Importance
Data regarding outcomes after major head and neck ablation and reconstruction in the growing geriatric population (specifically ≥80 years of age) are limited. Such information would be extremely valuable in preoperative discussions with elderly patients about their surgical risks and expected functional outcomes.

Objectives
To identify patient and surgical factors associated with 30-day postoperative complications, 90-day mortality, and 90-day functional decline; to explore whether an association exists between the type of reconstructive procedure and outcome; and to create a preoperative risk stratification system for these outcomes.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This retrospective, multi-institutional cohort study included patients 80 years or older undergoing pedicle or free-flap reconstruction after an ablative head and neck surgery from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2017, at 17 academic centers. Data were analyzed from February 1 through April 20, 2019.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Thirty-day serious complication rate, 90-day mortality, and 90-day decline in functional status. Preoperative comorbidity and frailty were assessed using the American Society of Anesthesiologists classification, Adult Comorbidity Evaluation-27 score, and Modified Frailty Index. Multivariable clustered logistic regressions were performed. Conjunctive consolidation was used to create a risk stratification system.

Results
Among 376 patients included in the analysis (253 [67.3%] men), 281 (74.7%) underwent free-flap reconstruction. The median age was 83 years (range, 80-98 years). A total of 193 patients (51.3%) had 30-day serious complications, 30 (8.0%) died within 90 days, and 36 of those not dependent at baseline declined to dependent status (11.0%). Type of flap (free vs pedicle, bone vs no bone) was not associated with these outcomes. Variables associated with worse outcomes were age of at least 85 years (odds ratio [OR] for 90-day mortality, 1.19 [95% CI 1.14-1.26]), moderate or severe comorbidities (OR for 30-day complications, 1.80 [95% CI, 1.34-2.41]; OR for 90-day mortality, 3.33 [95% CI, 1.29-8.60]), body mass index (BMI) of less than 25 (OR for 30-day complications, 0.95 [95% CI, 0.91-0.99]), high frailty (OR for 30-day complications, 1.72 [95% CI, 1.10-2.67]), duration of surgery (OR for 90-day functional decline, 2.94 [95% CI, 1.81-4.79]), flap failure (OR for 90-day mortality, 3.56 [95% CI, 1.47-8.62]), additional operations (OR for 30-day complications, 5.40 [95% CI, 3.09-9.43]; OR for 90-day functional decline, 2.94 [95% CI, 1.81-4.79]), and surgery of the maxilla, oral cavity, or oropharynx (OR for 90-day functional decline, 2.51 [95% CI, 1.30-4.85]). Age, BMI, comorbidity, and frailty were consolidated into a novel 3-tier risk classification system.

Conclusions and Relevance
Important demographic, clinical, and surgical characteristics were found to be associated with postoperative complications, mortality, and functional decline in patients 80 years or older undergoing major head and neck surgery. Free flap and bony reconstruction were not independently associated with worse outcomes. A novel risk stratification system is presented.


The National Budget for the fiscal year 2007-08 (FY08) and the Revised Budget of FY07 were placed before the country on 7 June 2007. The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), in continuation of its tradition of presenting its analysis of budgets prepared by successive governments, has prepared the following analysis of the budget for FY08. The CPD analysis draws upon data and information from various ministries, departments and agencies of the government as well as other sources. The CPD also undertakes a thorough examination of the various aspects of the budget for FY08 which was prepared by the Caretaker Government (CTG).


This article illustrates how corporate entrepreneurship links the firm's long term development process with the external environment. Based on the relaxation of several of the unrealistic assumptions in classic economic theory, it also illustrates how corporate entrepreneurship can be an important driver of change in the firm's environment. More specifically, the article demonstrates that: 1) one important consequence of entrepreneurship is the creation of more business opportunities, leading to an ever-abundant availability of new business potential; 2) these opportunities can be classified into three categories based on how they come into existence, and by whom they are exploited; 3) this leads to implications regarding strategic approaches to venture selection and pursuit. Each opportunity type is illustrated with examples from the online computer gaming industry. A number of preliminary managerial implications are presented, based on differences in the creation and nature of opportunities in each category.


Vibrations in a granular material can spontaneously produce convection rolls reminiscent of those seen in fluids. Magnetic resonance imaging provides a sensitive and noninvasive probe for the detection of these convection currents, which have otherwise been difficult to observe. A magnetic resonance imaging study of convection in a column of poppy seeds yielded data about the detailed shape of the convection rolls and the depth dependence of the convection velocity. The velocity was found to decrease exponentially with depth; a simple model for this behavior is presented here.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the veterinary version of the bladder tumor antigen (V-BTA) test as a screening test for transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the lower urinary tract of dogs.

