be in coordination with other electronic businesses, such as interactive video terminal (IVT) system, automated clearing house (ACH) system, point of sale (POS) system, remote banking system, financial electronic data exchange interchange, and even internet banking. The more bank branches there are, the more inefficient the banks. On average, a bank's cost inefficiency is significantly higher after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Introduction During recent years, the financial environment faced by Taiwan has changed quite dramatically. The government has enforced policies to release various financial restrictions gradually. In addition to loosening the interest rate and restrictions on the exchange rate, the government also has continued to adopt different measures of financial liberalization up to the present. Currently, there are 47 local banks in Taiwan including 5 public and 42 private banks. Their total assets are NTD18.2504 trillion, which is 87.76% of the total assets of all banks in Taiwan. Moreover, these banks' total deposit balance amount is about NTD14.2841 trillion, which is 90.96% of this economy's total deposits. Their loan balance amount is about NTD11.9833 trillion, which counts for 90.11% of this economy's total loans. While facing the various financial sector changes, the banks are trying to think up ways to improve their operating performance and increase their competitiveness. Electronic banking seems to be the most often used method adopted by banks. This entails using the technology of computer and communications to deliver and handle the transactions and information of banks and the software and hardware of electronic equipment in order to try their best to replace manual and paper operations. Electronic banking does not require a clerk to complete the transaction. On the contrary, the customer can start different service procedures through the terminator that is linked with the banks. Through the delivery of communication lines to enter the bank's server, the customer can enjoy the multitudes of service operating systems in real time. Researchers generally use the following methods to analyze operation efficiency: (1) financial ratio analysis, (2) parametric approach, and (3) non-parametric approach. Given that there are at least ten measurement methods of the financial ratio analysis and different banks have different goals and policies so that the financial index focused by each bank is totally different, it will be inappropriate to analyze the operating performance of each bank solely based on a few financial indices. Therefore, in practice most researchers adopt the parametric and non-parametric approaches. The SFA is the major one in the parametric approach and the DEA is the popular one in the non-parametric approach. Ferrier and Lovell (1990) compared the operating performance of 575 banks in the U.S. in 1984 by using both DEA and translog and obtained a pretty close result; i.e., most banks are in the stage of increasing remuneration by scope and small banks are the most efficient ones. Favero and Papi (1995) used the DEA model to evaluate the technology efficiency and scope efficiency of 174 banks in Italy in 1991 and conducted a cross-section analysis. They discovered that larger banks have a higher efficiency and banks with a higher performance are all dedicated to businesses that are different from the ones conducted by traditional banks. …


Purpose – The paper's aim is to establish how world class manufacturing (WCM) was diffused to some small- and medium-sized enterprises in the NW of England and the network of institutions involved ranging from the state to firms, and to iterate the results with Miller and O'Leary's work on accounting practices and governance.

Design/methodology/approach – This followed an actor network theory approach of "following the actors and actants" using interviews and documentation.

Findings – Three accountabilities (financial, production, and idealised customer) at firm and state levels were linked through agencies like consultants, academics, and employer federations, and quasi-governmental organisations like training and enterprise councils. New discourses and programmes of governance associated with competitiveness fostered changes in accountability locally and nationally. Competitiveness, WCM, and occasional allies like activity-based costing lacked stable and consistent definition. They are adopted and circulate because their plasticity helps actors redefine themselves within translation and mediation processes.

Research limitations/implications – Shop floor workers were not directly studied. Hence, observations on resistance and enactment are tentative.

Practical implications – Continual translations within large networks shape new techniques of management and governance.

Originality/value – The paper shows that programmes and discourses of governance over time are reciprocally linked in a constellation of state institutions and firms.


The experimental setup for laser cooling and trapping of 87Rb atoms with the aid of a Magneto-optical trap (MOT) is discussed. The experiment has a diverse setup, which includes: a vacuum system in which the cooling and trapping takes place; a laser system, which provides a velocity dependent force; a magnetic field,which creates a position dependent force for the atoms; and an imaging system which can be used to determine many of the properties of the atomic cloud. A polarisation detector is also designed and constructed, which is used to determine the degree of circular polarisation of beams in the experiment. Using this polarisation device, the beam can be circularly polarised to a high degree with an purity of the polarisation of 0.03. A pair of Anti-Helmholtz coils is designed and constructed, these two coils produce a magnetic field that is zero at the centre and changes linearly along along all three axes. The magnetic field gradient was measured along the symmetry axis of the coils. The final magnetic field coil measured a magnetic field gradient of 16.21 G/cm, 9.98 G/cm and 6.91 G/cm, when the separation is equal to 0.026 m, 0.655 m and 0.08 m, respectively. An overview of these systems is presented as well as their performance.


How migration relates to internationalization has been a prominent question in international economics for a long time and its relevance for policy has increased with the amplified political focus on migration. But the role of migration for internationalization is not as obvious as the standard theory suggests, and tightening migration could have unexpected consequences for both developing and developed countries. In this paper we review and discuss over 100 papers published about migrants' role in international trade and foreign direct investment, from pioneering country-level studies to nascent firm-level studies that utilize employer-employee data. To our knowledge, this is the first paper offering a wide-ranging review of the different strands of theory on the relationship between migration and internationalization, as well as new empirical findings. Although the evidence suggests that migration can facilitate internationalization, we also note substantial gaps and inconsistencies in the extant literature. The aim of this paper is to encourage future research and assist policymakers in their efforts to promote internationalization, and better understand the economic effects of changes in migration policy.


The most successful classrooms are those that encourage students to think for themselves and engage in critical thinking. This is a practical guide to lively teaching that results in reading and writing for critical thinking. It explains and demonstrates a well-organized set of strategies for teaching that invites and supports learning. At the same time it helps educators form judgments about teaching so that they can adjust their practices to subjects they teach and the needs of their students. A series of core lessons explains and demonstrates teaching methods in action and shows educators how they can use related teaching methods to achieve similar goals. It also includes general ideas about assessment and lesson planning, as well as classroom management techniques and assessment rubrics. Strategies can be used from upper primary school through secondary school and across the curriculum.


Background Epidemiological research has shown that hallucinations and delusions, the classic symptoms of psychosis, are far more prevalent in the population than actual psychotic disorder. These symptoms are especially prevalent in childhood and adolescence. Longitudinal research has demonstrated that psychotic symptoms in adolescence increase the risk of psychotic disorder in adulthood. There has been a lack of research, however, on the immediate clinicopathological significance of psychotic symptoms in adolescence. Aims To investigate the relationship between psychotic symptoms and non-psychotic psychopathology in community samples of adolescents in terms of prevalence, co-occurring disorders, comorbid (multiple) psychopathology and variation across early v. middle adolescence. Method Data from four population studies were used: two early adolescence studies (ages 11–13 years) and two mid-adolescence studies (ages 13–16 years). Studies 1 and 2 involved school-based surveys of 2243 children aged 11–16 years for psychotic symptoms and for emotional and behavioural symptoms of psychopathology. Studies 3 and 4 involved in-depth diagnostic interview assessments of psychotic symptoms and lifetime psychiatric disorders in community samples of 423 children aged 11–15 years. Results Younger adolescents had a higher prevalence (21–23%) of psychotic symptoms than older adolescents (7%). In both age groups the majority of adolescents who reported psychotic symptoms had at least one diagnosable non-psychotic psychiatric disorder, although associations with psychopathology increased with age: nearly 80% of the mid-adolescence sample who reported psychotic symptoms had at least one diagnosis, compared with 57% of the early adolescence sample. Adolescents who reported psychotic symptoms were at particularly high risk of having multiple co-occurring diagnoses. Conclusions Psychotic symptoms are important risk markers for a wide range of non-psychotic psychopathological disorders, in particular for severe psychopathology characterised by multiple co-occurring diagnoses. These symptoms should be carefully assessed in all patients.


