This paper describes a formal statistical model underlying the region-of-influence method routinely used in regional frequency analysis of hydrological extremes, and is an improvement to the existing Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) method for pooled frequency analysis of annual maximum flows in the UK. Specification of a pooling-group method requires three issues to be resolved: how to define hydrological similarity, the size of pooling groups and calculation of the pooled L-moment ratios. Because these issues are interrelated, an exploratory and iterative study has been undertaken before arriving at the final version of the method. Improvements provided by the model are: (1) that it allows an increased weight to be given to a gauged catchment when it is itself the target location and (2) it does not require identification of a homogeneous region, since the expected differences between the L-moment ratios within a pooling group are explicitly accounted for. Using annual maximum series from 602 gauged rural catchments, a comparison of candidate methods shows that the new method performs better than these others, including the FEH method. While the numerical comparison suggests that the improvement is 4%, and thus only minor, arguments are given for why this is a misleading conclusion.


physicists detected a hybrid particle in an unusual, two-dimensional magnetic material. The hybrid particle is a mashup of an electron a phonon.


Abstract. A new 18O stable water isotope scheme is developed for three components of the iLOVECLIM coupled climate model: atmospheric, oceanic and land surface. The equations required to reproduce the fractionation of stable water isotopes in the simplified atmospheric model ECBilt are developed consistently with the moisture scheme. Simplifications in the processes are made to account for the simplified vertical structure including only one moist layer. Implementation of these equations together with a passive tracer scheme for the ocean and a equilibrium fractionation scheme for the land surface leads to the closure of the (isotopic-) water budget in our climate system. Following the implementation, verification of the existence of usual δ18O to climatic relationships are performed for the Rayleigh distillation, the Dansgaard relationship and the δ18O –salinity relationship. Advantages and caveats of the approach taken are outlined. The isotopic fields simulated are shown to reproduce most expected oxygen-18–climate relationships with the notable exception of the isotopic composition in Antarctica.


In an ongoing project for electrical impedance-based needle guidance we have previously showed in an animal model that intraneural needle positions can be detected with bioimpedance measurement. To enhance the power of this method we in this study have investigated whether an early detection of the needle only touching the nerve also is feasible. Measurement of complex impedance during needle to nerve contact was compared with needle positions in surrounding tissues in a volunteer study on 32 subjects. Classification analysis using Support-Vector Machines demonstrated that discrimination is possible, but that the sensitivity and specificity for the nerve touch algorithm not is at the same level of performance as for intra-neuralintraneural detection.


Over the last two decades, the government has recognised the 'problem' of the north, and broad narratives and plans such as the Northern Powerhouse and The Northern Way have been put forward to deal with deficits and inequalities in infrastructure, economy and health outcomes etc., only to fade away, as governments and ministers change. Political agendas rise and fall, but what can we do when these fail and problems remain? Recent research suggests that the Northern region has strong, individual cities, but that collectively, they do not compare to similar regions in Europe, and overall, the productivity gap in the North is 11% below the national average. In the North of England, a person's chances of dying earlier than those who live in the South are higher. Home ownership is also becoming increasingly problematic in the North, with lower wages and higher levels of unemployment. Numerous neighbourhoods in the North witness some of the highest levels of social deprivation in England, and on average, people report lower levels of life satisfaction and wellbeing. Despite this, the North of England has strength and depth in its capabilities and competence to understand many of these issues. The North is home to eight of the UK's leading research intensive universities, who have secured over £1.2bn for funding in urban research. But how can the universities ensure that the knowledge and expertise they have improves conditions and leads to solutions for real world problems? We suggest that one way to do this is to embed knowledge through design as a way to empower citizens to seek creative solutions that best meet the needs of the world they inhabit. At ImaginationLancaster, based at Lancaster University, we conduct applied research into people, places and their interactions. Our projects to date have included, Beyond the Castle and Creative Exchange. The former involved working with Lancaster City Council to use collaborative, co-design methods to re-think the a major public space and an ancient monument, both subject to competing interests from residents, visitors and the local council. The latter meanwhile connects pioneering companies and academic expertise to develop digital public space to provide new contexts for the experience economy. These projects are emblematic of innovative and creative relationships that bridge academia and wider society for mutual benefit and are vibrant case studies that engage with the notions of inclusion and liveability in the North.


Purpose To compare the nature of uncertainties expressed by medical students using the six-step SNAPPS technique for case presentations (Summarize history and findings; N>arrow the differential; Analyze the differential; Probe preceptors about uncertainties; Plan management; Select case-related issues for self-study) versus those expressed by students doing customary presentations and to elucidate how preceptors respond. Method The authors performed a secondary analysis in 2009 of data from a 2004–2005 randomized study, comparing SNAPPS users' case presentations with other students' presentations. Authors coded transcriptions of audiotaped presentations to family medicine preceptors for type of student uncertainties, nature of preceptor responses, alignment of preceptor responses with uncertainty types, and expansion of preceptors' responses beyond addressing uncertainties. Results The analysis included 19 SNAPPS and 41 comparison presentations. SNAPPS students expressed uncertainties in all case presentations, nearly twice as many as the comparison group (&khgr;21df = 12.89, P = .0001). Most SNAPPS users' uncertainties (24/44 [55%]) focused on diagnostic reasoning compared with 9/38 (24%) for comparison students' (&khgr;21df = 8.08, P = .004). Uncertainties about clinical findings and medications/management did not differ significantly between groups. Preceptors responded with teaching aligned with the uncertainties and expanded 24/66 (36%) of their comments. Conclusion Students can drive the content of the teaching they receive based on uncertainties they express to preceptors during case presentations. Preceptors are ready to teach at "the drop of a question" and align their teaching with the content of students' questions; these learning moments—in context and just-in-time—can be created by students.


A major goal of synthetic biology is to reprogram living organisms to solve pressing challenges in manufacturing, environmental remediation, or healthcare. While many types of genetic logic gates have been engineered, their scalability remains limited. Previous work demonstrated that Distributed Multicellular Computation (DMC) enables the implementation of complex logic within cellular consortia. However, current DMC systems require spatial separation of cellular subpopulation to be scalable to N-inputs, and need cell-cell communication channels to operate. Here we present scalable composition frameworks for the systematic design of multicellular consortia performing recombinase-based Boolean or history-dependent logic, and integrating an arbitrary number of inputs. The theoretical designs for both Boolean and history-dependent logic are based on reduced sets of computational modules implemented into specific cellular subpopulations which can then be combined in various manners to implement all logic functions. Our systems mark a departure from previous DMC architectures as they do not require either cell-cell communication nor spatial separation, greatly facilitating their implementation and making them fully autonomous. Due to their scalability and composability, we anticipate that the design strategies presented here will help researchers and engineers to reprogram cellular behavior for various applications in a streamlined manner. We provide an online tool for automated design of DNA architectures allowing the implementation of multicellular N-inputs logic functions at: http://synbio.cbs.cnrs.fr/calin.


Empty azygos fissure implies dislocation of the azygos vein to the mediastinal side of the right upper lobe from azygos fissure, which is usually secondary to pneumothorax, pleural effusion, parenchymal fibrosis, vertebral collapse or persistent vomiting. We are presenting here a case where a separated azygos vein in CT and radiography images was noted. Moreover, in the follow-up images, it appeared that the complete reexpansion of the right lung resulted in reentrance of the azygos vein into azygos fissure in its native position.


This text approaches some points about the contemporary curricular reflection, referring to the study of new forms of curricular organization bound for the youth and adults education. In its beginning, the text brings a brief approach of the history of the youth and adults education in Brasil, aiming to place the reader in the debate. Then, using the relates of real situations lived by the author or by close people, I discuss some of the main problems that can be perceived in the curricular practices developed in the youth and adult education, as the childish treatment of the students or the inadequate contents or way of treating them and the speech used as well. From this, a theoretical reflection about how I understand the process of weaving the knowledge is developed, where I intent to contribute to the reflection around the possibilities of overcoming these problems. Finally, I discuss some of the conceptions of curriculum e yours fundaments to reach the proposition of a debate about the possibilities of new curricular drawings that may be more fitted to the students than the traditional proposes.


This paper presents a method for testing of a grid-size battery energy storage system and its interaction with the grid. The method uses a real installation with relatively small storage capacity which is combined with a simulation model of the grid. The storage is cycled based on measurements from the potential grid location and desired application. A scaling factor is used to relate the physical installation capacity and power ratings with the grid-size storage in the simulation model. Such a hybrid method allows evaluating grid-size storage installations without disturbing the grid. The physical behavior of the battery and control algorithm can be evaluated under realistic conditions without the need to construct a full grid-size storage installation. An experiment is described in this paper were the method is applied to an actual grid and battery storage installation.


The East Shetland Platform formed a regional high throughout the Mesozoic and Tertiary with only a thin Triassic to Recent succession preserved. Seismic data reveal the underlying structure and stratigraphy. Complex seismic reflections are seen within the basement and may indicate basement thrust duplexes and lateral ramps, recording Caledonide deformation. A distinctive change in seismic character, traceable over the entire area, marks the base of a sedimentary package >7.5 km thick which overlies and locally onlaps a regionally persistent top basement reflector. This package is thought to be Devonian. The recognition of several internal discontinuities within it may permit subdivision into tectono-stratigraphic units. Local divergence of the reflectors within the Devonian succession provides evidence of syn-sedimentary growth faulting, perhaps due to extension in the hanging wall of reactivating, rolled back Caledonide thrust faults. The Devonian sequence is locally deformed into symmetrical to eastward-vergent folds, these marking a pre-Mesozoic compressional deformation phase of probable Variscan age. The Devonian strata on the East Shetland Platform may provide local hydrocarbon charge from oil-prone lacustrine source rocks, as well as fluvial sandstones with moderate reservoir potential. Dipping and locally intensely folded Devonian strata can offer a range of structural and stratigraphic traps in this poorly explored area.


