How does informal care provision to an elderly parent affect the labor supply outcomes of a couple? Previous work examines the relationship between caregiving and the labor market decisions of the care provider, but ignores any labor supply response of the spouse to such decisions. Using data from the Health and Retirement Survey, we examine how informal care provision affects the labor supply of both members of a couple, at both the intensive and extensive margins. Such analysis is especially important for evaluating informal care's potential effect on retirement timing and household wealth accumulation. We find that providing personal care to an elderly parent reduces a married man's chance of working by 3.2 percentage points, but providing such care does not affect a married woman's chance of working. Additionally, male labor force decisions remain inelastic in response to the wife's caregiving behavior. Working married women do adjust their hours of work in response to caregiving, but in the opposite direction that within-couple insurance would suggest. Instead, the woman increases her work by one hour a week if she is the only care provider, and decreases her work when the husband is the only care provider. When both members of the couple provide informal care these effects cancel out.


It is estimated that between 10 and 45% of patients who undergo surgery to the low back continue to suffer pain. This variability cannot be explained solely on the basis of pre-surgical clinical findings. There has been little clear elucidation of the issues which may affect outcome. The study aimed to identify those patients who were most likely to benefit from surgery and those whose rehabilitation might be prolonged by evaluating the psychological, clinical and demographic factors which may influence outcome. In addition, it attempted to investigate the relationship between cardiovascular and endocrine functioning and psychological factors. Eighty nine patients were assessed on a range of pre and peri-operative measures and then various outcome measures post-operatively on four occasions up to six months following surgery. Those who reported low anxiety pre-operatively and those who believed more in their own control over their back problems improved more in several areas of quality of life. Patients of one of the surgeons improved more in several aspects and those who waited longest for their surgery fared less well. Women and those who were not wage earners appeared to be less well rehabilitated when compared to men or those in heavy or active occupations. Depression, social support and coping had little effect on outcome. There were no relationships between self reported, cardiovascular and endocrine measures of anxiety. It is concluded that psychological, demographic and clinical factors can have a far reaching impact on rehabilitation. These factors may be inherent in the patient or may possibly be associated with attitudes of the hospital staff to the patient. It is concluded that the findings have implications for future intervention studies designed to improve the rehabilitation of these patients.


Objective Crohn's disease (CD) is associated with intestinal dysbiosis, altered blood T cell populations, elevated faecal calprotectin (FC) and increased intestinal permeability (IP). CD-associated features present in siblings (increased risk of CD) but not in healthy controls, provide insight into early CD pathogenesis. We aimed to (1) Delineate the genetic, immune and microbiological profile of patients with CD, their siblings and controls and (2) Determine which factors discriminate between groups. Design Faecal microbiology was analysed by quantitative PCR targeting 16S ribosomal RNA, FC by ELISA, blood T cell phenotype by flow cytometry and IP by differential lactulose-rhamnose absorption in 22 patients with inactive CD, 21 of their healthy siblings and 25 controls. Subject's genotype relative risk was determined by Illumina Immuno BeadChip. Results Strikingly, siblings shared aspects of intestinal dysbiosis with patients with CD (lower concentrations of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (p=0.048), Clostridia cluster IV (p=0.003) and Roseburia spp. (p=0.09) compared with controls). As in CD, siblings demonstrated a predominance of memory T cells (p=0.002) and elevated naïve CD4 T cell β7 integrin expression (p=0.01) compared with controls. FC was elevated (>50 μg/g) in 8/21 (38%) siblings compared with 2/25 (8%) controls (p=0.028); whereas IP did not differ between siblings and controls. Discriminant function analysis determined that combinations of these factors significantly discriminated between groups (χ2=80.4, df=20, p<0.001). Siblings were separated from controls by immunological and microbiological variables. Conclusions Healthy siblings of patients with CD manifest immune and microbiological abnormalities associated with CD distinct from their genotype-related risk and provide an excellent model in which to investigate early CD pathogenesis.


Once again, an exciting programme was devised for the patients and clients of Bron Pharmacy in Naboomspruit, Limpopo. The valuable theme created a platform from which every patient could be reached, and in numerous ways. Bron Pharmacy starts its advertising campaign as early as August, by advertising for four consecutive weeks in the local newspaper. Flyers were distributed throughout the town, and the word spread quickly that the pharmacy was planning a great event. The theme was printed on headboards in the pharmacy as soon as it was announced, and these are still up, as the message is such a relevant and authentic one.


This research is to search for alternatives to the resolution of complex medical diagnosis where human knowledge should be apprehended in a general fashion. Successful application examples show that human diagnostic capabilities are significantly worse than the neural diagnostic system. Our research describes a constructive neural network algorithm with backpropagation; offer an approach for the incremental construction of nearminimal neural network architectures for pattern classification. The algorithm starts with minimal number of hidden units in the single hidden layer; additional units are added to the hidden layer one at a time to improve the accuracy of the network and to get an optimal size of a neural network. Our algorithm was tested on several benchmarking classification problems including Cancer1, Heart, and Diabetes with good generalization ability.


Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a multicomponent disease with extrapulmonary manifestation. Peripheral nerve affection may be one of the results or mechanism of COPD. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate peripheral neuropathy in patients with stable COPD and whether these changes are more or less marked in the phrenic nerve when compared with other peripheral nerves. Patients and methods Eighty patients with COPD and 60 healthy individuals as a control group were included. All were subjected to the following: (i) full history taking; (ii) clinical and neurological examination; (iii) chest radiography; (iv) high-resol ution computed tomography scanning of the chest; (v) arterial blood gases analysis at room air; and (vi) spirometric tests. Results There was a statistically significant increase in smoking packs/year, respiratory rate, hemoglobin, and white blood cells in the COPD group. There was a significant decrease in oxygen saturation, pH, arterial oxygen tension, forced expiratory volume in 1 s, forced expiratory volume in 1 s/forced vital capacity, and forced vital capacity% in the study group when compared with the control group, whereas there was a significant increase in CO2 tension in the COPD group. There was a significant increase in the distal latency of all nerves and a significant decrease in the amplitude and conduction velocity of all nerves, except the amplitude of the phrenic nerve in the COPD group. The difference for phrenic nerve amplitude was statistically nonsignificant. In the COPD group, abnormal motor activity in the median, ulnar, common peroneal, and phrenic nerves of 30, 22.5, 35, and 22.5%, respectively, was reported, whereas abnormal sensory activity in the median, ulnar, and sural nerves of 30.0, 27.5, and 42.5%, respectively, was reported. Finally, we found a statistically significant increase in nerve abnormalities with increased severity of the disease. Conclusion COPD had a significant affection on peripheral nerves, either motor or sensory. In addition, COPD had a significant affection on the phrenic nerve and muscle of the diaphragm. However, this affection of the phrenic nerve was confined to grades III and IV and was the least affection of studied nerves.


There is a growing discontentment among Indian cotton farmers because of declining profitability. Increase in production costs, yield stagnation and volatile output prices have affected the net incomes adversely. In this study we analysed cost of cotton cultivation to elucidate reasons for cost escalation. Cost of cultivation data obtained from the Directorate of Economics and Statistics for the period 200001 to 2014-15 was used for the analysis. It was found that an increase in human labour wage rates was the major factor that contributed to cost escalation. Fertilizers were another factor that contributed to cost escalation. Selective mechanization for curtailing human labour consumption and judicious use of fertilizers are options to lower the cost of cotton cultivation.


Victorian Sunderland developed a unique form of housing to accommodate its hardworking population. Resembling a terraced bungalow, the distinctive 'Sunderland cottage' became the town's dominant housing type during the nineteenth century. Early examples were built for Sunderland's many shipyard workers and opened the door to home ownership for skilled artisans and their families. Well loved by local residents, these unique homes are now recognised as an important and distinctive approach to housing Britain's urban population. Even today, Sunderland cottages represent the backbone of working-class communities across the city.

This book examines the development of the Sunderland cottage, tracing the evolution of the form and its place within the town's social and architectural history. The research draws upon an extensive collection of building plans, which reveal for the first time that these modest homes were in fact designed by leading Sunderland architects and share their provenance with the finest buildings in the city. The text is illustrated with photographs taken especially for this volume, along with building plans and archival images. 'The Sunderland Cottage: A History of Wearside's 'Little Palaces'' will serve as a valuable guide for Sunderland residents eager to know more about their own homes, and anyone with an interest in Britain's nineteenth and early twentieth century housing.


Professor David Radcliffe has created Lord Byron and his Times (LBT), a large digital archive of works surrounding Lord Byron and his contemporaries. The original website was unusable slow due to the expensive XSLT transformations and XPath queries being applied to TEI documents. By removing the reliance on XSL and using eXist-db and XQuery, while relying on ubiquitous and welldocumented CSS for client-side styling, we have been able to increase performance dramatically without sacrificing features or functionality. In this paper, we go over an overview of the project, including challenges and potential solutions, and performance metrics of the original system in section 1. Section 2 contains a user's manual detailing difference between the old and proposed systems. Section 3 contains a developer's manual, which contains overviews of various technologies that were being used in the system designed by Professor Radcliffe. The fourth section describes technologies relevant to the proposed system. Finally, documentation and installation instructions are given in the fifth section. The rest of the paper contains a VTechWorks inventory, contacts for everyone involved with the LBT project, and references.