"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria." Edward B. Garside, "New York Times Book Review" Ancient Mesopotamia the area now called Iraq has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written." Leonard Cottrell, "Book Week" "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research." Samuel Noah Kramer, "Archaeology" A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the "Assyrian Dictionary" of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago."


Hummingbird flower mites and hummingbirds may compete intensely for the nectar secreted by their host plants. Here, we present the results from field experiments in which flower mites were excluded from flowers of six hummingbird-pollinated plants with contrasting flower longevities. Nectar measurements were taken on flowers from which mites were excluded and those without mite exclusion over their lifespans. The exclusion of mites had a signifi- cant positive effect on the amount of nectar available in plants with long-lived flowers. In contrast, nectar availability in short-lived flowers was not significantly reduced after mite exclusion. The significance of the mite-exclusion treat- ment was independent of floral morph and flower age. Results also suggest that the magnitude of the mite-exclusion treatment depends on the volume of nectar produced by the flower throughout its lifetime. The treatment effect was detected when nectar consumption, presumably by flower mites, exceeded 13% of the nectar produced by the flowers; nectar availability was not significantly reduced when nectar volume was < 7 µL per flower. It appears that flower mites consume proportionately more nectar in long-lived flowers than in short-lived flowers. Parasitic hummingbird flower mites seem to be preferentially taking advantage of plant-pollinator interactions in which flowers last several days and produce large volumes of nectar. The consequences of this finding concerning plant-hummingbird-mite interactions await further investigation. As a working hypothesis, we propose that nectar production has increased over evolutionary time not only by the selective pressures imposed by the pollinators, but also to compensate for the reduction they suffer after exploitation by nectar robbers and thieves such as flower mites.


How infectious disease spreads both from individual to individual and across a landscape will depend upon many inter-related factors, including the genetic composition of host and pathogen populations, the pathogen transmission rate, host density, population connectivity, and the evolutionary response of both host and pathogen over time. As such, the study of infectious disease straddles a number of fields and approaches. A key advance in the field has come from incorporation of spatial structure into both theoretical and empirical studies of the epidemiology, evolution, and ecology of disease. Researchers taking this approach were recently brought together for a workshop entitled 'Spatial evolutionary epidemiology' in Montpellier, France organized by Sebastien Lion and Sylvain Gandon from the Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE). The workshop spanned topics from infection genetics in Daphnia, to cooperation and conflict in microbial populations, to the utility of spatial epidemiological models for designing better crop planting strategies, and emphasized the broader need to think about the importance of spatial heterogeneity in order to predict the spread and evolution of pathogens.

The recent literature includes a number of studies at the cutting edge of this field. For example, a model based on interactions between bacteria and their bacteriophage parasites by Ben Ashby and collaborators has demonstrated the importance of spatial structure in shaping the breadth of host resistance. They find that hosts and parasites from spatially structured populations should be less constrained by costs associated with 'generalism' than those from well-mixed populations, and therefore, that spatial structure is likely to increases the breadth of host resistance/parasite infectivity, especially when this increased breadth carries a significant fitness cost (Ashby et al. 2014). Another potential effect of spatial structure on host-parasite interactions is through changing rates of infection, as opposed to infection range. A recent empirical study of bacteria and phages by Pavitra Roychoudhury and coauthors experimentally evolved phages on spatially structured agar plates for 550 phage generations and found increased phage fitness was associated with a mutation conferring slower phage adsorption rate to bacterial host cells. This is in line with theoretical work suggesting spatial structure may lead to reduced parasite infectivity (e.g., Boots and Sasaki 1999) and builds upon previous empirical work from nonmicrobial systems in support of this theory. Furthermore, the authors develop a system-specific, spatially explicit model to explain how low attachment probability might lead to increased phage fitness through higher plaque density as a result of trade-offs between phage diffusion and adsorption (Roychoudhury et al. 2014).

Studying spatial structure in natural populations is of course a more challenging goal, as one loses the ability to control for the type of heterogeneity across which a study is performed. Despite these potential limitations, recent work by Jussi Jousimo, Ayco Tack, and collaborators examined the impact of connectivity among over 4000 populations of the plant, Plantago lanceolata, on resistance to a co-occurring fungal pathogen, Podosphaera plantaginis, over a 12-year period. Using this large spatial dataset, the authors were able to explain the unexpected observation that highly connected populations typically showed lower pathogen prevalence and higher pathogen extinction than more isolated populations. They demonstrate that hosts from highly connected populations are in fact more resistant to the pathogen than those from more isolated populations, most likely as a result of stronger parasite-mediated selection over time (Jousimo et al. 2014). This work highlights the importance of incorporating host and pathogen evolution into models predicting the spread of disease across space, and emphasizes the potential for differential parasite-mediated selection across a host metapopulation.

Finally, work by David Rasmussen and colleagues has demonstrated the strength of incorporating spatial structure into phylodynamic (coalescent) approaches to inferring past disease dynamics from genealogies (Rasmussen et al. 2014). Motivated to explain the common discrepancy between phylodynamic inferences and those made from hospital records, the authors apply their new method to a case study of mosquito-borne dengue virus in southern Vietnam. They demonstrate that a spatially structured susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model resulted in similar patterns to those seen from the hospitalization data, including large seasonal fluctuations in disease, and that the incorporation of ecological complexity into coalescent models increases the accuracy of inferences to disease demography.

Overall, these recent studies demonstrate the added value of incorporating spatial structure into epidemiological, phylodynamic, and evolutionary/ecological models of infectious disease. Although the current body of theory on the topic offers clear predictions for how spatial structure might influence disease evolution and spread, there remains a paucity of empirical and observational studies testing these key ideas. Moving forward, the more we understand about these eco-evolutionary feedbacks, the better we will be able to manage emerging disease in natural, agricultural, and human populations.


At two interfacial-tension measurement experiments with the same experimental conditions, steel samples and mold flux samples of the same compositions were melted in crucibles from the same batch. During the first experiment, the steel drop melted far below its liquidus and then was emulsified. At the second experiment, the steel melted at the expected temperature but did not emulsify. The difference that can be identified is the mass of the steel samples.


Being strategic implies intentionality. It involves knowing what one wants to happen, and then intentionally seeing that it occurs. It also implies having a toolbox from which one can pull tools or tactics to apply, and it implies selecting the best tool for the occasion. The ?best? tools are those that get the job done while requiring the least amount of time and energy to use them. To select the appropriate tool, one must analyze the situation for which a tool is needed to determine the problem's critical attributes and then match these up with the attributes of various tools to find the best fit. This requires one to possess not only knowledge about each of the tools in the toolbox, but also knowledge about the problem-solving context for which the tool is needed. Being strategic also means that one monitors the effectiveness of the tool once it is employed to both ensure the tool is working efficiently and to learn more about the tool itself (what it can and cannot accomplish) as well as to learn more about the problem-solving situation.