Information technology (IT) is a global phenomenon that provides organizations of all types the ability to achieve enterprise objectives. One IT component is computer security, sometimes referred to as cybersecurity, the detection and prevention of a rapidly evolving collection of threats and vulnerabilities capable of introducing significant IT risk to an organization. Seminal events such as the creation of U.S. Cyber Command in 2009 acknowledging cyberspace as the fifth domain of war, and the 2015 recall by Fiat Chrysler of 1.4 million vehicles to mitigate an Internet enabled threat, serve as bookends framing the rapid evolution of cybersecurity threats and the need for organizations to better understand the collective vulnerabilities that enable computer security risk. However, a recent literature review of a major information systems (IS) research journal suggests publication of academic research associated with management of computer security from an enterprise perspective is limited. Given the relevance of computer security in today's IT environment, this finding suggests that enterprise computer security is an under studied research topic. This article addresses this finding and the research gaps with the intent of encouraging new research in this domain.


We present a novel ionospheric tomography reconstruction method. The method is based on Bayesian inference with the use of Gaussian Markov random field priors. We construct the priors as a system of stochastic partial differential equations. Numerical approximations of these equations can be represented with linear systems with sparse matrices, therefore providing computational efficiency. The method enables an interpretable scheme to build the prior distribution based on physical and empirical information on the structure of the ionosphere. We show through synthetic test cases in a two‐dimensional setup of latitude‐altitude slices how this method can be applied to satellite‐based ionospheric tomography and how information about the structure of the ionosphere can be implemented in the prior. The technique is capable of being easily extended to multifrequency tomographic analysis or used for the inclusion of other data sets of ionospheric electron density, such as ground‐based observations by radars or ionosondes.


We develop and apply the theory of lower and upper compensated convex transforms introduced in [K. Zhang, Compensated convexity and its applications, Ann. Inst. H. Poincare Anal. Non Lineaire 25 (2008) 743–771] to define multiscale, parametrized, geometric singularity extraction transforms of ridges, valleys and edges of function graphs and sets in ℝn. These transforms can be interpreted as "tight" opening and closing operators, respectively, with quadratic structuring functions. We show that these geometric morphological operators are invariant with respect to translation, and stable under curvature perturbations, and establish precise locality and tight approximation properties for compensated convex transforms applied to bounded functions and continuous functions. Furthermore, we establish multiscale and Hausdorff stable versions of such transforms. Specifically, the stable ridge transforms can be used to extract exterior corners of domains defined by their characteristic functions. Examples of explicitly calculated prototype mathematical models are given, as well as some numerical experiments illustrating the application of these transforms to 2d and 3d objects.


Since its inception, Chondogyo has self-consciously maintained an identity as a "new" and "modern" Korean religion. These claims have seen ongoing efforts to rationalize religious practice and theology and purge the movement of "anti-modern," "superstitious" elements. This article explores the differing receptions of pilgrimage and ecstatic trance within the organization: the two major forms of embodied religious experience in Chondogyo. While the former has been actively promoted as a "legitimate" (and modern) form of religious experience, the latter is treated with ambivalence and is often connected with backward superstition. Through a comparison of these practices, I explore the ways in which they intersect with, bolster and challenge conceptions of Korean modernity.


In response to the increasing impact of regulation, several governments have introduced economic analysis as a way of trying to improve regulatory policy. This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of government-supported economic analysis of regulation. We find that there is growing interest in the use of economic tools, such as benefit-cost analysis; however, the quality of analysis in the U.S. and European Union frequently fails to meet widely accepted guidelines. Furthermore, the relationship between analysis and policy decisions is tenuous. To address this situation, we recommend pursuing an agenda that allows economics to play a more central role in regulatory decision making. In addition, we suggest that prediction markets could help improve regulatory policy and improve measurement of the impact of regulation.


BACKGROUND/AIMS
Excision repair cross-complementing group 8 (ERCC8) is one of the members of the nucleotide excision repair pathway. This study aimed to explore the association between ERCC8 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and gastric cancer.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Totally, 120 patients with gastric cancer treated from March 2010 to March 2011 were selected as the observation group and 120 healthy individuals were selected as the control group during the same period. The Sequenom MassARRAY system was used to identify genotypes in these samples. The genetic locus of ERCC8 tag SNPs and the relevance of gastric cancer risk to the different ERCC8 genotypes alone or in combination with Helicobacter pylori infection were observed and analyzed. The AA, GA, and GG genotypes on rs158572 and rs158916 in the observation and control groups were compared.

RESULTS
The results showed that the odds ratio of the different ERCC8 rs158572 and rs158916 genotypes was not significantly increased in the observation group compared with that in the control group. By contrast, in patients with H. pylori infection, the ERCC8 rs158572 GA/GG and rs158916 TT genotypes showed a 7.921-fold and 8.021-fold [95% confidence interval (CI)=4.022-15.921, p=0.029 and 95% CI=3.021-15.092, p=0.021, respectively] increased risk of gastric cancer than the AA and CT/CC genotypes, respectively.

CONCLUSION
Helicobacter pylori infection combined with ERCC8 rs158572 and rs158916 can be used as a predictive index of gastric cancer occurrence.


Extracted from text ... SA Pharmaceutical Journal - April 2006 42
MANAGEMENT
Service quality defined
Service quality is an abstract and
elusive concept, because of the three
unique characteristics of services,
namely intangibility, heterogeneity and
inseparability of production and
consumption.2, 3 Service quality has
been described as the consumer's
overall impression of the relative
inferiority/superiority/excellence of the
organisation and its services. It is an
extremely subjective concept. Service
quality is also multidimensional,
making it difficult to measure
accurately. Instead of attempting to
define service quality per se, some
authors have chosen to describe it in
terms of determinants of quality.4
Measurement of the
PERCEIVED ..


The inorganic content of 51 dated sediment cores from Mississippi River deltaic plain salt marsh wetlands peaks with the landfall of hurricanes. Variations in the inorganic sediment content demonstrate no temporal coherence with changes in either the Mississippi River suspended matter concentration or discharge, or with wetland losses on this coast. The inorganic matter brought to wetlands during hurricanes is sufficient to account for the accumulated inorganic sediment, and the volume averages 9% of the soil volume. A "sediment deficit" hypothesis, which makes a causal connection between a changing inorganic supply and the dramatically high wetland losses on this coast, is therefore rejected. Our results support the hypothesis that wetlands of an undeveloped coast receive the majority of their inorganic sediments from offshore and not from overbank flooding or through crevasses. Restoration and wetland maintenance (prevention) goals should be implemented with this in mind: the coastal wetland losses of the last century along this coast appear to be a consequence of the diminished accumulation of organic matter and not from variations in inorganic sediment loading.