ANIMALS
229 client-owned dogs.

PROCEDURE
Urine samples from dogs were shipped overnight to a single laboratory to facilitate testing within 48 hours of collection by use of the V-BTA rapid latex agglutination urine dipstick test. Groups of dogs included the following: 1) dogs with TCC of the lower urinary tract, 2) healthy control dogs, 3) unhealthy control dogs with non-TCC urinary tract disease, and 4) unhealthy control dogs without urinary tract disease. Test sensitivity and specificity were calculated by use of standard methods. Logistic models were developed to assess the effect of disease status, test conditions, urine composition, and signalment on the performance of the V-BTA test.

RESULTS
A total of 229 urine samples were analyzed, including 48 from dogs with suspected (n = 3) or confirmed (45) TCC. Test sensitivities were 88, 87, and 85% for all dogs with (suspected and confirmed) TCC, dogs with confirmed TCC at any site, and dogs with confirmed TCC of the urinary bladder, respectively. Test specificities were 84, 41, and 86% for healthy control dogs, unhealthy control dogs with non-TCC urinary tract disease, and unhealthy control dogs without urinary tract disease, respectively. The test performed slightly better on centrifuged urine samples than on uncentrifuged urine samples.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Our results indicate that the V-BTA test is useful in screening for urinary tract TCC in dogs.


The early postnatal period is a unique time of brain development, as diminishing amounts of neurogenesis coexist with waves of gliogenesis. Understanding the molecular regulation of early postnatal gliogenesis may provide clues to normal and pathological embryonic brain ontogeny, particularly in regards to the development of astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Cyclin dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5) contributes to neuronal migration and cell cycle control during embryogenesis, and to the differentiation of neurons and oligodendrocytes during adulthood. However, Cdk5's function in the postnatal period and within discrete progenitor lineages is unknown. Therefore, we selectively removed Cdk5 from nestin-expressing cells and their progeny by giving transgenic mice (nestin-CreERT2/R26R-YFP/CDK5flox/flox [iCdk5] and nestin-CreERT2/R26R-YFP/CDK5wt/wt [WT]) tamoxifen during postnatal (P) days P2-P 4 or P7-P 9, and quantified and phenotyped recombined (YFP+) cells at P14 and P21. When Cdk5 gene deletion was induced in nestin-expressing cells and their progeny during the wave of cortical and hippocampal gliogenesis (P2-P4), significantly fewer YFP+ cells were evident in the cortex, corpus callosum, and hippocampus. Phenotypic analysis revealed the cortical decrease was due to fewer YFP+ astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, with a slightly earlier influence seen in oligodendrocytes vs. astrocytes. This effect on cortical gliogenesis was accompanied by a decrease in YFP+ proliferative cells, but not increased cell death. The role of Cdk5 in gliogenesis appeared specific to the early postnatal period, as induction of recombination at a later postnatal period (P7-P9) resulted in no change YFP+ cell number in the cortex or hippocampus. Thus, glial cells that originate from nestin-expressing cells and their progeny require Cdk5 for proper development during the early postnatal period.


To improve the suitability of the Darwin Core standard for the research and management of alien species, the standard needs to express the native status of organisms, how well established they are and how they came to occupy a location. To facilitate this, we propose:
 1. To adopt a controlled vocabulary for the existing Darwin Core term dwc:establishmentMeans
 2. To elevate the pathway term from the Invasive Species Pathways extension to become a new Darwin Core term dwc:pathway maintained as part of the Darwin Core standard
 3. To adopt a new Darwin Core term dwc:degreeOfEstablishment with an associated controlled vocabulary
 These changes to the standard will allow users to clearly state whether an occurrence of a species is native to a location or not, how it got there (pathway), and to what extent the species has become a permanent feature of the location. By improving Darwin Core for capturing and sharing these data, we aim to improve the quality of occurrence and checklist data in general and to increase the number of potential uses of these data.


