This article explores the relationship between open educational resources (OER) created by students for use by other students, the long-term sustainability of the movement toward OER, and the success of students who use OER created by other students as part of their core curricular materials. We begin by providing definitions and a broader context for thinking about the possibility of student-created OER. We then describe a course context in which student-created OER have been slowly integrated into an online class over several years and examine the impact on student learning associated with their introduction.


UNLABELLED
The inappropriate use of antibiotics for the treatment of infections is a worldwide problem that has implications for the cost of treatment and the development of resistant strains of bacteria. The use of antibiotics should follow specific criteria; they are on top of the list of self-medication drugs in countries that do not control their commercialization.

OBJECTIVES
To determine the percentage of pharmacies that attend the public and sell antibiotics without medical prescription in a medium-sized city in Brazil, and analyze the variables involved in this procedure.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
107 of the 136 pharmacies registered in our city were evaluated. These pharmacies were visited by actresses who simulated having a sister with symptoms of a non-complicated rhino-sinusitis, so that they could obtain antibiotics without a medical prescription. Each pharmacy was visited only once; the only variable in the simulated clinical setting was the report of fever temperature, which was randomly assigned between 38.5 and 40 degrees Celsius.

RESULTS
Antibiotics were offered in 58% of the pharmacies, and this offer was increased to 74% after the actresses insisted on having them. In 65.4% of the pharmacies, the actresses were attended by a pharmacist, and 84.2% of them said they would sell antibiotics. When the request for antibiotics was denied (26%), only 7.5% was due to absence of prescription. The most frequent reason for refusal to sell antibiotics, was because the attendant deemed it unnecessary (46.6%)

CONCLUSION
Antibiotics can be easily bought in the great majority of the pharmacies in our town without a medical prescription and a clear indication. Fever temperature did not modify the attendant's indication of the drug.


What motivates the choice between hard and soft law in the drafting of international commercial law, and what role does business play in the preference between the two? Broad disagreement exists in international law (IL) commentary as to motivations for reliance on soft international law. Traditionally, this commentary cast a wide gaze across both international public and private law, but debate about the use of hard or soft law is sharpened by focusing exclusively on international commercial lawmaking. Traditionally, IL commentary considered only on states' interests in crafting international law and ignored business interests. But recent scholarship has begun to question the primacy of nation-states in the making of IL. Some of this criticism is the result of empirical work – such as in the recent book Global Lawmakers, co-authored by Terence Halliday and me – which demonstrates that the state-centric focus of conventional IL theory is incomplete. These empirical studies, in turn, stand on the shoulders of theory questioning whether states alone are involved in international lawmaking. Looking specifically at international commercial lawmaking invites examination of the involvement of both public and private actors, and in particular businesses, financial institutions, and the international associations that represent their interests, in this process. States and businesses hold potentially divergent interests in the production of international commercial law, depending on the sort of law reform proposed, whether regulatory or otherwise. Soft law aids in bridging these differences in various ways – through its gap filling, advocacy, and socializing functions.


Green technology plays an important role in the achievement of environmental sustainability. Tax incentives, carbon taxes, and rising fossil fuel costs are motivating increased growth and development of 'green' products and services, many of which are the result of innovative discoveries in biotechnology and nanotechnology.Green Technologies and Business Practices: An IT Approach is an international platform that brings together academics, researchers, lecturers, policy makers, practitioners, and persons in decision-making positions from all backgrounds who ultimately share new theories, research findings and case studies, together enhancing understanding and collaboration of green issues in business and the role of information technologies and also analyze recent developments in theory and practice. Furthermore, this book demonstrates the capacity of green models and policies, information technology and management for the mutual understanding, prosperity and overall well-being of all the citizens in the world. This title is perfect for politicians, professors, policy makers, government officers, and students alike.


This study examines complex areas of nursing practice in secure mental health care, offering historical and contextual analyses of these highly politicised services. A survey design is used to consider educational preparation of nurses working in these settings; and to define competencies required by those working at varying levels of security.
Data from focus groups (N=19) and interviews (N'24) with key service and educational personnel were content-analysed to yield a theory of nursing in secure environments comprising of an overarching definition incorporating eleven key themes supported by forty-five-statements of competency. The theory was translated into a questionnaire and distributed to national
samples of nursing staff working in high, medium and low security environments (N852) for testing. Respondents (N=276) stated whether individual competencies were part of their current practice or supervisory involvement; and the degree of importance they accorded to each competency.
Findings suggest that the theory proposed is strongly supported by nurses working within all levels of secure mental health services in the UK. This study also suggests that the preparation of nurses to work in secure mental health care is deficient at pre-registration, induction and postregistration levels. Students attending pre-registration placements were poorly prepared by educational staff who generally knew little of the specialty. In many instances, these placements also failed to make explicit the intended learning outcomes. Induction and post-registration training tended to be ad hoc; was frequently deficient in basic safety standards; and seldom skills-based.
The competence framework received widespread support from nurses at all levels of security in relation to their level of importance. Perceptions of specific competencies in relation to role perfonnance varied with level of security regarding nurses' involvement with the patient's family; patient's preparation for transfer and support following discharge; and involvement with patient's local community. Results identified issues in relation to security and how procedures in parts of the system - notably in high security - militate against therapeutic care. Noticeable differences emerged between respondents working in high and medium secure environments.
Issues of concern common to all levels of security included teamwork; balancing security and therapy; boundaries of professional practice; and clinical supervision.
Conclusions suggest that the proposed competence framework provides an appropriate infrastructure for development of nursing in secure mental health care. It has clear implications for educational preparation of nurses, providing a suggested curriculum at pre-registration, induction and post-registration levels. It also encourages service planners to utilise competencybased job descriptions and focus staff development within their services more precisely.


Different genera and groups of heterotrophic planktonic bacteria of the littoral zone of the lake Jeziorak produced different B-group vitamins. Most numerous among the planktonic bacteria of this zone of the lake were biotin producers and least numerous were organisms synthesizing riboflavin and nicotinic acid. Most bacteria produced one or two vitamins. Three or more vitamins were produced by only a few strains. In autumn no strain produced all five vitamins studied in this work.


Although Sir Samuel Ferguson is generally recognized as one of the key figures of mid-nineteenth-century Irish literature, there has been no major edition of his poems since 1916, as a result of which his work tends to be known to the general reader through selections published in anthologies. The essay analyses the selections of Ferguson's work in anthologies of Irish literature published between 1895 and 2010 in an attempt to assess the impact of the cultural dynamics of twentieth-century Ireland on the interpretation of Ferguson's achievement as a poet. The evidence collected demonstrates that the image of Ferguson perpetuated by most twentieth-century anthologists, most of them Hibernocentric in approach, was that of a respectable if rather old-fashioned Romantic nationalist antiquarian, whose work focused primarily on familiarizing the Victorian reader with the ancient myths and traditions of Ireland. This interpretation of Ferguson's achievement, motivated, it is argued, by the predominantly nationalist agenda of modern Ireland's cultural establishment, has largely marginalized the other side of Ferguson—a political thinker committed to the unionist cause and vehemently opposed to the violence perpetrated by the emergent Irish republican movement and culminating in the Phoenix Park murders of 1882, which formed the subject of two of Ferguson's most powerful late poems, "At the Polo-Ground" and "In Carey's Footsteps".


Background: Even if anemia is a worldwide public health problem affecting numerous people in all age groups, particularly the burden of the problem is higher among pregnant women. Anemia is estimated to contribute to more than 115,000 maternal deaths and 591,000 prenatal deaths globally per year. Maternal mortality is the prime health indicator in any society. Therefore, this study aimed at determining prevalence of anemia and assessing associated factors among pregnant women which might help for intervention and further study. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine prevalence and determinants of anemia among pregnant women attending Antenatal Care (ANC) in Mizan Tepi University teaching Hospital, South West Ethiopia. Materials and methods: Institutional based crosssectional study was conducted at antenatal care (ANC) departments of Mizan-Tepi university teaching hospital (MTUTH) from April 3 to May 3, 2017. Systematic random sampling technique was used to select the appropriate study unit. The data was collected using questionnaire, physical examination and laboratory investigation. Data was entered, cleaned and checked using Epi Info version 3.5.3 and analyzed using SPSS version 20 statistical software. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed associated factors. Finally, the result was presented using frequency tables, figures and graph. Results and discussion: The overall prevalence of anemia using a cut off level of hemoglobin <11 g/dl (<33% Haematocrit) was 23.5% (72 /306). Out of all anemic pregnant women about 59.7% (43/72) were mildly anemic, 33.3% (24/72) were moderately anemic and 7% (5/72) were severely. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that previous chronic diseases with (AOR=6.695 CI [1.5, 29.8]), knowledge about anemia (AOR=0.216, CI [0.090-0.516]), excessive menstrual bleeding (AOR=3.361, CI [1.375, 8.217], history of malaria attack (AOR=7.936, CI: [3.807, 16.546]) and history of abortion (AOR=4.562, CI: [ 2.212, 9.412]) had significant association with anemia. Conclusion and recommendation: The finding on the prevalence of anemia obtained from this study emphasized the need for continuous strengthening of interventions on factors associated with anemia. Thus, awareness creation should be promoted through the strengthened health education on risk factors. Similarly it would be better if concerned stakeholders work on increasing the knowledge of pregnant women about anemia and its consequence as well preventive methods.