Endogenously produced danger-associated molecular patterns induced by free fatty acids and sun-damaged RNAs activate TLR4 and TLR3. A pair of papers identifies endogenously produced danger-associated molecular patterns that activate Toll-like receptors (TLRs) 3 and 4, which stimulate inflammatory responses through the transcription factor NF-κB (nuclear factor κB). Excessive amounts of free fatty acids (FFAs) trigger insulin resistance by activating TLR4; however, FFAs do not directly interact with TLR4. In the first paper, Pal et al. (see also Heinrichsdorff and Olefsky) showed that activation of TLR4 by FFAs requires fetuin-A (FetA), a glycoprotein secreted by the liver that is a biomarker of chronic inflammatory diseases. Morpholino-based gene knockdown in mice of FetA (FetAKD) or Tlr4 (Tlr4KD) prevented the development of insulin resistance caused by a high-fat diet and also reduced activation of NF-κB and production of messenger RNAs encoding inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin 6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor–α (TNF-α). The resistance of FetAKD mice to high-fat diet–induced insulin resistance was attenuated by treatment with purified FetA. Treatment of 3T3L1 mouse adipocytes with the free fatty acid palmitate increased the activity of NF-κB and expression of IL-6 and TNF-α only in the presence of FetA, effects that were abrogated by the TLR4 inhibitor CLI-095. The leucine-rich repeat regions 2 and 6 of TLR4 were required for binding to FetA. The glycan residues of lipopolysaccharide are required for binding to TLR4 and, similarly, forms of FetA lacking the terminal carbohydrate moieties did not increase the activity of an NF-κB reporter gene in HEK cells or trigger insulin resistance in response to FFAs in adipocytes. TLR3 recognizes double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) that is typically produced in virally infected cells. Bernard et al. found that, in keratinocytes, TLR3 detected self noncoding RNA that was damaged by ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation, which can occur in response to excessive sun exposure and trigger the inflammatory reaction called sunburn. Treatment with lysates prepared from UVB-irradiated normal human epidermal keratinocytes (NHEKs) triggered the production of IL-6 and TNF-α from nonirradiated NHEKs, responses that required TLR3. Intradermal injection of lysates from irradiated NHEKs, but not those from nonirradiated NHEKs, triggered an inflammatory response in wild-type mice but not TLR3–/– mice. Whole-transcriptome shotgun sequencing of RNA from UVB-irradiated NHEKs showed that the base-read frequency of certain stem-loop domains of the small nuclear RNA U1 was increased; these stem loops could form dsRNAs that could activate TLR3. UVB-irradiated synthetic U1 RNA, but not nonirradiated U1 RNA, triggered the production of IL-6 and TNF-α from nonirradiated NHEKs and peripheral blood mononuclear cells. In NHEKs, UVB-irradiated U1 RNA colocalized with endosomal TLR3 and triggered the nuclear translocation of the p65 subunit of NF-κB. Intradermal injection of UVB-irradiated U1 RNA, but not UVB-irradiated transfer RNA, into the ears of wild-type mice caused an inflammatory response in the ears and increased the expression of TNF-α and IL-6 in the skin. These responses were not seen in TLR3–/– mice. Thus, TLR3 and TLR4 can be activated by endogenous danger-associated molecular pattern ligands that resemble the pathogen-associated molecular pattern ligands. D. Pal, S. Dasgupta, R. Kundu, S. Maitra, G. Das, S. Mukhopadhyay, S. Ray, S. S. Majumdar, S. Bhattacharya, Fetuin-A acts as an endogenous ligand of TLR4 to promote lipid-induced insulin resistance. Nat. Med. 18, 1279–1285 (2012). [PubMed] J. J. Bernard, C. Cowing-Zitron, T. Nakatsuji, B. Muehleisen, J. Muto, A. W. Borkowski, L. Martinez, E. L. Greidinger, B. D. Yu, R. L. Gallo, Ultraviolet radiation damages self noncoding RNA and is detected by TLR3. Nat. Med. 18, 1286–1290 (2012). [PubMed] J. Heinrichsdorff, J. M. Olefsky, Fetuin-A: The missing link in lipid-induced inflammation. Nat. Med. 18, 1182–1183 (2012). [PubMed]


The localistic enclave is a special kind of enclave in urban China, which is characterised by a high concentration of rural migrants from the same place of origin. Prior research has documented that rural migrants work in these localistic enclaves, but the significance of participation in them for labour market outcomes among migrant workers has yet to be determined. In this article, it is argued that localistic economic enclaves may improve the labour force outcomes of rural-to-urban migrants. Results are reported from a study of the social determinants and consequences of working in localistic enclaves, based on data from a 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River and the Yangzi River deltas. The results provide limited support for the hypothesis: localistic enclaves enable migrant workers to earn higher earnings overall, but the earnings returns to human capital in an enclave are limited.


For the past three years, the Transmedia Research Group at the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, has been developing open access online materials for supporting the teaching of humanities-related subjects in Estonian- and Russianlanguage secondary schools. This paper maps the theoretical and conceptual starting points of these materials. The overarching goal of the educational platforms is to support cultural coherence and autocommunication by cultivating literacies necessary for holding meaningful dialogues with cultural heritage. To achieve the goal, the authors have been seeking ways of purposeful harnessing of transmedial, crossmedial and other tools offered by the contemporary digital communication space. We have started with an understanding of culture as education – a model which is grounded in cultural semiotics and highlights the role of cultural experience and cultural self-description in learning literacies. From these premises we proceed to explicating the value of a transdisciplinary pedagogy for methodical translation of the theoretical concepts into practical solutions in teaching and learning culture.


ABSTRACTCarbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction in industry should be a portfolio option; for example, the carbon capture and utilization by mineralization (CCUM) process is a feasible and proven technology where both CO2 capture and alkaline waste treatment occur simultaneously through an integrated approach. In this study, the challengeable barriers and significant breakthroughs of CCUM via ex-situ carbonation were reviewed from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Recent progress on the performance of various carbonation processes for different types of alkaline solid wastes was also evaluated based on CO2 capture capacity and carbonation efficiency. Moreover, several process intensification concepts such as reactor integration and co-utilization with wastewater or brine solution were reviewed and summarized. In addition, the utilization of carbonated products from CCUM as green materials including cement, aggregate and precipitate calcium carbonate were investigated. Furthermore, the current status of worldwide CCUM demonstration projects within the iron- and steelmaking industries was illustrated. The energy consumption and cost analyses of CCUM were also evaluated.


Mathematics education is highly valued in advanced economies due to its role in developing skilled workforces, economic resilience and social wellbeing. However, university academics across disciplines regularly bemoan undergraduate students' under-preparedness for the mathematical and quantitative demands of undergraduate degree programmes. In this paper we consider this issue. We begin with a research synthesis of relevant literatures on mathematics within university study in the natural sciences (physics, chemistry and biology) and social sciences (economics, geography, psychology) that highlights the international nature of this problem. We then develop an historical national case study of how mathematics for pre-university study in England has evolved, culminating in a recent policy move which mandates the assessment of mathematics within disciplines. Finally, by integrating these two distinct perspectives we discuss wider issues relating to mathematics for the transition to higher education.


Nowadays, data intensive applications are in constant demand and there is need of computing environments with better intelligent capabilities than those present in today's Database Management Systems (DBMS). To build such systems we need formalisms that can perform complicate inferences, obtain the appropriate conclusions, and explain the results. Research in argumentation could provide results in this direction, providing means to build interactive systems able to reason with large databases and/or different data sources. In this paper we propose an argumentation system able to deal with explicit uncertainty, a vital capability in modern applications. We have also provided the system with the ability to seamlessly incorporate uncertain and/or contradictory information into its knowledge base, using a modular upgrading and revision procedure


We study a caching problem that resembles a lossy Gray-Wyner network: A source produces vector samples from a Gaussian distribution, but the user is interested in the samples of only one component. The encoder first sends a cache message without any knowledge of the user's preference. Upon learning her request, a second message is provided in the update phase so as to attain the desired fidelity on that component. The cache is efficient if it exploits as much of the correlation in the source as possible, which connects to the notions of Wyner's common information (for high cache rates) and Watanabe's total correlation (for low cache rates). For the former, we extend known results for 2 Gaussians to multivariates by showing that common information is a simple linear program, which can be solved analytically for circulant correlation matrices. Total correlation in a Gaussian setting is less well-studied. We show that for bivariates and using Gaussian auxiliaries it is captured in the dominant eigenvalue of the correlation matrix. For multivariates the problem is a more difficult optimization over a non-convex domain, but we conjecture that circulant matrices may again be analytically solvable.


A novel technique for point rendering in a CUDA path tracer is introduced in this proposal. The approach makes it possible to render point represented geometries with global illumination effects. Octree data structure is combined in order for more efficient intersection determination. Furthermore, Octree enables the users/artists to choose the level of details of the rendered results to achieve the sketch of the image before final rendering. The proposed approach also allows the rendered points to be visualized with depth and occlusion sense, providing more accurate 3D point positions for users to design before rendering. Our efforts are put on the intersections between a tracing ray and points detected by the adapted Octree implementation and its traversal method. When ray-point intersection happens, we decide whether or not the point in the Octree node should be rendered. Results with different levels of details (Octree resolutions respectively), rendering iterations and adjustable point radius are shown.


We present a porous electrode theory for capacitive deionization with electrodes containing nanoparticles that consist of a redox-active intercalation material. A geometry of a desalination cell is considered which consists of two porous electrodes, two flow channels, and an anion-exchange membrane, and we use the Nernst-Planck theory to describe ion transport in the aqueous phase in all these layers. A single-salt solution is considered, with unequal diffusion coefficients for anions and cations. Similar to previous models for capacitive deionization and electrodialysis, we solve the dynamic two-dimensional equations by assuming that the flow of water, and thus the advection of ions, is zero in the electrode, and in the flow channel only occurs in the direction along the electrode and membrane. In all layers, diffusion and migration are only considered in the direction perpendicular to the flow of water. Electronic as well as ionic transport limitations within the nanoparticles are neglected, and instead the Frumkin isotherm (or regular solution model) is used to describe local chemical equilibrium of cations between the nanoparticles and the adjacent electrolyte, as a function of the electrode potential. Our model describes the dynamics of key parameters of the CDI process with intercalation electrodes, such as effluent salt concentration, the distribution of intercalated ions, cell voltage, and energy consumption.


Torsional oscillations generated by the internal combustion engine induce various NVH phenomena in the drivetrain system, one being transmission rattle. Palliatives devices such as the clutch predampers or dual mass flywheel have been used to mitigate these NVH phenomena. However, usually these devices are effective over a limited range of frequencies, and not so for broadband transient phenomenon, such as any impulsive actions. This paper considers the Targeted Energy Transfer (TET) method to mitigate torsional vibrations in automotive powertrains. TET is a concept which attempts to direct the mechanical (vibration) energy (in a nearly irreversible manner) from a source (primary system) to a strongly nonlinear attachment (Nonlinear Energy Sink – NES), where it is absorbed, redistributed and/or dissipated. In contrast to the classical powertrain palliative methods, NES should be capable of operating over a broader band of frequencies (with the additional aim of being lightweight and compact). Although the TET concept has been extensively studied for translational systems, there is a dearth of studies for rotational (torsional) ones. In the present work, preliminary parametric studies are performed on a reduced automotive powertrain model, incorporating a NES attachment. The NES parameters, including nonlinear stiffness, viscous linear damping and inertia are varied in order to determine NES effects on engine order (EO) vibration.


