A coumarin-based molecular probe can be used for the sensing of peptides and aminoglycoside antibiotics. The probe reacts with the primary amine group(s) of the analytes to give a mixture of covalent adducts with distinct colors. Each analyte gives rise to a characteristic UV-vis spectrum. A pattern-based analysis of the spectra allows identifying structurally related analytes. Furthermore, it is possible to obtain information about the quantity and the purity of the analytes.


Sustainable development is recognised as being a complex concept and this is often its
main deficiency. A critical review of existing integrated assessment tools identified that
current valuation methods give weak signals on integration, adding to the complexity of
operationalising sustainable development. To bring about sustainability, professions
from different discipline backgrounds have to work together effectively. These factors
heighten the need for clear multidisciplinary communication at all stages of a
development. Systems thinking based on the concepts of fuzzy logic can provide the
basis for complex situations to be examined and approached as qualitatively as possible
and thereby could be useful in improving communication and promoting sustainable
development. To achieve this aim, literature review and case study research methods
were employed. The former provided a critical basis for considering sustainability
issues, integrated assessment tools and mega sports events. Such events provide a
suitable case study - the 2004 Olympiad - in which the issues of complexity and
multidisciplinary communication can be explored. The latter combined data processing
of primary sources collected over three decades, as well as the elaboration of a
questionnaire survey and a series of in-depth interviews with key stakeholders,
including academics, civil servants, members of the Olympics organising committee
and representatives of other agencies. The modelling process included transcribing and
ff*i verification of the interview data using NVivo -1.1. Data exploration and interpretation
led to the development and comparison of several fuzzy maps using Inspiration^-7.5.
These models were copied to Microsoft®Word-2000 and the subsequent analysis
revealed that the functionality of fuzzy modelling could comprehensively analyse data
and effectively communicate the potential outcomes. The participative, temporal and
qualitative nature of this model could, henceforth, improve the planning and decisionmaking
processes. This means that the model can be considered as a new integrated
appraisal system, providing a common language and a shared vision.


THE STRUGGLE of the command economies to rediscover the market brings to mind the Hungarian joke: "Question: What is communism? Answer: the longest road from capitalism to capitalism." Having spent up to seven decades systematically attempting to eradicate market forces, the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries of Eastern Europe have reversed field in an attempt to revive "the market." The effort reveals much about both systems. My paper is divided into three general areas. I begin with an overview of the aggregate performance in the socialist countries, particularly the Soviet Union, and compare their performance with that of Western countries. Next I discuss the goals and roadblocks on the road to reform, reform plans for the Soviet Union, and the macroeconomic issues facing socialist countries. I conclude with an assessment of the prospects for reform in the Soviet Union.


One of the most important stages of a typical ASIC (Application-specific integrated circuit) design flow, is physical design. The most prominent step of the aforementioned stage is placement. Major design challenges are regulated while traversing this stage in order to accommodate the final sign-off. Various aspects of the design might be modified during this step, and the primary manner to keep track of these modifications is usually through detailed text reports, concerning universal metrics like density and wire-length, and generic static visualizations, due to the timing overhead it introduces to the overall procedure. However, a detailed and interactive depiction of the final result might provide insights concerning the quality of the final solution and the effectiveness of the applied algorithms. In this paper we present WEVIAN, a web-based placement visualizer/analyzer that enhances the design procedure by adding interactivity and offloading part of the workload to a third-party server.


The motion of wires pulled transversely through ice has long been explained in terms of pressure melting at the front of the wire and regelation behind it, the speed of the process being controlled by the rate of conduction of the heat of fusion through the wire and the ice. Treated quantitatively, this simple picture predicts wire speeds that are directly proportional to driving stress, defined as driving force per unit length divided by half the circumference of the wire. Experimental observations, however, show much more complicated behaviour. The observed speeds increase nonlinearly at all but the lowest driving stresses, and at a stress of about 1 bar (105 Pa) jump sharply, but continuously and reversibly, by an amount that ranges from six-fold for Nylon wires to 60-fold for copper wires. Above this transition the speeds of highly conductive wires, such as copper, are as low as one-eighth of those predicted, though those of poorly conductive wires, such as Nylon and Chromel, are about the same as predicted. Below the transition the speeds of all wires are much less than predicted. Surprisingly, all wire speeds are significantly reduced by the presence of air bubbles in the ice. The wires leave behind a trace that below the transition consists of widely scattered, generally tiny bubbles of water, but above it grades from numerous bubbles of water and of vapour in the case of highly conductive wires to a central tabular layer of water in the case of poorly conductive ones. Measurements of the fractional volume of water in the trace show that above the transition heat flows to the moving wire from the surrounding ice. The nonlinearity and low speed below the transition are due to the presence of accumulated solutes in the water layer around the wire, which concentrate toward the rear, lowering the freezing temperature there and hence the rate of heat flow toward the front. The transition occurs when the temperature at the rear reaches the triple point, which fixes the pressure there, so that with increasing driving stress the mean pressure around the wire increases and hence the mean temperature decreases, causing heat flow to the wire and formation of the trace, which carries away the dissolved solutes. The trace of highly conductive wires is bubbly, rather than tabular, because of the Frank instability of the freezing surface, which permits fingers of water and vapour to grow until pinched off by surface tension. For poorly conductive wires the nonlinearity above the transition is mainly due to the additional melting at the front of the wire and the change in pressure distribution around the wire associated with the formation of the trace. For highly conductive wires the nonlinearity and unexpected slowness above the transition are mainly due to the supercooling required for a finite rate of freezing, which, like the presence of dissolved solutes, lowers the freezing temperature at the rear of the wire. When modified to take approximate account of these effects, the simple quantitative treatment predicts wire speeds that, considering the uncertainties about the parameters describing the solute content and the required supercooling, are in good agreement with the experimental observations.


The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence neonatal jaundice guidelines recommend checking the bilirubin level in all infants with visible jaundice. The gold standard for this measurement is total serum bilirubin (TSB). Transcutaneous bilirubinometry (TcB) is an alternative to TSB that has been validated for clinical use through extensive study. TcB provides many advantages over TSB including instantaneous measurements without requiring a painful lab draw. For infants >35 weeks gestation, TcB can reliably identify infants at risk for severe hyperbilirubinaemia and can decrease the number of TSB measurements obtained. However, paediatric providers should be aware of limitations in clinical use of TcB including decreasing accuracy at higher bilirubin levels, lack of independently validated nomograms for interpretation and limited research regarding its use during phototherapy.


Abstract It is challenging to plan and manage heavy maintenance services in the aviation industry due to large amounts of resources involved and complex interactions between them. Furthermore, during the aircraft heavy maintenance process, unexpected damages and discrepancies may arise that must be solved by programming unscheduled tasks. The dynamism of the process and the uncertainty caused by unscheduled tasks require the adjustment of a maintenance service plan constantly, which might impact on delivery times, process costs and even the quality of the maintenance service. To address this problem, it is proposed to use System Dynamics as a tool to understand and analyse complex and dynamic systems. In this paper the interrelationship of scheduled and unscheduled tasks and its impact on delays and disruptions during aircraft heavy maintenance are explained and analysed designing a causal loop diagram. Additionally, the effect of occurrence and discovery of discrepancies and damages on unscheduled tasks is presented using a system dynamics model, which also highlights the relevance of workforce allocation for the project performance.


The United States has lagged somewhat behind other countries in implementing steps to mitigate payment card fraud, such as chip card technology and personal identification numbers. Small delays in implementing fraud mitigation strategies could translate to large fraud losses relative to other countries. Although comparing fraud rates across countries can be challenging, Fumiko Hayashi examines payment card fraud rates in the United States along with three countries with the best available data?Australia, France, and the United Kingdom?and finds that the United States has the highest overall fraud rate. Even after migrating to chip card technology, the United States has a significantly higher in-person fraud rate than all three countries but a lower remote fraud rate than Australia and France. Fewer safeguards and differences in prevalent types of transactions may help explain this.


Prior to the spring of 1986 Public Utility District No. 2 of Grant County had developed a passive turbine intake screen design. A prototype of this design was placed in the emergency gate slot of the middle (B) bay of unit 9 turbine intake at the Priest Rapids Dam and tested in 1986. During the 1986 field tests a number of mechanical problems were resolved and sufficient information was obtained on its effect on fish passage to determine that the screen was diverting essentially all of the fish that were approaching the screened area. It was also found that descaling was occurring on about 30% of the smaller sockeye salmon. The data indicated that the injured fish may have been drawn against the diversion screen. To overcome the problems uncovered in 1986 it was decided to reduce the velocity through the diversion screen so that the smaller fish would not be drawn against the screen and injured. On a trial basis, a design was developed in the 1 to 16 model using perforated plate mounted on the downstream side of the diversion screen frame, leaving the bar screen used in 1986.