Abstract—Exact solution of an unsteady flow of elastico-viscous electrically conducting fluid through a porous media in a tube of elliptical cross section under the influence of constant pressure gradient and magnetic field has been obtained in this paper. Initially, the flow is generated by a constant pressure gradient. After attaining the steady state, the pressure gradient is suddenly withdrawn and the resulting fluid motion in a tube of elliptical cross section by taking into account of the transverse magnetic field and porosity factor of the bounding surface is investigated. The problem is solved in twostages the first stage is a steady motion in tube under the influence of a constant pressure gradient, the second stage concern with an unsteady motion. The problem is solved employing separation of variables technique. The results are expressed in terms of a nondimensional porosity parameter (K), magnetic parameter (m) and elastico-viscosity parameter (β), which depends on the NonNewtonian coefficient. The flow parameters are found to be identical with that of Newtonian case as elastic-viscosity parameter and magnetic parameter tends to zero and porosity tends to infinity. It is seen that the effect of elastico-viscosity parameter, magnetic parameter and the porosity parameter of the bounding surface has significant effect on the velocity parameter.


This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the value of the university armed service units – the University Officer Training Corps, University Royal Naval Units and University Air Squadrons. The units, many of which date back to the early 20th century, exist in order to provide students at UK universities with an experience of the British armed forces. Participation in the units is entirely voluntary, and there is no expectation that students will go on to join the armed forces on graduation, although a proportion of students each year do so. The Value of the University Armed Service Units brings together the results of a research project which explored what the value of the units might be to student participants, to graduates in civilian jobs who had the experience as students, to the armed forces, to universities whose students take part in the units, and to employers of graduates with service unit experience. This book draws on quantitative and qualitative research data to explore whether, how, and why the units have value to these different groups. Significant conclusions include the extent to which the units are able to assist students with the development of their transferable (graduate) skills; the potential significance of the units for future recruitment to the armed forces, particularly the Reserves; and the effect of unit experience in developing an informed understanding of the role and function of the British armed forces amongst the wider civilian population.


Over the past decade, many advances have been made in the characterization of primary liver tumours in humans, in particular relating to the identification and role of Hepatic Progenitor Cells (HPCs), which has resulted in a new classification. In view of the similarities in cell biological mechanisms involved in regeneration and tumour development between the human liver and the liver in small domestic animals, it is conceivable that the observations made in human hepatic tumour pathology may also be true for canine or feline liver tumours. Therefore, we investigated the presence and relative frequency of morphological types of canine and feline primary hepatic neoplasms and determined whether the classification is similar to the new human classification. Canine and feline primary liver tumours were examined histologically and with a series of immunohistochemical markers including the HPC marker keratin 19 (K19). K19 positive hepatocellular neoplasias in dogs were highly comparable to man and constituted 12% of canine hepatocellular tumours. Like in man the canine hepatocellular tumours could be subdivided in hepatocellular tumours with 0–5% positivity for K19, which were well differentiated and had no evidence of metastasis, tumours with >5% positivity for K19, which were poorly differentiated and had intrahepatic and/or distant metastasis, and a scirrhous subgroup with an intermediate position with regard to K19 staining and malignancy. Also cholangiocellular carcinomas and a cholangiolocarcinomas well as neuroendocrine carcinomas were found, which all had intrahepatic and/or distant metastases. The histopathological and immunohistochemical examination of canine primary hepatic neoplasms can differentiate hepatocellular, cholangiocellular and neuroendocrine tumours in accordance with the most recent human classification system. Histological and immunohistochemical examination of primary hepatic neoplasms in the cat revealed marked differences between canine and feline primary hepatic neoplasms justifying a separate new classification scheme for the cat. This comprised hepatocellular adenomas and carcinomas, cholangiocellular carcinomas as well as small cell carcinomas / carcinoids. In contrast to the dog, feline hepatocellular carcinomas showed no HPC characteristics but maintained their hepatocellular characteristics. Instead, within the small cell carcinomas or carcinoids a K19 negative group of true neuroendocrine carcinomas and a K19 positive group with HPC characteristics were recognized. To better understand the aggressive behaviour of K19-positive hepatocellular tumours, K19-positive and K19-negative canine hepatocellular tumours were immunohistochemically stained and compared for the presence of proteins known to be crucial in tumour development. The differential expression of for instance malignancy markers PDGAFRα and GPC-3 explain the malignant phenotype of carcinomas versus adenomas. The proposed classification of the primary liver tumours in dogs and cats provides a basis for a standardized diagnosis that allows more patient specific treatment modalities. In addition, functional immunohistochemical characterisation of the canine hepatocellular tumours suggested pathways for malignant transformation and may present possibilities for new diagnostic and future personalized therapies.


Real-time distributed systems are modeled by a times transition model (TTM). For any finite-state TTM, decision procedures are provided for checking a small but important class of properties (specified in real-time temporal logic). The procedures are linear in the size of the system reachability graph. The class of properties includes invariance, precedence, eventuality and real-time response specifications. >


Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a group of clinically and genetically heterogeneous inherited connective tissue disorders with widespread manifestations. The prevalence of this syndrome is 1:5000 worldwide without gender, racial or ethnic associations. This syndrome is characterized by joint hypermobility, dermal hyperelasticity and tissue fragility caused by mutations in genes encoding collagen type I, III, V and enzymes involved in the posttranslational modifications of collagen. The oral manifestations include increased mucosal fragility, delayed wound healing, early onset generalized periodontitis and temporomandibular joint hypermobility. Children presenting with this syndrome are often misdiagnosed for hematological problem as they present with bruising, malignancy and/or child abuse. A thorough assessment of the patient is, therefore, essential for early diagnosis and patient referral. This paper reviews current literature, oral manifestations, diagnostic investigations and effective dental management.


Methods that leverage the information about population history contained within the increasingly abundant genetic sequences of extant and extinct hominid populations are diverse in form and versatile in application. Here, we review key methods recently developed to detect and quantify admixture and ancestry in modern human populations. We begin with an overview of the f- and D-statistics, covering their conceptual principles and important applications, as well as any extensions developed for them. We then cover a combination of more recent and more complex methods for admixture and ancestry inference, discussing tests for direct ancestry between two populations, quantifijication of admixture in large data sets, and determination of admixture dates. These methods have revolutionized our understanding of human population history and highlight its complexity. Therefore, we emphasize that current methods may not capture this population history in its entirety but nonetheless provide a reasonable picture that is supported by data from multiple methods and from the historical record.


