Inspired by psychological studies on human judgment, this article represents the first attempt to provide a systematic account of how various heuristics and cognitive biases can influence public perception as well as regulatory response to foreign direct investment. In particular, it catalogues the main social and cognitive mechanisms through which various well-organized interest groups can exploit public fear of foreign direct investment from China. By closely studying two cases — the U.S. Congress' hostile response to CNOOC's attempted acquisition of Unocal and the European Commission's increased antitrust scrutiny of Chinese state-owned enterprises' acquisitions in Europe — this article shows how fear of Chinese investment can lead to counterproductive regulatory response. Contrary to the popular perception that Chinese state-owned enterprises are mere puppets of the government, the article draws attention to the pervasive but neglected agency problems that have powered the surge of Chinese outward investment. It calls for more effortful thinking by western policymakers and cautions against extreme precautionary measures for investment from China. At the same time, however, it questions the wisdom of overseas investment by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Empire building incentives, exacerbated by weak corporate governance structures and the lack of financial disclosure, make it highly likely that state assets are squandered in overseas acquisitions.


There has been an increased interest on the electronification of payments systems in the last two decades in general and on electronic money (e-money) on particular in the last decade with increased computing power and decreased cost of communication. E-money did not only attract attention from the academicians but also from central bankers, financial supervisory authorities, treasuries, finance ministries and innovators and operators all around the world. The purpose of this thesis is fourfold. Firstly, it seeks to define and critically assess e-money including the expected functions, necessary features, its potentials and major implications for different sides of financial system. Secondly, it tries to present empirical evidence on the current stage of e-money technology with two case studies, namely Mondei and Digicash. Thirdly, it investigates the perception of e-money innovators and operators with an assumption that they have the power and influence on the future shape of e-money. This section includes the analysis of two European surveys and one additional comparative survey conducted in Miami, the US. Lastly, it studies the free banking implications of e-money covering the impact on monetary policy framework and monetary policy instruments including whether e-money should be regulated or not. The research finds that the current definitions given to the e-money phenomenon is incomplete and defines the necessary functions and features for the future success of e-money applications. It describes e-money trends in Europe and compares it to the US perception finding no serious differences although the FED and the ECB have different approaches to money. Another conclusion the thesis reached is that e-money may result in a new approach to central banking with a contestable framework through the synergies with free banking. Finally, e-money is not seen as a danger for the successful conduct of monetary policy and the thesis underlines that when it is `representative', regulation is possible whereas `independent'money issuance may manage to stay out of the coverage of conventional regulatory
frameworks.


In the process of German unification, virtually all relevant West German political organizations quickly merged with their respective counterparts in the East. This was usually achieved through the transfer of the West German model to the new all-German organization. As often, the Greens were an exception, because they had, in a way, two counterparts in the East; that is, the East German Green Party and the Alliance 90, which had grown out of the citizens' movements. When fusion was finally completed in May 1993, the new party Alliance 90/The Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), prided itself on being the only political party that had accomplished unification on the basis of equality and respect for specific East German concerns. Based on an analysis of the organizational and political situation within the East German Land party organizations, this article discusses whether Alliance 90/The Greens have actually managed to realize the ideal of an equal partnership between East and West.


Abstract What, if much of anything, are "Antillean heptaxodontids"? Over the course of nearly a century and a half, these caviomorph rodents, with their distinctive quasilamellar cheek teeth and generally large body size, have been diversely regarded as members of Chinchilloidea, or Cavioidea, or Octodontoidea; as distinct enough to warrant their own family or subfamily, or as no more than an offshoot within Dinomyidae or Capromyidae; and as having diverged from other caviomorph clades as early as the Oligocene, or as recently as the late Neogene. Similar uncertainties concern the taxonomic content of the group. It has been repeatedly suggested that the Antillean Heptaxodontidae as usually organized may be paraphyletic, but no adequate character-based arguments have appeared that might form a strong basis for reassessment. This paper attempts to arrive at some serviceable solutions to the heptaxodontid problem by utilizing the character-rich domain of the auditory region. Thus Amblyrhiza inundata (St. Martin/Anguilla) and Elasmodontomys obliquus (Puerto Rico), the chief subjects of this contribution, have traditionally been regarded as closely related on the basis of dental features. Yet certain basicranial characters, analyzed here for the first time, reveal that Amblyrhiza possesses derived features of bullar development and middle-ear vascularization that are found in this specific combination only in Chinchilloidea. These features are also seen in the Mio-Pliocene Patagonian taxon Eumegamys, reinforcing the position that it belongs in this grouping as well. The basicranial morphology of Elasmodontomys is rather primitive, and where it should be placed cladistically remains indeterminate, although its likeliest position is within Octodontoidea. Although it is taken for granted that no single set of morphological features will satisfactorily capture relationships throughout a large group like Caviomorpha, the absence of basicranial characters in most morphology-based systematic discussions of these rodents is glaring. The results reported here, while suggestive in their own right, should now be tested against much larger datasets.


Dysphagia is a prevalent difficulty among aging adults. Though increasing age facilitates subtle physiologic changes in swallow function, age-related diseases are significant factors in the presence and severity of dysphagia. Among elderly diseases and health complications, stroke and dementia reflect high rates of dysphagia. In both conditions, dysphagia is associated with nutritional deficits and increased risk of pneumonia. Recent efforts have suggested that elderly community dwellers are also at risk for dysphagia and associated deficits in nutritional status and increased pneumonia risk. Swallowing rehabilitation is an effective approach to increase safe oral intake in these populations and recent research has demonstrated extended benefits related to improved nutritional status and reduced pneumonia rates. In this manuscript, we review data describing age related changes in swallowing and discuss the relationship of dysphagia in patients following stroke, those with dementia, and in community dwelling elderly. Subsequently, we review basic approaches to dysphagia intervention including both compensatory and rehabilitative approaches. We conclude with a discussion on the positive impact of swallowing rehabilitation on malnutrition and pneumonia in elderly who either present with dysphagia or are at risk for dysphagia.


Aim: Both conventional and flexible resins may show color alteration due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the color changes of the polyamid and heat polymerized acrylic denture base materials in storage of different staining solutions. Methods: Two denture base materials were used in this study. The speciemens were stored in two staining solutions (tea, coffee), distilled water and denture cleaner. For each group, 14 speciemens (25 × 15 × 2.5 mm) were prepared. The color of speciemens was measured using a colorimeter according to the CIE L*a*b* color scale. The color changes of speciemens were evaluated before and after 7 and 30 days. All data recorded were taken by the same investigator to minimize inconstancy of technique. The data were analyzed statistically by repeated measures analysis of variance and Tukey honestly significant difference multiple comparison tests. It was found no statistically significant difference between solutions (P > 0.05). Results: Polyamid denture base resin displayed the greatest colour change when compared to polymetyhl methacrylate denture base resin (P < 0.001). Polyamid material indicated the highest value (ΔE: 7.28) in coffee solution for 7 days. Significance: The colour stability of polymetyhl methacrylate denture base resin is greater than polyamid denture base resin.


The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between stressful life events and anxiety during the period of adolescence. It is known that stressful life events are commonly studied risk and environmental factors in the development of psychopathology in childhood and adolescence. In addition, physical and psychological symptoms of anxiety are often associated with stressful life events. These events are related to the different experiences of conflict and disrupted communication in the family. Subsequently, these events directly or indirectly affect the self-esteem and the self-image of adolescents during the period of adolescence. This research starts with the assumption that stressful life events predicted anxiety during the period of adolescence. Another assumption, in this research, is that females have higher level of anxiety compared with males. This study was conducted on a sample of 160 participants (80 girls and 80 boys) students in the fourth year of secondary school. The instruments used in the research include: scale of stressful life events for children and adolescents – Stress-D, and the Scale for anxiety for children and adolescents – SCAD-62. The results showed that stressful life events were significantly associated with anxiety symptoms (r= .962, p<.01). Also, the symptoms of anxiety are closely associated with medical (F,24,135= .871, p<.05) and family stressful events (F,24,135= 2.017, p<.05). There were significant relationship between medical stressful life events and gender (p= .045), and social stressful life events and gender (p= .001). On the other hand, there was a negative correlation between academic stressful life events and gender (p= .944), and family stressful life events and gender (p= .564). In conclusion, the results of the study show that females have higher level of anxiety compared with males (r= .985, p<.01). The results show that there is a significant relationship between specific types of stressful life events, including those related to physical health and family which discord the anxiety during the period of adolescence.


Vehicular communication (VC) systems are being developed primarily to enhance transportation safety and efficiency. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication, in particular, frequent cooperative awareness messages or safety beacons, has been considered over the past years as a main approach. Meanwhile, the need to provide security and to safeguard users' privacy is well understood, and security architectures for VC systems have been proposed. Although technical approaches to secure VC have several commonalities and a consensus has formed, there are critical questions that have remained largely unanswered: Are the proposed security and privacy schemes practical? Can the secured VC systems support the VC-enabled applications as effectively as unsecured VC would? How should security be designed so that its integration into a VC system has a limited effect on the system's performance? In this paper, we provide answers to these questions, investigating the joint effect of a set of system parameters and components. We consider the state-of-the-art approach in secure VC, and we evaluate analytically and through simulations the interdependencies among components and system characteristics. Overall, we identify key design choices for the deployment of efficient, effective, and secure VC systems.


