Eggshell ash obtained by incinerating Fowls' eggshells to ash has been established to be a good accelerator for cement-bound materials and this would be useful for road construction work at the peak of rainy seasons for reducing setting time of stabilized road pavements. However this should be achieved not at the expense of other vital properties of the stabilized matrix. This is part of the effort in adding value to agricultural materials which probably cause disposal problems. Thus this study aimed at determining the effect of eggshell ash on the strength properties of cement-stabilized lateritic soil. The lateritic soil was classified to be A-6(2) in AASHTO rating system and reddish-brown clayey sand (SC) in the Unified Classification System. Constant cement contents of 6% and 8% were added to the lateritic soil with variations in eggshell ash content of 0% to 10% at 2% intervals. All proportions of cement and eggshell ash contents were measured in percentages by weight of the dry soil. The Compaction test, California Bearing Ratio test, Unconfined Compressive Strength test and Durability test were carried out on the soil-cement eggshell ash mixtures. The increase in eggshell ash content increased the Optimum Moisture Content but reduced the Maximum Dry Density of the soil-cement eggshell ash mixtures. Also the increase in eggshell ash content considerably increased the strength properties of the soil-cement eggshell ash mixtures up to 35% in the average but fell short of the strength requirements except the durability requirement was satisfied.


Protein synthesis in the chloroplast is carried out by chloroplast ribosomes (chloro-ribosome) and regulated in a light-dependent manner. Chloroplast or plastid ribosomal proteins (PRPs) generally are larger than their bacterial counterparts, and chloro-ribosomes contain additional plastid-specific ribosomal proteins (PSRPs); however, it is unclear to what extent these proteins play structural or regulatory roles during translation. We have obtained a three-dimensional cryo-EM map of the spinach 70S chloro-ribosome, revealing the overall structural organization to be similar to bacterial ribosomes. Fitting of the conserved portions of the x-ray crystallographic structure of the bacterial 70S ribosome into our cryo-EM map of the chloro-ribosome reveals the positions of PRP extensions and the locations of the PSRPs. Surprisingly, PSRP1 binds in the decoding region of the small (30S) ribosomal subunit, in a manner that would preclude the binding of messenger and transfer RNAs to the ribosome, suggesting that PSRP1 is a translation factor rather than a ribosomal protein. PSRP2 and PSRP3 appear to structurally compensate for missing segments of the 16S rRNA within the 30S subunit, whereas PSRP4 occupies a position buried within the head of the 30S subunit. One of the two PSRPs in the large (50S) ribosomal subunit lies near the tRNA exit site. Furthermore, we find a mass of density corresponding to chloro-ribosome recycling factor; domain II of this factor appears to interact with the flexible C-terminal domain of PSRP1. Our study provides evolutionary insights into the structural and functional roles that the PSRPs play during protein synthesis in chloroplasts.


The Indicators of Integration framework—a conceptual framework defining core domains of refugee integration—has had a significant impact on the discourse surrounding refugee integration and a major role in shaping policy, practice and academic debate. Drawing on an innovative participatory mapping approach, this study examined the social connections of isolated single refugee men from Iran and Afghanistan (highlighted as particularly marginalized) and the implications for their mental health and wellbeing. Findings indicated very low levels of contact with family, local friends or local services, difficulties establishing trust and few opportunities for reciprocal relationships. The article makes an important contribution to the field of refugee integration in a number of ways. It suggests that the role of trust should be made explicit within the Indicators of Integration framework and be included as a 'Facilitator' of integration. It challenges Putnam's simple binary distinction between bonding and bridging relationships and suggests a new conceptualization based on a continuum between bonds and bridges. It offers theoretical innovation by bringing together the concept of reciprocity with Hobfoll's resource-conservation model to offer new insights into the way domains of the Framework interact. Its important contribution is in critiquing Putnam's reliance on the idealization of community solidarity and suggesting conceptualizations of integration must be informed by the impact of intersecting but differentiated communities. Two key priorities emerge for policy and practice: enabling asylum seekers and refugees to develop sufficient close bonding relationships and finding more effective ways of building knowledge and trust of relevant resources and services.


In this paper, we develop a theoretical model that provides an additional explanation for the forest transition based on a trade liberalisation scenario. Furthermore, in contrast with most explanations, in which the forest transition can only take place at a local level at the expense of other areas, ours is capable of supporting such phenomenon at a worldwide level. We introduce a renewable natural resource (wood), used as an input by manufacturing firms, in a framework with economic geography foundations: transport costs affect the distribution of firms between countries. In a general equilibrium, the results reproduce the forest transition at a global scale: a decrease in transport costs (in particular, that of the natural resource) has a negative effect on the worldwide stock of the natural resource in the short-term; however, this effect is offset during the transition as a consequence of industrial reallocation between countries and eventually disappears in the long-run.


This thesis examines four main subjects; consumer federated Internet Identity Management
(IdM), text analysis to detect grooming in Internet chat, a system for using steganographed
emoticons as 'digital fingerprints' in instant messaging and a systems analysis of online child
protection.
The Internet was never designed to support an identity framework. The current username /
password model does not scale well and with an ever increasing number of sites and services
users are suffering from password fatigue and using insecure practises such as using the same
password across websites. In addition users are supplying personal information to vast
number of sites and services with little, if any control over how that information is used.
A new identity metasystem promises to bring federated identity, which has found success in
the enterprise to the consumer, placing the user in control and limiting the disclosure of
personal information. This thesis argues though technical feasible no business model exists to
support consumer IdM and without a major change in Internet culture such as a breakdown in
trust and security a new identity metasystem will not be realised.
Is it possible to detect grooming or potential grooming from a statistical examination of
Internet chat messages? Using techniques from speaker verification can grooming
relationships be detected? Can this approach improve on the leading text analysis technique –
Bayesian trigram analysis? Using a novel feature extraction technique and Gaussian Mixture
Models (GMM) to detect potential grooming proved to be unreliable. Even with the benefit
of extensive tuning the author doubts the technique would match or improve upon Bayesian
analysis. Around 80% of child grooming is blatant with the groomer disguising neither their
age nor sexual intent. Experiments conducted with Bayesian trigram analysis suggest this
could be reliably detected, detecting the subtle, devious remaining 20% is considerably
harder and reliable detection is questionable especially in systems using teenagers (the most
at risk group).
Observations of the MSN Messenger service and protocol lead the author to discover a
method by which to leave digitally verifiable files on the computer of anyone who chats with
a child by exploiting the custom emoticon feature. By employing techniques from
steganography these custom emoticons can be made to appear innocuous. Finding and
removing custom emoticons is a non-trivial matter and they cannot be easily spoofed.
Identification is performed by examining the emoticon (file) hashes. If an emoticon is
recovered e.g. in the course of an investigation it can be hashed and the hashed compared
against a database of registered users and used to support non-repudiation and confirm if an
individual has indeed been chatting with a child.
Online child protection has been described as a classic systems problem. It covers a broad
range of complex, and sometimes difficult to research issues including technology, sociology,
psychology and law, and affects directly or indirectly the majority of the UK population. Yet
despite this the problem and the challenges are poorly understood, thanks in no small part to
mawkish attitudes and alarmist media coverage. Here the problem is examined holistically;
how children use technology, what the risks are, and how they can best be protected – based
not on idealism, but on the known behaviours of children. The overall protection message is
often confused and unrealistic, leaving parents and children ill prepared to protect
themselves. Technology does have a place in protecting children, but this is secondary to a
strong and understanding parent/child relationship and education, both of the child and
parent.


Foreword. Ten years after the end of the armed conflict, the
Western Balkans1 are still being considered as
the "land of the unsuccessful policies". Enormous
financial and technical assistance transferred by
the International Community has not managed
to meet the goals of integrating the region within
itself as well as within the European markets.
Explanation for this can be found in the consequences
of the war and the remnants of the socialist
state. The complexity of current institutional/
political arrangements combined with the limited
willingness of the regional actors to introduce
and implement much of the needed reforms
have additionally contributed to the current state
of affairs.
The economy and politics in the region intertwine
to an extent as probably in none of the other
post-communist states. Therefore, the paper presents
the recent economic performance of the
Western Balkan countries in the light of their limited
institutional development and lack of efficient
regional cooperation. The paper discusses
the importance of foreign direct investments' inflow
for the economic growth of the "latecomer"
states and presents major drawbacks which limit
the influx of the foreign capital to the region. It
presents private sector activity and regional cooperation
programmes. It discusses the role of the
International Community with the main focus
on the activities of the European Union. The EU
is examined not only as the main aid donor but
more importantly as a foreign trade partner. Furthermore,
it analyses the impact of the presence
of the International Community and their strategies
towards the region with the special attention
to the EU. Finally, it presents recommendations
for the improvement of the economic performance
in light of the enhanced political cooperation
between the EU and the region.


It was recently shown by us that particles distributed on the surface of a drop can be concentrated at the poles or equator of the drop by subjecting it to a uniform ac electric field. The dielectrophoretic and hydrodynamic forces which cause the motion of particles depend on the parameters such as the particles' and drop's radii, the dielectric properties of the fluids and particles, and the frequency of the electric field. The hydrodynamic force, which arises because of the induced motion in the liquids, is the main focus of this paper. We show that it can be used to control the distribution of particle monolayers on the surface of a drop.© 2014 ASME


We present an algorithm for aligning two colored point clouds. The key idea is to optimize a joint photometric and geometric objective that locks the alignment along both the normal direction and the tangent plane. We extend a photometric objective for aligning RGB-D images to point clouds, by locally parameterizing the point cloud with a virtual camera. Experiments demonstrate that our algorithm is more accurate and more robust than prior point cloud registration algorithms, including those that utilize color information. We use the presented algorithms to enhance a state-of-the-art scene reconstruction system. The precision of the resulting system is demonstrated on real-world scenes with accurate ground-truth models.