A major challenge for coral reef conservation and management is understanding how a wide range of interacting human and natural drivers cumulatively impact and shape these ecosystems. Despite the importance of understanding these interactions, a methodological framework to synthesize spatially explicit data of such drivers is lacking. To fill this gap, we established a transferable data synthesis methodology to integrate spatial data on environmental and anthropogenic drivers of coral reefs, and applied this methodology to a case study location–the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI). Environmental drivers were derived from time series (2002–2013) of climatological ranges and anomalies of remotely sensed sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a, irradiance, and wave power. Anthropogenic drivers were characterized using empirically derived and modeled datasets of spatial fisheries catch, sedimentation, nutrient input, new development, habitat modification, and invasive species. Within our case study system, resulting driver maps showed high spatial heterogeneity across the MHI, with anthropogenic drivers generally greatest and most widespread on O'ahu, where 70% of the state's population resides, while sedimentation and nutrients were dominant in less populated islands. Together, the spatial integration of environmental and anthropogenic driver data described here provides a first-ever synthetic approach to visualize how the drivers of coral reef state vary in space and demonstrates a methodological framework for implementation of this approach in other regions of the world. By quantifying and synthesizing spatial drivers of change on coral reefs, we provide an avenue for further research to understand how drivers determine reef diversity and resilience, which can ultimately inform policies to protect coral reefs.


Introduction: The incidence of hypotension after administration of anesthesia in the spinal canal in women undergoing abdominal surgical delivery may be about to eighty percent if preventive amplifications, for instance precedent the introduction of additional fluid into the body, propelling the uterus to the left, and vasopressors, have not been considered.
Aims: are to analyze the effect of ephedrine and phenylephrine in prophylaxis and treatment of low blood pressure in patients undergoing spinal anesthesia, to figure out the side effects of these drugs and to determine fetal Apgar scores.
Method: Fifty five women were randomly designated into two groups to get preventative ephedrine (n=27) or phenylephrine (n=28). Blood pressure, heart rate, frequency of low blood pressure, reactive high blood pressure, heart rate less than 60 BPM, heart rate more than 100 BPM, nausea, vomiting, and Apgar scores were checked out.
Results: There were no significant differences in the characteristic data between the groups. The mean (± SD) dose of ephedrine used was 19.81 mg (± 5.46) and phenylephrine was 125.71 μg (± 35.64). Differences in systolic and diastolic pressure were compatible in the two groups. There were significant alterations in the frequency of reactive hypertension episodes (Ephedrine group: 48 (14.5%) vs. Phenylephrine group: 26 (7.7%) P 0.301). There were significant differences in the incidence of nausea and vomiting (Ephedrine group: 10 (37%) vs. Phenylephrine group: 3(10.7%); P>0.018). There were no significant diversity in the incidence of hypotension, with an incidence of 18(66.7%) in the Ephedrine group and 17(60.7%) (P<0.646) in the Phenylephrine group. Maternal arrhythmias were more common in the Ephedrine group at 10(37%) than in the Phenylephrine group at 7(25%), but the difference is not significant (P=0.334). Additionally, maternal restlessness was more common in the Ephedrine group: 8(30.8%) than the Phenylephrine group: 3(10.7%), but with an insignificant difference (P=0.068). Diversity in the Apgar score in the 1st and 5th minute was not observed. Number of patients who required rescue dose in the Ephedrine group was 24(88.9%), which was significantly higher than the Phenylephrine group at 20(71.4%), P<0.005). There are significant differences in the number of rescue doses of the two drugs. In the Phenylephrine group there was only one patient (3.6%) that had the rescue dose 3 times, and for the Ephedrine group there were 9 patients (33.3%) that had the rescue dose 3 times each, (P=0.033).
Conclusion: This study reinforces the usefulness of phenylephrine for the retainment of blood pressure during administration of anesthesia in the spine for optional surgical delivery.


Background: In order to avoid potential harm of synthetic additives food, development of novel functional foods containing natural ingredients is considered in current years. In this study, inhibitory effect of Echinophora platyloba Essential Oil (EO) on growth of Aspergillus flavus was evaluated in culture media and cheese. Methods: E. platyloba EO was extracted by hydrodistillation method using a Clevengertype system. Growth of A. flavus on Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) culture media was assayed using an agar dilution method. The lowest concentration which inhibited the growth of A. flavus was considered as Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) and the lowest concentration of EO which eliminated the mold was taken as Minimum Fungicidal Concentration (MFC). Mold spore suspension was inoculated on Iranian ultra-filtered white cheese and the means of two perpendicular diameters of the fungal colony was calculated. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS, Inc, Chicago, IL software (v.16.0). Results: All concentrations of EO exhibited significant inhibition (p<0.05) of fungal growth in an agar medium. The concentration of 500 ppm of EO reduced the radial growth of A. flavus by 73.9% while higher concentration inhibited completely mold growth. MIC and MFC of the EO was 750 and 1500 ppm, respectively. All the levels of EO had an inhibitory effect (p<0.05) against radial fungal growth in cheese. However, the highest inhibitory effect was seen in cheese group treated with 2000 ppm of EO in which radial growth was reduced by 75.53%. Conclusion: This study suggested that the E. platyloba as a natural inhibitor was able to control the growth of molds in foods such as cheese.


The public forum doctrine is like an invasive weed that has expanded luxuriantly after being transplanted beyond its native habitat. The metaphor of the "forum" was first used as a way to explain why the government cannot engage in prior restraint or content discrimination with regard to speaking, picketing, or leafleting on city parks and sidewalks. It has since outgrown these locations, becoming so pervasive that courts frequently assert that all government property must be some kind of forum. The reflex to invoke the public forum doctrine where it does not belong leads to a number of awkward results. When used in inapt situations, the doctrine does little to help lawyers and judges reach correct results, but instead introduces a branching series of dead ends, redundancies, and inefficiencies. Continued use of the public forum doctrine in these settings may hinder the development of better-fitting legal rules. A larger problem arises when the doctrine goes beyond inelegance to create genuinely unjust results. For all of the debate that occurs over designating particular government properties as a traditional, designated, limited, or nonpublic forums, almost no effort has been applied to defining a forum itself. The law would be better served by recognizing that some locations for speech are simply not forums at all. As a step towards a better definition of a forum, this article identifies five features of a traditional public forum that help explain why these are spaces where the government must allow free-ranging discourse. It then examines the difficulties that result from invoking the public forum doctrine in factual situations lacking different combinations of these features.


To assess left ventricular diastolic filling in mitral valve prolapse (MVP), we studied 22 patients with idiopathic MVP and 22 healthy controls matched for sex, age, body surface area and heart rate. A two-dimensional, M-mode and Doppler echocardiographic examination was performed to exclude any cardiac abnormalities. The two groups had similar diastolic and systolic left ventricular volumes, left ventricle mass and ejection fraction. Doppler measurements of mitral inflow were: E and A areas (the components of the total flow velocity-time integral in the early passive period of ventricular filling, E; and the late active period of atrial emptying, A), the peak E and A velocities (cm.s-1), acceleration and deceleration half-times (ms) of early diastolic rapid inflow, acceleration time of early diastolic flow (AT), total diastolic filling time (DFT) (ms), and the deceleration of early diastolic flow (cm.s-2). From these measurements were calculate: peak A/E ratio (A/E), E area/A area, the early filling fraction, the atrial filling fraction, AT/DFT ratio. All the Doppler measurements reported are the average of three cardiac cycles selected at end expiration. The mean peak A velocity, A/E velocity ratio, deceleration half time and atrial filling fraction were each significantly higher for subjects presenting a MVP (60 +/- 12 cm.s-1 vs 49 +/- 14, P < 0.008; 98 +/- 13% vs 64 +/- 12%, P < 0.0001; 120 +/- 36 ms vs 92 +/- 11, P < 0.002; 0.45 +/- 0.14 vs 0.36 +/- 0.08, P < 0.02).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The analysis presented here is to study the effect of thermal gradient on the vibration of visco-elastic square plate (having clamped boundary condition on all the four edges) of variable thickness whose thickness varies linearly in both directions. Two dimensional thermal effects on frequency of free vibrations of a visco-elastic square plate is considered. It is also considered that the temperature varies parabolically in two directions and thickness of square plate varies linearly in two directions. An approximate but quite convenient frequency equation is derived for a square plate (clamped at all the edges) by using Rayleigh-Ritz technique with a two-term deflection function. Both the modes of the frequency are calculated by the latest computational technique, MATLAB, for the various