Visual tracking usually requires an object appearance model that is robust to changing illumination, pose, and other factors encountered in video. Many recent trackers utilize appearance samples in previous frames to form the bases upon which the object appearance model is built. This approach has the following limitations: 1) The bases are data driven, so they can be easily corrupted, and 2) it is difficult to robustly update the bases in challenging situations. In this paper, we construct an appearance model using the 3D discrete cosine transform (3D-DCT). The 3D-DCT is based on a set of cosine basis functions which are determined by the dimensions of the 3D signal and thus independent of the input video data. In addition, the 3D-DCT can generate a compact energy spectrum whose high-frequency coefficients are sparse if the appearance samples are similar. By discarding these high-frequency coefficients, we simultaneously obtain a compact 3D-DCT-based object representation and a signal reconstruction-based similarity measure (reflecting the information loss from signal reconstruction). To efficiently update the object representation, we propose an incremental 3D-DCT algorithm which decomposes the 3D-DCT into successive operations of the 2D discrete cosine transform (2D-DCT) and 1D discrete cosine transform (1D-DCT) on the input video data. As a result, the incremental 3D-DCT algorithm only needs to compute the 2D-DCT for newly added frames as well as the 1D-DCT along the third dimension, which significantly reduces the computational complexity. Based on this incremental 3D-DCT algorithm, we design a discriminative criterion to evaluate the likelihood of a test sample belonging to the foreground object. We then embed the discriminative criterion into a particle filtering framework for object state inference over time. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed tracker.


The aim of this paper is to expand the application of simulation in service operations. Four influential factors in services are chosen for simulating. These factors include ?customer?s expectation versus perception?, ?customer as co-producer?, ?customer groups? and ?high versus low customer contact operations?. A number of generic models are designed (using Simul8, a popular simulation software) in attempt to provide tools to illustrate and study the effects of these factors in service operations and to make managerial decisions with these factors into the account. Challenges faced when making the models are described. The main outcome is recognition of technical features that can be introduced and included in simulation modelling tools (in general) and in Simul8 software (in particular). Academia and practitioners are invited to contribute in generating (respectively) theoretical bases and demand for service ? based features in simulation software.


Petrographical and geochemical ( i.e. mineral and whole rock major, REE) data, and geothermobarometry estimates for a suite of crustal and upper mantle xenoliths from the Venetia Diamond Mine suggest a major crust forming event involving both subduction and crustal thickening between ~3.0 to ~2.6 Ga. The compositionally diverse xenoliths of felsic to mafic amphibolite, and granulite, and eclogite are compatible with being the respective protolith and restites involved in partial melting. Conditions of melting are constrained by comparing the characteristics of the xenoliths from Venetia with those of experimental charges from recent amphibolite melting experiments. The resulting melt products are correlated with Throndhjemite-Tonalite-Granite (TTG) lithologies currently exposed in the Northern Marginal and Central Zones of the Limpopo Belt. Geochemical data for the eclogite xenoliths in this study suggest that they may be remnants of Archean oceanic crust which has had partial melt extracted from it during subduction, whereas the intermediate-felsic garnet-quartz xenoliths are compatible with being restites from melting shallow, more ferroan sources during crustal thickening. A new geotectonic model for the Limpopo Belt based on the xenolith data is suggested.


Purpose We aimed to study the association between lung function decline and quantitative computed tomography (CT) air trapping. Materials and Methods Current and former heavy smokers in a lung cancer screening trial underwent volumetric low-dose CT in inspiration and expiration. Spirometry was obtained at baseline and after 3 years. The expiratory to inspiratory ratio of mean lung density (E/I-ratioMLD) was used to quantify air trapping. CT emphysema was defined as voxels in inspiratory CT below −950 Hounsfield Unit. Linear mixed modeling was used to determine the association between CT air trapping and lung function. Results We included 985 subjects with a mean age of 61.3 years. Independent of CT emphysema, CT air trapping was significantly associated with a reduction in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and the ratio of FEV1 over the forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC); FEV1 declines with 33 mL per percent increase in CT air trapping, while FEV1/FVC declines 0.58% per percent increase (both p<0.001). CT air trapping further elicits accelerated loss of FEV1/FVC (additional 0.24% reduction per percent increase; p = 0.014). Conclusion In a lung cancer screening cohort, quantitatively assessed air trapping on low-dose CT is independently associated with reduced lung function and accelerated decline of FEV1/FVC.


Load balanced parallel radix sort solved the load imbalance problem present in parallel radix sort. Redistributing the keys in each round of radix, each processor has exactly the same number of keys, thereby reducing the overall sorting time. Load balanced radix sort is currently known the fastest internal sorting method for distributed-memory multiprocessors. However, as the computation time is balanced, the communication time emerges as the bottleneck of the overall sorting performance due to key redistribution. We present in this report a new parallel radix sorter that solves the communication problem of balanced radix sort, called partitioned parallel radix sort. The new method reduces the communication time by eliminating the redistribution steps. The keys are first sorted in a top-down fashion (left-to-right as opposed to right-to-left) by using some most significant bits. Once the keys are localized to each processor, the rest of sorting is confined within each processor, hence eliminating the need for global redistribution of keys. It enables well balanced communication and computation across processors. The proposed method has been implemented in three different distributedmemory platforms, including IBM SP2, CRAY T3E, and PC Cluster. Experimental results with various key distributions indicate that partitioned parallel radix sort indeed shows significant improvements over balanced radix sort. IBM SP2 shows 13% to 30% improvement while Cray/SGIT3E does 20% to 100% in execution time. PC cluster shows over 2.5 fold improvement in execution time.


In a supersonic flow of pure vapour in adiabatic diffusers, under some circumstances, nucleation phenomenon occurs and consequently vapour condensation is observed. In this process, the resulted pressure rise is called the condensation shock, which causes the entropy generation. The innovation of this research is analytically modelling the volumetric heat addition to the steam flow in a 1D convergent?divergent supersonic nozzle. The analysis of the results shows that an appropriate volumetric heat addition to the convergent section of a convergent?divergent supersonic nozzle can reduce the degree of supercooling and subsequently reduce the nucleation rates significantly. The condensation reduction declines the irreversible internal heat transfer, which improves the efficiency of the steam flow.


Over the past decade, a number of well-publicized data leaks have revealed the secret offshore holdings of high-net-worth individuals and multinational taxpayers, leading to a sea change in cross-border tax enforcement. Spurred by leaked data, tax authorities have prosecuted offshore tax cheats, attempted to recoup lost revenues, enacted new laws, and signed international agreements that promote "sunshine" and exchange of financial information between countries. The conventional wisdom is that data leaks enable tax authorities to detect and punish offshore tax evasion more effectively, and that leaks are therefore socially beneficial from an economic welfare perspective. This Article argues, however, that the conventional wisdom is too simplistic. In certain circumstances, leak-driven lawmaking may in fact produce negative social welfare outcomes. Agenda-setting behaviors of leakers and media organizations, inefficiencies in data transmission, suboptimally designed legislation, and unanticipated behavioral responses by enforcement-elastic taxpayers are all factors that may reduce social welfare in the aftermath of a tax leak. This Article examines the potential welfare outcomes of leak-driven lawmaking and identifies predictable drivers that may affect those outcomes. It provides suggestions and cautions for making tax law, after a leak, in order to best tap into the benefits of leaks while managing their pitfalls.


Background— Patients with left ventricular dysfunction have an elevated risk of sudden cardiac death. However, the substrate for ventricular arrhythmia in patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy remains poorly understood. We hypothesized that the distribution of scar identified by MRI is predictive of inducible ventricular tachycardia. Methods and Results— Short-axis cine steady-state free-precession and postcontrast inversion-recovery gradient-echo MRI sequences were obtained before electrophysiological study in 26 patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy. Left ventricular ejection fraction was measured from end-diastolic and end-systolic cine images. The transmural extent of scar as a percentage of wall thickness (percent scar transmurality) in each of 12 radial sectors per slice was calculated in all myocardial slices. The percentages of sectors with 1% to 25%, 26% to 50%, 51% to 75%, and 76% to 100% scar transmurality were determined for each patient. Predominance of scar distribution involving 26% to 75% of wall thickness was significantly predictive of inducible ventricular tachycardia and remained independently predictive in the multivariable model after adjustment for left ventricular ejection fraction (odds ratio, 9.125; P=0.020). Conclusions— MR assessment of scar distribution can identify the substrate for inducible ventricular tachycardia and may identify high-risk patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy currently missed by ejection fraction criteria.


When neurology researcher James Austin began Zen training, he found that his medical education was inadequate. During the past three decades, he has been at the cutting edge of both Zen and neuroscience, constantly discovering new examples of how these two large fields each illuminate the other. Now, in Selfless Insight, Austin arrives at a fresh synthesis, one that invokes the latest brain research to explain the basis for meditative states and clarifies what Zen awakening implies for our understanding of consciousness. Austin, author of the widely read Zen and the Brain, reminds us why Zen meditation is not only mindfully attentive but evolves to become increasingly selfless and intuitive. Meditators are gradually learning how to replace over-emotionality with calm, clear objective comprehension. In this new book, Austin discusses how meditation trains our attention, reprogramming it toward subtle forms of awareness that are more openly mindful. He explains how our maladaptive notions of self are rooted in interactive brain functions. And he describes how, after the extraordinary, deep states of kensho-satori strike off the roots of the self, a flash of transforming insight-wisdom leads toward ways of living more harmoniously and selflessly. Selfless Insight is the capstone to Austin's journey both as a creative neuroscientist and as a Zen practitioner. His quest has spanned an era of unprecedented progress in brain research and has helped define the exciting new field of contemplative neuroscience.