Regional rainfall-runoff modeling is an old but still mostly out-standing problem in Hydrological Sciences. The problem currently is that traditional hydrological models degrade significantly in performance when calibrated for multiple basins together instead of for a single basin alone. In this paper, we propose a novel, data-driven approach using Long ShortTerm Memory networks (LSTMs), and demonstrate that under a 'big data' paradigm, this is not necessarily the case. By training a single LSTM model on 531 basins from the CAMELS data set using meteorological time series data and static catchment 5 attributes, we were able to significantly improve performance compared to a set of several different hydrological benchmark models. Our proposed approach not only significantly outperforms hydrological models that were calibrated regionally but also achieves better performance than hydrological models that were calibrated for each basin individually. Furthermore, we propose an adaption to the standard LSTM architecture, which we call an Entity-Aware-LSTM (EA-LSTM), that allows for learning, and embedding as a feature layer in a deep learning model, catchment similarities. We show that this learned catchment 10 similarity corresponds well with what we would expect from prior hydrological understanding.


Dual-arm modulator configurations to perform wavelength shifting at the optical network units (ONUs) for the mitigation of Rayleigh backscattering impairment in bidirectional centralized-light passive optical networks (PONs) are proposed, with different solutions compared. A 7 dB of sensitivity improvement due to the reduction in the Rayleigh scattering crosstalk between up- and down-stream signals is achieved with a suboptimal solution based on a conventional Mach-Zenhder modulator.


Gladiobranchus probaton Bernacsek & Dineley, 1977 was described based on poorly preserved specimens, and originally assigned to the Ischnacanthiformes because of its resemblance to Uraniacanthus spinosus Miles, 1973. Incomplete fossils of G. probaton which were available to Bernacsek and Dineley for the original species description, lacked teeth and/or dentigerous jaw bones and until now, the classification and relationships of G. probaton remained unresolved. New, nearly complete specimens show details of the rostrum, jaws, and the complete caudal fin, and correct some errors in the original species description. The toothless jaws, the enlarged anterior and posterior circumorbital plates, elongate, deeply inserted dorsal fin-spines, the structure of the scapulocoracoid, and the prepelvic fin-spine complement all indicate that G. probaton is a diplacanthoid, and not closely related to ischnacanthid acanthodians. Re-examination of U. spinosus shows that there are no dentigerous jaws with any body fossils, and the striking similarity of U. spinosus and G. probaton suggest that both should be placed in the same diplacanthoid family, Gladiobranchidae.


A sandwich construction is a special form of the laminated composite consisting of light weight core, sandwiched between two stiff thin face sheets. Due to high stiffness to weight ratio, sandwich construction is widely adopted in aerospace industries. As a process dependent bonded structure, the most severe defects associated with sandwich construction are debond (skin core bond failure) and dent (locally deformed skin associated with core crushing). Reasons for debond may be attributed to initial manufacturing flaws or in service loads and dent can be caused by tool drops or impacts by foreign objects. This paper presents an evaluation on the performance of honeycomb sandwich cantilever beam with the presence of debond or dent, using layered finite element models. Dent is idealized by accounting core crushing in the core thickness along with the eccentricity of the skin. Debond is idealized using multilaminate modeling at debond location with contact element between the laminates. Vibration and buckling behavior of metallic honeycomb sandwich beam with and without damage are carried out. Buckling load factor, natural frequency, mode shape and modal strain energy are evaluated using finite element package ANSYS 13.0. Study shows that debond affect the performance of the structure more severely than dent. Reduction in the fundamental frequencies due to the presence of dent or debond is not significant for the case considered. But the debond reduces the buckling load factor significantly. Dent of size 8-20% of core thickness shows 13% reduction in buckling load capacity of the sandwich column. But debond of the same size reduced the buckling load capacity by about 90%. This underscores the importance of detecting these damages in the initiation level itself to avoid catastrophic failures. Influence of the damages on fundamental frequencies, mode shape and modal strain energy are examined. Effectiveness of these parameters as a damage detection tool for sandwich structure is also assessed.


Objective. To investigate the side effects of 600 μg oral misoprostol given for the mother and the newborn to prevent postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). Methods. One thousand six hundred twenty women delivering at home or subcentres in rural India were randomised to receive misoprostol or placebo in the third stage of labour. Women were evaluated for shivering, fever, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea at 2 and 24 h postpartum. Newborns were evaluated within 24 h for diarrhea, vomiting and fever. Symptoms were graded as absent, mild-to-moderate or severe. Results. Women who received misoprostol had a significantly greater incidence of shivering (52%vs. 17%, p < 0.001) and fever (4.2%vs. 1.1%, p < 0.001) at 2 h postpartum compared with women who received placebo. At 24 h, women in the misoprostol group experienced significantly more shivering (4.6%vs. 1.4%, p < 0.001) and fever (1.4%vs. 0.4%, p < 0.03). There were no differences in nausea, vomiting or diarrhea between the two groups. There were no differences in the incidence of vomiting, diarrhea or fever for newborns. Conclusions. Misoprostol is associated with a significant increase in postpartum maternal shivering and fever with no side effects for the newborn. Given its proven efficacy for the prevention of PPH, the benefits of misoprostol are greater than the associated risks.


Brain death has specific implications for organ donation with the potential for saving several lives. Awareness on maintenance of the brain dead has increased over the last decade with the progress in the field of transplant. The diagnosis of brain death is clinical and can be confirmed by apnea testing. Ancillary tests can be considered when the apnea test cannot be completed or is inconclusive. Reflexes of spinal origin may be present and should not be confused against the diagnosis of brain death. Adequate care for the donor targeting hemodynamic indices and lung protective ventilator strategies can improve graft quality for donation. Hormone supplementation using thyroxine, antidiuretic hormone, corticosteroid and insulin has shown to improve outcomes following transplant. India still ranks low compared to the rest of the world in deceased donation. The formation of organ sharing networks supported by state governments has shown a substantial increase in the numbers of deceased donors primarily by creating awareness and ensuring protocols in caring for the donor. This review describes the steps in the establishment of brain death and the management of the organ donor. Material for the review was collected through a Medline search, and the search terms included were brain death and organ donation.


This paper argues that management practices are more readily portable across the sectors than has often been supposed, while indicating where particular care will be needed in translation. The paper suggests, however, that political pressure for control and an epistemological bias may prove to be management's Achilles heel. Further, it examines some dilemmas in the relationship between the manager and the managed, and queries the professions' outrage at being subject to increasingly overt management.


In competing with Rabelais' French novel Garguanta, the German author Fischart aims to illustrate the richness of the German language and its poetry in his comic novel Geschichtklitterung. Focusing on the second chapter of this text, which has so far been viewed as nothing more than an absurd play on language, this article offers a new interpretation and demonstrates how the German author stylizes himself as a poeta vates in his Pantagruelian prophecy and presents himself as a being purified by wine in his poem "Glucktratrara". In the end, inspired by Apollo and the Muses, he seems to create an epic poem praising both Germans and the German language.


There is a present need for simulation and measuring the inlet swirl distortion generated by airframe/engine system interactions to identify potential degradation in fan performance and operability in a full-scale, ground testing environment. Efforts are described to address this need by developing and characterizing methods for complex, prescribed distortion patterns. A relevant inlet swirl distortion profile that mimics boundary layer ingesting inlets was generated by a novel new method, dubbed the StreamVane method, and measured in a sub scale tunnel using stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV) as a precursor for swirl distortion generation and characterization in an operating turbofan research engine. Diagnostic development efforts for the distortion measurements within the research engine paralleled the StreamVane characterization. The system used for research engine PIV measurements is described. Data was obtained in the wake of a total pressure distortion screen for engine conditions at idle and 80% corrected fan speed, and of full-scale StreamVane screen at 50% corrected fan speed. The StreamVane screen was designed to generate a swirl distortion that is representative for hybrid wing body applications and was made of Ultem*9085 using additive manufacturing. Additional improvements to the StreamVane method are also described. Data reduction algorithms are put forth to reduce spurious velocity vectors. Uncertainty estimations specific to the inlet distortion test rig, including bias error due to mechanical vibration, are made. Results indicate that the methods develop may be used to both generate and characterize complex distortion profiles at the aerodynamic interface plane, providing new information about airframe/engine integration.


A statewide default 50 km/h speed limit in built-up areas (except where otherwise signed), was introduced in Victoria on January 22, 2001. This legislation was brought in with the aim to reduce the incidence and severity of casualty crashes, in particular, crashes involving the more vulnerable users of this road class (ie, pedestrians). An interim evaluation has been conducted to estimate the effect of the 50 km/h speed limit on crash frequency, which compared a five year preimplementation period with a five month post-implementation period. Poisson regression has been used to model crash frequency for the period January 1996 to June 2001. Crashes of all severity types were analysed, as were those involving specific road user groups such as pedestrians, and young and older drivers. The analysis has shown a statistically reliable reduction in all casualty crashes on roads with the new default limit and for all road user groups except older drivers, at this stage in the evaluation. The interim results presented are part of an ongoing project and estimate the effect of the 50km/h limit in only the first five months after its introduction. Results are also subject to a number of assumptions and qualifications.