The philosophy of globalism is neoliberalism. It has become prevalent due to the financialisation of the economy. During the twenty-five years of the so-called Fordist growth regime the interests of the real sector were served by the financial sector. This situation has changed in the last few decades. The financial sector has become the ruling force. Both the macro and the micro economy have become dependent on financing. The reasons for this include general indebtedness and the incentive system of modern managers. Financialisation has brought about changes both in macro-level and micro-level management. The interests of management are linked to asset growth. Competing individuals see themselves as human capital. They control themselves within the company and can be outsourced. Outsourcing turns hierarchical relations into horizontal ones. As a result, however, employees become more defenceless and solidarity among employees diminishes considerably. The underlying principle of good governance in macromanagement is that the state is one of the market players seeking maximal efficiency. Neoliberalism does not intend to reduce or overshadow the role of the state but it wants to change the state's role. This changing role essentially means reforms aimed at reducing expenditure along with strengthening the regulatory role of the state. Their main task is to ensure that the highly indebted state can pay all its debts to the financial sector at all times.


Immediate licence suspension, commonly referred to as administrative licence suspension in North America, is an increasingly common sanction used in a number of Australian jurisdictions. While differences exist in the way this sanction is applied across jurisdictions, it essentially involves the immediate suspension of the licence following detection by the police for certain offences. Typically the sanction has been used as a response to high-level drink driving offences. A review of the empirical evidence suggests strong support for the effectiveness of administrative licence suspension laws. The laws have been found to have both a general and specific deterrent effect. Specifically, introduction of the laws has been found to be associated with reductions in fatal and injurious crashes, both overall and alcohol related, as well on a number of measures often used as a proxy for alcohol-related crashes including night-time crashes, single-vehicle crashes, and crashes among younger drivers Furthermore, the laws have shown evidence of motivating behaviour change among drink driving offenders, with substantial reductions in drink driving recidivism and self-reported impaired driving, particularly when combined with alcohol treatment programs. Options for future expansion of the laws to other offence types including high-range speeding and dangerous driving offences and more widespread implementation of the laws throughout jurisdictions are explored.


A total of 1,054 barrows and gilts (PIC, initially 207.8 lb) were used in a 28-d study to determine the influence of glycerol and ractopamine HCl (Paylean) on growing-finishing pig performance, carcass characteristics, and loin quality. The experiment was conducted in a commercial swine research facility in southwest Minnesota. Pigs were blocked by weight and randomly allotted to 1 of 4 dietary treatments with 10 replications per treatment. Pigs were fed corn-soybean meal-based diets. Dietary treatments were arranged in a 2 × 2 factorial with main effects of glycerol (0 or 5%) and ractopamine HCl (0 or 6.75 g/ ton). Overall (d 0 to 28), there were no glycerol × ractopamine HCl interactions (P > 0.10) observed for growth performance. Pigs fed dietary glycerol had improved (P < 0.04) F/G, but ADG and ADFI (P > 0.40) were not affected. Pigs fed diets with added ractopamine HCl had improved (P < 0.01) ADG and F/G with a tendency (P > 0.08) for lower ADFI than pigs fed diets with no ractopamine HCl. For carcass characteristics, there were glycerol × ractopamine HCl interactions observed (P < 0.05) for percent yield and fat free lean index (FFLI). Adding either ractopamine HCl or glycerol to the control diet increased yield and FFLI; however, there were no additive effects when the combination of glycerol and ractopamine HCl was fed. Pigs fed ractopamine HCl had increased (P < 0.04) HCW, yield, loin depth, and FFLI. There was a glycerol × ractopamine HCl interaction (P < 0.01) observed for loin chop drip loss. Loin chop drip loss was numerically improved when glycerol and ractopamine HCl were added separately to the control diet; however, loin chop drip loss numerically decreased when the combination of glycerol and ractopamine HCl was fed. Glycerol did not affect (P > 0.22) loin characteristics. Ractopamine HCl tended to improve (P < 0.08) sirloin chop a* (redness) color. Neither ractopamine HCl nor glycerol influenced iodine value of belly fat, jowl fat, or backfat. In conclusion, pigs fed 5% glycerol had improved F/G, whereas pigs fed ractopamine HCl had improved growth and carcass characteristics and a tendency for improved loin a* color.; Swine Day, 2008, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 2008


Introduction: Finding sources of drugs among the species of genus Onosma of the local fl ora is actual direction. Many of the species of genus Onosma are weeds, some live exclusively on dry sandy or rocky slopes. Many of the species of genus Onosma have used in ethnopharmacology as anti-infl ammatory, analgesic, and wound health remedies. The purpose of this research is morphological and anatomical study of herbs of Onosma caucasica Levin. ex M. Pop. and Onosma sericea Willd. (Boraginaceae). Materials and Methods: The objects of the study were collected in North Caucasus (Russia) in June 2011. Materials morphological study herbarium specimens were stored in the herbarium fund the Department of Botany (acronym PGFA). Materials micromorphological study were temporary slides are the leaf, stem and fl owers. Results: The morphological results were compared with the Flora of the USSR. Anatomical characters of leaves and stems of the species were observed to be similar to the usual features of Boraginaceae anatomy. All results are supported by photographs. The nature of trichomes on the leaf blade has a major diagnostic value in determining the authenticity of herbs the studied species. Conclusion: The severity of downy leaf blade and the corolla, and the structure of the hair can reliably identify this type of raw material and serve as the basis for the development of the regulatory documentation for its standardization.


The aim of this paper is to address recognition of natural human actions in diverse and realistic video settings. This challenging but important subject has mostly been ignored in the past due to several problems one of which is the lack of realistic and annotated video datasets. Our first contribution is to address this limitation and to investigate the use of movie scripts for automatic annotation of human actions in videos. We evaluate alternative methods for action retrieval from scripts and show benefits of a text-based classifier. Using the retrieved action samples for visual learning, we next turn to the problem of action classification in video. We present a new method for video classification that builds upon and extends several recent ideas including local space-time features, space-time pyramids and multi-channel non-linear SVMs. The method is shown to improve state-of-the-art results on the standard KTH action dataset by achieving 91.8% accuracy. Given the inherent problem of noisy labels in automatic annotation, we particularly investigate and show high tolerance of our method to annotation errors in the training set. We finally apply the method to learning and classifying challenging action classes in movies and show promising results.