In recent years, the development of complex multi-metallic nanomaterials like high entropy alloy (HEA) catalysts has gained popularity. Composed of 5 or more metals, the compositions of HEAs exhibit extreme diversity. This is both a promising avenue to identify new catalysts and a severe constraint on their preparation and study. To address the challenges related to the preparation, study and optimization of HEAs, machine learning solutions are attractive. In this paper, the composition of PtRuPdRhAu hydrogen oxidation catalysts is optimized for the CO oxidation reaction. This is achieved by constructing a dataset using Bayesian optimization as guidance. For this quinary nanomaterial, the best performing composition was found within the first 35 experiments. However, the dataset was expanded until a total of 68 samples were investigated. This final dataset was used to construct a random forest regression model and a linear model. These machine learned models were used to assess the relationships between the concentrations of the consituent elements and the CO oxidation reaction onset potential. The onset potentials were found to correlate with the composition dependent adsorption energy of *OH obtained from density functional theory. This study demonstrates, how machine learning can be employed in an experimental setting to investigate the vast compositional space of HEAs.


We demonstrate a fully functional implementation of (per-user) checkpoint, restore, and live migration capabilities for JupyterHub platforms. Checkpointing – the ability to freeze and suspend to disk the running state (contents of memory, registers, open files, etc.) of a set of processes – enables the system to snapshot a user's Jupyter session to permanent storage. The restore functionality brings a checkpointed session back to a running state, to continue where it left off at a later time and potentially on a different machine. Finally, live migration enables moving running Jupyter notebook servers between different machines, transparent to the analysis code and w/o disconnecting the user. Our implementation of these capabilities works at the system level, with few limitations, and typical checkpoint/restore times of O(10s) with a pathway to O(1s) live migrations. It opens a myriad of interesting use cases, especially for cloudbased deployments: from checkpointing idle sessions w/o interruption of the user's work (achieving cost reductions of 4x or more), execution on spot instances w. transparent migration on eviction (with additional cost reductions up to 3x), to automated migration of workloads to ideally suited instances (e.g. moving an analysis to a machine with more or less RAM or cores based on observed resource utilization). The capabilities we demonstrate can make science platforms fully elastic while retaining excellent user experience.


Stochastic variational inference has emerged as an effective method for performing inference on or learning complex models for data. Yet, one of the challenges in stochastic variational inference is handling high-dimensional data, such as sequential data, and models with non-differentiable densities caused by, for instance, the use of discrete latent variables. In such cases, it is challenging to control the variance of the gradient estimator used in stochastic variational inference, while low variance is often one of the key properties needed for successful inference. In this work, we present a new algorithm for stochastic variational inference of sequential models which trades off bias for variance to tackle this challenge effectively. Our algorithm is inspired by variance reduction techniques in reinforcement learning, yet it uniquely adopts their key ideas in the context of stochastic variational inference. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through formal analysis and experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets.


As BIM adoption continues, the goal of a totally collaborative model with multiple contributors is attainable. Many initiatives such as the 2016 UK government level 2 BIM deadline are putting pressure on the construction industry to speed up the changeover. Clients and collaborators have higher expectations of using digital 3D models to communicate design ideas and solve practical problems. Contractors and clients are benefitting from cost saving scheduling and clash detection offered by BIM. Effective collaboration on the project will also give speed and efficiency gains. Despite this, many businesses of varying sizes are still having problems. The cost of the software and the training provides an obvious barrier for micro-enterprises and could explain a delay in adoption. Many studies have looked at these problems faced by SME and micro-enterprises. Larger companies have different problems. The efforts made by government to encourage them are quite comprehensive, but is anything being done to help smaller sectors and keep the industry cohesive? This limited study examines several companies of varying size and varying project type: architectural design businesses, main contractor, structural engineer and building consultancy. The study examines the barriers to a truly collaborative BIM workflow facing different specialities on a larger project and a contrasting small/medium project. The findings will establish that different barriers for each sector are actually pushing further apart, thus potentially creating a BIM-only construction elite, leaving the small companies remaining on 2D based drawing.


With the increased electoral success of anti-immigration parties, questions on what actual impact the parties obtain naturally follow.Previous research only sparsely has explored this question. Furthermore, within this body of research we are given different answers. While some arguethatanti-immigration parties have made an impact on public policy others find no such evidence. We argue that some of this inconsistency is a consequence of the methodological strategies that have been employed. Previous studies are single case studies or comparisons of a smaller number of countries. Consequently different parties in different institutional settings are compared making it hard to estimate the actual impact of the party of interest. In order to circumvent such methodological problems this studyexplore the question of anti-immigration party impact from a local level and asks if the Sweden Democrats (SD) has managed to influence decisions on refugee receptions in Swedish municipalities.Our analysis show mixed results. Firstly, while we are unable to find an independent effect of the size of the representation of SD we show that the party's impact is conditioned by them holding the balance of power. Secondly, SD impact is not dependent on whether there is a right-wing or left-wing rule although wecan show that local migration policy is stricter when the main right-wing party has a strong support


Given a set of $n$ points (sites) inside a rectangle $R$ and $n$ points (label locations or ports) on its boundary, a boundary labeling problem seeks ways of connecting every site to a distinct port while achieving different labeling aesthetics. We examine the scenario when the connecting lines (leaders) are drawn as axis-aligned polylines with few bends, every leader lies strictly inside $R$, no two leaders cross, and the sum of the lengths of all the leaders is minimized. In a $k$-sided boundary labeling problem, where $1\le k\le 4$, the label locations are located on the $k$ consecutive sides of $R$.
In this paper, we develop an $O(n^3\log n)$-time algorithm for 2-sided boundary labeling, where the leaders are restricted to have one bend. This improves the previously best known $O(n^8\log n)$-time algorithm of Kindermann et al. (Algorithmica, 76(1):225-258, 2016). We show the problem is polynomial-time solvable in more general settings such as when the ports are located on more than two sides of $R$, in the presence of obstacles, and even when the objective is to minimize the total number of bends. Our results improve the previous algorithms on boundary labeling with obstacles, as well as provide the first polynomial-time algorithms for minimizing the total leader length and number of bends for 3- and 4-sided boundary labeling. These results settle a number of open questions on the boundary labeling problems (Wolff, Handbook of Graph Drawing, Chapter 23, Table 23.1, 2014).


The publicly traded corporation has long been a source of legal debate and controversy. In the 21st century, however, a combination of highly publicized corporate scandals and financial improprieties has centered the debate surrounding publicly traded companies on the topic of corporate governance. Corporate governance refers to the framework by which business corporations are managed and controlled,1 and each corporation has its own unique internal characteristics and organization that impact the way it is governed. One such aspect is a corporation's equity ownership structure that sets out the types of shares to be issued to the public, and the rights, responsibilities, and degrees of control that each share confers on its respective owner. This paper focuses on the contentious topic of dual class share structures in Canada. At their core, dual class share structures refer to a particular corporate equity structure in which different classes of common shares are issued, each with distinct voting and control rights.2 While organizations like the Shareholder Association for Research and Education ("SHARE")3 and institutional investors like the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan ("OTPP")4 have argued that dual class share structures reduce non-controlling shareholder wealth and ought to be banned from Canadian public stock exchanges, the evidence for this claim is less than conclusive.5 Others, particularly financial analysts, have argued that in some instances dual class firms have exhibited better stock market performances than even the widest held firms. This paper aims to examine both the favourable and unfavourable characteristics of dual class share structures, and argue that these equity arrangements create a precarious controlling-minority structure ("CMS")6 that increases agency costs and financial risks to non-controlling shareholders. Part I of this paper provides an overview of the general structure of public corporations and how dual class firms fundamentally differ from other forms. In addition, a brief review of the history of dual class share structures in Canada is provided as well as their current relevance in Canadian capital markets. Part II examines the arguments supporting dual class firms and the potential economic benefits they can yield for society as a whole. While it is acknowledged that some examples suggest that dual class firms are an effective corporate governance structure, it is argued that these tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Part III examines, through the use of two models, how dual class share structures increase the agency costs and financial risks to non-controlling shareholders. Specifically, it is argued that as a controlling minority shareholder's equity in the firm decreases, agency costs for non- controlling shareholders tend to rise at a rapid rate. Part IV demonstrates how these increased agency costs and financial risks occur. Particularly, it is argued that CMSs erode the traditional internal and external monitoring mechanisms that serve as effective monitoring and disciplinary mechanisms in more dispersed ownership structures.7 Part V considers the current regulatory regime surrounding dual class firms and argues that these limited provisions, specifically the 1987 coat-tail provision, are largely inadequate to manage the enhanced risks and agency costs that CMSs pose to non- controlling shareholders. However, rather than espousing the positions of SHARE and OTPP, Part VI of this paper proposes that the benefits of dual class firms be harnessed under a more appropriate regulatory regime that better mitigates the risks they pose to non-controlling shareholders. In particular, it is argued that the provincial implementation of a mandatory voting cap restriction is a practical step towards improving the regulation of dual class firms and minimizing the added agency costs they pose to non-controlling shareholders. Part VII concludes this argument.