Warriors of the Plains explores the art of North American Plains Indian warriors - weapons, amulets, clothing and ceremonial objects - with particular emphasis on their ritual use and symbolic meanings. Unlike most books on Plains Indians, which have a purely historical focus, this title examines continuity and change between historic warrior societies and contemporary Native American military associations. Originally set up as clubs to organise war raids and to police seasonal cycles of nomadic hunting, warrior societies today maintain much of the Plains Indians' ethos, vigorously reinforcing their cultural, national and ethnic identity. With a new approach to the subject the author reveals how specific items and symbols - objects of "ritual and honour" - such as the American flag, eagle feathers and medicine bundles have been used over the last 200 years, as well as exploring the introduction of new elements in modern ceremonial practices such as powwow dance competitions and war veterans' celebrations. Lavishly illustrated with objects from the British Museum's important collections, as well as archival material, this book features previously unpublished material. Max Carocci has been conducting research on Plains Indians since 1989. Since 2006 he has been researching and collecting in this area for the British Museum and is the curator of the touring exhibition "Warriors of the Plains: 200 years of Native North American honour and ritual". He lectures on Indigenous American Arts at Birkbeck College, University of London and is editor of the Anthropological Index Online run by the Royal Anthropological Institute. 160p, 150 col illus (British Museum Press, 2012)


Although there has been a growing literature on cooperative diversity, the current literature is mainly limited to Rayleigh fading channel model which typically assumes a wireless communication scenario with a stationary base station antenna above roof-top level and a mobile station at street level. In this paper, we investigate cooperative diversity for inter-vehicular communication based on cascaded Rayleigh fading. This channel model provides a realistic description of inter-vehicular channel where two or more independent Rayleigh fading processes are assumed to be generated by independent groups of scatterers around the two mobile terminals. We investigate the performance of amplify-and-forward relaying for an inter-vehicular cooperative scheme assisted by a road-side access point which acts as a relay. Our diversity analysis reveals that the cooperative scheme is able to extract the full distributed spatial diversity. We further formulate a power allocation problem for the considered scheme to optimize the power allocated to broadcasting and relaying phases. Performance gains up to 2.8 dB are observed through optimum power allocation depending on the relay location.


We evaluate the importance of the precautionary saving motive by relying on a direct question about precautionary wealth from the 1995 and 1998 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances. In this survey, a new question has been designed to elicit the amount of desired precautionary wealth. This allows us to assess the amount of precautionary accumulation and to overcome many of the problems of previous works on this topic. We find that a precautionary saving motive exists and affects virtually every type of household. However, precautionary savings account for only 8 percent of total wealth holdings. Even though this motive does not give rise to large amounts of wealth, particularly for young and middle-age households, it is particularly important for two groups: older households and business owners. Overall, we provide strong evidence that we need to take the precautionary saving motive into account when modeling saving behavior.


Context Businesses within the Australian cattle industries and associated research and advisory agencies require accurate data on production and performance of the national herd. Currently, these are derived from survey and statistical data; the latter is expected to be accurate, but the former needs to be tested in view of information suggesting significant under-reporting. Aims The research aimed to define the structure, performance and liveweight production of the Australian cattle herd and describe changes in reproduction, growth and survival over the past 40–50 years. Methods Interactive static herd modelling of beef and dairy herds was reconciled each year from 1976 to 2018, using slaughter and live export statistics and surveyed dairy cow numbers. A principle applied was that model performance should dictate input variables, moderating information derived from publications and professional opinion. Key results The Australian cattle herd fluctuated in size till the mid-1980s from when it settled into a range of 30–40 million beef cattle (12–16 Mt), exceeding survey data by 56–75%. The dairy herd remained at ~10% of the beef herd. Despite consistent herd size, productivity of the cattle herd increased from ~2.5 to 4.5 Mt of liveweight annually over 35 years. Half of this change was due to reductions in mortality, though ~1 million post-weaning-age cattle still die annually, in addition to >0.5 million calves from birth to weaning. Approximately a quarter each of the change was due to increased reproductive output and to steer growth. Liveweight production per beef animal increased from 70–75 kg/year to 130–135 kg/year, while liveweight production ratio increased by 0.08 and 0.12 kg/kg of cattle in male and female beef cattle respectively, to reach 0.31 kg/kg of cattle. Conclusions The main conclusion is the size, performance, production and productivity of the Australian cattle herd are quite different from that determined from surveys. Also, there is an on-going opportunity to derive benefit from improving cattle survival, reproduction and growth and from improving the feed base. Implications This research may have large impact on priorities for Australian beef business and associated environmental management. It is recommended that surveys be used to derive relative values to use in combination with absolute statistical data to derive accurate herd measures.


Abstract. We demonstrate the capability of the Sentinel-2
MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) to detect and quantify anomalously
large methane point sources with fine pixel resolution (20 m) and rapid
revisit rates (2–5 d). We present three methane column retrieval methods
that use shortwave infrared (SWIR) measurements from MSI spectral bands 11
(∼ 1560–1660 nm) and 12 (∼ 2090–2290 nm) to
detect atmospheric methane plumes. The most successful is the
multi-band–multi-pass (MBMP) method, which uses a combination of the two
bands and a non-plume reference observation to retrieve methane columns. The
MBMP method can quantify point sources down to about 3 t h−1 with a
precision of ∼ 30 %–90 % (1σ) over favorable
(quasi-homogeneous) surfaces. We applied our methods to perform
high-frequency monitoring of strong methane point source plumes from a
well-pad device in the Hassi Messaoud oil field of Algeria (October 2019 to
August 2020, observed every 2.5 d) and from a compressor station in the
Korpezhe oil and gas field of Turkmenistan (August 2015 to November 2020,
observed every 5 d). The Algerian source was detected in 93 % of
cloud-free scenes, with source rates ranging from 2.6 to 51.9 t h−1 (averaging 9.3 t h−1) until it was shut down by a flare lit in August
2020. The Turkmen source was detected in 40 % of cloud-free scenes, with
variable intermittency and a 9-month shutdown period in March–December 2019
before it resumed; source rates ranged from 3.5 to 92.9 t h−1
(averaging 20.5 t h−1). Our source-rate retrievals for the Korpezhe
point source are in close agreement with GHGSat-D satellite observations for
February 2018 to January 2019, but provide much higher observation density.
Our methods can be readily applied to other satellite instruments with
coarse SWIR spectral bands, such as Landsat-7 and Landsat-8. High-frequency
satellite-based detection of anomalous methane point sources as demonstrated
here could enable prompt corrective action to help reduce global methane
emissions.


This study was conducted to investigate the potential of non-used forest biomass residues as raw materials for mak- ing wood pellets with additives such as wood tar and starch and to evaluate fuel characteristics of the pellets. Wood tar, a by-product provided from the carbonization process of wood, could be a suitable additive for wood pellet pro- duction due to its higher calorific value and lower hazardous heavy metals, such as cadmium and mercury, compared to woody biomass. When the wood tar (10 wt%) was added, the calorific value was increased from 4,630 kcal/kg (wood pellet without additive) to 4,800 kcal/kg (wood pellet with additive). With the increase of additive amount into wood pellet, the length and individual density of wood pellet increased. In addition, bulk density of the pellets was in- creased, whereas the fine content was decreased. Consequently the overall productivity of wood pellets was improved


Polyglutamine (pQ) tracts are abundant in many proteins co-interacting on DNA. The lengths of these pQ tracts can modulate their interaction strengths. However, pQ tracts > 40 residues are pathologically prone to amyloidogenic self-assembly. Here, we assess the extent and consequences of variation in the pQ-encoding opa repeats of Notch (N) in Drosophila melanogaster. We use Sanger sequencing to genotype opa sequences (5'-CAX repeats), which have resisted assembly using short sequence reads. While the majority of N sequences pertain to reference opa31 (Q13HQ17) and opa32 (Q13HQ18) allelic classes, several rare alleles encode tracts > 32 residues: opa33a (Q14HQ18), opa33b (Q15HQ17), opa34 (Q16HQ17), opa35a1/opa35a2 (Q13HQ21), opa36 (Q13HQ22), and opa37 (Q13HQ23). Only one rare allele encodes a tract < 31 residues: opa23 (Q13–Q10). This opa23 allele shortens the pQ tract while simultaneously eliminating the interrupting histidine. Homozygotes for the short and long opa alleles have defects in sensory bristle organ specification, abdominal patterning, and embryonic survival. Inbred stocks with wild-type opa31 alleles become more viable when outbred, while an inbred stock with the longer opa35 becomes less viable after outcrossing to different backgrounds. In contrast, an inbred stock with the short opa23 allele is semi-viable in both inbred and outbred genetic backgrounds. This opa23 Notch allele also produces notched wings when recombined out of the X chromosome. Importantly, wa-linked X balancers carry the N allele opa33b and suppress AS-C insufficiency caused by the sc8 inversion. Our results demonstrate significant cryptic variation and epistatic sensitivity for the N locus, and the need for long read genotyping of key repeat variables underlying gene regulatory networks.


We have recently shown that low intensity, intermediate frequency, electric fields inhibit by an anti-microtubule mechanism of action, cancerous cell growth in vitro. Using implanted electrodes, these fields were also shown to inhibit the growth of dermal tumors in mice. The present study extends these findings to additional cell lines [human breast carcinoma; MDA-MB-231, and human non-small-cell lung carcinoma (H1299)] and to animal tumor models (intradermal B16F1 melanoma and intracranial F-98 glioma) using external insulated electrodes. These findings led to the initiation of a pilot clinical trial of the effects of TTFields in 10 patients with recurrent glioblastoma (GBM). Median time to disease progression in these patients was 26.1 weeks and median overall survival was 62.2 weeks. These time to disease progression and OS values are more than double the reported medians of historical control patients. No device-related serious adverse events were seen after >70 months of cumulative treatment in all of the patients. The only device-related side effect seen was a mild to moderate contact dermatitis beneath the field delivering electrodes. We conclude that TTFields are a safe and effective new treatment modality which effectively slows down tumor growth in vitro, in vivo and, as demonstrated here, in human cancer patients.


Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS) is an autosomal dominant inherited disorder characterized by mucocutaneous melanin pigmentation and gastrointestinal (GI) tract hamartomatous polyps and an increased risk of malignancy. In addition to polyposis, previous studies have reported increased risk of GI and extraGI malignancies in PJS patients, compared with that of the general population. The most common extraintestinal malignancies reported in previous studies are pancreatic, breast, ovarian and testicular cancers.We report the case of a 17-year-old boy who presented with generalized weakness, recurrent sharp abdominal pain and melena, had exploratory laparotomy and ileal resection for ileo-ileal intussusception. Pigmentation of the buccal mucosa was noted. An abdominal computed tomography scan (CT) revealed multiple polyps in small bowel loops. Gastroscopy revealed multiple dimunitive polyps in stomach and pedunculated polyp in duodenum. Colonoscopy revealed multiple colonic polyps. Pathological examination of the polyps confirmed hamartomas with smooth muscle arborization, compatible with Peutz-Jeghers polyps. CT scan guided left para-aortic lymph node biopsy revealed the characteristic features of extra-adrenal para-aortic paraganglioma. Although cases of various GI and extra GI malignancies in PJS patients has been reported, the present case appears to be the first in literature in which the PJS syndrome was associated with asymptomatic extraadrenal para-aortic paraganglioma. Patients with PJS should be treated by endoscopic or surgical resection and need whole-body screening.


This paper presents a new methodology for missing value imputation in a database. The methodology combines the outputs of several Self-Organizing Maps in order to obtain an accurate filling for the missing values. The maps are combined using MultiResponse Sparse Regression and the Hannan-Quinn Information Criterion. The new combination methodology removes the need for any lengthy cross-validation procedure, thus speeding up the computation significantly. Furthermore, the accuracy of the filling is improved, as demonstrated in the experiments.


Presenting the concept and design and implementation of configurable intelligent optimization algorithms in manufacturing systems, this book provides a new configuration method to optimize manufacturing processes. It provides a comprehensive elaboration of basic intelligent optimization algorithms, and demonstrates how their improvement, hybridization and parallelization can be applied to manufacturing. Furthermore, various applications of these intelligent optimization algorithms are exemplified in detail, chapter by chapter. The intelligent optimization algorithm is not just a single algorithm; instead it is a general advanced optimization mechanism which is highly scalable with robustness and randomness. Therefore, this book demonstrates the flexibility of these algorithms, as well as their robustness and reusability in order to solve mass complicated problems in manufacturing. Since the genetic algorithm was presented decades ago, a large number of intelligent optimization algorithms and their improvements have been developed. However, little work has been done to extend their applications and verify their competence in solving complicated problems in manufacturing. This book will provide an invaluable resource to students, researchers, consultants and industry professionals interested in engineering optimization. It will also be particularly useful to three groups of readers: algorithm beginners, optimization engineers and senior algorithm designers. It offers a detailed description of intelligent optimization algorithms to algorithm beginners; recommends new configurable design methods for optimization engineers, and provides future trends and challenges of the new configuration mechanism to senior algorithm designers.


This article examines the impact of CEO duality on firm performance; which attracted much attention, especially in emerging economies, yet yielded several inconsistent empirical results. CEO duality exists when the offices of the CEO and Chairman are retained by the same person. This study examines the relationship between CEO duality and the performance of Pakistani public listed companies by using a sample of five years, from 2007 to 2011. This study tested the hypotheses with data obtained from the Karachi Stock Exchange 100 indexed firms, and employed the agency and stewardship theory perspectives. However, our empirical results do not show a significant relationship between CEO duality and firm performance, but CEO qualification and CEO affiliation are positively associated with firm performance. The results suggest that CEO duality is a less significant issue in corporate governance than suggested by many previous researchers and policy makers. The paper contributes to the literature on corporate governance and firm performance by introducing a framework in identifying and analyzing moderating variables that affect the relationship between CEO duality and firm performance.


Abstract Two sets of scaled laboratory experiments were performed to examine the effect of flow volume, flow density and grain-size distribution on the transport efficiency of turbidity currents. The experiments employed two sediment analogues (ballotini and silica flour) intended to model medium- to coarse-grained sand and mud respectively. In the first set of experiments each parameter was varied to examine its effect upon deposit geometry. Increases in the initial flow density, volume and proportion of fines had the effect of increasing the amount of sediment that was transferred to the floor of the experimental tank by the turbidity currents. Increase of each of these parameters has a characteristic effect on the three-dimensional geometry of the deposit: the deposits of large-volume flows are elongate, and those of fines-rich flows are broad. Increase of flow density increases the initial potential energy of the flow, thus increasing the runout distance; increase of the initial density beyond a sediment concentration of 13% by mass results, however, in a reverse of the geometrical trend of deposit elongation, possibly because of turbulence suppression at high densities. Increase of flow volume also increases the initial potential energy, and reduces the rate of velocity decrease due to gravitational spreading. Increase in the proportion of fines leads to maintenance of negative buoyancy, as the fine fraction remains suspended until the flow has virtually come to rest; it also decreases the settling velocity of the coarser fraction and thus delays its sedimentation. The second set of experiments was performed to investigate the influence of flow efficiency on the interaction of turbidity currents with topography. A single arcuate obstacle was placed in the path of the flows. In successive experiments flow efficiency was increased by progressively increasing the proportion of fines (silica flour). Both the proportion of sediment reaching the obstructing topography and the proportion of it able to surmount the topography increased as flow efficiency increased. Thus flow efficiency may determine whether or not an enclosed basin hosts deposits whose geometry has been affected by the confinement, and may also determine the relative effectiveness of the topography in confining inbound turbidity currents, and thus trapping their sediment load.


Despite popular momentum behind North American civil society initiatives to advance social justice and ecological resilience in the food system, food movements have had limited success engaging with migrant farmworkers. This article describes a partnership between a nonprofit food network organization in Ontario, Canada, with a mandate to advance healthy food and farming across the region and university researchers. The purpose of this community-based research was to gather a broad range of actionable ideas from key informants to advance health and equity conditions of migrant farmworkers. "Key solution ideas" were gathered primarily through 11 in-depth interviews and ongoing feedback from relevant actors. We reflect on the unique features of approaching this often-divisive area of inquiry through a university-community partnership. Reviewing the solution ideas, we categorize proposals for advancing farmworker health and equity under four broad themes: (a) health and safety, (b) farmworker recruitment and mobility, (c) community building and social integration, and (d) immigration policy. We then critically evaluate the constraints and opportunities for addressing proposals through a network-based food organization that takes a "big tent" approach to collaborative action on polarizing issues. A tension for such organizations is taking meaningful action while avoiding overly polarizing political stances, which can alienate some members and neglect obligations to funders. Notwithstanding such tensions, community-university research partnerships have the potential to expand spaces for advancing equity with farmworkers. As food networks are seeking to build meaningful alliances with migrant justice and labour movements, this study provides a timely contribution to literature and practice at the intersection of community-based participatory research, sustainable food networks, labour, and immigration.


This research investigates organisational readiness for implementing organisational elearning systems (OES) in the Forestry Research and Development Agency (FORDA) of Indonesia. The study measures the level of organisational readiness for OES implementation at FORDA; and determines factors that need to be addressed in order to implement successful OES at FORDA, in a context with no prior OES knowledge. A mixed-methods approach was employed in this study. A cross-sectional survey was delivered in two forms: online and paper-based. The survey sample consisted of 288 employees of FORDA (policy makers, researchers, research assistants, and general employees). Statistical measures - reliability analysis, factor analysis, and multiple regression - were conducted using SPSS version 16.0. As a complementary method, 12 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 policy makers at FORDA. A comprehensive organisational e-learning readiness instrument (COERI) was developed to assess the level of organisational readiness for OES from the perspective of all target respondents (policy makers, e-learning providers, facilitators, and learners). The study proposes twelve readiness dimensions: technological skills; positive online learning style; negative online learning style; equipment/infrastructure; attitude; human resources; environmental; positive cultural; negative cultural; financial affordability; financial availability; and financial possibility.  Overall, to implement successful OES at FORDA the results show that only five areas are ready but need a few improvements (equipment/infrastructure, attitude, environment, positive online culture, and financial availability); five areas are not ready of which three areas need some improvements (technological skills, positive online learning style, and human resources), and two areas need major improvements (financial affordability and financial possibility). Factors that affect organisational readiness and need to be developed further in order to implement successful OES are: personal characteristics (age, education, gender, and computer experience), Internet access, central support, finance, environment, face-to-face contact, human resources capacity, English proficiency, and prior e-learning knowledge. Further exploration is required to achieve a more reliable instrument and to improve the applicability of COERI to similar research contexts.


