Abstract Introduction: Early childhood is an optimal time to support the development of physical activity and healthy eating behaviors. As over half of children are cared for in family child care homes and child care centers it is crucial to ensure these behaviors are being supported in the childcare setting. One such process that supports provider's education and implementation of healthy behaviors in the childcare setting is the Nutrition and Physical Activity Assessment in Child Care (Go NAP SACC). However, after participation in Go NAP SACC, little is known regarding how to further support providers in their promotion of healthy behaviors. More research is needed in the United States (U.S.), especially in rural populations, to understand providers' reported perceptions of health behavior promotion after receiving Go NAP SACC training and implementing best practices. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the nutrition and physical activity reported practices and perceptions of U.S. rural and urban providers who had received Go NAP SACC training and implemented Go NAP SACC best practices within the last two years. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were completed with 12 providers (6 rural, 6 urban) in the Midwestern U.S. based on constructs of the Social Cognitive Theory (i.e., personal behaviors, cognitive factors, and socioenvironmental factors). Data were analyzed via immersion and crystallization and validated with reflexivity and peer debriefing. Results: Findings indicated Go NAP SACC trained providers in both rural and urban areas felt they had the resources and knowledge needed to promote physical activity and healthy eating. However, they still struggled with barriers related to adequate space for activity, funding for equipment, parent engagement, and health promotion among staff and parents. Conclusion: Incorporating opportunities for follow-up interactions after initial training may help reduce the barriers that persist after Go NAP SACC training. In addition, future interventions should consider the factors of parent engagement and staff wellness during intervention development and execution.


We introduced an exfoliation method of MoS2 in a 3% solution of sodium dodecyl surfactant at high concentration (i.e. 2 g/L). The bulk MoS2 was thinned by mechanical exfoliation between sand papers and the resulting powder was used to prepare dispersions by liquid exfoliation through probe sonication. The resulting dispersion consisted of very thin MoS2 nanosheets in surfactant solution with average lateral size around 126 nm. This may be interesting for applications in inkjet printed electronics.


Security is primarily concerned with protecting assets from harm. Identifying and evaluating assets are therefore key activities in any security engineering process - from modeling threats and attacks, discovering existing vulnerabilities, to selecting appropriate countermeasures. However, despite their crucial role, assets are often neglected during the development of secure software systems. Indeed, many systems are designed with fixed security boundaries and assumptions, without the possibility to adapt when assets change unexpectedly, new threats arise, or undiscovered vulnerabilities are revealed. To handle such changes, systems must be capable of dynamically enabling different security countermeasures. This paper promotes assets as first-class entities in engineering secure software systems. An asset model is related to requirements, expressed through a goal model, and the objectives of an attacker, expressed through a threat model. These models are then used as input to build a causal network to analyze system security in different situations, and to enable, when necessary, a set of countermeasures to mitigate security threats. The causal network is conceived as a runtime entity that tracks relevant changes that may arise at runtime, and enables a new set of countermeasures. We illustrate and evaluate our proposed approach by applying it to a substantive example concerned with security of mobile phones.


BACKGROUND
There continue to be many efforts around the world to develop assays that are shorter than the traditional embryofetal developmental toxicity assay, or use fewer or no mammals, or use less compound, or have all three attributes. Each assay developer needs to test the putative assay against a set of performance standards, which traditionally has involved testing the assays against a list of compounds that are generally recognized as "positive" or "negative" in vivo. However, developmental toxicity is highly conditional, being particularly dependent on magnitude (i.e. dose) and timing of exposure, which makes it difficult to develop lists of compounds neatly assigned as developmental toxicants or not.

APPROACH
Here we offer an alternative approach for the evaluation of developmental toxicity assays based on exposures. Exposures are classified as "positive" or "negative" in a system, depending on the compound and the internal concentration. Although this linkage to "internal dose" departs from the recent approaches to validation, it fits well with widely accepted principles of developmental toxicology.

CONCLUSIONS
This paper introduces this concept, discusses some of the benefits and drawbacks of such an approach, and lays out the steps we propose to implement it for the evaluation of developmental toxicity assays.


Proliferation of new wireless technologies has rekindled the interest on the design, analysis and implementation of suboptimal receiver structures that provide good error probability performance with reduced power consumption and complexity particularly when the order of diversity is large. This thesis presents a unified analytical framework to perform a trade-off study for a class of hybrid generalized selection combining technique for ultra-wideband, spread-spectrum and millimeter-wave communication receiver designs. The thesis also develops an exact mathematical framework to analyze the performance of a dual-diversity equal gain combining (EGC) receiver in correlated Nakagami-m channels, which had defied a simple solution in the past. The framework facilitates efficient evaluation of the mean and variance of coherent EGC output signal-to-noise ratio, outage probability and average symbol error probability for a broad range of digital modulation schemes. A comprehensive study of various dual-diversity techniques with non-independent and non-identical fading statistics is also presented. Finally, the thesis develops some closed-form solutions for a few integrals involving the generalized Marcum Q-function. Integrals of these types often arise in the analysis of multichannel diversity reception of differentially coherent and noncoherent digital communications over Nakagami-m channels. Several other applications are also discussed.


This work introduces and evaluates the use of recombinantly produced antigen binding fragments (Fab) for ICP-MS based immunoassays. A labeling procedure for a genetically modified anti HER2-specific Fab, so-called ThioFab, with rare earth element labeled macrocycles, and its characterization via liquid chromatography inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry is presented. The employment of this engineered ThioFab, which carries a recombinantly introduced cysteine allows accurate control of the labeling stoichiometry. The labeling procedure was performed after coordination of selected lanthanides by the complexing DOTA–maleimide-moiety and subsequent linking of the complex to the ThioFab. With the introduced cysteine residue, only a mild reduction step was necessary prior to the attachment of the lanthanide–DOTA–maleimide preventing fragmentation of the Fab-molecule. Pre-optimization steps were performed with human serum albumin as the model protein. By applying the optimized labeling procedure the labeling degree of the genetically modified ThioFab was increased to 90.5 ± 0.5%. The formation of the final ThioFab/antigen conjugate employing Anti-HER2/HER2 as the model system was successfully demonstrated indicating the high potential of the new approach for immunoassays in imaging and flow-cytometry based assays.


Abstract Takakia lepidozioides is a rare and potentially relictual species of a genus that diverged early in the evolution history of mosses. Plants of Takakia grow very slowly in the wild and are almost too small (only ∼ 5 mm high) to be genetically manipulated. We collected Takakia plants with mature spore-bearing capsules from the Nyingchi region at about 4,000 meters elevation in the Tibetan Plateau. We analyzed the pH and inorganic elements of the soil below the population to then optimize the composition of the Beneck medium that is generally suitable for moss culture. We explored the effects of several factors on spore germination and gametophyte growth and established the conditions for efficient spore germination and rapid gametophyte propagation. The characterization of spore germination and early gametophyte development revealed that the sporeling of Takakia is thalloid as in Sphagnum and Andreaea. These results provide the foundation to facilitate genetic, physiological and biochemical research with T. lepidozioides and also developmental studies, which may contribute to our understanding of the morphological transformations in the early diversification of mosses.


Sensor signal fusion is becoming increasingly important in many areas including medical diagnosis and classification. Clinicians/experts often do the diagnosis of stress, sleepiness, tiredness etc. based on several physiological sensor signals to achieve better accuracy in classification. This paper presents a case-based reasoning (CBR) system that offers an opportunity to classify healthy and stressed persons based on sensor signal fusion. Several sensor measurements for instance, i.e., heart rate, inter-beat-interval, finger temperature, skin conductance and respiration rate have been combined for the data level fusion using Multivariate Multiscale Entropy Analysis (MMSE) algorithm. This algorithm supports complexity analysis of multivariate biological recordings. Here, MMSE is used to formulate cases in the case-based classification system.


This report provides results from the establishment of a new collaborative working group of three colleagues from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland who sought to conduct a study on leadership learning across three respective systems. The study titled "Leadership Learning in Initial Teacher Education (LLITE)" began on 1st September 2018. Leadership in this study refers to "the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives" (Yukl, 2013, p.23). An important distinction is made between leadership and learning and learning for leadership (i.e., preparation for an imminent or future leadership role). Leadership learning is concerned with developing the professional knowledge and skills to make sense of the leadership that newly qualified and early career teachers will experience and see enacted in schools. It also aims to enable teachers to develop the leadership knowledge and skills necessary to practise leadership within their classrooms and in the wider school community as part of their collaborative professional practice (Hargreaves and O'Connor, 2017; King and Stevenson, 2017).


In this paper, we investigate numerical solution of Allen–Cahn equation with constant and degenerate mobility, and with polynomial and logarithmic energy functionals. We discretize the model equation by symmetric interior penalty Galerkin (SIPG) method in space, and by average vector field (AVF) method in time. We show that the energy stable AVF method as the time integrator for gradient systems like the Allen–Cahn equation satisfies the energy decreasing property for fully discrete scheme. Numerical results reveal that the discrete energy decreases monotonically, the phase separation and metastability phenomena can be observed, and the ripening time is detected correctly.