The thesis examines how the Russian army interpreted and what lessons it learned from the wars in Europe between 1859 and 1871 and the American Civil War. This was a time marked by rapid change - political, social, economic and technological. By raising the question of learning from foreign wars the thesis attempts to fill a gap in the historiography of the Russian army. The army was one of the pillars on which the Russian regime built its power, and it was crucial for the survival of the regime both in domestic and foreign affairs. The reactions and thinking of the military at a time of rapid social, political, economic, and technological change, therefore, tell a lot about the regime's ability to adjust, develop, and ultimately survive. Furthermore, the influence of foreign wars on Russian strategic war planning is analysed with the use of the first Russian war plan of 1873 and the proceedings from the strategic conference, chaired by Alexander II, in 1873. The influence of foreign wars on the General Staff officer education is also investigated. The thesis is largely based on extensive research in Russian archives. Special attention is given to the military attaches and, thus, the thesis fills a gap in the historiography of the Russian army. It uncovers the development of the military attache institution with the use of new archival material. The Russian military attache reports from the European Great Powers 1859-71 and the observer reports from the different war scenes are also examined. In addition, extensive use has been made of the military press and contemporary military literature with regard to the wars.


A theoretical study of chiral recognition in bicyclic guanidines has been carried out by means of B3LYP/6-31+G(d,p) DFT calculations. A series of complexes between protonated 4,8-dimethyl-1,5,7-triazabicyclodecene (DTBD) and 2,5-disubtituted chiral cyclopentanones have been evaluated for chiral recognition, both in the gas phase and in benzene solution as per the polarizable continuum model (PCM) and analyzed by AIM and NBO methodologies. An inversion in the sense of chiral recognition has been observed between gas phase and solvated results for cyclopentanone complexes. Among the different correlations found (i.e. between electron density, hydrogen bond distance, second-order perturbation energy), a linear correlation has been established between the chiral recognition energy and different molecular parameters.


This research report presents the findings from a national survey on: "Drug and Alcohol Misuse among Young Offenders on Probation Supervision in Ireland". Undertaken by the Probation Service, the survey included all young offenders, aged 20 years or less who were subject to statutory supervision on the 3rd December 2012.

For the purposes of the survey, the following interventions by the Probation Service werenot included under the definition of supervision:
 Offenders in custody
 Offenders only subject to community service orders
 Offenders only referred for an assessment report
 Offenders aged 21 years and over

From the Probation Service data base (Case Tracking System) it was expected that the total population meeting the criteria would be 808. Questionnaires were in fact returned on 721 offenders. This 88% rate of return is comparatively high for mailed questionnaires. Of the 721 offenders on whom questionnaires were returned, 628 were identified by the Probation Officer as having misused at least one substance.
This report describes the key findings from the survey and consists of four main chapters, reflecting the key objectives which were, to:
Determine the number of young offenders under probation supervision who had misused drugs and/or alcohol (Chapter 3)

Investigate the nature and frequency of drug and alcohol misuse (Chapter 3)

To examine the context within which drug and alcohol misuse occurred (Chapter 4)

To ascertain whether a relationship exists between drug misuse and offendingbehaviour and alcohol misuse and offending behaviour (Chapter 5)

To identify the range and nature of engagement with drug and alcohol treatment services (Chapter 6)

The report concludes with a discussion of the survey's findings. The discussion explores options for more effective engagement with young offenders to promote desistance and divert young people from the criminal justice system.

The following is a brief summary of the Key Findings

Prevalence

87% of the survey population were reported as having misused drugs, alcohol or a
combination of both
12% had misused drugs only,
12% had misused alcohol only and
63% had misused both drugs and alcohol
Male and female offenders had relatively similar levels of substance misuse

Alcohol was the substance most often misused on a weekly basis; 39.8% of males and 43.6% of females.

Gateways
Alcohol was recorded as the most common substance first misused, in excess of 50%, by offenders

The age of offenders commencing substance misuse ranged from eight years to eighteen years.

The majority commenced misuse between the ages of twelve and fifteen.

Fourteen was the median age to commence substance misuse.

More than 80% of offenders first engaged in substance misuse with their peers.

Of offenders who had misused a substance the survey identified that 38.9% of their parents had a history of substance misuse.

Relationship to Offending

In more than 80% of cases substance misuse was linked to current offending.

Alcohol was the substance most frequently linked to current offending.

Interventions

Over half of the survey population had attended some form of drug/alcohol treatment.

The majority of offenders who had attended some form of treatment were aged between 18 years and 20 years.


Catalytic supercritical water gasification of isopropanol (450 °C, 30 MPa) over Ru/C catalysts was carried out in a fixed-bed plug flow reactor. In the absence of Ru, isopropanol decomposed to solid carbon (coke), and H2 over the carbon support. The Ru/C catalyst was able to gasify efficiently 10 wt% isopropanol over a period of 96 h at WHSVgRu = 1228 gOrg gRu−1 h−1 with the gas composition close to the calculated thermodynamic chemical equilibrium. The catalyst lifetime was affected by the decomposition of isopropanol to solid carbon (coke) over the carbon surface that progressively filled up the pores of the activated carbon and this resulted in a covering of the Ru nanoparticles (NPs). The Ru dispersion (D) was found to be a relevant parameter. The 0.5% Ru/C (D = 0.26) was more active than the 2% Ru/C (D = 0.14). The influence of the solvent (acetone vs. water) used during the catalyst impregnation was studied and the turnover frequency (TOF) was twice as high for the Ru/C catalyst prepared with acetone. The higher Ru dispersion and the lower content of residual chloride obtained for the catalyst prepared with acetone were both responsible.


If you haven't played with Wordle yet, you should. Feed it your latest article, your thesis, your blog and see what emerges from the cloud. Some months ago I wordled the Australian Constitution (as you do). Wordle's expert legal analysis offers a fairly positive assessment of our federal system, suggesting that Commonwealth and state powers are fairly well balanced. Who needs a High Court when you can just count words?


This paper reviews interdisciplinary research on children's time use. Following the introduction, Section 2 sketches the broad historical and socio-cultural context for time-use studies, recognising that how childhood has been variously understood affects the valuation of children's activities, roles and relationships and the ways they are experienced. It will become clear that differing views about children's 'proper' time use have coincided with powerful assumptions about children's roles throughout history, and the 'value' of children's time. We offer a selective review of studies addressing time use from a range of disciplinary perspectives, in order to highlight how the use of time is not only associated with economic value, but also socio-cultural values. Whether or not certain children's activities are considered permissible, acceptable and appropriate by adult members of society largely depends upon how these activities fit into local value systems. Section 3 briefly explores subjective dimensions of time use, drawing on contrasting paradigms for studying how far children perceive time differently to adults. This question is addressed from a developmental psychological and social constructionist perspective. Finally, Section 4 offers an overview of research methods that have been utilised in studies of children's time use. This review is not exhaustive of methods in time-use research, but is intended as a summary resource for YL and other child researchers.


In this paper we undertake a systematic investigation of a ne invariant object detection. Edge detection is rst presented from the point of view of the a ne invariant scale-space obtained by curvature based motion of the image level-sets. In this case, a ne invariant edges are obtained as a weighted di erence of images at di erent scales. We then introduce the a ne gradient as the simplest possible a ne invariant di erential function which has the same qualitative behavior as the Euclidean gradient magnitude. These edge detectors are the basis both to extend the a ne invariant scalespace to a complete a ne ow for image denoising and simpli cation, and to de ne a ne invariant active contours for object detection and edge integration. The active contours are obtained as a gradient ow in a conformally Euclidean space de ned by the image on which the object is to be detected. That is, we show that objects can be segmented in an a ne invariant manner by computing a path of minimal weighted a ne distance, the weight being given by functions of the a ne edge detectors. The geodesic path is computed via an algorithm which allows to simultaneously detect any number of objects independently of the initial curve topology.


Background: Recent evidence has indicated that flavanol consumption may have many health benefits in humans, including improved cognitive activities. Objective: The aim was to evaluate the effect of flavanol consumption on cognitive performance in cognitively intact elderly subjects. Design: This was a double-blind, controlled, parallel-arm study conducted in 90 elderly individuals without clinical evidence of cognitive dysfunction who were randomly assigned to consume daily for 8 wk a drink containing 993 mg [high flavanol (HF)], 520 mg [intermediate flavanol (IF)], or 48 mg [low flavanol (LF)] cocoa flavanols (CFs). Cognitive function was assessed at baseline and after 8 wk by using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Trail Making Test (TMT) A and B, and the Verbal Fluency Test (VFT). Results: The changes in MMSE score in response to the 3 different treatments were not different. In contrast, there was a positive impact of the intervention on specific aspects of cognitive function. Mean changes (±SEs) in the time required to complete the TMT A and B after consumption of the HF (−8.6 ± 0.4 and −16.5 ± 0.8 s, respectively) and IF (−6.7 ± 0.5 and −14.2 ± 0.5 s, respectively) drinks significantly (P < 0.0001) differed from that after consumption of the LF drinks (−0.8 ± 1.6 and −1.1 ± 0.7 s, respectively). Similarly, VFT scores significantly improved among all treatment groups, but the magnitude of improvement in the VFT score was significantly (P < 0.0001) greater in the HF group (7.7 ± 1.1 words/60 s) than in the IF (3.6 ± 1.2 words/60 s) and LF (1.3 ± 0.5 words/60 s) groups. Significantly different improvements in insulin resistance (P < 0.0001), blood pressure (P < 0.0001), and lipid peroxidation (P = 0.001) were also observed for the HF and IF groups in comparison with the LF group. Changes in insulin resistance explained ∼17% of changes in composite z score (partial r2 = 0.1703, P < 0.0001). Conclusions: This dietary intervention study provides evidence that regular CF consumption can reduce some measures of age-related cognitive dysfunction, possibly through an improvement in insulin sensitivity. These data suggest that the habitual intake of flavanols can support healthy cognitive function with age. This trial was registered at www.controlled-trials.com as ISRCTN68970511.