This working paper presents a new dataset on the sources of billionaire wealth and uses it to describe changes in extreme wealth in the United States, Europe, and other advanced countries. The data classify wealth as either self-made or inherited and identify the company and industry from which it comes. Among self-made billionaires, individuals are further classified as company founders, executives, politically-connected, or in finance. Data analysis shows that the superrich in the United States are more dynamic than in Europe. Just over half of European billionaires inherited their fortunes, as compared with one-third in the United States. The median age of a company of a European billionaire is nearly 20 years older than that of an American billionaire. Traditional sectors explain more than half of the rise in wealth in Europe; the financial sector and technology-related sectors together are largely responsible for the rise in US wealth. There is some evidence that rents are higher in the United States than Europe, as not only is the number of US billionaires expanding rapidly, but US billionaires are also getting richer on average over time, especially when wealth is connected to resources, nontradables, or finance.


Assessment has been identified as one of the major challenges faced by Higher Education Institutions (Whitelock, et al, 2007). As a response to the challenge, in a project funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) the Open University developed Open Mentor (OM), a learning support tool for tutors to help them reflect on the quality of feedback given to their students on assignments submitted electronically. It was developed on the fundamental theory that there was convincing evidence of systematic connections between different types of tutor comments and the level of attainment in an assignment (Whitelock et al 2004). The work initiated by the Open University is being continued at the University of Southampton and King's College London through the JISC funded Open Mentor technology transfer (OMtetra) project. OMtetra aims at taking up OM and extend its uses by developing the system further and ultimately offer better support to tutors and students in the assessment process. The findings to date from the preliminary testing suggest that changes are required to the algorithm used in the analysis of feedback comments together with the introduction of a module for user authentication that would facilitate integration within any university system. In addition, changes to the types of assignments processed by OM have been also suggested by tutors who assess marked assignments as well as essays written by post-graduate students which do not necessarily need to have a mark but require complex feedback that allow students to enhance academic writing skills. OMtetra is an on-going project with high potential. We believe that the tools that result from the development and trial implementations of OM will contribute highly to the area of assessment and feedback in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) since it is an open source tool that will have wider applicability through the customisation process that is currently being undertaken.


Background and Design.- Newborn pneumothorax is a frequently seen condition in mechanically and manually ventilated neonates. However in some cases etiology for the pathology remains unclear. We retrospectively reviewed patients who were hospitalized for pneumothorax in two different neonate intensive care units. Material and methods: Between 1996 and 2001 83 cases were analyzed according to gestational age, weight, underlying primary lung pathology, age of admittance, side of pneumothorax, drainage time, need for mechanical ventilation. These criteria were assessed with mortality. 8 or 10 Fr feeding tube or pleurocan were used for thorax drainage. For diagnosis chest x-ray films were used. Compute tomography was used to eliminate congenital anomalies from pneumothorax in some patients. Results.- 83 neonates were assessed. M: F ratio was 1.6:1 Mean age of admittance was 63.8 hours (2 hours-20 days). 51 patients (61.4%) have low birth weight (less than 2500g). 41 patients (% 49.4) have prematurity. Patients weight ranged between 640 and 5170g. (Mean: 2280), 51 patients (% 61.4) needed mechanic ventilation. Pneumothorax was in right hemithorax in 44 (53%) patients, in left hemithorax 21 patients (25.7%) and 18 patients (21.7%) were bilaterally affected. We were able to define the underlying lung pathology in 49 patients (59%). 32 (38,6%) babies died. In those cases side of pneumothorax is respectively, bilateral in 13 cases (40.7%), right side in 12 cases (37.5%) and left side in 7 cases (25.3%). 22 (68%) of these lost babies were premature. We found underlying lung pathology in those 24 lost babies (75%) and 29 (90.6%) of them needed mechanic ventilation. Thorax tubes were stayed in 1-23 days (Mean 7.5 day). The mean hospital stay was 12,7 days (1-64). The difference in mortality was statistically non significant between the side of pnomothorax but significant in the presence of primary lung disease, low birth weight, prematurity and use of mechanical ventilation (p<0,005). Conclusion.- In neonate pneumothorax cases; low birth weight, prematurity, mechanic ventilation and underlying primary lung disease increases the mortality and morbidity. * Anahtar Kelimeler: Yenidogan, Pnomotoraks, Morbidite ve Mortalite * Key Words: Neonate, pneumothorax, morbidity, mortality


We investigate fluid mediated effective interactions in a confined film geometry, between two rigid, no-slip plates, where one of the plates is mobile and subjected to a random external forcing with zero average. The fluid is assumed to be compressible and viscous, and the external surface forcing to be of small amplitude, thus enabling a linear hydrodynamic analysis. While the transverse and longitudinal hydrodynamic stresses (forces per unit area) acting on either of the plates vanish on average, they exhibit significant fluctuations that can be quantified through their equal-time, two-point correlators. For transverse (shear) stresses, the same-plate correlators on both the fixed and the mobile plates, and also the cross-plate correlator, exhibit decaying power-law behaviors as functions of the inter-plate separation with universal exponents: At small separations, the exponents are given by -1 in all cases, while at large separations the exponents are found to be larger, differing in magnitude, viz., -2 (for the same-plate correlator on the fixed plate), -4 (for the excess same-plate correlator on the mobile plate) and -3 (for the cross-plate correlator). For longitudinal (compressional) stresses, we find much weaker power-law decays with exponents -3/2 (for the excess same-plate correlator on the mobile plate) and -1 (for the cross-plate correlator) in the large inter-plate separation regime. The same-plate stress correlator on the fixed plate increases and saturates on increase of the inter-plate separation, reflecting the non-decaying nature of the longitudinal forces acting on the fixed plate. The qualitative differences between the transverse and longitudinal stress correlators stem from the distinct nature of the shear and compression modes as, for instance, the latter exhibit acoustic propagation and, hence, relatively large fluctuations across the fluid film.


The thesis studies some problems in measure theory. In particular, a possible generalization
corresponding to Maharam Theorem for �nitely additive measures (charges).
In the �rst Chapter, we give some de�nitions and results on di�erent areas of Mathematics
that will be used during this work.
In Chapter two, we recall the de�nitions of nonatomic, continuous and Darboux
charges, and show their relations tWe hereby con�rm that all work without reference are
our work excluding the chapter one. We hereby con�rm that all work without reference
are our work excluding the chapter one. o each other. The relation between charges
on Boolean algebras and the induced measures on their Stone spaces is mentioned
in this chapter. We also show that for any charge algebra, there exists a compact
zero-dimensional space such that its charge algebra is isomorphic to the given charge
algebra.
In Chapter three, we give the de�nition of Jordan measure and some of its outcomes.
We de�ne another measure on an algebra of subsets of some set called Jordanian measure,
and investigate it. Then we de�ne the Jordan algebras and Jordanian algebras,
and study some of their properties.
Chapter four is mostly devoted to the investigation of uniformly regular measures
and charges (on both Boolean algebras and topological spaces). We show how the
properties of a charge on a Boolean algebra can be transferred to the induced measure
on its Stone space. We give a di�erent proof to a result by Mercourakis in [36, Remark
1.10]. In 2013, Borodulin-Nadzieja and Doamonja [10, Theorem 4.1] proved the countable
version of Maharam Theorem for charges using uniform regularity. We show that
3
4
this result can be proved under weaker assumption and further extended.
The �nal Chapter is concerned with the higher versions of uniform regularity which
are called uniform �-regularity. We study these types of measures and obtain several
results and characterizations. The major contribution to this work is that we show
we cannot hope for a higher analogue of Maharam Theorem for charges using uniform
�-regularity. In particular, Theorem 4.1 in [10] and Remark 1.10 in [36] cannot be
extended for all cardinals. We prove that a higher version of Theorem 4.1 in [10]
(resp. Remark 1.10 in [36]) can be proved only for charges on free algebras on � many
generators (resp. measures on a product of compact metric spaces). We also generalize
Proposition 2.10 in [26].


Scalable sensor simulation is an important yet challenging open problem for safety-critical domains such as self-driving. Current works in image simulation either fail to be photorealistic or do not model the 3D environment and the dynamic objects within, losing high-level control and physical realism. In this paper, we present GeoSim, a geometry-aware image composition process which synthesizes novel urban driving scenarios by augmenting existing images with dynamic objects extracted from other scenes and rendered at novel poses. Towards this goal, we first build a diverse bank of 3D objects with both realistic geometry and appearance from sensor data. During simulation, we perform a novel geometry-aware simulation-by-composition procedure which 1) proposes plausible and realistic object placements into a given scene, 2) renders novel views of dynamic objects from the asset bank, and 3) composes and blends the rendered image segments. The resulting synthetic images are realistic, traffic-aware, and geometrically consistent, allowing our approach to scale to complex use cases. We demonstrate two such important applications: long-range realistic video simulation across multiple camera sensors, and synthetic data generation for data augmentation on downstream segmentation tasks. Please check https://tmux.top/publication/geosim/ for high-resolution video results.


