The purpose of this study is to guide practice and future research by examining contemporary fraud brainstorming practices. Using field data collected from audits conducted during 2013-2014, we investigate team characteristics, attendance and communication, brainstorming structure, timing, and effort, and brainstorming quality. Results show that although some practices are similar to those reported in earlier field studies, there are interesting differences (e.g., decreased use of checklists, shorter sessions, and risk-based deployment of resources in brainstorming). These differences suggest brainstorming has evolved throughout the intervening period during which new audit standards became effective and the PCAOB criticized auditors' performance in fraud risk identification and risk response generation. We also examine differences in audit team characteristics and brainstorming practices across risk and trading- status partitions. Results reveal auditors deploy more resources to brainstorming when engagement risk is heightened (i.e., publicly traded clients with high fraud and/or high inherent risk); correspondingly, brainstorming quality is assessed as higher on these engagements. Collectively, our findings indicate risk-based resource allocations in brainstorming and diligent responses to regulatory concerns.


While many researchers and policymakers infer from correlations between eating out and body weight that restaurants are a leading cause of obesity, a basic identification problem challenges these conclusions. We exploit the placement of Interstate highways in rural areas to obtain exogenous variation in the effective price of restaurants and examine the impact on body mass. We find no causal link between restaurant consumption and obesity. Analysis of food-intake micro-data suggests that consumers offset calories from restaurant meals by eating less at other times. We conclude that regulation targeting restaurants is unlikely to reduce obesity but could decrease consumer welfare.


In this book, preeminent organizational scholar Edward Lawler identifies a comprehensive and integrated set of talent management practices that fit today's rapidly evolving workplace.

 The world of work has changed dramatically, says Lawler. Organizations now operate in a global environment. New technologies continue to disrupt how, when, and where work is done and should be managed. The workforce is becoming more diverse. Sustainability has joined profitability as a key business goal. All of this has dramatically accelerated the pace of change, making recruiting the best talent—not simply filling positions—an overriding concern.

 But too many organizations still use a job-based, bureaucratic talent management approach that doesn't take into account how the world has changed. Indeed, a recent study showed that from 1995 to 2016, there was no significant change in the way HR spends its time.

 Lawler says that talent management has to be reinvented. It needs to be closely linked to the organization's overall strategy. Recruitment and talent management should be driven by the skills and competencies the organization needs for long-term growth. This means talent management requires agile systems that can respond quickly to changing conditions and that take a more individualized approach to evaluating and rewarding performance. And everything talent management does has to be based on evidence, not tradition.

 Lawler looks at attracting, selecting, developing, rewarding, managing, and organizing talent through this new lens. In today's world, organizations have to constantly reinvent themselves—and talent management must do the same.


OBJECTIVES
To determine whether adherence interventions should be administered to all medication takers or targeted to nonadherers.

DATA SOURCES AND STUDY SELECTION
Systematic search (Medline and Embase, 1966-2009) of randomized controlled trials of interventions to improve adherence to medications for preventing or treating cardiovascular disease or diabetes.

DATA EXTRACTION
Articles were classified as (1) broad interventions (targeted all medication takers), (2) focused interventions (targeted nonadherers), or (3) dynamic interventions (administered to all medication takers; real-time adherence information targets nonadherers as intervention proceeds). Cohen's d effect sizes were calculated.

DATA SYNTHESIS
We identified 7,190 articles; 59 met inclusion criteria. Broad interventions were less likely (18%) to show medium or large effects compared with focused (25%) or dynamic (32%) interventions. Of the 33 dynamic interventions, 6 used externally generated adherence data to target nonadherers. Those with externally generated data were less likely to have a medium or large effect (20% vs. 34.8% self-generated data).

CONCLUSION
Adherence interventions targeting nonadherers are heterogeneous but may have advantages over broad interventions. Dynamic interventions show promise and require further study.


Background: Host-derived inflammatory responses contribute to the morbidity and mortality of severe influenza, suggesting that immunomodulatory therapy may improve outcomes. The normally circulating protein, human plasma gelsolin, is available in recombinant form (rhu-pGSN) and has beneficial effects in a variety of pre-clinical models of inflammation and injury. Methods: We evaluated delayed therapy with subcutaneous rhu-pGSN initiated 3 to 6 days after intra-nasal viral challenge in a mouse model of influenza A/PR/8/34. Results: Rhu-pGSN administered starting on day 3 or day 6 increased survival (12-day survival: 62 % vs 39 %, pGSN vs vehicle; p < 0.00001, summary of 18 trials), reduced morbidity, and decreased pro-inflammatory gene expression. Conclusions: Rhu-pGSN improves outcomes in a highly lethal influenza model when given after a clinically relevant delay.


A distributed reconfigurable micro-robotic system is a collection of unlimited numbers of distributed small, homogeneous robots designed to autonomously organize and reorganize in order to achieve mission-specified geometric shapes and functions. This project investigated the design, control, and planning issues for self-configuring and self-organizing robots. In the 2D space a system consisting of two robots was prototyped and successfully displayed automatic docking/undocking to operate dependently or independently. Additional modules were constructed to display the usefulness of a self-configuring system in various situations. In 3D a self-reconfiguring robot system of 4 identical modules was built. Each module connects to its neighbors using rotating actuators. An individual component can move in three dimensions on its neighbors. We have also built a self-reconfiguring robot system consisting of 9-module Crystalline Robot. Each module in this robot is actuated by expansion/contraction. The system is fully distributed, has local communication (to neighbors) capabilities and it has global sensing capabilities.


So You Want to Write about American Indians? is the first of its kind-an indispensable guide for anyone interested in writing and publishing a novel, memoir, collection of short stories, history, or ethnography involving the Indigenous peoples of the United States. In clear language illustrated with examples-many from her own experiences-Choctaw scholar and writer Devon Abbott Mihesuah explains the basic steps involved with writing about American Indians. So You Want to Write about American Indians? provides a concise overview of the different types of fiction and nonfiction books written about Natives and the common challenges and pitfalls encountered when writing each type of book. Mihesuah presents a list of ethical guidelines to follow when researching and writing about Natives, including the goals of the writer, stereotypes to avoid, and cultural issues to consider. She also offers helpful tips for developing ideas and researching effectively, submitting articles to journals, drafting effective book proposals, finding inspiration, contacting an editor, polishing a manuscript, preparing a persuasive resume or curriculum vitae, coping with rejection, and negotiating a book contract.


Background. Adaptive seating systems are used with children with cerebral palsy to
promote function and independence and to prevent the development of deformity. A
seating system that uses a sacral pad and kneeblock to control the pelvis was
investigated.
Methods A mixed methodology design was employed. Acceptability was addressed
through the development and administration of matching questionnaires to the parents
and therapists of the children participating in the project. Effectiveness was
investigated by measuring pressure at the sacral pad, force exerted through a kneeblock,
seated postural alignment and seated function; during a case controlled trial, where
children were seen 6 times over a period of 6 months. Children removed their
kneeblocks for a period of one month between visits 3 and 4. The force, pressure and
postural alignment data were statistically analysed. Theoretical biomechanical analyses
were also performed.
Results Questionnaire results showed important differences between parents and
therapists views of the seating systems. Therapists concentrated on postural
management, whilst parents were concerned with day-to-day management of the child.
There were few statistically significant differences over the 6-visit trial for force,
pressure or postural alignment. There were no statistically significant correlations
between force measured at the kneeblocks and pressure exerted through a sacral pad,
nor between force and postural alignment. Statistically significant effects on hip
abduction and hip rotation were found on removal of kneeblocks. Finally, individual
biornechanical analysis illustrated positive effects for hip abduction for some children,
but a tendency to increase deformity in half of the children.
Conclusions Adaptive seating systems that use a kneeblock and sacral pad may achieve
hip rotation and abduction for children with cerebral palsy. However, no other
improvements in posture were seen, and biomechanical analysis showed an increase in
tendency of the children to develop secondary deformity.


A technique for optical pattern recognition using an amplitude-compensated matched filter is presented. With the synthetic discriminant function in a matched spatial filtering application an iterative technique is employed to first obtain the synthetic discriminant functions for the phase-only matched filter and then is extended to the amplitude-compensated matched filter. Computer simulation shows that the suggested spatial filter has a high signal-to-noise ratio and good Horner efficiency, and it is more sensitive to changes in the input image.


Nanostructures in solar cells are used both for the active layers and for light management techniques. Particularly thin-film solar cells will benefit strongly from such nanoscale approaches as the light absorption needs to be improved. Nanoparticles produced by wet chemical techniques, sometimes in the form of quantum dots, are currently used to fabricate thin-film solar cells for research purposes. Light management studies use nanostructures that are often created by lithographic methods but which are too expensive for an industrial realisation. In this review paper, the opportunities for using nanoparticles as a bottom-up approach for both the active layer and light management nanostructures is discussed. Since both the wet chemical method and lithographic techniques have considerable limitations, the use of gas aggregation cluster sources is proposed as a promising method to advance the use of bottom-up nanoparticles for solar cells. Plasmonics, Mie scattering, quantum dots and new materials are reviewed with respect to the nanoparticle potential. The increase of solar cell efficiency by using ultra-clean and crystalline nanoparticles which are produced with a vacuum-compatible technique at low temperatures should be very interesting for science and technology, ultimately leading to industrial products.