BACKGROUND Platelet dysfunction has been attributed to progression of initial intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) on repeat head computed tomographic (RHCT) scans in patients on prehospital antiplatelet therapy. However, there is little emphasis on the effect of platelet count and progression of ICH in patients with traumatic brain injury. The aim of this study was to determine the platelet count cutoff for progression on RHCT and neurosurgical intervention in patients on antiplatelet therapy. METHODS We performed a prospective cohort analysis of all traumatic brain injury patients with an ICH on prehospital antiplatelet therapy. Antiplatelet therapy was defined as aspirin, clopidogrel, or a combination of both. Admission platelet count was recorded and used for analysis. Receiver operating characteristic curves were plotted to identify the optimal platelet count for progression on RHCT scan and neurosurgical intervention in patients on antiplatelet therapy. RESULTS A total of 264 patients were enrolled. Platelet count of 135,000/µL or less (area under the curve, 0.80) and platelet count of 95,000/µL or less (area under the curve, 0.92) were the optimal threshold points for progression on RHCT scan and neurosurgical intervention, respectively. Patients with platelet count of 135,000/µL or less were 12.4 times (95% confidence interval, 7.1–18.4) more likely to have progression on RHCT scan and patients with platelet count 95,000/µL or less were 31.5 times (95% confidence interval, 19.7–96.2) more likely to require neurosurgical intervention. CONCLUSION A platelet count of less than 135,000/µL in patients on antiplatelet therapy is predictive of both radiographic and clinical worsening. This is a clinically relevant target intended to help tailor and improve management in patients on antiplatelet therapy. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Therapeutic study, level III.


Marine sediment core MD012394 from the Vietnam coastal upwelling area in the western South China Sea was investigated in order to reconstruct the last Quaternary monsoon upwelling based on planktic foraminifer fauna assemblages and fauna-based sea surface temperature (SST) estimates. The age model of core MD012394 was constructed using oxygen isotope stratigraphy of the planktic foraminifer G. sacculifer, with 10 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating of planktic foraminifers from the sediment samples. Our studies on the relative and absolute abundances of planktic foraminifer assemblages reveal eight dominant species in core MD012394: N. dutertrei+N. pachyderma (right coiling), G. ruber, G. glutinata, G. sacculifer, P. obliquiloculata, G. menardii + G. tumida, G. calida, and G. inflata. In a Q-mode factor analysis of the fauna abundance data, the fauna factors show variations that do not parallel the glacial/interglacial changes throughout the last 135 kyr. The relative abundance patterns of G. inflata and N. dutertrei (including N. pachyderma-R) are interpreted as hydrographic proxies for East Asian summer and winter monsoon, respectively, in the current study. We calculated the fluctuations in the SST using the Revised Analog Method (RAM) in MD012394 and found that the abundance changes of the summer monsoon upwelling indicator G. inflata were similar and nearly synchronous. This suggests that the summer monsoon-driven upwelling signal was strong near the local summer insolation maximum, which induced low SSTs, particular around ~11, 33, 59, and 83 kya. Our studies support the view that the strengths of both summer insolation and the East Asian summer monsoon have determined the relative abundance of planktic foraminifers and the SSTs in the western SCS during the last 135 kyr.


INTRODUCTION During the last five years there have been several studies emphasizing the demand for changes in the accounting curriculum. Beaver (1992) stimulated the demand by discussing the challenges in accounting education. Prime among these challenges is to understand the incentives and environmental factors that influence accounting education and use this understanding to implement improvements in accounting education. Apparently the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC) attempted to meet this challenge by offering its position on the objective of the first course in accounting (AECC, 1992). The AECC (1992) stated that the primary objective of this course was to assist students in developing information retrieval and communication skills that would support and enhance their decision-making abilities. To that end, educators must emphasize interaction with students and among students. Such interaction can be promoted by the use of case method, simulation exercises, database research, group projects, and most recently information technology, always keeping in mind that the primary motivation is to teach students to learn on their own. In light of these challenges and objectives, Ainsworth & Plumlee (1993) described the restructuring of the accounting curriculum at Kansas State University. The restructuring had two curriculum objectives: to provide students with (1) technical and professional knowledge and (2) the necessary skills to implement this knowledge in the professional accounting environment. These objectives required that professors implement new tools of instruction to develop the following skills: communication, analysis, listening, understanding, team building, and negotiation. The ultimate expectation was to teach students how to learn and continually utilize new ideas and information throughout their careers. This development is especially crucial in the age of information technology. Subsequently, Brigham Young University (BYU) restructured its accounting curriculum to incorporate the new challenges of this century as well as the next. Albrecht et al. (1994) summarized the changes in the curriculum as well as teaching innovations that are transferable to other schools. BYU had three goals: (1) to identify the competencies needed by professional accountants in the next decade, (2) to design a curriculum to develop these competencies in students, and (3) to assess the effectiveness of the new curriculum in achieving these student competencies (Albrecht et al., 1994). One of the many teaching innovations was the integration of expanded competency instruction with technical accounting instruction. The expanded competency instruction included the following areas: written and oral communication, listening skills, group dynamics, conflict resolution, organization and delegation skills, critical thinking, and working under pressure (Albrecht et al., 1994). Within these emerging competencies, understanding the role of information technology in solving business and accounting problems was crucial. Specifically, in the research phase, students were introduced to NAARS, NEXIS and LEXIS databases and given assignments requiring them to use these sources. However, with the expanded information technology base in today's environment, the professors and students face even newer challenges and opportunities in accounting education. The increasing use of the Internet and related information technologies prompted the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) to provide a guideline on the use of information technology in the accounting curriculum. The IFAC International Education Guideline No. 11 (Guideline) acknowledges that information technology (IT) is one of the core competencies of professional accountants and thus requires special attention due to its rapid growth and rate of change. This growth and change has created the following challenges which the accounting profession must address: (1) IT affects the way in which organizations operate, especially the business planning and design processes; and (2) IT changes the nature and economics of accounting activity as well as the competitive environment in which professional accountants participate. …


Abstract Property tax in Greece is levied since 1985 not on Market Values but on the "objective value" of the properties as it is defined by the Ministry of Economics. It forms a non-flexible system, with market-irrelevant and unrealistic values, inducing land-policy practices and potential political cost to each periodical update. Furthermore, instead of adjusting taxation levels to the current economic reality, the real estate market is experiencing further burdening through approximately 40 different property taxes and levies, leading to further shrinking and depreciation. The authors believe that a fairer taxation system could significantly assist the property sector in Greece. Thus, through this paper and by studying and analyzing best practices from other countries, they propose models that can be applied with the use of existing data in Greece. This work aims to identify the critical parameters that affecting property values in Thessaloniki to create a Market Value forecasting tool for a fairer taxation system, to highlight the importance of a GIS system for this purpose and to compare the results of MRA with the use of SPSS with those of GWR in ArcGIS environment. For the purposes of this study, the Municipality of Thessaloniki was chosen due to its very well organized portal with significant and well organized geographical data and because authors manage to access some data from the Central Bank of Greece, regarding property valuations.


WiMAX is an effective metropolitan area broadband access technology, supplying wireless coverage over an area of several kilometers with high data rates. WiMAX technology has introduced WiMAX broadband to provide an alternative to the high cost of broadband connection through cable or DSL. In this paper, simulative investigations have been done for the WiMAX network using different path loss models. Investigations have been done in terms of performance metrics such as path loss, throughput and delay. Considering VoIP as major application, extensive results of different path loss models have been indicated which will help the network engineers in planning and design. General Terms WiMAX network, Path loss models.


CR1/CR2 chimeric receptors in which various short consensus repeats (SCRs) of CR1 were attached to CR2 were transiently expressed on COS cells, and assessed for the binding of polymerized C3b (pC3b) and anti- CR2 by immunofluorescence. Of COS cells expressing chimeras containing SCR 1-4, 1-3, 2-4, 1-2, and 2-3 of the long homologous repeats (LHRs) - B or -C, 96%, 66%, 23%, 0%, and 0%, respectively, bound pC3b. K562 cells were stably transfected with wild-type CR1, deletion mutants of CR1, and the CR1/CR2 chimeras, respectively, and assayed for binding of 125I-pC3b. The dissociation constants (Kd) for pC3b of wild-type CR1 and the LHR-BD and -CD constructs were in the range of 1.0-2.7 nM, and of the CR1/CR2 chimeras containing SCRs 1-4, 1-3, and 2-4 of LHR-B or - C were 1.8-2.4, 6-9, and 22-36 nM, respectively. The factor I-cofactor function of the CR1/CR2 chimeras paralleled the C3b-binding function of the constructs. A CR1/immunoglobulin (Ig) chimeric protein was prepared by fusing SCRs 1-4 of LHR-B to the heavy chains of a murine F(ab')2 anti-nitrophenacetyl (NP) monoclonal antibody. The (CR1)2-F(ab')2 chimera, which retained its specificity for NP, was as effective as soluble, full-length CR1 in binding pC3b, serving as a cofactor for factor I-mediated cleavage of C3b, and inhibiting activation of the alternative pathway, indicating that the bivalent expression of these SCRs reconstitutes the alternative pathway inhibitory function of CR1. The feasibility of creating CR1/Ig chimeras makes possible a new strategy of targeting complement inhibition by the use of Ig fusion partners having particular antigenic specificities.