Currently, 65% of Americans are overweight, which leads to well-supported cardiovascular and cognitive declines. Little, however, is known concerning obesity's impact on sensory systems. Because olfaction is linked with ingestive behavior to guide food choice, its potential dysfunction during obesity could evoke a positive feedback loop to perpetuate poor ingestive behaviors. To determine the effect of chronic energy imbalance and reveal any structural or functional changes associated with obesity, we induced long-term, diet-induced obesity by challenging mice to high-fat diets: (1) in an obesity-prone (C57BL/6J) and obesity-resistant (Kv1.3−/−) line of mice, and compared this with (2) late-onset, genetic-induced obesity in MC4R−/− mice in which diabetes secondarily precipitates after disruption of the hypothalamic axis. We report marked loss of olfactory sensory neurons and their axonal projections after exposure to a fatty diet, with a concomitant reduction in electro-olfactogram amplitude. Loss of olfactory neurons and associated circuitry is linked to changes in neuronal proliferation and normal apoptotic cycles. Using a computer-controlled, liquid-based olfactometer, mice maintained on fatty diets learn reward-reinforced behaviors more slowly, have deficits in reversal learning demonstrating behavioral inflexibility, and exhibit reduced olfactory discrimination. When obese mice are removed from their high-fat diet to regain normal body weight and fasting glucose, olfactory dysfunctions are retained. We conclude that chronic energy imbalance therefore presents long-lasting structural and functional changes in the operation of the sensory system designed to encode external and internal chemical information and leads to altered olfactory- and reward-driven behaviors.


This paper deals with the effect of anodic oxidation treatment on the corrosion behaviour of 6061 aluminium alloy in natural sea water. Anodic oxidation treatment leads to the formation of an amorphous oxide layer on the top surface of 6061 aluminium alloy as shown by optical microscopy results. The corrosion behaviour was investigated in natural sea water, harvested from the Black Sea, Mangalia harbour. The study was done by in situ electrochemical methods such as: open circuit potential (OCP), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potentiodynamic polarization (PD) and cyclic voltammetry polarization (CV). The results show that the untreated 6061 aluminium alloy undergoes severe corrosion in natural sea water in comparison with anodized 6061 aluminium alloy. The results obtained by different electrochemical methods were in good agreement with each other and showed an improved corrosion resistance of the anodic oxide layer formed on aluminium alloy in natural sea water. The results were confirmed by optical microscopy.


Talk about making an impact: Applei¾?s Shake compositing and visual effects software has been used in every Academy Award-winning film for visual effects since its debut. Iti¾?s no wonder then that trained Shake artists are in high demandi¾?and therei¾?s nowhere better to begin getting that training than with this comprehensive Apple-approved guide (which includes a free 30-day trial version of the $4,000-plus software).Using step-by-step, hands-on instruction, Hollywood effects wizard Marco Paolini takes you through Shakei¾?s interface and features, including its color correction tools, tracking and stabilization capabilities, integrated procedural paint and rotoscoping tools, and more. As with the other titles in the Apple Pro Training Series, each chapter in this Apple-authorized guide represents a complete lessoni¾?with a project to complete, a review section, and bonus exercises to reinforce the lessons. The accompanying DVD includes all of the lesson files needed to complete the booki¾?s projects. You can work through the book from cover to cover to get an entire course or you can go straight to the lessons that interest you most. Either way, youi¾?ll find the coverage you need to confront even the most daunting compositing and effects tasks with Shake.


Group testing, dating back to the early 1940s, was first proposed to screen for syphilis among US inductees during World War II (Dorfman, 1943). Since then, the benefits of reducing testing costs by employing group testing have been demonstrated in many areas, such as drug discovery, genetics, and infectious disease testing. Traditionally, statistical research in group testing has largely been motivated by applications involving a single infection. With the recent development of multiplex assays that can diagnose multiple infections simultaneously, generalizing the existing group testing literature to incorporate multiple infections is a natural and necessary next step. This dissertation consists of three research projects that extend group testing to multiple infections. In Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, we propose two different testing algorithms to accommodate the use of multiplex assays. Compared to the two-stage hierarchical group testing algorithms currently employed by the Infertility Prevention Project (IPP) in Iowa, our algorithms are proven to confer significant cost savings. In Chapter 4, we propose a semi-parametric regression framework to estimate individual-level marginal probability of infection from multiple infection group testing data. The performance of our testing algorithms and estimation techniques is evaluated through numerical study, simulation, and application to chlamydia and gonorrhea data collected by five states as part of the IPP.


Abstract Heart failure (HF) is a common chronic condition, increasing in prevalence in line with an ageing population. Patients have a significant symptom burden, and a palliative care approach may be appropriate in advanced disease. Barriers to a palliative care approach exist, but can be overcome by an integrated model of care. Palliative care of patients with advanced HF has many similarities to palliative care of cancer patients. It is important to assess the psychosocial and spiritual domains of symptoms such as breathlessness, as well as physical. Individually tailored medical management has transformed the care of HF, but in advanced disease management the cardiac medication should be regularly reviewed to ensure optimal tolerated doses are prescribed. Breathlessness is a common and distressing symptom for patients with HF and their families. Specific non-pharmacological interventions such as exercise and psychological interventions should be considered. Pharmacological strategies, particularly low-dose opioids may also be useful. Use of oxygen remains a clinical uncertainty. Usefulness of cardiac devices, particularly implantable cardioverter-defibrillators decreases in advanced disease. Deactivation requires excellent communication between teams and with patients and families.


Memory has never been closer to us, yet never more difficult to understand. In the more than thirty specially commissioned essays that make up this book, leading scholars survey the histories, the theories, and the faultlines that compose the field of memory research.The volume reconstructs the work of the great philosophical and literary figures of the last two centuries who recast the concept of memory and brought it into the forefront of the modernist and postmodernist imagination-among them, Bergson, Halbwachs, Freud, Proust, Benjamin, Adorno, Derrida, and Deleuze. Drawing on recent advances in the sciences and in the humanities, the contributors address thequestion of how memory works, highlighting transactions between the interiority of subjective memory and the larger fields of public or collective memory.The public, political life of memory is an increasingly urgent issue in the societies we now inhabit, while the category of memory itself seems to become ever more capacious.Asking how we might think about the politics of memory, the closing chapters explore anumber of defining instances in which the troubled phenomenon of memory has entered and reshaped our very conception of what makes and drives the domain of politics. These include issues of slavery, the Soviet experience, the Holocaust, feminism and recovered memory, and memory in post-apartheid South Africa.


This article examines the market-wide relations between the U.S. stock market and the credit default swap (CDS) market for the period 2001–2007. Results indicate that the lead-lag relationship between the U.S. stock market and the CDS market depends on the credit quality of the underlying reference entity. Specifically, this article finds significant mutual feedback of information between the stock market and the high-yield CDS market in terms of pricing and volatility, while the stock market leads the investment-grade CDS index in the pricing process. The CDS market seems to play a more significant role in volatility spillover than the stock market. That is, volatilities of both the investment-grade and high-yield CDS indices seem to lead the stock market volatility, while the latter has a feedback effect to that of the high-yield CDS market only. Overall, the implication is that market participants should seek information in both markets when they are about to engage in trading and/or hedging


This article discusses a range of factors that may shift the level of UK potential employment — that is, the amount of labour that can be sustainably employed by UK companies to produce goods and services. The level of potential employment reflects four factors: the size of the adult population; the willingness of that population to participate actively in the labour market; the sensitivity of wages to the unemployment rate; and the average number of hours that people are willing to work when employed. Rapid growth in the UK population has been the primary source of growth in potential employment over the past ten years. Structural changes in the labour market are likely to have also enabled a modest increase in the equilibrium participation rate and a decline in the equilibrium unemployment rate which would have further boosted potential employment. But those developments have been partly offset by the continued downward trend in desired working hours.


Providing quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees over wireless packet networks poses a host of technical challenges that are not present in wireline networks. One of the key issues is how to account for the characteristics of the time-varying wireless channel and for the impact of link-layer error control in the provisioning of packet-level QoS. We accommodate both aspects in analyzing the packet-loss performance over a wireless link. We consider the cases of a single and multiplexed traffic streams. The link capacity fluctuates according to a fluid version of Gilbert-Elliott channel model. Traffic sources are modeled as on-off fluid processes. For the single-stream case, we derive the exact packet-loss rate (PLR) due to buffer overflow at the sender side of the wireless link. We also obtain a closed-form approximation for the corresponding wireless effective bandwidth. In the case of multiplexed streams, we obtain a good approximation for the PLR using the Chernoff-dominant eigenvalue (CDE) approach. Our analysis is then used to study the optimal forward error correction code rate that guarantees a given PLR while minimizing the allocated bandwidth. Numerical results and simulations are used to verify the adequacy of our analysis and to study the impact of error control on the allocation of bandwidth for guaranteed packet-loss performance.


Graphics processing relies on executing similar instructions repeatedly on a large data set. This parallelism in the data gives rise to the Single-Instruction Multiple-Data (SIMD) paradigm which is used in modern processors. This paper explores several techniques that exploit the parallelism in the SIMD execution functional units and proposes several new SIMD methods. The methods discussed in this paper cover SIMD Addition and SIMD Matrix Multiplication.