In human color vision each incident spectral energy distribution is coded in three values, corresponding to the responses of the red, green, and blue receptor systems. The Stiles-Crawford effect and the color phenomena associated with it indicate that these three values are in a different degree for each wavelength dependent on eccentricity of the point of entry of the light in the pupil.A rather quantitative description of the facts is given by a theory in which leak factor of the light to the surrounding tissue in the outer and the inner segment is involved. The leak factor implies that for oblique light the effective pathway in the outer segment is shortened. This results in narrowing of the fundamental response curve of the particular receptor.Theory strongly points to rather high densities of the photopigment in the receptor, but not improbably high. On the contrary, there is agreement with other sound suggestions and estimates of the density value. As absorption curves for the red, green, and blue pigments we used Pitt's curves. The agreement of different experimental data with this theory strongly supports the Young-Helmholtz hypothesis, as far as the receptor layer is concerned, and also indicates that the curves derived by Pitt are fairly good approximations of the absorption curves of the photopigments after correction for absorption of light by the ocular media.


Data from a 2-year field study were used to examine the relationships among psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and employee job performance with employee turnover. Using a sample of 112 managers employed at a large organization on the West Coast of the United States, and controlling for employee age, gender, ethnicity, and job performance, well-being and job satisfaction were found to predict turnover in a nonadditive manner. As expected, well-being was found to moderate the relation between job satisfaction and job separation, such that job satisfaction was most strongly (and negatively) related to turnover when well-being was low.


In the 1960s and 1970s, self-avowed members of the counterculture, often based on the west coast and in the Rocky Mountain West, eschewed critics' stereotypical notions of stoned and indolent hippies and struggled to build an alternative economic system. While rejecting corporate capitalism and consumer acquisitiveness, they built new enterprises, new institutions, new organizational forms, and new practices that gave proof of the possibility of creating economically sustainable, alternative lives. Do-it-yourself practices, especially building one's own home or repairing one's own vehicle, promised to free practitioners from working for wages in order to afford consumer goods—even as DIY culture often promoted traditional gender roles. While many of the counterculture's attempts at escaping the employee-consumer nexus failed or were short-lived, it did succeed in outlining an alternative approach to both production and consumption that has had a continuing impact on American capitalist development.


Two major tasks in spoken language understanding (SLU) are intent determination (ID) and slot filling (SF). Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have been proved effective in SF, while there is no prior work using RNNs in ID. Based on the idea that the intent and semantic slots of a sentence are correlative, we propose a joint model for both tasks. Gated recurrent unit (GRU) is used to learn the representation of each time step, by which the label of each slot is predicted. Meanwhile, a max-pooling layer is employed to capture global features of a sentence for intent classification. The representations are shared by two tasks and the model is trained by a united loss function. We conduct experiments on two datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches on both tasks.


We investigate the corrective unit commitment problem to deal with disruption in power system operations caused by an unforeseen unit breakdown with stochastic duration. Since the original unit schedule is no longer feasible when a unit breaks down during operation, a corrective scheduling that provides an immediate response to such a disruption is needed to update the original schedule in time. The objective of the corrective scheduling is to minimize the generation cost and the deviation from the original schedule. The corrective scheduling problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming model where the stochastic duration is expressed by tree-structured duration scenarios. The proposed variable splitting-based Lagrangian relaxation algorithm decomposes the problem into multiple single-unit subproblems and a linear programming-type artificial variable subproblem. Each single-unit subproblem is solved by a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, the generating level of the unit in each committed period is determined optimally. In the second stage, before the dynamic programming is called, an effective pre-processing technique based on optimality conditions is applied to speed up the procedure. The dual problem is solved by a bundle method. The numerical results show that the algorithm can find solutions very close to optimums within a reasonable time.


The medical records of children who had had CSF shunt procedures were reviewed for the seven-year period from 1975 through 1981. There were 516 procedures performed in 297 patients. Only three were ventriculoatrial shunts; the remainder were ventriculoperitoneal shunts. Fifty-nine infectious episodes (11%) occurred in 50 patients (17%); there were three relapses and six reinfections. The infecting pathogen was staphylococci in 75% of the infections and gram-negative bacilli in 19%, and there were two or more pathogens in 15% of the infections. The onset of the infection was within 15 days of surgery in 53% of the cases. The main symptoms were fever, irritability, and shunt malfunction. Gram's stain of the CSF was positive in 46% of the episodes and blood cultures were positive in 29%. Nineteen percent of patients had wound infection and 7% had peritonitis; in most of these cases there were no neurologic signs or symptoms. Thirteen episodes were managed with antibiotic therapy alone; among these, there were three relapses and two reinfections. Thirty-seven episodes were treated with antibiotics and immediate removal of the shunt; there were no relapses and three reinfections. Nine episodes were managed with antibiotics and delayed removal of the shunt; there was one reinfection. The median duration of antibiotic treatment was 15 days, and the time to defervescence was 24 hours in those with immediate removal of the shunt and six days in those in whom the shunt was not removed.


This Note argues that courts assessing the desegregation effectiveness of magnet schools should evaluate the desegregation of classrooms as well as buildings. Part I, after describing magnet schools and their role in the segregation of school systems, presents support for the claim that many magnet schools are rife with racially segregated classrooms. Part II explains how the methods developed by academics to evaluate desegregation plans have made it possible for magnet schools to operate separate classrooms for minority and white students, yet still be considered desegregated schools. Part III describes constitutional prohibitions against racial segregation within magnet schools, but notes that federal funding programs for desegregation-oriented magnet schools do not explicitly require the Department of Education to consider how the magnet program will affect classroom racial composition. Part IV discusses the declining number of school desegregation cases in which the court explicitly considers within-school racial segregation. The Article concludes that courts should pay particular attention to classroom racial composition as they fashion equitable remedies to school segregation.


Gd, N, and P tri-doped anatase-TiO 2 (GNPTO) nano-photocatalyst has been synthesized from TiCl 4 hydrolysis using gadolinium nitrate, urea, and phosphoric acid as dopant sources via a hydrothermal process followed by calcination at 400°C. The physicochemical properties of as-synthesized samples have been investigated by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, N 2 physical adsorption-desorption, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, UV-vis absorbance spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy techniques. Doped P in the TiO 2 lattices plays a predominant role in inhibiting the phase transformation and crystal growth, and in improving the surface textural properties. Gd, N, and P tri-doping inhibits the recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes, increases the surface hydroxyls, and improves the UV absorption. GNPTO exhibits the highest photoactivity towards 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) degradation under simulated sunlight irradiation among the undoped, doped, and P25 TiO 2 . ·OH radicals play a key role in 4-CP degradation, and photogenerated electrons also play a minor role through the final formation of ·OH via H 2 O 2 . Synergetic mechanism of the enhanced photoactivity for GNPTO has also been discussed.


Coordinate descent methods minimize a cost function by updating a single decision variable (corresponding to one coordinate) at a time. Ideally, we would update the decision variable that yields the largest marginal decrease in the cost function. However, finding this coordinate would require checking all of them, which is not computationally practical. Therefore, we propose a new adaptive method for coordinate descent. First, we define a lower bound on the decrease of the cost function when a coordinate is updated and, instead of calculating this lower bound for all coordinates, we use a multi-armed bandit algorithm to learn which coordinates result in the largest marginal decrease and simultaneously perform coordinate descent. We show that our approach improves the convergence of the coordinate methods both theoretically and experimentally.


"Judicial restraint" and its counterpart "judicial activism" are widely regarded as meaningless terms, useful primarily as rhetorical weapons with which to praise or condemn judicial decisions about which the speaker has strong feelings. The terms certainly are frequently used in that manner, but there may also be analytically distinct forms of judicial restraint to which different judges adhere. Academic commentators have articulated and defended various theories of judicial restraint, but my purpose here is to examine the debate "at work," so to speak, in an actual case. The Court's recent Second Amendment incorporation decision, McDonald v. Chicago, is an especially interesting example because strikingly different models of judicial restraint are adopted by subsets of the more conservative wing of the Court, and subtly different models are adopted by subsets of the more liberal wing. A close look at the opinions in the case suggests that each model has different strengths and weaknesses, but also that they are by no means created equal. Surprisingly, perhaps, the most radical sounding opinion in the case may on balance be the most restrained.


This paper will demonstrate the advantages of using Lean Construction methodologies on projects, specifically Just In Time, to the entire process of fabrication, transportation, and installation of prefabricated concrete facades. The objective was to change the traditional process of mass production, with production of big lots of each different piece and the need of important areas for storage of the material waiting for installation. As Sven Bertelsen and Rafael Sacks (2006) propose on their paper presented at the IGLC 14 conference: "The construction industry must therefore be seen as an industry conducting an eternal chain of interwoven projects as any participant is involved in more than one project at the same time. The aspect distinguishing the construction industry from mass or customized production is thus not the individuality of the product per se but the fact that the huge variation in project outcomes makes it necessary for the industry to set up a new production process— and therefore a new production system for each project". The proposed change was to fabricate very small lots of oneor two units of each different piece, send it to the construction site to be installed, checked for changes and adjustments needed, communicate those to production and implement the changes on the molds and on the production processes. This change is of particular importance because it is difficult to make sound decisions on materials management and supply chain management in regards to how much and when to order the materials on a construction project, combined with the uncertainty of it delivery (Tommelein 2006) IGLC 14, Tommelein and Li 1999).