While wave heights globally have been growing over recent decades, observations of their regional trends vary. Simulations of future wave climate can be achieved by coupling wave and climate models. At present, wave heights and their future trends in the Arctic Ocean remain unknown. We use the third-generation wave forecast model WAVEWATCH-III forced by winds and sea ice concentration produced within the regional model HIRHAM, under the anthropogenic scenario SRES-A1B. We find that significant wave height and its extremes will increase over different inner Arctic areas due to reduction of sea ice cover and regional wind intensification in the 21 century. The opposite tendency, with a slight reduction in wave height appears for the Atlantic sector and the Barents Sea. Our results demonstrate the complex wave response in the Arctic Ocean to a combined effect of wind and sea ice forcings in a climate-change scenario during the 21 century.


The effective population size (Ne) is a major factor determining allele frequency changes in natural and experimental populations. Temporal methods provide a powerful and simple approach to estimate short-term Ne. They use allele frequency shifts between temporal samples to calculate the standardized variance, which is directly related to Ne. Here we focus on experimental evolution studies that often rely on repeated sequencing of samples in pools (Pool-Seq). Pool-Seq is cost-effective and outperforms individual-based sequencing in estimating allele frequencies, but it is associated with atypical sampling properties: additional to sampling individuals, sequencing DNA in pools leads to a second round of sampling increasing the estimated allele frequency variance. We propose a new estimator of Ne, which relies on allele frequency changes in temporal data and corrects for the variance in both sampling steps. In simulations, we obtain accurate Ne estimates, as long as the drift variance is not too small compared to the sampling and sequencing variance. In addition to genome-wide Ne estimates, we extend our method using a recursive partitioning approach to estimate Ne locally along the chromosome. Since type I error is accounted for, our method permits the identification of genomic regions that differ significantly in Ne. We present an application to Pool-Seq data from experimental evolution with Drosophila, and provide recommendations for whole-genome data. The estimator is computationally efficient and available as an R-package at https://github.com/ThomasTaus/Nest.


Resistance to multimodal chemotherapy continues to limit the prognosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). This occurs in part through a process called adhesion-mediated drug resistance, which depends on ALL cell adhesion to the stroma through adhesion molecules, including integrins. Integrin α6 has been implicated in minimal residual disease in ALL and in the migration of ALL cells to the central nervous system. However, it has not been evaluated in the context of chemotherapeutic resistance. Here, we show that the anti-human α6-blocking antibody P5G10 induces apoptosis in primary ALL in vitro and sensitizes primary ALL cells to chemotherapy or tyrosine kinase inhibition in vitro and in vivo. We further analyzed the underlying mechanism of α6-associated apoptosis using a conditional knockout model of α6 in murine BCR-ABL1+ B-ALL cells and showed that α6-deficient ALL cells underwent apoptosis. In vivo deletion of α6 in combination with tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment was more effective in eradicating ALL than treatment with a TKI (nilotinib) alone. Proteomic analysis revealed that α6 deletion in murine ALL was associated with changes in Src signaling, including the upregulation of phosphorylated Lyn (pTyr507) and Fyn (pTyr530). Thus, our data support α6 as a novel therapeutic target for ALL.


The aim of this article is to analyze Louis de Rochemont's The Ramparts We Watch as a public relations war effort from the past century. Arising from the informative and propagandistic strategy of late 1930s newsreels, the aforementioned documentary was made using very appropriate narrative techniques to award it the dimension of objectivity and truthfulness characteristic of public relations messages, without losing sight of its educational and persuasive function. From this standpoint, The Ramparts We Watch founded a genre and constituted one of the clearest precedents of public relations war films in America.


Before construction activities could begin, engineering geological and geotechnical investigations had to be approved in order to establish a map with suitable areas for safe construction. The example used in this study is Tunis City which has complex geology and geomorphology. The risk analysis was based on a large-scale land-suitability map that was prepared using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The approach used in this study combined physical data with the geotechnical properties of Tunis City. The adopted methodology and analyses were performed to assess the risk of urban expansion and landscape management. Results are presented as a zoning map that shows the suitable area for safe extension of the urban area. The data used and multi-criterion analysis of geotechnical and geological data seems to be useful for similar case studies and the adopted methodology can be used successfully for identifying similar cities for risk assessment.


Handling ambiguity and underspecification of users' utterances is challenging, particularly for natural language interfaces that help with visual analytical tasks. Constraints in the underlying analytical platform and the users' expectations of high precision and recall require thoughtful inferencing to help generate useful responses. In this paper, we introduce a system to resolve partial utterances based on syntactic and semantic constraints of the underlying analytical expressions. We extend inferencing based on best practices in information visualization to generate useful visualization responses. We employ heuristics to help constrain the solution space of possible inferences, and apply ranking logic to the interpretations based on relevancy. We evaluate the quality of inferred interpretations based on relevancy and analytical usefulness.


A common observation is that individuals strive to neutralize the effect of procedural rules designed to drive choices away from their private optimum. An example of this phenomenon is offered by the reaction of Italian academia to two reforms that modified the procedures of recruitment and promotion, by introducing random selection of the examiners not appointed by the recruiting school and reducing from two to one the number of candidates to be qualified. We model the negotiation occurring within evaluation committees and test the decision rule implied by the theoretical model on the sample composed of all selections to associate and full professorship initiated by the Italian schools of economics between 2004 and 2011. Particularly, we investigate whether these reforms decreased the relative weight of the examiner appointed by the recruiting school on committee's decision. Empirical results suggest that both reforms had little if no effect on examiners' weights.


Within the broadly defined field of human communication an important aspect is related to the teacher-students interactions. The character of these interactions may decisively determine students' achievements. The opinion on the transactional nature of the interaction requires the individuals organising the education process to deconstruct the paradigm on the unidirectional process of human communication and to contribute to the creation of conditions promoting reciprocity of interactions. This paper presents the contemporary concept of communication and the term "interaction" was analysed using respective examples given in literature on the subject. Moreover, results of studies describing the nature of teacher-students interactions are presented and key factors determining their course are characterised.


The e-performance systems can be an aid to help the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to prepare for the new challenges of the modern economic world. This study describes employee e-performance effectiveness within United Arab Emirates organisations and investigates of using manual and traditional performance system as well as the electronic performance system. Our research reveals that e-performance systems identify major components that have a dramatic impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of governmental operations, such as to explore the advantages of using electronic systems in accelerating the accomplishment of employee job objectives.


A concise introduction to the concept of fractional Fourier transforms is followed by a discussion of their relation to chirp and wavelet transforms. The notion of fractional Fourier domains is developed in conjunction with the Wigner distribution of a signal. Convolution, filtering, and multiplexing of signals in fractional domains are discussed, revealing that under certain conditions one can improve on the special cases of these operations in the conventional space and frequency domains. Because of the ease of performing the fractional Fourier transform optically, these operations are relevant for optical information processing.


The present paper is a theoretic proposal in the field of experimental psychology. Its objective is to present the contingency contrast model (CCM) as an explanatory alternative for the study of conditional discrimination learning. The general notion of a model is discussed as well as the epistemic properties which a model must have in order to be a candidate in the set of explanatory models in the field of conditional discrimination. The epistemic properties discussed here are: a) empirical inclusiveness; b) predictability; and c) heuristic capacity, all of which are proven given procedures, effects, and empirical exploration possibilities in the study of conditional discrimination learning. Finally, given this demonstration of the epistemic properties of the CCM it is presented as an explanatory alternative in the field of conditional discrimination.


This work is about different optimal solutions for the unit commitment problem in the Venezuelan hydrothermal power system, disregarding the transmission system. The centralized cost-based maximum net social benefit solution, the oligopoly solution and the unregulated monopoly solution are formulated and analyzed. The oligopoly is studied via Nash-Cournot equilibrium, obtained iteratively considering both price-maker and price-taker firms. The price-demand curves are created using a price-demand elasticity parameter. The hydro plants can be of the run-of-river type or can have a regulation period, like in the case of Guri. In latter case the future profit is represented by a fixed volume of water to be turbined in the day ahead. Since integer variable are necessary to simulate the shut-down, start-up process a mixed integer commercial programming application is employed


The extent of preoperative anxiety and its impact on physiological parameters during surgery and postoperative pain have been widely studied. Moreover, publications may be found that cover in detail various surgery types. The conclusions reached thus far have allowed to implement a number of procedures, not all of them based on drugs, with the goal of reducing anxiety and improving patient wellbeing.


The latent group structure in the cryptocurrency market yields information on network risk and dynamics. By forming a dynamic return-based network with coin attributions, we develop a dynamic covariate-assisted spectral clustering method to detect communities. We prove its uniform consistency along the horizons. Applying this new method, we show the return-based network structure and coin attributions, including algorithm and proof types, jointly determine the market segmentation. Based on the network model, we propose a novel "hard-to-value" measure using centrality scores. Further analysis reveals that the group with a lower centrality score exhibits stronger short-term return reversals. Cross-sectional return predictability further confirms the economic meanings of our grouping results and reveal important portfolio management implications.