The authors in this issue of Law and Contemporary Problems explore the everyday lives of international law. More specifically, the authors theorize and investigate select "practices" of the International Criminal Court (ICC), by which I mean recurrent and meaningful work activities—social or material— that are performed in a regularized fashion and that have a bearing, whether large or small, on the operation of the ICC. By conceiving the ICC as a bundle of practices rather than as a unitary actor whose performance is primarily governed by politics, I seek to re-direct the existing literature on the much debated international organization, which has largely failed to engage, both theoretically and empirically, with the inner workings of the sizable bureaucracy based in The Hague—and the many organizational, cultural, and other cleavages that run through it and that have had a more than random institutional effect on international adjudication. In this foreword I give a brief account of the theoretical foundations on which this issue of Law and Contemporary Problems rests, then provide an overview of the empirical investigations. I close by briefly sketching avenues for further research.


Synthetic Parkinson's Parkinson's disease (PD) and related α-synucleinopathies are defined by the accumulation of α-synuclein (α-Syn)–containing intraneuronal inclusions—Lewy bodies (LBs) and Lewy neurites (LNs)—in association with the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) and other brain regions. However, a cause-and-effect relationship between LB/LN formation and neurodegeneration remains unclear. Indeed, whether LB/LNs are toxic or represent a neuroprotective response has been contentious. Luk et al. (p. 949) injected α-Syn fibrils generated from recombinant mouse α-Syn protein into the dorsal striatum of wild-type mice and found that misfolded α-Syn caused the formation of PD-like LB/LNs and subsequent cell-to-cell transmission of pathologic α-Syn to anatomically interconnected regions, including the SNpc. Furthermore, the formation of LB/LNs and their accumulation in SNpc resulted in the progressive loss of these dopaminergic neurons, reduced dopamine innervations to the dorsal striatum, and culminated in motor deficits similar to PD. Thus, a synthetic misfolded wild-type protein (that is, α-Syn) was able to elicit and transmit disease pathology and neurodegeneration in healthy nontransgenic mice. Intracerebral inoculation of synthetic misfolded α-synuclein mimics Parkinson's disease in wild-type mice. Parkinson's disease is characterized by abundant α-synuclein (α-Syn) neuronal inclusions, known as Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites, and the massive loss of midbrain dopamine neurons. However, a cause-and-effect relationship between Lewy inclusion formation and neurodegeneration remains unclear. Here, we found that in wild-type nontransgenic mice, a single intrastriatal inoculation of synthetic α-Syn fibrils led to the cell-to-cell transmission of pathologic α-Syn and Parkinson's-like Lewy pathology in anatomically interconnected regions. Lewy pathology accumulation resulted in progressive loss of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, but not in the adjacent ventral tegmental area, and was accompanied by reduced dopamine levels culminating in motor deficits. This recapitulation of a neurodegenerative cascade thus establishes a mechanistic link between transmission of pathologic α-Syn and the cardinal features of Parkinson's disease.


Legal pluralism has become a major theme in socio-legal studies. However, under this very broad denomination, one can identify many different trends which share little but the very basic idea that law is much more than state law. Despite their eclectic character, these many conceptions of legal pluralism also share some common fundamental premises concerning the nature of law, its function, and its relationship with its cultural milieu. This contribution aims at critically addressing these premises and at suggesting some re-specification of the question of law, its plural sources, and the many practices that enfold in relationship with it. In its spirit, this re-specification can be characterised as realistic and praxiological. Indeed, I shall argue that it is at best useless and at worst wrong to start from a label like "legal pluralism" so as to describe something which is presumed to be an instance of such label. My contention here is that law is what people consider as law, nothing more nothing less, and that occurrences of legal plurality are limited to these situations where people explicitly orient themselves to the fragmented spectrum of law. Instead of looking at the hypothetical pluralistic model of law which something like, e.g., Egyptian law, would be an instance of, the task of social scientists is, rather, to describe the situations, the mechanisms and the processes through which people orient to something legal which they identify as pluralistic. This position is grounded on a principle of indifference, by which one seeks to avoid normative and evaluative engagements: the focus is put on the description of practices, not on their evaluation. Moreover, this position is based on the refusal of any ironic standpoint, i.e. the denial that social scientists occupy any kind of overhanging position vis-a-vis the social, by which they would be entitled to "reveal" to "self-deceived people" the truth which is concealed from them because of their "lack of critical distance", "ignorance" and/or "bad faith". In a first section, I shall briefly describe the main trends in the field of legal pluralism, from its historical scientific background to its more recent theories. In a second section, I formulate some of the major criticisms which can be addressed to the postulates sustaining these many versions of legal pluralism. These critical stances vis-a-vis the legal pluralistic study of law articulate around three main questions, i.e. the definitional problem, the functionalist premises, and the culturalist conception which undermine existing theories. I shall argue, in the third section, that realism is a possible remedy to these flaws. However, these are best addressed through what I call a praxiological re-specification of the whole issue of legal pluralism, which I shall illustrate through the study of Egyptian cases. In conclusion, I shall formulate some remarks on praxiology as a way to fill the "missing-what" of classical socio-legal studies.


The hypothesis tested in this experiment was that the structure and function of the small intestine of piglets given a milk liquid diet after weaning depends on their level of energy intake. At weaning (28 days), 42 piglets were allocated to one of five treatments: (1) control group killed at weaning; (2) piglets offered a dry starter diet ad libitum; (3) piglets given cow's fresh milk at maintenance energy intake (Ma); (4) piglets given cow's fresh milk at 2-5 Ma; and (5) piglets given cow's fresh milk ad libitum. On the 5th day all piglets were killed and samples of gut were taken for histological and biochemical examination. Piglets given milk ad libitum grew faster (P < 0·001) than piglets on all other treatments. Piglets offered the dry starter diet ingested similar quantities of dry matter and energy, and grew at the same rate as piglets given cows' milk at 2·5 Ma. As predicted, piglets given milk at maintenance energy intake grew slower (P < 0·001) and consumed less food (P < 0·001) than piglets in all other treatments. For piglets given both cows' fresh milk and the dry starter diet, there were significant linear relationships (r = 0·72 to 0·82, P < 0·05) between villous height and crypt depth with dry matter (energy) intake after weaning. In turn, mean villous height in both milk-fed and starter-fed piglets was significantly correlated (r = 0·68 to 0·79, P < 0·05) to empty body-weight gain in the first 5 days after weaning. Estimates of digestive enzyme activity and absorptive capacity of the gut did not corroborate the large differences seen between treatments in villous height and crypt depth, and possible reasons are discussed. These data illustrate the interdependence between voluntary food intake and mucosal architecture in determining piglet performance after weaning.


The management of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste has become a major issue lately in the province of Quebec, Canada. Most of it is landfilled today, which increases the burden on landfills and is environmentally unsound. In order to comply with new government guidelines, municipalities have to develop solutions to recover and recycle organic waste. In this context, this study examines two solutions for treating organic waste: home-composting and a separate biodegradable waste collection system combined with large-scale composting. The two scenarios are compared in terms of costs and environmental performance to a reference scenario where all waste is landfilled, using as a case study a fictional city of 50 000 inhabitants. Results indicate that a centralized collection system, combined to large-scale composting, has greater environmental benefits than home-composting. It cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 240% compared to the reference scenario, while emissions from home-composting remain at the reference level. However, when compared to the reference scenario, home-composting reduces waste management costs by 15% while they represent an increase of 4% with large-scale composting. The study concludes that separate biodegradable waste collection combined to large-scale composting is the best way for a municipality to achieve high environmental goals, despite a slight increase of municipal costs. The participation rate of citizens is suggested to be a crucial parameter for the success of organic waste management in the two scenarios and it should be enhanced by different means to ensure the successful implementation of the chosen solution.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What is more important in our lives than learning how to have mutual, caring romantic relationships? Certainly gratifying, mature sexual relationships also rank high. Yet, while schools and many other industries in this country devote tremendous attention and resources to preparing the young for work, they do remarkably little to prepare them for generous, self-respecting sex and love. The cost of this neglect is profound. Beyond teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, various problems including substance abuse, depression, and many types of school troubles often have roots in sexual and romantic anxiety and failure. Rates of sexual harassment in middle school and high school are startlingly high. One national report indicates that nearly half of students in grades 7-12 reported experiencing sexual harassment in the previous year and 87% describe negative effects such as absenteeism and poor sleep, and misogyny is pervasive (Hill & Kearl, 2011). Words like "bitches" and "ho's" are stunningly commonplace in many school hallways across the country, and terms that boys and young men use to describe sex these days--"I hit that," "I nailed that," "I crushed that"--are unnervingly impersonal and violent. Some girls also have picked up these phrases. Failure to prepare young people for healthy love and sex can reverberate destructively throughout their lives. Divorce (which ends nearly half of all first marriages), constant marital conflict or quieter marital misery, and the inability to even form a relation ship all reflect this failure. Troubled relationships breed alcoholism, domestic abuse, and workaholism. The countless therapies, mediation, and legal settlements charged with managing relationship failures take a staggering financial toll. Conversely, supportive, stable romantic relationships are associated with higher wages, fewer health problems, and gratification in many domains of life. A high school student told New York Times reporter Laurie Abraham, "As a society, we always tell kids, 'Work hard, just focus on school, don't think about girls or guys--you can worry about that stuff later, that stuff will work itself out,' but the thing is, it doesn't" (2011). Many Americans argue, of course, that this preparation is not school's responsibility. But then whose responsibility is it? The vast majority of American families simply can't--or won't--take on the task alone. Parents struggle with how to pass on wisdom about sexual and romantic relationships to their kids or don't see this guidance as their role. Many teens, of course, resist talking to their parents about love --let alone sex--in a way that begins to do justice to the nuanced layers of these topics or provides any kind of map for the vexing, subtle work of developing mature romantic or sexual relationships. The lack of modeling and conversation creates a perilous void. Young people often wind up learning about sex and love from their peers, the Internet, or the media. The harm is not simply daily exposure to misogynistic songs, pornography, and other debased images of sex--serious as that harm is. The media also spawns all kinds of misconceptions and reinforces deeply ingrained cultural myths about romantic love--for example, that love is an intoxication, an obsessive attraction, and that "real love" is clear and unmistakable and happens suddenly. For adults to hand over responsibility for educating young people about love and sex to popular culture is a dumbfounding, epic abdication of responsibility. The reality is that schools could do much more to prepare students for both romantic love and sex. Some of these forms of guidance will certainly meet huge resistance in more socially conservative communities. But the real travesty is that political morality wars about sex have obscured the very hopeful fact that young people want and need many uncontroversial, vital forms of relationship and sex education. …