Short-term traffic prediction allows Intelligent Transport Systems to proactively respond to events before they happen. With the rapid increase in the amount, quality, and detail of traffic data, new techniques are required that can exploit the information in the data in order to provide better results while being able to scale and cope with increasing amounts of data and growing cities. We propose and compare three models for short-term road traffic density prediction based on Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks. We have trained the models using real traffic data collected by Motorway Control System in Stockholm that monitors highways and collects flow and speed data per lane every minute from radar sensors. In order to deal with the challenge of scale and to improve prediction accuracy, we propose to partition the road network into road stretches and junctions, and to model each of the partitions with one or more LSTM neural networks. Our evaluation results show that partitioning of roads improves the prediction accuracy by reducing the root mean square error by the factor of 5. We show that we can reduce the complexity of LSTM network by limiting the number of input sensors, on average to 35% of the original number, without compromising the prediction accuracy.


In the aftermath of the Great Recession, various mortgage modification programs were introduced to help homeowners struggling to make their monthly mortgage payments remain in their homes. We use mortgage data at the individual borrower level, joined to credit card spending and deposit account data, to investigate the relative importance of changes in monthly mortgage payments and long-term mortgage debt on default and consumption. We first quantify the variation in payment reduction offered by these modification programs and then use the variation in payment and principal reduction experienced by program recipients to estimate the impact of payment and principal reduction on default and consumption.
First, we find that payment reduction for borrowers with similar payment burdens varied by two to three times across different modification programs. Borrowers with a high mortgage payment to- income (PTI) ratio received more than twice the payment reduction from HAMP compared to the GSE program. Borrowers with a low mortgage PTI ratio received three times the payment reduction from the GSE program compared to HAMP. Second, a 10 percent mortgage payment reduction reduced default rates by 22 percent. Third, for borrowers who remained underwater, mortgage principal reduction had no effect on default. This suggests that "strategic default" was not the primary driver of default decisions for these underwater borrowers. Fourth, for borrowers who remained underwater, mortgage principal reduction had no effect on consumption. Finally, default was correlated with income loss, regardless of debt-to-income ratio or home equity. Mortgage default closely followed a substantial drop in income. This pattern held regardless of pre-modification mortgage PTI or loan-to-value ratio, suggesting that it was an income shock rather than a high payment burden or negative home equity that triggered default.
These findings suggest that mortgage modification programs that are designed to target substantial payment reduction will be most effective at reducing mortgage default rates. Modification programs designed to reach affordability targets based on debt-to-income measures without regard to payment reduction or target a specific LTV ratio while leaving borrowers underwater may be less effective at reducing defaults. Furthermore, policies that help borrowers establish and maintain a suitable cash buffer that can be used to offset an income shock could be an effective tool to prevent mortgage default. Both high and low mortgage PTI borrowers experienced a similar income drop just prior to default, suggesting that even among those borrowers with "unaffordable" mortgages, it was a drop in income rather than a high level of payment burden that triggered default.


Purpose: An attempt was made to determine the scope and actual implications resulting from the use of the Russian "hard power" and "soft power" concerning the CEE countries in the COVID-19 era based on the Russian impact on Poland in the period 2019/2020. Design/Methodology/Approach: The substantive components of the impact under study were obtained through a study. A synthesis method was applied, which allowed for grouping the originally separated components into three basic currents of hard influences: political, political-economic, and paramilitary. The comparison method was used to verify such a division of the Russian hard current and, if such a division is confirmed, to highlight the existing differences especially between the first and second current. In the course of research on the methodology of the Kremlin's soft impact on the Polish decision-making process, the method of reviewing source materials of recognized reliability was used (query of scientific literature and expert studies), which were compared with quantitatively collected data obtained from media information to supplement the whole source material. The conclusions were formulated using induction and deduction methods. Findings: The Russian Federation uses political and economic and economic measures in the first place to influence using "hard power," and if it is not possible to influence such measures, it uses paramilitary measures. In the case of soft power impact, the Russian Federation mainly uses informational means in the form of so-called "social engineering" methodology (propaganda), where the main area of activity is virtual space. Practical Implications: This paper can be used in scientific and expert work dedicated to the Russian methodology of impact using "hard power" and "soft power." Originality/Value: Lack of comprehensive scientific studies dedicated to the methodology of using "hard power" and "soft power" means by the Russian Federation during the COVID-19 2019/2020 epidemic.


During his highly controversial presidential election campaign, President Trump successfully but bizarrely exploited anti-Muslim rhetoric, among other factors, to capture the White House. His post-election policy actions, particularly the executive order to ban Muslim entry into the US, first issued on January 27 and followed by a watereddown version on March 6, has also officially exposed his anti-Muslim biases creating a crisis in Muslim – US relations. This article presents President Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies in historical perspectives, comparing them to other great American narratives of the post-World War II period. It ends up making two important conclusions: first off, Trump's anti-Muslim stand galvanized, and now keeps alive, his political support base of the white underclass Americans; and, secondly, although motivated by political needs, his anti-Muslim rhetoric contributes to an increasing divide between the Muslims worldwide and the non-Muslim racist and Islamophobic white Americans. Keywords: President Trump, anti-Muslim ban, Trumpism, American foreign policy narratives, 'America First', Israel – Palestine conflict, Iran – US nuclear deal.


OBJECTIVE. A low mean birth weight is a constant finding in pregnancies of women with homozygous sickle cell disease. The factors responsible are largely unknown and have now been investigated in an 11-year retrospective analysis. METHODS. Records for 126 pregnancies of mothers with homozygous sickle cell disease and 126 pregnancies of control women with an AA phenotype, matched according to age and date of delivery, were examined. Events during pregnancy and outcomes of pregnancy were recorded. RESULTS. Pregnancy outcomes for mothers with homozygous sickle cell disease confirmed the lower birth weight, gestational age, and placental weight. A low birth weight in infants of mothers with homozygous sickle cell disease was strongly related to gestational age and placental weight and weakly related to reticulocyte counts and a history of preeclampsia in univariate analyses, but only gestational age and placental weight remained significant in multivariate analyses. No relationships were seen with maternal age, parity, anthropometric features, other hematologic features (hemoglobin levels, fetal hemoglobin levels, mean cell volume, and α-thalassemia), pregnancy-induced hypertension, or prepartum hospital admissions (expressed as number or total days). Compared with Jamaican standards, birth weight was affected more than head circumference or length in infants of mothers with homozygous sickle cell disease, indicating asymmetric growth retardation, which occurred for 27% of boys and 38% of girls (compared with 4% and 9%, respectively, among infants of control mothers). CONCLUSIONS. A chronic condition such as homozygous sickle cell disease might have been expected to cause symmetric growth retardation throughout pregnancy. The finding of asymmetric retardation might indicate adverse factors emerging late in pregnancy and might have relevance for the poor pregnancy outcomes in such mothers.


Evaluating the biomass of a specific taxon or that of a certain nutritional level is especially important for understanding an ecosystem. Although various methods are available, there is still a lack of a universally accepted approach for taxa-specific biomass evaluation. Taking cultured unicellular Tetrahymena as an example, the present study is aimed at exploring and highlighting a DNA-based method for taxa-specific biomass estimation. Results indicated that the Tetrahymena DNA yield increased linearly with increasing number of Tetrahymena cells (p<0.001). The intra and inter real-time quantitative PCR (Q-PCR) assays were highly reproducible, and Q-PCR quantifying 18S rDNA could detect an equivalent quantity of a single cell or less. Tetrahymena-specific biomass then can be determined according to the rDNA copies quantified by Q-PCR (p < 0.002), considering both of species richness and evenness (indicated by the pooled cells of Tetrahymena species with different ratios). Observations of the present study together with some others suggest that it is possible to quantify a target micro-biomass in natural ambience via specifically-amplified genes.


This essay reviews Copyright's Paradox by Neil Weinstock Netanel. It argues both that the book is the best exposition of the free speech critique of copyright and that the critique suffers two flaws. First it must cherry-pick among strands of free speech theory, emphasizing some and ignoring others. It thereby sacrifices a claim to be grounded in any conception of freedom of expression as such. Second, in Netanel's version the critique holds that judges and legislators may intervene selectively in the expressive environment to make that environment more robust. Such intervention includes favoring some types of speech over others. To the extent this claim is true it undermines the premise that government actors are incapable of determining the socially optimal level of various kinds of expression. Without that premise, however, the free speech principle itself is undercut, and the free speech critique of copyright with it. I propose that this is the most interesting paradox Netanel's book identifies.