Business modeling tools provide IT support in the complex process of business modeling. Little research exists on the evaluation of business modeling tools. We interpret business modeling as a creative process and evaluate a specific business modeling tool (OctoProz) by assessing its potential for fostering creative performance. We draw on literature on the design of creativity support systems, that is, the components for collaborative idea development, and position our business modeling tool as a creativity support system. We conduct a focus group study in the software development industry, collecting qualitative data on creativity-specific tool properties of OctoProz: playfulness, comprehension, specialization, and collaboration. The results show that task-specificity of the tool was highly appreciated by the business modeling experts, while improvements are needed with regards to playful interaction with the business model and support of comprehension of the business model. Real-time collaboration in the modeling process over-satisfies the experts' needs. Our findings contribute to the purposeful design of business modeling tools. Further, the results suggest that the components for collaborative idea development are valid, while aspects of GUI design and collaboration modes require further attention. We finally indicate limitations and future research


Knowledge of the spatiotemporal variations in emissions and uptake of CO2 is hampered by sparse measurements. The recent advent of satellite measurements of CO2 concentrations is increasing the density of measurements, and the future mission ASCENDS (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days and Seasons) will provide even greater coverage and precision. Lagrangian atmospheric transport models run backward in time can quantify surface influences ("footprints") of diverse measurement platforms and are particularly well suited for inverse estimation of regional surface CO2 fluxes at high resolution based on satellite observations. We utilize the STILT Lagrangian particle dispersion model, driven by WRF meteorological fields at 40-km resolution, in a Bayesian synthesis inversion approach to quantify the ability of ASCENDS column CO2 observations to constrain fluxes at high resolution. This study focuses on land-based biospheric fluxes, whose uncertainties are especially large, in a domain encompassing North America. We present results based on realistic input fields for 2007. Pseudo-observation random errors are estimated from backscatter and optical depth measured by the CALIPSO satellite. We estimate a priori flux uncertainties based on output from the CASA-GFED (v.3) biosphere model and make simple assumptions about spatial and temporal error correlations. WRF-STILT footprints are convolved with candidate vertical weighting functions for ASCENDS. We find that at a horizontal flux resolution of 1 degree x 1 degree, ASCENDS observations are potentially able to reduce average weekly flux uncertainties by 0-8% in July, and 0-0.5% in January (assuming an error of 0.5 ppm at the Railroad Valley reference site). Aggregated to coarser resolutions, e.g. 5 degrees x 5 degrees, the uncertainty reductions are larger and more similar to those estimated in previous satellite data observing system simulation experiments.


The following are citations selected by title and abstract as being related to Computer-Human Interaction, resulting from a computer search, using Dialog Information Services, of the Dissertation Abstracts Online database produced by University Microfilms International (UMI). Included are UMI order number, title, author, degree, year, institution; number of pages, Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) subject category chosen by the author, and abstract. Unless otherwise specified, paper or microform copies of dissertations may be ordered from University Microfilms International, Dissertation Copies, Post Office Box 1764, Ann Arbor, MI 48106; telephone for U.S. (except Michigan, Hawaii, Alaska): 1-800-521-3042, for Canada: 1-800-343-5299. Price lists and other ordering and shipping information are in the introduction to the published DAI. An alternate source for copies is sometimes provided. Dissertation titles and abstracts contained here are published with permission of University Microfilms International, publishers of Dissertation Abstracts International (copyright by University Microfilms International), and may not be reproduced without their prior permission.


College participation by minority students declined in the middle 1980s following a period of sustained growth [21]. This trend was particularly evident among African Americans and Hispanics [46] who exhibited both the lowest participation rates as well as the highest propensity to drop out from college. Porter's [45] analyses of the high-school senior class of 1980, for instance, revealed that Hispanic college students were 13 percent more prone to withdraw from college than were white students, whereas African American college students were 22 percent more likely to drop out than their white counterparts over a six-year period. These low persistence rates (even over extended periods of enrollment in college) are particularly troublesome from a policy perspective given the relationship that the attainment of a bachelor's degree has on subsequent occupational and economic attainment [44]. Several reasons have been advanced to account for these trends. Hauser and Anderson [21] explored the extent to which declines in college participation rates could be attributed to changes in college aspirations as well as to changes in high-school completion rates among African Americans. After analyzing college aspiration trends for both minorities and nonminorities over a period of thirty years and taking into account high-school completion rates and indicators of socioeconomic status, Hauser and Anderson could not find support for this hypothesis. Other researchers have speculated that the decline could be attributed to changes in the composition of federal assistance and to patterns of financing higher education exhibited by minority students. Porter [45] noted that declines in minorities' college participation rates correlated with the growth of student loans at the expense of grants. Olivas [41], Mortenson and Wu [31], and Mortenson [30] observed that African American and Hispanic students were less willing to go into debt to finance their college education than were white students. Moreover, Ekstrom [19] helped to establish and test the proposition that students willing to go into debt to finance their education were more likely to enroll and persist in college. An alternative explanation to the role of finances in the persistence process has stressed the influence of academic preparation for college. Tinto [56] argued that overall differences in persistence rates between minorities and nonminorities were primarily due to differences in their academic preparedness rather than differences in their socioeconomic backgrounds. Tinto further contended that these ability differences arise from prior educational experiences at the elementary and secondary educational levels which tend to favor the educational achievement of nonminorities relative to minorities. Some degree of support has been given to this hypothesis. St. John, Kirshstein, and Noell [50], for instance, reported that the effects of ethnicity disappeared once academic preparation for college was taken into account for the high-school class of 1980. The proposition that a lack of adjustment to predominantly white institutions and that perceptions of prejudice (racial climate) may lower the quality of college experiences of minority students has emerged as a competing explanation for the differences in persistence rates between minority and nonminority college students [for example, 1, 18, 23, 24, 28, 34, 35, 36, 53]. Fleming [18], in particular, has argued that adjustment problems with the curriculum, lack of support services, financial problems and the nature of interpersonal relationships with faculty, peers and academic staff are some of the experiences that negatively impact minority students attending predominantly white institutions. Likewise, Tracey and Sedlacek [57, 58, 59] have contended that noncognitive factors (that is, self-concept, an understanding of racism, and the ability to cope with it) play a more critical role in shaping academic performance in college and persistence decisions among minority students than do cognitive factors such as academic ability and study habits. …


Various forms of labor obligation, coercion, and oppression existed in colonial India, but the supposed dichotomy between "free" and "unfree" labor was rarely absolute. European slave-trafficking, internal trades in women and children, domestic slavery, caste-based obligations for agricultural and other labor, and capitalist systems such as indenture represented distinct but overlapping forms of "unfree" labor in the South Asian context. Enslaved Indians were exported to various European colonial possessions in the 17th and 18th century or provided domestic services within the homes of both the European and Indian elites. Meanwhile, various preexisting local labor relationships such as begar, caste-based obligation, and debt bondage involved elements of coercion, control, and ownership that mirrored some of the characteristics of slavery. These underwent significant changes in the colonial period, as the colonial state both tapped into and sought to reshape the Indian labor market to suit the needs of the imperial capitalist economy.


For various reasons, many Algol 68 compilers do not directly implement the parallel processing operations defined in the Revised Algol 68 Report. It is still possible however, to perform parallel processing, multitasking and simulation provided that the implementation permits the creation of a master routine for the coordination and initiation of processes under its control. The package described here is intended for real time applications and runs in conjunction with the Algol 68R system; it extends and develops the original Algol 68RT package, which was designed for use with multiplexers at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern. The facilities provided, in addition to the synchronising operations, include an interface to an ICL Communications Processor enabling the abstract processes to be realised as the interaction of several teletypes or visual display units with a real time program providing a useful service.


The Second World War has had a great and bitter impact upon the countries which participated in it. Unfortunately, one of those countries suffered tragic consequences of the war since it was invaded twice firstly by Italy, and then by Germany. Out of the military invasion, Greece also suffered from the starvation which lasted approximately 5 years in the country. This long and terrific period is known as "µ?????? ??µ??" or the Great Famine. The only country helping Greece during the period of invasion and famine was Turkey, and a distinguished Turkish man named Feridun Demokan brought the Greek tragedy into the public attention and informed the entire world about this disaster. This article will focus on the period of Greek famine and the activities of Feridun Demokan who worked as the representative of the Turkish Red Crescent Society.


We investigated the accessibility to protons and thiol-directed reagents of a cysteine substituted at position 338 in transmembrane segment 6 (TM6) of CFTR to test the hypothesis that T338 resides in the pore. Xenopus oocytes expressing T338C CFTR exhibited pH-dependent changes in gCl and I-V shape that were specific to the substituted cysteine. The apparent pKa of T338C CFTR was more acidic than that expected for a cysteine or similar simple thiols in aqueous solution. The pKa was shifted toward alkaline values when a nearby positive charge (R334) was substituted with neutral or negatively charged residues, consistent with the predicted influence of the positive charge of R334, and perhaps other residues, on the titration of a cysteine at 338. The relative rates of chemical modification of T338C CFTR by MTSET+ and MTSES- were also altered by the charge at 334. These observations support a model for CFTR that places T338 within the anion conduction path. The apparent pKa of a cysteine substituted at 338 and the relative rates of reaction of charged thiol-directed reagents provide a crude measure of a positive electrostatic potential that may be due to R334 and other residues near this position in the pore.


This study aimed to investigate the incidence of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection (COVID-19) in adenovirus-negative conjunctivitis in Japan. Twelve patients with unilateral or bilateral conjunctivitis with preauricular lymphadenopathy or serous discharge and an initial clinical diagnosis of viral conjunctivitis from April 1, 2020 to September 30, 2020, with negative adenovirus antigen test were included in this study. The residual smeared conjunctiva sample for the adenovirus antigen test was preserved by freezing at –70 °C in a completely anonymized manner. Seven to 180 days after preservation, the samples were tested using the SARS-CoV-2 antigen kit (ESPLINE® SARS-CoV-2 kit, Lot number, K4B00810; FUJIREBIO, Tokyo, Japan). One sample (8.8%) tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 antigen. None of the patients exhibited systemic symptoms, including pneumonia. No medical staff related to these patients exhibited any infectious findings. These results suggest that the possibility of COVID-19 should be considered with care in daily medical examinations for conjunctivitis, including epidemic keratoconjunctivitis.


