The aim of the present study was to evaluate strength and marginal fit of different designed single crowns screwed on titanium implants (Brånemark) without the usage of any abutment. Seven test groups with 10 specimens each (standardized maxillary central incisor crowns) were fabricated of Empress (staining/veneering technique), metal-based Empress (staining/veneering technique), metal-based In-Ceram and metal ceramic (with/without cervical porcelain margin). The marginal fit of 5 specimens of each group was evaluated (SEM-Analysis) and the crowns were incisally loaded at a 30 degrees angle in a Zwick testing machine until fracture. The 5 remaining specimens underwent a marginal evaluation (SEM-analyses) before and after thermo-mechanical stressing (tms) and were loaded in the Zwick testing machine as well. All Empress ceramic crowns without metal reinforcement fractured during fixing procedure on the implant (32 N cm). The gap medians of the fixed crowns ranged from 11 microns (metal ceramic crowns) to 34 microns (metal ceramic crowns with porcelain margin). No significant differences in gap width were observed before and after tms. In the strength analyses screw-binding forces (SBF) of about 135 N were registered in all test groups. Fracture failure forces (FFF) reached up to 280 N. The indication of the crown designs presented in this study is limited in clinical use because of low stability and esthetics.


Abstract Understanding growth patterns is critical for determining age and size at sexual maturity and longevity in species that are severely threatened by over-collection and habitat loss, particularly in poorly understood species in tropical East Asia. Using data collected during a 9-year mark–recapture study, we fit the von Bertalanffy and logistic growth models to examine growth patterns of the endangered Big-headed Turtle (Platysternon megacephalum). Growth rate of P. megacephalum was best described by the von Bertalanffy model. Mean age at maturation for female and male P. megacephalum was 8 and 13 years. At maturity for female and male P. megacephalum, mean carapace length was 100 mm and 130 mm, respectively. We determined that counting growth rings on the carapace and plastron was not a reliable method for estimating ages. The long time to maturation in P. megacephalum may be costly in harvested populations, with individuals potentially being removed from populations prior to first reproduction. The growth patterns we have documented, and associated information on body size and age at sexual maturity, yield metrics that may be used to assess the effects of harvesting in populations and may contribute to conservation efforts for this endangered species.


Pyogenic granuloma (PG) is an inflammatory hyperplastic lesion of the oral cavity with common etiological factors such as low-grade local irritation, traumatic injury, or hormonal factors. The lesion is nonneoplastic in nature with the recurrence rate of 15.8%. Moreover, as it is a benign lesion, the choice of treatment is surgical excision with the removal of underlying cause if any. The present article highlights the use of platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) membrane in the management of PG. This case report presents a 62-year-old female patient who had reported with PG that recurred twice in 7-year period. The lesion appeared with a sessile base and was diagnosed clinically and histopathologically as PG. The PG was surgically excised exposing the underlying bone. The exposed bone surface was then covered with PRF membrane. At 6-month follow-up period, the patient did not show any further recurrence of the lesion.


Background: Clinical and pathologic features that predict outcome have important potential application in patients with pauci-immune necrotizing glomerulonephritis (usually antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody–associated vasculitis). This study examines the predictive value of simple quantitative renal histologic measurements in a large cohort with extended follow-up. Study Design: Cohort study. Setting & Participants: 390 consecutive patients with pauci-immune necrotizing glomerulonephritis at a single hospital (1983-2002); 90 patients underwent repeated kidney biopsy during follow-up. Predictors: Age and serum creatinine concentration at biopsy, antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody specificity, percentage of normal glomeruli, percentage of glomeruli with active lesions, and index of chronic damage (quantitative measurement of established cortical damage) in the initial kidney biopsy for all patients. The same factors were assessed in both biopsy specimens for patients undergoing an additional biopsy. Outcomes & Measurements: End-stage renal disease and patient survival. Results: Mortality at 1 and 5 years was 23% and 40%, respectively: standardized mortality ratio, 4.74 (95% CI, 3.62-6.32). End-stage renal disease was reached by 14% and 18% at 1 and 5 years, respectively. In multivariable analysis, serum creatinine level at biopsy and percentage of normal glomeruli in the initial biopsy specimen were the best predictors of kidney survival. C Statistics were 0.80 for creatinine level alone and 0.83 for creatinine level with normal glomeruli. In patients undergoing an additional biopsy, rapid progression in the index of chronic damage and serum creatinine level at the second biopsy were associated with kidney survival in multivariable analysis. Limitations: Retrospective analysis. External validity of the index of chronic damage requires further assessment. Selection bias may influence repeated biopsy analyses. Conclusions: Serum creatinine level at biopsy best predicts kidney survival in patients with pauci-immune necrotizing glomerulonephritis overall.


Over the second half of the 2010s, the /pol/ ('politically incorrect') forum on the 4chan image board has emerged as a space within which various extreme political ideologies are discussed and cultivated, occasionally informing off-site acts of political extremism. While previous research has often studied this space as a unified whole, it is relevant to more specifically demarcate different publics within 4chan's /pol/ board, apart from studying it as an 'amorphous blob'. This paper focuses specifically on 'generals' - recurring threads with a specific thematic focus identified by a particular vernacular phrase or tag. By identifying them it is possible to partition the board's archive into multiple distinct datasets comprising discussions about a particular topic, such as Donald Trump, the Syria war, or British politics. We provide a dataset containing 58,841 opening posts and 13,697,738 replies to those, divided over 329 thematically distinct general thread collections. In this paper we outline our data collection and query protocol, the structure of the data and its rationale, as well as a number of suggested research uses for this new data.


The thinning trend of a low-aspect ratio ignimbrite (LARI) in a direction of increasing topographic relief at the Pululagua Volcanic Complex, Ecuador, is established by correlating continuous ground penetrating radar (GPR) profiles and radar reflector behavior with stratigraphic measurements and unit behavior. Minimum density-current and vertical (cross-sectional) velocity analyses of the LARIs parent pyroclastic densitycurrent are performed by analyzing the exchange of kinetic energy for potential energy in an upslope direction. Continuous GPR profiles were acquired in a direction of increasing topographic relief with the intent of identifying the LARI within the GPR record and examining the relationships between the LARI and the underlying paleo-topographical surface. Stratigraphic measurements recorded throughout the field area demonstrate that the LARI thins 7.5 m in an upslope direction (over 480 m distance and 95 m elevation). Stratigraphic measurements enable correlations with GPR profiles, resulting in LARI identification. By utilizing GPR derived paleo-topographical surface elevations, minimum flow velocities of the LARI-producing parent pyroclastic density-current at the base of upslope flow are shown to be at least 25 m/s. Vertical velocity analyses based on the identification of internal GPR reflectors, interpreted as flow streamlines, yield viii pyroclastic surge-like cross-sectional velocity profiles of the LARIs parent densitycurrent. Maximum density-current velocities at the base of upslope flow reach 24 m/s and diminish toward the base of the current.


BERT (Devlin et al., 2018) and RoBERTa (Liu et al., 2019) has set a new state-of-the-art performance on sentence-pair regression tasks like semantic textual similarity (STS). However, it requires that both sentences are fed into the network, which causes a massive computational overhead: Finding the most similar pair in a collection of 10,000 sentences requires about 50 million inference computations (~65 hours) with BERT. The construction of BERT makes it unsuitable for semantic similarity search as well as for unsupervised tasks like clustering. In this publication, we present Sentence-BERT (SBERT), a modification of the pretrained BERT network that use siamese and triplet network structures to derive semantically meaningful sentence embeddings that can be compared using cosine-similarity. This reduces the effort for finding the most similar pair from 65 hours with BERT / RoBERTa to about 5 seconds with SBERT, while maintaining the accuracy from BERT. We evaluate SBERT and SRoBERTa on common STS tasks and transfer learning tasks, where it outperforms other state-of-the-art sentence embeddings methods.


Objective To investigate the association between APOE genotype and β-amyloid (Aβ) burden, as measured by PET in patients with subcortical vascular cognitive impairment (SVCI) and those with Alzheimer disease–related cognitive impairment (ADCI). Methods This was a cross-sectional study of 310 patients with SVCI and 999 with ADCI. To evaluate the effects of APOE genotype or diagnostic group on Aβ positivity, we performed multivariate logistic regression analyses. Further distinctive underlying features of latent subgroups were examined by employing a latent class cluster analysis approach. Results In comparison with ε3 homozygotes, in the ADCI group, ε2 carriers showed a lower frequency of Aβ positivity (odds ratio [OR] 0.43, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.23–0.79), while in the SVCI group, ε2 carriers showed a higher frequency of Aβ positivity (OR 2.26, 95% CI 1.02–5.01). In particular, we observed an interaction effect of ε2 carrier status and diagnostic group on Aβ positivity (OR 5.12, 95% CI 1.93–13.56), in that relative to ε3 homozygotes, there were more Aβ-positive ε2 carriers in the SVCI group than in the ADCI group. We also identified latent subgroups of Aβ-positive APOE ε2 carriers with SVCI and Aβ-positive APOE ε4 carriers with ADCI. Conclusions Our findings suggest that APOE ε2 is distinctly associated with Aβ deposition in patients with SVCI and those with ADCI. Our findings further suggest that there is a distinctive subgroup of Aβ-positive APOE ε2 carriers with SVCI among patients with cognitive impairment.


Electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) is a member of an emerging class of direct manufacturing processes known as solid freeform fabrication (SFF); another member of the class is the laser deposition process. Successful application of the EBF3 process requires precise control of a number of process parameters such as the EB power, speed, and metal feed rate in order to ensure thermal management; good fusion between the substrate and the first layer and between successive layers; minimize part distortion and residual stresses; and control the microstructure of the finished product. This is the only effort thus far that has addressed computer simulation of the EBF3 process. The models developed in this effort can assist in reducing the number of trials in the laboratory or on the shop floor while making high-quality parts. With some modifications, their use can be further extended to the simulation of laser, TIG (tungsten inert gas), and other deposition processes. A solid mechanics-based finite element code, ABAQUS, was chosen as the primary engine in developing these models whereas a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, Fluent, was used in a support role. Several innovative concepts were developed, some of which are highlighted below. These concepts were implemented in a number of new computer models either in the form of stand-alone programs or as user subroutines for ABAQUS and Fluent codes. A database of thermo-physical, mechanical, fluid, and metallurgical properties of stainless steel 304 was developed. Computing models for Gaussian and raster modes of the electron beam heat input were developed. Also, new schemes were devised to account for the heat sink effect during the deposition process. These innovations, and others, lead to improved models for thermal management and prediction of transient/residual stresses and distortions. Two approaches for the prediction of microstructure were pursued. The first was an empirical approach involving the computation of thermal gradient, solidification rate, and velocity (G,R,V) coupled with the use of a solidification map that should be known a priori. The second approach relies completely on computer simulation. For this purpose a criterion for the prediction of morphology was proposed, which was combined with three alternative models for the prediction of microstructure; one based on solidification kinetics, the second on phase diagram, and the third on differential scanning calorimetry data. The last was found to be the simplest and the most versatile; it can be used with multicomponent alloys and rapid solidification without any additional difficulty. For the purpose of (limited) experimental validation, finite element models developed in this effort were applied to three different shapes made of stainless steel 304 material, designed expressly for this effort with an increasing level of complexity. These finite element models require large computation time, especially when applied to deposits with multiple adjacent beads and layers. This problem can be overcome, to some extent, by the use of fast, multi-core computers. Also, due to their numerical nature coupled with the fact that solid mechanics- based models are being used to represent the material behavior in liquid and vapor phases as well, the models have some inherent approximations that become more pronounced when dealing with multi-bead and multi-layer deposits.


Abstract
 The City of Edinburgh in Scotland in the UK had advanced plans for a congestion charging scheme until 25 February 2005. However, these plans were abandoned at that time after a referendum that resulted in a 'no vote'. This paper explains the origins of the scheme, outlines its nature, extent, charging technology and predicted effect; it also analyses the difficulties that exist when attempting to plan and implement such a scheme in a particular governance context, and when there is little unanimity of public opinion about the need for a scheme. As well as the primary documentation from the proposals (e.g. public inquiry submissions, papers to government), the paper also draws upon a series of face-to-face interviews that were undertaken with key stakeholders. It also provides an analysis of press coverage in the local (Edinburgh) and national (Scottish) newspapers in the run-up to the referendum. These sources explain both the systemic and more local barriers to the scheme's implementation. The paper draws key lessons which are important for authorities considering the implementation of a road user charging scheme, by suggesting how legislative and governance barriers to implementation can be reduced. The lessons are of relevance world wide.


This paper uses a semiparametric homeownership model to estimate and to decompose the household-level white–black homeownership gap into an endowment component and a residual component across the distribution of homeownership rates. We find that the racial gap differs across homeownership rates and that studies that examine the gap only at the mean may be misleading. We also find that although household characteristics explain the homeownership gap for most households, there is a substantial portion of the gap that remains unexplained for households with a very low propensity to own homes. A comparison of the estimates from the semiparametric model and a probit model suggests that the semiparametric approach is able to capture the heterogeneity structure between the ethnic groups, particularly in the tails of the distribution. To illustrate the flexibility of our household-level approach, we decompose the homeownership gap in cities of varying levels of segregation.


The aim of this study was to evaluate proline accumulation as an indicator of drought stress and drought tolerance in spring wheat cultivars (Triticum aestivum L.) grown in the Western Cape. Drought stress was induced in whole plants and leaf discs in two cultivars with known drought tolerance, namely, Gamtoos (drought tolerant) and S ST 66 (slightly drought sensitive), as well as in two cultivars with unknown drought tolerance, namely, Nantes and SST 44. To assess the effect of growth stage on the reaction of the cultivars to drought stress, stress was induced during pre-anthesis and also during anthesis. Proline accumulation in whole plants showed clear genotypical differences during pre-anthesis and, to a lesser extent, during anthesis. A positive correlation between the degree (onset and extent) of proline accumulation and drought tolerance was found for Gamtoos and SST 66. Proline accumulation patterns in leaf discs did not correlate with results obtained with whole plants.


Abstract State policy makers, healthcare professionals, and advocates have been asking various iterations of the question, Do we have too many or too few physicians? In order to address this question, a relative-needs analysis ~as conducted for the state of Oklahoma. Six projection-needs studies were used for comparison with Oklahoma's supply of practicing physicians. This analysis found that Oklahoma did not have a surplus of primary care physicians. While the national average for primary care physicians per 100,000 was 79, Oklahoma's ratio was 68. This analysis also compares not only the number of physicians in Oklahoma per 100,000 population, it also discusses the proportion of primary care physicians in the physician workforce. Primary care physicians were found to be neither oversupplied nor undersupplied in Oklahoma. Oklahoma was found to be closer to national planning model goals than most states in the United States. Because this study combines both allopathic and osteopathic physicians and includes only those physicians in active practice, it is unique in comparison to many other studies concerning physician workforce needs.


It has often been claimed that it is impossible to measure human capabilities but within the methodological conventions of household survey design, this chapter shows that some non-financial capability indicators do already exist and this chapter demonstrates how similar indicators, covering a wide range of life domains, can be constructed. This chapter draws on a continuing research project which contributes to the operationalization of the capabilities approach by devising over sixty capability indicators which can be used to extend coverage of indices such as HDI, illustrating different ways in which such indicators may be analysed, and discussing some of the associated methodological issues that have emerged in the process. Based on usable observations from a national UK sample of 1,000 adults, this chapter uses latent class analysis to identify an impoverished group of respondents with low capabilities across the board, builds models of experienced violence and subjective wellbeing as a function of experienced and anticipated violence, and explores the relationship between capability indicators and subjective wellbeing. Substantive findings include: the identification of a group with low all round capabilities associated with low health and low income; evidence that fear of future violence can be a more significant determinant of subjective wellbeing than past experience of violence; and evidence which supports the view that a large diverse set of non-financial dimensions of capability have a detectable impact on subjective wellbeing. The chapter concludes by discussing some of the econometric issues that have emerged in the course of this work.


Actual trends of increased utilization of renewable sources in residential sector impose new requirements for domestic energy system operation. Recent research results have shown that a high level of energy autonomy could be achieved by the utilization of such systems in a residential building located within the European continental climate zone. That is particularly interesting in the light of the fact that in near future access to the hourly electricity market will be enabled to all households thus acting as prosumers. In this paper, the energy system comprising of a photovoltaic thermal collector, heat storage, heat pump and auxiliary energy sources, sized to cover the most of electricity, heating and cooling demand of a selected low-energy family house (180 m heated and cooled area, 75 m useful roof area, located in northwest Croatia) was considered. By analysis of yearly operational profiles, required exchange of energy on electricity market was estimated. Detailed mathematical model of the system was used for hourly simulation in order to evaluate impact of operational strategies on both renewable energy sources utilization and profitability. Two different control strategies were compared in typical days defined by profiles of energy demands, solar irradiance and electricity price. The simulation results showed how the change in operation strategy can reduce operational cost.


Robots are predicted to serve in environments in which human honesty is important, such as the workplace, schools, and public institutions. Can the presence of a robot facilitate honest behavior? In this paper, we describe an experimental study evaluating the effects of robot social presence on people's honesty. Participants completed a perceptual task, which is structured so as to allowthem to earn more money by not complying with the experiment instructions. We compare three conditions between subjects: Completing the task alone in a room; completing it with a non-monitoring human present; and completing it with a non-monitoring robot present. The robot is a new expressive social head capable of 4-DoF head movement and screen-based eye animation, specifically designed and built for this research. It was designed to convey social presence, but not monitoring. We find that people cheat in all three conditions, but cheat equally less when there is a human or a robot in the room, compared to when they are alone. We did not find differences in the perceived authority of the human and the robot, but did find that people felt significantly less guilty after cheating inthe presence of a robot as compared to a human. This has implications for the use of robots in monitoring and supervising tasks in environments in which honesty is key. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.1.2 [Models and Principles]: User/Machine Systems; J.4 [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences–- psychology. General Terms Experimentation, Human Factors.