Questions of Poetics is Barrett Watten's major reassessment of the political history, social formation, and literary genealogy of Language writing. A key participant in the emergent bicoastal poetic avant-garde as poet, editor, and publisher, Watten has developed, over three decades of writing in poetics, a sustained account of its theory and practice. The present volume represents the core of Watten's critical writing and public lecturing since the millennium, taking up the historical origins and continuity of Language writing, from its beginnings to the present. Each chapter is a theoretical inquiry into an aspect of poetics in an expanded sense-from the relation of experimental poetry to cultural logics of liberation and political economy, to questions of community and the politics of the avant-garde, to the cultural contextswhere it is produced and intervenes. Each serves as a kind of thought experiment that theorizes and assesses the consequences of Language writing in expanded fields of meaning that include history, political theory, art history, and narrative theory. While all are grounded in a series of baseline questions of poetics, they also polemically address the currently turbulent debates on the politics of the avant-garde, especially Language writing, among emerging communities of poets. In manifold ways, Watten masterfully demonstrates the aesthetic and political aims of Language writing, its influence on emerging literary schools, and its present aesthetic, critical, andpolitical horizons. Questions of Poetics will be a major point of reference in continuing debates on poetry and literary history, a critical reexamination for already familiar readers and a clearly presented introduction for new ones.


In this paper we propose a description language for specifying motions for humanoid robots and for allowing humanoid robots to acquire motor skills. Locomotion greatly increases our ability to interact with our environments, which in turn increases our mental abilities. This principle also applies to humanoid robots. However, there are great difficulties to specify humanoid motions and to represent motor skills, which in most cases require four-dimensional space representations. We propose a representation framework that includes the following attributes: motion description layers, egocentric reference system, progressive quantized refinement, and automatic constraint satisfaction. We also outline strategies for acquiring new motor skills by learning from trial and error, macro approach, and programming. Then, we outline the development of a new humanoid motion description language called Cybele.


The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been viewed as a watershed event in dealing with corporate fraud. In addition to its extensive provisions dealing with internal controls and corporate accounting procedures, the law adopted new crimes and pushed the United States Sentencing Commission to enhance the Federal Sentencing Guidelines provisions for fraud and related offenses. Even before the adoption of the Act, the Commission had increased the potential punishment for white collar crimes by amending the loss table for fraud offenses. These two steps played a key role in the increased sentences imposed on defendants convicted for their role in corporate crimes, such as Bernie Ebbers (twenty-five years) and John Rigas (fifteen years). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act marked a change in the sentencing atmospherics for corporate crime that propelled judges to give out sentences that were unthinkable even five years earlier. This article considers how the Sarbanes-Oxley Act changed the approach to sentencing of white collar defendants involved in corporate crimes. It uses a hypothetical case to illustrate how sentences under the Guidelines have tripled from what they would have been just a few years earlier. It then looks at the recent Supreme Court decision in Gall v. United States that emphasized the discretion federal judges have even under the Sentencing Guidelines to shape sentences that reflect the individual circumstances of the defendant. The change in sentencing created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act may well be abating in the new era of discretion fostered by the Supreme Court.


The necessity for prolonged tissue culture manipulations limits the clinical application of many form of gene therapy in patients with malignancies. We hypothesized that granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) cDNA in a plasmid expression vector could be effectively introduced into resting tumor cells, without the need for tissue culture propagation prior to or following transfection, and that efficient expression of transgenic GM-CSF by the transfected tumor cells would confer an effective immune response against tumors. GM-CSF cDNA in expression vectors was coated onto gold particles and accelerated with a gene gun device into mouse and human tumor cells. Human tumor tissue transfected within 4 hr of surgery produced significant levels of transgenic human GM-CSF protein in vitro. Human GM-CSF was readily detectable in serum and at the injection site following subcutaneous implantation of these transfected tumor cells into nude mice. Transfected and irradiated murine B16 melanoma cells produced > or = 100 ng/ml murine GM-CSF/10(6) cells per 24 hr in vitro for at least 10 days. The antitumor efficacy of this nonviral approach was tested using irradiated B16 tumor cells that were transfected with mGM-CSF cDNA and injected into mice as tumor "vaccine". Subsequent challenge of these mice with nonirradiated, nontransfected B16 tumor cells showed that 58% of the animals wer protected from the tumor by the prior vaccine treatment. In contrast, only 2% of control animals were protected by prior treatment with irradiated B16 cells transfected with the vector containing the luciferase gene. These results suggest that particle-mediated transfection of fresh tumor explants with cytokine cDNA is an effective and clinically attractive approach for cancer therapy.


Smartphone consumers, app developers, and even mobile systems researchers operate under the assumption that performance differences between identical smartphones should be small. Consumers pick a model to purchase and don't consider that the specific device they leave the store with may vary quite dramatically from the identical models it sat next to on the shelf. App rating systems typically collect the model from reviewers, but not more detailed information-again, assuming that all instances of a particular model perform similarly. Even mobile systems researchers will conduct studies using small numbers of devices that fail to account or control for inherent differences between identical phones. Unfortunately seemingly-identical smartphones can in fact have very different performance characteristics. Note that we are not referring to differences in battery or Flash performance caused over time by wear. Inherent differences would separate two brand-new phones still in the original packaging. Our experiments show up to 20% performance and energy consumption differences between otherwise identical devices. These differences result from process variation in the manufacture of smartphone CPUs, which causes some CPUs to perform much more poorly than others. This paper explains the causes of this variation, measures its impacts, and discusses implications for smartphone researchers, software developers, and consumers.


Background and purpose of the study: Willingness to smoke and the negative consequences of smoking are among the main problems in general health all around the world. Therefore, the present research attempted to investigate students' perception and performance of smoking cigarettes at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences. Materials and methods: The present research is analytical and cross-sectional. The target population included all students at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in 2015. The sample size was 350. Students admitted in the same academic year were clustered based on their field of study and were selected in a systematic randomization method. To assess students' attitude towards smoking, Shore et al.'s Smoking Attitudes Scale was used. In order to measure their performance, Romito et al.'s Performance Evaluation Questionnaire was employed. The reliability and validity of both scales were already established. The collected data entered SPSS version 16 and the indices of central tendency, descriptive statistics and such statistical tests as independent-sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and chi-squared test were used to analyze the data. The significance level of results was set at ≤.05. Findings: participants' average age was 22.77±3.64 years. The mean score of attitude towards smoking was 50.80±9.87. A statistically significant difference was found between male and female students' attitude towards smoking (p E'.05). Similarly, a similar statistically significant difference was found between the attitudes of smokers and non-smokers (p E'.05).The former had a higher attitude score on average towards the act of smoking than the latter. Due to the debilitative effects of smoking, there is a need for extensive interventions to prevent the formation of a positive attitude towards smoking among university students and prevent the emergence of smoking behaviors among them.


Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are spreading around in multiple fields of applications because they perform measuring tasks in a flexible way [1]. In this presented work IEEE 802.15.4 protocol based Zigbee transceivers module are used to make the wireless sensor network. The sensor node will acquire and internally store data periodically. Starting times as well as the time intervals for the measurements can be freely programmed over the network system [2]. As soon as a mobile network is detected in its proximity the node will automatically transfer data. Optionally sensor data can be delivered on demand. When in its idle state the node remains in power-down mode in order to minimize power consumption. The system is based on an AVR microcontroller coupled to an RF-transceiver. In a sample application the system is interfaced to a piezoresistive pressure sensor, typically used to determine water levels in closed tanks or open aquaculture systems. Possible applications in the area of environmental monitoring will be presented (including tidal range measurements).


Around the world governments characterized by observers as populist have taken power. Many of their actions have been incompatible with tenets of modern liberalism. This has generated commentary suggesting that populism is itself incompatible with constitutionalism.

This Essay challenges that commentary. We agree that some variants of populism are incompatible with modern liberal constitutionalism but argue that the tension between populism as such and constitutionalism as such, though real, is significantly narrower than much commentary suggests. We begin in Section II by offering "bare-bones" definitions of populism and constitutionalism so that we can tease out precisely what the tension between them is. Section III turns to case studies of challenges to judicial independence, of the use of referendums, and of innovative methods of determining the public's views. As with our discussion of defining populism and constitutionalism, here we attempt to identify whether (or the degree to which) the case studies demonstrate a tension between populism and constitutionalism. Our conclusion is that sometimes we can see such a tension and sometimes we cannot, and that the analysis of specific populisms and their policies in relation to constitutionalism must be highly sensitive to context.

Section IV applies the argument to two developments in the United Kingdom: the Brexit referendum and the attempt by Boris Johnson to prorogue Parliament and the ensuing decision by the UK Supreme Court finding the prorogation unlawful. Here our conclusion once again that analysis of populism's relation to constitutionalism must be sensitive to context: The referendum was flawed but not in ways that cast a bad light on populism as such, and the prorogation, while perhaps unlawful, was not clearly anti-constitutional.