We study an online learning setting where the player is temporarily deprived of feedback each time it switches to a different action. Such model of adaptive feedback naturally occurs in scenarios where the environment reacts to the player's actions and requires some time to recover and stabilize after the algorithm switches actions. This motivates a variant of the multi-armed bandit problem, which we call the blinded multi-armed bandit, in which no feedback is given to the algorithm whenever it switches arms. We develop efficient online learning algorithms for this problem and prove that they guarantee the same asymptotic regret as the optimal algorithms for the standard multi-armed bandit problem. This result stands in stark contrast to another recent result, which states that adding a switching cost to the standard multi-armed bandit makes it substantially harder to learn, and provides a direct comparison of how feedback and loss contribute to the difficulty of an online learning problem. We also extend our results to the general prediction framework of bandit linear optimization, again attaining near-optimal regret bounds.


Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) is the most common and best studied of the various forms of complex congenital heart diseases. It is characterised by a malaligned ventricular septal defect (VSD), aortic over-ride, right ventricular (RV) outflow tract obstruction and resulting hypertrophy of the right ventricle. Since the era of infant surgery for the correction of congenital heart disease, the repair of TOF represents one of the great success stories in the treatment of congenital heart disease. The 30-year survival for patients with repaired TOF (rTOF) approaches 90%.1 Despite this unequivocal success, it was recognised, as early as the 1970s, that a subset of patients with TOF was dying suddenly. To a great extent, the research focus in TOF has since been to identify those few patients at risk of dying suddenly and to figure out what to do about it. Until relatively recently, the primary manner of addressing this issue has been observational clinical studies.2 Despite decades of study in this manner, however, our understanding of the problem and our ability to identify those at risk remain incomplete.

Dr Benoist et al 3 show us an important new direction in congenital heart disease research—the movement from observational clinical study towards a basic science approach. In this study, the researchers simulate repaired TOF physiology in a pig model by inducing pulmonary insufficiency (PI) and RV outflow tract obstruction. The pigs (rTOF) were then allowed to mature for almost 6 months, at which time a series of tests were performed to characterise the degree and nature of the cardiac remodelling that had occurred. Compared with sham-operated animals, conventional MRI of rTOF pigs demonstrated an increase in both end-systolic and end-diastolic RV volumes, and moderate RV dysfunction. Detailed characterisation of RV action potential duration by optical mapping …


Intensive tillage-based production systems coupled with inefficient fertilizer management practices have led to increased production costs, sub-optimal productivity, and significant environmental externalities. Conservation agriculture (CA) is being increasingly advocated as a management strategy to overcome these issues but precision nutrient management under the CA-based maize-wheat system is rarely studied. Two year's (2014–2015 and 2015–2016) research was conducted at the research farm of BISA, Pusa, Bihar, India to develop precision nutrient management practices for CA-based management in the maize-wheat system. Seven treatment combinations involving (i) tillage (conventional tillage; CT & permanent beds; PB) and (ii) nutrient management rates, application methods (farmers' fertilizer practices; FFP, state recommended dose of fertilizer; SR and precision nutrient management using Nutrient Expert tool; NE and GreenSeeker; (GS), applied using two methods; broadcasting (B) and drilling (D)) were investigated for multiple parameters. The results showed that NE, NE+GS, and SR-based nutrient management tactics with drilling improved crop yields, nutrient-use efficiency (NUE), and economic profitability relative to NE-broadcasting, SR broadcasting, and FFP broadcasting methods. Maize-wheat system productivity and net returns under NE+GS-drilling on PB were significantly higher by 31.2%, 49.7% compared to FFP-broadcasting method, respectively. Total global warming potential (GWP) was lower in the PB-based maize-wheat system coupled with precision nutrient management compared to CT-based maize-wheat system with FFP. Higher (15.2%) carbon sustainability index (CSI) was recorded with NE-drilling compared to FFP-broadcasting method. Results suggests that PB-based maize-wheat system together with precision nutrient management approaches (NE+GS+drilling) can significantly increase crop yields, NUE, and profitability while reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from maize-wheat systems in eastern Indo Gangetic Plains (IGP).


Rising eutrophication in South African reservoirs is of major concern, leading to the consideration of top-down biomanipulation as a management option – reducing zooplankton-eating fish to sustain zooplankton grazing pressure and thus restrict autotrophic plankton that proliferate with nutrient increases. The biomass ratio of zooplankton to phytoplankton (ZB/PB) is used as an index of the likely value of biomanipulation to achieve this outcome, but values have not been explored for South African systems. Using chlorophyll (Chl) as a surrogate for PB, available ZB/Chl data are assembled for the first time for ten reservoirs of three types (minerally-turbid systems, oligo/mesotrophic clear water systems, and eutrophic/hypertrophic systems), and the results are discussed in relation to a generalised conceptual model proposed. With the exception of one minerally-turbid system, ZB/Chl values decline quasi-exponentially with rising chlorophyll within individual reservoirs. Conversely, between individual systems, median (or mean) values of ZB/Chl conversely increase rather than decline with rising trophic status – broadly contradicting observations reported elsewhere. Underlying causal reasons for the observed pattern and its implications for biomanipulation are considered. This assessment evaluates: the negative impacts of general declines in food quality that stem from rising eutrophication on zooplankton feeding ability and resulting seasonal changes in ZB and community structure; prospects of food sources other than living autochthonous autotrophs in sustaining ZB between systems; and inferences about fish predation pressure on zooplankton, derived from empirical data regarding the large body sizes of species and individuals of Daphnia that occur in the reservoirs. Observed increases in median ZB/Chl ratios with rising nutrient status are consistent with the inference that obligate visual zooplanktivorous fishes are scarce or absent, particularly in eutrophic reservoirs, suggesting that biomanipulative management is unlikely to assist in controlling the consequences of nutrient enrichment in local reservoirs. Keywords: Biomanipulation, eutrophication, food webs, food quality, interactions, plankton communities


The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of pupils, staff and an Educational Psychologist (EP) researcher, who had engaged in the planning of, and inclusion in, an arts programme in a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) setting. A case-study approach was utilised through the design and implementation of a six session art programme which included three members of staff(teaching assistants S1, S2 and S3) , two pupils from Key Stage three ( P2 and P1), one pupil from key stage four(P3) and myself. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the head of the key stage three PRU (HP), two of the pupils (P1 and P3) and the three members of staff (S2, S1 and S3). A reflective diary was maintained throughout the programme and interview process. An inductive latent Thematic Analysis (TA) was completed on the interview and reflective diary data.
Overall the findings reveal the importance of ethos/climate of the environment, conversations and art in the experiences presented. Art was interpreted as having a facilitatory role on the social phenomenon under study. Those outcomes and benefits of the programme prevalent in the data are discussed as well as the difficulties encountered throughout the experience. Further interpretation of the Main Overarching Themes (MOTs) demonstrated the potential importance of the development of more positive relationships in the group as well as opportunities for personal learning.
This study has raised questions about the potential for reflection, skill development and the impact on individual and social change. Further information emerged which relates to understanding and meeting the needs of excluded young people and how creative activities such as art may be of benefit in educational provisions. Implications for involving this group of young people in research are discussed. This research highlights one way in which EPs may be able to develop their creative role in the future. It explores one example of how we might increase the accessibility of our service to females and without the need for a perceived within child deficit.


Objectives The purpose of the study was to estimate health expectancy for the Palestinian population and to evaluate changes that have taken place over the past 5 years. Design Mortality data and population-based health surveys. Setting The Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Participants 17 034 and 38 071 adults aged 20 or over participating the Palestinian Family Health Surveys of 2006 and 2010. Death rates for 2007 and 2010 covered the entire population. Outcome measures Life expectancy and expected lifetime with and without chronic disease were estimated using the Sullivan method on the basis of mortality data and data on the prevalence of chronic disease. Results Life expectancy at the age of 20 increased from 52.8 years in 2006 to 53.3 years in 2010 for men and from 55.1 years to 55.7 years for women. In 2006, expected lifetime without a chronic disease was 37.7 (95% CI 37.0 to 38.3) years and 32.5 (95% CI 31.9 to 33.2) years for 20-year-old men and women, respectively. By 2010, this had decreased by 1.6 years for men and increased by 1.3 years for women. The health status of men has worsened. In particular, lifetime with hypertension and diabetes has increased. For women, the gain in life expectancy consisted partly of years with and partly of years without the most prevalent diseases. Conclusions Health expectancy for men and women diverged, which could to some extent be due to gender-specific exposures related to lifestyle factors and the impact of military occupation.


The subject of measuring the performance of registries has been a topic of policy discussions in recent years on the regional level due to the recast of the European Union (EU) port state control (PSC) directive which introduces incentives for flags which perform better. Since the current method used in the EU region entails some shortcomings, it has therefore been the subject of substantial scrutiny. Furthermore, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) developed a set of performance indicators which however lacks the ability to measure compliance as set out in one of its strategic directions towards fostering global compliance. In this article, we develop and test a methodology to measure flag state performance which can be applied to the regional or global level and to other areas of legislative interest (e.g. recognized organizations, Document of Compliance Companies). Our proposed methodology overcomes some of the shortcomings of the present method and presents a more refined, less biased approach of measuring performance. To demonstrate its usefulness, we apply it to a sample of 207,821 observations for a 3 year time frame and compare it to the best know current method in the industry.