"Recent advances in approximate Bayesian computation methodology: application in structural dynamics." Presentation given at the ENL Workshop, 9-10 January 2017, Bristol, United Kingdom.In
 this work, a new variant of the approximate Bayesian computation (ABC)
algorithms is presented based on the concept of the nested sampling (NS)
 algorithm proposed by Skilling [Ref.1] and an ellipsoidal sampling
technique shown in Mukherjee et al. [Ref.2]. The ABC algorithms have been
widely used for parameter estimation and model selection in different
fields mainly when the likelihood function is intractable or cannot be
approached in a closed form. However, those algorithms suffer from the
high rejection rates during the sampling process. To overcome this
problem, the authors propose a new variant of ABC algorithms called
ABC-NS. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm will be compared with
the ABC based on sequential Monte Carlo (ABC-SMC) sampler. The obtained
results show how the ABC-NS outperforms the ABC-SMC in terms of
computational efficiency while achieving the same or better results.
Several examples have been proposed to illustrate the efficiency of the
ABC-NS compared with the ABC-SMC for parameter estimation and model
selection issues.Ref.1: J. Skilling (2006) Nested sampling for general Bayesian computation. Bayesian Analysis, 1(4):833-860 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/06-BA127]Ref.2: P. Mukherjee, D. Parkinson and A.R. Liddle (2006) A Nested Sampling Algorithm for Cosmological Model Selection. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 638 (2). L51-L54 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/501068]


The hemipteran suborder Auchenorrhyncha is a highly diverse, ecologically and agriculturally important group of primarily phytophagous insects which has been a source of phylogenetic contention for many years. Here, we have used transcriptome sequencing to assemble 2139 orthologues from 84 auchenorrhynchan species representing 27 families; this is the largest and most taxonomically comprehensive phylogenetic dataset for this group to date. We used both maximum likelihood and multispecies coalescent analyses to reconstruct the evolutionary history in this group using amino acid, nucleotide, and degeneracy‐coded nucleotide orthologue data. Although many relationships at the superfamily level were consistent between analyses, several differing, highly supported topologies were recovered using different datasets and reconstruction methods, most notably the differential placement of Cercopoidea as sister to either Cicadoidea or Membracoidea. To further interrogate the recovered topologies, we explored the contribution of genes as partitioned by third‐codon‐position guanine‐cytosine (GC) content and heterogeneity. We found consistent support for several relationships, including Cercopoidea + Cicadoidea, most often in genes that would be expected to be enriched for the true species tree if recombination‐based dynamics in GC content have contributed to the observed GC heterogeneity. Our results provide a generally well‐supported framework for future studies of auchenorrhynchan phylogeny and suggest that transcriptome sequencing is likely to be a fruitful source of phylogenetic data for resolving its clades. However, we caution that future work should account for the potential effects of GC content heterogeneity on relationships recovered in this group.


The transient frequency response (TFR) method has been widely developed and applied in the literature to identify and detect potential defects such as leakage and blockage in water supply pipe systems. This type of method was found to be efficient, economic and non-intrusive for pipeline condition assessment and diagnosis, but its applications so far are mainly limited to single and simple pipeline systems. This paper aims to extend the TFR-based leak detection method to relatively more complex pipeline connection situations. The branched and looped pipe junctions are firstly investigated for their influences to the system TFR, so that their effects can be characterized and separated from the effect of other components and potential leakage defects in the system. The leak-induced patterns of transient responses are derived analytically using the transfer matrix method for systems with different pipe junctions, which thereafter are used for the analysis of pipe leakage conditions in the system. The developed method is validated through different numerical experiments in this study. Based on the analytical analysis and numerical results, the applicability and accuracy as well as the limitations of the developed TFR-based leak detection method are discussed for practical applications in the paper.


Conditional image synthesis aims to create an image according to some multi-modal guidance in the forms of textual descriptions, reference images, and image blocks to preserve, as well as their combinations. In this paper, instead of investigating these control signals separately, we propose a new two-stage architecture, M6-UFC, to unify any number of multi-modal controls. In M6-UFC, both the diverse control signals and the synthesized image are uniformly represented as a sequence of discrete tokens to be processed by Transformer. Different from existing two-stage autoregressive approaches such as DALL-E and VQGAN, M6-UFC adopts non-autoregressive generation (NAR) at the second stage to enhance the holistic consistency of the synthesized image, to support preserving specified image blocks, and to improve the synthesis speed. Further, we design a progressive algorithm that iteratively improves the non-autoregressively generated image, with the help of two estimators developed for evaluating the compliance with the controls and evaluating the fidelity of the synthesized image, respectively. Extensive experiments on a newly collected large-scale clothing dataset M2C-Fashion and a facial dataset Multi-Modal CelebA-HQ verify that M6-UFC can synthesize high-fidelity images that comply with flexible multi-modal controls.