ABSTRACT How do we best bridge the gap between the Library and the diverse academic communities it serves? Librarians need new strategies for engagement. Traditional models of liaison, aligning solutions to disciplines, are yielding to functional specialisms, including a focus on building partnerships. This paper offers a snapshot of realignment across the Russell Group from subject support to relationship management. It then follows the journey of a newly-formed Faculty and School Engagement Team. Techniques are explored for building relationship capital, anchored to a model Strategic Engagement Cycle. Theory is contrasted with the challenges of securing real buy-in to new ways of working amid diverging agendas and assumptions, notably within the Library itself. Consideration is given to the retention of aspects of subject librarian roles. Investment in a relationship management function demands staunch and ongoing commitment to fulfil its promise, not only from its performers but from across the library community.


Strontium isotopes are a unique tool to study soil-erosion dynamics. Changes in Sr isotope ratios ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) provide a record of late Quaternary landscape denudation of the Edwards Plateau of central Texas, United States. The use of Sr isotopes as a tracer for soil erosion is based on the observation that, in central Texas, the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of soil correlates with soil thickness. Plants and animals express the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of exchange- able Sr in the soil. Therefore, we use changes in Sr isotope ratios through a well-dated stratigraphic sequence of fossil plants and animals in Hall's Cave, Kerr County, Texas, as a proxy for temporal changes in soil thickness. By using this record we are able to characterize late Quaternary climate-driven soil-erosion dynamics on the Edwards Pla- teau. We find that continuous erosion removed at least 180 cm of soil at a constant min- imum rate of 11 cm/k.y.; this continuous phase of erosion ended ca. 5 ka. The Sr isotope record of soil erosion is consistent with late Quaternary environmental change in central Texas that has been independently modeled by using local and regional climate records. However, the rate of this climate-driven soil-erosion event was an order of magnitude slower than recent soil erosion caused by human land use. These results link erosion to century- to millennial-scale climate change and are cautionary evidence that even greater landscape degradation may result from coincident climatic variability and anthropogenic influences.


A potential cause of thermal fatigue failures in energy cooling systems is identified with cyclic stresses imposed on a piping system. These are generated from temperature changes in regions where a cold flow is intensively mixed with a hot flow. Typical locations of such thermal mixing are T-junctions in nuclear reactor cooling systems. Turbulent mixing in a T-junction is investigated here using large-eddy simulation (LES). In general, LES can capture very well the mixing phenomena and the accompanying turbulent flow fluctuations that occur in a T-junction. Through a direct comparison with experimental results, an assessment of the accuracy of LES predictions is made for the Smagorinsky and the Vreman models. It is shown that the results obtained with the Vreman model are closest to the experimental results. The Smagorinsky model is found to provide the least accurate results. This is particularly detected in the near-wall regions that are of great importance in thermal fatigue predictions. Detailed numerical validation was performed with simulations using five different spatial mesh resolutions. These simulations show that computational meshes must resolve important turbulence length scales in order to obtain sufficiently accurate results. This accuracy assessment and error quantification are based on the integral and Taylor length scales of turbulence. For the investigated cases, the mesh resolution with average cell sizes of the order of λ/3 (three times smaller than the Taylor microscale length) is sufficient to give very similar results to those obtained on much finer meshes. An engineering estimation of the minimal mesh resolution gives an initial guideline for construction of computational meshes that allow for accurate predictions of turbulent mixing in a T-junction using LES. Additionally, analysis of the temperature measurement data at specified probe locations is presented along with a quantification of an error introduced by the applied LES method.


Location commerce extends e-commerce through the provision of location-related activities, but this gives rise to greater concerns about privacy invasion. To encourage the smooth growth of location commerce, it is suggested that control over the sharing of intimate information be given back to the consumer. This study proposes an ontology-based privacy protection (OPP) framework that allows consumers to specify their own privacy preferences and then uses these preferences to determine whether or not a message from a merchant can be delivered to a consumer. We use ontology to structure the knowledge to simplify the framework and allow for the possibility of automation. The system is believed to be context-aware, as the location, time, service type, information type, and other contextual data are taken into consideration. We develop a prototype system for demonstration and experiment, and show that the framework design is feasible and has a reasonable performance.


Multidrug resistance (MDR) is considered the main cause of cancer chemotherapy failure and patient relapse. The active drug efflux mediated by transporter proteins of the ABC (ATP-binding cassette) family is the most investigated mechanism leading to MDR. With the aim of inhibiting this transport and circumventing MDR, a great amount of work has been dedicated to identifying pharmacological inhibitors of specific ABC transporters. We recently showed that 3β-acetyl tormentic acid (3ATA) had no effect on P-gp/ABCB1 activity. Herein, we show that 3ATA strongly inhibited the activity of MRP1/ABCC1. In the B16/F10 and Ma104 cell lines, this effect was either 20X higher or similar to that observed with MK571, respectively. Nevertheless, the low inhibitory effect of 3ATA on A549, a cell line that expresses MRP1-5, suggests that it may not inhibit other MRPs. The use of cells transfected with ABCC2, ABCC3 or ABCC4 showed that 3ATA was also able to modulate these transporters, though with an inhibition ratio lower than that observed for MRP1/ABCC1. These data point to 3ATA as a new ABCC inhibitor and call attention to its potential use as a tool to investigate the function of MRP/ABCC proteins or as a co-adjuvant in the treatment of MDR tumors.


The microclimate of a residential landscape can affect both the energy use in your home and the human thermal comfort in your garden, ultimately affecting the heat in the neighbourhood or precinct. A thermal imaging camera provides information about the temperature of surfaces. By using Stefan–Boltzmann's law and the surface properties, these temperatures can be used to calculate the emission of longwave radiation (radiant exitance) in W m−2 . A thermal camera was used to determine the amount of radiant exitance from a range of residential landscape elements. A standard procedure for capturing these images was developed, taking into account factors which affect the quality of the radiometric data. A quantitative database comparing this radiation has been compiled for different times of day and different seasons. The sky view factor of these elements was chosen such that it was as close to 1 as possible. For a particular landscape design, areas of each landscape element can be measured and the amount of radiation reduced or emitted at different times can be calculated. This data can be used to improve landscape designs to reduce home energy use and human thermal comfort through shading and reduction of surfaces which emit longwave radiation close to the house.


The FLUXNET dataset contains eddy covariance measurements from across the globe and represents an invaluable estimate of the fluxes of energy, water, and carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere. While there is an expectation that the broad range of site characteristics in FLUXNET result in a diversity of flux behaviour, there has been little exploration of how predictable site behaviour is across the network. Here, 155 datasets with 30 min temporal resolution from the Tier 1 of FLUXNET 2015 were analysed in a first attempt to assess individual site predictability. We defined site uniqueness as the disparity in performance between multiple empirical models trained globally and locally for each site and used this along with the mean performance as measures of predictability. We then tested how strongly uniqueness was determined by various site characteristics, including climatology, vegetation type, and data quality. The strongest determinant of predictability appeared to be that drier sites tended to be more unique. We found very few other clear predictors of uniqueness across different sites, in particular little evidence that flux behaviour was well discretised by vegetation type. Data length and quality also appeared to have little impact on uniqueness. While this result might relate to our definition of uniqueness, we argue that our approach provides a useful basis for site selection in LSM evaluation, and we invite critique and development of the methodology.


Myceliophthora thermophila laccase was covalently immobilized on functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) arranged over a supporting membrane to obtain a permeable bio-barrier that could be applied in multibatch or continuous processes. Initially, several supporting materials, namely cellulose nitrate, agarose and polyvinyl alcohol, were evaluated as supports for the MWNT. The maximum enzyme loading of 0.286 U mg−1 of MWNT was obtained for cellulose nitrate support supplemented with 0.21 mg MWNT. Immobilized laccase showed good operational stability (above 95% of its initial activity was maintained after 10 cycles of reaction) and exhibited improved stability towards temperature, pH and acetone: for instance, 21% and 49% for free and immobilized laccase, respectively, when incubated in the presence of 20% of acetone (v/v) for 6 h. The immobilized laccase was applied for Reactive Black 5 (RB5) decolorization. Maximum values of RB5 decolorization were observed in the presence of 1-hydroxybenzotriazole as mediator and at pH 5.0, with 68.09 and 84.26% decolorization after 6 and 24 h, respectively.


The 1st Regional pain medicine symposia were held between the 14th and 18th of November 2011 in 3 cities (Nairobi, Mombasa and Dar-es-salaam), across 2 countries, Kenya and Tanzania. It was funded by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), through the IASP developing country education grant for 2011 and The Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi (AKUHN). It was organized by faculty from the Pain Management Unit (PMU) AKUHN. The Pain medicine educators were from PMU, AKUHN and from Specialists in Pain International Network (SPIN).

The aims of the symposia were to introduce the Rhino model concept, the theoretical and clinical concepts of pain medicine, as well as create awareness and stimulate an interest in pain medicine education and pain research in ECSA region. At each of the 3 different locations, the same topics and workshops were presented by the speakers, thus ensuring uniformity of the message delivered.