Contemporary genetic spatial structure in north temperate marine species is likely the culmination of multiple vicariant and dispersive cycles. Here we evaluate spatial genetic struc- ture in an estuarine fish, rainbow smelt Osmerus mordax, from coastal Newfoundland, Canada, us- ing data from both mtDNA (ND5) sequences and nuclear loci (11 microsatellites). Sequence analysis of ND5 identified a previously unrecognized genetic discontinuity between 2 hypo - thesized glacial clades in southeastern Newfoundland. Microsatellite based tests for directional se- lection identified a locus (Omo11, p < 0.001) that mirrored mtDNA clades in the geographic distrib- ution of its 2 common alleles but did not display elevated differentiation following correction for heterozygosity. Bayesian multilocus clustering of the remaining micro satellite loci supported the presence of 2 predominant groups, for which the spatial distribution was also largely consistent with those of the mtDNA and Omo11 clades. Taken together, the similarity in microsatellite and mtDNA clines supports the hypothesis that contemporary spatial structure in smelt reflects histori- cal landscape isolation maintained by low dispersal and selective processes producing reinforce- ment between diverging populations. As genetic structure in northern marine and estuarine spe - cies may be largely determined by historical glacial cycles of vicariance, contemporary estimates of connectivity should be interpreted in the context of both past and present landscape structure.


Flock Logic is an art and engineering project that explores how the feedback laws used to model flocking translate when applied by a group of dancers. The artistic goal is to create tools for choreography by leveraging dynamics of multiagent systems with designed feedback and interaction. The engineering goal is to develop insights and design principles for multi-agent systems, such as human crowds, animal groups and mobile robotic networks, by examining the connections between what individual dancers do and what emerges at the level of the group. We describe our methods to create dance and investigate collective motion. To illustrate, we analyze the overhead video of an experiment in which thirteen dancers moved according to simple rules of cohesion and repulsion in response to the relative position and motion of their neighbors. Importantly, because we have prescribed the interaction protocol, we can estimate from the tracked trajectories the time-varying graph that defines who is responding to whom as time evolves. We compute time-varying status of nodes in the graph and infer conditions under which certain individuals emerge as leaders.


Abstract. Peatlands store large amounts of organic carbon, but the carbon stock is sensitive to changes in precipitation or water table manipulations. Restoration of drained peatlands by drain blocking and flooding is a common measure to conserve and augment the carbon stock of peatland soils. Here, we report to what extent flooding affected the contribution of heterotrophic and rhizosphere respiration to soil CO2 efflux in a grass-dominated mountain fen in Germany. Soil CO2 efflux was measured in three un-manipulated control plots and three flooded plots in two consecutive years. Flooding was achieved by permanent irrigation during the growing seasons. Radiocarbon signatures of CO2 from different sources including soil CO2 efflux, incubated peat cores and live grass roots were repeatedly analyzed for partitioning of soil CO2 efflux. Additionally, heterotrophic respiration and its radiocarbon signature were determined by eliminating rhizosphere respiration in trenched subplots (only control). In the control plots, rhizosphere respiration determined by 14C signatures contributed between 47 and 61% during the growing season, but was small (4 ± 8%) immediately before budding. Trenching revealed a smaller rhizosphere contribution of 33 ± 8% (2009) and 22 ± 9% (2010) during growing seasons. Flooding reduced annual soil CO2 efflux of the fen by 42% in 2009 and by 30% in 2010. The reduction was smaller in 2010 mainly through naturally elevated water level in the control plots. A one-week interruption of irrigation caused a strong short-lived increase in soil CO2 efflux, demonstrating the sensitivity of the fen to water table drawdown near the peat surface. The reduction in soil CO2 efflux in the flooded plots diminished the relative proportion of rhizosphere respiration from 56 to 46%, suggesting that rhizosphere respiration was slightly more sensitive to flooding than heterotrophic respiration.


ABSTRACT The political significance of Spanish reason-of-state literature has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of imperial institutions, in particular the monarchy. This article argues that there was a distinctive political perspective in the crown of Aragon, based on its constitutional traditions, which inspired a particular kind of 'reason of state'. Focusing on the works of a Catalan nobleman, Don Francisco Gilabert, the argument goes on to show that this constitutional thought was able to articulate a project of reform alternative to that of the minister of Philip IV, the count-duke of Olivares, and that therefore it cannot be merely analysed (as it often has been) as an anachronistic form of aristocratic self-seeking. On the contrary, by denying the king the power of absolute sovereignty, and by insisting on the idea of a mixed constitution, Gilabert's approach was able to articulate republican ideals, even though at the cost of some fundamental ambiguities concerning the idea of empire. It is suggested that the recognition of this distinctive intellectual tradition has important implications for the overall interpretation of the course of Spanish history in the seventeenth century, before and after the Catalan revolt of 1640.


Since William Rehnquist became Chief Justice in 1986, the Supreme Court has been aggressively activist in narrowing, undermining, or effectively nullifying an array of statutes – in particular the vast edifice of regulatory, safety net, and civil rights laws enacted by both the federal and state governments since the early 20th century dawn of progressive government (collectively labeled "progressive statutes" in the article). The conservative bloc of justices have developed a formidable arsenal of largely non-constitutional techniques for limiting the reach and impact of progressive statutes, blunting or neutralizing the intent and purpose of the legislatures that enacted them, elevating the Court's power vis-a-vis both Congress and state legislatures, and, even, impeding Congress' practical capacity to carry out its legislative function.For the past quarter century, Justice Stevens has been alert to this "continuing campaign," spotlighting its excesses and countering its designs. He has done so more persistently than any of his colleagues, or for that matter, more than any observer in Congress, academia, or progressive advocacy circles. Over and over, Justice Stevens called out his conservative colleagues for "unabashed law-making," and for "skewed interpretations" that impose "its own policy preferences," "defeat the purpose for which a provision was enacted," and "ignore the interest of unrepresented" constituencies whom statutes were enacted to protect. He recognized this "kind of judicial activism [as] such a radical departure from the proper role of this Court that it should be opposed whenever the opportunity arises." And he never shrank from acting on that recognition, with eloquence but also the professional and strategic craft for which he was renowned on all sides. Scholars have spotlighted, catalogued, debated, and brilliantly critiqued various of these doctrinal theories and initiatives. This Article considers them together, as elements of a campaign bent on constraining the impact of 20th and 21st century progressive legislation. The Article contributes to a Northwestern Law Review symposium on the Legacy of Justice Stevens. The symposium took place at Northwestern Law School on May 12, 2011. The symposium issue of the law review, in which this Article will be included, is scheduled for publication in the spring of 2012.The 2011-2012 term will throw light on whether, going forward, the Roberts Court will start venting the intensely ideological activism detailed in this Article on broad questions of Congress' constitutional authority, as well as on below-the-radar statutory interpretation issues. By the end of this term the Court will have ruled on pending challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If, when contemplating the signature legislative accomplishment of President Barack Obama and the Democratic 111th Congress, the conservative justices feel inclined to sideline restraint and let ideology trump precedent, their statutory jurisprudence provides a roadmap of how they will go about that enterprise. Such a result will ratchet up pre-New Deal "Lochneresque" activism, with historic implications for the distribution of power to set 21st century domestic policy as well as its content.


In the first chapter, first we review the famous Taylor (1979, 1980a) model
of staggered wage setting and then we present original work in describing the
structure of a dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered wage setting
a la Taylor. This model is central to the thesis since the results presented in
chapters 2, 3 and 4 are based on it. Moreover, also the models in chapters 5
and 6, while somewhat different, originate from it.
Chapter 2 addresses the issue of superneutrality of money using the model
presented in the previous chapter. It demonstrates that, once staggered
wages are introduced in an optimising framework, a mild permanent change
in the rate of growth of money could have substantial effects on the steady
state aggregate level of output and welfare. Previous studies fail to reproduce
these results because they consider restrictively simple utility and production
functions. The model exhibits high costs of inflation and provides a rationale
for the pursuit of price stability observed in western countries.
Chapter 3 studies analytically the output costs of a reduction in monetary
growth in the dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered wages of the
previous chapters. We show that the introduction of microfoundations helps
to resolve the puzzle recently raised by Laurence Ball (1994), namely that
disinflation in staggered pricing models causes a boom. In our model disinflation,
whether unanticipated or anticipated, unambiguously causes a slump.
The analytical results are restricted to the tractable case (log-linearisation of
the model around a zero steady state inflation), but a long appendix checks
the robustness of these results through non-linear simulations.
Chapter 4 investigates whether staggered wages could induce a high degree
of persistence in the real effects of money shocks. We show how the
parameters of Taylor's model depend upon the microeconomic fundamentals
and the conduct of monetary policy. We conclude that high persistence is an
unlikely outcome. Either sensible values of the microeconomic parameters
or a moderate rate of underlying inflation imply a low degree of persistence.
This is the persistence puzzle we referred to above. Furthermore, we show
that: (i) the model is highly non-linear; (ii) the conduct of monetary policy
affects the structural parameters of Taylor's wage setting equation, providing
a clear example of the Lucas critique; (iii) the inertia of the system is
inversely related to the level of average inflation.
In Chapter 5 we incorporate explicit relative wage concern on the part
of wage-setters into the dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered
wages developed in the previous chapters. We then investigate the effects of
money shocks on both inflation and output. In contrast to previous models of
staggered wages/prices, output and inflation persistence are a robust finding
of the model. Moreover, they hold for all the sensible parametrisations.
Given the empirical evidence on relative wage concern, we conclude that this
may be the missing piece in the money shocks persistence puzzle.
Chapter 6 presents a unifying framework to analyse the ability of price
versus wage staggering to generate persistence. The results are fairly general
in that they derive from a stylised log-linear model which encompasses
most of the microfounded models of price/wage staggering, found recently in
the literature. The results highlight the importance of the underlying economic
structure for the ability of staggered price/wage models to generate
persistence of the real effects of money shocks.