Abstract. Although vessel-based acoustic sounding technique is accurate, however it is typically constrained by high operating costs, logistic difficulties and limited spatial coverage. It seems it is necessary to employ an alternative approach that can reduce the aforementioned high operation cost. The development of the imagery-derived bathymetry has brought in the new revolution in hydrography. The paper highlights the application of incorporating satellite remote sensing techniques to extract bathymetry information from the freely downloadable Landsat-8 satellite images. In this study, two different band ratio transform empirical models have been utilised to transform the reflected radiances of green and blue bands into bathymetry depths at the coastal region adjacent to Tanjung Kupang, Strait of Johor, Malaysia. The inland swampy area is vegetated by lavish mangroves while the shoreface is fronted by flat slopes with turbid suspended sediment. In the course of experiment, the results from Stumpf et al.'s model and Dierssen et al.'s model show a reasonable agreement, with similar correlation coefficient (r) of 0.76 between the imagery-derived depths and in-situ bathymetry depths from vessel-based sounding. The Stumpf et al.'s model has achieved root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.885 metres and mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.631 metres; while Dierssen et al.'s model delivers RMSE of 0.878 metres and MAE of 0.629 metres respectively. Although these two algorithms are slightly different, however the end results produced are quite close in this study. The results show that both empirical models represent a promising outcome and can be used to complement data from vessel-based single beam sounding, which is normally obtained at medium to course profiling resolution for the purpose of survey reconnaissance and survey planning.


An intersectional framework uncovers several valuable sites of engagement for the study of clinical encounters: the position of individuals within larger institutional structures of power, their representation in dominant discourses, and the impact of lived experiences of difference and oppression on clinical care and practice. Intersectionality moves beyond the outlook of a strictly biomedical approach to illness and pathology and offers a unique perspective on the broader social, institutional, material, and discursive contexts in which these encounters unfold. As such, we agree with Wilson and colleagues (2019) that its application in the context of clinical encounters is extremely promising and long overdue. Our main concern, however, lies in the practical implementation of this framework to clinical contexts. While the authors explicitly acknowledge that intersectionality does not offer a "how-to" manual for clinical medicine, or an unequivocal blueprint for ethical action, we argue that further discussion is required to understand the scope and conditions of its application. Furthermore, while Wilson and colleagues propose a much-needed structural analysis of the conditions that enable and hinder the development of personal awareness and ethical sensibility, the article begs the question of its implications for broader institutions and remains largely centered on dyadic interactions between individual clinicians and patients. We argue that an intersectional approach can and should transform medical approaches to care and help identify and redress conditions of structural inequity, but we suggest that its incorporation into clinical medicine requires more concrete details about its applicability. We stress that clinical encounters do not occur in a vacuum, and note institutional, embodied, and ethical aspects to consider when reflecting on the role of intersectionality in clinical medicine. INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS


The decade-long revolution known as May '68 is commonly framed as a political protest radiating out from European and North American universities. However, much is gained by instead viewing May '68 within the context of both anticolonial struggle and the emergence of what Wallerstein terms "the world university system." Understanding student protests within the context of anticolonial struggle, including within African universities, reveals the extent to which the neoliberal university we inhabit today is the product of a profound counterrevolution designed to undermine the promise of the university as a site of radical and anticolonial transformation.


Lehmann lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana Nees) seed (germination 96%, dormant 0%) was used in 4 experiments to study the potential of sheep as a dispersal agent. Five, 4-year-old, ruminally cannulated wethers were used to examine effects of ruminant digestion on seed recovery and germination. All wethers were ruminally evacuated, and rumens were cleansed and reinoculated with strained ruminal fluid. After a 21-day adaptation to pelleted alfalfa, 4 experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 was designed to test viability of Lehmann lovegrass seeds exposed to ruminal and postruminal digestion. Lehmann lovegrass seed (10 g) was dosed intra-ruminally via ruminal fistula, and total fecal collections made. Of the viable seed ruminally dosed, 37% germinated within 21 days after recovery. Also, 98 to 100% of the seed that germinated was recovered within 72 hours of dosing. Experiment 2 was designed to test the influence of ruminal microbial digestion on seed degradation and viability, using in sacco nylon bag techniques. In sacco dry matter disappearance increased linearly from 5.5% at 3 hours of incubation to 16% at 120 hours. Germination of seed was not greatly affected until after 72 hours of ruminal incubation. Experiment 3 was designed to examine the effect of mastication on viability of Lehmann lovegrass seeds. Seeds were mixed with seed-free Lehmann lovegrass straw in a proportion of 1 to 10 (seed to straw) and 10 g fed to each wether. Boli were recovered manually via ruminal fistula. Thirty five percent of the seed fed entered the rumen without damage due to mastication. Experiment 4 compared in vitro techniques and in sacco techniques used to estimate the effect of digestion on seed viability. In vitro incubation techniques yielded similar results as in sacco techniques. We conclude that ruminants are potential disseminating agents of Lehmann lovegrass seed.


Motivated by questions in mass-action kinetics, we introduce the notion of vertexical family of differential inclusions. Defined on open hypercubes, these families are characterized by particular good behavior under projection maps. The motivating examples are certain families of reaction networks { including reversible, weakly reversible, endotactic, and strongly endotactic reaction networks { that give rise to vertexical families of mass- action differential inclusions. We prove that vertexical families are amenable to structural induction. Consequently, a trajectory of a vertexical family approaches the boundary if and only if either the trajectory approaches a vertex of the hypercube, or a trajectory in a lower-dimensional member of the family approaches the boundary. With this technology, we make progress on the global attractor conjecture, a central open problem concerning mass-action kinetics systems. Additionally, we phrase mass-action kinetics as a functor on reaction networks with variable rates.


Understanding the interaction between the HIV and HPV infections has always been an issue of interest in infectious diseases. Initially, the mechanism was thought to be a simple one, HPV lesions acting as gateways for HIV, and HIV-induced immunodepression by favoring the acquisition of an HPV infection.
Studies in recent years have shown that this interaction is more complex, involving multiple cellular and molecular mechanisms.


Abstract Apatite is a ubiquitous accessory mineral found in most magmatic rocks and is often the only U-bearing mineral available to date mafic rocks because primary zircon and/or baddeleyite are not present. In this paper, U-Pb LA-ICP-MS dating of apatite was applied to seven different dike and sill samples of dolerite from the Variscan belt of Brittany (Armorican Massif, western France). These dolerites, which are characterized by a within-plate tholeiite geochemical signature, are organized in several dense swarms across the belt. Their geochemical compositions are homogeneous although they intrude a large geographical area subdivided into several domains each characterized by different tectonic-metamorphic settings. Their emplacement ages were so far poorly constrained due to the difficulty to date these mafic rocks using either the 40Ar/39Ar or the U-Pb methods on classical minerals like mica, plagioclase, or zircon. Although the closure temperature of apatite is lower than the emplacement temperature of the magma, physical models show that the time needed to solidify and cool these mafic dikes and sills below the apatite closure temperature is basically of the order of 100 years or less. Consequently, the U-Pb dates obtained on apatite can be interpreted as the emplacement ages for these mafic intrusions. Our results demonstrate that, in all cases, the apatite grains do carry enough radiogenic Pb to be dated by in situ U-Pb analyses and yield a 207Pb-corrected mean age of 363.4 ± 5.8 Ma. These results reveal the existence of a major and short-lived magmatic event in the Variscan belt of Brittany during the Devonian-Carboniferous transition, a feature further highlighted by field evidence. Beyond the geological implications of these results, U-Pb LA-ICP-MS dating of apatite appears to represent an ideal tool to date small size mafic intrusions.


ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of wealth, human capital, and social group on the occupational choice and income of farm households, to gain an understanding of the mechanism underlying the recently increasing income diversification in rural eastern India. The results show that wealth and human capital have a positive impact on the choice of high-return jobs, and low caste workers are more likely to work in casual, low-paying jobs, partly due to their dependence on personal networks in finding jobs. Notably, no clear evidence of association between social group and income is found.


We report Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 1.3 mm continuum upper limits for five planetary-mass companions DH Tau B, CT Cha B, GSC 6214-210 B, 1RXS 1609 B, and GQ Lup B. Our survey, together with other ALMA studies, have yielded null results for disks around young planet-mass companions and placed stringent dust mass upper limits, typically less than 0.1 M⊕, when assuming dust continuum is optically thin. Such low-mass gas/dust content can lead to a disk lifetime estimate (from accretion rates) much shorter than the age of the system. To alleviate this timescale discrepancy, we suggest that disks around wide companions might be very compact and optically thick in order to sustain a few Myr of accretion, yet have very weak (sub)millimeter flux so as to still be elusive to ALMA. Our order-of-magnitude estimate shows that compact optically thick disks might be smaller than 1000 RJup and only emit ∼μJy of flux in the (sub)millimeter, but their average temperature can be higher than that of circumstellar disks. The high disk temperature could impede satellite formation, but it also suggests that mid- to far-infrared might be more favorable than radio wavelengths to characterize disk properties. Finally, the compact disk size might imply that dynamical encounters between the companion and the star, or any other scatterers in the system, play a role in the formation of planetary-mass companions.