Bicycling infrastructure has flourished across Latin American cities as urban activists who cycle have pressed municipalities to grant space on the streets. This article analyzes the ways urban cyclists use and create bicycling infrastructure in the city of Quito, Ecuador. It uses an ethnographic approach to understand how infrastructure is systematically produced through various relationships with human actors and non-human phenomena. The article starts from the perspective of the ethnographer moving within the assemblage of the feminist bicycle collective Carishina en Bici. The ethnographer drew on feminist science and technology studies (STS) approaches to cultivate everyday relationships of 'care' to become a moving part of an infrastructural assemblage. The study of infrastructure entails carefully choosing research relationships that result in intra-action, or the coming together of the subjects and objects of a study to produce infrastructure. The article uses the term experimental infrastructure to reveal the procedures of studying and analyzing the political dynamics that result from bicycling infrastructure. It draws on 15 months of fieldwork in Quito, Ecuador, and participatory photo travel diaries of cyclists to demonstrate how bicycling infrastructure is a point of intersection as well as an active site for making democratic claims to the Andean city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


This is a revised version of a paper presented at the NEH conference on "Civility and American Democracy" at Washington State University in early March, 2011. The paper tries to identify the circumstances in which civility in discourse is both necessary and obligatory. I assume that, pre-theoretically, everyone can agree that "civility" is paramount for discourse in the classroom setting. Teachers should be civil to students, and students to their teachers. By elucidating why civility seems obligatory in this context, I try to specify the circumstances of civility, which, in brief, obtain when epistemic values and motives dominate in discourse. I then describe a political context, "Dystopia," in which the circumstances of civility do not obtain, and so civility is not obligatory, but might still be advisable.


Background: Studies on the effects of acupuncture on mortality and complication rates in hip fracture patients are limited by small sample size and short follow-up time. We aimed to assess the associations of acupuncture use with mortality, readmission and reoperation rates in hip fracture patients using a longitudinal population-based database. Methods: A retrospective matched cohort study was conducted using data for the years 1996–2012 from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. Hip fracture patients were divided into an acupuncture group consisting of 292 subjects who received at least 6 acupuncture treatments within 183 days of hip fracture, and a propensity score matched "no acupuncture" group of 876 subjects who did not receive any acupuncture treatment and who functioned as controls. The two groups were compared using survival analysis and competing risk analysis. Results: Compared to non-treated subjects, subjects treated with acupuncture had a lower risk of overall death (hazard ratio (HR): 0.41, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.24–0.73, p = 0.002), a lower risk of readmission due to medical complications (subdistribution HR (sHR): 0.64, 95% CI: 0.44–0.93, p = 0.019) and a lower risk of reoperation due to surgical complications (sHR: 0.62, 95% CI: 0.40–0.96, p = 0.034). Conclusion: This is the first study to suggest that postoperative acupuncture in hip fracture patients is associated with significantly lower mortality, readmission and reoperation rates compared with those of matched controls.


Identification of crash risk factors and enhancing safety at work zones is a major priority for transportation agencies. There is a critical need for collecting comprehensive data related to work zone safety. The naturalistic driving study (NDS) data offers a rare opportunity for a first-hand view of crashes and near-crashes (CNC) that occur in and around work zones. NDS includes information related to driver behavior and various non-driving related tasks performed while driving. Thus, the impact of driver behavior on crash risk along with infrastructure and traffic variables can be assessed. This study: (1) investigated risk factors associated with safety critical events occurring in a work zone; (2) developed a binary logistic regression model to estimate crash risk in work zones; and (3) quantified risk for different factors using matched case-control design and odds ratios (OR). The predictive ability of the model was evaluated by developing receiver operating characteristic curves for training and validation datasets. The results indicate that performing a non-driving related secondary task for more than 6 seconds increases the CNC risk by 5.46 times. Driver inattention was found to be the most critical behavioral factor contributing to CNC risk with an odds ratio of 29.06. In addition, traffic conditions corresponding to Level of Service (LOS) D exhibited the highest level of CNC risk in work zones. This study represents one of the first efforts to closely examine work zone events in the Transportation Research Board's second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) NDS data to better understand factors contributing to increased crash risk in work zones.


This article briefly discusses the regulation of mergers and acquisitions in terms of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 (the Act). It is generally accepted that legal protection of the investing public in a country encourages development of financial markets. In countries that have well-functioning legal rules, outside investors are willing to invest by providing funding to firms and are willing to participate in financial markets. On the other hand, where investors are not protected the development of financial markets may be retarded. Shareholders and creditors feeling that their rights are protected are willing to pay more for financial assets including equity and debt, with the recognition that they will be repaid in the form of either dividend or interest rather than losing their investment to expropriation; investors may be willing to pay more. Share prices may increase. This in turn, may lead to investors putting more money in the financial markets and subsequent expansion of the financial markets.


This paper seeks to provide a theoretical approach to the nature of interpretation to overcome some of the challenges of treaty interpretation in international law. By adhering to the approaches of Gadamer and Wittgenstein, it is argued that interpretation is a reciprocal dialogue between the reader and text with the mediation of the 'tradition' and 'language-games'. Although it seems there exists no agreement among legal theorists on the nature of interpretation, reviewing their approaches reveal they have acknowledged the dependency of meaning to the tradition. This finding paves the way for providing a new reading for the system of interpretation provided by article 31 and 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It is argued that VCLT rules, while integrate some of the elements of current interpretive methods, adopt their own approach. The nature of international law requires taking into account the 'conventionalist theory' to determine the meaning based on the acts of its subjects. Nevertheless, the nature of interpretation necessitate the terms to be understood with the meditation of the 'language-games' which is realized by the inclusion of 'the relevant rules of international law'.


The thesis focused on the design and construction of a proof-of-concept polymer based microfluidic Point of Care (POC) device that is portable, requires little user interaction, and is sensitive enough to reliably test for protein biomarkers from a small sample of whole human blood. Specific contributions to the presented system include novel microfluidic channel geometries that support improved fluidic handling, and an improved technique for the fabrication of the poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microfluidic chip. Additionally, a commercially available plasma separation membrane was integrated into the microfluidic chip using presented structures and techniques to achieve cellular filtration of whole blood on-chip, yielding a usable volume of plasma to be used as the analyte fluid. A system of valves was used to direct the pressures generated by a new patented syringe-style pump designed for this specific application. The pump was created to more precisely move the collection of fluid volumes through the chip. A previously developed charged couple device (CCD) based vision system was modified and integrated into the presented fluid control system to track the position of the various fluid volumes. Software was developed that used the fluid position sensors data to control the various hardware components of the system. Finally, the above components were combined into a working prototype geared towards ease of use and portability. Efforts were focused on the system's ability to autonomously and reliably control the various microliter sized volumes of fluid within the microfluidic chip. C-reactive protein (CRP) was used as a benchmark protein for biomarker detection because its normal concentration in human blood is at an approximate median to other biomarkers, and because the detection of CRP in a laboratory setting has been well established. A limit of detection (LOD) of 1.87 μg/mL of CRP in buffer was achieved utilizing the proposed stop-flow sequential loading technique. An acceptable volume of plasma was extracted and collected in the microfluidic chip from 50 μL of whole blood using the structures and techniques presented in this work. The CCD based fluid position sensor was capable of sensing a change in the contents of a channel over 97% of the time. Totally autonomous stop-flow fluid handling was accomplished at a similar rate of success utilizing a combination of valves, the custom pump, and the fluid position sensor all working in unison. Results show that protein detection using a previously untested stop-flow procedure still provided an acceptable LOD. The presented portable POC device was able to execute fluid handling in the microfluidic channels at a higher level of precision and reliability than previously possible. The presented prototype gives a viable blueprint for a next-generation protein biomarker detector capable of autonomous complex fluid handling procedures.


A Sybex study guide for the new SharePoint Server 2010 Configuration exam SharePoint holds 55 percent of the collaboration and content management market, with many more companies indicating they plan to join the fold. IT professionals interested in enhancing their marketability with the new Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Configuring exam will find this guide may be their only alternative to costly classroom training. Microsoft SharePoint claims over half the market for collaboration and content management software; IT professionals will boost their marketability with the newest MCTS certification covering Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Configuring This study guide covers 100 percent of the exam objectives with real world scenarios, hands-on exercises, and challenging review questions Covers installing, deploying, configuring, and upgrading SharePoint Server 2010; managing search, business intelligence, and administration; configuring content management and business forms; and more With plenty of practice questions on the companion CD, this guide to exam 70-667 prepares IT professionals to achieve the MCTS: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Configuring certification.


Legitimacy problems continue to dog investment law, despite modest efforts at bridging its legitimacy gap. Drawing upon lectures by nineteenth century historian Francois Guizot, this paper argues that legitimacy problems do not simply dissipate over time. Securing and maintaining legitimacy, instead, requires continuous work. This paper takes up a justificatory frame for determining how well investment law is succeeding in securing legitimacy. As Guizot describes it, representatives invested with power on behalf of a majority must continually seek to justify their authority. Because rulers are fallible, exercises of authority must be open, public and subject to endless questioning. The subsequent parts of the paper evaluate strategies that have been taken up by states and by arbitrators in light of this legitimacy frame. The paper asks whether these strategies offer up a means by which citizens can learn about, embrace or resist the regime's dictates of what is in the common interest. It is suggested that the state and arbitral strategies under discussion fall far short of this mark. More drastic reforms need to be entertained, many of which will be anathema to investment law's norm entrepreneurs.