We consider the real-valued centered Gaussian field on the four-dimensional integer lattice, whose covariance matrix is given by the Green's function of the discrete Bilaplacian. This is interpreted as a model for a semi-flexible membrane. d = 4 is the critical dimension for this model. We discuss the effect of a hard wall on the membrane, via a multiscale analysis of the maximum of the field. We use analytic and probabilistic tools to describe the correlation structure of the field.


The analysis of the scientific literature available on the types of general competences and their classification caused the authors to conclude that it is necessary to implement interdisciplinary approach in engineering education to develop competences necessary for engineers to make them competitive in the labour market. The attention should be paid to a professional foreign language, computer literacy and educational psychology recommendations. To improve professional foreign language skills, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) method should be integrated in the study process of engineering education. In order to develop information literacy competence, it is important to create a single e-study environment. The academic staff, developing study subjects for engineering programmes, should focus on the study content and study methods. As regards the content, the compromise should be sought between fundamental acquisition of the knowledge of the subject matter, the know-how of the application of this knowledge as well as the use of brand new software in the calculations. The paper presents the examples of the application of the interdisciplinary approach in the universities, where the authors of the paper are affiliated: the LUA (Latvia University of Agriculture) and the RTU (Riga Technical University), respectively.


Drug use in a population varies dramatically over time in no small measure due to nonlinear feedback among factors endogenous to the drug system. This suggests that drug policy ought likewise to be dynamic, varying the mix of strategies over time as drug use waxes and wanes. A growing literature that models drug "epidemics" mathematically supports this hypothesis and offers perspectives that may break policy logjams. For example, supply control may be most effective early, in the explosive growth stage of an epidemic. Conversely, treatment and measures to mitigate the consequences of dependent use and flagrant drug markets may have their comparative advantage later, in the endemic stage. Fully harnessing the power of dynamic drug policy will require more research and collection of new types of data, but the promise is worth the effort.


The German Mikrozensus is a data set that is frequently used to study fertility behavior. With its large sample size, the dataset also offers the opportunity to investigate childbearing among population subgroups, such as particular migrant groups. Because birth histories are not surveyed in the Mikrozensus, scholars have frequently employed the Own-Children Method (OCM) to generate fertility schedules from this data. The OCM draws on information on the number and ages of the co-residential children in order to estimate the fertility schedule of women. It is clear that this method leads to an underestimation of fertility, because children do not necessarily live with their biological mother. It is also clear that the bias is stronger for older women, because children may have left parental home. In the past, it was not possible to assess the bias. With the Mikrozensus 2008, we are able to validate the OCM by relying on respondent's own report on the total number of children. We furthermore examine whether the OCM leads to worse estimates for migrants and non-migrants. The results show that the OCM provides reasonable fertility estimates for women in western Germany up to age 40, irrespective of migrant background. For eastern Germany, there is a stronger bias at later ages than in western Germany. This relates to the early age at childbirth in this region and the more diverse family structures.


In the Egyptian presidential elections of September 2005, President Hosni Mubarak's fourth re-election came as little surprise to the Egyptian people or the international community as a whole. Although lauded by some, progress of Egyptian democracy has been undermined by the detainment of political opposition, a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood party, allegations of voter intimidation, and inaccurate electoral rolls. Opposition leader Ayman Nour, Mubarak's only serious competition, was detained in January 2005 by the Egyptian government under allegations that he had forged the signatures necessary to validate his recently formed Egyptian Party of Tomorrow's (al-Ghad) legal status. His co-defendant, Ayman Ismail, confessed to committing acts of forgery on Nour's behalf but later recanted, claiming police blackmail was used in order to elicit his testimony. While Mubarak's party, the National Democratic Party, insisted that the matter was based on judicial grounds, the Bush administration criticized Nour's recent detention. While such international pressure led to Nour's release and postponed his trial, he ran in the presidential elections with a heavily damaged reputation. Most Egyptians have remained skeptical of their nation's move toward democracy. Due partially to the country's pattern of corrupt presidential referendums, voter apathy pervaded the election with only 23 percent of voters turning out. In addition, candidate exposure was heavily one-sided--opposition-party postering was overwhelmed by National Democratic Party advertisements, many of which were paid for by independent businesses or the party masquerading as such. Mubarak secured his fifth term by pledging to reform both Egypt and its constitution. Shortly after the election, opposition parties and their leaders decried the referendum as having been unfairly influenced. For example, Mubarak's critics claimed that opposition voters were turned away from polling sites. The Egyptian government reported 88.6 percent of the vote for the incumbent Mubarak, just 7.6 percent for Nour, and only 2.9 percent for the Nafd party leader. Members of the two smaller parties, the Nafd and the al-Ghad, took to the streets to protest the alleged rigging of the election by Mubarak and to call for another presidential election. Egypt's electoral commission dismissed claims of fraudulent results and refused calls for another election. While the al-Ghad party was permitted to participate in the election, red tape and complications still obstruct other political parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood, whose parliamentary candidates had to run as independents. The party, banned by the government in 1954 under a law against religious political groups, claimed that the government's arrests of party officials intimidated voters. Egyptian security forces dismissed the allegation that the arrests were part of an underhanded strategy to detain party members as wanted criminals. …


This paper documents that variation in one's personal sense of empowerment is related to one's phonetic response to altered auditory feedback. We see this as related to the actuation of sound change, identifying a personal characteristic of individuals who are likely to introduce a change variant. Many speakers react to gradual alteration of auditory feedback by compensating for the manipulation – for example, by raising the frequency of a vowel's F2 as it is reduced in auditory feedback. However, prior research has found that there is substantial individual variability in the degree of compensation. To test our hypothesis that this variability may be linked to social or personality factors, we investigated the relationship between participants' responses to altered auditory feedback and their answers on questionnaires measuring a number of personality variables. A significant negative correlation was discovered: the more empowered subjects felt, the less they compensated.


Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, occurs as an outcome of signals that direct cells to perish. Whether initiated by specifically activated receptors or induced through viral infection, apoptosis is an important means by which organisms maintain health and homeostasis. The apoptotic pathway uses several regulatory proteins that prevent uncontrolled cell death, which would be detrimental to the organism. Richter and Duckett review the recently discovered and characterized inhibitors of apoptosis proteins (IAPs). Not surprisingly, IAPs were first identified in viruses that were able to subvert apoptosis in infected cells. Evidence exists suggesting that, in addition to inhibiting apoptosis, IAPs are involved in signal transduction and cell cycle regulation. Richter and Duckett also review other recent observations indicating that some IAPs may have roles in protein ubiquitination. Although the various roles of the IAPs are beginning to be uncovered, new questions arise about the breadth of their functions and the proteins to which IAPs bind.


The researchers of this project sought to demonstrate that upper cervical specific adjustments would have a profound effect on the physiology, serology and immunology of HIV positive individuals. The effect of specific upper cervical adjustments on the immune system CD4 cell counts of HIV positive individuals was measured by CD4/mm3 in the blood. These tests were performed by the patients independent medical center where they were under medical supervision for the condition. The measured CD4 counts in the regular group were dramatically increased over the counts of the control group. A 48% increase in CD4 cells was demonstrated over the six month duration of the study for the adjusted group.


The envisioned smart grid aims at improving the interaction between the supply- and the demand-side of the electricity network, creating unprecedented possibilities for optimizing the energy usage at different levels of the grid. In this paper, we propose a distributed demand-side management (DSM) method intended for smart grid users with load prediction capabilities, who possibly employ dispatchable energy generation and storage devices. These users participate in the day-ahead market and are interested in deriving the bidding, production, and storage strategies that jointly minimize their expected monetary expense. The resulting day-ahead grid optimization is formulated as a generalized Nash equilibrium problem (GNEP), which includes global constraints that couple the users' strategies. Building on the theory of variational inequalities, we study the main properties of the GNEP and devise a distributed, iterative algorithm converging to the variational solutions of the GNEP. Additionally, users can exploit the reduced uncertainty about their energy consumption and renewable generation at the time of dispatch. We thus present a complementary DSM procedure that allows them to perform some unilateral adjustments on their generation and storage strategies so as to reduce the impact of their real-time deviations with respect to the amount of energy negotiated in the day-ahead. Finally, numerical results in realistic scenarios are reported to corroborate the proposed DSM technique.


In this paper, we develop an enhanced corporate valuation model based on the implied cost of equity capital (ICC). We argue that the enhanced approach extends the standard market multiples and discounted cash flow (DCF) approaches to corporate valuation. Specifically, it incorporates positive aspects of the market comparables and DCF approaches while mitigating the shortcomings of both. Unlike the traditional market comparables approach, the enhanced approach takes account of the full term structure of earnings forecasts. It does so by using the ICC calculated for the comparable companies as an "enhanced multiple" which translates the entire stream of cash flow forecasts into a value estimate. Unlike the DCF approach it does not require estimation of the cost of equity capital. As such, it avoids the complexity and uncertainty associated with estimating the cost of equity capital. In our empirical tests, we find the enhanced approach to be more accurate than either of the two traditional approaches.


emerging skin-whitening and anti-ageing biotechnology. Using an intersectional theoretical framework and a content analysis methodology drawn from cultural studies, the sociology of knowledge, the history of colonial medicine and critical race theory, it examines technical reports, as well as print and online advertisements from pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies for skin-whitening products. With close attention to the promises of 'ageless beauty', 'brightened', youthful skin and solutions to 'pigmentation problems' for non-white women, the author reveals the dynamics of racialization and biomedicalization at work. A study of a significant sector of the globalized health and wellness industries – which requires the active participation of consumers in the biomedicalization of their own bodies – Wellness in Whiteness will appeal to social scientists with interests in gender, race and ethnicity, biotechnology and embodiment.