Overall we argue against generalized claims about populism as such and constitutionalism as such. There are many populisms and at least a few constitutionalisms, and scholars and observers should direct their attention to the questions posed by specific actions taken by individual populist governments. Sometimes populist governments will act in anti-constitutional ways, and sometimes they will not. We believe that this conclusion is appropriately deflationary.


The Restricted Isometric Property (R.I.P.) is a very important condition for recovering sparse vectors from high dimensional space. Traditional methods often rely on R.I.P or its relaxed variants. However, in real applications, features are often correlated to each other, which makes these assumptions too strong to be useful. In this paper, we study the sparse recovery problem in which the feature matrix is strictly non-R.I.P. We prove that when features exhibit cluster structures, which often happens in real applications, we are able to recover the sparse vector consistently. The consistency comes from our proposed density correction algorithm, which removes the variance of estimated cluster centers using cluster density. The proposed algorithm converges geometrically, achieves nearly optimal recovery bound O(s2 log(d)) where s is the sparsity and d is the nominal dimension.


The safety of industrial control systems (ICS) depends not only on comprehensive solutions for protecting information, but also on the timing and closure of vulnerabilities in the software of the ICS. The investigation of security incidents in the ICS is often greatly complicated by the fact that malicious software functions only within the computer's volatile memory. Obtaining the contents of the volatile memory of an attacked computer is difficult to perform with a guaranteed reliability, since the data collection procedure must be based on a reliable code (the operating system or applications running in its environment). The paper proposes a new instrumental method for obtaining the contents of volatile memory, general rules for implementing the means of collecting information stored in memory. Unlike software methods, the proposed method has two advantages: firstly, there is no problem in terms of reading the parts of memory, blocked by the operating system, and secondly, the resulting contents are not compromised by such malicious software. The proposed method is relevant for investigating security incidents of ICS and can be used in continuous monitoring systems for the security of ICS.


Batten, Jack. Oscar Peterson: The Man and His Jazz . Toronto: Tundra Books, 2012. Print. This young adult non-fiction novel explores the life of the legendary Canadian jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson. Beginning with an account of Peterson's 1949 breakthrough performance at Carnegie Hall as part of the influential Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concert series, Batten traces the seventy year musical career of Oscar Peterson in an engaging and insightful style. This book seamlessly combines a personal and musical biography of Peterson with a history of the development of jazz from the 1920s to the time of Peterson's death in 2007. True to the title of the book, Batten's is indeed one about both the man and his music. From Peterson's humble upbringing as the son of immigrants from the West Indies living in poverty in Montreal, the influence of his family on his personal and musical development is a consistent theme throughout the book. Batten does not hold back when describing the social conditions Peterson was operating under throughout his career. The racism Peterson encountered both at home and abroad, as well as the drug use prominent among jazz musicians is honestly explored, as are the personal tragedies Peterson faced, including his failed marriages and consistently poor health. Peterson's many longtime musical collaborations are explored in great detail, with Batten highlighting the influential performing and recording achievements of his career. From his longtime relationship with the jazz promoter Norman Granz, through the many iterations of Peterson's famous trio, Batten doesn't leave out the details at any point. The addition of multiple photographs, quotes from Peterson's teachers and collaborators, and a selected bibliography and discography add to the historical richness of this title. This book is recommended to the young adult reader with an interest in jazz history, and the life and accomplishments of one of Canada's most cherished musicians. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sean Luyk Sean is the Music Librarian for the Rutherford Humanities and Social Sciences Library at the University of Alberta. Sean holds an MA in Music Criticism and B.Mus from McMaster University, as well as an MLIS from the University of Western Ontario.


Horizontal‐slip along restraining bends of strike‐slip faults is often partitioned into a vertical component via splay faults. The active Susitna Glacier Thrust Fault (SGTF), as shown by its initiation of the 2002 M7.9 Denali Fault earthquake, lies south of, and intersects the dextral strike‐slip Denali Fault. Geochronology and thermochronology data from samples across the SGTF constrain the region's tectonic history and the role of thrusting in the formation of the eastern Alaska Range south of the Denali fault. U‐Pb zircon ages indicate intrusion of plutons in the footwall (~57 Ma) and hanging wall (~98 Ma). These U‐Pb zircon ages correlate to those from the Ruby Batholith/Kluane Terrane ~400 km east along the Denali Fault, supporting geologic correlations and hence constraints on long‐term slip rates. 40Ar/39Ar mica and K‐feldspar data from footwall and hanging wall samples (~54 to ~46 Ma) reflect cooling following magmatism and/or regional Eocene metamorphism related to ridge subduction. Combined with apatite fission track data (ages 43–28 Ma) and thermal models, both sides of the SGTF acted as a coherent block during the Eocene and early Oligocene. Contrasting apatite (U‐Th)/He ages across the Susitna Glacier (~25 Ma footwall, ~15 Ma hanging wall) suggest initiation of faulting during the middle Miocene. Episodic cooling and exhumation is related to thrusting on known or hypothesized faults that progressively activate due to varying partition of strain along the Denali Fault associated with changing kinematics and plate interaction (Yakutat microplate collision, flat‐slab subduction and relative plate motion change) at the southern Alaskan plate margin.


This research, carried out under the guidance of Mrs. A. Pontrandolfo, Professor at the Salerno University and Mrs. Rouveret, Professor at the Paris X University. Our main goal is to rebuild the diachronic, dynamical, more articulated and less fragmented picture of the types of occupation and transformation of the periurban area and of the northern and eastern chora of Poseidonia-Paestum, between the Sele river, in the north, and the actual town of Roccadaspide, in the east, in the period between the foundation of the Greek polis and the resulting Latin colony. The methodological assumptions at the basis of this study are: the "critical" revision of the known information in bibliography, filed documents, diaries of excavations and reports of the Superintendence officers integrated by the study of the paleoenvironmental dynamics, and verifications, formalization and aggregation of data aiming to an historical interpretation. The core of this research is the philological analyses of the materials obtained in different ways: an essential anchorage point and a basis for the interpreting proposals relevant to the dynamics of the occupation of the periurban space and the area in the north and in the east of Poseidonia- Paestum. To the census of the unpublished and the filed information, to their geo-localization – when possible – to the analyses of the materials some further data were added. These data are provided by the methodical surfaces reconnaissance which, since 2003, have been involving the territory of Poseidonia-Paestum. The archaeological research has shown that before the monumentalization, the city spaces are clearly defined and their outline is based on their functions and on their usages. The northerly and easterly territory is characterized by meaningful presences which play a fundamental role in relationship with the native elements since the beginning of the IV century BC and which adopt different values and connotations until the Romanization.


The static friction of compliant elastomers has proven important for industrial applications, including seals, and grips on tools and sports equipment. The design of load-dependent contact state may provide characteristic load-de-pendent frictional properties beyond that found on conventional rubber surfaces. Here we investigate the static friction, over a wide range of normal loads, between a flat glass surface and polyester meshes adhered on an elastomer surface. At low load the glass is supported only by the mesh members and the static friction is low. As normal load in-creases, the mesh members tend to dent into the elastomer and at the pore of the mesh the elastomer surface may make contact with the glass. The newly created contact with the elastomer makes the static friction increase with the higher friction coefficient. By tuning the structures, e.g., the aperture ratio, of meshes, we can extend the monotonic load-dependency of static friction of rubbers into the highly nonlinear range.


Cat's claw creeper, Macfadyena unguis-cati (L.) Gentry (Bignoniaceae) is a major environmental weed of riparian areas, rainforest communities and remnant natural vegetation in coastal Queensland and New South Wales, Australia. In densely infested areas, it smothers standing vegetation, including large trees, and causes canopy collapse. Quantitative data on the ecology of this invasive vine are generally lacking. The present study examines the underground tuber traits of M. unguis-cati and explores their links with aboveground parameters at five infested sites spanning both riparian and inland vegetation. Tubers were abundant in terms of density (~1000 per m2), although small in size and low in level of interconnectivity. M. unguis-cati also exhibits multiple stems per plant. Of all traits screened, the link between stand (stem density) and tuber density was the most significant and yielded a promising bivariate relationship for the purposes of estimation, prediction and management of what lies beneath the soil surface of a given M. unguis-cati infestation site. The study also suggests that new recruitment is primarily from seeds, not from vegetative propagation as previously thought. The results highlight the need for future biological-control efforts to focus on introducing specialist seed- and pod-feeding insects to reduce seed-output.


The majority of local governments implement social media into their web sites and means of communications without any strategy or knowledge about their advantages or perils. Academic research about how local governments use social media platforms is scarce. Most of the research is focused on services, comparative perspectives or assessment of e-government. Local governments are blind-folded on where they efforts will arrive. The purpose of this research is to provide some direction to the implementation of technology in governments. Based on the diffusion of innovations theory proposed by Rogers we analyze data of Twitter and Facebook accounts from 32 Mexican local governments from 2010 to 2014 and place them on each category. According to this theory and our sample, just one local government could be considered an innovator, four local governments considered early adopters, eleven are considered early majority, other eleven are considered late majority and five of them are considered as laggards. This will be an example of how social media adoption has been implemented on government actions.