Background Smoking has physical, psychological, and social impacts on women's health and subsequentlythe community's health. Therefore, it is important to have an estimation of smoking among Iranian women.Since comprehensive data are not available in this respect, the authors performed a systematic review and metaanalyzedall high-quality studies in this field. Methods All available electronic papers were searched by certain keywords and were included in this studyaccording to the inclusion criteria regardless of the publication year. Furthermore, non-electronic resources includingthe final report of research projects, dissertations, unpublished papers (grey literature) and books publishedby the Iranian ministry of health were also evaluated in the study. The materials were assessed for theirquality and meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Considering the high degree of variability in many selectedstudies, we used random effect method for meta-analysis. Results The highest and lowest rates of cigarette smoking among women were 10.5% and 0.04%, respectively.The prevalence rates of smoking were different in various subgroups; ranging from 0 to 0.4% in students, 1.1to 3.1% in adults, and 1.4 to 8.7% in all subgroups. According to the meta-analyses performed for the subgroups,the mean age of participants, performing the study in urban or rural areas, and the year of paper publicationwere major sources of heterogeneity. Conclusion The studies were highly different with regard to their findings, and it seems that there is an ageand time trend for the findings. Furthermore, the prevalence of smoking was different in various regions of thecountry.


This article broadens existing relational theories and their relevance to our Western understanding of the formation of self-concept by examining Anglo Saxon Americans9 understanding of connection with Ancestors. It uses the African worldview as a sample Indigenous paradigm, shows its influence on contemporary African American culture, and reviews literature of Africentric psychology wherein conceptualization of, and engagement with, Ancestral connectedness has been employed. Based on findings from an earlier phenomenological inquiry into the lived experience of the formation of self-concept in relation to Ancestral connectedness in three Anglo Saxon Americans reveals that there is very little sense of Ancestral connectedness for these individuals. It follows that the long-standing premise in Western psychology that a healthy development of the self is forged out of a process of differentiation and increased autonomy must be brought into question. A self-identity based in the form of an extended self and having access to a lived connection with our Ancestors as Anglo Saxon Americans, can inform psychotherapeutic modalities designed to support our ever-growing social and psychological maladies.


While most of the quantitative literature on quality of government has focused on national differences, subnational variation has been neglected, mainly due to the lack of data. This study explores subnational divergences in quality of government (understood as control of corruption, impartial treatment of citizens, and government effectiveness) using newly created subnational data including over 70 European regions. It addresses the institutional puzzle of why regions which share so many formal institutions (e.g., Northern and Southern Italy) do diverge so much in quality of government. Similar to recent political economy scholarship, our theory points to historical path dependencies. The study argues that a major factor explaining regional path dependencies is the consolidation of clientelistic networks in those regions where rulers have historically (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) less constraints to their decisions.


Web applications are increasingly popular victims of security attacks. Injection attacks, such as Cross Site Scripting or SQL Injection, are a persistent problem. Even though developers are aware of them, the suggested best practices for protection are error prone: unless all user input is consistently filtered, any application may be vulnerable. When hosting web applications, administrators face a dilemma: they can only deploy applications that are trusted or they risk their system's security.

To prevent injection vulnerabilities, we introduce PHP Aspis: a source code transformation tool that applies partial taint tracking at the language level. PHP Aspis augments values with taint meta-data to track their origin in order to detect injection vulnerabilities. To improve performance, PHP Aspis carries out taint propagation only in an application's most vulnerable parts: third-party plugins. We evaluate PHP Aspis with Wordpress, a popular open source weblog platform, and show that it prevents all code injection exploits that were found in Wordpress plugins in 2010.


This article attempts to problematise the conventional notion of dialogue, proposing 'utmost listening' as an alternative approach in International Relations (IR) dialogue. More specifically, I argue that we need to regard IR as a foreign language; I particularly explore the proposed approach in terms of feminist IR. Having a dialogue as a 'non-native' speaker demands hard work and consistent training. Most of all, a starting point would be to listen carefully to dialogue partners. This is different from the conventional approach in dialogue which presupposes that listening and speaking are situated almost equally in epistemological terms. In this sense, I reflect on myself as a 'provisional-straight man' researcher who engages with feminist IR. I also consider other men scholars, such as Robert Keohane. Finally, I introduce Momo — a fictional character in Michael Ende's novel — as an 'utmost listener'. What happens if we follow Momo in the IR community?


Abstract Six populations of seeds of the aquatic monocotyledon Stratiotes (Hydrocharitaceae) from the Paleogene of England have been studied to assess morphological evolution through the Eocene–Oligocene transition. Morphometric methodologies (including eigenshape analysis) have been used to quantify evolution within the genus and compare results to previous qualitative studies. Previously hypothesized broad evolutionary trends of increasing size and more elongate shape are found to be mainly correct, but, in places, can be elucidated further. The results of this study indicate a single evolving lineage in the Paleogene of southern England with an increase in seed size and keel width in late Eocene specimens, followed by a reversal of this trend in the early Oligocene. Two Miocene populations from continental Europe are shown to be morphologically distinct from those of the English Paleogene. Changes in overall shape of the seed are shown to be controlled dominantly by the relative size of the keel structure, rather than the seed body. Comparisons show that the microevolutionary trend of Stratiotes across the Eocene–Oligocene transition differs from that of the charophyte, Harrisichara. This may suggest that factors other than climatic change, such as animal/plant interactions, played a role in evolution of Stratiotes seeds. Type and figured material of named Paleogene species was added passively to the dataset, and results suggest that taxonomic splitting may have led to previous evolutionary hypotheses of multiple clades, which is not supported by this study.


Temperature-memory polymers remember the temperature, where they were deformed recently, enabled by broad thermal transitions. In this study, we explored a series of crosslinked poly[ethylene-co-(vinyl acetate)] networks (cPEVAs) comprising crystallizable polyethylene (PE) controlling units exhibiting a pronounced temperature-memory effect (TME) between 16 and 99 °C related to a broad melting transition (∼100 °C). The nanostructural changes in such cPEVAs during programming and activation of the TME were analyzed via in situ X-ray scattering and specific annealing experiments. Different contributions to the mechanism of memorizing high or low deformation temperatures (Tdeform) were observed in cPEVA, which can be associated to the average PE crystal sizes. At high deformation temperatures (>50 °C), newly formed PE crystals, which are established during cooling when fixing the temporary shape, dominated the TME mechanism. In contrast, at low Tdeform (<50 °C), corresponding to a cold drawing scenario, the deformation led preferably to a disruption of existing large crystals into smaller ones, which then fix the temporary shape upon cooling. The observed mechanism of memorizing a deformation temperature might enable the prediction of the TME behavior and the knowledge based design of other TMPs with crystallizable controlling units.


Private not-for-profit organizations combine characteristics of a public sector agency with those of a private, proprietary firm. In particular, nonprofits are required to address designated social missions while breaking even financially. This structure underlies the difficulty that nonprofit organizations face in making decisions with important resource implications. Specifically, choices that would achieve maximal mission impact may differ from choices that reward the organization in purely financial terms. As a result, nonprofit managers face a variety of trade-offs between mission responsive and financially rewarding actions. This paper considers some of these tradeoffs in the context of pricing decisions by nonprofit organizations. In particular, the paper draws on alternative theories of nonprofit pricing from the literature. In one theory, nonprofits are viewed as revenue maximizers, pricing their services to garner as much net revenue as possible to support their organizations. In an alternative theory, nonprofits are conceived as mission maximizers, pricing their services to achieve maximum mission impact within the constraint of financial solvency. The efficacy of these theories is explored through five case studies of organizations offering a variety of services within the context of a local social services federation. Evidence from these cases suggests that the forgoing theories apply in some combination for any given nonprofit organization. Several different behavioral patterns are found, including nonprofits seeking to balance financial and mission impacts in the pricing policies for each of their service offerings and others pursuing a strategic mix of pricing policies for profitable and mission-impacting services. It is clear from all cases observed that nonprofit managers struggle with mission-market tensions as they relate to pricing and that they can benefit from metrics to help them sort through these decisions in ways that resolve these tensions.


Small networks of cultured hippocampal neurons respond to transient stimulation with rhythmic network activity (reverberation) that persists for several seconds, constituting an in vitro model of synchrony, working memory, and seizure. This mode of activity has been shown theoretically and experimentally to depend on asynchronous neurotransmitter release (an essential feature of the developing hippocampus) and is supported by a variety of developing neuronal networks despite variability in the size of populations (10200 neurons) and in patterns of synaptic connectivity. It has previously been reported in computational models that small-world connection topology is ideal for the propagation of similar modes of network activity, although this has been shown only for neurons utilizing synchronous (phasic) synaptic transmission. We investigated how topological constraints on synaptic connectivity could shape the stability of reverberations in small networks that also use asynchronous synaptic transmission. We found that reverberation duration in such networks was resistant to changes in topology and scaled poorly with network size. However, normalization of synaptic drive, by reducing the variance of synaptic input across neurons, stabilized reverberation in such networks. Our results thus suggest that the stability of both normal and pathological states in developing networks might be shaped by variance-normalizing constraints on synaptic drive. We offer an experimental prediction for the consequences of such regulation on the behavior of small networks.