1. Anthropogenic stressors affect the ecosystems upon which humanity relies. In some cases when resilience is exceeded, relatively small linear changes in stressors can cause relatively abrupt and nonlinear changes in ecosystems.

2. Ecological regime shifts occur when resilience is exceeded and ecosystems enter a new local equilibrium that differs in its structure and function from the previous state. Ecological resilience, the amount of disturbance that a system can withstand before it shifts into an alternative stability domain, is an important framework for understanding and managing ecological systems subject to collapse and reorganization.

3. Recently, interest in the influence of spatial characteristics of landscapes on resilience has increased. Understanding how spatial structure and variation in relevant variables in landscapes affects resilience to disturbance will assist with resilience quantification, and with local and regional management.

4. Synthesis and applications. We review the history and current status of spatial resilience in the research literature, expand upon existing literature to develop a more operational definition of spatial resilience, introduce additional elements of a spatial analytical approach to understanding resilience, present a framework for resilience operationalization and provide an overview of critical knowledge and technology gaps that should be addressed for the advancement of spatial resilience theory and its applications to management and conservation.


Design studies focuses on explaining the human activity of design, and is fundamental to design research. It frequently involves the use of qualitative research approaches such as case study, with the collection of a considerable amount of heterogeneous data (e.g. observations, interviews, documents, artifacts). Multiple sources and heterogeneous data can be hard to analyse. Within social sciences, qualitative analysis is undertaken through the process of coding (e.g. grounded theory) which can be supported by computer-assisted software such as Nvivo. However, this type of analysis works better for textual data and is not so effective to analyze more heterogeous and visual data sets. Moreover, the process of open, selective and axial coding in traditional qualitative research do not have a good fit with the more visual, iterative, and participatory approaches of service design researchers. To address these challenges this article presents a case study research, where a more visual and participatory designerly approach was used to conduct qualitative research in design studies. The results show that the approach enabled a richer data triangulation and analysis; and also triggered more multidisciplinary discussions, enriching study's results.


Exchange of personal information online is usually conceptualized according to an economic model that treats personal information as data owned by the persons these data are 'about.' This leads to a distinct set of concerns having to do with data ownership, data mining, profits, and exploitation, which do not closely correspond to the concerns about privacy that people actually have. A post-phenomenological perspective, oriented by feminist ethics of care, urges us to figure out how privacy concerns arrive in fundamentally human contexts and to speak to that, rather than trying to convince people to care about privacy as it is juridically conceived and articulated. By considering exchanges of personal information in a human-to-human online informational economy — being friends on social networking sites — we can identify an alternate set of concerns: consent, respect, lurking, and creepiness. I argue that these concerns will provide a better guide to both users and companies about prudence and ethics in information economies than the existing discourse around 'privacy.'


Bile cast nephropathy is a condition of renal dysfunction in the setting of hyperbilirubinemia. There are very few cases of this condition reported in the last decade and a lack of established treatment guidelines. While the exact etiology remains unknown, bile cast nephropathy is presumed to be secondary to multiple concurrent insults to the kidney including direct toxicity from bile acids, obstructive physiology from bile casts, and systemic hypoperfusion from vasodilation. Therapy directed at bilirubin reduction may improve renal function, but will likely need dialysis or plasmapheresis as well. We report our case of bile cast nephropathy and the therapeutic measures undertaken in a middle-aged male with chronic renal insufficiency that developed hyperbilirubinemia and drug-induced liver injury secondary to antibiotic use. He developed acute renal injury in the setting of rising bilirubin. He subsequently had a progressive decline in renal and hepatic function, requiring dialysis and plasmapheresis with some improvement, ultimately requiring transplantation.


Research on aircraft bleed air systems has been performed at Ryerson University for the last eight years. During this time, the requirements of the test apparatus have been constantly expanding. This thesis work aims at developing a new reconfigurable rig that supports current and future research on aircraft bleed air control systems and takes advantage of lessons learned from previous test rigs. The new rig consists of two temperature control channels in a parallel arrangement to allow for flow sharing control, and a load tank with variable exhaust. Beyond the development of the test rig, research has been performed to improve mass flow measurement based on signals from traditional thermal mass flow and pressure sensors. The proposed method utilized these redundant means of indicating flow to obtain fast and accurate flow measurement through the use of a dynamically weighted average. This method has been experimentally investigated using the test rig.


In a 0 - 1 sequence of Markov dependent trials we consider a statistic which counts strings of a limited length run of 0s between subsequent 1s. Its probability mass function is used to determine the chance that a stochastic process remains or not in statistical control. Illustrative numerics are presented.


Peer code review is an important quality assurance mechanism which widely used in both industrial and Open Source Software (OSS) software development projects. Effectively performing code review can increase the quality of software; but it also requires reviewers with experiences and a deep understanding of system code. However, in distributed software development projects, manually finding an appropriate reviewer is difficult and time-consuming. In order to ease developers, this thesis proposes a reviewer recommendation algorithm, called FPS algorithm, based on locations of changed files. FPS algorithm finds appropriate reviewers for a new patch by determining the similarity of its file paths with file paths of previous patchs. In the experiment, FPS algorithm was evaluated using three OSS projects and compared with the existing reviewer recommendation algorithm. Moreover, this thesis studies factors that impact to the reviewer recommendation algorithms. Specifically, the impact of file path structure and time priority were investigated. The results indicate that the performance of FPS algorithm is significantly better than the existing reviewer recommendation algorithm. The results also show that file path structure has impact to the FPS algorithm while the time prioritization cannot improve the performance.


This research was conducted to analyse the violence experienced by nurses employed at six university hospitals. A descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted. The research sample consisted of 441 nurses who worked in the emergency, intensive care and psychiatry units of six university hospitals in Turkey between June 2008 and June 2009 and who voluntarily agreed to participate. It was found that 60.8% of the nurses were subjected to verbal violence and/or physical violence from patients, visitors or health staff. Of the nurses who were subjected to workplace violence, 42.9% stated that their experience of verbal and/or physical violence had a negative impact on their physical and/or psychological health, and 42.9% stated that their work performance was negatively affected. Of these nurses, 1.8% stated that they received professional help, 13.6% stated that a report was made and 9.5% stated that they contacted the hospital police in some way. According to the findings of this research, similar to the situation worldwide, nurses in Turkey are subjected to verbal and/or physical violence from patients, visitors and health staff.


Hepatitis A virus (HAV), the causative agent of type A viral hepatitis, is an ancient human virus that was first identified almost 35 years ago. It has several characteristics that make it unique among the Picornaviridae, particularly in terms of its mechanisms of polyprotein processing and virion morphogenesis, and which likely contribute to its pathobiology. Although efficacious vaccines containing formalin‐inactivated virus produced in cell culture have been licensed in multiple countries, their use has been limited by cost considerations. Changes in public health sanitation and generally increasing standards of living are leading to a decreasing incidence of acute hepatitis A worldwide, with the result that the prevalence of preexisting immunity among adults is declining in many regions. These changes in the epidemiology of HAV may paradoxically enhance the disease burden, as greater numbers of individuals become infected at older ages when disease is more likely to be clinically evident, thus providing greater incentives for vaccine utilization. (Hepatology 2006;43;S164–S172.)


This paper presents the results of investigations of the manifestations of photostimulated structural changes in thermally deposited layers of As2Se3 from the absorption spectra in the far-IR region, using the methods of Fourier spectroscopy. It is shown that photostructural changes in the layers used for fabricating the holograms show up in an intensity redistribution of the bands of the IR absorption spectrum associated with the valence vibrations in moleculelike pyramidal structures that form part of the unit cells of the crystalline phase of As2Se3. © 2005 Optical Society of America


OBJECTIVE To measure in-shoe foot pressures in diabetic patients and healthy subjects and compare them with the foot pressures when they walked without their shoes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Forty-four diabetic patients at risk of foot ulceration and 65 healthy subjects were matched for age, sex, race, and weight. Neuropathy was evaluated clinically, and the F-Scan program was used to measure the foot pressures. Foot pressures were measured with the sensors placed in the shoes (S measurements), between the foot and the sock with shoes (H measurements) or with their socks alone (B measurements). RESULTS In the control group, significant differences were found between S (4.77 ± 1.87 kg/cm2) and H measurements (5.12 ± 1.87 kg/cm2, P < 0.001), between S and B (7.23 ± 2.95 kg/cm2, P < 0.0001), and between H and B (P < 0.0001). In the diabetic group, no difference was found between S and H measurements (5.28 ± 2.22 vs. 5.27 ± 2.39 kg/cm2, NS). In contrast, the B pressure was significantly higher when compared with both (8.77 ± 4.67 kg/cm2, P < 0.02). When compared with the control group, the S and H pressures did not differ significantly, but the B pressure in the diabetic group was significantly higher (P < 0.02). The peak S pressure was above the normal limit in 24 (27%) diabetic and 21 (16%) control feet (P < 0.05), the H pressure in 17 (19%) diabetic feet and 22 (17%) control feet (NS), and the B pressure in 24 (27%) diabetic and 21 (16%) control feet (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS In-shoe foot pressure measurements are significantly lower than the ones measured when walking with the socks only in both diabetic patients and healthy subjects. The shoes of diabetic patients provided a higher pressure reduction than did those of the control group, but the number of feet with abnormally high pressures did not change. The F-Scan system may be particularly helpful in designing footwear suitable for diabetic patients with at-risk feet.