Background: Risk for mobility problems and falls is encountered in more than one-third of community-dwelling older adults. Several factors have been reported in literature as motivators/ barriers to participation in exercise programs designed to modify fall risks.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of fear of falls on exercise compliance in community dwelling older adults.

Materials and Methods: One hundred sixteen community-dwelling older adults (age - 67.31 ± 3.06 years), with balance impairment were recruited into balance training intervention (n = 58) and functional training intervention (n=58) groups. The subjects received three sessions per week of training supplemented by home exercise program, over eight weeks of intervention period. Berg Balance Scale was used to assess balance. Fear of falling was measured by Falls Efficacy Scale-International. Failure to turn up at appointments as well as self- reported non- compliance with the home program was recorded to determine exercise compliance.

Statistical analysis: The data was analyzed by using Student's unpaired ' t' test.

Results: Exercise non-compliance was higher in functional training group (36.21%) than the balance training group (25.86%). In both the intervention groups, subjects with lower fear of falling demonstrated poor exercise compliance. When subjects were categorized by fall risk, in both low fall risk (n=56) as well as medium fall risk (n=60) groups, the exercise compliance was poorer among subjects with lower fear of falling.

Conclusion: Among community dwelling older adults participating in exercise based interventions aimed at reducing risk of falling, exercise compliance was poorer in subjects with lower fear of falling.


Normal observers process individual faces holistically, meaning that facial features are processed simultaneously over a face-wide perceptual span and that the face is represented as a single perceptual unit. Acquired prosopagnosia, an impairment of face recognition following brain damage is thought to be caused by a problem with holistic processing of faces (Sergent & Villlemure, 1989). However, previous studies have only demonstrated an impairment of interactive processing of features in patients who, in addition, present general visual integrative agnosia (e.g., Boutsen & Humphreys, 2002; Levine & Calvanio, 1989), so that direct evidence for a deficit in holistic face processing in prosopagnosia is lacking. In an experiment with a brain damaged case of prosopagnosia (PS, Rossion et al., 2003), we used two gaze-contingent techniques allowing manipulation of the amount of information that was simultaneously available. First, a gaze-contingent foveal mask, prevented the use of foveal, high resolution information, necessary for detailed investigation of the facial features, but allowed holistic processing based on lower resolution peripheral information. Second, a gaze-contingent foveal window covering all peripheral information, prevented the simultaneous use of several facial features, but allowed detailed investigation of each feature individually. In a face matching task, normal control participants showed increased errors and RTs with a foveal window in comparison to conditions with a foveal mask or with a full face. PS, on the contrary, was almost unimpaired by a foveal window relative to a full face, while she had major difficulties recognizing faces with a foveal mask. Moreover, the eye movement data confirmed the findings from previous studies, that for face recognition, PS mainly relies on the mouth region, while normal observers attend to the region just below the eyes. These data provide direct evidence for impairment of holistic face processing in acquired prosopagnosia.


The potential benefits of the geographical clustering of economic activity have been well documented in the literature, yet there is little empirical evidence quantifying these effects in developing country contexts. This is surprising given the emphasis in industrial policy on productivity growth and the potential gains that could be made by facilitating cluster formation. It is also possible that for some firms there may be disadvantages associated with locating close to competitors, in particular if they sell to customers located in the same geographic area. These represent a large proportion of firms in developing country settings at the early stage of industrialization, where physical infrastructure is underdeveloped and there are a large number of informal and service sector firms that often exclusively rely on customers in local markets. Using data on the population of all firms in Cambodia we investigate the pattern of firm clustering and explore the extent to which it leads to productivity-enhancing effects. We focus on two channels, a competition and a spillover channel and investigate the types of firms that benefit or suffer as a result of geographical clustering. We find strong negative competition effects associated with clustering for formal and manufacturing firms. We find some evidence of productivity spillovers for informal firms and firms in the manufacturing sector but they are not of a large enough magnitude to outweigh the negative competition effects observed.


We consider the problem of type-directed component-based synthesis where, given a set of (typed) components and a query type, the goal is to synthesize a term that inhabits the query. Classical approaches based on proof search in intuitionistic logics do not scale up to the standard libraries of modern languages, which span hundreds or thousands of components. Recent graph reachability based methods proposed for Java do scale, but only apply to monomorphic data and components: polymorphic data and components infinitely explode the size of the graph that must be searched, rendering synthesis intractable. We introduce type-guided abstraction refinement (TYGAR), a new approach for scalable type-directed synthesis over polymorphic datatypes and components. Our key insight is that we can overcome the explosion by building a graph over abstract types which represent a potentially unbounded set of concrete types. We show how to use graph reachability to search for candidate terms over abstract types, and introduce a new algorithm that uses proofs of untypeability of ill-typed candidates to iteratively refine the abstraction until a well-typed result is found. We have implemented TYGAR in H+, a tool that takes as input a set of Haskell libraries and a query type, and returns a Haskell term that uses functions from the provided libraries to implement the query type. Our support for polymorphism allows H+ to work with higher-order functions and type classes, and enables more precise queries due to parametricity. We have evaluated H+ on 44 queries using a set of popular Haskell libraries with a total of 291 components. H+ returns an interesting solution within the first five results for 32 out of 44 queries. Our results show that TYGAR allows H+ to rapidly return well-typed terms, with the median time to first solution of just 1.4 seconds. Moreover, we observe that gains from iterative refinement over exhaustive enumeration are more pronounced on harder queries.


Biological data exists in several layers from genome sequence to networks and beyond. Information that comes from environment passes through layers of viscosity within organisms and is transformed into an output released back into the environment. Given enormous data generation, biology is increasingly becoming a computational problem. Here in this article, various computational needs are abstracted with a view to offer the future requirement of the community.


Abstract We compare an entropy estimator recently discussed by Zhang (2012) with two estimators, and , introduced by Grassberger (2003) and Schürmann (2004). We prove the identity , which has not been taken into account by Zhang (2012). Then we prove that the systematic error (bias) of is less than or equal to the bias of the ordinary likelihood (or plug-in) estimator of entropy. Finally, by numerical simulation, we verify that for the most interesting regime of small sample estimation and large event spaces, the estimator has a significantly smaller statistical error than .


research with the aim of research and implementation in services fields of washing-cleaning or periodical inspection of operational robots systems, used at exterior frontage of buildings that are realized from modular glass panels. The climbing constructive variant of robot is designated at service fields of robots, which are more used in cleaning-washing services of frontage buildings with glass walls. The system is composed from mechanical system with light structure, power system formed by pneumatic-vacuum system, and command-moving in conformity with predictable software.


In 2012 the two authors of this article planed and implemented a 4-month mentor teacher course. The content of this course concentrated on descriptive statistics and data analysis for 5th to 10th graders in Germany. One central topic of the course was the use of technology like Fathom as a tool for learning and doing statistics: How to use Fathom for the analysis of real data, what are usable tasks for the classroom, how to use Fathom for visualizing properties of mean and median, and how to use online-tools like GoogleDocs for collecting data? In our article we will focus on the technological knowledge for common and pedagogical content aspects: What were the concrete topics, we communicate? Which educational settings did we use? What were the feedback we got from the participants by questionnaires and interviews?


Immiscibility (unmixing of melts and fluids) should be almost inevitable at some point in the evolution of most mantle and crustal magmas during cooling and crystallization. Formation of two immiscible phases "results in a major geochemical fractionation all chemical species present, the elements (and their isotopes), and their various compounds, become distributed between these two phases... the compositional divergence between the two phases is... extreme" (Roedder 2003). The variations in compositions of melts undergoing immiscibility, and physical parameters of their evolution in the plutonic environments, mean that each intrusion should be expected to show differences in the processes of exsolution and compositions of exsolving phases. One of the immiscible phases is universally volatile-rich, and this has important consequences for further magma evolution and geological processes related to it. More specifically, volatile-rich phases generally have significant density and viscosity contrasts with parental silicate magmas, and thus rapid separation of the newly exsolved phases is expected. Further, the exsolution of volatile-rich phases exerts major controls on the chemistry of a magmatic system, particularly on metal partitioning between immiscible melts and fluids, so the volatile phase is highly efficient at sequestering the metals (e.g., Candela 1989; Candela & Piccoli 1995; Williams et al. 1995; Heinrich et al. 1999; Webster 2004). Magmatic immiscibility and the related formation of volatile-rich melts and fluids are prerequisites for the origin of mineralized hydrothermal solutions that may transport metals to a suitable depositional site. Immiscible separation, however, is not restricted to magmas that form mineralized rocks.
The fugitive nature of magmatic immiscibility involves problems in unraveling physical and chemical characteristics of this fundamental process. If separation of immiscible phases was efficient, the residual magma should be significantly depleted in incompatible volatiles and metals relative to the parental magma, and reconstructing the original metal and volatile content is extremely difficult. One rapidly developing approach to this problem is the use of melt and fluid inclusions trapped and preserved in magmatic minerals (e.g., Roedder 1992; De Vivo & Frezzotti 1994; Bodnar 1995; Lowenstern 1995; Student & Bodnar 1999; Frezzotti 2001; Kamenetsky et al. 2003; Lowenstern 2003 and references therein). Such inclusions provide the closest approximation to samples of continuously evolving (and thus ephemeral) melts and magmatic fluids. Many studies of magmatic inclusions have made possible the recognition of several types of magmatic immiscibility (e.g., between silicate melts, sulfide melts, aqueous and carbonic liquids and vapors, hydrosaline liquids and various combinations of these). For brevity, in this work only those examples from plutonic systems, of which the author has first-hand experience, will be presented and discussed in detail.