Current distributed computing and resource management infrastructures (e.g., Cluster and Grid) suffer
from a wide variety of problems related to resource management, which include scalability bottleneck,
resource allocation delay, limited quality-of-service (QoS) support, and lack of cost-aware and service
level agreement (SLA) mechanisms.
This thesis addresses these issues by presenting a cost-effective resource management solution
which introduces the possibility of managing geographically distributed resources in resource units that
are under the control of a Virtual Authority (VA). A VA is a collection of resources controlled, but not
necessarily owned, by a group of users or an authority representing a group of users. It leverages the
fact that different resources in disparate locations will have varying usage levels. By creating smaller
divisions of resources called VAs, users would be given the opportunity to choose between a variety of
cost models, and each VA could rent resources from resource providers when necessary, or could potentially
rent out its own resources when underloaded. The resource management is simplified since the
user and owner of a resource recognize only the VA because all permissions and charges are associated
directly with the VA. The VA is controlled by a 'rental' policy which is supported by a pool of resources
that the system may rent from external resource providers. As far as scheduling is concerned, the VA is
independent from competitors and can instead concentrate on managing its own resources. As a result,
the VA offers scalable resource management with minimal infrastructure and operating costs.
We demonstrate the feasibility of the VA through both a practical implementation of the prototype
system and an illustration of its quantitative advantages through the use of extensive simulations. First,
the VA concept is demonstrated through a practical implementation of the prototype system. Further, we
perform a cost-benefit analysis of current distributed resource infrastructures to demonstrate the potential
cost benefit of such a VA system. We then propose a costing model for evaluating the cost effectiveness
of the VA approach by using an economic approach that captures revenues generated from applications
and expenses incurred from renting resources. Based on our costing methodology, we present rental
policies that can potentially offer effective mechanisms for running distributed and parallel applications
without a heavy upfront investment and without the cost of maintaining idle resources. By using real
workload trace data, we test the effectiveness of our proposed rental approaches.
Finally, we propose an extension to the VA framework that promotes long-term negotiations and
rentals based on service level agreements or long-term contracts. Based on the extended framework,
we present new SLA-aware policies and evaluate them using real workload traces to demonstrate their effectiveness in improving rental decisions.


With the discovery of new exploit techniques, new protection mechanisms are needed as well. Mitigations like DEP (Data Execution Prevention) or ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) created a significantly more difficult environment for vulnerability exploitation. Attackers, however, have recently developed new exploitation methods which are capable of bypassing the operating system's security protection mechanisms. In this paper we present a short summary of novel and known mitigation techniques against return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks. The techniques described in this article are related mostly to x86-32 processors and Microsoft Windows operating systems.


BK channels are large-conductance calcium- and voltage-activated potassium channels with diverse properties. Knockout of the accessory BK β4-subunit in hippocampus dentate gyrus granule neurons causes BK channels to change properties from slow-gated type II channels to fast-gated type I channels that sharpen the action potential, increase the fast afterhyperpolarization (fAHP) amplitude, and increase spike frequency. Here we studied the calcium channels that contribute to fast-gated BK channel activation and increased excitability of β4 knockout neurons. By using pharmacological blockers during current-clamp recording, we find that BK channel activation during the fAHP is dependent on ryanodine receptor activation. In contrast, L-type calcium channel blocker (nifedipine) affects the BK channel-dependent repolarization phase of the action potential but has no effect on the fAHP. Reducing BK channel activation during the repolarization phase with nifedipine, or during the fAHP with ryanodine, indicated that it is the BK-mediated increase of the fAHP that confers proexcitatory effects. The proexcitatory role of the fAHP was corroborated using dynamic current clamp. Increase or decrease of the fAHP amplitude during spiking revealed an inverse relationship between fAHP amplitude and interspike interval. Finally, we show that the seizure-prone ryanodine receptor gain-of-function (R2474S) knockin mice have an unaltered repolarization phase but larger fAHP and increased AP frequency compared with their control littermates. In summary, these results indicate that an important role of the β4-subunit is to reduce ryanodine receptor-BK channel functional coupling during the fAHP component of the action potential, thereby decreasing excitability of dentate gyrus neurons.


Erythrocytes serve as reservoirs for cis- and trans-epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs). Incubation of rat red blood cells (RBCs) with cis- and trans-EETs produces threo- and erythro-dihydroxyeicosatrienoic acids, respectively. The Vmax of EET hydrolysis by rat intact RBCs (2.35 ± 0.24 pmol/min/108 RBCs for 14,15-trans-EET) decreased by approximately 2 to 3-fold sequentially from 14,15-, 11,12- to 8,9-EETs for both cis- and trans-isomers. The Vmax of trans-EET hydrolysis by RBCs is approximately 2 to 3 times that of the corresponding cis-EETs. Incubation of EETs with recombinant murine soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) yielded the same geometric and regio preferences of EET hydrolysis as with rat intact RBCs. The principal epoxide hydrolase activity for EET hydrolysis (approximately 90%) is present in the erythrocyte cytosol. Western blots of sEH suggested a concentration of sEH protein to be approximately 2 μg/mg protein or 0.4 μg/109 RBCs. The apparent Km values of EETs were between 1 and 2 μM, close to the Km for purified sEH as reported. Erythrocyte hydration of cis- and trans-EETs was blocked by sEH inhibitors, 1,3-dicyclohexylurea and 4-[4-(3-adamantan-1-ylureido)cyclohexyloxy]benzoic acid. Erythrocyte sEH activity was inhibited more than 80% by 0.2% bovine serum albumin in the buffer. Preferred hydrolysis of 14,15-EETs and trans-epoxides characterizes sEH activity in RBCs that regulates the hydrolysis and release of cis- and trans-EETs in the circulation. Inhibition of sEH has produced antihypertensive and antiinflammatory effects. Because plasma trans-EETs would increase more than cis-EETs with sEH inhibition, the potential roles of trans-EETs and erythrocyte sEH in terms of circulatory regulation deserve attention.


Muller, Gilbert. William Cullen Bryant: Author of America. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. 410 pp. $30. Born during the United States' infancy, William Cullen Bryant became one of the country's first literary giants. When he died at age eighty-three, he was an internationally known poet with a resume that included long stints as an editor, editorial writer, ttavel writer, and publisher. Bryant showed literary promise early, becoming a published poet at twelve, but his fathet pushed him to study law. He eventually became so disenchanted as a lawyer and so successful as a poet that the "literary adventurer" left his native Massachusetts in 1 825 for the promises of fast-growing Manhattan. A year later, the New-York Evening Post's editor, William Coleman, was severely injured in a carriage accident and hired him as an assistant. He would be associated with the Post until his death in 1878. During his long life, Bryant developed a lengthy list of friendships that included Samuel EB. Morse, Richard Henry Dana, and James Fenimore Cooper. The politicians on whom he opined ranged from Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay to Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Bryant's life and writings are recounted in Gilbert H. Muller's William Cullen Bryant: Author of America. A professor emeritus of English at City University of New York, Muller notes that Bryant is largely forgotten and sets out to "restore Bryant to his rightful place as a compelling and exemplary figure in American life and letters." As part of his effott, he consulted biographies written by Bryant's son-in-law, Parke Godwin (1883), and Charles H. Brown (1971), as well as a six-volume collection of his letters not available to earlier biographers. The result is a well-documented tome that succeeds in describing Bryant's accomplishments when newspapering was personal and competing editors sometimes literally clashed in the streets (chapter 6 begins with an account of a brawl in which Bryant took a whip to William L. Stone, editor of the rival Commercial Advertiser) . The book also succeeds in vividly describing the times in which Bryant lived. One memorable passage depicts the "notoriously filthy" New York City of his early years there. One can almost feel the grit and smell the squalor of the city, where swine herds "roamed freely, devouring garbage while leaving their own waste behind." It further succeeds in describing his maturation as an editor, able to rationalize his support for President Jackson's forcible removal of Native Americans from the Southeast and then years later becoming one of the leading advocates of President Lincoln's efforts to end the enslavement of African- Americans. …


Srinivas Aravamudan here reveals how "Oriental" tales, pseudo-ethnographies, sexual fantasies, and political satires took Europe by storm during the eighteenth century. Naming this body of fiction "Enlightenment Orientalism", he poses a range of urgent questions that uncovers the interdependence of "Oriental" tales and domestic fiction, thereby challenging standard scholarly narratives about the rise of the novel. More than mere exoticism, "Oriental" tales fascinated ordinary readers as well as intellectuals, taking the fancy of philosophers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot in France, and writers such as Defoe, Swift, and Goldsmith in Britain. Aravamudan shows that "Enlightenment Orientalism" was a significant movement that criticized irrational European practices even while sympathetically bridging differences among civilizations. A sophisticated reinterpretation of the history of the novel, "Enlightenment Orientalism" is sure to be welcomed as a landmark work in eighteenth-century studies.


Almost a decade ago, John Braithwaite (1989) put forth an innovative theory of crime causation in Crime, Shame and Reintegration. In his theory of reintegrative shaming, Braithwaite locates the source of crime control in reactions to deviance that simultaneously evoke remorse from offenders for the rules they have violated and reinforce the individual's membership in the community of law-abiding citizens. In the period since its publication, the theory has influenced both the fields of criminal justice and academic criminology. However, apparent interest in the theory has not been translated into empirical tests of it. This article argues that the scarcity of empirical tests stems in large part from the lack of theoretical clarity in Braithwaite's statement of the theory. In general, definitions of key concepts and strategies for their measurement are provided at a minimum level and at times the theory omits necessary considerations. The purpose of this article is to correct these errors and demonstrate how the microlevel portion of the theory can be tested and thereby encourage empirical tests of a potentially valuable theory of crime causation.