Purpose - This paper aims to examine the mobilization of management accounting (MA) numbers and metrics in social interactions. The purpose is to develop a model of how and why managers perceive and mobilize (new) MA numbers/metrics in a changing way over time in situated face-to-face interactions. Design/methodology/approach - An observation-based qualitative field study of a change project in a large manufacturing company is used as the basis for our analysis. Findings - The empirical study shows that MA numbers and metrics are essential when semi-distant managers strive to solve problems and achieve radical improvement targets, but that the ways in which existing and new metrics are perceived and mobilized during face-to-face interactions change over time. The study provides both a detailed account of the emergent nature of the transformation process and a number of mechanisms as to why managers (inter-)act the way they do to produce such change. Originality/value - The paper problematizes the generally held view that MA numbers and metrics primarily work as a structuring device in face-to-face interactions, and also, how the processes are constituted through which MA is transformed into such a structuring device. The paper also adds new insights to our understandings of why managers (inter-)act the way they do to produce MA change.


ABSTRACT The development of inclusive education (IE) is arguably the biggest challenge currently facing school systems in Oman. School leadership (SL) was argued to be a determinant of organisational effectiveness and an antecedent of organisational commitment (OC). The current study investigated how SL affects teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education (TATIE). A total of 378 teachers from both genders responded to the Principal Leadership Style (PLS), Scale of Teachers' Attitudes towards Inclusive Classrooms (STATIC), and the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ). Using structural modeling, we tested a set of hypotheses drawn from a conceptualised model which we developed from previous research evidence. Results supported our conceptualised model. OC was found to mediate the relationship between PLS and TATIE. Further, different PLSs showed different indirect effects on TATIE through OC. Results are discussed in relation to the context of Oman.


In 2016, the New Zealand Government announced a policy to rid the country of key introduced predators (possums (Trichosurus vulpecula), ship rats (Rattus rattus), Norway rats (R. norvegicus) and mustelids (Mustela spp.)) by 2050. An interim goal under this policy is to remove all mammalian predators (the key species as well as mice (Mus musculus), kiore (R. exulans), cats (Felis catus), pigs (Sus scrofa) and hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus)) from island nature reserves by 2025. We identify the New Zealand islands over one hectare managed as reserves by the Department of Conservation (DOC) that have mammalian predators that can be eradicated. There are over 850 islands, islets, stacks and vegetated rocks in the New Zealand archipelago. We exclude islands in lakes and rivers and those smaller than one hectare, which leaves 616 islands, less than half of which are under some form of reserve status (286 islands entirely managed by DOC and 13 under mixed tenures but with some reserve land). One or more mammalian predators are known to occur on 48 of these islands, with the Government's 2050 target species on 42 islands and other predators (in the absence of the target species) on six islands. The Government's 2025 goal nominates one class of reserve, nature reserves. Of the 48 islands, just four islands are classed as nature reserves – two (Mauitaha and Araara Islands) with protected kiore in the Hen and Chickens group and two in the Auckland Islands group (Auckland with mice, cats and pigs; and Masked with mice and cats) – i.e. none with the key species of the wider 2050 goal. Therefore, we consider other reserve classes but place more or less strict risks of reinvasion, as indexed by known swimming ranges of the predators, to judge the feasibility of eradication. Relaxing the reserve class of the island, but not our selection of swimming ranges, results in 15 candidate islands where all mammalian predators present could be eradicated for the 2025 interim goal. Decisions on which islands to select for the programme need to consider costs and other constraints to eradicate different combinations of predators, and whether the island and its predators provide templates for the wider vision of a predator-free New Zealand, i.e. whether any of the key 2050 predators are present, the size of the island, and/or the presence of human inhabitants that complicate the predators to be targeted or constrain the use of some control methods.


The Forest Management Unit (FMU) is the area unit of forest management which its area has been set up with clear boundaries, it has been the predominant covered by forests, it has been managed for long term including their was an explicit objective which declared in the forest management plan. FMU IX is a part of FMU area which is located in North Kota Agung. It has obtained processing area permit through CF program (CFM). CFM managed by Gapoktan (Association of Farmers Groups) who has obtained management area license. Good or bad of the CFM depends on the farmers who are incorporated in "Gapoktan" therefore research on the role of this institution is needed. This study aimed: 1) to analyze the institutional system in two Gapoktan, namely Beringin Jaya and Sinar Mulya in the boundary of CFM land in FMU IX areas of North Kota Agung, and 2) to evaluate the level of effectiveness of "Gapoktan" organization. Appeal data have been developed by the method of SSBP (situation-structure-behavior-performance). The results showed the different performance of both Gapoktan . Beringin Jaya has had good institutional situation, its organizational structure was running well, its member behavior was active in every activities, and performance was very good. Meanwhile in Sinar Mulya, its organizational structure was not going well, the activities were lack hence its performance was not satisfied. The result of the effectiveness level at Beringin Jaya was effective, on the other hand the effectiveness level at Sinar Mulya was quite effective.


Estimating 3D hand pose from single RGB images is a highly ambiguous problem that relies on an unbiased training dataset. In this paper, we analyze cross-dataset generalization when training on existing datasets. We find that approaches perform well on the datasets they are trained on, but do not generalize to other datasets or in-the-wild scenarios. As a consequence, we introduce the first large-scale, multi-view hand dataset that is accompanied by both 3D hand pose and shape annotations. For annotating this real-world dataset, we propose an iterative, semi-automated `human-in-the-loop' approach, which includes hand fitting optimization to infer both the 3D pose and shape for each sample. We show that methods trained on our dataset consistently perform well when tested on other datasets. Moreover, the dataset allows us to train a network that predicts the full articulated hand shape from a single RGB image. The evaluation set can serve as a benchmark for articulated hand shape estimation.


Advances in healthcare over the last 100 years has resulted in an ever increasing elderly population. This presents greater challenges for adequate systemic and oral healthcare delivery. With increasing age there is a natural decline in oral health, leading to the loss of teeth and ultimately for some having to wear denture prosthesis. It is currently estimated that approximately one fifth of the UK and US populations have some form of removable prosthesis. The microbiology of denture induced mucosal inflammation is a pivotal factor to consider in denture care management, similar to many other oral diseases of microbial influence, such as caries, gingivitis and periodontitis.

Dentures support the growth of microbial biofilms, structures commonly known as denture plaque. Microbiologically, denture stomatitis (DS) is a disease primarily considered to be of yeast aetiology, with the literature disproportionately focussed on Candida spp. However, the denture surface is capable of carrying up to 1011 microbes per milligram, the majority of which are bacteria. Thus it is apparent that denture plaque is more diverse than we assume. There is a fundamental gap in our understanding of the bacterial composition of denture plaque and the role that they may play in denture related disease such as DS. This is categorised as inflammation of the oral mucosa, a disease affecting around half of all denture wearers. It has been proposed that bacteria and fungi interact on the denture surface and that these polymicrobial interactions lead to synergism and increased DS pathogenesis. Therefore, understanding the denture microbiome composition is the key step to beginning to understand disease pathogenesis, and ultimately help improve treatments and identify novel targets for therapeutic and preventative strategies.

A group of 131 patients were included within this study in which they provided samples from their dentures, palatal mucosa, saliva and dental plaque. Microbes residing on the denture surface were quantified using standard Miles and Misra culture technique which investigated the presence of Candida, aerobes and anaerobes. These clinical samples also underwent next generation sequencing using the Miseq Illumina platform to give a more global representation of the microbes present at each of these sites in the oral cavity of these denture wearers. This data was then used to compare the composition and diversity of denture, mucosal and dental plaque between one another, as well as between healthy and diseased individuals. Additional comparisons included denture type and the presence or absence of natural teeth. Furthermore, microbiome data was used to assess differences between patients with varying levels of oral hygiene. The host response to the denture microbiome was investigated by screening the patients saliva for the presence and quantification of a range of antimicrobial peptides that are associated with the oral cavity. Based on the microbiome data an in vitro biofilm model was developed that reflected the composition of denture plaque. These biofilms were then used to assess quantitative and compositional changes over time and in response to denture cleansing treatments. Finally, the systemic implications of denture plaque were assessed by screening denture plaque samples for the presence of nine well known respiratory pathogens using quantitative PCR.

The results from this study have shown that the bacterial microbiome composition of denture wearers is not consistent throughout the mouth and varies depending on sample site. Moreover, the presence of natural dentition has a significant impact on the microbiome composition. As for healthy and diseased patients the data suggests that compositional changes responsible for disease progression are occurring at the mucosa, and that dentures may in fact be a reservoir for these microbes. In terms of denture hygiene practices, sleeping with a denture in situ was found to be a common occurrence. Furthermore, significant shifts in denture microbiome composition were found in these individuals when compared to the denture microbiome of those that removed their denture at night. As for the host response, some antimicrobial peptides were found to be significantly reduced in the absence of natural dentition, indicating that the oral immune response is gradually impaired with the loss of teeth. This study also identified potentially serious systemic implications in terms of respiratory infection, as 64.6% of patients carried respiratory pathogens on their denture.