BACKGROUND
Pelvic floor muscle training is the most commonly used physical therapy treatment for women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI). It is sometimes also recommended for mixed and, less commonly, urgency urinary incontinence.

OBJECTIVES
To determine the effects of pelvic floor muscle training for women with urinary incontinence in comparison to no treatment, placebo or sham treatments, or other inactive control treatments.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the Cochrane Incontinence Group Specialised Register, which contains trials identified from the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (1999 onwards), MEDLINE (1966 onwards) and MEDLINE In-Process (2001 onwards), and handsearched journals and conference proceedings (searched 15 April 2013) and the reference lists of relevant articles.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised or quasi-randomised trials in women with stress, urgency or mixed urinary incontinence (based on symptoms, signs, or urodynamics). One arm of the trial included pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT). Another arm was a no treatment, placebo, sham, or other inactive control treatment arm.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Trials were independently assessed by two review authors for eligibility and methodological quality. Data were extracted then cross-checked. Disagreements were resolved by discussion. Data were processed as described in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Trials were subgrouped by diagnosis of urinary incontinence. Formal meta-analysis was undertaken when appropriate.

MAIN RESULTS
Twenty-one trials involving 1281 women (665 PFMT, 616 controls) met the inclusion criteria; 18 trials (1051 women) contributed data to the forest plots. The trials were generally small to moderate sized, and many were at moderate risk of bias, based on the trial reports. There was considerable variation in the interventions used, study populations, and outcome measures. There were no studies of women with mixed or urgency urinary incontinence alone.Women with SUI who were in the PFMT groups were 8 times more likely than the controls to report that they were cured (46/82 (56.1%) versus 5/83 (6.0%), RR 8.38, 95% CI 3.68 to 19.07) and 17 times more likely to report cure or improvement (32/58 (55%) versus 2/63 (3.2%), RR 17.33, 95% CI 4.31 to 69.64). In trials in women with any type of urinary incontinence, PFMT groups were also more likely to report cure, or more cure and improvement than the women in the control groups, although the effect size was reduced. Women with either SUI or any type of urinary incontinence were also more satisfied with the active treatment, while women in the control groups were more likely to seek further treatment. Women treated with PFMT leaked urine less often, lost smaller amounts on the short office-based pad test, and emptied their bladders less often during the day. Their sexual outcomes were also better. Two trials (one small and one moderate size) reported some evidence of the benefit persisting for up to a year after treatment. Of the few adverse effects reported, none were serious.The findings of the review were largely supported by the summary of findings tables, but most of the evidence was down-graded to moderate on methodological grounds. The exception was 'Participant perceived cure' in women with SUI, which was rated as high quality.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
The review provides support for the widespread recommendation that PFMT be included in first-line conservative management programmes for women with stress and any type of urinary incontinence. Long-term effectiveness of PFMT needs to be further researched.


Despite the increasing number of older people, many with cognitive impairment (CI), in hospitals, there is yet to be an evaluation of hospital-wide interventions improving the management of those with CI. In hospitalized patients with CI, there are likely to be associations between increased complications that impact on outcomes, length of stay, and costs. This prospective study will evaluate the effectiveness of an established hospital CI support program on patient outcomes, patient quality of life, staff awareness of CI, and carer satisfaction. Using a stepped-wedge, continuous-recruitment method, the pre-intervention patient data will provide the control data for usual hospital care. The intervention, the Dementia Care in Hospitals Program, provides hospital-wide CI awareness and support education, and screening for all patients aged 65+, along with a bedside alert, the Cognitive Impairment Identifier. The primary outcome is a reduction in hospital-acquired complications: urinary tract infections, pressure injuries, pneumonia and delirium. Secondary outcome measures include cost effectiveness, patient quality of life, carer satisfaction, staff awareness of CI, and staff perceived impact of care. This large-sample study across four sites offers an opportunity for research evaluation of health service functioning at a whole-of-hospital level, which is important for sustainable change in hospital practice.


This thesis presents a novel antenna structure that satisfies the challenging requirements of an air coupled high speed ground penetrating radar (GPR). The desired GPR system is to achieve high spatial resolution and accurate inspection results while scanning at relatively high speed for highway pavement and bridge deck inspection. This work utilizes the Ultra Wide Band (UWB) antenna design to achieve both physical and electrical requirements imposed. The design procedure starts with a short survey to discuss typical UWB antennas used for GPR applications, and various tradeoffs of each type specifically when used for Air Coupled GPR applications. Our structure anatomy is presented, followed by a theory introduction that mainly focuses on achieving good impedance matching throughout the proposed antenna structure. A proof-of-concept MATLAB model is created to evaluate the preliminary physical dimensions that can achieve minimum reflections at antenna's feed point. These dimensions are then used in SolidWorks to create a 3D model that is imported later in HFSS to obtain accurate electromagnetic characteristics. Furthermore, fine tunings are performed to the antenna structure to optimize both gain and impedance matching. The SolidWorks 3-D structural model is finally used for antenna fabrication. The measurements recorded from the field experiments using the prototypes manufactured are compared to the simulation results confirming our initial findings. Both measurements and simulation results demonstrated very small reflection loss across the 700 MHz ~ 6 GHz frequency band with a very high directed gain and radiation efficiency.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Normal B-cells in the germinal center (GC) may be exposed to both tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) and Fas-L. Whether abrogation of TRAIL apoptosis is a feature in the genesis of B cell lymphomas of GC-phenotype is not known. We assessed the integrity of the TRAIL pathway in Fas-resistant and Fas-sensitive Burkitt s lymphomas (BLs).

DESIGN AND METHODS
Expression of TRAIL receptors was determined by flow cytometry and Western blots. The extent of apoptosis following exposure to TRAIL was measured by annexin-V/propidium iodide dual staining. The integrity of the Fas and TRAIL apoptotic pathways was determined by Western blotting to assess cleavage of downstream caspases. Western blot analyses were used to determine the expression of pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins and the profile of expression was correlated with response to TRAIL and CH11.

RESULTS
Our results demonstrate that BL expresses both functional and decoy TRAIL receptors. BLs with a functional Fas pathway retained sensitivity to TRAIL: Frequent and compound loss of expression of pro-apoptotic proteins can be identified in BLs resistant to Fas. However, loss of Bax, Bak and Bcl-Xs did not compromise sensitivity to TRAIL:

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
Our results indicate that BLs frequently retain sensitivity to the TRAIL pathway. These results underscore the utility of TRAIL-based therapeutic strategies in the treatment of those B-cell lymphomas that may have compromised expression of several pro-apoptotic proteins.


It is recognized that employment policies must grant flexibility to theworking schedules to allow parents to reconcile family and work. By exploiting the particularity of the East German labor market, I identify the causal effect of temporal work flexibility on parental time with children. The analysis unambiguously shows that it allows parents to spend about 30 percent more time with their children. The results can be generalized to Germany as a whole. It can be concluded that temporal work flexibility can be used as a device to mitigate the adverse effect of parental employment on the child's cognitive development.


The European Journal of Anaesthesiology (EJA) publishes original work of high scientific quality. Preference is given to experimental work or clinical observation in man, and to laboratory work of clinical relevance. The journal also publishes commissioned narrative reviews by an authority in a field of interest to those working in anaesthesiology, pain, emergency medicine or intensive care. Editorials, commissioned commentaries and book reviews also included.


Microbial bioerosion is an important factor in the long-terms survival of vertebrate skeletal remains and in the quality of any preserved biological information contained within them – e.g. genetic, isotopic or trace element evidence. Over the past two decades there has been a dramatic improvement in our understanding of the diagenetic changes experienced by ancient bones and the impact of those changes on preserved information, although the identity of the organisms responsible for microbial degradation remains something of a mystery. Because of the long timescales involved, the damages seen in bones excavated from archaeological and fossil sites have proved difficult to replicate in the laboratory. Field experiments in a tropical location (Taiwan) have successfully replicated the early stages of many of the features seen in genuinely ancient bones and these changes can be linked to specific burial environments. These key diagenetic signatures are shown to persist in fossil bones over millions of years and can be identified in electron microscope images of histological sections. Thus, investigation the histology of fossil bones using backscatter electron microscopy (BSEM) is a useful addition to other techniques, e.g. rare earth element analyses, in understanding the diagenetic histories of fossil assemblages.