The formation and maintenance of tissues in multicellular animals are crucially dependent on cellular interactions with the extracellular matrix (ECM). Two different studies on such interactions are presented herein.Studies on expression of laminins in normal and dystrophic skeletal muscle, clarified a much debated issue regarding discrepancies seen for laminin α1-chain expression between human and mouse tissues. Lack of laminin α1-chain expression was verified in both mouse and human skeletal muscle. Furthermore, the earlier discrepancies seen for laminin α1-chain expression was explained by showing that an antibody-reagent, commonly used in human studies, recognised the laminin α5-chain rather than the laminin α1-chainThe integrin α11-chain (forming α11β1 integrin) is the latest addition to the integrin receptor family, and belongs to the I domain-containing group of integrin α-chains. Previous studies had shown that α11β1 is a collagen receptor. In the present study, the in vitro and in vivo functions of the α11-chain were further characterised. Distribution studies on embryonic human and mouse tissues showed that the α11-chain was expressed on mesenchymal cells in the developing tendon, perichondrium, intervertebral disc, and cornea. The interactions of α11β1 integrin with collagen type I and IV were studied in vitro. The α11β1 bound to these collagens in a manner similar to integrin α2β1 (with collagen type I being the preferred ligand for α11β1). Furthermore, α11β1 was shown to mediate migration on collagen type I coated surfaces, and to mediate contraction of collagen type I gels. The in vivo functions of the α11-chain were investigated by the generation of integrin α11-chain null-mice, using gene targeted disruption of the itga11 in embryonic stem cells. Two independent lines of mice lacking α11 protein were generated. Phenotypic analysis of these mice indicated a role for α11β1 in the formation of the musculoskeletal system.


Intrigue and tragedy are inherent in murder. Justice is not. What role does wealth play? At the very least, money buys access to limitless expert witnesses and the best and brightest attorneys. Today, all killings are felonies except those deemed justifiable. But that was not the case in Victoria, Texas, in 1976 when young, handsome and wealthy rancher Hampton C. Robinson III shot young, handsome and wealthy rancher Thomas Traylor Bauer in the back of the head. Criminally negligent homicide was a misdemeanor. And unlike the law today, the judge was allowed to reduce the full range of charges and provide jurors only two: murder or criminally negligent homicide. Convicted of a misdemeanor, Hampton Robinson served less than a year in jail. His crime began a downward spiral that took other lives and led to his self-destruction.


The purpose of this study was to explore the portrayal of Olympism in the
British media coverage of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games. A figurational
framework was implemented in making sense of the interdependencies that exist in
the sport-Olympic-media complex. Coubertin, as the founder of the modern Games,
established the Olympics with Olympism as the ideology underpinning them. Still
today, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) maintains that these principles are
central to the Games (IOC website, 2004). In this examination, the question of
whether the presence of Olympism is a myth or reality in the mediated version of the
Games was addressed. A qualitative content analysis was carried out of the British
press and BBC television coverage of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Using a
coding system, themes relating to Olympism were searched for and, where found,
evidenced. Working inductively, any other themes which emerged from the data were
also identified.
The findings demonstrated that there was a general absence of ideas relating to
Olympism in the British media coverage of the Games. Instead, the dominant themes
or characteristics which emerged were: politics; a nationalistic bias; gendered
treatment of athletes; and a focus on high performance sport. It is proposed that this
framing of the Games directly opposes several elements of the Olympic ideology:
international understanding; cultural exchange; equal opportunity for all; and the
separation of sport and politics. The conclusions drawn from this study are that whilst
the IOC is a significant body in sportisation, and global processes more broadly, it is
by no means all powerful. The Olympics retain their place at the forefront of world
sporting competition only when interpreted as reflecting the dominant ideology of the
time, that is, the achievement sport ethic and capitalist consumption. The IOC and
media institutions are highly interdependent, however, the media institutions retain a
degree of autonomy which means they are able to frame the Olympics in a way which
suits their own needs: those of consumption. Any elements of the IOC's own,
alternative, ideology (assuming that the ideology stated is actually that which is of
central interest) which do not fit with the dominant sport model do not feature in the
mediated public experience of the Games.


Cloud computing promises to significantly change the way we use computers and access and store our personal and business information. With these new computing and communications paradigms arise new data security challenges. Existing data protection mechanisms such as encryption have failed in preventing data theft attacks, especially those perpetrated by an insider to the cloud provider. We propose a different approach for securing data in the cloud using offensive decoy technology. We monitor data access in the cloud and detect abnormal data access patterns. When unauthorized access is suspected and then verified using challenge questions, we launch a disinformation attack by returning large amounts of decoy information to the attacker. This protects against the misuse of the user's real data. Experiments conducted in a local file setting provide evidence that this approach may provide unprecedented levels of user data security in a Cloud environment.


The ultimate functionality of elastomeric materials can be largely influenced by the molecular design of antifouling additives that interact through directed hydrogen bonding bisurea motifs. Herein, three additives, composed of matching bisurea groups and antifouling oligo(ethylene glycol) (OEG) functionalities, are judiciously designed. The first additive is composed of one bisurea and one OEG, the second additive of one bisurea and two OEGs, and the third additive of two bisurea and one OEG. On solution‐cast films, non‐cell adhesive properties are dependent on the amount of incorporated OEG irrespective of the bisurea design; however, on 3D electrospun scaffolds only the additive that consists of two bisurea moieties connected via an OEG functionality ensures proper non‐cell adhesive properties. Interestingly, robust non‐cell adhesive properties are maintained, both with repeated cell seeding and after partial enzymatic degradation of the scaffold. These results highlight the importance of additive design in supramolecular functionalization and show that translation from simple 2D solution‐cast films to 3D electrospun scaffolds is not trivial with respect to additive presentation and functionality.


We explore the fundamental question of the critical nonlinearity value needed to dynamically localize energy in discrete nonlinear cubic (Kerr) lattices. We focus on the effective frequency and participation ratio of the profile to determine the transition into localization in one-, two-, and three-dimensional lattices. A simple and general criterion is developed, for the case of an initially localized excitation, to define the transition region in parameter space ("dynamical tongue") from a delocalized to a localized profile. We introduce a method for computing the dynamically excited frequencies, which helps us validate our stationary ansatz approach and the effective frequency concept. A general analytical estimate of the critical nonlinearity is obtained, with an extra parameter to be determined. We find this parameter to be almost constant for two-dimensional systems and prove its validity by applying it successfully to two-dimensional binary lattices.


In this study, we present evidence that interaction of Fc gamma R(CD16) with ligands (immune complexes or anti-CD16 antibodies) induces a rapid rise in [Ca2+]i and fast production of both inositol 1,4,5 triphosphate (IP3) and IP4 in homogeneous NK cell preparations. Part of the initial [Ca2+]i rise observed upon stimulation of NK cells with either anti- CD16 antibodies alone or after their crosslinking at the cell membrane depends on Ca2+ mobilization from intracellular stores, but sustained [Ca2+]i levels are maintained, after the initial spike, through influx of extracellular Ca2+. The [Ca2+]i rise is mediated, at least in part, by increases in IP3 after receptor-induced hydrolysis of membrane polyphosphoinositides (PPI). The role of extracellular Ca2+ in Fc gamma R(CD16)-dependent induction of lymphokine gene expression has been tested by evaluating production, mRNA accumulation and transcription of IFN-gamma and TNF in NK cells stimulated with Fc gamma R(CD16) ligands and/or rIL-2 in the presence of EGTA. Under these conditions, accumulation and transcription of both IFN-gamma and TNF mRNA induced by CD16 ligands, but not that induced by rIL-2, is completely abolished and neither cytokine can be detected at significant levels in the supernatant fluids of cells so treated. These data confirm that NK cell activation by specific ligands occurs through mechanisms distinct from those induced by IL-2, and indicate that extracellular Ca2+ represents a stringent requirement for cytokine production induced in NK cells through specific (Fc gamma R) stimulation. Our data also indicate that the [Ca2+]i rise induced upon Fc gamma R(CD16) crosslinking, though necessary, is not sufficient per se to induce activation of lymphokine genes, compatible with the hypothesis that Fc gamma R(CD16) crosslinking generates additional transducing signals that synergize with IL-2 to maximally activate NK cells.


Objective To compare the longitudinal, radial, circumferential, rotational and torsional mechanics of the left ventricle (LV) in patients with constrictive pericarditis (CP) and restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM), and detect the new quantitative parameters to differentiate CP and RCM using two-dimensional speckle tracking imaging (2-D STI) method. Methods 18 patients with CP and 14 patients with RCM were enrolled. Nineteen control subjects were recruited. Two-dimensional imagings of parasternal short-axis (apical, mid, and basal segments) and apical 4-chamber, 3-chamber, 2-chamber views were recorded. Longitudinal, radial, circumferential, rotational and torsional parameters were analysed. Results In systole phase, radial strain was significantly lower in RCM than in CP (apex: 14±7% vs 23±12%, p<0.05; mid: 16±7% vs 32±14%, p<0.05; base: 13±11% vs 20±8%, p<0.05)and was reduced in both groups when compared with control subjects (p<0.05 for both). Longitudinal strain was significantly lower in RCM than in CP (apex:−12±4% versus −17±6%, p<0.05; mid: −8±3% versus −16±4%, p<0.05; base: −6±3% versus −16±5%, p<0.05)and was also reduced in the two groups when compared with control subjects. Circumferential strain was reduced both in CP and RCM when compared with control subjects (p<0.05), but no significant difference was found between the two groups. In the LV apex, rotation was significantly reduced in CP compared with RCM and control subjects (4±3° versus 7±3°, 4±3° versus 9±3°, p<0.05 for both). Torsion was significantly lower in CP than in RCM (7±4° vs 12±5°, p<0.05)and was reduced in the two groups when compared with control subjects (p<0.05 for both). Optimal cut-off value for torsion was 9° with sensitivity 72% and specificity 76%. Conclusions Torsion, longitudinal and radial strain measured by 2-D STI method can provide useful information to differentiate CP and RCM. Torsion of 9° can differentiate CP and RCM with sensitivity of 72% and specificity 76%.