The hot summer of 2007 in southeast Europe has been studied using two regional atmospheric chemistry models; WRF-Chem and EMEP MSC-W. The region was struck by three heat waves and a number of forest fire episodes, greatly affecting air pollution levels. We have focused on ozone and its precursors using state-of-the-art inventories for anthropogenic, biogenic and forest fire emissions. The models have been evaluated against measurement data, and processes leading to ozone formation have been quantified. Heat wave episodes are projected to occur more frequently in a future climate, and therefore this study also makes a contribution to climate change impact research. The plume from the Greek forest fires in August 2007 is clearly seen in satellite observations of CO and NO2 columns, showing extreme levels of CO in and downwindof the fires. Model simulations reflect the location and influence of the fires relatively well, but the modelled magnitude of CO in the plume core is too low. Most likely, this is caused by underestimation of CO in the emission inventories, suggesting that the CO/NOx ratios of fire emissions should be re-assessed. Moreover, higher maximum values are seen in WRF-Chem than in EMEP MSC-W, presumably due to differences in plume rise altitudes as the first model emits a larger fraction of the fire emissions in the lowermost model layer. The model results are also in fairly good agreement with surface ozone measurements. Biogenic VOC emissions reacting with anthropogenic NOx emissions are calculated to contribute significantly to the levels of ozone in the region, but the magnitude and geographical distribution depend strongly on the model and biogenic emission module used. During the July and August heat waves, ozone levels increased substantially due to a combination of forest fire emissions and the effect of high temperatures. We found that the largest temperature impact on ozone was through the temperature dependence of the biogenic emissions, closely followed by the effect of reduced dry deposiion caused by closing of the plants' stomata at very high temperatures. The impact of high temperatures on the ozone chemistry was much lower. The results suggest that forest fire emissions, and the temperature effect on biogenic emissions and dry deposition, will potentially lead to substantial ozone increases in a warmer climate.


In the April 6, 1903, edition of the Tōkyō asahi shinbun, best-selling translator Hara Hōitsuan published "Shiizā sansatsu jiken," his rendition of a burlesque by Mark Twain titled "The Killing of Julius Caesar 'Localized.'" This minor translation of a minor text by a world-famous American author sparked a virulent public debate between Hara and Yamagata Iso'o, who was incensed by the translator's failure to grasp Twain's subtle sense of humor. This essay examines the 1903 Hara-Twain controversy for what it reveals about the status of literary laughter as an object of knowledge via translation in Meiji


Novel emerging tools are allowing the manipulation and control of biological cells and their functions, e.g., sensing, actuation, and communication through biochemical stimuli. These tools have the potential to enable the implementation of manmade networks of biological computing devices, i.e., Internet of Bio-things. In this work, signal transduction pathways, i.e., cells' chemical reactions that process biochemical signals, are proposed for the design of analog linear filters to be utilized as components in the Internet of Bio-things. These filters, which exploit the crosstalk of signal transduction pathways to achieve the desired response, are here modeled and analyzed. The relations between filter properties and biochemical parameters are presented with the goal of designing a notch filter. A preliminary numerical example is also given as proof-of-concept.


BACKGROUND
Although studies have linked vitamin D deficiency to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), evidence regarding whether vitamin D intake from foods or supplements is prospectively associated with lower CVD risk in healthy humans is limited and inconclusive.

OBJECTIVE
The objective was to comprehensively evaluate the associations between both dietary and supplemental vitamin D and CVD risk.

DESIGN
In the Nurses' Health Study (1984-2006) and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2006)-consisting of 74,272 women and 44,592 men, respectively, who were free of CVD and cancer at baseline-we prospectively examined the association between vitamin D intake and incident CVD.

RESULTS
Over a total of 2,280,324 person-years of follow-up, we identified 9886 incident cases of coronary heart disease and stroke. After multivariate adjustment for age and other CVD risk factors, a higher total vitamin D intake (from foods and supplements) was associated with a decreased risk of CVD in men but not in women; the relative risks (95% CIs) for a comparison of participants who met the Dietary Reference Intake of vitamin D (≥600 IU/d) with participants whose vitamin D intake was <100 IU/d were 0.84 (0.72, 0.97; P for trend = 0.009) for men and 1.02 (0.89, 1.17; P for trend = 0.12) for women.

CONCLUSIONS
These observations suggest that a higher intake of vitamin D is associated with a lower risk of CVD in men but not in women. Further research is needed to confirm these findings and to elucidate a biological basis for potential sex differences.


Many proposed applications using dendrimers, such as drug delivery and environmental remediation, involve dendrimer interactions with small molecules. Understanding the details of these interactions is important for designing dendrimers with tunable association with guest molecules. In this work, we investigate dendrimer interactions with small aromatic hydrocarbons using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. We study the association of naphthalene (NPH)-the smallest polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-with 3rd-6th generation (G3-G6) polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers. Our work emphasizes that the association of small aromatic molecules with PAMAM dendrimers involves the formation of dynamic pocket-like association sites through interactions between flexible dendrimer branches and NPH molecules. The association sites are primarily formed by branches from the two outermost dendrimer subgenerations, and often involve the tertiary amine groups. Irrespective of their location on the dendrimer-whether buried or near the outer surface-these pocket-like structures lower the hydration of the associated NPH molecules. We show that on average NPH molecules with a lower hydration have a greater tendency to remain associated with the dendrimer for longer times. In general, the association sites are similar for the G3-G6 PAMAM dendrimers, indicating similarities in the association mechanisms across different dendrimer generations.


During an incompatible interaction between alfalfa leaves and Pseudomonas syringae pv. pisi, flavonoids accumulated between 6 and 24 h, whereas they could not be detected during the first 96 h of a compatible interaction with Xanthomonas campestris pv. alfalfae. Three flavonoids accumulated which were identified as 4′,7-dihydroxyflavanone and 4′,7-dihydroxyflavone and 2′,4,4′-trihydroxychalcone. Surprisingly, the phytoalexin medicarpin was found only at a very low level. Analysis of both the infected and noninfected zones revealed that these flavonoids were detectable only in the infiltrated tissue. Northern hybridizations showed that transcripts encoding for chalcone synthase (CHS), chalcone reductase, chalcone isomerase, and isoflavone reductase (IFR) accumulated in both infiltrated and noninfiltrated zones. Measurements of the CHS and IFR activities in the infiltrated and noninfiltrated zones indicated that the levels of CHS activity were highly increased only in the infiltrated zones, whereas the leve...


A workshop entitled "Deriving Compound-Specific Exposure Limits for Chemicals Used in Pharmaceutical Synthesis" was held at the 2018 Genetic Toxicology Association annual meeting. The objectives of the workshop were to provide an educational forum and use case studies and live multiple-choice polling to establish the degree of similarity/diversity in approach/opinion of the industry experts and other delegates present for some of the more challenging decision points that need to be considered when developing a compound-specific exposure limit (ie, acceptable intake or permissible or permitted daily exposure). Herein we summarize the relevant background and case study information for each decision point topic presented as well as highlight significant polling responses and discussion points. A common observation throughout was the requirement for expert judgment to be applied at each of the decision points presented which often results in different reasoning being applied by the risk assessor when deriving a compound-specific exposure limit. This supports the value of precompetitive cross-industry collaborations to develop compound-specific limits and harmonize the methodology applied, thus reducing the associated uncertainty inherent in the application of isolated expert judgment in this context. An overview of relevant precompetitive cross-industry collaborations working to achieve this goal is described.


The sensing capabilities of an Internet-of-Things (IoT) network are usually fixed at deployment. Adding new sensing modalities is a cumbersome process because it requires altering the deployed hardware. We introduce passive sensor tags that allow to easily and seamlessly add new sensors to existing IoT deployments without requiring hardware modifications or additional energy sources. Passive sensor tags employ backscatter communication to generate transmissions that can be decoded by the radio transceivers present in today's IoT devices. Furthermore, unlike recent works, our approach does not require dedicated infrastructure to generate the unmodulated carrier used for backscatter communication. The demo showcases our prototype of a passive sensor tag collecting sensor data and delivering it to unmodified commodity IoT devices using passive 802.15.4 transmissions.


A major challenge in public health research on physical activity is in reconciling the commonly observed differences between estimates provided by monitor-based methods and report-based methods. Calibration methods are widely used in measurement research to rescale or convert an estimate so that it matches a more robust criterion value. Accelerometry-based activity monitors are routinely calibrated against more robust estimates of indirect calorimetry, but surprisingly little research is done to calibrate report-based estimates. The purpose of the paper was to document the utility of calibration methods for harmonizing estimates from report-based measures to correspond with data from monitor-based methods. While there are also limitations associated with monitor-based methods, this procedure provides a systematic way to promote harmonization of estimates obtained from these different methods. This enables the more feasible report-based measures to provide more accurate group-level estimates of physical ac...