Accountability is often presented as a panacea for behavioral ailments. This one-size-fits-all approach to a multi-dimensional construct ignores a key component of the effectiveness of accountability systems: situational context. Situational contexts such as highly stochastic environments (e.g., financial markets, world politics) and politically-charged domains (e.g., national security decision-making, domestic policy) form accountability boundary conditions, beyond which previous experimental effects may not generalize. In a series of studies, I explore the relatively under-explored frontiers of accountability effects, including those that apply to highly stochastic environments; politically-charged outcomes, where the tendency towards motivated reasoning dominates; and rapidly evolving states of information, where one's ability to update one's beliefs has serious implications for the quality of one's judgments and decisions. In this series of studies, I find that accountability effects only appeared under certain conditions. In general, holding people accountable for their judgments did not improve performance on highly stochastic or politically-charged tasks—in fact, it sometimes made performance worse. However, certain types of accountability were able to boost performance in some contexts. These studies demonstrate the value of incorporating situational context into accountability experiments. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor Philip E. Tetlock


High risks of lung cancer occur after successful treatment of Hodgkin's disease. In addition to tobacco smoking, other risk factors include radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and immunosuppression, although the relative contributions of each are unknown. We conducted p53 mutational spectrum analysis in second lung cancers after radiation therapy for Hodgkin's disease in the Netherlands and in Ontario, Canada. Lung cancer tissues from 11 patients were analyzed by p53 immunohistochemistry and DNA sequence analysis. All were male cigarette smokers, all received radiation therapy, and six also received chemotherapy. The lung cancers occurred 9.8 years (mean) after treatment. Radiation doses to lung lobes that developed the tumors averaged 5.7 Gy (range, 3.7-11.7 Gy). Sequence analysis showed four missense and two silent p53 point mutations in five patients. There were four G:C-->A:T transitions; three of four mutated deoxyguanines occurred on the coding strand, and one was a CpG site. There were two transversions: one G:C-->C:G and one A:T-->C:G. Despite moderate or heavy smoking histories in all patients, the mutational spectrum appears to differ from usual smoking-related lung cancers in which G:C-->T:A transversions predominate. The absence of G:C-->T:A mutations and the prominence of G:C-->A:T transitions, which are characteristic of radiation and oxidative damage, suggest that radiotherapy might have caused some of the p53 mutations. These data illustrate the potential of mutation analysis to determine causes of human cancer. If confirmed in a larger series, these results imply that some radiation-induced cancers can be distinguished from those caused by other factors.


Herbivores contain microflora in their guts which digest lignocellulosics in their stomachs and intestines by secreting the essential enzymes that perform the function so efficiently that the guts of these animals have been described as the best fermentation tanks known. Hippopotamus amphibious , a herbivorous animal, has three stomach compartments together with small and large intestines which are of similar structure and function. This work models each stomach compartment as continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) and the small and large intestines as plug flow reactor (PFR) arrangements in series in order to determine the performance of the herbivorous digestive system. Autocatalytic microbial fermentation takes place in the stomach, modeled as CSTR and described by Monod kinetics, whereas enzymatic digestion takes place in the intestines, modeled as PFR and described by Michaelis Menten equation. Designed equations derived from the two equations are used for the reactor sizing of the modeled reactors. This shows the efficiency of each reactor at converting the purely lignocellulosics substrates to useful products like protein, vitamin, fatty acid and the bye-products. The results showed that 3CSTR-IPFR model is the best and most efficient for converting lignocellulosics. Keywords: Lignocellulosics, microflora, herbivore, catalytic, reactor


In response to demand from China, rubber smallholdings are being established by shifting cultivators in Northern Laos, encouraged by government land-use policy. We examine the economics of smallholder rubber production in an established rubbergrowing village and model the likely expansion of smallholder rubber in Northern Laos. Data were obtained from key informants, group interviews, direct observation, and a farm-household survey. Latex yields were estimated using the Bioeconomic Rubber Agroforestry Support System (BRASS). A financial model was developed to estimate the net present value for a representative rubber smallholding. This model was then combined with spatial data in a Geographical Information System (GIS) to predict the likely expansion of rubber based on resource quality and accessibility.


This paper presents an interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) system to map the bedrock topography underneath the sand in deserts and arid areas. This is anticipated to greatly increase the efficiency of oil field and ground water exploration as well as environmental and archaeological studies. The proposed system consists of two InSAR subsystems, one operating at Ka-band to map the sand topography and the other operates in the VHF band to map the subsurface topography. The different issues associated with InSAR processing for subsurface mapping are discussed. It is shown that conventional InSAR processing produces unacceptable error in height estimation since it does not account for the refraction and the different propagation velocity in the sand. Thus, a new inversion algorithm is developed which can be used to accurately estimate the bedrock topography for arbitrary sand and bedrock geometries. A sensitivity analysis is then presented to show the effect of the different systematic and random errors. The inversion algorithm is verified experimentally for flat sand case using a scaled model that was implemented in the lab.


Abstract Student's exacting theory of errors, both random and real, marked a significant advance over ambiguous reports of plant life and fermentation asserted by chemists from Priestley and Lavoisier down to Pasteur and Johannsen, working at the Carlsberg Laboratory. One reason seems to be that William Sealy Gosset (1876–1937) aka "Student" – he of Student's t-table and test of statistical significance – rejected artificial rules about sample size, experimental design, and the level of significance, and took instead an economic approach to the logic of decisions made under uncertainty. In his job as Apprentice Brewer, Head Experimental Brewer, and finally Head Brewer of Guinness, Student produced small samples of experimental barley, malt, and hops, seeking guidance for industrial quality control and maximum expected profit at the large scale brewery. In the process Student invented or inspired half of modern statistics. This article draws on original archival evidence, shedding light on several core yet neglected aspects of Student's methods, that is, Guinnessometrics, not discussed by Ronald A. Fisher (1890–1962). The focus is on Student's small sample, economic approach to real error minimization, particularly in field and laboratory experiments he conducted on barley and malt, 1904 to 1937. Balanced designs of experiments, he found, are more efficient than random and have higher power to detect large and real treatment differences in a series of repeated and independent experiments. Student's world-class achievement poses a challenge to every science. Should statistical methods – such as the choice of sample size, experimental design, and level of significance – follow the purpose of the experiment, rather than the other way around? (JEL classification codes: C10, C90, C93, L66)


Background and Aim: The main goal of each hospital – like all health care sectors – is protecting and increasing the health level in orsig country. The important role of human resources in hospitals is appropriate strategic decisions making for fast environmental changes and shows the need of staff participation. Nurses as a one of the biggest parts of hospital staff need to participate much more in strategic decision making in hospitals. This article is aimed to measure the level of nurses' participation in strategic decisions making. Materials and Methods: This research is descriptive – analytic. Total nurses of Shariati hospital were 577 nurses of which 175 nurses were selected and studied.The gathering information instrument was questionnaire adapted from Dustdar thesis. This questionnaire contained 35,5 choice questions set by Likert basis. Project's data was analyzed with SPSS software in % 95 confidence levels and statistical specifications like mean, standard error,correlation and non parametric tests were used. Results: According to the results obtained, there are meaningful relation between staff participation in strategic decision making and: marriage situation (PV=0.01), Decision Directing (PV=0.0), culture of participation (PV=0.00), organization maturity (PV=0.00) and risk tolerance (PV=0.01) Discussion and Conclusion: It has been observed that nurse participation in strategic decision making in Shariati hospital is in "low" position (participation mean score: 28.52 from 100). So an administrator effort for spreading culture of participation to owner's process is something that should be paid attention more than before.