This article will examine how philosophy and empirical sciences can cooperate in research. It is presupposed that in philosophy and in the empirical sciences different types of discourses are used. This difference causes a large gap between them, which has to be bridged. Intercultural philosophy is understood as a specific approach to philosophy as a whole. It is necessary to make philosophy fit into a world in which exchanges are happening on a global level in many fields. In the dialogues between the philosophies of different cultures, support is needed from certain empirical sciences for the understanding of the philosophy, which is based on the the participation of philosophers in everyday life and everyday language. Therefore, in addition to the the support by empirical sciences, living in a foreign culture, participating in its life, is necessary for intercultural philosophers.


Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus is a gripping account of the developmental dynamics involved in the collapse of Soviet socialism. Fusing a narrative of human agency to his critical discussion of structural forces, Georgi M. Derluguian reconstructs from first-hand accounts the life story of Musa Shanib - who from a small town in the Caucasus grew to be a prominent leader in the Chechen revolution. In his examination of Shanib and his keen interest in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Derluguian discerns how and why this dissident intellectual became a nationalist warlord. Exploring globalization, democratization, ethnic identity, and international terrorism, Derluguian contextualizes Shanib's personal trajectory from de-Stalinization through the nationalist rebellions of the 1990s to the recent rise in Islamic militancy. He masterfully reveals not only how external economic and political forces affect the former Soviet republics but also how those forces are in turn shaped by the individuals, institutions, ethnicities, and social networks that make up those societies. Drawing on the work of Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein, and, of course, Bourdieu, Derluguian's explanation of the recent ethnic wars and terrorist acts in Russia succeeds in illuminating the role of human agency in shaping history.


In this paper we present an exploration of central coordination as a way of managing P2P live streaming overlays. The main point is to show the elements needed to construct a system with that approach. A key element in the feasibility of this approach is a near real-time optimization engine for peer selection. Peer organization in a way that enables high bandwidth utilization plus optimized peer selection based on multiple utility factors make it possible to achieve large source bandwidth savings and provide high quality of user experience. The benefits of our approach are also seen most when NAT constraints come into play.


Community of Practice (CoP) has been proved as an effective means for co-creation of knowledge. It is not yet widely used in health promotion, not to mention to utilize technological environment such as Web 2.0 to add value to the CoP. Under this study, an eHealth promotion @HKIEd, a CoP platform to promote healthy lifestyles was designed and constructed. It helped facilitate the CoP to share useful health information, locate expertise, promote health related events, communicate health updates effectively, co-construct shared repertoire of knowledge and build shared best practice on effective health promotion which was not limited to time, space and distance. Usability test was conducted to evaluate user acceptance of the eHealth promotion CoP platform using the Computer System Usability Questionnaire. A random sample of eighty-three active participants was recruited. Fifty females and thirty-three males with mean (S.D.) aged 21.1 were asked to evaluate the e-platform. The average scores of each domain were calculated with the corresponding means of the average scores of System Use, Information Quality and Interface Quality being 2.69, 2.83 and 2.74 respectively. The overall usability was 2.48 and the eHealth promotion @HKIEd demonstrated a high usability. It will provide a promising way to disseminate information for the public in health awareness promotion.


Recurrent low energy (not less than 0.5 MeV) proton flux enhancements, reliable indicators of corotating plasma inteaction regions in interplanetary space, have been observed on the Voyager 1 and 2 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft in the heliographic latitude range 2 deg S to 23 deg N and the heliocentric radial range 11 to 20 AU. After a period of rather high correlation between fluxes at different latitudes in early 1983, distinct differences develop. The evolution of the fluxes appears to be related to the temporal and latitudinal dynamics of solar coronal holes, suggesting that information about the latitudinal structure of solar wind stream sources propagates to these distances.


Abstract We present a phylogenetic hypothesis for 40 species in the bird family Paridae, based on comparisons of nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene. Parids, including tits and chickadees, are an older group than their morphological stereotypy suggests. The longest cytochrome-b distances between species reach 12% in uncorrected divergence. With the exception of one thrasher-like terrestrial tit species of the Tibetan plateau (Pseudopodoces humilis), morphological and ecological stasis have prevailed since the initial parid radiation in the Old World during the mid-Tertiary. All trees support monophyly of the family Paridae, which includes Parus (sensu lato) and the monotypic Oriental genera Sylviparus, Melanochlora, and Pseudopodoces. Within the clade of chickadees and gray tits (Parus, subgenus Poecile), three Old World species, Parus lugubris of the eastern Mediterranean and Balkan regions, P. superciliosus of high elevations in the Himalayas of western China, and P. varius of the Orient are sisters to all other species. The Eurasian crested titmice (subgenus Lophophanes) and North American crested titmice (subgenus Baeolophus) are sister groups. Our data suggest two colonizations of the New World by parids in the late Tertiary. The ancestor of modern Baeolophus colonized North America 4 mya, and the ancestor of all North American chickadees colonized North America 3.5 mya. Phylogénie chez la mésange (Paridés): II. Relations entre les espèces basées sur des séquences du gène mitochondrial cytochrome-b


Background
There is increasing evidence demonstrating that lifestyle interventions of exercise and diet may represent a useful supportive therapy for men with prostate cancer, improving physiological and psychosocial outcomes. There has been limited investigation of the effects of such interventions in men with castrate resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), the terminal phase of the disease.
It is not clear how exercise has been implemented in the prostate cancer care pathway and what a successfully implemented exercise programme might look like. Furthermore, the specific treatment and disease related barriers men with CRPC might face engaging in exercise is not documented, particularly when considering their advanced stage of disease.
This work described in this thesis covers an exploration of the feasibility and acceptability of an exercise and dietary intervention to improve outcomes in men with CRPC.
Methods
A healthcare professional survey was conducted to assess the extent to which NHS trusts are meeting the NICE guidelines (CG175, 1.4.19) for
exercise training for men with prostate cancer on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT).
Semi-structured interviews of UK healthcare professionals, specialising in prostate cancer care and based in UK National Health service (NHS) trusts
were conducted. These explored underlying reasons behind the variability in NHS trusts in delivering exercise training programmes and probed the views of the HCPs regarding exercise training, including the acceptability of
concurrent use of an anabolic agent for men with CRPC.
A feasibility randomised controlled trial (RCT) of an exercise and dietary intervention in CRPC patients was conducted (COMRADE). Men with CRPC recruited to the RCT were randomised on a 1:1 ratio to either the intervention or usual care for 16 weeks. Men allocated the intervention received up to
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three sessions of supervised resistance exercise a week; supplemented with
whey protein and creatine monohydrate; and given dietary advice. They were
also asked to partake in at least one independent moderate intensity aerobic
activity lasting at least 30 minutes a week.
Following the RCT, post study participant focus groups addressed patients' views on aspects of the study, particularly with regards to acceptability of trial procedures, barriers and facilitators to exercise training and the impact of
living with CRPC.
Results
The healthcare professional survey demonstrated significant variability
between NHS trusts in the UK in delivering the NICE guidelines and that a supervised exercise training programme is not currently embedded within "usual care" for prostate cancer.
The healthcare professional interviews (n=12) demonstrated support for an individualised and adaptable exercise programme for men with CRPC which could improve fitness and mitigate some of the long term effects of their cancer/cancer therapy. Their opinions reflected that comorbidities and disease/treatment specific barriers to exercise must be taken into account to support better adherence.
In the feasibility RCT, n=31 men were recruited from a total of n=3607 screened (recruitment rate=13.6%). There were eighteen in the intervention and thirteen randomised to the control group. The attrition rate was 16%, with n=4 dropping out of the intervention and n=1 death in the control.
Adherence to the supervised and independent exercise sessions was 69% and 78% respectively. The adherence to the whey protein was 68% and creatine was 71%. There were 4 AEs associated with trial procedures, none of which were serious.
Three primary themes were identified from the participant focus groups (n=3); these included 1) living with CRPC, 2) experience and opinions of the trial, 3) attitudes and experiences of exercise training and physical activity. The findings demonstrated that the study procedures were well received by
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the participants, including the trial assessments and format of the intervention. Valuable insights were gained for implementing future exercise intervention studies - providing participant perspectives for the success of a lifestyle behaviour study such as COMRADE.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that it is feasible to randomise and retain men with CRPC to an exercise and diet intervention, however there was a high rate of
attrition in the study, due to the complex nature of the disease in these men. Further work is required to address the barriers related to implementation of exercise in the prostate cancer pathway for men with CRPC.


Fall events and their severe consequences represent not only a threatening problem for the affected individual, but also cause a significant burden for health care systems. Our research work aims to elucidate some of the prospects and problems of current sensor-based fall risk assessment approaches. Selected results of a questionnaire-based survey given to experts during topical workshops at international conferences are presented. The majority of domain experts confirmed that fall risk assessment could potentially be valuable for the community and that prediction is deemed possible, though limited. We conclude with a discussion of practical issues concerning adequate outcome parameters for clinical studies and data sharing within the research community. All participants agreed that sensor-based fall risk assessment is a promising and valuable approach, but that more prospective clinical studies with clearly defined outcome measures are necessary.