In conclusion, this is the first study to provide a detailed understanding of the oral microbiome of denture wearers, and has provided evidence that DS development is more complex than simply a candidal infection. Both fungal and bacterial kingdoms clearly play a role in defining the progression of DS. The biofilm model created in this study demonstrated its potential as a platform to test novel actives. Future use of this model will aid in greater understanding of host: biofilm interactions. Such findings are applicable to oral health and beyond, and may help to identify novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of DS and other biofilm associated diseases.


The world's total oil reserves are to some extent dominated by heavy oil. The heavy oil reserves are doubled in volume compared to conventional oil reserves. As conventional oil reservoirs are depleting, heavy oil and bitumen possesses a great potential in covering parts of the future energy demand. The possibility of horizontal drilling has created a pathway for SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage), which is the most preferred heavy oil and bitumen recovery method. The mechanism of SAGD involves two parallel horizontal wells, one for production and one for injection. The production well is situated at the bottom of the reservoir and the injection well is placed above. Steam is injected and heats up the oil which is then able to flow to the production well by gravity drainage. In the present thesis, a numerical study of parameters has been performed in relation to SAGD implementation in the Athabasca field. The thermal simulator utilized is CMG STARS. The Athabasca field is located in Northern Alberta in the Western Canada Sedimentary basin. Due to the complexity of core extraction in bitumen reservoirs, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis is significant in order to determine the appropriate production approach. The present study confirmed that a decrease in viscosity and increase in porosity yielded higher oil recoveries. All oil recoveries found in 3D simulations were within model uncertainties compared to the 2D result. Increase in horizontal and vertical permeabilities resulted in higher oil recovery up to a certain limit, where exceeding permeabilities provided limited increase in oil recovery. The effect of different vertical well spacing proved to have minor effect on amount of oil produced. Yet, based on cumulative steam oil ratio (CSOR) it was proposed to maintain a vertical well spacing in the range of 3.5 to 7 meters.


Growth - the change in number or size - and adaptation - the change in quality or structure - are key attributes of global processes in natural communities, society and economics (see, e.g. Hofbauer and Sigmund, 1988; Freedman, 1991; Young, 1993). In this paper we describe a model with explicit growth-adaptation feedbacks. We treat it in the form of an economic model of competition of two firms (with several departments) on the market. Their size is measured by their capital, and their quality by their productive power (production complexity). It is assumed that the production complexity of a department or firm is a simple function (that is more general than the one considered in Krazhimskii and Stoer, 1999) of its capital. The model works on both the firm level (competition among the departments) and the market level (competition among the firms). The model shows some empirically observable phenomena. Typically, one of the firms will finally cover the market. The winner is not necessarily the firm with the potentially higher maximum productivity. A long-term coexistence of firms may arise in exceptional situations occurring only when the maximum potential productivities (not the actual productivities) are equal. The analysis is also based on the concept of central paths from the interior point optimization theory (see Sonnevend, 1985; and e.g., Ye, 1997).


ABSTRACT

Increasingly companies are realizing that long term survival is tied to delivering valued products or services that satisfy customers' needs. As the environment in which they operate becomes more competitive, companies are increasingly paying attention to the role of customer satisfaction in customer choices of products and its role in attaining and retaining customers. Technology development particularly in the area of Telecommunications and Information Technology are revolutionizing the way of doing business for banking industry. Automated Teller Machines (ATM's) which introduced to Malaysia in the early of 1980's is the beginning of the evolution of electronic banking in Malaysia. Banks can enhance the convenience of banking for their customers and maximizing their business efficiencies through the self-service channel. Today, there are various types of self-service terminals being used by the local banks such as cash deposit machine and cheque deposit machine. It shows that banks is further migrating consumer transactions from the teller line to the self-service channel. Nevertheless, researches show that many consumers prefer to receive a deposit slip from a teller than a machine due to lack of confidence in the system, fear of error, limited availability of funds deposited at the ATM and others. As such, this paper mainly describes the customer satisfaction on the self-service terminal within the vicinity of Johor Bahru. Questionnaires method is used in this research with the sample size of 200 respondent. The analysis method includes frequency, percentage, mean and correlation. In general, the customer satisfaction on the self-service terminal is average good and the deficiencies are on the service empathy and reliability aspects.


The purpose of the study was to obtain an in-depth understanding of the perceptions of advanced practice providers (APPs) with respect to their current roles in the context of the transition to a new cancer care delivery system, as well as factors that may influence their ability to practice at their level of training and education. Five focus groups were conducted with 15 APPs (11 nurse practitioners, 4 physician assistants). Data were collected by a recorder at each focus group. Four investigators reviewed the data from each group for accuracy and to generate an initial set of codes. Codes were compared across reviewers until consensus was reached and final themes were agreed upon. The mean age of the participants was 43.5 years (range: 27 to 63 years). The APPs practiced for an average of 11 years (range: 1 to 27 years), with a mean of 6.5 years in oncology (range: 1 to 11 years). Six themes were generated from the data related to the APP role during the transition to a new oncology care system: experiencing role tension, facing communication barriers, seeking mentorship, dealing with fragmented care, recognizing the need for professional growth, and navigating a new system. Our findings may inform administrators about the role of the APP in quality care delivery. These findings may empower APPs to practice to the full scope of their training and educational preparation, thereby facilitating their goals for professional development.


The governance of private nonprofit organizations requires a high level of competence on the part of social administrators and their volunteer boards of directors. To this end, the governance relationship between the volunteer "board" and executive management needs to be well defined and structured. Yet, to date, research has not produced a "best practice" model. Business leaders and other professionals serving as volunteers on nonprofit boards as well as those hired as executive directors need the guidance that such research could provide. This online survey of 193 nonprofit board members seeks to clarify "the board perspective" on best practice in nonprofit governance.


Oliver Brown, on behalf of his daughter, Linda, sued a school board, not a public park commission or state-run railroad, though throughout the South these public facilities were no less segregated than schools. Within the private sector as well, discrimination was pervasive. Yet today we see marked progress toward racial equality in public facilities, industry, and politics--but not in our schools. In light of the Brown opinion, the irony is all the greater. The opinion accompanying the Supreme Court's decision barred only school segregation--on the shaky grounds that such segregation harmed the "hearts and minds" of black children (see the essays in this issue by Warren Simmons and Howard Fuller, starting on page 21). Brown nonetheless changed the country's most basic political and economic institutions. Segregated political rallies, legislative assemblies, and presidential cabinets all went by the boards. Not right away, but eventually. The workplace, too, is now more often racially mixed than not. When the private sector was told not to discriminate, it complied. Not right away--and not completely--of course. But as younger generations scorned racism and money was to be made by becoming an equal-opportunity employer, private institutions opened their doors. Today, black and white adults with similar scores on standardized tests earn similar wages. Meanwhile, Brown's consequences for education remain ambiguous at best. On the plus side, legalized school segregation disappeared and most school districts have become as integrated as their cities' demographics will allow. But the slow march toward further integration was accompanied by bitter conflicts that introduced new problems--involuntary busing that separated schools from families and communities; large, difficult-to-manage school campuses (built to broaden the social mix of the school); tensions between ethnic groups and within-school discrimination; and lowered expectations for students of all social backgrounds. Whites fled bad schools for racially distinctive suburbs. Worse, African-American students' learning has continued to trail that of whites. Though the achievement gap narrowed in the 1980s, it opened again in the 1990s, at a time when the principles of Brown should have been firmly entrenched. Conventional liberals blame "politicians" for inadequate funding or "society" for its abiding, if now hidden, racism. …


Personal learning environment (PLE) solutions aim at empowering learners to design (ICT and web-based) environments for their activities in different learning contexts and even for transitions between these contexts. Hereby, recommender systems which are highly successful in other application areas comprise one relevant technology for supporting learners in PLE-based activities. In this paper we examine the utilization of recommender technology for PLEs. However, being confronted by a variety of educational contexts and due to different research approaches dealing with recommenders, we present three strategies for providing PLE recommendations to learners. Consequently, we compare these recommender strategies by discussing their strengths and weaknesses in general.