We discuss by a Poynting vector analysis how the losses of a negative-index material (NIM) affect the resolution performances of a Veselago-Pendry lens, and we analyze those performances in the framework of the Abbe criterion. The limits of both high losses and low losses are explored. We find that the impedance-matched NIM is able to resolve 30% better than the limit imposed by the Abbe criterion even when the imaginary part of the refractive index (the material losses) exceeds the absolute value of the real part of the refractive index. The NIM is described by a lossy Drude model with equal permittivity and permeability. By increasing the damping parameter of the Drude model, we also explore the regime where both permittivity and permeability are positive and point out the conditions under which the metamaterial is still able to superresolve.


Graphs (networks) are an important tool to model data in different domains. Realworld graphs are usually directed, where the edges have a direction and they are not symmetric. Betweenness centrality is an important index widely used to analyze networks. In this paper, first given a directed network G and a vertex r ∈ V (G), we propose an exact algorithm to compute betweenness score of r. Our algorithm pre-computes a set ℛ𝒱(r), which is used to prune a huge amount of computations that do not contribute to the betweenness score of r. Time complexity of our algorithm depends on |ℛ𝒱(r)| and it is respectively Θ(|ℛ𝒱(r)| · |E(G)|) and Θ(|ℛ𝒱(r)| · |E(G)| + |ℛ𝒱(r)| · |V(G)| log |V(G)|) for unweighted graphs and weighted graphs with positive weights. |ℛ𝒱(r)| is bounded from above by |V(G)| – 1 and in most cases, it is a small constant. Then, for the cases where ℛ𝒱(r) is large, we present a simple randomized algorithm that samples from ℛ𝒱(r) and performs computations for only the sampled elements. We show that this algorithm provides an (ɛ, δ)-approximation to the betweenness score of r. Finally, we perform extensive experiments over several real-world datasets from different domains for several randomly chosen vertices as well as for the vertices with the highest betweenness scores. Our experiments reveal that for estimating betweenness score of a single vertex, our algorithm significantly outperforms the most efficient existing randomized algorithms, in terms of both running time and accuracy. Our experiments also reveal that our algorithm improves the existing algorithms when someone is interested in computing betweenness values of the vertices in a set whose cardinality is very small.


This report is from a set from market research firm Tematys that OIDA is offering as a way to extend our market coverage to more topics at an affordable cost. Much of the material remains current, as often happens in corners of the optics and photonics business. OIDA obtained permission from Tematys to distribute the report for OIDA member use only.


Despite their documented importance in the labor market, little is known about how workers use social networks to find jobs and their resulting effect on earnings. I use geographically detailed US employer-employee data to infer the role of social networks in connecting workers to jobs in high-paying firms. To identify social interactions in job search, I exploit variation in social network quality within small neighborhoods. Workers are more likely to change jobs, and more likely to move to a higher-paying firm, when their neighbors are employed in high-paying firms. Furthermore, local referral networks help match high-ability workers to high-paying firms.


Classical models of database-driven web applications follow thin-client architectures, i.e., all data processing and business logic resides on the server while the client's role is to arrange and display the user interface. When transactions come into play, which may naturally span several consecutive interactions between client pages and server actions, problems arise since transactions cannot exceed the boundaries of server actions. We address this issue by proposing a novel architecture for web applications, where a webservice-based data access component is integrated directly in the markup of a client page. Our approach guarantees ACID transaction properties and generates serializable histories in the sense of conflict serializability. In contrast to past efforts to transaction management in web applications, our architecture does not necessitate the existence of an additional, external transaction server.


It has recently been pointed out that phases of matter with intrinsic topological order, like the fractional quantum Hall states, have an extra dynamical degree of freedom that corresponds to quantum geometry. Here we perform extensive numerical studies of the geometric degree of freedom for the simplest example of fractional quantum Hall states—the filling &ngr; = 1 / 3 ?> Laughlin state. We perturb the system by a smooth, spatially dependent metric deformation and measure the response of the Hall fluid, finding it to be proportional to the Gaussian curvature of the metric. Further, we generalize the concept of coherent states to formulate the bulk off-diagonal long range order for the Laughlin state, and compute the deformations of the metric in the vicinity of the edge of the system. We introduce a 'pair amplitude' operator and show that it can be used to numerically determine the intrinsic metric of the Laughlin state. These various probes are applied to several experimentally relevant settings that can expose the quantum geometry of the Laughlin state, in particular to systems with mass anisotropy and in the presence of an electric field gradient.


The phosphorylation status of a tyrosine residue in the histone variant H2AX determines whether cells with DNA damage repair the damage or undergo apoptosis. Originally identified as a transcription factor, Eyes absent (Eya) is also a tyrosine phosphatase, and its absence is associated with increased apoptosis. Cook et al. (see Lukas and Bartek) observed increased immunostaining for the Ser139-phosphorylated histone variant H2AX [a modification that enables Ser139 to act as a binding site for DNA repair factors, such as MDC1 (mediator of DNA damage checkpoint protein 1)] in Eya1–/– mouse embryo kidneys. Eya1 and Eya3 interacted and colocalized with H2AX at sites of double-stranded breaks in nuclei in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293T cells exposed to ionizing radiation, but not in unexposed cells. This interaction required phosphorylation of Eya3 at Ser219 by the DNA-damage response kinases ATM (ataxia telangiectasia mutated) and ATR (ATM and Rad3-related). The H2AX C terminus is phosphorylated at Tyr142 as well as Ser139. Tyr142 phosphorylation decreased when cells were exposed to three different DNA-damaging treatments; this dephosphorylation was mediated by wild-type Eya1 and Eya3 but not catalytically inactive mutants. The phosphorylation status of Tyr142 determined whether irradiation induced phosphorylation of Ser139 and whether DNA repair or proapoptotic factors were recruited to H2AX. A peptide corresponding to the H2AX C terminus that was phosphorylated at Ser139 but not Tyr142 interacted with MDC1 and other DNA repair factors. Accordingly, knockdown of Eya3 by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) (which would be expected to increase Tyr142 phosphorylation of H2AX) prevented the irradiation-induced interaction between MDC1 and H2AX. In contrast, a H2AX C terminus peptide that was phosphorylated at both residues associated with the proapoptotic c-Jun N-terminal kinase 1 (JNK1). JNK1 was recruited to H2AX by Fe65, a protein that may promote apoptosis; Fe65 did not interact as strongly with a Tyr142→Phe142 H2AX mutant compared to wild-type. The authors propose a model in which dephosphorylation of Tyr142 in H2AX by Eya recruits DNA damage repair factors and promotes cell survival, whereas maintenance of phosphorylation of Tyr142 in H2AX recruits proapoptotic factors and promotes cell death. P. J. Cook, B. G. Ju, F. Telese, X. Wang, C. K. Glass, M. G. Rosenfeld, Tyrosine dephosphorylation of H2AX modulates apoptosis and survival decisions. Nature 458, 591–596 (2009). [PubMed] J. Lukas, J. Bartek, DNA repair: New tales of an old tail. Nature 458, 581–583 (2009). [PubMed]


Abstract The labelling of teachers of English as either 'native' or 'non-native' speakers in the field of English Language Teaching continues to promote ideals of 'native-speakers' that impact negatively on the teaching lives of those teachers using English as another language. In this paper, I explore constructs of 'native-speakerism' (Holliday, Adrian. 2015. Native-speakerism: Taking the Concept Forward and Achieving Cultural Belief. In Anne Swan, Pamela Aboshiha & Adrian. Hollliday (eds.), Encountering Native-speakerism: Global perspectives, 11–25. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) by examining them as networks or assemblages formed through interactions of people, technologies, discourses and other material objects integral to teaching and learning environments. Drawing on 'Actor-network theory', I analyse unique influences of 'native' and 'non-native' networks as experienced by individual teachers of English from different contexts. The data collected in this qualitative study shows how 'native-speaker' networks form and exert power to reinforce the ideal of 'native-speaker' teachers, and restrict the agency of those who are classed as 'non-native'. By unravelling these networks, I challenge the notions on which they are constructed, and show how the categorising of teachers in this way undermines the legitimacy of those classed as 'non-native', and limits their professional development. I therefore argue that moving beyond these labels is an essential step for English Language Teaching to move forward as a profession.


We consider two settings of online learning to rank where feedback is restricted to top ranked items. The problem is cast as an online game between a learner and sequence of users, over $T$ rounds. In both settings, the learners objective is to present ranked list of items to the users. The learner's performance is judged on the entire ranked list and true relevances of the items. However, the learner receives highly restricted feedback at end of each round, in form of relevances of only the top $k$ ranked items, where $k \ll m$. The first setting is \emph{non-contextual}, where the list of items to be ranked is fixed. The second setting is \emph{contextual}, where lists of items vary, in form of traditional query-document lists. No stochastic assumption is made on the generation process of relevances of items and contexts. We provide efficient ranking strategies for both the settings. The strategies achieve $O(T^{2/3})$ regret, where regret is based on popular ranking measures in first setting and ranking surrogates in second setting. We also provide impossibility results for certain ranking measures and a certain class of surrogates, when feedback is restricted to the top ranked item, i.e. $k=1$. We empirically demonstrate the performance of our algorithms on simulated and real world datasets.