To analyze and project age-specific mortality or morbidity rates age-period-cohort (APC) models are very popular. Bayesian approaches facilitate estimation and improve predictions by assigning smoothing priors to age, period and cohort effects. Adjustments for overdispersion are straightforward using additional random effects. When rates are further stratified, for example, by countries, multivariate APC models can be used, where differences of stratum-specific effects are interpretable as log relative risks. Here, we incorporate correlated stratum-specific smoothing priors and correlated overdispersion parameters into the multivariate APC model, and use Markov chain Monte Carlo and integrated nested Laplace approximations for inference. Compared to a model without correlation, the new approach may lead to more precise relative risk estimates, as shown in an application to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease mortality in three regions of England and Wales. Furthermore, the imputation of missing data for one particular stratum may be improved, since the new approach takes advantage of the remaining strata if the corresponding observations are available there. This is shown in an application to female mortality in Denmark, Sweden and Norway from the 20th century, where we treat for each country in turn either the first or second half of the observations as missing and then impute the omitted data. The projections are compared to those obtained from a univariate APC model and an extended Lee--Carter demographic forecasting approach using the proper Dawid--Sebastiani scoring rule.


Current gas hydrate flow assurance methods are becoming less economical and/or practical for deepwater operations, long tiebacks and ageing reservoirs. The industry thus needs novel flow assurance techniques to address these challenging conditions. An alternative approach called HYDRAFLOW, a chemical based wet Cold Flow method, has been presented in this thesis in which gas hydrate management, rather than prevention, is the aim. The idea is to convert most of the gas phase into hydrates and transfer it in the form of hydrate-slurry in the pipeline. This study investigates the concept, i.e. the transportability of hydrate slurries, for different systems (low and high GOR oil systems in the presence and absence of AAs) in different operating conditions, especially in conditions where the other flow assurance solutions either cannot be applied or are not economically viable, e.g. at high watercuts or under very high degree of subcoolings. The experiments involve investigating the rheological behaviour and flow properties of hydrate slurries using the HTI-set up (Helical Tube Impeller, an apparatus designed and build in-house for measuring viscosity of hydrate slurries at high pressures). Additionally, the rate of hydrate formation in low and high oil systems and also at subzero conditions has been measured. Furthermore, the effect of key variables, (e.g. heat transfer, mass transfer, degree of subcooling, salt, anti-agglomerants (AAs) and thermodynamic inhibitors) on the rate of hydrate formation and also on the rheology of hydrate suspensions have been studied in this work. The partitioning of a commercial AA between hydrate, oil and aqueous phases and its performances in each phase have also been determined which can help for decision making about recovering and/or recycling all or part of AAs. And finally, it has been shown that hydrate flow can potentially reducing wax deposition problems in pipeline by abrasion of the deposited wax. Dedicated to my parents


Systematic reuse of artifacts and a clear understanding of the variability within a product family are key success concepts within diverse industrial domains. Nevertheless, there are still many open issues regarding adapting and tailoring of software product line engineering approaches to specialized domains. The nature of ERP systems would suggest the application of product line techniques, but the limitations and constraints within this domain makes this a challenging task from the viewpoint of a partner company. In this paper we discuss ERP domain constraints and provide first conceptual solutions on how to adapt and extend software product line techniques for this particular context. Furthermore, we present a first tool prototype to support sales consultants at ERP partner companies.


The study of the relationships between the different structures of the human locomotor system still raises great interest. In fact, the human body networks and in particular the "myofascial system network" underlie posture and movement and new knowledge could be useful and applied to many fields such as medicine and prosthetics. The hypothesis of this study was to verify the possibility of creating a structural network representing the human locomotor system as well as to study and describe the relationship between the different structures considered. The graph theory was applied to a network of 2339 body parts (nodes) and 7310 links, representing the locomotor system. The open source platform software Cytoscape was used for data entry (nodes and links) as well as for debugging. In addition, the "NetworkAnalyzer" plugin was used for the descriptive statistics of the network obtained. In order to achieve a better rendering, the results of the network parameters gained were then imported into Gephi graph platform. At the end of this procedure, we obtained an image of a human being in an orthostatic position with a precise distribution of the nodes and links. More specifically, "the shortest pathways analysis of the network" demonstrated that any two randomly selected nodes on the network were connected by pathways of 4 or at most 6-8 nodes. Moreover, the Edge Radiality Distribution analysis was carried out in order to define how a single node is functionally relevant for other nodes: the probability distribution ranged from 0.4 to 0.77. This indicates that the majority of nodes tend to be functionally relevant for the others, but none of these is predominant. As a whole, the Cluster Coefficient (0.260) demonstrates that the network is neither random nor "strongly organized".


Introduction The genesis of the standards movement occurred when critics heralded the famous "A Nation At Risk" (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) report claiming the educational system in the United States of America was at risk and "being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity" (p. 1). The purpose of the report was to generate concern and reform and to renew a commitment of high quality schooling throughout the country. The report asserts that educational standards and expectations were focused on minimum requirements and states there should be a continuum of learning, and not an "incoherent outdated patch work quilt" (p. 7). One of the five major recommendations of the report focuses on standards and expectations and instructs educational institutions to adopt more rigorous and measurable standards and higher expectations. The advanced learner was also addressed in this document which cited that over one-half of the population of these students were not achieving comparable to their tested ability. On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110). This law not only changed the role of the federal government in public school education, it dictated to the states that they were required to establish standards for learning and assessments to measure the achievement of those standards. States then became accountable to report their standards and assessment instruments to the federal government and were required to report to the public the results of their assessments in a report card format. District and school assessment scores are currently used to measure adequate yearly progress (AYP) for all public schools in the United States. These data are disaggregated by major ethnic/racial groups, economically disadvantaged, limited English proficiency (LEP) and students with disabilities. Schools and districts that do not meet the desired achievement proficiency results as stated by their state plan, receive some type of sanction. The majority of states adopted state learning standards and developed state assessments or utilized norm-referenced national achievement tests to report the achievement results of students, schools, districts and the state. The state of Illinois adopted the Illinois Learning Standards in 1997, five years before the federal mandate. The Illinois Standards Achievement Test, the state assessment, measures individual student achievement on the Illinois Learning Standard in grades three through eight. It was first developed in 1997 and revised in 2006. Results are given to students, parents, and teachers and are available to the general public. Results are also aggregated by grade, school and the district. Standards--The Advanced Learner On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the A Nation at Risk (1983) report, another document, A Stagnant Nation: Why American Students Are Still at Risk (Strong American Schools, 2008) was issued. The document evaluated selected reforms recommended by A Nation at Risk and found "stunningly few of the Commission's recommendations have actually been enacted" (p.3). The report asserts that key recommendations related to time, teaching, and standards have not been realized. The report states that the National Commission of 1983 recommended states and districts adopt more rigorous and measurable standards and expectations, and claimed that grades should reflect actual learning. According to the 2008 report, just the opposite has happened. "Students are earning better grades in "tougher" courses, yet actual learning is either stagnant or in decline. At the same time, states have failed to set rigorous academic standards in the lower grades" ((p. 4). The report also states that out of 32 states, none have set performance benchmarks for the 4t grade reading that are high enough to meet the proficient level on our nation's test, the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP). …


The appeal of commercial e-mail and pop-up communication is evident today, because e-mail and pop-up are both cost effective and time efficient. There is no doubt that e-mail and pop-up is becoming one of the major direct channels for marketers. As the use of commercial e-mail and pop ups increases, it is more and more important for direct mail marketers to understand the process through which e-mail and pop-up campaigns influence consumer attitudes and behavior-mail marketing offers great opportunities for businesses. Marketing activities supported by e-mails and pop-ups allow companies to directly communicate with their consumers without time or location barriers. The topic of advertising via e-mails is of major interest. It addresses consumers with individualized advertising messages via e-mails. This paper discusses its relevance and investigates antecedents of consumer attitudes toward advertising via e-mails and pop-ups. The analysis is based on a consumer survey. For this purpose, a quota sample of 800 Internet users in India has been interviewed. By understanding consumers, attitude toward advertising, designers and marketers can better strategize their advertising designs. A better understanding of interactivity can also help to improve the effectiveness of interactive media such as the Internet. A methodology for studying the factors that contribute to consumers' perceptions of ads is proposed, and implications for Internet-based advertising are discussed. Keywords: attitude, e-mail spam, privacy, intrusion, advertising medium


The species of Schismatogobius from Indonesia are reviewed and compared to the known species described from the area. Eight species are recognized including four new species. These are described using genetic and morphomeristic approaches. The species differ by a high percentage of genetic divergence in partial COI gene (652 bp) and by several characters including the number of pectoral fin rays, the pattern of the ventral surface of the head in males and/or females, the pectoral fin colour pattern, the jaw length/head length ratio or the jaw length of male and/or female. Cybium, Vol. 41, No. 2. Hal. 195-211