"Modern Turkey, like a transgendered body with the soul of one gender in the body of another, is in constant tension.... The soul of white Turkey and its Kemalist identify is in constant pain and conflict with the national body politic of Turkey." In order to understand state-society relations in Turkey, it is first necessary to understand the relationship between Turkish nationalism and Islam. Although Turkey is a national and secular state, religion lies at the core of its political landscape and identity.(2) Islam has always played an important role in the vernacularization of Turkish nationalism; Turkish nationalists, in turn, have redefined Islam as an integral part of national identity. Turkish nationalism is essentially based on the cosmology of Islam and its conception of community. The patterns of collective action, the meaning of justice, community, legitimacy and organizational networks in Turkey are very much informed by Islamic practices and organizations. Islamic activism has emerged as a result of the expanding market and the changing patterns of religious authority; political liberalization and interaction with Europe. It is, therefore, an attempt to re-imagine and renegotiate the Islamic aspect of Turkish identity. After Islam was ripped out of Turkey's social fabric by the reforms of Mustafa Kemal in the 1920s, the rhythms of this religio-political activism have been modulated by the changing policies of the Turkish state. These centralizing and homogenizing reforms divided Turkey into zones of prosperity and zones of conflict. The zones of prosperity are concentrated around the "white Turks," or governing political elite, who are at the center of state power, while the zones of conflict are centered around the poor and marginalized sectors of the population--"the black Turks."(3) Religion, as a residual variable of the category of the black Turks and Kurds, became the basis for the exclusion of the majority of the population by the hegemonic Kemalist discourse of the white Turks. Islam has become the oppositional identity for the excluded sectors of Turkish society. Cultural cleavage is the basis of Turkish politics. Political divisions, which formed as a result of secular nation-building reforms, reflect such splits. The purpose of this paper is to examine the discursive origins and historical paradox of the cultural cleavage between Turkey's Muslim masses and its pseudo-Westernized elite, and the power struggle between them. The first part of this article analyzes the irresolvable paradox of the Turkish Republic by examining the process of "othering" Islam. It identifies Kemalism, an authoritarian Westernization project, as the source of the contemporary crisis. The second part examines the politicization and the fragmentation of Islamic social movements by focusing on the Sufi-centric movements and the political Islam of the National Order Movement. The final sections of the article examine the transformation of the National Order Movement and the socio-political implications of the February 28th process. BLACK VS. WHITE TURKS, ISLAM AND NATIONALISM Turkey embodies an irreconcilable paradox established during the foundation of the Republic in the 1920s. On one hand, the state used Islam to unify diverse ethno-linguistic groups; on the other, it defined its progressive civilizing ideology in opposition to Islam. It called upon the men and women of Turkey to participate in a jihad to liberate their homeland and Caliphate from the occupying European armies. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) stressed the common religious identity of Turks and Kurds as Muslims and referred to non-Muslims as a "minority." Turkey thereby refused to accept ethnicity as the basis of its national identity, referring instead to religio-territorial identity as its standard for unity. Islamic identity based on religious devotion, ritual practices and a set of historically structured socio-political roles and schematic frames,(4)served as the integrative glue for the establishment of the Turkish Republic. …


Ambiguity can be used as a strategic device in some situations. To demonstrate this, we propose and study a framework for normal form games where players can use Knightian uncertainty strategically. In such Ellsberg games, players may use Ellsberg urns in addition to the standard objective mixed strategies. We assume that players are ambiguity-averse in the sense of Gilboa and Schmeidler. While classical Nash equilibria remain equilibria in the new game, there arise new Ellsberg equilibria that can be quite different from Nash equilibria. A negotiation game with three players illustrates this finding. Another class of examples shows the use of ambiguity in mediation. We also highlight some conceptually interesting properties of Ellsberg equilibria in two person games with conflicting interests.


INTRODUCTION
The present article reviews findings from empirical evaluations of integrated disease management programmes. The objective is to provide insights on integration levels, priority interventions and their effect on patient outcomes.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
The literature review identified 1 251 articles, published from 2006 to 2011. Upon a detailed screening 61 articles were selected for bibliometric analysis and critical discussion.

RESULTS
Among several findings, it can be noted that United States of America is the country with the highest amount of published evidence on the subject under study. The most frequently referred disease is diabetes mellitus and the main reported issue of integrated disease management is self-management support. The majority of the studies were developed and exclusively managed by managed care organizations, organized family doctors or hospitals. From a total of 360 interventions reported in studies, patient interventions are the most frequently used across all disease groups, followed by professional interventions. To monitor the effectiveness of the disease programmes, the most frequently used outcomes are patient physiological measures, service use and patient health status.

DISCUSSION
Every country has its own way to implement the integrated disease management strategy. The focus of practice lies on patient empowerment, particularly through self-management. Physiological measures and service use are the outcomes with the highest rate of assessment, which are also the indicators that show higher impact among all integrated disease management programmes.

CONCLUSION
The Portuguese health care system still faces challenges in the coordination and integration of care for patients with chronic disease thus improvements at integrated disease management programmes should be incorporate.


Automatic music recommendation has become an increasingly relevant problem in recent years, since a lot of music is now sold and consumed digitally. Most recommender systems rely on collaborative filtering. However, this approach suffers from the cold start problem: it fails when no usage data is available, so it is not effective for recommending new and unpopular songs. In this paper, we propose to use a latent factor model for recommendation, and predict the latent factors from music audio when they cannot be obtained from usage data. We compare a traditional approach using a bag-of-words representation of the audio signals with deep convolutional neural networks, and evaluate the predictions quantitatively and qualitatively on the Million Song Dataset. We show that using predicted latent factors produces sensible recommendations, despite the fact that there is a large semantic gap between the characteristics of a song that affect user preference and the corresponding audio signal. We also show that recent advances in deep learning translate very well to the music recommendation setting, with deep convolutional neural networks significantly outperforming the traditional approach.


The recognition of new venture opportunities has been acknowledged as one of the most important abilities of successful entrepreneurs. Explaining the recognition of new venture opportunities has thus become an important element of the scholarly study of entrepreneurship. Building on this stream of research, we present a study of the influence of prior industry and functional work experience on entrepreneurs' ability to recognize new venture opportunities. As a theoretical point of departure we acknowledge two alternative lines of reasoning in the literature as explanations of opportunity recognition; the expert thesis and the intersectional thesis. Statistical analysis is made on a sample of 291 Swedish individuals with recent experience of starting up a new venture. In all, the overall results give ample support for the intersectional thesis. The findings suggest that entrepreneurs with experience across different industries and work functions have an enhanced ability to recognize new venture opportunities. On the other hand, we do not find any support for the expert thesis. The findings show no association between deeper experience within a particular industry or work function and generating more new venture opportunities. In addition, a more fine grained analysis of the type of business opportunity recognized reveal supporting evidence that experience across functional areas is positively associated with more innovative business opportunities.


The legal doctrine of informed consent, which imposes tort liability for failure to disclose the risks, benefits, and alternatives of a proposed medical intervention, is often criticized for emphasizing ritual over relationships, contributing to the deterioration of the doctor-patient relationship by encouraging the practice of defensive medicine. This article considers a rather radical response to the allegations that the tort of lack of informed consent does not serve the lofty goal of protecting patient self-determination by ensuring that treatment decisions are voluntary and informed, namely the elimination of liability for failure to provide informed consent to medical treatment. In doing so, this article evaluates the rationale and procedure for abolishing a common law private right of action for lack of informed consent, as well as potential alternatives to tort liability for failure of informed consent to medical treatment. The article concludes that the time has not come for a wholesale elimination of the private right of action for lack of informed consent to treatment. Abolishing liability for lack of informed consent in treatment would not only eliminate the deterrent effect for potential bad actors, but would also remove recourse for those who have suffered harm due to a failure of informed consent. * Director of Law & Ethics, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago; Visiting Fellow at DePaul University College of Law; Chair of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Bioethics & the Law. J.D., Harvard Law School; A.B., Princeton University. I would like to offer particular gratitude to Ting Liu, who provided extensive research support for this project. In addition, thank you to Professor Michael Waitzkin, who enabled this project to come to fruition through the Duke Institute for Science & Society summer practicum; Elizabeth Yang, Deputy Director of the Division for Public Services; and the American Bar Association, for coordinating this effort with the ABA Special Committee on Bioethics & the Law. Valuable discussion of this article was provided by Wendy Netter Epstein and Nadia Sawicki. KOCH AC 534 (DO NOT DELETE) 5/15/2019 1:36 PM 1212 UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND LAW REVIEW [Vol. 53:1211


New digital technologies are now being widely used in Africa and lower-income countries (LICs). This has had an impact on tax administration, which has been increasingly digitised. Specifically Digital Financial Services (DFS) and digital IDs can improve tax administration. They have the potential to identify taxpayers more easily, communicate with them better, enforce and monitor compliance, and reduce compliance costs. While the potential is clear, existing literature indicates some of the barriers. Take-up of digital technology is still low due to barriers. Also, when taking up the technology, taxpayers often tend to adopt various measures to minimise tax payments. Within tax administrations there are challenges to accessibility and use of quality data. Mistakes can be made when launching digitisation, and there are regulatory and political barriers for effective use of digital technology. Given this context, this paper summarises key questions that are relevant for research and policy development to make more effective use of digital technology in tax administration in Africa and LICs.


We consider a class of lattices built using Construction A, where the underlying code is a non-binary spatially-coupled low density parity check code. We refer to these lattices as spatially-coupled LDA (SCLDA) lattices. SCLDA lattices can be constructed over integers, Gaussian integers and Eisenstein integers. We empirically study the performance of SCLDA lattices under belief propagation (BP) decoding. Ignoring the rate loss from termination, simulation results show that the BP thresholds of SCLDA lattices over integers is 0.11 dB (0.34 dB with the rate loss) and the BP thresholds for SCLDA lattices over Eisenstein integers are 0.08 dB from the Poltyrev limit (0.19 dB with the rate loss). Motivated by this result, we use SCLDA lattice codes over Eisenstein integers for implementing a compute-and-forward protocol. For the examples considered in this paper, the thresholds for the proposed lattice codes are within 0.28 dB from the achievable rate of this coding scheme and within 1.06 dB from the achievable computation rate of Nazer and Gastpar's coding scheme in [6] extended to Eisenstein integers.


Current reform efforts in science education around the world call on teachers to use integrated approaches to teach science. As a part of such reform efforts in the United States, engineering practices and engineering design have been identified in K–12 science education standards. However, there is relatively little is known about effective ways of teaching science through engineering design. The study explores the approaches or strategies used by a sixth grade science teacher to teach science and engineering in an integrative manner. Classroom observations, teacher interview, and student surveys were used to study the features of engineering integration implemented by the teacher and the changes in student interest in science and engineering by participating in an engineering design-based science unit. Findings suggest that the teacher explicitly included practices and core ideas from engineering and science; used an engaging, motivating engineering challenge; and provided students with opportunities to be autonomous. Students engaged in the activities in the engineering unit and their interest level slightly increased. The results suggest that the three strategies that the teacher used to teach engineering and science are important foundations of integrated science and engineering education.