The way in which law and lawyers are portrayed in popular film and literature is a fascinating subject not only for the social scientist but, more importantly, the lawyer and law student. Increasingly in law schools, films and classic literature with a legal theme are being used to identify various aspects of legal activity ranging from legal practice (i.e. intrinsic lawyer skills including legal argument, negotiation and advocacy) to various aspects of the legal process (e.g. the function of the judge and jury) as well as important elements of legal and ethical theory. This article focuses on the Law Through Film and Literature option which is offered to law students in the final year of their LLB (Hons) degree at Greenwich. The aim is to show how law-related film and literature can be a useful tool in the legal classroom, as well as providing some insights into how students have responded and developed as a result of their experiences on the course.


Restricting or eliminating the use of atrazine in the Midwest would have important economic consequences for farmers and consumers. Atrazine is an important herbicide in the production of corn and other crops in the United States. Since atrazine is such an important herbicide, mandatory changes in application strategies are likely to generate sizable costs for producers and consumers. However, recent findings indicate that elevated amounts of atrazine are running off fields and entering surface water resources. This report presents the costs and benefits of an atrazine ban, a ban on pre-plant and pre-emergent applications, and a targeted ban to achieve a surface water standard. A complete atrazine ban is hypothesized to be the costliest strategy, while the targeted strategy is the least costly.


The study presents the estimates of industry specific multipliers which are derived utilizing a highly disaggregated symmetric input-output table for the Maltese Economy for 2010, published by the National Statistics Office of Malta in 2016. The aim of this study is to derive and analyse a set of output, value added, income and employment multipliers, which illustrate how an exogenous shock to the final demand of each industry would affect the production activities of the Maltese economy on the basis of the Leontief demand driven model. Both the open, as well as the closed Leontief demand driven model are utilized in order to derive the simple and total multipliers. The study presents a comparative analysis of the direct, indirect and induced multiplier effects in terms of the output, value added, income and employment generation for each industry within the Maltese economy. Although there is a considerable degree of heterogeneity in the results obtained across the various multiplier measures, when considering the complete set of multiplier results, a number of industries do feature as relatively strong performers across all categories of multipliers. The accommodation and food services activities feature in the top 15 in almost all categories of multipliers under consideration, confirming the historic tendency for the tourism sector to feature as a key important economic driver. The sectors associated with the public sector, more specifically the public administration, education and human health sectors, were also found to consistently exhibit relatively strong multiplier effects.


R EIEW A R TCLE Abstract In the development of microfluidic chips, conventional 2D processing technologies contribute to the manufacturing of basic microchannel networks. Nevertheless, in the pursuit of versatile microfluidic chips, flexible integration of multifunctional components within a tiny chip is still challenging because a chip containing micro-channels is a non-flat substrate. Recently, on-chip laser processing (OCLP) technology has emerged as an appealing alternative to achieve chip functionalization through in situ fabrication of 3D microstructures. Here, the recent development of OCLP-enabled multifunctional microfluidic chips, including several accessible photochemical/photophysical schemes, and photosensitive materials permiting OCLP, is reviewed. To demonstrate the capability of OCLP technology, a series of typical microcomponents fabricated using OCLP are introduced. The prospects and current challenges of this field are discussed.


ABSTRACT A retrospective study was conducted on all patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Ilorin, Nigeria, over a 10—year period (October 1991—Sept. 2001). This period marks the first decade of the establishment of our ICU. The purpose of this study is to describe the pattern of admission of patients into the ICU, highlighting the variety of cases, indications for admission, outcome and causes of death, and the problems of medical and administrative management of the unit. No similar study has previously been carried out in this institution. A total of 295 patients, consisting of 185 males (62.7%) and 110 females (37.3%) were admitted to the ICU during the study period. The commonest indication for ICU admission was for postoperative high care (54.9%), with post-laparotomy patients accounting for 59.9% of these cases. Medical indications for admission accounted for 21.3%, with respiratory failure and asthma being the commonest and each accounting for 11.5%. One hundred and ten patients (37.3%) died during their ICU admission, giving an ICU survival rate of 62.7%. Late presentation of cases and inadequate staffing and equipment were important factors which may have contributed to mortality in these patients. Improved funding, training of additional staff and acquisition of advanced monitoring and life support equipment would improve the efficiency of our intensive care unit and patient survival.


This thesis investigates advanced optical performance monitoring approaches for future all-optical networks using the synchronous sampling technique. This allows for improved signal quality estimation, fault management and resource allocation through improved control of transmission at the physical layer level. Because of the increased transparency in next generation networks, it is not possible to verify the quality of the signal at each node because of the limited number of optical-electrical-optical conversions, and therefore new non-intrusive mechanisms to achieve signal quality monitoring are needed. The synchronous sampling technique can be deployed to estimate the bit error rate, considered an important quality measure, and hence can be utilised to certify service level agreements between operators and customers. This method also has fault identification capabilities by analysing the shapes of the obtained histograms. Each impairment affects the histogram in a specific way, giving it a unique shape that can be used for root cause analysis. However, chromatic dispersion and polarisation mode dispersion (PMD) can have similar signatures on the histograms obtained at decision times. A novel technique to unambiguously discriminate between these two sources of degradation is proposed in this work. It consists of varying the decision times so that sampling also occurs at both edges of the eye diagram. This approach is referred to as three-section eye sampling technique. In addition, it is shown that this method can be used to accurately assess first order polarisation mode dispersion and can simultaneously estimate the differential group delay (DGD) and the power splitting ratio between the two states of polarisation. Since synchronous sampling is employed, the effect of PMD on the sampling times is also investigated. For the first time, closed form relationship between the shift in sampling time, the DGD and the power splitting ratio between the polarisation states is obtained. Three types of high-Q filter based clock recovery circuits are considered: without pre-processing circuits that can be used for RZ format and with an edge detector or a squarer pre-processing circuits suitable for NRZ format. Moreover, this technique can be used to monitor chromatic dispersion and a large monitoring range of more than 1750ps/nm is experimentally demonstrated at 10Gbit/s. Since it can monitor PMD and dispersion, this method can be deployed to control dynamic PMD or dispersion compensators. Furthermore, this technique offers easy and quick inline eye mask testing and timing jitter assessment.