Ex situ bioremediation is an attractive and often cost-effective technology for the clean-up of organics-contaminated sites; however, it often requires extended treatment time under field conditions. Electrokinetic bioremediation is an emerging technology to remediate organic-contaminated soil. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of using electrical biostimulation processes to enhance ex-situ bioremediation of soils contaminated with organic pollutants. The effect of different applied voltages (0.33 – 1.0 V/cm) as well as the effect of inorganic (NPK) fertilizer on the electrokinetic bioremediation of soil was evaluated. A bench-scale uniform electrokinetic system was developed for this purpose and tested by using a sandy loam soil spiked with petroleum refinery waste effluent having total organic compound (TOC) as model organic pollutant. The results demonstrated that the application of a low direct current (voltage) could be an effective strategy to accelerate the movement and ex situ biodegradation or removal of TOC in the soil. At the application of 0.33, 0.67 and 1.0 V/cm voltage, electricity biostimulation correspondingly and averagely remove 65.7%, 70% and 73.3% of TOC from soil in only 15 days without nutrient (NPK fertilizer) application; while with nutrient application, electricity biostimulation correspondingly and averagely removed 71.8%, 77.4% and 81.6% of TOC from soil. Thus, bioremediation of soil contaminated with petroleum refinery waste effluents can be enhanced by electrokinetics and the rate of TOC biodegradation or removal relatively increased with increased specific voltage application. The electrokinetic bioremediation of soil can further be enhanced or accelerated with the addition of nutrient in the form of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK). Small changes in soil pH and/or moisture were induced by the applied electric field. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v36i2.29


The cost-effective production of high-performance and durable steel reinforced thermoplastic composites requires improvement of the adhesion encountered at the interface between metallic substrates (galvanized steel) and a thermoplastic elastomer (TPU). Combined requirements of processing speed, adhesion and durability were assessed by using cationic photo-polymerized coatings at the TPU-metal interface. The adhesion was studied by pull-out tests on co-molded TPU matrix - galvanized steel wires samples before and after different aging conditions. Several fast benchmark surface treatments were first studied and resulted in average adhesion and poor durability. Coupling primers were then investigated with γ-APS aminosilane films formed from different solutions and deposition parameters. They resulted in excellent adhesion and durability at the cost of a very low processing speed. Finally, cationic UV-curable coatings were used as an innovative adhesion-promoting interface achieving fast curing together with excellent adhesion and durability. The curing kinetics and the final degree of cure of these coatings was also investigated in order to reach the fastest processing rate. Maximum interfacial shear strength and energy release rate adhesion criteria were defined and discussed for the case of an elastomeric matrix in the light of FEM simulations considering residual stress, viscoelastic relaxation and temperature dependence.


Continuing CIGI's BRICSAM research, this paper questions whether size (economic or population) of emerging economies alone is enough to warrant accommodation in the rules and structures of the global system. The global realignment of states following the resulting power vacuum brought on by the end of the Cold War is finally materializing, as a new triangular formation has taken shape: the first world club of the OECD; the second world of emerging economies; and, a heterogeneous third world of the rest. The interplay between and mobility among these groups of states deserves in-depth analysis. The core of this paper observes the economic and social trends of countries in second tier, and their upwards aspirations towards the top-tier of the global architecture. Traced through a variety of indices, the growth of the BRICSAM group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, ASEAN-4 and Mexico) is demonstrated to be a powerful force in international economics and political economy. For the inclusion of these states, a change in the key aspects of global economic governance, the international architecture and geopolitics seems inevitable, and with it, new challenges arise for decision-makers and scholars alike.


In Nepal, it is widely believed that in 1941 Yogmaya, a female religious ascetic, and 60 of her disciples drowned themselves in the Arun River. In many of her 'utterances' (bani), preserved in a book that was effectively banned in Nepal for 40 years, Yogmaya called upon the Rana government to establish a dharmarajya, a religious state. The mass suicide is now interpreted as an act of protest at the Ranas' failure to meet this demand. However, the event is not mentioned in any published history of Nepal. Yogmaya's revolt was 'rediscovered' by an American anthropologist in the 1980s and revealed to a group of activists in Kathmandu, who attempted to reinstate her in their country's political history. Twenty years later, Nepal's leading feminist journal launched a campaign to gain recognition for Yogmaya as Nepal's first woman rebel. A small-scale iconisation process has been underway ever since, with Yogmaya being constructed as, variously, a feminist leader, a progressive poet, an opponent of caste discrimination, and a political rebel. This article recounts the standard story of her life, evaluates recent constructions of her rebellion and attempts to explain the appeal of Yogmaya to progressive forces in modern Nepali society.


BACKGROUND
The number of older people living with cancer and cardiometabolic conditions is increasing, but little is known about how specific combinations of these conditions impact mortality.

METHODS
A total of 22,692 participants aged 65 years and older from four international cohorts were followed-up for mortality for an average of 10 years (8,596 deaths). Data were harmonized across cohorts and mutually exclusive groups of disease combinations were created for cancer, myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, and diabetes at baseline. Cox proportional hazards models for all-cause mortality were used to estimate the age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratio and rate advancement period (RAP) (in years).

RESULTS
At baseline, 23.6% (n = 5,116) of participants reported having one condition and 4.2% (n = 955) had two or more conditions. Data from all studies combined showed that the RAP increased with each additional condition. Diabetes advanced the rate of dying by the most years (5.26 years; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4.53-6.00), but the effect of any single condition was smaller than the effect of disease combinations. Some combinations had a significantly greater impact on the period by which the rate of death was advanced than others with the same number of conditions, for example, 10.9 years (95% CI, 9.4-12.6) for MI and diabetes versus 6.4 years (95% CI, 4.3-8.5) for cancer and diabetes.

CONCLUSIONS
Combinations of cancer and cardiometabolic conditions accelerate mortality rates in older adults differently. Although most studies investigating mortality associated with multimorbidity used disease counts, these provide little guidance for managing complex patients as they age.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/about_us/legal/notices


The vessel wall is thicker in hypertension. Folkow demonstrated that adaptive structural changes occur in vessels in response to the increased wall stress of hypertension. Because the vessel wall thickens and encroaches on the lumen, the adaptive change results in an elevated vascular resistance. It also exaggerates the vasoconstrictor effects of vascular smooth muscle contraction, thereby increasing vascular reactivity to physiologically occurring vasoactive agents. As solid as this information may be, important unanswered questions still remain related to the question "What makes the pressure go up in the first place?" In this brief review, we have examined possible culprits both in the area of extrinsic vascular regulatory systems and in that of intrinsic changes in the vascular smooth muscle cell. Interesting newly described vasoactive agents currently are being evaluated. On the other hand, generalized intrinsic abnormalities in the cell membrane are well documented in hypertension. Many individual transport systems display this abnormality, suggesting that the primary defect may be in the lipid bilayer that influences the function of all integral protein transport systems. Abnormalities also have been found in the cells' signal transduction systems, whereas the energy metabolism and contractile protein system are essentially normal. Functional abnormalities of the vascular smooth muscle cell in hypertension must explain both its increased contraction and its increased growth. It is likely that the same functional abnormality may explain both of these changes.


Deployment of multiple flying robots has attracted the interest of several research groups in the recent times both because such a feat represents many interesting scientific challenges and because aerial collective systems have a huge potential in terms of applications. By working together, multiple robots can perform a given task quicker or more efficiently than a single system. Furthermore, multiple robots can share computing, sensing and communication payloads thus leading to lighter robots that could be safer than a larger system, easier to transport and even disposable in some cases. Deploying a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles instead of a single aircraft allows rapid coverage of a relatively larger area or volume. Collaborating airborne agents can help each other by relaying communication or by providing navigation means to their neighbours. Flying in formation provides an effective way of decongesting the airspace. Aerial swarms also have an enormous artistic potential because they allow creating physical 3D structures that can dynamically change their shape over time. However, the challenges to actually build and control aerial swarms are numerous. First of all, a flying platform is often more complicated to engineer than a terrestrial robot because of the inherent weight constraints and the absence of mechanical link with any inertial frame that could provide mechanical stability and state reference. In the first section of this chapter, we therefore review this challenges and provide pointers to state-of-the-art methods to solve them. Then as soon as flying robots need to interact with each other, all sorts of problems arise such as wireless communication from and to rapidly moving objects and relative positioning. The aim of section 3 is therefore to review possible approaches to technically enable coordination among flying systems. Finally, section 4 tackles the challenge of designing individual controllers that enable a coherent behavior at the level of the swarm. This challenge is made even more difficult with flying robots because of their 3D nature and their motion constraints that are often related to the specific architectures of the underlying physical platforms. In this third section is complementary to the rest of this book as it focusses only on methods that have been designed for aerial collective systems.


The Australian health system requires novel strategies to implement widespread primary prevention to reduce the burden of chronic illness. One approach is for health sectors to draw on resources available in communities of place and to form partnerships which maximize the relevance and uptake of initiatives designed to promote healthy lifestyles. This article presents a typology of conceptual approaches to community and health sector partnerships, developed through an extensive literature search and empirically tested using in-depth case studies across regional Australia. The article finds that the health sector's orientation to primary prevention is generally instrumental involving highly targeted outcomes and pre-defined programmes. Communities of place have multifaceted priorities that include building the social and economic sustainability of their community. While these approaches might appear incompatible, careful 'manipulation' and 'massaging' of instrumental objectives to adjust to community agendas and the presence of 'boundary crossers' can lead to successful primary prevention outcomes.


In accordance with the appropriation doctrine it appears straightforward to distribute water during below-average supply, 'first in time of use, first in right of use'. However, the practice of changing a water right and plans for augmentation make it difficult to quantify the native river flow and the shorted water user. A program is described which iteratively computes the native river flow at all points in a stream basin by applying the continuity equation from headwaters downstream. User inputs include known river flows, diversion amounts, water to storage and return flow. Independent parameters particular to the watershed include the hydraulic characteristics of the river channel and diversion structures. By recognizing when legal exchanges can occur, due to zero river points or specific flow conditions, the administrator can manipulate water distribution changes in the program. The goal is to equate the paper allocation of water to the naturally available and imported supplies.