Targeting a microRNA that inhibits type I interferon production may be a strategy to treat Japanese encephalitis virus infection. Fighting flavivirus infection Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), which is related to the Zika, West Nile, and dengue viruses, targets the central nervous system, causing viral encephalitis. Because of the high mortality rate in JEV-infected individuals and the neurological damage that afflicts survivors, effective antiviral therapies are urgently needed. Hazra et al. found that JEV infection of mouse and human neuronal cells increased the abundance of the microRNA miR-301a, which inhibited the cells from producing type I interferons (IFNs), cytokines that are critical to the antiviral immune response. One of the targets of miR-301a is the transcription factor IRF1, which is required for the expression of genes encoding type I IFNs. Treating JEV-infected mice with an inhibitor of miR-301a restored IRF1 abundance and function and led to increased type I IFN production, decreased viral replication, and increased survival. Together, these data suggest that targeting miR-301a may be an effective therapy against JEV infection. Effective recognition of viral components and the subsequent stimulation of the production of type I interferons (IFNs) is crucial for the induction of host antiviral immunity. The failure of the host to efficiently produce type I IFNs in response to infection by the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) is linked with an increased probability for the disease to become lethal. JEV is a neurotropic virus of the Flaviviridae family that causes encephalitis in humans. JEV infection is regulated by several host factors, including microRNAs, which are conserved noncoding RNAs that participate in various physiological and pathological processes. We showed that the JEV-induced expression of miR-301a led to inhibition of the production of type I IFN by reducing the abundances of the transcription factor IFN regulatory factor 1 (IRF1) and the signaling protein suppressor of cytokine signaling 5 (SOCS5). Mechanistically, induction of miR-301a expression during JEV infection required the transcription factor nuclear factor κB. In mouse neurons, neutralization of miR-301a restored the host innate immune response by enabling IFN-β production, thereby restricting viral propagation. Inhibition of miR-301a in mouse brain rescued the production of IRF1 and SOCS5, increased the generation of IFN-β, and reduced the extent of JEV replication, thus improving mouse survival. Thus, our study suggests that the JEV-induced expression of miR-301a assists viral pathogenesis by suppressing IFN production, which might be targeted by antiviral therapies.


We present a recently developed experimental method to estimate individuals' time and risk preferences and test it for its suitability in the pension context. Participants allocate money between an account that pays out at an earlier date and an account that pays out at later dates. Money allocated to the earlier date is paid out with certainty, while the money allocated to the later account is paid out with varying probabilities. This reflects the trade-off between certain immediate consumption and saving for uncertain future consumption. We test if time and risk preferences are different in the pension context as compared to a neutral context. Our main finding is that estimated discount rates are close to actual market interest rates if allocation decisions involve a long term period and involves a trade-off between receiving money one year from now and receiving money shortly after the expected retirement age. The elicited discount rates from our long-term decisions are therefore useful for pension funds that are interested in knowing the internal discount rates of their clients. We also estimate time and risk preferences on an individual level. These estimates indicate that, after further tests and when suitably adopted, the tested method could lead to an 'easy-to-use' tool for creating personalized profiles regarding clients' time and risk preferences, generally as well as specifically in the context of pensions.


Boxing is one of the oldest and most exciting of sports: its bruising and bloody confrontations have permeated Western culture since 3000 B.C. During that period, there has hardly been a time in which young men, and sometimes women, did not raise their gloved or naked fists to one other. Throughout this history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers and film-makers have been there to record and make sense of it all. In her encyclopaedic investigation of the shifting social, political and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, Kasia Boddy throws new light on an elemental struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. From Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Looking afresh at everything from neo-classical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boddy explores the way in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media, and sheds new light on the work of such diverse figures as Henry Fielding and Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin and Philip Roth, James Joyce and Mae West, Bertolt Brecht and Charles Dickens. This all-encompassing study tells us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.


Burst noise is a normally undesirable phenomenon occasionally
found in bipolar semiconductors and other current carrying devices. It
is an electrical fluctuation which exhibits itself as one or more rectangular
waveforms possessing constant amplitude but random pulse duration. The
experimental portion of this study relates only to burst noise in bipolar
transistors and operational amplifiers. Burst noise is not Gaussian as are the more common fluctuations
in semiconductors. That fact was established by estimation of the amplitude
distribution, a technique found to be sensitive in the
detection of burst noise obscured by quantities of conventional noise. The amplitude of burst noise varies with the parameters of
base-emitter, voltage temperature and source resistance. An exponential
increase of amplitude with Vbe and a lack of dependence on collector
voltage implied that the noise originates in the base-emitter junction.
A noise magnitude linearly proportional to source resistance over several
decades leads one to infer the equivalent circuit of a current source
between base and emitter. Current amplitudes of 10-10 to nearly 10-6
ampere p-p were observed. Burst noise pulse durations were found as brief as 10 µsec and as
long as some 29 hours; neither an upper nor a lower bound was established. The
two noise states (high and low, in the rectangular
waveform) were treated separately in the duration experiments. Careful
measurements on the relative frequency with which the pulse occurred
gave duration probability densities of 1/τ e -t/τ for each state.
That density also applies to a single particle alternately being trapped
and escaping and is consistent with the physical theory due to Mead and
Whittier relating burst noise to trapping phenomena. Measurements on
noise pulse durations in both states as a function of Vbe lent support
to the theory and indicated both trapping and recombination-generation centers
were present in samples examined. Another theory, due to Leonard and Jaskolsky,
was found inconsistent with the evidence for burst noise's origin in the base-emitter
junction. Duration versus temperature dependence indicated activation
energies of roughly .5 eV. Although suggestions in the literature for the power spectrum of burst noise
have been inconsistent, digital spectral estimation and judicious use of a
wave analyzer showed the spectrum to be flat at low frequencies and to fall as
1/f2 at higher ones. Proceeding only from the measured pulse duration
probability density, the power spectrum was deduced on theoretical grounds
for the first time. The method entailed the derivation of burst noise's
autocorrelation function which, when Fourier transformed, yielded S(w) = 2/(τ1 + τ0)[(1/τ1 + 1/τ0)2 + w2] where τ1 and τ0 are the average durations in the two noise estates.
The expression proved consistent with experiment.


Objective: In order to study the effect of drought stress, salicylic acid (SA) and  jasmonic acid (JA) foliar application on Hill reaction and photosynthetic pigments. Methods:Experiment was done as factorial on the basis of completely randomized design in 4 replications. Irrigation in 3 levels (FC,   FC and  FC), salicylic acid in 2 levels (0 and 0.5 mM) and jasmonic acid in 2 levels (0 and 50 µM). Results: The results indicated that, the effects drought stress, salicylic acid and jasmonic acid on Hill reaction, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, chlorophyll a+b, β-carotene and Xanthophyll were significant. Drough stress increased the content of β-carotene (1.83  ) and Xanthophyll (2.60 ). The 50 (µM) foliar application of jasmonate  and salicylic acid under normal irrigation condition gained to maximum amounts of Hill reaction, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, chlorophyll a+b, β-carotene and xanthophyll.  According to the results, exogenous salicylic acid and jasmonic acid application can improve drought tolerance in moldavian dragonhead (Dracocephalum moldavica L.).


Although researchers agree on the use of structured interviews in personnel selection, past research has been undecided on whether these interviews need to be conducted nontransparently (i.e., without giving interviewees any indication of the evaluated criteria) or transparently (i.e., by revealing to interviewees the dimensions assessed in the interview). This article presents two independent studies examining the effects of interview transparency on interviewees' performance and on the interview's construct and criterion-related validity in the context of an application training program. Results from both Study 1 (N = 123) and Study 2 (N = 269) indicate an improvement in interviewees' performance under transparent interview conditions. Both studies further support the assumption that transparent interviews show satisfactory construct validity, whereas nontransparent interviews do not. Moreover, Study 2 showed no significant difference between the interview's criterion-related validity under transparent versus nontransparent conditions. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.


With the advent of the experience economy the unique experiential value of cultural heritage products comes to the forefront of cultural tourism development and is the main value proposition for emerging destinations, including South Africa. As South Africa's democracy divedends had paid out by 1998, South African Tourism was left with an array of dormant cultural heritage resources (still) unable to turn them into meaningful tourist experiences. The reason is lack of understanding of tourist experience as opposed to tourist consumption. Consumer segmentation and marketing mantra of telling and selling simply does not work on tourist experience arising from consumption of cultural heritage products. Two propositions underline this type of experience: attractions cannot speak for themselves and we tell the story to sell the experience. The art of telling the story converges on both sides of experiential paradigm (tourist and attraction) thus telling is selling principle is a point of sale for cultural heritage products. Unpacking this principle in creating unique experiential value of cultural heritage products is the main theoretical contribution of this paper to South African cultural tourism discourse. The proposed experiential framework pertinent to cultural heritage sites integrates three paradigms namely product, experience and interpretation and the resultant tourist experience as a gestalt phenomenon. Against this framework the experiential value of South African cultural heritage products is assessed with data from official South African sources.


Abstract Background Inflammation plays a significant role in the pathophysiology of bronchiectasis. Two small studies have shown small benefits from inhaled corticosteroids and oral corticosteroids may be of benefit in bronchiectasis Objectives To determine the efficacy of oral corticosteroids in acute and stable bronchiectasis Search methods The Cochrane Airways Group Specialised Register was searched and bibliographies of retrieved papers were checked. Searches are current as of May 2011. Selection criteria Only randomised controlled trials were considered Data collection and analysis No trials met the inclusion criteria for the review. Main results No randomised controlled trials were identified Authors' conclusions There are no randomised trials upon which to base recommendations about the use of oral corticosteroids in acute or stable bronchiectasis. Plain language summary Oral corticosteroids for bronchiectasis (stable and acute exacerbations) Bronchiectasis is a chronic respiratory disease. People with the condition experience difficulty in clearing mucus from their lungs, leaving them prone to infections. Oral steroids have a place in the management of acute and severe asthma. In bronchiectasis, inhaled steroids have small benefits but there is no evidence for or against the use of oral steroids for this condition.