In this thesis, novel two-dimensional materials are grown by molecular beam epitaxy and studied in detail. The surface structure is investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and low energy electron diffraction (LEED), whereas the magnetic properties are determined by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). The experimental results are supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

The rare earth metal europium (Eu) intercalates at elevated temperatures underneath graphene (Gr) on iridium (Ir), driven by a large energy gain. Low energy electron microscopy (LEEM) and photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM) show that penetration at wrinkles is the dominating pathway for intercalation. Depending on the coverage, the Eu atoms arrange in a (2x2) or a (√3x√3)R30° superstructure with respect to Gr. The intercalated material forms complex patterns of stripes and islands. The underlying mechanism is explained to be an interplay of local binding inhomogeneities and relaxation of pre-exisiting strain in Gr. As a side benefit, the initial strain distribution is directly visualized by local variations in the intercalation step density.

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) reveals that Eu and cesium (Cs)intercalation induce a strong local n-doping. By deposition of cationic adsorbates onto partially intercalated Gr a preferential binding to the non-intercalated regions is found. This preference is attributed to changes in the local work function caused by the n-doping. DFT calculations show that charge redistributions and substrate-dependent screening yield corrections to this elementary model.

Moreover, fully closed Eu monolayers are grown on intercalated Gr and structurally compared with the growth of Eu on pristine Gr. Furthermore, the structure of Eu on Ir(111) is investigated. For deposition of gadolinium (Gd) on Ir(111), alloying with the substrate is observed and a comparison to other surface alloys is drawn. The two intercalated Eu layers have fundamentally different magnetic properties: Whereas the (2x2) structure is paramagnetic, the (√3x√3)R30° layer shows a substantial magnetic coupling. For the latter, a strong in-plane anisotropy arising from the low aspect ratio is found. DFT calculations indicate the relevance of the Ir substrate for the magnetic coupling, which explains deviations from the corresponding graphite intercalation compound. For samples with Eu adsorbed on top of Gr a partial oxidation to europium oxide (EuO) is identified, which dominates the magnetic properties.

Moreover, the magnetic properties of cobalt (Co) clusters on the Gr/Ir(111) moire are investigated. An improved recipe for the cluster growth reduces undesired effects of cluster coalescence. Small platinum-seeded Pt15Co28 clusters are superparamagnetic at 10 K, whereas larger Ir50Co500 and Co2700 clusters exhibit a hysteresis due to the higher blocking temperature. The orbital moment is enhanced for the smallest clusters and gradually decreases towards the bulk value with increasing cluster size. The clusters do not show magnetic anisotropy, indicating a weak interaction with the substrate. Furthermore, rhodium (Rh) clusters are analyzed, but they do not reveal magnetic moments.

Finally, an O terminated polar EuO(111) bilayer of high quality and exceptional stability is grown on Ir(111). DFT calculations show that the interlayer spacing is strongly reduced compared to the bulk material, which results in an expanded in-plane lattice parameter and rotational epitaxy. The layer contraction reduces together with a surface metalization the electrostatic potential of the film. For higher coverages and Eu rich growth conditions the polarity is additionally reduced by a partial Eu adlayer. The apparent height of the EuO(111) islands in STM strikingly depends on the type of co-adsorbed species on the adjacent Ir terraces, which can be attributed to different work functions. The EuO(111) bilayer does not exhibit ferromagnetism down to 45K as revealed by magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) measurements.


This thesis explores processes of following in the UK public sector, and sheds light on individuals' experiences of following authentically. It addresses calls for extending understandings of followership and, informed by the empirical data, adds to models of authentic followership.

By taking a relational constructionist perspective, the thesis focuses on processes of following, recognising these as on going and as occurring in relation to multiple others and within multiple contexts. This study adopts a follower-focused approach, placing followers as the central focus of the study both theoretically and methodologically. The thesis develops links between the theoretical areas of followership and employee voice, to problematise and inform, through the study's emergent findings, contemporary understandings of authentic following.

This qualitative study employed a multiple-method research design consisting of interviews, visual research diaries and photo-elicitation interviews. Through this, participants shared their experiences and, through the design's staged and reflexive approach, gave descriptions and understandings of their current and past experiences of engaging in following. Thematic analysis was utilised to interpret the data and the findings, across the multiple data sources and data types, were presented thematically.

The use of multiple and visual based data collection methods, which is claimed as a methodological contribution to the followership field, provides rich insights into the lived experiences of individuals doing following and, particularly, highlights the importance of visibility, value and voice, within an overarching theme of agency. Processes of following in this thesis are thus conceptualised as individuals acting independently and having choice in the ways that they engage in following, whilst also recognising the structures in which they are located. The thesis proposes a new framework for following authentically, highlighting the complex ways in which visibility, value and voice interact.


Murray, Fang and colleagues (2006, 2008) demonstrated that the Ponzo illusion was reflected in the spatial pattern of activity in primary visual cortex (V1). They presented two rings at close and far apparent depths in a 3D scene (Fang et al. 2008). When subjects fixated its center, the far ring appeared to be larger and occupy a more eccentric portion of the visual field, relative to the close ring. Using fMRI, they found that the spatial distribution of V1 activity induced by the far ring was also shifted toward a more eccentric representation of the visual field, whereas that induced by the close ring was shifted toward the foveal representation. However, the nature of the V1 activity shifts remains largely unknown. A possible explanation is the position shift of receptive field of V1 neurons. Here, we used the fMRI-based population receptive field (pRF) mapping technique to test this possibility. We used the same stimuli as those in Fang et al. (2008). The magnitude of the Ponzo illusion was measured with a method of constant stimuli. The far ring appeared to be 0.17 degrees larger than the close ring. In the pRF mapping experiment, flickering checkered rings with various sizes were presented in the 3D scene and their center coincided with that of either the far ring or the close ring. Subjects were required to detect occasional, brief pauses of flickering. We found that, relative to the close ring, the pRF positions of the voxels in V1 and V2 responding to the far ring were closer to fixation, consistent with the perceptual appearance of the far and close rings. Furthermore, the pRF position shift in V1 significantly correlated with the illusion magnitude across individual subjects. These findings make headways towards unraveling the neural mechanisms of the Ponzo illusion. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous organizations have shifted to remote work, telework, or work from home (WFH) for the employees' safety. However, remote work reduces motivation, especially if employees have no choice on where to work. Apart from the motivation of employees, the levels of engagement are also decreasing. With the emergence of telework, numerous challenges are also identified. This research identifies, enumerates, and establishes the need for gamification, a trending concept that uses game elements (or motivational affordances which include points, leaderboards, badges, etc.) to non-game context (marketing/commerce, education, work, etc.) in remote work, to increase the levels of engagement and motivation, as well as to overcome the challenges employees encounter in the new set-up. With the lack of in-depth literature on gamification together with the emergence of work-from-home in the new normal, the researcher used a qualitative design to explore the concept and interviewed 10 employees from the Philippines who were forced to work remotely. The participants for the interview were chosen using the Purposive Sampling method and were asked about their perceptions on motivation, employee engagement, and games, as well as their perception towards implementing gamification in their new workplace. The interviews were done through online interviews (conference call). This research shows a positive response and potential effect on leveraging both motivation and employee engagement through gamification. With the perceptions of the participants toward gamification, this paper could help develop concepts or theories for potential quantitative research, as well as encourage organizations to implement gamification in the workplace to avoid potential problems.


We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times...-- from The Soul at Work Capital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean by the Soul -- language, creativity, affects -- is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value -- while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens. In this, his newest book, Franco "Bifo" Berardi -- key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Felix Guattari -- addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness. The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext(e) edition is also the book's first appearance in any language.


Abstract In biological fluids nanoparticles bind a range of molecules, particularly proteins, on their surface. The resulting protein corona influences biological activity and fate of nanoparticle in vivo. Corona composition is often determined by the biological milieu encountered at the entry portal into the body, and, can therefore, depend on the route of exposure to the nanoparticle. For environmental nanoparticles where exposure is by inhalation, this will be lung lining fluid. This study examined plasma and bronchoalveolar fluid (BALF) protein binding to engineered and environmental nanoparticles. We hypothesized that protein corona on nanoparticles would influence nanoparticle uptake and subsequent pro-inflammatory biological response in macrophages. All nanoparticles bound plasma and BALF proteins, but the profile of bound proteins varied between nanoparticles. Focusing on diesel exhaust nanoparticles (DENP), we identified proteins bound from plasma to include fibrinogen, and those bound from BALF to include albumin and surfactant proteins A and D. The presence on DENP of a plasma-derived corona or one of purified fibrinogen failed to evoke an inflammatory response in macrophages. However, coronae formed in BALF increased DENP uptake into macrophages two fold, and increased nanoparticulate carbon black (NanoCB) uptake fivefold. Furthermore, a BALF-derived corona increased IL-8 release from macrophages in response to DENP from 1720 ± 850 pg/mL to 5560 ± 1380 pg/mL (p = 0.014). These results demonstrate that the unique protein corona formed on nanoparticles plays an important role in determining biological reactivity and fate of nanoparticle in vivo. Importantly, these findings have implications for the mechanism of detrimental properties of environmental nanoparticles since the principle route of exposure to such particles is via the lung.