This report discusses the Youth and Citizenship Project: A Meeting Place ( Projeto Juventude e Cidadania: Ponto de Encontro ), developed in 2004 as part of the Municipal Secretariat of Education's Objectives Plan. The following were established as major themes: the principle of the Educating City, intersectoral nature of municipal public policies at the city hall level, and formation of a social protection network in this space. The Meeting Place is a location for teen and youth interaction with intentionally planned situations, comprised of a set of differently themed, cultural, and management and oversight workshops and workshops to formulate community intervention projects. The report discusses the proposal, material and methodology as well as implementation and assessment of the project.The intent is to implement training of groups of young people at each of the 21 Unified Educational Centers ( Centros Educacionais Unificados – CEUs) outside of regular classroom hours. Adhesion was complete, including participation from professionals at the Education, Sports and Culture Centers and effective participation of community representatives from the CEU Managing Council, in addition to local leaders and social educators. The text concludes that evidence of the project's good reception can be found in the various professional segments that identified the potential for development of a significant proposal with young people at the Meeting Place, within their own context of educational work.


The magnetic spinor particles (magnetic charges) are the real structural components all varieties of the Mass, for example, atoms, nucleons, positrons and neutrinos. Atomic-shaped device of Mass is the natural and the only possible organization of electric and magnetic charges which can create a gravitational field. At level of a popular language one can define nucleons as "small atoms", and positron and neutrino as "very small atoms". The electric and magnetic fundamental particles in neutron and proton shells which by tradition should be called quarks have charges of smaller magnitude than the charges of particles in atomic shells. Positron which participates in the gravitational interaction and, consequently, has an atomic-shaped device is the most likely candidate for the role of the proton nucleus. The most likely candidate particles on the participation in nuclei of proton and neutron as well as in nuclei of the positron and neutrino are presented in the article. So-called abnormal magnetic moment of neutron is formed by the quark magnetic dipoles which are like to unpaired electrons in the so-called magnetic atoms rotate on the outer orbitals of the neutron shell. The participation of the "magnetic electron" (magneton) in the neutrino core assumes the existence of the so-called anomalous magnetic moment and in the neutrino shell. The existence of real magnetic charges in the structures of the Mass draws our attention on such important problem as interaction between charges in the framework of electromagnetic dipoles such as and in which manifest the weak attraction. Weak interaction by its nature is electromagnetic. So-called electromagnetic interaction, manifested in pairs of homogeneous charges of opposite signs, is either electric or magnetic, but not electromagnetic. The explanation of the weak interaction in the marked pairs of charges is based on the author's concept of the World Physical Triad and "Dark Energy". Forces responsible for the interaction of the charges composing the electromagnetic dipoles correspond, conditionally of the weak charges of the particles which what assume mutual suppression of the influence of their fields on the Energo-medium and the formation of the weak "Dark energy". Complex of magnetic particles, the quark magnetic dipoles and magneton by means of which the interconversion of a proton and a neutron is realized and maintained their constant number in the atomic nuclei can be called as magnetic meson. Namely, a processes of interconversion between a neutron and a proton which, as a rule, are not accompanied by secretions, created the illusion of neutron stability in atomic nuclei. The energy created by an exchange of magnetic mesons between neutron and proton can be a component of nuclear forces (strong interaction). Another effective and, most likely, the main component in the composition of the nuclear forces is the gravitational "Dark Energy". Physics and structure of neutrinos presented in the paper suggest that the nature of these particles closer to the ideology of E. Majorana than P. Dirac's.


When training deep networks it is common knowledge that an efficient and well generalizing representation of the problem is formed. In this paper we aim to elucidate what makes the emerging representation successful. We analyze the layer-wise evolution of the representation in a deep network by building a sequence of deeper and deeper kernels that subsume the mapping performed by more and more layers of the deep network and measuring how these increasingly complex kernels fit the learning problem. We observe that deep networks create increasingly better representations of the learning problem and that the structure of the deep network controls how fast the representation of the task is formed layer after layer.


As this paper is drafted, the YPJ continues to clash against Daesh's patriarchal impositions. This paper considers three significant questions for its purpose; first, who are Kurdish female fighters and why did they choose to take up arms in an organized militia? Second, how did the Western media portray the YPJ? Third, it considers whether the Western representation of female soldiers is coherent or not with the subject. In conclusion, the essay will attempt to summarize in a nutshell the reality of the Kurdish female fighters. The aim of this essay is to identify a possible misrepresentation of the objective entailed in Rojava's liberation struggle, since this could compromise the real understanding of the subject, withholding from the audience the opportunity to learn about the plight of the Kurdish female fighters. The study of YPJ's representation was pursued with the Analysis of Textual Data (ATD). However, the subject material for the socio-political analysis on the background of YPJ fighters was pursued through reference to books and interviews of Western reporters that were engaged in Rojava. Furthermore, a written interview was submitted to Meral Çiçek, of REPAK (Kurdish Women's Relation Office). The results show an overall heterogeneous representation of the subject, as it is still not entirely exhaustive. The sociopolitical and ideological stand of YPJ combatants is often not addressed in a proper manner, therefore diminishing some aspects of their struggle. While Western fascination with Kurdish female fighters has slowed down, the YPJ battle is still ongoing. To that regard, the analysis in this paper ought to be considered as a starting point for


The potential advantages of Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) are very well known in industry. However it is also shown that their performance is very sensitive to changing production requirements. The detrimental effects of changing production requirements on the performance of CMS can be alleviated by "implementing better manufacturing cell designs", "employing effective part loading strategies" and "reconfiguration".

This thesis proposes a decision support framework that provides solution strategies for manufacturing cell design, cell loading and reconfiguration problems. There are three main modules in the proposed framework, named as cell formation, loading and reconfiguration. Each module can handle multiple objectives and integrates several planning and design functions, by considering the capabilities of manufacturing resources. Reconfiguration decisions are made explicitly in the proposed framework by answering the questions "when to reconfigure?" and "how to reconfigure?". In order to answer these questions, the modules of the proposed framework are interconnected. The cell formation module creates the initial set of cells. The loading module makes the 'part to cell assignment' and the scheduling in each production period. The reconfiguration module regenerates manufacturing cells, if the loading module can not find a satisfactory solution.

The cell formation module solves the part-machine cell formation problem by simultaneously considering multiple objectives and constraints. Overlapping machine capabilities and generic part process plans are taken into account in the model formulation. A new approach for the evaluation of machine capacities is also presented. Results of the comparative study show that the proposed cell formation method gives better results than several other cell-formation procedures. The manufacturing cells are formed with improved capacity utilisation levels and reduced extra machine requirements. The method is also more likely to produce independent manufacturing cells with higher flexibility.

The loading module solves the 'part to cell assignment' and 'cell scheduling' problems simultaneously for cellular manufacturing applications. Alternative parts to cell and machine assignments are considered by making use of generic part process plans in the model formulation. A parametric simulation model is developed to determine cell schedules for a given part assignment scenario. The proposed loading system can assess performance of the CMS in each production period. Therefore a decision can be made about its reconfiguration. It is also shown that the efficiency of CMSs facing changing production requirements can be improved and/or sustained by using the proposed loading strategy.

The reconfiguration module takes the existing cell configuration as the current solution and generates a new solution from it, to enhance its performance. The model is objective driven and considers multiple objectives and constraints within a goal programming framework. The virtual cell concept is applied as the reconfiguration strategy. In the virtual cell approach the physical locations of machines are not changed, only cell memberships of machines are updated after reconfiguration. The results of the test studies showed that it is possible to improve the performance of CMS by reconfiguring it using virtual cells.

The cell formation, loading and reconfiguration problems issues discussed in this thesis are combinatorially complex multiple objective optimisation problems. Additionally simulation is used to evaluate several of the objective functions used in the modelling of loading and reconfiguration problems. Classical optimisation algorithms have various limitations in solving such problems. Therefore Tabu Search (TS) based multiple objective optimisation algorithms are developed. The proposed TS algorithms are general-purpose and can also be used to solve other multiple objective optimisation problems. The results obtained from several test problems show the proposed TS algorithms to be very effective in solving multiple objective optimisation problems. More than 500/0 improvement in solution quality is obtained in some test problems.


Water lilies (Nymphaea sp.) are one of the most valuable aquatic ornamental
plants which have a bright potential to be a multimillion-dollar commodity in the
floriculture trade. They could be exploited as cut flowers (Master, 1974),
ornamental plants for water garden, urban landscape for aquascaping and restoration
projects (Kane and Philman, 1992) and sources for pharmaceutical and cosmetic
products (Perry, 1987).
Water lily family consists of approximately 50-60 species found in tropical
to cold temperate region (Halijah, 2000). Flowers of water lilies are available in
many colours including red, pink, yellow and white. Water lilies are not only
beautiful but they are also useful in creating a balanced environment in ponds or
lakes as well as improving the water quality. They function as surface vegetation in
controlling the amount of direct sunlight that penetrates the water surface, thus,
stabilising the water temperature particularly during dry season, and also control the
algal growth from over blooming which causes the green water problem (Dawes,
1989). In Putrajaya Wetland Garden in Malaysia, water lilies are planted in open
water as ornamental plants (Radiah, 2000).
Many years ago, Europeans, Asians and Africans consumed the seeds and
tubers of water lilies as food in time of emergency. Nymphaea alba at one time was
used by the French in the preparation of beer, while Irish and Scottish highlanders
used it as a source of dye for dyeing wool (Perry, 1971). During the Egyptian
civilization (approximately 4000 B.C), water lilies were used in religious
ceremonies (Perry, 1987).
Conventionally, water lilies are propagated vegetatively through tuber
production or from new plants sprouting from the underground rhizomatous stem.
However, such propagation methods are restricted due to the slow and limited
number of plants produced, diseases, large propagation space needed and an
extended period to produce saleable plants. These factors contribute to a high
production cost (Kelly and Fret, 1986) and often prevent an efficient and rapid
production of planting materials to meet the market demand (Kane, 1991).