This article studies the history of Web portals widely used in business-to-business and business-to-consumer Web applications in the late 1990s. Web portals originated from Web search engines in the early 1990s and evolved through Web push technology in mid-1990s to its mature model in the late 1990s. This article also compares Web portals with other popular media, such as radios and televisions, for their audience base and content broadness. As of January 2003, only a few libraries had adopted Web portal technology despite the widespread use of my.yahoo.com-type Web portals in the business sector. The article examines several reasons for the lack of portal development in libraries and concludes with a set of Web portal development guidelines for academic libraries. Some of the pioneer library portals are also discussed, as well as the California State Government, the first government portal to offer customization and financial transactions for individuals and business. This article concludes by probing a more fundamental question about general information storage and retrieval processes. In the last several hundred years, libraries primarily built hierarchical data structures and librarians provided information service without any search engines. In the past ten years, Web business communities have primarily worked on developing fast search engines for information retrieval without paying much attention to data structure. Now with the exponential growth of data on the Web, it is time that librarians and computer engineers work together to improve both search mechanisms and data structures for a more effective and efficient information service. What is a portal? "Portal" has been the buzzword of the networked age since 1997. Portals were so popular in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumers (B2C) applications that the business world borrowed an old jingle: "I'm a portal, he's a portal, she's a portal, we're a portal, wouldn't you like to be a portal, too?" Portal derives from the medieval Latin word portale, meaning "city gate." American Heritage Dictionary defines a portal as "a doorway or an entrance, or a gate, especially one that is large and imposing." New definitions for portals in the networked environment can be found on many Web sites. A synthesis of these new definitions is as follows: a Web portal is a doorway that can be customized by individual users to automatically filter information from the Web. It typically offers a search engine and links to useful pages, such as news, weather, travel, and stock quotes. A portal can also be defined as a customizable Web search engine to reflect the MY trend in current Web development. The platform for a portal Web site is a search engine, but a portal is different from a general search engine in that it can be customized by individuals for automatic, constant search for specific information, and it can deliver the results to individuals in a predefined way. A customizable search engine is unique to the user; it is different from anyone else's. The very early history of portals used by librarians can be traced back to the 1960s, when the first digital version of Index Medicus was created. (1) Some science librarians may still remember the customized weekly search in Medline for medical researchers and in INSPEC for physicists. This kind of canned search was predefined offline first by scientists and librarians together with a set of criteria. The canned search was performed by librarians against the weekly updated database tapes on IBM mainframes. Finally, the search result was delivered to scientists for the most recent developments in related fields. In the business community, CEOs often had various Executive Information Systems (EIS) before the Web came into existence in 1992. EIS was developed to provide top decision makers with broad, diverse content according to previously defined criteria. Both librarians' canned searches and the EIS service can be seen as human-controlled portals as they provided customized information in a timely manner through human mediation. …


In this paper, we investigate a downlink model for underlay cognitive radio networks (CRNs). In particular, we assume that the secondary transmitter (SU-Tx) sends common packets to secondary receivers (SU-Rx) under the outage constraint of a single primary user (PU) and the peak transmit power constraint of the SU-Tx. All channels undergo Rayleigh fading. Given these settings, an adaptive transmit power policy for the SU-Tx is considered. Moreover, the cumulative distribution function (CDF) and probability density function (PDF) for packet transmission time are derived to analyze the timeout probability, the average packet transmission time and the average time a packet spends in the system for the SU-Rx having the best channel condition. Numerical results are provided to investigate the impact of the PU transmit power and channel mean powers on secondary network performance. The results show that when the number of SU-Rx becomes large, the timeout probability and the packet average time in the system decrease to a minimum.


Oscillatory transmission of biconically tapered monomode fibers is related to the nonadiabaticity of the process. In this paper, we show that large power transfer from HE11 to other modes, thus large amplitude in the oscillations, cannot be predicted by a formalism using only two coupled local mode equations. A new model based on successive use of the sudden approximation and the adiabatic approximation is considered. Its predictions show good agreement with experimental results.


We fabricate and study quantum dot structures incorporating quasi-one-dimensional excited states. The structures are realized by graded bandgap GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wires self-formed inside inverted tetrahedral pyramids. The ground state transitions exhibit typical characteristics of fully confined excitons, including single photon emission. Efficient carrier thermalization and relaxation, as well as correlated photon emission is observed also among the excited states, indicating the formation of quasi-one-dimensional multi-exciton states. These structures offer interesting possibilities for collecting and directing charge carriers towards heterostructured potential traps.


Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an umbrella term for disorders involving deficits in social interaction, stereotyped behaviours and communication difficulties. A growing area of research has recently focused on motor deficits in ASD, which have been noted in clinical observations and diagnostic criteria since autism was first described. However, motor deficits have traditionally carried little weight in the diagnostic procedure. Until recent changes to diagnostic criteria (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th edition: DSM-5), a comorbid diagnosis of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD: a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting motor development) was not possible for those with ASD and motor deficits. This exclusion criterion prompted an investigation of the nature of motor deficits in ASD, questioning whether they are characteristically different from motor deficits in DCD. Previous literature suggested a possible double dissociation in the use of vision and proprioception to guide movement and perception in ASD and DCD, with a reliance on proprioception in ASD, and an over-reliance on vision in DCD. Motor deficits were first investigated by looking at high-level motor skills, and then more basic sensory processing associated with movement to investigate this possible dissociation. There was no significant difference between ASD and DCD on a standardised motor battery (Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2nd edition: MABC-2), with 70% of children with ASD showing motor difficulties within the clinical range on tasks such as timed manual dexterity tasks and balance. Similarly, children with ASD and poor motor skills were indistinguishable from children with DCD on a number of basic motor tasks manipulating visual and proprioceptive cues. These tests included spatial location matching, reaching, goal-directed movements towards proprioceptively-defined targets, and the rubber hand illusion. Children with poor motor skills with a diagnosis of either ASD or DCD seemed to either rely more heavily on visual cues, or behaved in a similar way to typically developing (TD) children. In the spatial location matching task, children with ASD and spared motor skills showed a tendency to give more weight to proprioceptive cues, however too few children with ASD and spared motor skills took part in other tasks to fully investigate cue weighting in this subgroup. Mirroring the overlap in social and motor skills in the clinical groups, a study of the relationship between perceived social and motor ability in a large sample of TD children highlighted the related nature of these developmental domains in typical development. It is concluded that motor deficits in ASD are not ASD-specific but are instead indicative of an additional diagnosis of DCD. This is supported by the recent change to diagnostic criteria.


Abstract. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) have fallen steadily across the US over the last 15 years. At the same time, NOx concentrations decrease on weekends relative to weekdays, largely without co-occurring changes in other gas-phase emissions, due to patterns of diesel truck activities. These trends taken together provide two independent constraints on the role of NOx in the nonlinear chemistry of atmospheric oxidation. In this context, we interpret interannual trends in wintertime ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) in the San Joaquin Valley of California, a location with the worst aerosol pollution in the US and where a large portion of aerosol mass is NH4NO3. Here, we show that NOx reductions have simultaneously decreased nighttime and increased daytime NH4NO3 production over the last decade. We find a substantial decrease in NH4NO3 since 2000 and conclude that this decrease is due to reduced nitrate radical-initiated production at night in residual layers that are decoupled from fresh emissions at the surface. Further reductions in NOx are imminent in California, and nationwide, and we make a quantitative prediction of the response of NH4NO3. We show that the combination of rapid chemical production and efficient NH4NO3 loss via deposition of gas-phase nitric acid implies that high aerosol days in cities in the San Joaquin Valley air basin are responsive to local changes in NOx within those individual cities. Our calculations indicate that large decreases in NOx in the future will not only lower wintertime NH4NO3 concentrations but also cause a transition in the dominant NH4NO3 source from nighttime to daytime chemistry.


This Essay discusses how comparative law played and plays a role in the statutory development of corporate laws. The influence of laws of other systems on the development of statutory law is common, explicit, and represents a tradition that accompanied legal reforms since the very beginning of the development of legislation. Focusing on modern corporate law, I argue (but the argument could be extended to many other legal fields) that it is necessary to distinguish two basic ways in which comparative law influences legal reforms in one particular jurisdiction. The first one is through regulatory competition among different systems. In order to make one system more competitive and attractive, or to remove disadvantages affecting the economic development of one system, legislatures can respond to foreign threats by changing their laws either borrowing rules and institutions from other systems (legal transplants), or by adopting rules designed to protect their interests vis-a-vis the effects of foreign law. The second "channel" through which comparative law plays a role in shaping local rules is a top-down harmonization process. Different reasons can suggest a harmonized regulation of corporate law: the need to create a common market in which all economic actors can operate in a leveled playing-field, the removal of barriers to commerce among states, the desire to reduce regulatory arbitrage, the goal of ensuring to all constituencies of different jurisdictions a similar level of legal protection, and so on. Typically, international agreements can foster harmonization, and the paradigmatic example of this are corporate law (and securities regulation) directives in the European Union, but examples are also present in the U.S.: consider, for example, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 that introduced some common rules in the field of corporate governance at the federal level, or the role played by the Model Business Corporation Act. The rules contained in these legal instruments are rarely developed out of the blue. Generally they take into account regulations already existing in one or more jurisdictions, and through a negotiation process tend to extend them also to other systems. In this Essay I will discuss several examples of how comparative law influenced the development of statutory corporate law either through the mechanism of regulatory competition, or through harmonization; both in the U.S. and in the European Union. I will conclude by considering the role of comparative law in corporate law statutory evolution.