Why does digital identity turn out to be such a hard problem? People are social animals with deep seated intuitions and conventions around identity, but exercising our identities online has been hugely problematic. In response to cyber fraud and the password plague, there has been a near universal acceptance of the idea of Federated Identity. All federated identity models start with the intuitively appealing premise that if an individual has already been identified by one service provider, then that identification should be made available to other services, to save time, streamline registration, reduce costs, and open up new business channels. It's a potent mix of supposed benefits, and yet strangely unachievable. True, we can now enjoy the convenience of logging onto multiple blogs and social networks with an unverified Twitter account, but higher risk services like banking, e-health and e-government have steadfastly resisted federation, maintaining their own identifiers and sovereign registration processes. This paper shows that federated identity is really a radical and deeply problematic departure from the way we do routine business. Federation undoes and complicates long standing business arrangements, exposing customers and service providers alike to new risks that existing contracts are unable to deal with. Identity federations tend to overlook that identities are proxies for relationships we have in different contexts. Business relationships don't easily "interoperate." They can't be arbitrarily tweaked to suit different contexts, because each relationship has evolved to fit a particular niche. While the term identity "ecosystem" is fashionable, genuine ecological thinking has been lacking in contemporary identity theory. The alternative presented here is to conserve business contexts and replicate existing trusted identities when we go from real world to digital, without massively re-engineering traditional business practices. The password plague and 'token necklace' have elicited a sort of broad moral panic, yet they are essentially just human factors engineering problems. Traditional access control was devised for and by technicians; consumer authentication demands better user interfaces. The real problem lies not in identity issuance processes but rather in the way perfectly good identities once issued are taken 'naked' online where they're vulnerable to takeover and counterfeiting. If we focused on conserving context and replicating existing real world identities in non-replayable forms, most routine transactions could take place safely online, without the incalculable cost of re-engineering proven business arrangements.


Hypervariable minisatellites have found increasing use in a wide range of applications including linkage analysis, relationship testing and forensic medicine. Conventional length analysis via restriction digestion, agarose gel electrophoresis and Southern blot hybridization produces at best, less than 100 resolvable alleles and involves inherently error prone length estimations. Forensic analyses based on such a system have recently been heavily criticised and the population assumptions used to calculate match frequencies questioned. However, allele length is not the only criterion by which minisatellite variability may be assessed. All well characterised hypervariable human minisatellites also show variation in the dispersion patterns of minisatellite variant repeats. At the most well characterised human minisatellite MS32, MVR variation has been assayed by both restriction analyses and a more direct MVR-PCR approach. Both procedures have shown that allele length analysis seriously underestimates the true variability at minisatellite loci. Many individuals incorrectly typed as homozygous by length analysis have been demonstrated to be heterozygous by internal MVR mapping. MVR allelic analysis has been used to directly show the existence of many hundreds of different alleles, each one absolutely defined, from which we can infer the existence of many thousands of alleles. With a theoretical capacity to define many millions of alleles MVR analysis adds a new dimension to the study of variation in human DNA. The high observed allelic variability is directly reflected in the very high individual specificity obtained when MVR-PCR is applied to total genomic DNA to obtain a diploid code of the two superimposed alleles. MVR diploid code analysis produces a highly portable digital output which provides unambiguous match criteria. Diploid code analysis may be used to obtain highly discriminatory information from mixed DNA samples and, via the use of allele specific flanking primers in knockout MVR-PCR, from admixtures far lower than currently approachable. MVR analysis of allelic variation has revealed the existence of a terminal mutation hotspot which has been confirmed in studies of de novo mutation events in pedigrees. This work has revealed the complex nature of minisatellite mutation, with, for the first time, strong evidence for a role for unequal interallelic exchange and preliminary evidence for a size increase bias.


On January 2, 2008, the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) closed significant portions of Missouri Interstate 64 (I-64) in St. Louis County for reconstruction. During the planning stages of this project, the proposal to close all lanes of I-64 was met with public concern regarding the possible safety risks associated with diverting I-64 traffic to adjacent roadways. A specific concern was the possibility of increased crash rates on roads designated to receive I-64 traffic flow. The following research was conducted to assess the actual outcomes related to these concerns. Crash analyses and crash rate analysis of 2008 and 2009 crash data were performed. The data were compared to four years of pre-closure crash data. Overall results suggest no evidence of increased crash rates on roadways adjacent to I-64 resulting from the two-year closure period. The study indicated that crash rates on 17 roadways were 8.9% below average in 2008 and 14.7% below average in 2009. Crash rates declined for most freeways, expressways, and major arterials in the surrounding region. Rear-end crashes declined noticeably from 7,757 in 2007 to 6,728 in 2009.


New insights into the nature and construction of granitic intrusions provide an opportunity to correlate the rock record of an intrusion to the rock record of volcanism related to the intrusion. We attempt such a correlation between the Silurian Vinalhaven (Maine, USA) intrusive complex and associated volcanic rocks. The largely granitic Vinalhaven intrusion includes a stratigraphic sequence of interlayered gabbro, diorite, and minor granite that preserves field evidence for mingling of coexisting mafic and silicic magmas in a series of ephemeral silicic magma chambers. Within this stratigraphy, blocks of country rocks occur at a number of stratabound horizons in association with mafic sheets. The along-strike lithologic variation of the blocks mirrors the lithologic variation of country rocks along the northern margin of the intrusion, which appears to be the only preserved portion of the intrusion's roof. The limited stratigraphic distribution and correlation of lithologies to the roof suggest that the country-rock blocks were stoped during short-lived roof collapse events rather than continuously over the lifetime of the chamber. We suggest that these stratabound roof blocks record collapse of the roof during eruptions from the system, perhaps triggered by the influx of mafic magma, and represent one large caldera-forming eruption followed by a series of smaller eruptions. This interpreted eruptive history of the pluton is consistent with the overall stratigraphy of spatially, temporally, and compositionally related volcanic rocks.


For digital content curation of historical artefacts, curators collaboratively collect, analyze and edit documents, images, and other digital resources in order to display and share new representations of that information to an audience. Despite their increasing reliance on digital documents and tools, current technologies provide little support for these specific collaborative content curation activities. We introduce CurationSpace -- a novel cross-device system to provide more expressive tools for curating and composing digital historical artefacts. Based on the concept of Instrumental Interaction, CurationSpace allows users to interact with digital curation artefacts on shared interactive surfaces using personal smartwatches as selectors for instruments or modifiers (applied to either the whole curation space, individual documents, or fragments). We introduce a range of novel interaction techniques that allow individuals or groups of curators to more easily create, navigate and share resources during content curation. We report insights from our user study about people's use of instruments and modifiers for curation activities.


Clear. Current. Connected to Today's Student. Schiller, The Micro Economy Today, 13e, is noted for three great strengths: readability, policy orientation, and pedagogy. The accessible writing style engages students and brings some of the excitement of domestic and global economic news into the classroom. Schiller emphasizes how policymakers must choose between government intervention and market reliance to resolve the core issues of what, how, and for whom to produce. This strategic choice is highlighted throughout the full range of micro, macro, and international issues, and every chapter ends with a policy issue that emphasizes the markets vs. government dilemma. The authors teach economics in a relevant context, filling chapters with the real facts and applications of economic life. Schiller is also the only principles text that presents all macro theory in the single consistent context of the AS/AD framework.
Connect is the only integrated learning system that empowers students by continuously adapting to deliver precisely what they need, when they need it, and how they need it, so that your class time is more engaging and effective


Introductory statistics texts have given extensive coverage to two-sided inferences. All texts that were surveyed give significant coverage to one-sided hypothesis tests. Very few discussed the possibility of one-sided interval estimation at all. Even fewer mentioned so in any detail the possibility of dividing the risk of a type I error unequally between the tails for a two-sided confidence interval. None of the textbooks that were reviewed even considered the possibility of unequal tails for two-sided hypothesis tests. In this paper, we suggest that all statistics courses and texts should cover both one-sided tests and confidence intervals. Furthermore, coverage should also be given to unequal division of the nominal risk of a type I error for both hypothesis tests and confidence intervals. Examples are provided for both situations.


Children acquiring English will demonstrate vowel errors mostly between age 1;6 and 2;0 (Hare, 1983; Paschall, 1983) and will have developed an almost complete vowel system (93.3%) by age three (Ball & Gibbon, 2013). Vowel acquisition can be problematic for some children leading to vowel error patterns, such as lowering and fronting. This can result in a perceptual collapse in vowel contrast; context sensitive processes where surrounding consonants influence the vowel; and more unusual idiosyncratic systems (Reynolds, 1990; Reynolds, 2013; Pollock, 2013; Bates, Watson, & Scobbie, 2013). Robb, Beleile, and Lee (1993) and Speake, Stackhouse, and Pascoe (2012) provide encouragement that both vowel-focused and unfocused speech and language therapy can increase vowel inventory and accuracy of production. Ultrasound Visual Bio-Feedback (U-VBF) Therapy has become increasingly popular for the remediation of persistent speech sound disorders (SSDs), however there are few studies investigating the use of U-VBF therapy for the remediation of vowel disorders. Current evidence for the remediation of vowels is within the hearing impairment population, showing limited evidence of improvement (Klajman et al., 1988; Wein et al., 1991; Bacsfalvi et al., 2007). The UltraPhonix Project aims to investigate the effectiveness of ultrasound therapy for 20 children aged six to 16 with persistent SSDs. This study uses a single-subject multiple baseline design with Michael (pseudonym),aged 6;5 years, presenting with a vowel disorder. Our research questions were: 1. Does a course of ultrasound visual biofeedback treatment improve accuracy of the targeted phoneme(s) in a. Words/pseudo-words and phrases trained during the therapy (treated word lists)? b. Words/pseudo-words and phrases not trained during the therapy (untreated wordlists)? 2. Are listeners able to perceive a difference in the production of /ɛ/pre- and post-therapy tokens? 3. Does acoustic and instrumental data provide evidence of covert errors/contrasts? Repeated measures of the Phonology subtest of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) (Dodd et al, 2002) and an untreated wordlist containing X tokens of /ɪ ɛ a ɑ/ were undertaken across three baseline assessments. Michael received 10 therapy sessions using ultrasound visual biofeedback (U-VBF) targeting /ɛ/. Assessments were repeated mid-therapy and will be repeated post therapy and at a maintenance session three months post-therapy to test for generalisation. Ultrasound datawas aquired using an Ultrasonix® SonixRP machine remotely controlled via Ethernet from a PC running Articulate Assistant Advanced™ (AAA) software (Articulate Instruments 2010). A probe stabilising headset is being used, to ensure accurate measurements are gathered. To ensure that headset movement is accounted for, a video from a headset-mounted micro-camera is being used, which also captures lip data. A headset-mounted microphone is also being used to record audio data. Therapy is currently on-going. We will present a fine phonetic analysis of Michael's vowel system including perceptual and instrumental findings to investigate possible covert errors or contrasts. Outcome measures will be based on auditory judgements by trained and untrained listeners (phonetic transcription and perceptual evaluation or pre- and post-therapy measures), acoustic analysis (formant analysis) and articulatory data (tongue surface shape analysis).