International consensus is growing that a transition towards a low carbon society (LCS) is needed over the next 40 years. The G8, the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, as well as the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, have concluded that states should prepare their own Low-emission Plans or Low-emission Development Plans and such plans are in development in an increasing number of countries.
An analysis of recent long-term low emission scenarios for Germany shows that all scenarios rely heavily on a massive scale up of energy efficiency improvements based on past trends. However, in spite of the high potential that scenario developers assign to this strategy, huge uncertainty still exists in respect of where the efficiency potentials really lie, how and if they can be achieved and how much their successful implementation depends on more fundamental changes towards a more sustainable society (e.g. behavioural changes).
In order to come to a better understanding of this issue we specifically examine the potential for energy efficiency in relation to particular demand sectors. Our comparative analysis shows that despite general agreement about the high importance of energy efficiency (EE), the perception on where and how to achieve it differ between the analysed scenarios. It also shows that the close nexus between energy efficiency and non-technical behavioural aspects is still little understood. This leads us to the conclusion that in order to support energy policy decisions more research should be done on energy efficiency potential. A better understanding of its potential would help energy efficiency to fulfil its role in the transition towards a LCS.


The study of organizational learning is no longer in its infancy. Since Cyert and March first introduced the notion in the early 1960s, a plethora of books and journal publications have presented their own interpretations of the meaning and significance of the term. Despite such endeavours, there is little common agreement about what organizational learning represents and how future research may build cumulatively upon the many diverse ideas articulated. The intention here is by no means to address these issues, which have been comprehensively examined elsewhere. The purpose is rather to compare and contrast approaches in order to analyse similarities and dissimilarities, together with research challenges, for each approach. This is achieved by presenting a comparative framework to categorize the literature according to (a) its prescriptive/explanatory bias and (b) in line with the level of analysis, examining whether there is a focus on the organization as a whole or upon individuals and their work communities instead. The review concludes by presenting some preliminary suggestions for cross-quadrant research. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006.


ABSTRACT Geophysical methods are routinely applied for investigation of near surface in areas of infrastructure, water supply, artificial infiltration, farming, waste deposits, construction, etc. A new towed transient electromagnetic tool, called 'tTEM', provides rapid, efficient, high‐resolution imaging of subsurface hydrogeology, and can deliver densely spaced profiles of resistivity. These profiles can be used to map a three‐dimensional subsurface in high resolution. In this paper, we present three case studies where the towed transient electromagnetic system was used to map the subsurface at the hectare scale. In the first case, we used towed transient electromagnetic to map raw materials in the northern Jutland, Denmark. The survey was carried out to map possible sand and gravel deposits. In the towed transient electromagnetic models, the potential sand/gravel targets are identified as high resistive bodies in the top 30 m. These bodies can have significant lateral variation at scales much less than one hundred metres. In the second case study, towed transient electromagnetic was used to map the thickness of a protecting clay layer above an aquifer in Vildbjerg, a town in the central part of Denmark. Results show that the overlying clay layer has sufficient thickness (>15 m) to protect the underlying aquifer from pesticide pollution in the area. Finally, in the third case study, we used towed transient electromagnetic for mapping geology in the vicinity of a landfill. The inversion results reveal a hitherto unknown buried valley‐like feature within the top 30 m of the subsurface that was not identified by older, regional TEM surveys – a feature that can have significant impact on the water flow.


Residential burglary is a serious problem in South Africa, considering its high occurrence rate and the financial and psychological impact it has on peoples' lives. Victims of residential burglary may rightfully ask why their residences were targeted and what they could have done to prevent it. Hypothetically, the answers might be found in the perceived vulnerability of a specific residence in time and space, and how the burglar relates to it. In the absence of effective and enduring crime prevention initiatives at the local level, individual households increasingly realise the need for self-protection as well as private security measures in their immediate environment. The aim of this article is thus to provide a conceptual framework that can be applied in the micro-environment to explain the occurrence of a burglary event and to suggest prevention measures and initiatives to curb this type of crime.
The conceptual framework was constructed on the theoretical perspectives gained through a burglary study conducted by Van Zyl (2002) in two case study areas in the Greater Pretoria metropolitan area, namely the police station areas of Pretoria West and Garsfontein. Although the study was designed within the qualitative research paradigm, both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used. Research data were gathered through primary (semi-structured interviews) and secondary (statistics and documents) sources. The analysis strategy applied in the study, can be described as "pattern-matching logic", where the initial conceptual framework served as a model against which the codified data could be evaluated.
The findings of the study confirmed the usefulness of the conceptual framework in that it provided an integrated understanding of the burglary process and gave a structured and systematic description of the components and elements involved in the burglary process. Central emphasis was placed on the situational conditions that might contribute to the vulnerability of residences. Consequently an integrated framework for the prevention of residential burglary was developed that integrates the efforts of individual households with those of the local communities and law enforcement agencies in the prevention of crime.


A set $S\subseteq V(G)$ is independent if no two vertices from $S$ are adjacent. Let $\alpha\left( G\right) $ stand for the cardinality of a largest independent set.In this paper we prove that if $\Lambda$ is a nonempty collection of maximum independent sets of a graph $G$, and $S$ is an independent set, thenthere is a matching from $S-\bigcap\Lambda$ into $\bigcup\Lambda-S$, and$\left\vert S\right\vert +\alpha(G)\leq\left\vert \bigcap\Lambda\cap S\right\vert +\left\vert \bigcup\Lambda\cup S\right\vert $.Based on these findings we provide alternative proofs for a number of well-known lemmata, such as the "Maximum Stable Set Lemma" due to Claude Berge and the "Clique Collection Lemma" due to András Hajnal.


Worldwide, soil contamination due to industrial activities is a major issue. One method for remediation of contaminated sites is in situ chemical oxidation, where an oxidizing agent is injected into the contaminated soil. Normally, monitoring wells are established in the remediation area for tracking the oxidizing agent. However, wells only provide point information of the injectant spread. This issue can be addressed using cross-borehole resistivity and induced polarization tomography, by mapping the electrical properties in the entire remediation volume and by deriving, through petrophysical relations, the hydraulic properties of themedium.Here we present a proof-ofconcept study, performed over one year as part of a larger remediation project, where resistivity and time-domain induced polarization data were acquired among 10 boreholes, before and after two rounds of injection of oxidizing agents. The time-lapse resistivity models, obtained through a focusing inversion scheme that favours compact time-lapse changes, clearly show the oxidizing agent spread as highly conductive anomalies and confirmed by water conductivity measurements in boreholes. The time-lapse inversions also show spatial variability in the injectant spread, with some areas not reached. The induced polarization data quality decreased significantly just after the injection rounds, because of the decrease in resistivity and induced polarization signal level, so that induced polarization time-lapse inversions were not feasible. However, the induced polarization data were used for background characterization and to estimate permeability. In particular, there is a good match between the imaged low-permeability zones and the areas in which the injectant did not spread, identified by the time-lapse resistivity inversions. Furthermore, geological samples confirm the presence of fine-grained sediments in the estimated low-permeability zones.While time-lapse resistivity tomography may be used for documenting the injectant spread, induced polarization permeability estimates prior to injection can be used to better tailor the remediation in terms of dimension and location of injection filters.


The adequate use of statistical methods is an indispensable aspect of generating novel findings in medical research. Generally, there is a focus on presenting the p-values of biometric results, although their validity has to be assessed critically. At the same time, the capabilities of graphical approaches of descriptive statistics are exhausted just rarely to outline the essential findings emphatically. By means of retrospective data from emergency medicine, the application of simple, but non-standard graphical methods is demonstrated to highlight the main results. The objective is to identify injury patterns at particular accident sites. Frequencies and weighted kappa coefficients are graphically displayed to present the results. Appropriate contingency tables enable rapid identification of the most frequent combinations of accident site and injury type. Furthermore, respective spider and star charts illustrate alternatively the most important connections and frequencies. A diagram displays the kappa coefficients with confidence intervals facilitate a fast assessment of the accordance of diagnoses at accident site and clinic. Graphical methods of descriptive statistics are suitable to work out the essential results of a medical research question in retrospective samples. Effectively, there are no creative limits for their application to illustrate a particular issue in an individual manner.


This study examines scientific practices associated with scientific writing in organic chemistry in China. Although there is rapidly growing literature on the features and strategies of scientific writing, further research in this area is needed to recognize and treat scientific writing as a social endeavor to evaluate it in a more comprehensive and detailed way in order to effectively convey scientific information to readers. This study shared these important premises and attempted to investigate the development of Chinese undergraduate students' competence of scientific writing. Twenty-two undergraduate students majoring in chemistry participated in this study. They experienced a researcher-intervenedAdvanced Organic Chemistry Experimentcourse and were asked to write scientific articles on the six course experiments. Their scientific writings were analyzed based on normativity, objectivity, and logicality. These dimensions of the development of students' competence in scientific writing during the course were portrayed. This study suggested that student's development in scientific writing can be divided into categories, demonstrating the importance and implications of teaching "learn to write" in science.