ASTEP 400, the main instrument of the ASTEP (Antarctica Search for Transiting ExoPlanets) programme, is a 40 cm telescope, designed to withstand the harsh conditions in Antarctica, achieving a photometric accuracy of a fraction of millimagnitude on hourly time-scales for planet-hosting southern bright (R = 12 mag) stars. We review the performances of this instrument, describe its operating conditions, and present results from the analysis of observations obtained during its first three years (2010-2012) of operation, before its repatriation in 2014. During this time, we observed a total of 22 stellar fields (1A degrees x 1A degrees field of view). Each field, in which we measured stars up to magnitude R = 18 mag, was observed continuously during =7 to =30 d. More than 200 000 frames were recorded and 310 000 stars processed, using an implementation of the optimal image subtraction photometry algorithm. We found 43 planetary transit candidates. 20 of these candidates were observed using spectroscopic follow-ups including four targets classified as good planet candidates. Our results demonstrate that accurate near-continuous photometric observations are achievable from the Concordia station at Dome C in Antarctica, even if we were not able to reach the nominal photometric precision of the instrument. We conducted a correlation analysis between the rms noise and a large number of external parameters and found that source of the =1 mmag correlated noise is not obvious and does not depend on a single parameter. However, our analysis provided some hints and guidance to increase the photometric accuracy of the instrument. These improvements should equip any future telescope operating in Antarctica.


During the Democratic presidential debate on July 31, all 10 candidates raised their hands when asked if they would provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants. Among all Democratic ideas for health reform, this is least popular. A recent poll found that only 38% of respondents approve. The idea drew extensive criticism, which is understandable: Why should the United States provide health coverage for people who don't have a legal right to be here? Extending coverage could be seen as rewarding individuals who have violated the law.

There are, however, strong reasons to afford health coverage for this population: modest economic costs, safeguarding the public's health by curbing the spread of infectious diseases, and complying with international law that requires health coverage for migrants. Many countries fail to afford migrants equitable access to health coverage, so adopting a policy of providing undocumented immigrants on par with other residents — integrated into existing federal health insurance programs — would help the United States regain moral leadership, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations (UN) guidelines, and potentially save money (discussed below).


The vast majority of drone attacks conducted by the U.S. have been signature strikes – strikes that target "groups of men who bear certain signatures, or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity, but whose identities aren't known." In 2010, for example, Reuters reported that of the 500 "militants" killed by drones between 2008 and 2010, only 8% were the kind "top-tier militant targets" or "mid-to-high-level organizers" whose identities could have been known prior to being killed. Similarly, in 2011, a U.S. official revealed that the U.S. had killed "twice as many 'wanted terrorists' in signature strikes than in personality strikes." Despite the U.S.'s intense reliance on signature strikes, scholars have paid almost no attention to their legality under international law. This article attempts to fill that lacuna. Section I explains why a signature strike must be justified under either international humanitarian law (IHL) or international human rights law (IHRL) even if the strike was a legitimate act of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Section II explores the legality of signature strikes under IHL. It concludes that although some signature strikes clearly comply with the principle of distinction, others either violate that principle as a matter of law or require evidence concerning the target that the U.S. is unlikely to have prior to the attack. Section III then provides a similar analysis for IHRL, concluding that most of the signature strikes permitted by IHL – though certainly not all – would violate IHRL's insistence that individuals cannot be arbitrarily deprived of their right to life.


Abstract Latin American participatory research and critical theory of the Frankfurt School are rarely associated with one another, and also have not had effective dialogues that would allow mutual enrichments. This article, however, highlights some elective affinities between them in order to explore new resources for research and social engagement. Its focus relies on the question of the attitude of the researcher and the languages that allow articulating perceptions of injustice. After reviewing intuitions and proposals from the foundational period in critical theory and the tradition of participatory research, the text examines within these traditions the difficult question of the origin of normative principles that can serve as immanent criteria of judgement in analyses of reality. Finally it takes the proposed renewal of critical theory through the recovery of the language of recognition, according to Honneth, to ask if it could contribute to participatory research today. Keywords: participatory research, critical theory, citizenship, emancipation


The Solomon's lily targets odorant receptors that enable drosophilids to detect odors from their food source. Plants that use deceptive pollination lure insects into pollinating them without reward (see Benton). Stökl et al. found that the Solomon's lily (Arum palaestinum) trapped eight drosophilid species, including Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans, which feed on yeast and breed in fruit when available. Gas chromatography of volatile compounds from the Solomon's lily, linked to electroantennographic detection (GC-EAD), revealed that six compounds induced repeated, reproducible antennal responses in D. melanogaster and D. simulans. In two-choice assays, these six compounds, mixed in proportions similar to those emitted by the Solomon's lily, were as attractive as two attractive odor stimuli, banana and Vector960 (a commercially available Drosophila bait). These compounds are produced by fermentative yeasts and are characteristic of overripe or rotting fruit, but they are relatively uncommon in floral bouquets. The compounds activated the same set of odorant receptors as Vector960; some of these odorant receptors, such as Or42b, Or59b, and Or92a, are involved in locating alcoholic fermentation substrates and are well conserved across drosophilid species (although other targeted odorant receptors were evolutionarily divergent). Thus, the deceptive pollination system used by the Solomon's lily targets odorant receptors that enable drosophilids to detect the odors of yeast. J. Stökl, A. Strutz, A. Dafni, A. Svatos, J. Doubsky, M. Knaden, S. Sachse, B. S. Hansson, M. C. Stensmyr, A deceptive pollination system targeting drosophilids through olfactory mimicry of yeast. Curr. Biol. 20, 1846–1852 (2010). [PubMed] R. Benton, Chemosensory ecology: Deceiving Drosophila. Curr. Biol. 20, R891–R893 (2010). [PubMed]


A conceptual marketing-finance framework is proposed which links channel contracting in agriculture and the use of financial facilitating services (e.g., financial derivatives) to (shareholder) value creation. The framework complements existing literature by explicitly including channel contract relationships as market-based assets that can be managed to reduce cash flow volatility and hence increase shareholder value. We show how financial facilitating services (e.g., derivatives) can be used to complement the cash flows components of channel contract relationships thereby further reducing the risk adjusted cost of capital and improving shareholder value. In a field study of producers, wholesalers, and processors, in the potato and meat industry the framework shows how shareholder value can be enhanced by using financial facilitating services, such as derivatives, to complement marketing channel relationships. Moreover, this study shows how producers and managers from agribusiness companies can use such financial services as conflict-solving tools in case of incongruent contract preferences between channel members.


Aims: The aim of this study was to identify the microorganisms associated with the chronic discharging ears and their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern. To find the pattern in bacteriological flora and their susceptibility patterns in patients from the different parts of India. Settings and Design : Observational, retrospective study. Subjects and Methods : A total of 106 patients with unilateral or bilateral active chronic discharging ears attending the outpatient clinic or in-patients were included in the study. All patients' chart details were reviewed and history, clinical findings and microbiology reports were noted. Results : The microbiology of 106 samples (106 patients) was studied (in bilateral ear disease, information about the side from where the swab was taken, was not available). Among them, 72 (67.92%) grew a single isolate while 34 (32.07%) grew two or more organisms. Major micro-organism isolated was Pseudomonas aeruginosa 48 (30.96%), followed by Staphylococcus aureus 46 (29.676%), non-fermenting gram negative bacilli (NFGNB) 17 (10.96), Coliforms 22 (14.20%). Drug susceptibility pattern of P. aeruginosa showed that Piperacillin was active against the majority of the isolates 94%, followed by Ceftazidime 83.3%, Amikacin 81.2%, Netilmicin, Tobramycin 60% and Ciprofloxacin, Gentamicin, Aztreonam 62.5%. Most of the S. aureus isolates were susceptible to Oxacillin in 80% and Erythromycin in 43%. Conclusions : Commonest organisms isolated from chronically discharging ears were P. aeruginosa and S. aureus , with P. aeruginosa marginally more than S. aureus . When patients from north and south were segregated, majority of isolates were P. aeruginosa in south ( P. aeruginosa 28, S. aureus 23), whereas S. aureus was more in north (23 S. aureus , 20 P. aeruginosa ). Coliforms were isolated more in south (13 south, 9 in north), similarly, NFGNB were also more in south (11 south, 6 north). Majority of isolates of P. aeruginosa were susceptible to Piperacillin and S. aureus was susceptible to Oxacillin.