Recent data from Rio de Janeiro shows a sharp drop in the number of notified cases of Zika in the summer of 2016-17, compared to the previous summer. This is probably due to herd immunity built up after the previous year's epidemic. There is still a much higher incidence among women than men, almost certainly due to sexual transmission. An unexpected feature of the new data is that there are proportionally far more cases in children under 15 months than in older age classes. By comparing the incidence for 2016-17 with that of 2015-16, we can deduce the proportion of reported cases for men and women, and also verify that the disparity of incidence between them is still present. Women and children still represent risk groups with regard to Zika infection, even during a non-epidemic season.


Adhatoda vasica Nees plants were grown in 50 earthen pots, which were divided into 5 batches A, B, C, D, and E. Of these A, B and C, D were arranged into two separate parallel pairs. One leaf of each plant of an adjacent pair was immersed in sterile tap water in a beaker. Adjacent beakers in each pair A B or C D were connected by polythene tubes containing wet cotton threads. One leaf of each plant of A was given heat shock by immersing a leaf in hot water for 5 min. One leaf of each plant of C was treated with Cantharis vesicatoria 200c. Batch E served as the unstressed and untreated control. One hour after heat shock or drug treatment all the leaves were harvested and their proteins were extracted by chilled protein extraction buffer. Proteins were separated by Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography (FPLC). Protein profiles of A, B and C, D showed marked similarity with respect to expression and repression of some proteins. It is concluded that the effect of heat shock and drug treatment is transmitted through water in the capillaries of cotton threads connecting the pairs of plants. It is assumed that heat shock or drug treatment altered locally the water structure in the leaves which was propagated through global network of water structure over the protein network in the whole plants, and from there to the interfacial water in the beakers and cotton threads. A homeopathic potency is thought to be specifically structured water which influences the water structure in the treated organism.


Background: The retinal vasculature may be altered in multiple sclerosis (MS), potentially acting as a biomarker of disease processes. Objective: To compare retinal vascular plexus densities in people with MS (PwMS) and healthy controls (HCs), and examine correlations with visual function and global disability. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 111 PwMS (201 eyes) and 50 HCs (97 eyes) underwent optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Macular superficial vascular plexus (SVP) and deep vascular plexus (DVP) densities were quantified, and poor quality images were excluded according to an artifact-rating protocol. Results: Mean SVP density was 24.1% (SD = 5.5) in MS eyes (26.0% (SD = 4.7) in non-optic neuritis (ON) eyes vs. 21.7% (SD = 5.5) in ON eyes, p < 0.001), as compared to 29.2% (SD = 3.3) in HC eyes (p < 0.001 for all MS eyes and multiple sclerosis optic neuritis (MSON) eyes vs. HC eyes, p = 0.03 for MS non-ON eyes vs. HC eyes). DVP density did not differ between groups. In PwMS, lower SVP density was associated with higher levels of disability (expanded disability status scale (EDSS): R2 = 0.26, p = 0.004; multiple sclerosis functional composite (MSFC): R2 = 0.27, p = 0.03) and lower letter acuity scores (100% contrast: R2 = 0.29; 2.5% contrast: R2 = 0.40; 1.25% contrast: R2 = 0.31; p < 0.001 for all). Conclusions: Retinal SVP density measured by OCTA is reduced across MS eyes, and correlates with visual function, EDSS, and MSFC scores.


The usual configuration of uniaxial whispering gallery mode resonators is a disk shaped geometry where the optic axis points along the symmetry axis, a so called z-cut resonator. Recently x-cut resonators, where the optic axis lies in the equatorial plane, became of interest as they enable extremely broadband second harmonic generation. In this paper we report on the properties of a more generalized system, the so called angle-cut resonator, where the optic axis exhibits an arbitrary angle against the symmetry axis. We show experimentally that the modal structure and quality factors are similar to common resonators but that the polarization properties differ quite significantly: due to the asymmetry the polarization depends on the equatorial position and is, in general, elliptical.


Web services provide a standard means to achieve interoperability between different software applications in a heterogeneous distributed environment. The Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) has redefined Grid computing standards, making Web services more suitable for Grid applications by adding persistent state management. A primary benefit of Web and Grid services is that they provide a uniform implementation-independent mechanism for accessing distributed services. However, it is still difficult to build, deploy, and evolve such services. Different Web or Grid services containers are implemented in different programming languages, with different constraints and requirements placed on the programmer. The research described in this dissertation takes a significant first step toward "write-once deploy-anywhere" Web and Grid services, by enabling mobile code for different Web and Grid services containers. The term "mobile code" refers to passive code segments that can be dynamically deployed into a variety of hosting environments. The basis of this approach is the design and definition of a common intermediate language, called X#, for the representation and transmission of mobile code. Three Web services containers (namely, Tomcat, ASP.NET and a gSOAP based C++ container), and two Grid services containers (namely, GT4 and WSRF.NET) now support dynamic mobile code deployment through a standard Web service deployment interface. Containers receive the mobile X# code and then generate container-specific native code in different languages, without exposing these details to applications and Grid services programmers. The dynamically deployed mobile code can access state managed by the hosting container, can utilize functionalities exposed by statically deployed services, and can communicate with other mobile code modules, running either in the same container or in different containers. A performance study shows that the newly deployed mobile code can run as nearly efficiently as it would if it had been deployed statically, through container-specific mechanisms. The resulting software systems enable uniform dynamic deployment of the same code into several different containers written in different languages, including C#, Java, and C++. This reduces the burden on service programmers, facilitates interoperability, and potentially increases the impact of service code by allowing it to run in a larger number of different containers.


Victims of online abuse suffer measurable negative effects equivalent to survivors of traumas such as bombings and sexual assaults but it has been suggested that the general population view such online behaviour as acceptable, with victims consequently receiving little support. This is an issue of increasing import as the number and accessibility of online communication apps, and their incorporation into our everyday lives, increases the opportunity for Deviant Online Behaviours (DOBs) to be perpetrated. In order to better understand individuals' attitudes to specific DOBs 118 psychology undergraduate students rated 11 examples of DOBs on a scale of severity. Individual difference measures of online cognitions and interpersonal sensitivity were also collected. A factor analysis revealed 3 emerging online behaviour types: use of false information (theft of identity, tricking others), unsolicited behaviour (unsolicited e-mailing/messaging), and persistent communication (frequent contact and use of multiple identities). 'Persistent communication' was viewed as more unacceptable than 'unsolicited behaviour' and 'false information', though all contained behaviours which have been demonstrated to cause severe harm to victims. These findings attempt to demonstrate how individuals categorise deviant online behaviours in terms of severity and individual differences that may be associated with these perceptions.


Representative model organisms form the basis on which biology is constructed, and pure cultures offer many opportunities for discovery. However, our view of the importance of axenic cultures changed dramatically at the turn of the last century upon realizing that the major- ity of environmentally relevant microbes still remains uncultured. The sequencing revolution has led us to a point where we can identify the microbial world in which we live, but many questions remain regarding the autecology of planktonic microbes and their interactions with their environ- ment. Thus, it is essential to isolate and cultivate the key microbial players to gain a deeper insight into their ecology. If the past is a guide, the way forward in confronting the so-called 'great plate count anomaly' is the use of more subtle and refined approaches to culturing, using a number of methods and processes that are now becoming available. The vast amount of information accumu- lated from genome sequencing alone has yet to result in the isolation of the most important and abundant microbes of aquatic systems. We highlight the merits of pure cultures and discuss the critical need to integrate information from a variety of different sources to isolate planktonic microbes. We also describe how to culture bacteria of interest with a full cycle isolation approach based on targeted enrichment and illustrate the benefits of pure cultures with 2 examples of isolated representatives of freshwater Betaproteobacteria.


Urban poverty is one of the main concerns of the 21 st century and fighting against it is at the top of the millennium development goals. This paper has been done aiming to identify and analyze spatially areas of urban poverty. It has been done with quantitative method and survey based on secondary analysis in Tehran Metropolis in a way that calculated items were categorized based on four main factors of housing including economic, social, cultural, and educational ones and 43 indexes. They were selected by using statistical blocks data of Tehran Metropolis based on population and housing census in 2011. The results indicated that four extracted factors determine 72.7 percent of distribution of the total variance including housing poverty (28.7 percent), economic poverty (18.4 percent), social poverty (14.1 percent), and educational-cultural poverty (11.5 percent) respectively. They also indicated that districts 17, 19, 18, and 16 had the highest ranks regarding all poverty factors including economic, social, cultural, and educational ones. It is recommended to prioritize poverty alleviation and empowerment in development measures. However, the results of fuzzy VIKOR showed that there were 2312 very poor blocks (38.5 percent), 2049 poor blocks (34.1 percent), 1068 average blocks (17.8 percent), 458 rich blocks (7.6 percent), and only 114 very rich blocks.