Background: The school is an important setting for promoting social skills that may enhance
the health of children. The quality of life of school children may be influenced by social and
individual resources such as social support and self-efficacy. Research on adults shows that
self-efficacy is an important determinant in improving their quality of life. However, less
research has been conducted on the association between self-efficacy and quality of life in
children. Bullying can contribute to psychosocial problems and low quality of life in victims
of bullying. Children who are bullied or socially withdrawn are vulnerable children that may
feel excluded or unsafe at school. Many of these children report that they lack friends, are
lonely, and have low self-efficacy at school. Increasing self-efficacy may improve young
people's beliefs in their ability to stand up for themselves and to attain their goals in school.
Participating in small discussion groups may enhance self-efficacy. The Solution-focused
Approach (SFA) is a strength-based approach that emphasizes the resources of individuals
and how these can be applied to the change process by focusing on solutions rather than
problems. Socially vulnerable children with problems such as withdrawal or being bullied
face great challenges in school that may influence their health. For school nurses, cooperating
with the school and families to promote health among these children is therefore an
important issue. The present thesis – "Promoting self-efficacy and health-related quality of
life in socially vulnerable school children" – aims further to investigate factors that promote
health and to evaluate the effect of an SFA intervention.
Aims: The main aim of the present study is to investigate factors that promote psychosocial
health in socially vulnerable school children aged 12–13 years. These children are socially
withdrawn and are victims of bullying in school settings. The main study consists of three
component studies. The aim of the first study is to examine the association between general self-efficacy (GSE) and health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and to explore how this
association is related to socio-demographic characteristics in school children. The aim of the
second study is to explore the effect of a group intervention based on the solution-focused
approach on self-efficacy among a group of socially withdrawn children and to explore
possible sex-based differences. The aim of the third study is to explore how school children
experience being bullied, how they envisage their dream day, and what kind of help they
want.
Method: To reach the main aim, the study consists of three studies. All the participants in
these studies were from Eastern Norway and were aged 12–13 years.
The present study consists of three designs: The first study (paper I) is a cross-sectional
design. The second study (paper II) is a non-randomized controlled trial, and the third study
(Paper III) is a focus group design. The first study assesses the association of GSE and
HRQOL among school children. The KINDL questionnaire developed by Ravens-Sieberer &
Bullinger was used to measure HRQOL. Schwarzer's questionnaire based on Bandura's
concept of self-efficacy was used to measure GSE. The second study is written on the basis of
data from a non-randomized control trial and uses Schwarzer's GSE questionnaire in addition
to domain-specific self-efficacy developed by Choi et al. In the first study, T-tests were
computed to compare mean subscale values between HRQOL and socio-demographic
variables. Single and multiple regression analyses were performed to explore associations
among GSE, HRQOL and socio-demographic variables. In the second study, analysis of
covariance (ANCOVA) was used to compare differences in the mean changes between the
experimental and control groups from baseline (t0) to immediately after the intervention (t1)
and three months after the intervention (t2). The third study is written on the basis of data
from focus-group interviews with a semi-structured interview format. The collection and analysis of data followed Kvale's guidelines for qualitative research. The studies were
performed between autumn 2006 and spring 2008.
Results: Results from the first study showed a strong positive significant association between
GSE and HRQOL for all subscales and total scales of HRQOL. In the second and third
studies, we chose a group of socially vulnerable children with psychosocial challenges,
including socially withdrawn children and bullied children. The socially withdrawn children
were a target group in the SFA intervention in the second study. The second study showed
that the participants increased their level of self-efficacy post intervention. Girls showed a
greater increase in GSE immediately after the intervention, whereas boys showed a delayed
increase three months after the intervention. The bullied children were the target group in the
third study. We explored how they experienced being bullied in a health promotion
perspective with focus on their dream day, and what kind of help they wanted. Results from
this study showed that their dream day was a day when they felt included by peers, and they
wanted help to stop the bullying immediately.
Conclusion: The main aim of the present study is to investigate factors that promote
psychosocial health in socially vulnerable school children. Socially vulnerable children
experience being rejected and excluded, and they need to be helped and included in school.
Promoting health by creating a safe school environment and preventing bullying is therefore
an important issue for a school health service. Socially vulnerable children need help to
improve their social skills and need to receive social support. An intervention such as SFA
may improve self-efficacy in socially withdrawn children. The studies included in this thesis
reveal the significance of focusing on promoting self-efficacy and health-related quality of
life in school children.


Transparent and clear reporting of research is important to enable readers to understand how a study is conducted and to assess the validity and reliability of the study findings. Failure to adequately report research findings distorts the reality of how the research was actually conducted. It prevents clinicians from applying effective interventions and can result in considerable amounts of money invested in health research being wasted.1 Incomplete or inadequate reporting of health research also has far reaching ethical implications as the individuals who consent to participate in research, and agencies that provide funding support for these investigations, do so with the understanding that the work will make a contribution to the existing knowledge.2 Clearly, new knowledge that is not disseminated, or knowledge that is disseminated in a biased way, is not making a true contribution.

Many research studies have identified serious reporting shortcomings in published health research. These problems are widespread and range from the failure to report and publish whole research studies depending on the nature of their research findings, publication bias',3 to the selective publication (or non-publication) of specific study outcomes 'selective outcome reporting bias'.4 Even when all study outcomes are reported, the interpretation of the study results is sometimes distorted by the authors of the primary study.5 Other problems in the reporting of health research literature include the inadequate and misleading reporting of adverse events,6 the omission of information about study methods which would allow implementation of the intervention in clinical practice,7 and the omissions from, or misinterpretation of, results in the abstracts of study publications.8 Serious deficiencies in the reporting of research have been well documented across many medical specialties and various study designs.

Systematic reviews of the health research literature are widely acknowledged as the best way …


Problem Statement: Student teachers' beliefs and conceptions affect not only what and how they learn in teacher education programs, but also their future professional development in their teaching careers. Examining and understanding student teachers' beliefs and conceptions is therefore crucial to improving their professional preparation and development, as well as the effectiveness of teacher education. Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study was to explore elementary student teachers' beliefs and conceptions about teaching in the contexts of student- and teacher-centered educational perspectives. Method: This study employed qualitative research methodologies by asking 267 prospective teachers to provide a metaphor characterizing teachers. Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses were used for the study. Findings and results: The results of analysis represented 113 metaphors made by student teachers about teachers—for example, they are gardeners. Results of descriptive analysis show that of the 267 student teachers, 227 (85.7%) had teacher-centered beliefs, 11 (4.1%) had student-centered beliefs, and 29 (10.1%) had mixed beliefs. The student teachers had no misconceptions about teacher-centeredness, meaning that all misconceptions and poorly structured beliefs were related to student-centeredness. Conclusions and recommendations: The study showed that the teacher-centered approach is quite common among student teachers in Turkey. As a result, teacher educators should provide various opportunities for and model student-centered approaches so that student teachers can critically examine their beliefs and realize other educational possibilities. Furthermore, most participants lacked a consistent cognitive structure about teaching, largely due to misconceptions related to guidance and active learning, which require more in-depth research. Student teachers also described teachers' and students' roles with stereotypical metaphors, including teachers as knowledge givers who know everything and teachers as social controllers who disseminate dominant cultural values. Acknowledging these misconceptions can allow teacher educators to better design courses, classroom discussions, and assignments to help student teachers develop new pedagogical knowledge and beliefs. Keywords: Teacher education, student teachers' beliefs, teaching metaphors, educational approach


The simulation of human neurons and neurotransmission mechanisms has been realized in deep neural networks based on the theoretical implementations of activation functions. However, recent studies have reported that the threshold potential of neurons exhibits different values according to the locations and types of individual neurons, and that the activation functions have limitations in terms of representing this variability. Therefore, this study proposes a simple yet effective activation function that facilitates different thresholds and adaptive activations according to the positions of units and the contexts of inputs. Furthermore, the proposed activation function mathematically exhibits a more generalized form of Swish activation function, and thus we denoted it as Adaptive SwisH (ASH). ASH highlights informative features that exhibit large values in the top percentiles in an input, whereas it rectifies low values. Most importantly, ASH exhibits trainable, adaptive, and context-aware properties compared to other activation functions. Furthermore, ASH represents general formula of the previously studied activation function and provides a reasonable mathematical background for the superior performance. To validate the effectiveness and robustness of ASH, we implemented ASH into many deep learning models for various tasks, including classification, detection, segmentation, and image generation. Experimental analysis demonstrates that our activation function can provide the benefits of more accurate prediction and earlier convergence in many deep learning applications.