Summary
1.
Hexyl resorcinol, in 1:1000 dilution in 30 parts glycerin and 70 parts water, has proven a satisfactory disinfectant for Culicid eggs provided they are immersed in the liquid for a period of two minutes.
2.
Anopheline larvae are able to utilize material in solution and colloids in suspension from normal pool water. This has been demonstrated by the use of Seitz-Werke filtered media and the dialysable and non-dialysable fractions of water from breeding habitats.
3.
Larvae of Anopheles crucians and A. quadrimaculatus are able to live up to a period of eleven days and to make significant growth, under sterile conditions, in Seitz-Werke filtered water.
4.
These larvae are unable, however, to develop in the dialysate of water from the same breeding pools.
5.
In the case of the non-dialysable fraction of the same type of water it has been found that the larvae may live up to six days and make a slight significant growth, indicating that the normal water colloids may be of considerable importance in the nutrition of anopheline larvae.


The use of laminated composite materials in primary structures is still limited by the occurrence of in-service delaminations. Considering that interlaminar shear is one of the predominant loads experienced by composite structures, understanding the damage mechanisms involved in mode II delaminations is crucial for the development of a damage tolerance philosophy. Therefore, this work examines whether the energy dissipated in the process zone ahead of the crack tip should be accounted for when assessing fatigue in-plane shear delaminations. ENF tests were performed and the results showed that damage propagates ahead of the main crack tip in a process zone, which dissipates energy that should be accounted for when characterizing mode II delamination growth. It is not possible to measure appropriately the extent of the process zone in an ENF specimen from observations made from its side, and the definition of a crack tip is not advisable in mode II delamination studies. Instead, an effective crack length, which includes the damaged zone ahead of the main crack tip, should be defined. More studies are necessary in order to understand and define appropriately the extent of the process zone in mode II delaminations.


There have been many crowd disasters because of poor planning of the events. Pedestrian models are useful in analysing the behavior of pedestrians in advance to the events so that no pedestrians will be harmed during the event. This thesis deals with pedestrian flow models on microscopic, hydrodynamic and scalar scales. By following the Hughes' approach, who describes the crowd as a thinking fluid, we use the solution of the Eikonal equation to compute the optimal path for pedestrians. We start with the microscopic model for pedestrian flow and then derive the hydrodynamic and scalar models from it. We use particle methods to solve the governing equations. Moreover, we have coupled a mesh free particle method to the fixed grid for solving the Eikonal equation. We consider an example with a large number of pedestrians to investigate our models for different settings of obstacles and for different parameters. We also consider the pedestrian flow in a straight corridor and through T-junction and compare our numerical results with the experiments. A part of this work is devoted for finding a mesh free method to solve the Eikonal equation. Most of the available methods to solve the Eikonal equation are restricted to either cartesian grid or triangulated grid. In this context, we propose a mesh free method to solve the Eikonal equation, which can be applicable to any arbitrary grid and useful for the complex geometries.


Britain and the Government of India embarked on the campaign in Mesopotamia for several reasons. The discovery of oil in south Persia in 1901 resulted in the formation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The oil produced from this company was supplied to the Royal Navy. Germany's plan to construct a railway from Constantinople to Baghdad and Basra send tremors at London and Delhi. Germany's attempt to operate behind the façade of Turkish and Persian intrigues threatened the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's pipeline at the island of Abadan, the oilfields and the refineries. Britain was afraid that the Germans might instigate the Arab tribes to revolt. Further, capture of Basra by a hostile power would threaten Britain's sea lines of communication between Egypt and India. Logistics to a great extent had determined the texture of campaign in Mesopotamia. The logistical aspect of the Mesopotamia campaign during the Great War is yet to be studied thoroughly. The issue of supplying the British and Indian units in Mesopotamia proved crucial in shaping the course of the campaign. The first half of the paper shows how the problems of maintaining the units accelerated the disaster at Kut in April 1916. And the next section highlights the organizational restructuring of the logistical affairs which enabled the British and the Indian authorities to maintain larger number of troops with greater effectiveness from late 1916 onwards.


Despite significant poverty reduction over the past decade, undernutrition in Myanmar remains widespread. Food prices play an important role in influencing diets and nutrition outcomes, especially for poorer households. In this study, we use national household food expenditure data to assess dietary patterns and estimate regional costs of nutritious diets in Myanmar relative to a recommended diet derived from food-based dietary guidelines. We estimate these costs following the cost of a recommended diet method (CoRD), which is based on minimum food group prices. We also develop and demonstrate an extension of this method using food group prices that reflect typical food consumption preferences (CoRD-FP). We assess the affordability of the recommended diet by comparing observed household food expenditure to the CoRD and the CoRD-FP. In 2015, 52 percent of the Myanmar population lived in households with food expenditure below the CoRD-FP, compared to 70 percent in 2010. Even the CoRD, which measures the lowest possible cost of meeting the recommended diet, exceeded household food expenditure for 32 and 24 percent of the population in 2010 and 2015, respectively. Low affordability is driven by high costs of animal-source foods and vegetables, which account for half the CoRD-FP. A majority of households over-consume staples and under-consume micronutrient-dense food groups. This imbalance is driven in part by the high caloric price of nutrient-dense foods relative to rice. The inability of more than half of households in Myanmar to afford a recommended diet at existing food expenditure levels suggests the need for policies that reduce the prices of micronutrient-dense foods, ideally through pro-poor improvements in agricultural productivity and marketing.


BACKGROUND
Approximately 3.8 million sports related TBIs occur per year. Genetic variation may affect both TBI risk and post-TBI clinical outcome. Limited research has focused on genetic risk for concussion among athletes. We describe the design, methods, and baseline characteristics of this prospective cohort study designed to investigate a potential association between genetic polymorphisms of apolipoprotein E gene, APOE promoter G-219T, and Tau gene exon 6 polymorphisms (Ser53 Pro and Hist47Tyr) with: 1) the risk of prospective concussion; 2) concussion severity; and 3) postconcussion neurocognitive recovery.

METHODS
The prospective cohort study included a final population of 2947 college, high school, and professional athletes. Baseline data collection included a concussion/medical history questionnaire, neuropsychological (NP) testing, and genetic sampling for the genetic polymorphisms. Data collection on new concussions experienced utilized post-concussion history/mental status form, Lovell post-concussion symptom score, Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC) and/or the Sports Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT)-1/SCAT-2, and post-concussion NP testing.

RESULTS
This paper is focused on discussing the important methodological considerations, organizational challenges and lessons learned in the completion of a multi-center prospective cohort study. A total of 3740 subjects enrolled, with a total of 335 concussions experienced.

CONCLUSIONS
Of critical importance to the success of a study of this type is to successfully recruit committed institutions with qualified local study personnel, obtain "buy-in" from study sites, and cultivate strong working relationships with study sites. The use of approved incentives may improve study site recruitment, enhance retention, and enhance compliance with study protocols. Future publications will detail the specific findings of this study. Collaborative research is very likely needed given the nature of this study population.


We present three voting protocols with unconditional privacy and correctness, without assuming any bound on the number of corrupt participants. All protocols have polynomial complexity and require private channels and a simultaneous broadcast channel. Unlike previously proposed protocols in this model, the protocols that we present deterministically output the exact tally. Our first protocol is a basic voting scheme which allows voters to interact in order to compute the tally. Privacy of the ballot is unconditional in the sense that regardless of the behavior of the dishonest participants nothing can be learned through the protocol that could not be learned in an ideal realisation. Unfortunately, a single dishonest participant can make the protocol abort, in which case the dishonest participants can nevertheless learn the outcome of the tally. Our second protocol introduces voting authorities which improves the communication complexity by limiting interaction to be only between voters and authorities and among the authorities themselves; the simultaneous broadcast is also limited to the authorities. In the second protocol, as long as a single authority is honest, the privacy is unconditional, however, a single corrupt authority or a single corrupt voter can cause the protocol to abort. Our final protocol provides a safeguard against corrupt voters by enabling a verification technique to allow the authorities to revoke incorrect votes without aborting the protocol. Finally, we discuss the implementation of a simultaneous broadcast channel with the use of temporary computational assumptions, yielding versions of our protocols that achieve everlasting security.


Written by some of the leading figures in the fields of conversation analysis, discursive psychology and ethnomethodology, this book looks at the challenging implications of new discourse-based approaches to the topic of cognition. Up to now, cognition has primarily been studied in experimental settings. This volume shows how cognition can be reworked using analyses of engaging examples of real life interaction such as conversations between friends, relationship counselling sessions and legal hearings. It includes an extended introduction that overviews the history and context of cognitive research and its basic assumptions to provide a frame for understanding the specific examples discussed, as well as surveying cutting edge debates about discourse and cognition. This comprehensive and accessible book opens up important newways of understanding the relation between language and cognition.


Abstract The ant colony optimization algorithm was used to search for a feasible power ascension path for a boiling water reactor. The control action of start-up operation includes control rod movements and core flow rate variations. During the process, the core status should satisfy some constraints such as thermal limits, preconditioning interior operating management recommendation guideline, and power flow operation domain. In addition, the control objective is to reach full power as soon as possible and approach the target control rod pattern as close as possible. The results show that the developed method can obtain the satisfactory power ascension path, which is also comparable to the operation record.