We analyze whether antitrust might provide an alternative and perhaps superior approach to regulating consumer subprime mortgage lending. Behavioral exploitation antitrust targets commercial conduct of the sort that was observed in consumer subprime mortgage lending in the years leading up to 2007. The welfare effects of that conduct are easily established. Antitrust-based regulation can mitigate those welfare effects. Regulation that does exist, which operates at the level of the individual transaction, may be easily avoided, may be short-sighted, may suffer from enforcement problems that public choice theory explains, and/or may overreach by removing consumer choice. We show that antitrust enforcement under a rule of reason approach avoids those pitfalls. However, none of the three primary approaches to antitrust enforcement – prohibitions of anticompetitive conduct by a dominant firm, prohibitions of anticompetitive agreements, and prohibitions of mergers with incipient anticompetitive effects – in their current form permit resort to antitrust remedies in the consumer subprime mortgage market. We argue that liberalized standards for antitrust enforcement under both Clayton Act section 7 (regulating mergers) and Sherman Act section 1 (regulating concerted conduct), perhaps restricted narrowly to this and closely analogous markets, would be appropriate to gain the benefits of regulation through behavioral exploitation antitrust.


BACKGROUND: Child homelessness is correlated with a wide range of health and psychosocial challenges including poor school performance, juvenile justice involvement, and heightened risk of exposure to early-life violence and trauma. Despite this, participation in therapy tends to be low. Animal Assisted Play TherapyTM (AAPT), a comprehensive model that systematically integrates trained therapy animals into play therapy, serves as a compelling modality for engaging this population into treatment. The tenets of AAPT are aligned with several clinical goal areas that homeless children might address in therapy, including the strengthening of attachment relationships with primary caregivers. METHODS: The study integrated analysis of projective drawings and accompanying narratives with the treatment records of 11 children (ages 6-11) who received canine assisted therapy while residing in an urban, mid-Atlantic family homeless shelter. All children worked with a clinician trained in AAPT and participated in at least three therapy sessions with a qualified therapy dog present. Each child created a drawing in response to the prompt: "Draw a picture of a child and a dog", and told a story based on the contents of their drawing. Parent/caregivers of each child participated in a qualitative interview that elicited feedback and reflections on the therapy process. Grounded constructivist theory and interpretive description were used to conduct both individual and cross-participant analysis. Analysis was further informed by children's case history files and parent interviews about children's developmental history. RESULTS: The projective drawings communicated aspects of homeless children's relationships with the therapy dog and, in turn, with their primary caregivers. Developmentally, children drew at lower levels than would be expected for their age. Each child personalized their drawing, either by identifying the protagonist as their gender, or including a physical characteristic (e.g. clothing, hairstyle) unique to the child; this suggests that the children tapped into their personal experience. Several themes emerged from analysis of the drawings and narratives including representations of lived and wished-for attachment experiences. Children depicted relationships between the characters in their drawings and narratives that were characterized by emotional closeness as well as frequent separations and reunions. Children also highlighted the importance of learning tasks related to training and caring for the dogs. These themes were reflected in the children's treatment records and the parent/caregiver interviews. Parent/caregivers described their child's experience in therapy positively, and identified the therapy dog as a component of the treatment's success. IMPLICATIONS: Projective drawings enabled homeless children to communicate their attachment experiences in a manner sensitive to their developmental needs. Themes that emerged from this study inform further research on specific benefits of animal assisted therapy. Specifically, the themes of lived and wished-for attachment experiences suggest that further research on this modality might focus on the ways that the modality allows children to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. The drawings created during this study are a valuable tool in understanding the experiences of homeless children, and lay the groundwork for further study of the use of projective drawings for exploring children's experiences in therapy.


The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1200 B.C.) in southern Caucasia marked the first appearance of a radically altered regional sociopolitical tradition founded upon newly empowered elites sequestered in fortified citadels. The archaeology of the era indicates a significant break from the preceding Middle Bronze Age, when large burial mounds and a dearth of settlement sites have long suggested the prevalence of pastoral nomadism and mobile sociopolitical institutions. The patterns of social order and institutional formation that developed in the Late Bronze Age appear to have endured well into the Iron Age, exerting a profound impact upon later historical empires, such as Urartu. The investigations of Project ArAGATS are examining the rise of complex societies in Caucasia by detailing the nature of social organization and the apparatus of political authority that constituted this emergent tradition. Having completed an archaeological survey of the Tsakahovit Plain region in 2000, we initiated phase II of our investigations in 2002 with intensive excavations at Tsakahovit and Gegharot fortresses, two settlement sites with well-preserved strata from three major archaeological periods: the Kura-Araxes III phase of the Early Bronze Age, the Late Bronze Age, and the Yervandid period of the mid first millennium B.C. (sixth-third centuries B.C.). The Early Bronze Age settlement at Gegharot is notable not only for its unexpected large size, good preservation, and terraced construction, but also for the illumination it promises to shed on the terminal era of the Kura-Araxes horizon. With the discovery of stratigraphically superimposed Late Bronze Age and Yervandid occupations at Tsakahovit, continuing research at the site promises to shed light on both the initial emergence of sociopolitical complexity in southern Caucasia and the reconfiguration of local practices in the aftermath of the Urartian imperial collapse.


The function of the left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG) is highly disputed. A number of language processing studies have linked the region to the processing of syntactical structure. Still, there is little agreement when it comes to defining why linguistic structures differ in their effects on the L-IFG. In a number of languages, the processing of object-initial sentences affects the L-IFG more than the processing of subject-initial ones, but frequency and distribution differences may act as confounding variables. Syntactically complex structures (like the object-initial construction in Danish) are often less frequent and only viable in certain contexts. With this confound in mind, the L-IFG activation may be sensitive to other variables than a syntax manipulation on its own. The present fMRI study investigates the effect of a pragmatically appropriate context on the processing of subject-initial and object-initial clauses with the IFG as our ROI. We find that Danish object-initial clauses yield a higher BOLD response in L-IFG, but we also find an interaction between appropriateness of context and word order. This interaction overlaps with traditional syntax areas in the IFG. For object-initial clauses, the effect of an appropriate context is bigger than for subject-initial clauses. This result is supported by an acceptability study that shows that, given appropriate contexts, object-initial clauses are considered more appropriate than subject-initial clauses. The increased L-IFG activation for processing object-initial clauses without a supportive context may be interpreted as reflecting either reinterpretation or the recipients' failure to correctly predict word order from contextual cues.


In Section 1502 of Dodd-Frank, Congress instructed the SEC to draft rules that would require public companies to report annually on whether their products contain certain Congolese minerals. This unprecedented legislation and the SEC rulemaking that followed have inspired an impassioned and ongoing debate between those who view these efforts as a costly blunder and those who view them as a measured response to human-rights abuses committed by the armed groups that control many mines in the Congo. This Article for the first time brings empirical evidence to bear on this controversy. I present data on the inaugural disclosures that companies submitted to the SEC. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of these submissions, I argue that Congress's hope of supply-chain transparency goes unfulfilled, but amendments to the rules could yield useful information without increasing compliance costs. The SEC filings expose key loopholes in the regulatory structure and illustrate the importance of fledgling institutional initiatives that trace and verify corporate supply chains. This Article's proposal would eliminate the loopholes and refocus the transparency mandate on disclosure of the supply-chain information that has come to exist thanks to these institutional efforts.


Much has been written about prospects for U.S. current account adjustment, including the possibility of what is sometimes referred to as a disorderly correction: a sharp fall in the exchange rate that boosts interest rates, depresses stock prices, and weakens economic activity. This paper assesses some of the empirical evidence bearing on the likelihood of the disorderly correction scenario, drawing on the experience of previous current account adjustments in industrial economies. We examined the paths of key economic performance indicators before, during, and after the onset of adjustment, building on the analysis of Freund (2000). We found little evidence among past adjustment episodes of the features highlighted by the disorderly correction hypothesis. Although some episodes in our sample experienced significant shortfalls in GDP growth after the onset of adjustment, these shortfalls were not associated with significant and sustained depreciations of real exchange rates, increases in real interest rates, or declines in real stock prices. By contrast, it was among the episodes where GDP growth picked up during adjustment that the most substantial depreciations of real exchange rates occurred. These findings do not preclude the possibility that future current account adjustments could be disruptive, but they weaken the historical basis for predicting such an outcome.