Electroosmosis, the electrically induced flow of liquid, can be used as an alternative to pressure driven flow in liquid chromatography. Consideration of the physical nature of this type of flow suggests that less peak dispersion should result than with conventional flow. In addition theoretical considerations indicate that it should be possible to work with particles far smaller than those currently used in high performance liquid chromatography. This work describes the use of electroosmosis to propel electrolyte through narrow capillaries packed with typical chromatographic packing materials. The resistive heating generated by the passage of electric current through the medium dictates that this must be carried out in capillaries of less than 20011m i. d.. The experimental methods used with such capillaries, including the production of packed capillaries are discussed. Experiments carried out in capillaries packed with particles as small as 1.511 m in diameter demonstrate that adequate linear flow velocities can be obtained with particles which are too small for use in conventional chromatography due to pressure limitations. Measurements of the linear velocity of electroosmotic flow show that there is no evidence of a relationship between linear velocity and particle diameter, for particles ranging from 1.5μm to 50um in diameter. The direct comparison of plate heights obtained using both pressure driven flow and electroosmotic flow shows that in the latter case considerably enhanced efficiencies are obtained. In some cases reduced plates heights as low as 0.7 have been achieved, providing strong evidence of a negligible contribution to the overall plate height from the van Deemter A-term. Using 1.5pm diameter particles plate numbers of 300,000 have been obtained for an unretained analyte in a time of approximately 5 minutes. The implications of the results together with the performance limitations of electrically driven chromatography (electrochromatography) are discussed.


In the paper stability losses of the packer with a girdle construction have been investigated by taking into account compactness mechanism. Expanding and constricting cases of conical surface of the packer with a girdle construction have been studied, stability problem of the packer has been solved via numerical estimation by using finite differences method. With this purpose, continuity condition of the deformation has been written for packer construction (cylindrical and conical surface of the packer) and added to stability losses condition. In the first approach the solution has been carried out in boundary and junction nodes of the packer (where cylindrical and conical surfaces combine), however, in the second approach by finite differences method. During packing process stability losses limit has been studied for the first time for a girdle construction.
Keywords: packing, well packing, cylindrical-conical construction packing, mode of deformation, critical pressure in packing.


Data mining algorithms utilize search techniques to explore hidden patterns and correlations in the data, which otherwise require a tremendous amount of human time to explore. This feature issue explores the use of such techniques to help understand the data, build better simulators, explain outlier behavior, and build better predictive models. We hope that this issue will spur discussions and expose a set of tools that can be useful to the optics community.


Accurate forecasts are crucial to a revenue management system. Poor estimates of demand lead to inadequate inventory controls and sub-optimal revenue performance. Forecasting for airline revenue management systems is inherently difficult. Competitive actions, seasonal factors, the economic environment, and constant fare changes are a few of the hurdles that must be overcome. In addition, the fact that most of the historical demand data is censored further complicates the problem. This dissertation examines the challenge of forecasting for an airline revenue management system in the presence of censored demand data. The number of seats an airline can sell on a flight is determined by the booking limits set by the revenue management system. An airline continues to accept reservations in a fare class until the booking limit is reached. At that point, the airline stops selling seats in that fare class-It also stops collecting valuable data. Demand for travel in that fare class may exceed the booking limit, but the data does not reflect this. So the data is censored or " constrained " at the booking limit. While some models exist that produce unbiased forecasts from censored data, it is preferable to " unconstrain " the censored observations so that they represent true demand. iv Then, the forecasting model may be chosen based on the structure of the problem rather than the nature of the data. This dissertation analyzed the improvement in forecast accuracy that results from estimating demand by unconstraining the censored data. Little research has been done on unconstraining censored data for revenue management systems. Airlines tend to either ignore the problem or use very simple ad hoc methods to deal with it. A literature review explores the current methods for unconstraining censored data. Also, practices borrowed from areas outside of revenue management are adapted to this application. For example, the Expectation-Maximization (EM) and other imputation methods were investigated. These methods are evaluated and tested using simulation and actual airline data. An extension to the EM algorithm that results in a 41% improvement in forecast accuracy is presented.


OVERVIEW Taking risks is fairly common in adolescence. Risky behaviors can be associated with serious, long-term, and – in some cases – life-threatening consequences. This is especially the case when adolescents engage in more than one harmful behavior. The tendency for risky behaviors to cooccur has been well-studied. Yet prevention efforts traditionally have taken a targeted approach, seeking to prevent a single risky behavior. A more powerful and cost-effective approach may be to employ strategies designed to address factors associated with multiple risky behaviors. This Research Brief brings together findings from developmental science and from rigorous program evaluations to identify seven actionable, feasible strategies and relevant programs that have been found to affect two or more risky behaviors. These strategies are to:


According to the research firm Gartner, Inc., information technology is subject to a five-phase acceptance cycle: a Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and Plateau of Productivity. Even zealous advocates of social media marketing (SMM) admit their craft is currently stuck in the disillusionment phase.


This paper develops decision assistance curves (DACs) to compare delay-based performance measures for three indirect left-turn (ILT) intersections—median U-turn, continuous-flow intersection, and jughandle—relative to a conventional signalized intersection. The DACs consist of two graphical tools: (a) a DAC classifier and (b) two sets of DAC contours. DAC classifier plots are used to select the intersection type that produces the minimum system average delay for a specified main and cross-street volume configuration. DAC contour plots are used to estimate the system average delay difference between a chosen ILT and a conventional signalized intersection and to estimate the increase in average delay compared with a conventional signalized intersection for the movement most negatively affected. These tools can be used by planners, engineers, or other decision makers to identify visually the intersection type that provides the least average system delay under given volume conditions and estimated trade-offs for specific intersection types. The conventional signalized intersection, with protected left turns, was never optimal under studied scenarios. This finding implies that, for all the studied conditions, at least one ILT or permitted left-turn alternative produces lower delay than the conventional signalized intersection.


We introduce a new method for simultaneous imaging of tissue motion and flow with subsample accuracy in both axial and lateral directions. The method utilizes a phase-coupled 2D speckle tracking approach, which employs the true 2D complex cross correlation to find subpixel displacements in both axial and lateral directions. We have also modified the imaging sequence on a Sonix RP scanner to allow high frame rate 2D data collection in a limited field of view covering the region of interest (M2D-mode). Together with the robust 2D speckle tracking method, M2D imaging allows for capturing the full dynamics of the flow and wall/tissue motion, even when the flow is primarily in the lateral direction (with respect to the imaging beam). The fine vector displacement estimates in both axial and lateral directions are shown to allow for smooth and contiguous strain and shear strain calculations with minimal filtering. The quality of the displacement and strain fields is demonstrated by experimental results from a flow phantom (ATS Model 524) and in vivo images of the carotid artery in a healthy volunteer. The results clearly demonstrate the feasibility of simultaneous imaging of the vector flow field and the wall/tissue motion and the corresponding strains at high spatial and temporal sampling. This may provide an essential tool in modeling the fluid-solid interactions between the blood and blood vessel, a key challenge in vascular biomechanics.


TBA

Motivated in part by the wish to "replace" dark energy by a large distance modification of gravity, a large body of works has lead to a better understanding of properties and pathologies of theories of "massive gravity", and closely related models such as "Galileons". This body mainly developped from the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) model which was proposed almost 15 years ago - and was the first framework which linked explicitly the cosmic acceleration with a large distance modification of gravity - and culminated with the more recent de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley (dRGT) theory which is now believed to avoid certain pathologies present in previous constructions. Inbetween, these works also lead to several other proposals, many of which using the "Vainshtein mechanism" to hide at intermediate distances effects which only show up at cosmological scales. I will review these works stressing in particular the left over open questions.


It goes without saying that the primary goal of a profit company is to increase the wealth of its shareholders by paying dividends and causing the price of the company's shares to increase. The company's board is entrusted with managing the business and affairs of the company in the interests of the company's shareholders, as well as its wider stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, creditors, employees and the community. Therefore, to achieve the primary goal, the board must pay dividends to the company's shareholders without adversely impacting the price of the company's shares or the wider interests of the company's other stakeholders.


Sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions cause acidification and human health problems which are, despite present policy instruments, projected to remain even after 2030 in Europe. Additional instruments are needed to solve the problems, and impact analysis of already used policy instruments would contribute to the development of new effective instruments. We present a study on how much of the decoupling of SO2 emissions from economic growth 1990–2012 that was due to SO2 policy instruments in general and to what extent it is possible to estimate the impact of individual instruments. Focus is on Sweden, a country with problems reaching its SO2-related environmental policy targets and with detailed data available. We applied decomposition analysis combined with an analysis of the chronological development of emission factors and mandated emission limits. Our use of official emission inventory data and publicly available data on the development of SO2 policy instruments increase the usefulness of our results to policy makers. The results indicate that at least 26–27% (corresponding to ∼35–36 ktonne annually) of the decoupling 1990–2012 was due to SO2 policy instruments. 4–5% (∼6–7 ktonne) of the decoupling was caused by one environmental permit decision and stricter sulphur emission limit for marine oils. Most of the total impact of SO2 policy instruments could not be causally connected to an individual instrument, because many events and developments overlap in time. The implications of the results are that: a) SO2 policy instruments should still be important to reduce SO2 emissions in many countries; b) a lower boundary total emission impact of SO2 policy instruments can be estimated, but with current knowledge and data the impacts of individual instruments are rarely possible to estimate. Research on how to increase the precision in total impact estimates of SO2 policy instruments is needed to improve future impact analyses. More detailed emission inventory data would improve impact analysis of individual instruments.