Determination of rice seed varieties is very important to ensure varietal purity in the production of high-quality seed. To date, manual seed inspection is carried out to separate foreign rice seed varieties in rice seed sample in the laboratory as there is lack of an automatic seed classification system.  This paper describes a simple approach of using image processing technique and artificial neural network (ANN) to determine rice seed varieties based on extracted colour features of individual seed images. The experiment was conducted using 200 individual seed images of two Malaysian rice seed varieties namely MR 219 and MR 269. The acquired seed images were processed using a set of image processing procedure to enhance the image quality. Colour feature extraction was carried out to extract the red (R), green (G), blue (B), hue (H), saturation (S), value (V) and intensity (I) levels of the individual seed images. The classification using ANN was carried out by dividing the data sets into training (70% of data), validation (15%) and testing (15%) dataset respectively. The best ANN model to determine the rice seed varieties was developed, and the accuracy levels of the classification results were 67.5% and 76.7% for testing and training data sets using 40 hidden neurons.


Bordetella pertussis is known to release a factor which promotes the loss of ciliated respiratory epithelium and copurifies with a soluble peptidoglycan (PG) fragment termed tracheal cytotoxin (TCT). The objective of this study was to determine whether pertussis organisms turn over and release PG derivatives in addition to TCT. B. pertussis Tohama (phase III) was grown in liquid Stainer-Scholte medium containing [3H]diaminopimelic acid (DAP) to label PG specifically, washed to remove free label, and suspended in fresh medium without [3H]DAP. Molecular sieve chromatography of supernatants obtained from such cultures revealed a single included peak of 3H, the elution volume of which corresponded roughly to a disaccharide peptide monomer standard (ca. 10(3) daltons). This material (i) contained [3H]DAP in acid-hydrolyzable linkage, (ii) comigrated with 1,6-anhydro-N-acetylmuramic acid-containing disaccharide peptides on paper chromatography, (iii) was resistant to degradation by mild alkali, and (iv) was indistinguishable from authentic TCT by high-voltage paper electrophoresis and two reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography systems. Together, the data suggest that B. pertussis releases a markedly homogeneous set of PG fragments, consisting principally of TCT, and that TCT is possibly a nonreducing, anhydromuramic acid-containing fragment or a cyclic PG derivative.


The atmospheric response to perturbations in NO x emissions from global air traffic is investigated by performing a coherent set of sensitivity experiments. The importance of cruise altitude, size of the emission perturbation and geographical distribution of emissions is systematically analyzed using two global chemistry transport models and an off-line radiative transfer model. NO x emissions from a contemporary aircraft inventory have been used to assess the impact of global air traffic on ozone and methane. In further experiments the NO x emissions are perturbed, in turn, in 16 cruise altitude bands between 5 and 15 km altitude. In the p-TOMCAT model we diagnose an annual mean ozone increase of up to 6 ppbv and a decrease in the methane lifetime of 3% due to global air traffic in 2002. Associated radiative forcings of 30 mWm−2 for ozone and −19 mWm−2 for methane are diagnosed; a simple method is used to estimate the forcing due to the methane-induced ozone change and this yields an additional −11 mWm−2. Results show that up to the tropopause, ozone production efficiency and resulting impacts increase per emitted mass of NO x with the altitude of the perturbation. Between 11 and 15 km we find that the geographical location of the NO x emissions plays a crucial role in the potential O3 impact and lifetime change of CH4. We show that changes in flight routing in this altitude range can have significant consequences for O3 and CH4 concentrations. Overall, we demonstrate a linear relationship in the atmospheric response to small emission changes which can be used to predict the importance of perturbations about the reference aircraft emissions profile, provided the geographical distribution of the emissions is not altered significantly.


In the days and weeks following the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, a related assault began on the place of irony and satire in America's new post-9/11 culture. For example, on 18 September, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told the news website Inside.com that America had reached "the end of the age of irony"; on 21 September, Camille Dodero wrote in the Boston Phoenix of the end of "unbridled irony" for a "coddled generation that bathed itself in sarcasm"; and on 24 September, in a Time magazine editorial, Roger Rosenblatt also declared irony dead, its demise constituting "the one good thing [that] could come from this horror." (1) Although a small number of media pundits came to the defense of irony, events in popular culture seemed to reflect the accuracy of the views of Carter and Rosenblatt, as many television productions that relied on ironic satire went temporarily (and, in at least one case, permanently) off the air in the face of a wave of public animosity. The attack on ironic satire after 9/11 helps to illuminate one of the most contentious theoretical issues surrounding the genre: the role of history in the interpretation of satire. What is potentially useful to the literary critic/historian about moments of intense cultural crisis is that such moments tend to make satire's 'historicity' (2) more readily apparent. Since satire unapologetically engages with "those things which men do" (quidquid agunt homines) (3) as Juvenal (1.85) wrote, the genre must invariably engage with profound shifts in the cultural ethos in a dialogic manner; however, it is when engagement turns to conflict during moments of crisis that satire is subjected to repression, and a repressive response often provides illuminating details about the nature of the conflict between the arbiters and the critics of a society. As one historical example, Annabel Patterson (1989, 83-4) describes the Elizabethan government's effort to ban satire in the politically unstable summer of 1599 as "a struggle not only for the popular imagination but also, obviously, for control of the media by which that imagination was stimulated." Patterson's (1989, 86) contention that Elizabeth's government could not tolerate "representational instability" resonates with modern times as well. During the heavily contested ministerial elections in Italy in 2006, for example, Prime Minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi invoked Italy's par conditio law, which ensures equal time for all political views, as a means to prevent Italian comedians and satirists from deriding his administration on those television networks that were beyond his control. Satire's historicity and the frequent desire to quell its unorthodox influence are recurring issues in cultural history; after all, if in actuality satire "has little power to disturb the political order," asks Dustin Griffin (1994, 153), "then why have governments thought it important to control?" The battle to control the tenor of representations of the social ethos is an inherently ideological battle as the forces of authority work to maintain the orthodoxies that sustain it by suppressing those who would undermine such orthodoxies. The repressive acrimony leveled at satire after 9/11 provides a kind of case study of the dynamics involved in the dialogue between contemporary satire and historical change. The radical shifts in America's political, economic, and psychological climates of the time both influenced and were influenced by the prevalent modes of cultural criticism. Although space does not permit an exhaustive discussion of all the factors involved in the recent example of satire's historicity, a broad outline may help to illuminate not only the historicity of contemporary satire but that of Roman satire as well. Such a comparison of contemporary America and ancient Rome is open to a host of well-founded objections, yet the comparison is made with such frequency as to merit serious consideration. …


Teratomas are neoplasms composed of tissues from all three germ layers with varying degrees of differentiation. They are most commonly found in the sacrococcygeal and gonadal regions and rarely occur in the head and neck region. A teratoma is termed "epignathus" when it arises from the skull base or hard palate and is located in the oral cavity. The authors describe a case of a giant epignathus teratoma originating in the skull base of a neonate, extending bilaterally via two pedicles throughout the hard palate and protruding through the oral cavity. The tumor was completely resected using a transpalatal endoscopic endonasal approach. The excised tumor proved to be an immature teratoma with well-differentiated yolk sac elements. At the 1-year follow-up the patient showed no evidence of tumor recurrence and the child remains neurologically intact. This report demonstrates the use of a transpalatal endonasal corridor in a preterm infant. This approach provided an ample corridor into the ventral skull base without the need for external excisions and/or disruption of osseous elements.


We study the problem of estimating continuous quantities, such as prices, probabilities, and point spreads, using a crowdsourcing approach. A challenging aspect of combining the crowd's answers is that workers' reliabilities and biases are usually unknown and highly diverse. Control items with known answers can be used to evaluate workers' performance, and hence improve the combined results on the target items with unknown answers. This raises the problem of how many control items to use when the total number of items each workers can answer is limited: more control items evaluates the workers better, but leaves fewer resources for the target items that are of direct interest, and vice versa. We give theoretical results for this problem under different scenarios, and provide a simple rule of thumb for crowdsourcing practitioners. As a byproduct, we also provide theoretical analysis of the accuracy of different consensus methods.