Toll-like receptor 2 promotes tumorigenesis in a mouse model of gastric cancer, but not by enhancing inflammation. Microbes are detected by Toll-like receptors (TLRs), and inflammation caused by microbial infection is a risk factor for the development of gastric cancer. Polymorphisms in TLR2 and TLR4 are associated with increased risk for developing gastric cancer. Tye et al. investigated the role of TLR2 in gastric cancer using gp130F/F mice, which spontaneously develop gastric tumors and are a model for human gastric cancer because they share some phenotypic characteristics, such as increased activation of the transcription factor STAT3 and production of interleukin (IL)–11. In human gastric tumors, increased activation of STAT3 positively correlated with increased expression of TLR2, and the combination of increased STAT3 activation and TLR2 expression correlated with decreased overall survival. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assays performed on IL-11–treated gastric epithelial cells or gp130F/F tumor tissue revealed that tyrosine-phosphorylated and active STAT3 was recruited to the TLR2 promoter, indicating that TLR2 was a target gene for STAT3. gp130F/F mice lacking TLR2 (gp130F/F:Tlr2–/–) had smaller stomachs, smaller gastric tumors, and fewer gastric lesions compared with control mice (gp130F/F) or gp130F/F mice lacking TLR4 (gp130F/F:Tlr4–/–). Although transcriptional profiling of gp130F/F mice revealed increased expression of TLR2-regulated genes encoding proinflammatory factors, histological examination indicated no difference between gp130F/F and gp130F/F:Tlr2–/– mice in the infiltration of and activation of immune cells in gastric epithelium. Instead, gp130F/F:Tlr2–/– mice showed reduced proliferation and increased apoptosis in gastric epithelia compared with gp130F/F mice, a phenotype that required signaling through the nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) Akt, and the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways mediated by ERK1 and 2 and JNK, but not by p38. Injection of a TLR2-blocking antibody into gp130F/F mice reduced stomach size and tumor burden. These results suggest the potential of TLR2 as a therapeutic target in gastric cancer. H. Tye, C. L. Kennedy, M. Najdovska, L. McLeod, W. McCormack, N. Hughes, A. Dev, W. Sievert, C. H. Ooi, T.-o. Ishikawa, H. Oshima, P. S. Bhathal, A. E. Parker, M. Oshima, P. Tan, B. J. Jenkins, STAT3-driven upregulation of TLR2 promotes gastric tumorigenesis independent of tumor inflammation. Cancer Cell 22, 466–478 (2012). [PubMed]


This paper is devoted to the analysis of sets in the plane which have at least one limit direction at each point. In the proof of a variational technique used in univalent function theory Schiffer used the fact that a continuum in the plane which only has limit directions ±1 is a horizontal segment, a result of Haslam-Jones which used measure theory and some rather unusual topological terminology. The at-tempt to find an elementary topological proof has led to several false proofs in the literature. Not only do we establish Haslam-Jones' result using only elementary topology but we obtain the conclusion under far weaker conditions allowing us to obtain a set theoretic counterpart to the real variable theorem that says if the upper right Dini derivative of a function is zero on an interval, then the function is constant on that interval. We then extend the result to allow for the possibility of exceptional points. Our strongest result gives a complete classification of continua with exceptional points. The paper closes with an open problem. THEOREM.


BACKGROUND
Current outcomes prediction tools are largely based on and limited by regression methods. Utilization of machine learning (ML) methods that can handle multiple diverse inputs could strengthen predictive abilities and improve patient outcomes. Inpatient length of stay (LOS) is one such outcome that serves as a surrogate for patient disease severity and resource utilization.

OBJECTIVE
To develop a novel method to systematically rank, select, and combine ML algorithms to build a model that predicts LOS following craniotomy for brain tumor.

METHODS
A training dataset of 41 222 patients who underwent craniotomy for brain tumor was created from the National Inpatient Sample. Twenty-nine ML algorithms were trained on 26 preoperative variables to predict LOS. Trained algorithms were ranked by calculating the root mean square logarithmic error (RMSLE) and top performing algorithms combined to form an ensemble. The ensemble was externally validated using a dataset of 4592 patients from the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program. Additional analyses identified variables that most strongly influence the ensemble model predictions.

RESULTS
The ensemble model predicted LOS with RMSLE of .555 (95% confidence interval, .553-.557) on internal validation and .631 on external validation. Nonelective surgery, preoperative pneumonia, sodium abnormality, or weight loss, and non-White race were the strongest predictors of increased LOS.

CONCLUSION
An ML ensemble model predicts LOS with good performance on internal and external validation, and yields clinical insights that may potentially improve patient outcomes. This systematic ML method can be applied to a broad range of clinical problems to improve patient care.


This research develops the understanding of project stakeholder management through examining how stakeholder communication is facilitated and managed during the different phases of the project's life cycle. By building on the information processing view and the stakeholder salience framework, our study shows how stakeholder communication practices vary among the impersonal, personal, and group modes of communication. We also show how these practices depend on stakeholders' salience and project life cycle phase. The results indicate that a dynamic approach is required to understanding stakeholder management; different communication practices are required over the project's life cycle, which can be explained by the varying degrees of stakeholder salience.


We studied collision rate of birds with modern, large 1.65 MW wind turbines in three wind farms in The Netherlands during three months in autumn and winter. Collision rate, after correction for retrieval and disappearance rate, was 0.08 birds per turbine per day on average (range 0.05–0.19). Collision risk, i.e. the number of victims relative to the flight intensity of birds at the wind farms, was 0.14% on average. For nocturnal migrants, risk was as low as 0.01%, while the risk was 0.16% for local birds flying at night. In absolute numbers, the overall collision risk was similar to the 0.06–0.28% found for earlier-generation lower turbines that have a smaller rotor surface. However, given the comparatively large rotor surface and altitude range of the modern turbines, the risk was c. threefold lower than for smaller turbines. A large fraction of collision victims were diurnally active and local birds that were foraging in the area, rather than nocturnal migrants. Flight intensities of this group should be taken into account as well as that of nocturnal migrants, when calculating collision rate.


Abstract This study examines the ethnic identities of 50 second-generation migrant-Australian women aged 17–28 years. Twenty-five women were from Turkish backgrounds and 25 women were from South and Central American (or 'Latin') backgrounds. The overwhelming majority of the women interviewed for this study had travelled extensively to their families' countries of origin, and their experiences growing up in Australia alongside their ongoing overseas visits shed light on transnational ties and the negotiation of ethnicity and belonging in the Australian multicultural context. A typology of the women's migrant-Australian identities highlights the differences and similarities of experiences among the women in both groups, and reveals the role of social context in shaping identity. Islam was a primary source of identification for most of the Turkish women, as a form of pan-ethnic identity. Participants exhibited a good deal of agency in their identity choices, and this was specifically connected to their transnational positioning. However, while most of the women took on a transnational identity to some degree, their experiences of racism and social exclusion reproduced an ambivalent sense of belonging to Australia. Their sense of being allowed to belong 'where they are at' remained salient to the ways in which they constructed their identities.


Written c.1608, Coriolanus , despite its setting in ancient Rome, can be read as Shakespeare's discussion of contemporary food riots taking place in the Midlands because of shortages of corn.  Consequently, the play can be read as an engagement with social and political events of the early seventeenth century, making it a play for Shakespeare's today.  However, the play has also been used successfully in recent years to comment on or seek to understand political movements that are rooted in the current moment.  In 2011 there were a number of protests around the world under the banner of Occupy.  In 2012 a flurry of theatre productions of Coriolanus in the United States of America referenced the Occupy movement as a focal point of their interpretation of the play, using Occupy to shed light on Coriolanus and using Coriolanus to begin to understand what was happening on the streets.  In this article I seek to elucidate the parallels between the Occupy movement and Coriolanus , and will show that, although the play can be seen as current, it has to be constantly updated for new contexts, both political and spatial, and that location - in terms both of geography and performance space - is crucial to creating present meaning.  In this article I look at productions of the play by the Seattle Shakespeare Company and The Drilling Company's Shakespeare in the Parking Lot and, in order to address the various points of comparison and divergence between American and UK interpretations, I conclude with a discussion of the Donmar Warehouse production of Coriolanus in London in the winter of 2013/2014


One of the still open issues for the development of superconducting insertion devices is the understanding of the heat load induced by the beam passage. With the aim of measuring the beam heat load to a cold bore and in order to gain a deeper understanding in the beam heat load mechanisms, a cold vacuum chamber for diagnostics is under construction. We plan to have access with the same set-up to a number of different diagnostics, so we are implementing: i) retarding field analysers to measure the electron flux, ii) temperature sensors to measure the total heat load, iii) pressure gauges, iv) and mass spectrometers to measure the gas content. The inner vacuum chamber will be removable in order to test different geometries and materials. COLDDIAG is built to fit in a short straight section at ANKA, but we are proposing its installation in different synchrotron light sources with different energies and beam characteristics. A first installation in DIAMOND is planned in June 2011. Here we describe the technical design report of this device and the planned measurements with beam.