For the last five decades the Antarctic Peninsula faces the strongest atmospheric warming on Earth with consequences for its glaciers and ice shelves. With more data available it becomes obvious that the fringing ocean also experiences changes which, however, might result from the natural variability of the system. The comparison of hydrographic data from the northwestern Weddell Sea continental shelf covering the austral summers and winters of the past 20 years reveals a distinct front in summer which separates water masses near surface freezing to the south from those warmer and saltier (with the exception of a ~50-m thick bottom layer) to the north. The latter seem to originate from Bransfield Strait, and its southward extension (~64 oS in 2007) towards existing ice shelves might differ from year to year. In winter, these warm waters are replaced by cold shelf water with salinities corresponding to the salty summer bottom layer on the southern continental shelf. The comparison of the two winter cruises in 1989 and 2006 reveals a significant freshening (~0.1) of the whole water column at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the esthetic outcome of single tooth Morse taper connection implants used to replace congenitally missing lateral incisors after orthodontic treatment by means of the pink esthetic score (PES) and white esthetic score (WES) index.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Twenty consecutive patients who were treated with a single tooth Morse taper connection implants (Leone Implant System®, Florence, Italy) were enrolled in this study. An independent calibrated examiner applied the PES/WES index to 20 implant-supported restorations 3 months and 3 years after implant placement.

RESULTS
No implants were lost. All 20 implants fulfilled the established success criteria for dental implants with regard to osseointegration and prosthetic complications, with an overall implant-crown success of 100.0%. At the 3 year examination, the mean distance between the implant shoulder and the first visible bone-implant contact was of 0.49 ± 0.18 mm (95% confidence interval 0.41-0.57); the mean PES was 8.15 ± 1.69, and the mean WES was 8.70 ± 0.92.

CONCLUSIONS
The placement of single-tooth Morse taper connection implants for rehabilitation of congenitally missing lateral incisors after orthodontic treatment represents a successful procedure in the medium term. Further studies are necessary in order to assess the long-term esthetic score.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
This paper evaluates the esthetic outcome of Morse taper connection implants placed to restore congenitally missing lateral incisors after orthodontic treatment.


DR. R. G. PARK congratulated both authors on their interesting accounts of the very complex geology of the southern Outer Hebrides. Lacking first-hand knowledge of that area, he was tempted, despite his sceptical approach to structure correlation in general, to try to match the structural sequence proposed by the authors with the sequence obtained by the speaker and others in their recent work on the southern Laxfordian belt of the Scottish mainland, but found considerable difficulty in doing so. A superficial similarity existed between the f3 folds of the authors and the large-scale second Laxfordian folds on the mainland with a NW–SE trend and steep axial planes. The distribution of these structures showed a marked heterogeneity of deformation with narrow intensely deformed synformal belts (e.g. the Gairloch schist belt) separated by wide, relatively little-deformed zones. A characteristic feature of the Scourie dyke margins in the highly deformed zones was the presence of tight small-scale folds with relatively sharp antiformal and synformal hinges suggesting fairly ductile behaviour of dykes and gneiss, whereas no small-scale folding of dyke margins has been observed in the antiformal zones. In contrast, during the earlier Laxfordian deformation, small-scale folding of dyke margins is apparently absent throughout the region investigated and the dykes have developed a foliation only which is absent from the enclosing gneisses. In the light of these observations, could Dr. Coward comment on the role of small-scale f1 and f2 folding of the dyke margins in his area and on the physical conditions


World wide experiences and practices have shown that universities, especially agricultural universities, have played a very important and a key role in helping rural populations become literate, in upgrading farmers' living quality and accelerating rural economic development. Universities are becoming the main forces for transforming knowledge and technology into agricultural productivity, especially in developing nations. The activities carried out by universities in rural development programs cover many areas through the dissemination of new technologies for income-generation, delivering short courses and of expertise for the promotion of quality of rural life. Experience shows that universities have a strong technical expertise to enable them to become a major vehicle in promoting development in rural areas. Implementing development changes also prove to be a very tedious and a costly endeavor for universities as they are limited by both human and financial resources. However, there are many experiences and cases of successful and unsuccessful university activities gathered by some universities that are already engaged in rural development. In this context, two universities's experiences have been selected concerning their role in rural development. These are Agricultural University of Hebei (AUH) China, and Charles Darwin University (CDU), Australia. AUH has been providing extension services to rural farmers since the late 1970s. CDU has been involved with education/training, research and services for rural, remote and Indigenous communities and made a contribution for their development. This thesis focuses on a comparative analysis of the roles of these universities in rural development between China and Australia. A simple linear model is developed. Complex model development has been suggested for further study.


This paper describes the development of an e‐research facility for socio‐spatial analysis. It is illustrated with the example of a prototype Web‐based GIS and statistical application for the analysis, modelling and visualisation of the relationships between patterns of voting at the 2007 Australian federal election and the demographic and socio‐economic characteristics of local populations using 2006 census data. The facility incorporates a web‐based GIS which can generate maps displaying patterns of voting for political parties across polling booths with overlay data showing the population characteristics living within the surrounding polling booth catchments. Various classification approaches including equal interval, quantile, median‐based natural breaks, and location quotients can be used to generate different map displays. Statistical analysis functionality ‐ such as regression analysis, cluster analysis and discriminant analysis ‐ enables researchers to conduct on‐line statistical modelling and the visualisation of outputs. This prototype facility not only gives researchers and students on‐line access to socio‐spatial datasets through a metadata directory, but also enhances the capacity and capability of researchers and students to undertake spatially integrated social science research.


This paper investigates industry-level effects of government purchases in order to shed light on the transmission mechanism for government spending on the aggregate economy. We begin by highlighting the different theoretical predictions concerning the effects of government spending on industry labor market equilibrium. We then create a panel data set that matches output and labor variables to shifts in industry-specific government demand. The empirical results indicate that increases in government demand raise output and hours, but lower real product wages and productivity. Markups do not change as a result of government demand increases. The results are consistent with the neoclassical model of government spending, but they are not consistent with the New Keynesian model of the effects of government spending.


Abstract First lactation milk, fat, and protein yields for first lactations of 8044 Holstein cows in New York from 24 herds were used to estimate genetic and phenotypic covariances with an animal model by restricted maximum likelihood. Numerator relationships within herd, including those from sires, were utilized, although relationships across herds were ignored. Each analysis was terminated after 300 rounds of iteration. Average milk production (twice daily milking, 305-d lactation, mature equivalent) was 8630 kg. Estimates were obtained for each individual herd and groups of 3, 6, and 12 herds. Average estimates from separate analyses of the 24 herds were nearly identical to those from combined analysis. Heritability estimates from combined analysis were .36, .35, and .33 for milk, fat, and protein yield with standard errors of approximately .03. Genetic correlations were .72 for milk and fat, .88 for milk and protein, and .77 for fat and protein. Phenotypic correlations were .81, .91, and .82. Heritability estimates for individual herds were quite variable with standard errors of about .15. The largest environmental standard deviation for a herd was about twice the smallest. Estimates from only one analysis failed to converge—a group of three herds. All single herd analyses reached convergence as did the other 7 trios of herds and all sets of 6 and 12 herds.


What do we have here? A terse American, a terser Briton, and a positively gushing Latin? Or three scientists, two of whom are plagiarizing the third? It is more likely that these three were merely stating the obvious: that as no one knows research has occurred unless its results are published, publication is central to the research enterprise. If they could have seen what progress would be made in the scientific technologies, each of these three might have anticipated that their successors would have subjected the operations of the biomedical literature to searching inquiry. The system has improved and expanded to include many thousands of journals and an efficient apparatus for indexing and retrieving their contents. Yet, while there are fine descriptive studies of the system, inquiries have so far failed to deal adequately with its most crucial part, peer review—the process by which scientists evaluate each others' work to


Extracting stellar fundamental parameters from Spectrointerferometric (SPI) data requires reliable estimates of observables and with robust uncertainties (visibility, triple product, phase closure). A number of fine calibration procedures are necessary throughout the reduction process. Testing departures from centrosymmetry of brightness distributions is a useful complement. Developing a set of automatic routines called SPIDAST (made available to the community) to reduce, calibrate and interpret raw data sets of instantaneous spectrointerferograms at the spectral channel level, we complement (and in some respects improve) the ones contained in the AMDLIB Data Reduction Software. Our new software SPIDAST is designed to work in an automatic mode, free from subjective choices, while being versatile enough to suit various processing strategies. SPIDAST performs the following automated operations: weighting of nonaberrant SPI data (visibility, triple product), fine spectral calibration (subpixel level), accurate and robust determinations of stellar diameters for calibrator sources (and their uncertainties as well), correction for the degradations of the interferometer response in visibility and triple product, calculation of the centrosymmetry parameter from the calibrated triple product, fit of parametric chromatic models on SPI observables, to extract model parameters. SPIDAST is currently applied to the scientific study of 18 cool giant and supergiant stars, observed with the VLTI/AMBER facility at medium resolution in the K band. Because part of their calibrators have no diameter in the current catalogues, SPIDAST provides new determinations of the angular diameters of all calibrators. Comparison of SPIDAST final calibrated observables with AMDLIB determinations shows good agreement, under good and poor seeing conditions. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.


Radical cystectomy (RC) is the gold standard treatment for muscle-invasive and high-risk, noninvasive bladder cancer. Since 2003, robot-assisted radical cystectomy (RARC) has been gaining popularity. Metanalyses show that the primary advantage of RARC is less blood loss and the primary advantage of open radical cystectomy (ORC) is shorter operative times. There do not appear to be significant differences in complications, cancer-related outcomes or survival between the two approaches. Cost analyses comparing RARC and ORC are complicated by the often-ill-defined distinction between the cost to the hospital versus the cost to payors. However, it is likely that for both hospitals and payors, RARC is cost effective at high-volume centers. It is feasible that in the future, increased experience with RARC will lead to improved outcomes and justify the use of RARC over ORC.