Introduction Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common musculoskeletal disease. Current treatments for OA are mainly symptomatic and inadequate since none results in restoration of fully functional cartilage. Hyaluronic Acid (HA) intra-articular injections are widely accepted for the treatment of pain associated to OA. The goal of HA viscosupplementation is to reduce pain and improve viscoelasticity of synovial fluid. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been also employed to treat OA to possibly induce cartilage regeneration. The combination of HA and PRP could supply many advantages for tissue repair. Indeed, it conjugates HA viscosupplementation with PRP regenerative properties. The aim of this study was to evaluate the rheological and biological properties of different HA compositions in combination with PRP in order to identify (i) the viscoelastic features of the HA-PRP blends, (ii) their biological effect on osteoarthritic chondrocytes and (iii) HA formulations suitable for use in combination with PRP. Materials and Methods HA/PRP blends have been obtained mixing human PRP and three different HA at different concentrations: 1) Sinovial, 0.8% (SN); 2) Sinovial Forte 1.6% (SF); 3) Sinovial HL 3.2% (HL); 4) Hyalubrix 1.5% (HX). Combinations of phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and the four HA types were used as control. Rheological measurements were performed on an Anton PaarMCR-302 rheometer. Amplitude sweep, frequency sweep and rotational measurements were performed and viscoelastic properties were evaluated. The rheological data were validated performing the tests in presence of Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) up to ultra-physiological concentration (7%). Primary osteoarthritic chondrocytes were cultured in vitro with the HA and PRP blends in the culture medium for one week. Cell viability, proliferation and glycosaminoglycan (GAG) content were assessed. Results PRP addition to HA leads to a decrease of viscoelastic shear moduli and increase of the crossover point, due to a pure dilution effect. For viscosupplements with HA concentration below 1% the viscoelasticity is mostly lost. Results were validated also in presence of proteins, which in synovial fluid are more abundant than HA. Chondrocytes proliferated overtime in all different culture conditions. The proliferation rate was higher in chondrocytes cultured in the media containing PRP compared to the cultures with different HA alone. GAG content was significantly higher in chondrocytes cultured in PRP and HL blend. Discussion We investigated the rheological and biological properties of four different HA concentrations when combined with PRP giving insights on viscoelastic and biological properties of a promising approach for future OA therapy. Our data demonstrate that PRP addition is not detrimental to the viscosupplementation effect of HA. Viscosupplements containing low HA concentration are not indicated for combination with PRP, as the viscoelastic properties are lost. Although having the same rheological behavior of SF and HX, HL was superior in stimulating extracellular matrix production in vitro.


Water, sanitation, and hygiene are issues of substantial public health importance. Community-based participatory research approaches such as photovoice can help explore and identify determinants that influence sanitation and hygiene-related behaviours. This study aimed to use photovoice as part of the formative research process to increase understanding of youth's perceptions of the cultural and contextual factors that influence sanitation and hygiene-related behaviours in Thirumalaikodi, India. First, a school was recruited using convenience sampling; next, 10 participants were purposively selected to participate in an information meeting, seven photo discussion sessions, and one wrap-up session over a three-week period. In each photo discussion session, participant groups selected one 'trigger' photograph, and through a structured discussion using SHOWED mnemonic questions (a series of questions that ask participants to describe and reflect upon a chosen photograph), generated a new understanding of issues related to water, sanitation, and hygiene. All sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Conventional content analysis was used to analyse photo discussion session text. Findings revealed that factors such as social structure, education, and culture influence behaviours that determine the sanitary conditions of an individual's private and public spaces. Furthermore, participants described how descriptive norms generated practices (e.g. littering) that were reinforced and maintained by limited access to waste management systems, attitudinal indifference, and generational beliefs. Findings yielded an in-depth understanding of youth's perceptions of the cultural and contextual factors that influence sanitation and hygiene-related behaviours. This study also contributes to the advancement of participatory applications in formative research and intervention adaptation processes.


A camera module employing spherical single-element lens imaging system (SSLIS) is introduced in this study. This type of imaging system can be used in compact digital cameras or mobile phone cameras, and it provides the advantages of simple design, reduced device bulkiness, and reduced manufacturing costs. When compared with conventional camera modules, our system produces radially variant blurred images, which can be satisfactorily restored by means of a polar domain deconvolution algorithm proposed in our previous study. In this study, we demonstrate an improved version of this algorithm that enables full-field-of-view (FOV) image restoration instead of the partial FOV restoration obtained via our previous algorithm. This improvement is realized by interpolating the upper and arc-shaped boundaries of the panoramic polar image such that the ringing artifacts around the center and four boundaries of the restored Cartesian image are greatly suppressed. The effectiveness of the improved algorithm is verified by image restoration of both computer simulated images and real-world scenes captured by the spherical single lens camera module. The quality of the restored image depends on the overall sparsity of all the point spread function (PSF) block Toeplitz with circulant blocks (BTCB) matrices used to restore a radially blurred image.


Despite the separation between classical and modern theories of government, contributors to Aristotle and Modern Politics find Aristotle a useful interlocutor for assessing both possibilities and limitations in contemporary politics. In this collection, noted political scientists, theologians, and philosophers discuss the magnitude of Aristotle's presence in contemporary debate and demonstrate some of the ways in which Aristotle sheds new light on contemporary problems. This engaging book also exhibits the persistence of political philosophy at a time when the pervasive influence of "ideology" and "historicism" lead many to deny its possibility. Although the authors of these essays differ on the nature of Aristotle's contribution, all are united by the conviction that he has something important to teach citizens of modern political societies. If the fundamental principles of modern politics were drawn from critical reflections of reason over and against the imposition of authority under its various guises, modern politics can best sustain itself by nurturing the critical attitude that initially brought it into being. Paradoxically, serious engagement with the "preliberal" thought of Aristotle can render contemporary debate more fruitful by bringing to light subtle limitations in the political discourse of any era, including our own. If the modern understanding of freedom is primarily freedom to speak and think for oneself, the essays in Aristotle and Modern Politics exhibit the persistence of political philosophy by thinking beyond limits often constricting contemporary paradigms.


A common assumption in multimodal learning is the completeness of training data, i.e., full modalities are available in all training examples. Although there exists research endeavor in developing novel methods to tackle the incompleteness of testing data, e.g., modalities are partially missing in testing examples, few of them can handle incomplete training modalities. The problem becomes even more challenging if considering the case of severely missing, e.g., ninety percent of training examples may have incomplete modalities. For the first time in the literature, this paper formally studies multimodal learning with missing modality in terms of flexibility (missing modalities in training, testing, or both) and efficiency (most training data have incomplete modality). Technically, we propose a new method named SMIL that leverages Bayesian meta-learning in uniformly achieving both objectives. To validate our idea, we conduct a series of experiments on three popular benchmarks: MM-IMDb, CMU-MOSI, and avMNIST. The results prove the state-of-the-art performance of SMIL over existing methods and generative baselines including autoencoders and generative adversarial networks.


The cycling bioluminescence of Arabidopsis plants carrying a firefly luciferase fusion construct was used to identify mutant individuals with aberrant cycling patterns. Both long- and short-period mutants were recovered. A semidominant short-period mutation, timing of CAB expression (toc1), was mapped to chromosome 5. The toc1 mutation shortens the period of two distinct circadian rhythms, the expression of chlorophyll a/b-binding protein (CAB) genes and the movements of primary leaves, although toc1 mutants do not show extensive pleiotropy for other phenotypes.


Abstract The present study approaches the Spanish postposed constructions creo Ø and creo yo '[p], [I] think' from a cognitive-constructionist perspective. It is argued that both constructions are to be distinguished from one another because creo Ø has a subjective function, while in creo yo, it is the intersubjective dimension that is particularly prominent. The present investigation takes both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective. With regard to the latter, the problem of quantitative representativity is addressed. The discussion posed the question of how empirical research can feed back into theory, more precisely, into the framework of Cognitive Construction Grammar. The data to be analyzed here are retrieved from the corpora Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual and Corpus del Español.


Two cDNA clones encoding chitinase were isolated from a root nodule cDNA library of Elaeagnus umbellata by the hybridization-competition method. The two clones, EuNOD-CHT1 and EuNOD-CHT2, encode for 335 and 317 amino acid residues with the molecular mass of mature proteins being 33.3 and 31.1 kDa, respectively. The two chitinases showed similar protein structures consisting of four domains: hydrophobic signal peptide domain, cysteine-rich chitin-binding domain, hinge domain, and catalytic domain. The EuNOD-CHT1 gene showed similar expression levels in root nodules and leaves, with no detection of transcripts in the roots. The EuNOD-CHT2 gene was expressed at similarly high levels in the roots and root nodules, but at a very low level in the leaves. In situ hybridization showed that EuNOD-CHT1 transcripts were strongly detected in the meristem zone, but weakly detected in the outer cortex layer of the root nodule and in the uninfected cells of the fixation zone. On the other hand, EuNOD-CHT2 transcripts were strongly detected in the infected cells of the fixation zone and central vascular system, but weakly detected in the senescence zone. Our results suggest that the two chitinases may play different biological roles in the root nodule. EuNOD-CHT2 may be involved in a defense response against internal symbionts, external pathogens, or both, while EuNOD-CHT1 may be involved in normal plant development as well as in a defensive role against external pathogens.