This work is concerned with the processing and properties of chromiuni reinforced alumina ceramics with the Cr particles in both the micro- and nano-scale ranges. The influence of processing and microstructure on the mechanical properties has been studied. Al2O3-20vol%Cr micro-composites have been fabricated using both sintering and hot pressing techniques. Sintering environment has a crucial influence on the microstructural development of the pressureless sintered Al2O3-Cr composites. It was found that too little or too much oxygen is detrimental to Al2O3/Cr interfacial bonding. Attempts have been made to improve the Al2O3/Cr interfacial bonding by sintering in a graphite powder bed in order to control the oxygen partial pressure. The fracture toughness of the composite with strengthened interfaces was the highest of all the sintered samples. However, the improvement is limited by the brittle fracture of Cr. This may be caused by the high carbon content associated with Cr particles in the composite. The ductility of Cr was higher in the hot-pressed Al2O3-Cr samples. The possibility of further toughening Al2O3 by Cr80Ni20 and Cr20Ni80 alloys with higher ductility was explored. It was shown that 20 wt% of Ni present in the alloying phase did not change the ductility, but when the Ni content increased to 80 wt% the crystal structure changed to fc.c., giving a inherently ductile metal. However, the large thermal mismatch between Al2O3 and Ni/Cr alloys led to a high density of microcracks at the interfaces. The composites with different metallic phases had similar' fracture toughness values as measured by double cantilever beam testing. Among the Al2O3-CrxNi1-x composites, the highest fracture toughness, 5.8 MPa m1/2, was achieved by the hot pressed Al2O3-Cr composite. This value is comparable to values measured for other alumina-metal systems. The poor bonding at the alumina/metal interface is the main limitation to toughening in these composites. Thus, it may not be possible to have a strongly bonded and ductile reinforcement. The pressureless sintered Al2O3-Cr composites with different particle sizes showed different thermal shock behaviour. The composite with fine Cr particles exhibited a thermal shock behaviour which is typical of engineering ceramics, but with an improved critical temperature difference compared to sintered Al2O3. The specimen with a larger Cr particle size showed gradual strength degradation with increasing temperature difference. The increased fracture toughness, low initial strength and low Young's modulus of the composite are the primary reasons for the greater strength retention following quenching. Although Al2O3 was toughened by Cr and Cr/Ni alloys, the strength of the micro-composites was not improved as the metal particles acted as large flaws. In order to reduce the flaw size nano-composites were investigated. Al2O3-5vol% Cr nanocomposites were fabricated using a chemical method. Optimisation of the processing procedure led to a desirable microstructure and significantly increased strength. Among the nanocomposites, the highest strength, 736+/-29 MPa, was achieved by hot pressing at 1450°C. The improved strength of the nanocomposites is the consequence of the microstructure refinement by homogeneously distributed nano-sized Cr particles. The nanocomposites are slightly tougher than the parent Al2O3, although the values of the fracture toughness are lower than those for the 20vol% micro-scale particle toughened Al2O3. Thus, a small degree of toughening and significant strengthening have been achieved by Al2O3-Cr nanocomposites.


Recent data from several laboratories have shown that spatial-frequency discrimination is not a smooth function of frequency but rather exhibits alternate peaks and troughs. A model for spatial-frequency discrimination analogous to line-element models for color discrimination is presented here and shown to provide a reasonable fit to the available data. This model is based on the predicted responses of six spatial-frequency-tuned mechanisms, whose sensitivity curves have been estimated in previously published masking experiments. In order to fit the data it is necessary to pool responses from units centered under the stimulus as well as from spatially neighboring units. Thus it appears that the visual system utilizes both spatial and spatial-frequency information in discrimination tasks.


Background: Technology-enhanced learning is reliable, established, and effective teaching tool for better understanding of the subject. This study addresses an important issue in medical education, namely, the enhancement of the widely criticized lecture style of teaching by engaging students more actively during class through the use of videos or animations. This study describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a traditional anatomy lecture series combined with technology. Aim and Objectives: The aim of the study is (a) to combine three-dimensional (3D) videos and animations with traditional embryology lectures and (b) to evaluate the 1st-year MBBS students' perception about this method of learning of embryology. Methodology: This qualitative study was conducted in the Department of Anatomy at Guru Gobind Singh Medical College, Faridkot, during the theory classes of embryology over a period of approximately 3 months among 100 1st-year MBBS students. The students were shown 3D videos and animations of embryology during traditional didactic lecture to explain all the aspects of the development of different systems of the body in 25 classes, of 1-h duration each. Feedback was taken using a structured questionnaire to know the perception of students toward this exercise of using technology during lecture of embryology. Results: A total of 100 MBBS first professional students took part in the study and submitted questionnaire. The students were satisfied with this method of technology-enhanced learning and described better understanding of the concepts with improved learning. More than 90% of the students found that combining 3D videos and animations with traditional lecture helped in solving the confusion and misconceptions regarding topic and did make the topic more interesting. They further added that they wanted to have such type of technology (videos)-enhanced lectures in all other topics of anatomy and in other subjects as well. Conclusions: Technology used in the form of 3D videos and animations changed their attitude toward learning and their learning was improved. It provided satisfaction to students in terms of better learning and understanding of the subject.


In an effort to develop potent antimicrobial a series of mannich bases of 2,5-disubstututed indoles were prepared for investigating their antimicrobial activities. All compounds were found to be significantly active against gram positive bacteria: S. aureus, B. subtilus Gram negative bacteria: E.coli, P.aeruginosa and fungal strains: C. albicans, A. niger by tube dilution method. Compound N-((2-(4-bromophenyl)-5-nitro-1H-indol-3-yl)methyl)-Nphenyl benzenamine (MB10) and N-benzyl-N-((2-(4-bromophenyl)-5-nitro-1H-indol-3-yl) methyl) (phenyl) methanamine (MB11) emerged as the best antimicrobial agent in the present study. The structure of the synthesized compounds was confirmed by physico-chemical characteristics and spectroscopic investigations. Docking results of these two compounds with COX-2 (PDB ID: 4COX) also exhibited a strong binding profile.


Long‐term metapopulation persistence is mediated by the dynamics of colonization and extinction. To understand and predict future species occupancy in changing landscapes, we must account for the dynamic rates that shape the occupancy and disentangle their dependence on environmental conditions. Specialist and generalist species may differ in their dynamics in systematic ways. Using an extensive, large‐scale repeat survey dataset for wood‐decaying fungi, we fitted dynamic metapopulation models for ten species, ranging from generalists to specialists with differing resource requirements. We first estimated base rates of colonization and extinction and tested their relationships to species' degree of specialization. We then tested for effects of local and landscape scale variables on the colonization and extinction rates. Finally, using the fitted models and a scenario of future forest development we projected future colonization–extinction dynamics over 100 years to test for differences in species occupancies between production stands and set‐aside stands. Our study revealed a striking pattern of decreasing colonization rates with increasing degree of specialization across species, along with concomitantly increasing extinction rates. Strong sensitivity of colonization probabilities to local habitat quality (dead wood volume and stand age) in specialist but not generalist species constrained the regional occupancy of specialists, especially in production forest. We found evidence for short‐range dispersal limitation in two specialists, but no effect of our measure for landscape‐scale connectivity on colonization rates. Simulations of future metapopulation dynamics resulted in decreasing and lower final occupancy in production forest than in set‐asides, especially of specialist species. In set‐aside stands, however, specialists increased over time to relatively high occupancies. Synthesis. Colonization–extinction dynamics of wood‐decaying fungi varied with species' degree of specialization. Increasing specialization was associated with increasing sensitivity of colonization rates to habitat conditions, and partly local connectivity, as well as with increasing extinction rates. Low landscape‐scale occupancies of specialist as compared to generalist wood‐decaying fungi are thus maintained by a combination of lower colonization rates, particularly in production forest, and higher extinction rates.


From the Publisher:
What is 16 feet long, 10 feet high, weighs 6,000 pounds, has six legs, and can sprint at 8 mph and step over a 4 foot wall? The Adaptive Suspension Vehicle (ASV) described in this book.
Machines That Walk provides the first in depth treatment of the "statically stable walking machine" theory employed in the design of the ASV, the most sophisticated, self contained, and practical walking machine being developed today. Under construction at Ohio State University, the automatically terrain adaptive ASV has one human operator, can carry a 500 pound payload and is expected to have better fuel economy and mobility than that of conventional wheeled and tracked vehicles in rough terrain.
The development of the ASV is a milestone in robotics research, and Machines That Walk provides a wealth of research results in mobility, gait, static stability, leg design, and vertical geometry design. The authors' treatment of statically stable gait theory and actuator coordination is by far the most complete available.
Shin Min Song is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kenneth J. Waldron is Nordholt Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Ohio State University.


Mobility services nowadays offer an enormous variety for modes of transportation. The development and planning of such systems requires careful consideration, in which regard traffic and demand simulations can play an important role. In this paper we introduce JIACVI-ITS, a framework for simulating large scale agent-based transportation scenarios. It is based on the actor model in which agents communicate entirely via message passing. Simulation events are synchronized conservatively but, by exploiting model uncertainty, are processed in parallel between small time steps, which enables the utilization of multiple CPU cores. The framework also offers a programming language and platform agnostic model definition, which facilitates the integration into external systems. We have evaluated our simulation approach with regard to speedup with an increasing number of CPU cores and show significant performance gains.


It is generally acknowledged that software testing is both challenging and time-consuming. Understanding the factors that may positively or negatively affect testing effort will point to possibilities for reducing this effort. Consequently there is a significant body of research that has investigated relationships between static code properties and testability. The work reported in this paper complements this body of research by providing an empirical evaluation of the degree of association between runtime properties and class-level testability in object-oriented (OO) systems. The motivation for the use of dynamic code properties comes from the success of such metrics in providing a more complete insight into the multiple dimensions of software quality. In particular, we investigate the potential relationships between the runtime characteristics of production code, represented by Dynamic Coupling and Key Classes, and internal class-level testability. Testability of a class is considered here at the level of unit tests and two different measures are used to characterise those unit tests. The selected measures relate to test scope and structure: one is intended to measure the unit test size, represented by test lines of code, and the other is designed to reflect the intended design, represented by the number of test cases. In this research we found that Dynamic Coupling and Key Classes have significant correlations with class-level testability measures. We therefore suggest that these properties could be used as indicators of class-level testability. These results enhance our current knowledge and should help researchers in the area to build on previous results regarding factors believed to be related to testability and testing. Our results should also benefit practitioners in future class testability planning and maintenance activities.