The objective of this paper is to present the key findings on the exploration of safety culture of bus drivers in Norway and Greece. An empirical study was conducted to examine whether and how membership in different socio-cultural units influences transport safety behaviour and outcomes in professional transport. Qualitative interviews with bus drivers in Norway and Greece were conducted, followed by a survey among 228 bus drivers in Norway and Greece. Our study provides four main results. First, bus drivers in Greece report of more aggressive violations in traffic than Norwegian bus drivers. Second, aggressive violations are predicted by national transport safety culture, specified as descriptive norms ("violations") and values (individual freedom to take risk in traffic). Third, respondents' aggressive violations in traffic predicted their accident involvement, although "work related variables" were more strongly correlated. Fourth, organizational safety culture contributes negatively to aggressive transport safety behaviours, meaning that a positive organizational safety culture may reduce (the negative impact of national transport safety culture on) aggressive violations in traffic. Although more research definitely is needed, our study indicates a relationship between national transport safety culture, transport safety behaviour and accident involvement, that perhaps could be developed further to shed light on national transport safety records.


The impact that widespread disasters have on communications systems has evolved over time - fueled by advancements in technology and cemented by societal adoption. As the use of IP-based communications systems, both wired and wireless, has become ubiquitous, we as a society have become dangerously dependent. We vest our banking and healthcare records in cloud-based services, and we have systematically shifted our preferred ways of staying in touch with friends and family away from voice communications toward online social networks. Outages of these systems that occur as a consequence of man-made or natural disasters leave us in communications darkness and without the local means to reconstruct our communications tools. In this paper, we propose a Survivable Social Network (SSN) that seeks to put the means of rebuilding familiar-feeling, modern communications tools into the hands of members of neighborhoods, schools, organizations and communities and demonstrate how such a system can be architected and replicated.


Rapid changes in the syllabus require that schools keep changing teaching and learning resources, as well as teaching and evaluation methodologies. Whenever a change in the syllabus is effected, teachers need to be informed of the changes, retrained, and supported to effectively implement the changes. However, curricula changes in Kenya are rarely followed by in-service training to equip teachers with skills of handling the new curriculum. Changes in an existing syllabus also require that schools and parents purchase new textbooks and other instructional material. But as Rotich (2004) established, the cost of textbooks is too high for most parents, and therefore they prioritize basic essential needs before thinking of purchasing textbooks. Successful adoption of a new syllabus by teachers also requires that they have formed a positive attitude towards the new syllabus; otherwise it may face resistance in form of indifference towards the syllabus and lack of enthusiasm in its implementation. These challenges require headteachers, as the chief curriculum implementation supervisors, to adopt effective coping strategies in order to manage the changes in a way that does not compromise education quality. The study therefore set out to find out challenges facing secondary school headteachers in the implementation of a new syllabus, and the strategies they use to cope with such challenges. The study employed a descriptive survey design, and was carried out in public secondary schools in of Thika East and Thika West Districts. The target population for the study consisted of all the headteachers and teachers from the 30 public secondary schools in Thika East and Thika West Districts. From this, 15 schools were randomly selected for the study. From each of these schools, the headteacher and 3 teachers randomly selected from all the teachers in that school participated in the study. Therefore, the study sample comprised of 15 headteachers and 45 teachers from 15 secondary schools in Thika East and Thika West Districts. Data was collected using questionnaires for teachers and headteachers. Data was analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques. Quantitative data was analysed using simple descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, means and percentages. Qualitative data was analyzed by organizing them into similar themes and tallying the number of similar responses. The study established that headteachers have been facing major challenges in the implementation of curricular changes. The challenges faced include inability of schools to promptly procure textbooks and instructional resources for the new curriculum, lack of parental support in procurement of textbooks, inadequate in-service training of teachers, and negative attitudes of teachers towards curricular changes. Although headteachers have been employing various strategies to deal with the challenges faced, such as having students to share textbooks, encouraging teachers and sensitizing parents on the need to support schools through purchase of books, more needs to be/done to assist schools implement curricular changes without compromising quality of education. The study concludes that curriculum development process in Kenya has not given adequate attention to the school-level change process. When changes in the curriculum are effected, the ministry of education does not ensure that teachers are adequately trained on the changes prior to implementation and schools are not adequately supported to procure required textbooks. In addition, the Kenyan teacher is never considered in the curriculum development process, and therefore holds negative attitude towards curricular changes. Relevant recommendations are given for curriculum developers, Ministry of Education and school administrators.


Description: Handbook of Offshore Oil and Gas Operations is an authoritative source providing extensive up-to-date coverage of the technology used in the exploration, drilling, production, and operations in an offshore setting. Offshore oil and gas activity is growing at an expansive rate and this must-have training guide covers the full spectrum including geology, types of platforms, exploration methods, production and enhanced recovery methods, pipelines, and envinronmental managment and impact, specifically worldwide advances in study, control, and prevention of the industry's impact on the marine environment and its living resources. In addition, this book provides a go-to glossary for quick reference. Handbook of Offshore Oil and Gas Operations empowers oil and gas engineers and managers to understand and capture on one of the fastest growing markets in the energy sector today. Quickly become familiar with the oil and gas offshore industry, including deepwater operations Understand the full spectrum of the business, including environmental impacts and future challenges Gain knowledge and exposure on critical standards and real-world case studies


The relative alignments of mid-infrared traced Galactic bubbles are compared to the orientation of the mean Galactic magnetic field in the disk. The orientations of bubbles in the northern Galactic plane were measured and are consistent with random orientations—no preferential alignment with respect to the Galactic disk was found. A subsample of H ii region driven Galactic bubbles was identified, and as a single population they show random orientations. When this subsample was further divided into subthermal and suprathermal H ii regions, based on hydrogen radio recombination linewidths, the subthermal H ii regions showed a marginal deviation from random orientations, but the suprathermal H ii regions showed significant alignment with the Galactic plane. The mean orientation of the Galactic disk magnetic field was characterized using new near-infrared starlight polarimetry and the suprathermal H ii regions were found to preferentially align with the disk magnetic field. If suprathermal linewidths are associated with younger H ii regions, then the evolution of young H ii regions is significantly affected by the Galactic magnetic field. As H ii regions age, they cease to be strongly linked to the Galactic magnetic field, as surrounding density variations come to dominate their morphological evolution. From the new observations, the ratios of magnetic-to-ram pressures in the expanding ionization fronts were estimated for younger H ii regions.


This thesis by publications is a substantial contribution to understanding current and anticipated migration practices for Indigenous people in the Northern Territory of Australia. In contrast to existing scholarly knowledge about the relationship of residential migration to Indigenous demographic futures, this thesis argues we should anticipate bifurcations from past flows and patterns in remote areas. The purpose is to explore a range of demographic and social issues for their influence on residential migration. Drawing on parallel experiences in comparable developed nations, a series of investigative studies demonstrate the force of migration for substantially changing population distributions and compositions for small, isolated and dispersed Indigenous populations like those of the Northern Territory. While policy approaches to Indigenous affairs continue to portray remote communities as the 'rightful' places for Indigenous people, this thesis argues for more encompassing theories, a broadening of the research agenda, a revision of demographic discourse, and a shift in policy paradigms. The methodological approach is positivist using a mix of empirical, ethnographic and investigative studies undertaken during the course of the candidature, and as part of a broader research program on changing Indigenous demographics in the Northern Territory and elsewhere. Investigations span a range of themes including: Indigenous population estimation, enumeration and forecasting; women, migration and gendered demography; technology and Indigenous futures; and education. The focus is on describing how changing interrelations between these might alter future migration patterns. Equally the research emphasises the value and relevance of systematic perspectives on Indigenous migration and mobility of all types (permanent residential, short-term and so on). As a result, this body of work is a call for policy makers to stay abreast of developments proposed by the results presented herein. Even partial fulfillment of the trends anticipated will require planning and program responses to deal with social, demographic and economic consequences. In doing so, policy 'blind spots' might be avoided so that unintended consequences and misguided institutional scopes are not permitted to undermine continuing attempts to provide Indigenous Australians with opportunities for generating and enjoying lives of relative abundance which are afforded to most Australians.


There currently exists no uniform method for filling vacancies in the United States Senate, leaving the states to create and implement their own vacancy-filling procedures. As a result of recent problems under this system, such as ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich's notorious scandal in Illinois, some in Congress have suggested a standardized method for filling Senate vacancies. However, an apparent constitutional conflict between the Elections Clause and the Seventeenth Amendment's vacancy-filling clause presents the question of whether such standardization could be accomplished with federal legislation, or whether it would require amending the Constitution. Applying the textual, structural, and historical approaches of constitutional interpretation to this conflict shows that the Seventeenth Amendment did not alter Congress's Elections Clause authority to fashion regulations for all types of Senate elections, including those to fill vacancies. Since the Amendment's primary goal was to eliminate state legislatures' selection of senators, it would be an absurd textual result to interpret the Amendment as giving states any exclusive authority over vacancy-filling elections. Such an interpretation would also create structural inconsistency among the Constitution's elections provisions and contravene the intent of the Seventeenth Amendment's framers. Thus, if Congress wants to create a uniform method for filling U.S. Senate vacancies, it can—and should—do so through regular federal legislation, which, even after the Seventeenth Amendment's ratification, remains a constitutionally-permissible exercise of Congress's Elections Clause authority. This comment is available in American University Law Review: http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/aulr/vol61/iss2/4 ISTA.OFF.TO.PRINTER (DO NOT DELETE) 3/26/2012 8:09 PM