Accurate and spatially distributed rainfall data are crucial for a realistic simulation of the hydrological processes in a watershed. However, limited availability of observed hydro-meteorological data often challenges the rainfall–runoff modelling efforts. The main goal of this study is to evaluate the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) and Water and Global Change (WATCH) rainfall by comparing them with gauge observations for different rainfall regimes in the Mara Basin (Kenya/Tanzania). Additionally, the skill of these rainfall datasets to simulate the observed streamflow is assessed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The daily CFSR and WATCH rainfall show a poor performance (up to 52% bias and less than 0.3 correlation) when compared with gauge rainfall at grid and basin scale, regardless of the rainfall regime. However, the correlations for both CFSR and WATCH substantially improve at monthly scale. The 95% prediction uncertainty (95PPU) of the simulated daily streamflow, as forced by CFSR and WATCH rainfall, bracketed more than 60% of the observed streamflows. We however note high uncertainty for the high flow regime. Yet, the monthly and annual aggregated CFSR and WATCH rainfall can be a useful surrogate for gauge rainfall data for hydrologic application in the study area.


Traditionally the creation of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) was "supply-driven", the result of excess reserves from natural resources (e.g. Norway, Qatar, Kuwait, etc.) or non-commodity capital flows (e.g. South Korea, China, Singapore, etc.). More recently we observe many newly established or announced funds to be "demand-driven", motivated by domestic development objectives (including infrastructure development). This transition from supply-driven to demand-driven SWF creation is most starkly manifested in SWF capitalization. This paper outlines recent developments on SWF creation – especially by countries that are neither endowed with oil wealth nor possess sizeable export surpluses to create SWFs with a development mandate. While contextualizing this study in the broader SWF literature, the aim is to provide a comprehensive overview on how funding sources impact achieving long-term financial and socio-economic development objectives.


Purpose
Prosocial advertisers widely use assertive messages to encourage prosocial attitudes and behaviors, but ironically, assertive messages may cause reactance. By applying cultural theories and the reciprocity principle, this study aims to observe whether consumers' responses to assertive messages hold across culturally different audiences (Americans vs South Koreans) and different consumption situations (price discount vs no discount).

Design/methodology/approach
American and Korean participants take part in three experimental studies examining the interactions of nationality, price discounts and assertive messaging for influencing consumer responses, first to a prosocial ad encouraging recycling (Study 1), the second for a campaign requesting donations for disadvantaged children (Study 2) and the third to prosocial messages encouraging water conservation (Study 3).

Findings
The three experiments strongly support the moderating role of price discounts and cultural backgrounds in the persuasiveness of assertive prosocial messages. American consumers generally dislike assertive messages, but feel reciprocal obligations if marketers include price discounts, whereas South Korean consumers accept both assertive and nonassertive messages without resistance, and discounts have no effects on persuasion.

Research limitations/implications
The findings make two key contributions to the literature and to prosocial advertising practices. First, although many corporations have adopted philanthropic strategies, few researchers have examined how specific consumption contexts determine the effectiveness of prosocial persuasion. The findings show how price discounts and message framing potentially alter the effectiveness of prosocial messages across Eastern and Western cultures. Second, assertive language evokes reactance, but the findings suggest that reactive responses to prosocial advertising are culture-specific.

Practical implications
International nonprofit organizations and brands using philanthropic strategies might use the guidelines of this study for tailoring strategic, practical prosocial messages that will appeal to consumers from diverse cultural backgrounds. In particular, pro-environmental and charity campaigns targeting North American or Western European populations may consider bundling discounts into promotions to evoke reciprocity.

Originality/value
Findings provide novel implications for social marketers regarding on how to couple message assertiveness and price discounts to maximize the success of prosocial messages in different cultures.


Based on the microscope phase-field model,the evolution of atom morphology, the long range order(lro) parameter and concentration can be gotten, and atomic clustering and ordering during the precipitation process of Ni-Cr-Al alloy could be obtained. The Ni-14at.%Cr-15.5at.%Al alloy is studied and the temperature of precipitation are 973K. It was showed that the ordering of both Al and Cr atoms take place simultaneously during the precipitation process of Ni-Al-Cr alloy, Cr atoms transfer to the boundaries of L12 phases, the domain of rich Cr atoms are formed. At the boundaries of L12 phases, Cr atoms may substitute the Al sublattice, and the D022 phases are formed.


In January 2011, we organized a mini conference about the Hungarian constitutional transformation at Humboldt University. We described the chain of events, from the landslide victory of the then-opposition party, Fidesz, to a series of drastic constitutional revisions. In our presentations, we called the transformation a constitutional crisis and we argued that the constitutional revisions did not meet the democratic constitutional standards.


We present QLoRA, an efficient finetuning approach that reduces memory usage enough to finetune a 65B parameter model on a single 48GB GPU while preserving full 16-bit finetuning task performance. QLoRA backpropagates gradients through a frozen, 4-bit quantized pretrained language model into Low Rank Adapters~(LoRA). Our best model family, which we name Guanaco, outperforms all previous openly released models on the Vicuna benchmark, reaching 99.3% of the performance level of ChatGPT while only requiring 24 hours of finetuning on a single GPU. QLoRA introduces a number of innovations to save memory without sacrificing performance: (a) 4-bit NormalFloat (NF4), a new data type that is information theoretically optimal for normally distributed weights (b) double quantization to reduce the average memory footprint by quantizing the quantization constants, and (c) paged optimziers to manage memory spikes. We use QLoRA to finetune more than 1,000 models, providing a detailed analysis of instruction following and chatbot performance across 8 instruction datasets, multiple model types (LLaMA, T5), and model scales that would be infeasible to run with regular finetuning (e.g. 33B and 65B parameter models). Our results show that QLoRA finetuning on a small high-quality dataset leads to state-of-the-art results, even when using smaller models than the previous SoTA. We provide a detailed analysis of chatbot performance based on both human and GPT-4 evaluations showing that GPT-4 evaluations are a cheap and reasonable alternative to human evaluation. Furthermore, we find that current chatbot benchmarks are not trustworthy to accurately evaluate the performance levels of chatbots. A lemon-picked analysis demonstrates where Guanaco fails compared to ChatGPT. We release all of our models and code, including CUDA kernels for 4-bit training.


In 2004 the Austrian-based OMV acquired in a privatization process 51% of the Romanian national oil company Petrom. Two and a half years later this privatization is again in the focus of political attention in Romania. The current government and the media consider the selling price and the royalties too low in view of the high international oil and gas prices. The whole issue of privatization is on the agenda. This paper investigates the privatization of Petrom in its historical context and deals with its consequences. In 2003-2004 the privatization of large companies was seen as a prerequisite to put an end to non-transparent subsidization, rent-seeking and favouritism in the Romanian economy. The Petrom sale was urged by the necessity to obtain from the EU Commission the 'functioning market economy status' and to close all negotiation chapters by the end of 2004. Fair and open bidding resulted in selecting the winner and setting the sales price. The conditions of privatization, the sales price and other stipulations of the privatization process reflected the then level of knowledge and the risks associated with a Romanian company. Meanwhile, due to high international oil prices and the improved business conditions in Romania, an EU member as of 2007, the value of the company is now certainly higher than it was two years ago – which also benefits the Romanian state as (direct and indirect) holder of 40% of Petrom's shares. It is debatable how far the recent increases in international oil prices could be foreseen in 2003, but it is quite certain that the International Energy Agency and large oil companies did not expect such a development. Still, the high oil prices benefit Petrom, and the large one-time profits finance investments. The sale of Petrom to OMV and its subsequent restructuring stabilized the company. New technologies, management techniques and organizational structures have increased efficiency. The company envisages the production decline to come to an end in 2007; explorations in Kazakhstan will add to Romania's supply in the future. As a further advantage, Petrom is the OMV subsidiary in charge of the company's business in the CIS and in Southeast Europe, Bucharest becoming the regional headquarters. The discussions around the OMV–Petrom case should have no relevance for greenfield investments in Romania, but large-scale privatizations particularly in the energy sector suffer delays. The government has stalled a number of important privatizations thus nurturing potential hotbeds of corruption.


The development of claws in different reptiles and their cornification are analyzed using histological, ultrastructural and autoradiographic methods. Claws develop at the tip of digits in relation to the growth of the terminal phalanx and appear as modified scales. The apical epidermis of digit becomes thickened and is associated with a mesenchymal condensation or a dense mesenchyme. The dorsal side of the digit becomes the unguis while the ventral side becomes the sub-unguis. The corneous layer in the unguis is thicker than in the sub-unguis and accumulates hard-keratin while corneocytes remain separated or partially fused. Bundles of hard-keratin tend to accumulate in parallel orientation with respect to the surface and are directed toward the claw tip. The sub-unguis is formed by a softer corneous material and by a much thinner hard-keratin layer. Autoradiography after tritiated thymidine and histidine injection indicates that the growth of reptilian claws occurs along the entire epidermis of the claw. A proximal matrix zone for cell proliferation like in mammalian nails and claws is therefore absent in claws of reptiles. This observation indicates that the pattern of growth of reptilian and probably avian claws is different from that of mammals.