AIM
To compare social support and coping ability in acute coronary syndrome patients at the time of the cardiac event with a healthy community-based sample, with regard to age, sex, education and marital status.

METHOD
The study comprised 241 patients and 316 healthy controls. The participants answered a self-administered questionnaire that included three well-established scales. Multiple logistic regression was used in the analysis to compare the health situation between the patients and controls.

RESULTS
Persons suffering from acute coronary syndrome rated emotional support significantly lower than the healthy controls. However, there were no differences between the two groups in terms of socio-demographic variables.

CONCLUSION
This study indicates that social support may be a predictor of acute coronary syndrome.


ABSTRACT Roadworks take place frequently on existing roads in New Zealand. The adverse effects of poor road conditions and reduced road width due to the presence of a work zone on the safety of road users and workers at the work zone have been a matter of concern. Several studies have been conducted to examine the risk factors contributing to the occurrence of road crashes in work zones in different countries. Slow-moving and stopped vehicles near work zones have been found to be the primary cause of crashes and casualties in the work zones. Excessive speed of passing traffic has also been recognized as a crucial factor contributing to work zone related crashes in New Zealand. This study examined the effect of possible risk factors contributing to severe injury and fatality in work zone related crashes in New Zealand. A multinomial logistic regression model was established to determine the association between crash severity and factors such as road environment, vehicle attributes, driver behavior, and crash circumstances, based on the information available on 453 road crashes during the period from 2008 to 2013. The results indicated that the time period, vehicle involvement, and presence of vulnerable road users were the factors that determined the crash severity in work zones. This implies that improvements are required in traffic control and management measures in work zones to enhance road safety in the long run.


This study examines the perceptions of owners/managers of Uruguayan wineries currently exporting wines regarding perceived potential and actual benefits of collaboration and challenges to collaboration through the lens of the theory of collaboration. In addition, perceived general challenges of the wine industry are investigated. Fifteen of the currently 23 exporting wineries participated via an online questionnaire. These data were complemented through two face-to-face interviews with the general manager of Wines of Uruguay and the co-owner of one of the country's most established wineries. Overall, collaboration is perceived as the source of various key benefits, including positive impacts on participants at a personal level, in helping facilitate relationship building, mutual support, or broaden knowledge of the local wine industry. However, a sense of limited collaboration emerged, with lack of reciprocating collaboration being one key challenge identified. Other perceived challenges of the wine industry, particularly the little knowledge of Uruguayan wines internationally, and limited resources to promote wines internationally, further suggest the importance of collaboration as a crucial strategy to address these issues. Alignments between the findings and some of the tenets of the theory of collaboration were identified, underlining its usefulness.


Recent research on the behavioral effects of income taxes has to a large extent focused on the elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net-of-tax rate, i.e., one minus the marginal tax rate. We offer new evidence on this matter by making use of a large panel of Swedish tax payers over the period 1991-2002. Changes in statutory tax rates as well as discretionary changes in tax bracket thresholds provide exogenous variations in tax rates that can be used to identify income responses. We estimate dynamic income models which allow us to distinguish between short-run and long-run effects in a straightforward fashion. The estimates of the long-run elasticity of income with respect to the net-of-tax rate typically hover in a range between 0.20 and 0.30. The short-run elasticities are in general smaller but less precisely estimated. We use the estimates to simulate the fiscal consequences of a tax reform that reduces the top marginal tax rate by five percentage points. Such a reform turns out to have negligible effects on tax revenues and may even yield a fiscal surplus.


In this paper we introduce a new semantic desktop system called IRIS, an application framework for enabling users to create a -personal map" across their office-related information objects. Built as part of the CALO Cognitive Assistant project, IRIS represents a step in our quest to construct the kinds of tools that will significantly augment the user's ability to perform knowledge work. This paper explains our design decisions, progress, and shortcomings. The IRIS project has grown from the past work of others and offers opportunities to augment and otherwise collaborate with other current and future semantic desktop projects. This paper marks our entry into the ongoing conversation about semantic desktops, intelligent knowledge management, and systems for augmenting the performance of human teams.


Background: Tularemia is a potential biological weapon due to its high infectivity and ease of dissemination. This study aimed to characterize the innate and adaptive responses induced by two different lots of a live attenuated tularemia vaccine and compare them to other well-characterized viral vaccine immune responses. Methods: Microarray analyses were performed on human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) to determine changes in transcriptional activity that correlated with changes detected by cellular phenotyping, cytokine signaling, and serological assays. Transcriptional profiles after tularemia vaccination were compared with yellow fever [YF-17D], inactivated [TIV], and live attenuated [LAIV] influenza. Results: Tularemia vaccine lots produced strong innate immune responses by Day 2 after vaccination, with an increase in monocytes, NK cells, and cytokine signaling. T cell responses peaked at Day 14. Changes in gene expression, including upregulation of STAT1, GBP1, and IFIT2, predicted tularemia-specific antibody responses. Changes in CCL20 expression positively correlated with peak CD8+ T cell responses, but negatively correlated with peak CD4+ T cell activation. Tularemia vaccines elicited gene expression signatures similar to other replicating vaccines, inducing early upregulation of interferon-inducible genes. Conclusions: A systems vaccinology approach identified that tularemia vaccines induce a strong innate immune response early after vaccination, similar to the response seen after well-studied viral vaccines, and produce unique transcriptional signatures that are strongly correlated to the induction of T cell and antibody responses.


This paper specifies and estimates a four-equation disequilibrium model of the consumption goods market in a centrally planned economy (CPE).The data are from Poland for the period 1955-1980, but the analysis is more general and will be applied to other CPEs as soon as the appropriate data sets are complete.The work reported here is based on previous papers of Portes and Winter and Charernza and Quandt.Portes-Winter applied to eachof four CPEs a discrete-switching disequilibrium model with a household demand equation for consumption goods, a planners'supply equation, and a "min" condition stating that the observed quantity transacted is the lesser of the quantities demanded and supplied.Charemza-Quandt considered how an equation for the adjustment of planned quantitites could be integrated into a CPE model with fixed prices and without the usual price adjustment equation.They made plan formation endogenous and permitted the resulting plan variables to enter the equations determining demand and supply.This paper implements the Charemza-Quandt proposal in the Portes-Winter context.It uses a unique new data set of time series for plans for the major macroeconomic variables in Poland and other CPEs.The overall framework is applicable to any large organisation which plans economic variables.