Laser technology may be one of the most important purchases for a dermatology practice. Anne Chapas, M.D., of Union Square Laser Dermatology in New York, suggests that physicians do their research before making such an important investment. "I've actually seen people go bankrupt because they didn't know how to use this very expensive laser that they purchased," she said. Dr. Chapas suggests the following considerations before making your first purchase.


In the existing system the problem of agriculture is found manually so there is more chances for loses to the farmers. Now a day's agriculture grow is reducing because of more pollution and pest in the world. India's most of the farmer grow sugarcane but did not get yielding due to bugs and larvae in sugarcane. To avoid this situation, the proposed design has been developed with acoustic sensor and pir sensor. In this proposed design system used arduino for monitoring the noise and temperature. So finding the problem can be simplified and solved easily.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the morbidity and outcome of low birthweight babies (birthweight < 2000 gm) of adolescent (age < 20 years) and older mothers.

DESIGN
Cross sectional descriptive study.

SETTING
The newborn Unit of the Kenyatta National Hospital.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
All babies weighing less than 2000 gm at birth whose mothers consented to the study had their gestational age verified using the Dubowitz scoring system. They were then followed up by daily clinical assessment until discharge, death or up to one month in the ward. The babies were divided into two groups according to their mother's age and then compared with respect to episodes of illness, duration of hospital stay, and overall outcome.

RESULTS
One hundred and forty two babies were studied. Of these, 64 were born to adolescent mothers. Babies of the adolescent mothers tended to be more premature (p = 0.0174), be lower in weight (p = 0.0078), had more occurrences of respiratory distress and anaemia (probably reflecting their increased prematurity) and had frequent multiple morbidity events They also had longer hospital stay and they were more likely to die (57.7% compared to 42.3% of babies of older mothers).

CONCLUSION
Low birthweight babies of the adolescent mothers were found to be more likely to have increased morbidity and adverse outcome compared to similar babies of older mothers.


Richard B. Freeman & Joel Rodgers offer an important addition to the industrial relations literature. This work is grounded in survey methodology. The authors' original thesis, premised on the Worker Representation and Participation Study (WRPS) which Freeman & Rogers designed more than ten years ago, concludes that there is "a large gap between the kind and extent of representation and participation workers had and what they desired." The updated edition of their book, "What Workers Want," does not present new or innovative polling or original empirical research directed by the authors. Instead, much of the new data cited come from several polls "that come closest in spirit to the WRPS focus on particular aspects of the workplace and compensation package as opposed to job satisfaction broadly defined." This review essay examines Freeman and Rogers's conclusions drawn from the survey material they put forth and their latest recommendations and proposals. Torn between optimism and despair, ?What Workers Want? (Updated edition)? endeavors to offer a balanced approach to labor relations in America. From a positive perspective, their approach puts forward an alternative to another round of endless proposals and counter-proposals for reforming the National Labor Relations Act. However, closer scrutiny is likely to uncover grave problems in their analysis and proposals for reform. Because factual and analytical gaps exist in their analysis and because actual data appear to be available which undermine their conclusions and recommendations, this essay finds that Freeman & Rogers's book is less than fully persuasive.


The relation type question, raised by C. Huneke, asks whether for a complete equidimensional local ring R there exists a uniform number N such that the relation type of every ideal I ? R generated by a system of parameters is at most N. Wang gave a positive answer to this question when the non-Cohen?Macaulay locus of R (denoted by NCM(R)) has dimension zero. In this paper, we first present an example, due to the first author, which gives a negative answer to the question when dimNCM(R) = 2. The major part of our work is to investigate the remaining situation, i.e., when dimNCM(R) = 1. We introduce the notion of homology multipliers and show that the question has a positive answer when R / A(R) is a domain, where A(R) is the ideal generated by all homology multipliers in R. In a more general context, we also discuss many interesting properties of homology multipliers.


This article introduces the longshore current computations based on theories published under the title "Longshore Currents and Longshore Troughs" (Bruun, 1963). Two approaches are used to formulate the longshore current velocities for a beach profile with one bar under the following assumptions: (1) that longshore current is evenly distributed (or a mean can be taken) along the depthj (2) that the solitary wave theory is applicable for waves in the surf zone; (3) that the statistical wave-height distribution for a deep water wave spectrum with a single narrow band of frequencies can be used near the shore, and (4) that the depth over the bar crest, Dcr, equal 0.8Hv/i /o\. Breaking wave height H^Q/^X is designated to be the actual height equal to Hw-j (significant wave height). Diagrams have been constructed for both approaches for beach profiles with one bar, from which longshore current velocities caused by various wave-breaking conditions can be read directly. As for longshore currents along the beach with a multibar system, fifteen diagrams covering a great variety of wave-breaking conditions are provided for obtaining longshore current velocities in different troughs.


The discussion on the role of economists is characterised by metaphors, which range from plumber to designer to dentist. This paper aims to clarify the meaning of these metaphors for applied economists. To this end, the source of theses metaphors, which is located in John Neville Keynes' conception of the art of economics, is examined. In this context, it is argued that a return to John Neville Keynes' tripartite systematisation of economics, namely positive, normative, and art of economics, can provide both structure and framework for the demands for theoretical-methodological complementarity, application orientation, and transparent values in economics. Through the synthesis of Kant's sensus communis with Keynes' tripartite systematisation of the economics, interdependencies between the three sub-areas are discussed. A central finding of this synthesis is that the disclosure of normative aspects in economics is necessary in order to establish intersubjectivity and thus create the conditions for an open discourse, which ultimately increases the resilience of economic analysis.


markdownabstract__Background:__ Indonesia has not resolved tuberculosis burden since its prevalence and incidence has remained high. As the capital of Indonesia with a large population and a high number of tuberculosis cases, Jakarta has a distinctive condition of tuberculosis burden. This study aimed to obtain social determinants of knowledge and perception of pulmonary tuberculosis in an urban community.
__Methods:__ This study used 2,323 samples taken by random sampling in Jakarta during February-May 2011. Questionnaires were delivered to assess respondents' knowledge and perception about pulmonary tuberculosis. Levels of knowledge were categorized into 'poor' and 'good'. Perceptions about tuberculosis were measured by whether respondents perceived tuberculosis as a humiliating disease and a shunned disease.
__Results:__ Most respondents (88.7%) had good level of knowledge about tuberculosis, but misperception remained high (45.9%) in the community. Education level determined level of knowledge. The higher the education level the lower the risk of lack of knowledge. Tuberculosis perceptions were determined by family income and education level. Higher family income and education level were protective factors of misperception about tuberculosis as a humiliating disease and tendency to shun tuberculosis patients.
__Conclusion:__ People in urban area of Jakarta have good level of knowledge about tuberculosis, but it does not necessarily lead to proper perception of tuberculosis. Age, education level and having health insurance determined level of knowledge, while tuberculosis perceptions were determined much more by education level and family income. Tuberculosis control program should consider these determinants prior to developing a comprehensive strategy.


The log-ratio methodology makes available powerful tools for analyzing compositional data. Nevertheless, the use of this methodology is only possible for those data sets without null values. Consequently, in those data sets where the zeros are present, a previous treatment becomes necessary. Last advances in the treatment of compositional zeros have been centered especially in the zeros of structural nature and in the rounded zeros. These tools do not contemplate the particular case of count compositional data sets with null values. In this work we deal with "count zeros" and we introduce a treatment based on a mixed Bayesian-multiplicative estimation. We use the Dirichlet probability distribution as a prior and we estimate the posterior probabilities. Then we apply a multiplicative modification for the non-zero values. We present a case study where this new methodology is applied.


This paper identifies the high value to researchers in many disciplines of having web-based graphical editors for scientific workflows and draws attention to two technological transitions: good quality editors can now run in a browser and workflow enactment systems are emerging that manage multiple workflow languages and support multi-lingual workflows. We contend that this provides a unique opportunity to introduce multi-lingual graphical workflow editors which in turn would yield substantial benefits: workflow users would find it easier to share and combine methods encoded in multiple workflow languages, the common framework would stimulate conceptual convergence and increased workflow component sharing, and the many workflow communities could share a substantial part of the effort of delivering good quality graphical workflow editors in browsers. The paper examines whether such a common framework is feasible and presents an initial design for a web-based editor, tested with a preliminary prototype. It is not a fait accompli but rather an urgent rallying cry to explore collaboratively a generic web-based framework before investing in many divergent individual implementations.


Development of science and technology has been a main focus of Iranian policy makers in recent years. Knowledge based companies have been considered as a key player in this respect. However, Iranian policy making system is suffering from a lack of sophisticated understanding rooted in empirical evidences of critical factors influencing the performance of domestic knowledge based companies. This dissertation aims to provide an initial ground by studying the organizational capabilities which have influenced the success of such firms and comparing them with organizational capabilities which are mentioned in the related literature. For this purpose, four companies which are supposed to be successful knowledge based companies by the Sharif Advanced Technologies Incubator have been studied. The comparative analysis offers an understanding of, First, the capabilities which all of them have been learnt, second, the capabilities which lack of them has imposed a challenge for some, next, the capabilities that have been mentioned in the literature but not having them is not considered as an issue for these companies and finally the capabilities that are important for  Corresponding Author: firstname.lastname@example.com some, but not for others and the factors that may explain them.