This report summarizes and analyzes the responses of various organizations that provided assistance to the National Oncology Institute (Instituto Oncológico Nacional, ION) of Panama following the overexposure of 28 radiation therapy patients at the ION in late 2000 and early 2001. The report also looks at the long-term measures that were adopted at the ION in response to the overexposure incident, as well as implications that the incident has for other cancer treatment centers worldwide. In March 2001, the director of the ION was notified of serious overreactions in patients undergoing radiation therapy for cancer treatment. Of the 478 patients treated for pelvic cancers between August 2000 and March 2001, 3 of them had died, possibly from an overdose of radiation. In response, the Government of Panama invited international experts to carry out a full investigation of the situation. Medical physicists from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) were among those invited. They ascertained that 56 patients treated with partially blocked teletherapy fields for cancers of the uterine cervix, endometrium, prostate, or rectum, had had their treatment times calculated using a computerized treatment planning system. PAHO's medical physicists calculated the absorbed doses received by the patients and found that, of these 56 patients, only 11 had been treated with acceptable errors of +/-5%. The doses received by 28 of the 56 patients had errors ranging from +10 to +105%. These are the patients identified by ION physicists as overexposed. Twenty-three of the 28 overexposed patients had died by September 2005, with at least 18 of the deaths being from radiation effects, mostly rectal complications. The clinical, psychological, and legal consequences of the overexposures crippled cancer treatments in Panama and prompted PAHO to assess radiation oncology practices in the countries of Latin American and the Caribbean. ION clinicians evaluated the outcome of 125 non-overexposed patients who had been treated in the same time period and for the same cancer sites as the overexposed patients. The clinicians uncovered a larger recurrence of cervical cancers than expected. The finding prompted PAHO to launch an initiative for the accreditation of radiation oncology centers in Latin America and the Caribbean, working in collaboration with professional societies for radiation oncologists, medical physicists, and radiotherapy technologists. The Latin American Association for Radiation Oncology (Asociación Latinoamericana de Terapia Radiante Oncológica) has established an accreditation commission. Accreditation will require that centers implement a comprehensive radiation oncology quality assurance program that follows international guidelines. Statistical data on patient outcomes will be collected in order to document needs in radiotherapy centers in Latin America and the Caribbean and to define future strategies for cancer treatment.


Physicians have the potential to decrease opioid misuse through appropriate prescribing practices. We examined the frequency of potentially inappropriate intravenous (IV) opioid use (where oral use would have been more appropriate) in patients hospitalized at a tertiary medical center. We excluded patients with cancer, patients receiving comfort care, and patients with gastrointestinal dysfunction. On the basis of recent guidance from the Society of Hospital Medicine, we defined IV doses as potentially inappropriate if administered more than 24 hours after an initial IV dose in patients who did not have nil per os status. Of the 200 patients studied, 31% were administered potentially inappropriate IV opioids at least once during their hospitalization, and 33% of all IV doses administered were potentially inappropriate. Given the numerous advantages of oral over IV opioids, this study suggests significant potential for improving prescribing practices to decrease risk of addiction, costs, and complications, ultimately improving the value of care provided.


A major challenge for stochastic optimization is the cost of updating model parameters especially when the number of parameters is large. Updating parameters frequently can prove to be computationally or monetarily expensive. In this paper, we introduce an efficient primal-dual based online algorithm that performs lazy updates to the parameter vector and show that its performance is competitive with reasonable strategies which have the benefit of hindsight. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in the online portfolio selection domain where a trader has to pay proportional transaction costs every time his portfolio is updated. Our Online Lazy Updates (OLU) algorithm takes into account the transaction costs while computing an optimal portfolio which results in sparse updates to the portfolio vector. We successfully establish the robustness and scalability of our lazy portfolio selection algorithm with extensive theoretical and experimental results on two real-world datasets.


In mechanism design with (partially) verifiable information, the revelation principle obtains in full generality if allocations are modelled as the product set of outcomes and verifiable information. Incentive constraints fully characterize the implementable set of these product- allocations. The revelation principle does not generally hold when an allocation is modelled as only an outcome. However, any outcome of an implementable product-allocation is also implementable under this restricted modelling, provided that the mechanism designer can expand communication by adding unverifiable messages and restrict communication by limiting the use of messages. A canonical representation of such mechanisms is presented, implying that an inalienable right of the agent to withhold evidence does not affect implementability.


This paper quantifies the scale and scope of the commercial real estate mortgage bond market in the period surrounding the 1920s in an attempt to better understand the role of retail mortgage debt in early urban development. In particular, this paper quantifies the size of the market, identifies risk factors affecting the coupon yield spread over Treasuries and utilizes a unique data set to construct a commercial mortgage price index over the period 1926-1935.A substantial retail appetite for real estate securities during this period may have significantly contributed to a real construction boom, but overly optimistic speculation in these securities may have led to overbuilding. The rapid deterioration of these securities and a near complete drop in issuance show, ex post, that investors were overconfident in building fundamentals during the boom years. The breakdown in the value of real estate securities as collateral assets preceded the crash of 1929 and may have contributed to the fall of asset prices more generally.


During tunnel excavation, stress redistribution produces plastic deformation and damage around the opening. Moreover, the surrounding soil can be either saturated or unsaturated. Suction has a significant influence on the mechanical behaviour of geomaterials. Depending on their stress state and on their moisture content, clay-based materials can exhibit either a ductile or a brittle behaviour. Plasticity leads to permanent strains and damage causes the deterioration of the soil elastic and hydraulic properties. The damage-plasticity model proposed in this work is formulated in terms of a damaged constitutive stress, defined from the principle of Bishop's hydro-mechanical stress (for unsaturated conditions), and from the principle of damaged effective stress used in Continuum Damage Mechanics. The evolution laws are obtained by using the principle of strain equivalence. This hydro-mechanical damage-plasticity model was implemented in a Finite Element code. The excavation of a tunnel is simulated at different constant suctions. The results obtained illustrate the influence of suction on the development of plastic and damaged zones.


Particle induced X-ray emission with a focused beam (μPIXE) and synchrotron-based X-ray micro-fluorescence (μSXRF) are used to determine the distribution and contents of trace elements in single cells. A proper sample preparation method is required to ensure that the elemental distribution is preserved spatially and quantitatively. The aim of this study was to establish an optimal sample preparation method for single whole cell microanalysis, compatible with both μPIXE and μSXRF techniques. To find the most efficient method, we used PC12 cells as the cellular model and compared four widely applied protocols using a combination of rinsing solutions (phosphate buffered saline or ammonium acetate) and fixation methods (cryofixation or chemical fixation with 3% paraformaldehyde or methanol). The results showed a loss of diffusible elements K and Mg and an increase in Na, S, Cl and Zn concentrations in chemically fixed cells compared to cryofixed cells. In addition, K/Na and Cl/K cellular ratios indicated a good preservation of the chemical and structural integrity of cryofixed cells but not those of chemically fixed ones. The disturbance of elemental distributions after chemical fixation was also observed on rat brain tissue sections. Our results suggest that the optimal sample preparation method to study elemental distribution in single whole cells prepared for X-ray microanalysis is achieved when cells are rinsed with ammonium acetate, quickly frozen by plunging into liquid nitrogen–chilled cryogenic fluid and freeze-dried at low temperatures. This protocol was also successfully validated on rat primary hippocampal neurons, a delicate in vitro neuronal model.


Introduction Longline fishing gear has a higher by-catch rate than any other type of commercial fishing gear. Nowadays, there is an urgent need to find efficient management strategies to mitigate by-catch and the use of new hook types could be one of them. This study investigates the effects of a longline fishery (which targets swordfish, Xiphias gladius, in the South Adriatic Sea) replacing the traditional J-type hook with a circle hook (C-type hook) on target and by-catch species. Methods For this purpose, a fishing trip of nine days – with seven fishing sets – was monitored. For both targeted swordfish and by-catch specimens caught (i.e., blue shark, Prionace glauca; pelagic stingray, Pteroplatytrygon violacea; and loggerhead turtle, Caretta caretta), data about the hook type used (J-type vs. C-type), the specimen size, and their capture condition were collected. Results and discussion With all species, we observed no significant difference in catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) or specimen lengths between the two hook types. In addition, the hook type did not significantly affect the capture condition of swordfish, pelagic stingray, or loggerhead turtle specimens; however, it significantly affected the capture condition of blue sharks. The percentage of blue shark specimens found in healthy condition was higher when using a C-type hook (71.5%) than when using a J-type hook (22.6%). Overall, these preliminary results suggest that the use of a C-type hook improves the condition of by-caught blue sharks without affecting the CPUE or size of the target species. In conclusion, the use of a C-type hook could reduce the detrimental effects of by-catch on some species in the Adriatic Sea; however, this finding needs to be confirmed by a study with a larger sample size.


One area where powder metallurgy has proven to be superior to other means of manufacturing is wear resistant structures. Highly wear resistant high speed steel powders are commonly used in both HIPped and pressed and sintered forms. The carbide size and structure obtained depends both on production conditions and carbide type but the carbide types are fixed by the alloy composition. Alternative carbides have different properties and can be introduced in new alloy compositions. This paper presents the development of a new material where the carbides are designed to be of the most useful type for a sintered tool steel. A mix of small hard carbides and larger less hard carbides in a matrix capable of being hardened gives a good combination of properties. In some applications, the properties achieved are more effective than those obtained from the pressed and sintered M3/2 and M2 currently in use.