The research focuses on secondary school teachers' perception of parental involvement in their children's education based on Epstein model. The main aim of this study is to explore the secondary school teachers' perception towards parental involvement in their children's education. The respondents were comprised of 130 teachers from three selected schools that are located in the district of Temerloh. This study is descriptive in nature. Findings showed that teachers perceived parents need to show involvement in four out of six types of parental involvements in the Epstein model. The four types of parental involvements specified by teachers are parenting, communication, home learning, and collaboration with community. Based on the level of teachers' satisfaction, generally they were not satisfied with parental involvement in parenting and volunteering activities, but were satisfied with parental involvement in activities of communication and home learning. For school governance activities, generally teachers said that parental involvement in the children' education involved attending PIBG meeting in schools (61.5%) while less than 50% of teachers' agreed that parents involved frequently in other activities such as engaged as the schools' committee and 'involved in the programmed organized by schools and in revising schools' curriculum'. While for school collaboration and community activities, majority of the teachers' perceived that frequency of which school involves outsiders in education is low. The teachers also perceived that problems and the constraints in the parental involvement in their children education in school as due to "being too busy", "reluctant to get involve", "lack of knowledge", "lack of source of money to support activities involving the parents", "negative attitude", and "lack of skills". Based on the comparison of the different ethnics of parents involved in children education, it is shown that the Malay parents' involvement is high in the activities such as discussing with teachers, encouraging children to attend extra class and co-curriculum activities, giving ideas and energy, and receiving comments and critics on their children. Chinese parents perceived to be more interested in sending children to tuition classes, giving donation to schools and buying extra reference books. Indian parents and other ethnics perceived as having the lowest level of involvement in the respected activities too.
The highest method of interaction between parents and schools according to the teachers are through letters, followed by telephone and face-to-face interaction. Other methods such as e-mail, facsimile and SMS are very rarely used. Besides that, teachers perceived that in terms of community's involvement in education, the highest is through government department while the involvement from other agencies is still low. This research implies that more has to do be done to increase the level of parental involvement in their children education in schools, including planning and implementing more effective programmers.


Barack Obama's election as president in 2008 generated widespread hope that the United States was entering a new era whereby government, in a reversal of Ronald Reagan's famous dictum, would be the solution to the nation's manifold problems amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The Obama election slogan of ""Yes We Can"" seemed to voice a hope that new leadership would put right what had gone wrong with America. Anticipating a new era of government activism, some commentators read the death rites on ""The Age of Reagan,"" the post-1980 anti-statist trend of American politics. Within a short time, however, ""Yes We Can"" gave way to ""No We Can't,"" as America's government became enmeshed in gridlock and political polarization. The contributors to Broken Government? add their voices to the debate on whether American government truly is broken and, if so, what can be done to fix it. Contents 1. Introduction: Is American Government Broken? 2. ""Hail Gridlock""? 3. What's Wrong with Congress and What Should Be Done About It? 4. Singularity, Separation, and Sharing 5. Tenure Reform and Presidential Power 6. The Politics of the U.S. Budget 7. Losing Voice, Losing Trust 8. Two Years of Achievement and Strife: The Democrats and the Obama Presidency, 2009-2010 9. The Rise of the Tea Party Movement and American Governance


This paper examines the effect commercialization (sale ratio, market transaction, co-operative sale), and diversification (crop, animal husbandry, and non-farm diversification) may have on farmers' income. In investigating so, this paper takes into account the structural factors which could also affect farmers' income. The results show that increasing diversification (crop and non-farm diversification), and increasing commercialization in terms of ratio of crop sold, number of transactions that farmers undertake in crop and animal husbandry markets, and selling of crops to mandis, co-operative and government agency, could improve farmers' income. These findings substantiates the policy suggestions made by Dalwai Committee Report 2018 with regard to commercialization and diversification as important policy instruments for raising of farmers' income.


BACKGROUND
Barrett's esophagus (BE) is the primary risk factor for esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). Limited data exists regarding the frequency of histologically confirmed BE by both gender and ethnicity in the United States. The study aim was to determine whether the frequency of histologically confirmed BE varies by ethnicity and gender.

METHODS
The University of Florida-Jacksonville endoscopy database was reviewed for all cases of salmon colored esophageal mucosa from September 2002 to August 2007. Histologic BE was diagnosed only if salmon colored esophageal mucosa was seen endoscopically and biopsy confirmed intestinal metaplasia with goblet cells. Data collected included: age at diagnosis, self-reported ethnicity [non-Hispanic white (nHw) or African American (AA)], gender, procedure indication, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) history, atypical manifestations, cigarette smoking, alcohol use, proton pump inhibitor (PPI) use, BE endoscopic length, absence/presence of hiatal hernia, stricture or ulcer, and absence/presence/grade of dysplasia.

RESULTS
Salmon colored esophageal mucosa was identified in 391/7,308 patients, distributed ethnically as 306 nHw and 85 AA. Histologic BE was confirmed in 111/391 patients with ethnic distribution of: 95 nHw and 16 AA. Histologically confirmed BE frequency varied both by gender and ethnicity with nHw males having the highest (42.3%) and AA females the lowest (12.3%). Histologically confirmed BE frequency differed significantly between nHw males and nHw/AA females only (P<0.005).

CONCLUSIONS
Histologically confirmed BE frequency varies by ethnicity and gender with nHw males having the highest frequency/risk and AA females the lowest. Investigation to improve understanding of the impact of race and gender in BE formation should be performed.


Context: Longer duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) is known to be associated with poorer outcome of schizophrenia. DUP is also known to be longer in lower- and middle-income countries. Methodologically sound studies that have examined the association of DUP and outcome of schizophrenia in these countries are lacking. Aim: The aim was to evaluate the association between DUP and outcome of never-treated schizophrenia patients. Setting and Design: This study was conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, using a prospective cohort design. Materials and Methods: 119 patients with schizophrenia/schizophreniform disorder diagnosed using the computerized diagnostic interview schedule for DSM-IV (CDIS-IV) were further assessed for DUP with the interview for retrospective assessment of onset of schizophrenia (IRAOS). After a mean (SD) follow-up period of 55.9 (37.2) weeks, the social and occupational functioning and psychopathology of 93 (80.2% of the surviving patients) patients were assessed using the social and occupational functioning scale (SOFS) and the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS), by raters blind to the DUP data. Spearman's correlation and Kendall's tau-B test were used to analyze the relationship between DUP and the outcome variables. Results: The mean DUP was 90.2 (median=30.1; SD=121.9) weeks. SOFS and PANSS scores at follow-up were statistically significantly associated with DUP, but not with other baseline variables (SOFS: rho=0.22, P=0.03; PANSS: rho=0.23, P=0.03). Among those with the shortest DUP (<16 weeks; n=33), 45.5%, 30.3%, and 24.2% had no impairment, mild-moderate impairment, and severe impairment, respectively. In contrast, 19.4%, 38.7%, and 41.9% of those with the longest DUP (>72 weeks; n=31) had no, mild-moderate, and severe impairment, respectively (Kendall's Tau-b=0.194; P=0.025). Conclusions: The delay in accessing treatment among patients with psychosis is considerable in India, a lower- to middle-income country. Longer DUP is associated with poorer psychopathological and functional outcomes in persons with schizophrenia/schizophreniform disorder.


Seasonal variations in inorganic carbon chemistry and associated fluxes from the Congo River were investigated at Brazzaville‐Kinshasa. Small seasonal variation in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) was found in contrast with discharge‐correlated changes in pH, total alkalinity (TA), carbonate species, and dissolved organic carbon (DOC). DIC was almost always greater than TA due to the importance of CO2*, the sum of dissolved CO2 and carbonic acid, as a result of low pH. Organic acids in DOC contributed 11–61% of TA and had a strong titration effect on water pH and carbonate speciation. The CO2* and bicarbonate fluxes accounted for ~57% and 43% of the DIC flux, respectively. Congo River surface water released CO2 at a rate of ~109 mol m−2 yr−1. The basin‐wide DIC yield was ~8.84 × 104 mol km−2 yr−1. The discharge normalized DIC flux to the ocean amounted to 3.11 × 1011 mol yr−1. The DOC titration effect on the inorganic carbon system may also be important on a global scale for regulating carbon fluxes in rivers.


A full-scale test was performed on a Vestas V27 wind turbine equipped with one active 70 cm long trailing edge flap on one of its 13 m long blades. Active load reduction could be observed in spite of the limited spanwise coverage of the single active trailing edge flap. A frequency-weighted model predictive control was tested successfully on this demonstrator turbine. An average flapwise blade root load reduction of 14% was achieved during a 38 minute test, and a reduction of 20% of the amplitude of the 1P loads was measured. A system identification test was also performed, and an identified linear model, from trailing edge flap angle to flapwise blade root moment, was derived and compared with the linear analytical model used in the model predictive control design model. Flex5 simulations run with the same model predictive control showed a good correlation between the simulations and the measurements in terms of flapwise blade root moment spectral densities, in spite of significant differences between the identified linear model and the model predictive control design model. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.