Most field stars will have encountered the highest stellar density and hence the largest number of interactions in their birth environment. Yet the stellar dynamics during this crucial phase are poorly understood. Here we analyze the radial velocities measured for 152 out of 380 observed stars in the 2–6 Myr old star cluster IC 348 as part of the SDSS-III APOGEE. The radial velocity distribution of these stars is fitted with one or two Gaussians, convolved with the measurement uncertainties including binary orbital motions. Including a second Gaussian improves the fit; the high-velocity outliers that are best fit by this second component may either (1) be contaminants from the nearby Perseus OB2 association, (2) be a halo of ejected or dispersing stars from IC 348, or (3) reflect that IC 348 has not relaxed to a Gaussian velocity distribution. We measure a velocity dispersion for IC 348 of 0.72 ± 0.07 km s−1 (or 0.64 ± 0.08 km s−1 if two Gaussians are fitted), which implies a supervirial state, unless the gas contributes more to the gravitational potential than expected. No evidence is found for a dependence of this velocity dispersion on distance from the cluster center or stellar mass. We also find that stars with lower extinction (in the front of the cloud) tend to be redshifted compared with stars with somewhat higher extinction (toward the back of the cloud). This data suggest that the stars in IC 348 are converging along the line of sight. We show that this correlation between radial velocity and extinction is unlikely to be spuriously caused by the small cluster rotation of 0.024 ± 0.013 km s−1 arcmin−1 or by correlations between the radial velocities of neighboring stars. This signature, if confirmed, will be the first detection of line of sight convergence in a star cluster. Possible scenarios for reconciling this convergence with IC 348's observed supervirial state include: (a) the cluster is fluctuating around a new virial equilibrium after a recent disruption due to gas expulsion or a merger event, or (b) the population we identify as IC 348 results from the chance alignment of two sub-clusters converging along the line of sight. Additional measurements of tangential and radial velocities in IC 348 will be important for clarifying the dynamics of this region and informing models of the formation and evolution of star clusters. The radial velocities analyzed in this paper have been made available online.


Inversion of the uterus is a rare clinical problem. It is encountered as an obstetric emergency and a diagnostic challenge in gynecology. Non-puerperal inversion usually results from a tumor implanted on fundus of the uterus. Treatment depends on the associated pathology and the stage. A rare case of non-puerperal uterine inversion caused by a large fundal leiomyoma was reported in Bahounar Hospital, Kerman, in a 38 years old woman resulting in severe lower abdominal pain and profuse vaginal bleeding. After incomplete myomectomy, reduce the inversion vaginally was successful and abdominal hysterectomy was performed.


The project titled "Remote Voting System for Corporate Using Visual Cryptography" aims at providing a facility to cast vote for critical and confidential internal corporate decisions. It has the flexibility to allow casting of vote from any remote place, even when key stakeholders of election process are not available at workplace. This is enabled by leveraging the features that are provided by visual cryptography that are implemented in Remote Voting System. The election is held in full confidentiality by applying appropriate security measures to allow the voter to vote for any participating candidate only if he logs into his login by entering the correct password which is generated by merging the


Abstract. The scientific motivation for this study is to understand the processes in the ocean interior controlling carbon transfer across 30° S. To address this, we have developed a unified framework for understanding the interplay between physical drivers such as buoyancy fluxes and ocean mixing, and carbon-specific processes such as biology, gas exchange and carbon mixing. Given the importance of density in determining the ocean interior structure and circulation, the framework is one that is organized by density and water masses, and it makes combined use of Eulerian and Lagrangian diagnostics. This is achieved through application to a global ice-ocean circulation model and an ocean biogeochemistry model, with both components being part of the widely-used IPSL coupled ocean/atmosphere/carbon cycle model. Our main new result is the dominance of the overturning circulation (identified by water masses) in setting the vertical distribution of carbon transport from the Southern Ocean towards the global ocean. A net contrast emerges between the role of Subantarctic Mode Water (SAMW), associated with large northward transport and ingassing, and Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW), associated with a much smaller export and outgassing. The differences in their export rate reflects differences in their water mass formation processes. For SAMW, two-thirds of the surface waters are provided as a result of the densification of thermocline water (TW), and upon densification this water carries with it a substantial diapycnal flux of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). For AAIW, principal formatin processes include buoyancy forcing and mixing, with these serving to lighten CDW. An additional important formation pathway of AAIW is through the effect of interior processing (mixing, including cabelling) that serve to densify SAMW. A quantitative evaluation of the contribution of mixing, biology and gas exchange to the DIC evolution per water mass reveals that mixing and, secondarily, gas exchange, effectively nearly balance biology on annual scales (while the latter process can be dominant at seasonal scale). The distribution of DIC in the northward flowing water at 30° S is thus primarily set by the DIC values of the water masses that are involved in the formation processes.


But to lose oneself in the city-as one loses oneself in a forest-that calls for quite a different schooling. Then, signboards and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like cracking twigs under his feet in the forest, like the startling call of a bittern in the distance, like the sudden stillness of a clearing with a lily standing erect at its centre.1 As I read Levinas's Talmudic reading "Judaism and Revolution"21 wondered to myself as I came upon a discussion of the cafe as the context of one of the great dangers of modern life, just what this might mean. My initial response was to think that such a condemnation of one of my favorite social contexts must simply be a manifestation of Levinas's deep desire to stay close to the Talmudic texts he was analyzing. However, after overcoming this initial surprise, I wondered what it was that Levinas was really getting at here and more to the point what he was trying to say about modernity by asserting that cafes have become an integral part of modern life, that they were indeed "the realization of a form of life" (JR, 112) that is ours and finally, that they are expressive of "a category essential to western being" (ibid.) At the center of this essay is my desire to explore this question in a little more depth. In order to do this I will engage Levinas's analyses of the relationship between the interiority of the dwelling and the exterior (in this case the urban exterior) that is the site of the cafe, with those of Walter Benjamin.3 In the analyses of Benjamin and Levinas we find two closely related and yet also in certain respects opposed analyses of the relationship between private, interior space and the exterior space with which it is inextricably interwoven. We have in both Levinas and Benjamin accounts of the distinction between a constructed interiority and an exterior public field of exchange over and against which it is understood,4 and indeed we even have discussions of the cafe as a form of life that is to be found in this exterior public realm. Insofar as Benjamin's account is an account of modernity, we also have in this sense an interesting and useful way of both contextualizing and critically engaging with Levinas' largely a historical phenomenological categories. In these senses there is a strong agreement between the two accounts. However there is also some disagreement between their respective analyses. This disagreement centers primarily upon the question of how interiority, or to use Levinas's language, totality, is brought into question. In both cases it is through a rupturing of borders or boundaries and a bringing into question of subjective mastery, however in one of our two thinkers (Levinas) it is via a border crossing that goes from the exterior into the interior and in the other (Benjamin) via a crossing that goes from the interior out to the exterior.5 Perhaps the central question which the comparison of these two thinkers raises for me is that of who the interiorizing subject is and where he or she is located in social and historical terms? In attempting to address this question what I will argue is that we can productively read Benjamin's account as providing a more concrete historical and social context for some of the categorial structures to be found in Levinas's early and middle analyses of the relation between the self and the other and hence also between the interior and the exterior. Needless to say this critical response to the Levinasian analyses also brings into question to some extent the radical anti-subjectivism of the Levinasian account of the self as well. Levinas: The Invitation to Come In In this first section I will briefly recount some of the themes of Levinas' reflections and in particular I will try to draw out Levinas's often only implicit hopes and fears about the forms of life characteristic of the city itself, as one of the most exemplary of modern life contexts. …


Attention based Transformer architecture has enabled significant advances in the field of natural language processing. In addition to new pre-training techniques, recent improvements crucially rely on working with a relatively larger embedding dimension for tokens. Unfortunately, this leads to models that are prohibitively large to be employed in the downstream tasks. In this paper we identify one of the important factors contributing to the large embedding size requirement. In particular, our analysis highlights that the scaling between the number of heads and the size of each head in the current architecture gives rise to a low-rank bottleneck in attention heads, causing this limitation. We further validate this in our experiments. As a solution we propose to set the head size of an attention unit to input sequence length, and independent of the number of heads, resulting in multi-head attention layers with provably more expressive power. We empirically show that this allows us to train models with a relatively smaller embedding dimension and with better performance scaling.


This study explores the causes of the Typhoon Morakot disaster based on adopting principles proposed by the forensic investigation approach, so as to learn from experiences of past disaster and disaster resilience. Typhoon Morakot severely devastated the southern areas of Taiwan in August 2009 and brought record‐breaking rainfalls ever recorded, causing large‐scale floods, landslides and debris flows. Indigenous tribes living in mountainous areas were the hardest hit, including loss of original inhabitation, damages to homes, and heavy casualties. In order to learn from Typhoon Morakot, this study compares two communities that were adversely impacted by debris flow in 2009: Nansalu Village in Kaohsiung City and Daniao Village in Taitung County. Through conducting on‐site interviews, reviewing secondary data and applying cause effect analysis, this study is aimed at gaining insight understanding of why and how local residents find their own solutions to enhance resilience at grassroots level . By comparing real situations after Typhoon Morakot, the learned experiences extensively help communities to take decisive decisions that bring more deep reflections about how to adapt themselves to afterward extreme events in 2010 and later on. According to strategies of two areas about how to mitigate key factors leading to casualties and how to better enhance emergency preparedness, the countermeasures did reflect different outcomes between two areas. Namaxia Township Office and the head of Nansalu Village did not well implement response measures as expected. In contrast, the head of Daniao Village and the Township Office actively responded to emergency and decisively evacuated residents within potentially hazardous areas. Furthermore, shelter operation of the two villages also had shown significant differences, in which the shelter of Nansalu Village was poorly operated in condition of shortage of food, water and medical supplies, while Daniao Village and the township office properly responded and handled the shelter and supplies for evacuees. At stage of quick relief, Nansalu Village did not have an official contact window to coordinate required aid, while supplies and aid were rapidly shipped to Daniao Village under the Township Office's assistance. The comparison of these two cases shows that involvement of social factors related to preparedness and past experience of disaster are essential elements to lower adverse impacts brought by natural disaster. In order to strengthen disaster resilience, social factors born by local residents and public sector should be considered as a linkage to formulate public‐private partnership on strengthening disaster resilience.