OBJECTIVE--To evaluate the difference in systolic blood pressure at the arm and ankle at rest and after various exercise tests for the assessment of aortic coarctation. METHODS--22 patients (mean age 33 years, range 17-66) were investigated on the suspicion of having haemodynamically significant aortic coarctation. Eight had undergone previous coarctation surgery, of whom five had received vascular grafts and three end to end anastomoses. The patients exercised submaximally while supine, seated on a bicycle, and walking on a treadmill, as well as exercising maximally on a treadmill. Arm and ankle blood pressure were measured with a cuff at rest and 1-10 minutes after exercise. Invasive pressures and cardiac output by thermodilution were recorded during catheterisation while patients were at rest and during and after supine bicycle exercise. The degree of constriction was assessed by angiography. Twelve healthy volunteers (mean age 32 years, range 17-56) provided reference values for cuff pressures after exercise. RESULTS--All patients with a difference in cuff pressure at rest of 35 mm Hg or more had a difference in invasive pressure of 35 mm Hg or more. Increasing severity of constriction on angiography correlated with larger pressure gradients at rest and during exercise (P < 0.0001). When cuff measurements after exercise were considered singly or combined to form a predictor they did not improve the prediction of the invasive pressure gradients at rest or after maximal exercise. A pressure gradient between arm and ankle also developed in normal subjects after maximal but not after submaximal exercise. CONCLUSION--In most patients with suspected haemodynamically significant coarctation the difference in cuff pressure between arm and ankle at rest is sufficient to select patients in need of further evaluation. If exercise is performed submaximal exercise is preferable.


The paper aims to provide an overview of the effects that trauma has on individuals and on how creative arts can promote their recovery and reintegration in their community. Trauma refers to any unexpected and overwhelming event that causes uncontrollable psychological strain to single individuals and/or groups. At the individual level, trauma can be critical (a one-off episode) or complex (i.e., prolonged exposure to psychological and/or physical stressors). A collective level, trauma can be ongoing ancestral (this is also called vertical trauma as it is transmitted from one generation to the next one) and/or ongoing cumulative (or horizontal trauma which affects specific groups/ ethnicities for instance via genocide). All these types of trauma share similar symptoms including anger, numbness, shame and among all, dissociation; this latter represents the core of trauma and it is manifested through daydreaming, as well of feelings of split-off and fragmentation in presence of events that trigger traumatic memories. The attempt to maintain control over these symptoms also affects the individual's body, for instance through chronic fatigue, chronic pain and autoimmune diseases. Trauma therefore affects the individual's body as much as the mind.
Trauma is not listed in the DSM-5 (APA, 2013) as a mental condition per se, however empirical evidence indicates that it is at the basis of several psychopathologies and therefore it needs attention in terms of treatment options. So far, the medical approach and/or specific psychological treatments to trauma have produced mixed outcomes and, in some cases, have indicated the need to explore alternative routes to support traumatised individuals. It is only recently that leading researchers in this field have acknowledged that, along with other interventions, creative arts should be embedded in the recovery and reintegration of these individuals. Recent evidence in fact suggests that creative arts such as creative writing, theatre and visual arts, are beneficial to individuals whose past traumatic experiences have removed their sense of control over their lives, as they offer a chance to re-build their self-identity, and liberate them from potentially harmful thoughts and actions. Creative arts have the power to order the chaos that trauma has caused to the individuals' mind and body; they provide a safe space where these individuals can make sense of their past traumatic episodes. In addition, arts help these individuals to develop a voice to share their experiences with other individuals with as similar experience as well with the broader community. When arts are presented to audiences they help individuals with trauma to connect with them as it promotes emphatic engagement, which might represent a stepping stone towards their reintegration in the community.
This paper sheds light on the current debate on the use of creative arts in the recovery, empowerment and reintegration of individuals affected by trauma.


Abstract: Probiotics have been used as an alternative method to antibiotic treatment. In this study, we evaluated the effect of seaweed extracts, commercially named OceanFeed Swine® (OFS), on body weight, average daily weight gain (ADG) and feed efficiency (FE) in nursery and fattening pigs of terminal lines. The study was conducted with 1809 piglets from weaning age until the end of the fattening phase on a commercial farm, divided into two groups (control and OFS; 905 and 904 pigs, respectively). Three replicates were made during the 6 weeks of production. Food was elaborated in the same productive unit and was given to the animals in the form of flour. OceanFeed Swine® (5 g/kg of diet) was added to the diet of the OFS groups during the nursery period, from 21 to 55 days of age. The faecal microbial population was evaluated at 35 and 60 days of life. In this paper, we observed a positive effect of administering OceanFeed Swine® on the production parameters analysed in the fattening phase, showing an improvement of 26 g in ADG and FE of 0.07. It can be concluded that the use of OceanFeed Swine® in the diets of the piglets, aged between 21 to 55 days old, improves FE (Control 2.36, OFS 2.29) and ADG (control 0.798 kg, OFS 0.824 kg). Moreover, its use exhibited an increase in the slaughter weight, a reduction of E coli CFU, and an increase in Lactobacillus sp. in fattening animals. All these improvements have a major positive economic impact per pig at time of slaughter.


Cohesin attaches chromosomes to the mitotic spindle and allows separation of sister chromatids at anaphase. Phosphorylation of cohesin by a Polo-like kinase in yeast enhances cohesin degradation by separase at the onset of anaphase. However, in other eurkaryotes, the bulk of cohesin is removed from chromosomes earlier in mitosis (prophase and prometaphase) by a mechanism that is thought to be cleavage-independent. Sumara et al. show that a Xenopus Polo-like kinase, PLX1, is required for this bulk release before anaphase. Addition of recombinant purified PLX1 to PLX1-depleted Xenopus mitotic extracts rescued cohesin dissociation in vitro. Phosphorylation of cohesin by PLK1 also decreased cohesin binding to chromatin. Immunofluorescence microscopy confirmed that PLX1 stimulated cohesin dissociation from mitotic chromosomes. Transfected human HeLa cells expressing a constitutively activated form of PLK1 induced cohesin dissociation in vivo. PLK1 enhanced cleavage of cohesin by separase in vitro, suggesting that phosphorylation of cohesin by PLK1 may be part of the release mechanism. I. Sumara, E. Vorlaufer, P. T. Stukemberg, O. Kelm, N. Redemann, E. A. Nigg, J.-M. Peters, The dissociation of cohesin from chromosomes in prophase is regulated by Polo-like kinase. Mol. Cell 9, 515-525 (2002). [Online Journal]


Signaling pathways that mediate the normal functions of growth factors are commonly subverted in cancer. Oncogenes identified by a variety of approaches have been shown to function at critical steps in mitogenic signaling. Progression through the cell cycle requires the coordinated actions of members of two complementary classes of growth factors, and oncogenes appear to replace the actions of one set of these growth factors. Growth factors can also influence normal cell differentiation, and constitutive activation of growth-promoting pathways in cancer cells can modulate the cell phenotype as well. Paracrine actions of growth factors and cytokines may also influence the stepwise series of genetic events that lead to malignancy. New approaches for cancer therapy are being developed that intervene at various steps in growth factor signaling pathways.


The aim of this study is to provide information about sports lodges (tekkes) which provided food, shelter, training and protection to athletes within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Sports lodges were facilities that fulfilled similar functions as do today's sports clubs. They played an important role in training not only famous athletes of the time (especially wrestlers and archers) but also soldiers for the army. To this end, numerous sports lodges were opened within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Some of the most important ones were in Bursa, İstanbul, Edirne and Manisa. Especially the wrestling and archery lodges opened in Istanbul were recorded in Ottoman registers.


This paper compares the cohesiveness of English and German compounds. Cohesiveness is understood as the extent to which two given elements are integrated into a larger structural unit. The null hypothesis according to which the compounds in the two languages are equicohesive is rejected on the strength of an extended quantitative analysis. The results of ten empirical tests are consistent with the hypothesis that English compounds are less cohesive than their German counterparts. As the degree of cohesion is inversely related to the position of a given unit in the linguistic hierarchy, English compounds are argued to be more phrase-like, whereas German compounds are more word-like. German imposes more rigorous constraints on compounding than English. Thus, the prototypical categories of English and German compounds differ in terms of their formal content. Since compounds are essentially words, two somewhat disparate definitions of word prevail in the two languages. Following up on an idea put forward by Klinge (2009), the cross-linguistic difference emanates from the varying importance of inflectional morphology in the two languages. Cohesiveness is supposedly a level-specific rather than a language-wide factor.


We have created "You, M.D.", an interactive museum exhibit in which users learn about topics in public health literacy while interacting with virtual humans. You, M.D. is equipped with a weight sensor, a height sensor and a Microsoft Kinect that gather basic user information. Conceptually, You, M.D. could use this user information to dynamically select the appearance of the virtual humans in the interaction attempting to improve learning outcomes and user perception for each particular user. For this concept to be possible, a better understanding of how different elements of the visual appearance of a virtual human affects user perceptions is required. In this paper, we present the results of an initial user study with a large sample size (n =333) ran using You, M.D. The study measured users' reactions based on the user's gender and body-mass index (BMI) when facing virtual humans with BMI either concordant or discordant from the user's BMI. The results of the study indicate that concordance between the users' BMI and the virtual human's BMI affects male and female users differently. The results also show that female users rate virtual humans as more knowledgeable than male users rate the same virtual humans.