As of July 9, 2002, more than 300 websites, which provide automated mapping and facilities
management over the internet, are registered in the ESRI Internet Map Server (IMS) user
registry [1]. But it won't be an exaggeration to assume that this is only a tiny fraction of the
actual number of IMS sold and used over the world. In fact, realising the potential scope and
issues of this new form of geographic information delivery, the International Cartographic
Association has formed a Commission dedicated to Maps and the Internet [2]. The IMS
software has also kept pace with the growing demand and progress in technology. IMS has
evolved from the simple HTML image maps to sophisticated servelet-driven mapping
services. During this period, a very significant event happened with the arrival of ArcIMS.
With the ArcIMS the use of IMS changed from merely an interactive visualisation and query
of the spatial databases to a platform for sharing remote spatial databases. In other words, the
ArcIMS made the scale of operation of IMS global.
While the accessibility and usability of the IMS have certainly increased in the past 5-
6 years, the functionalities provided by IMS however remained fairly static. A widely felt but
unreported criticism of IMS has been that the lack of a broader range of spatial analysis
functions (except the usual buffering) in the off-the-shelf IMS installation. Therefore a couple
of eyebrows always tend to rise if the word "Internet GIS" is used for IMS. Oddly enough, the
ArcIMS 3.x and the older versions carry this limitation as well. Essentially, IMS suffer from
the limitation for not being able to allow simultaneous update and dynamic manipulation of
the thematic content of the online maps. For example, in the case of ArcIMS while there are
provisions for complex scale-dependent rendering, it is not easily possible to manipulate (for
example add layers or delete layers) the crucial axl file of a mapping service on the fly. The
recent launch of ArcIMS 4 promises to bridge this gap by allowing an enhanced integration
with the ArcGIS. The aim of this article is to propose a generic framework, which makes the
link between an IMS and a standard GIS, to provide geographic analysis in online maps. We
will take the example of such a framework developed for ArcIMS.


S OF PAPERS Sixteenth Annual Albert L. Tester Memorial Symposium, 10-12 April 1991 1 The Albert L. Tester Memorial Symposium is held in honor of Professor Albert L. Tester, who, at the time of his death in 1974, was senior professor of zoology at the University of Hawaii. The faculty and students of the Department of Zoology proposed an annual symposium of student research papers as a means of honoring, in a continuing and active way, Dr. Tester's lively encouragement of student research in a broad range offields in marine biology. Papers reporting original research on any aspect of biology are solicited from students at the university, and these papers are presented at the symposium, which takes place during the spring semester. Income from contributions to the Albert L. Tester Memorial Fund of the University of Hawaii Foundation is used to provide two prizes for the best papers by graduate students. Papers are judged on quality, originality, and importance of research reported, as well as on the quality of the public presentation. Judges include several members of the faculty of the Department ofZoology as well as winners of the symposium from the preceding year, when possible. In addition, a distinguished scholar from another university is invited to participate in the symposium as a judge and to present the major symposium address. This year John Maynard Smith of the University of Sussex participated in the symposium. Evidence for Expression of a Sugarcane PEP Carboxylase Gene That Lacks a Canonical "TATA" Transcription Control Element


Mandatory reporting represents the key strategy in child sexual abuse cases. It is based on the assumption that early detection will help prevent serious injuries (even the death of the child), will alleviate victims from the responsibility of asking for help themselves, and at their own risk, and will also encourage coordination between legal, medical, and social response units. Among health professionals with a reporting obligation are odontologists. Worldwide, dentists have actively committed to take part in the detection, reporting and prevention of child sexual abuse from presumed and proven lesions in the mouth. However, although current legislation explicitly states this mandatory reporting, it appears that Chilean dentists are neither conceptually nor technically prepared to take on this responsibility. Hence, this type of forensic legal evidence is undervalued, inadequately addressed within other medical professions, and practically unknown in the judicial system. In summary, this is a "missed opportunity" in circumstances that warrant serious scrutiny, resulting in severe social judgment and criticism. A complete review and regulation of the guidelines in this area must be carried out in order to use all means available, and apply legal measures to provide the necessary proof in these ca-


Trade liberalization has brought in its wake an unprecedented explosion in the volume of world trade. The advent of information technology coupled with containerization equally contributed and continues to fuel an upsurge in international cargo traffic. Over the last decade the importance of trade facilitation (TF) has increased dramatically; with the need to reduce transaction and administration cost as well as expedite cargo movement forming the core elements. The issue of trade facilitation leads to long-term benefit for individuals and businesses.

The need to cope with growing international competition has added more gravity to the relevance of trade facilitation in this era of globalization. The study dwelt on trade facilitation in the context of the Ghana Gateway Project (GGWP) – an undertaking by the Government of Ghana (GoG) which seeks to make Ghanaian seaports the gateway to West Africa, among other things.

The author argues that there are myriads of endogenous and exogenous variables which militate against trade facilitation in Ghana as the country is earnestly positioning itself to become a part of the global logistics network. It was found that corruption among trade-related institutions especially Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) has a huge bearing on realization of trade facilitation objectives under the Ghana Gateway Project (GGWP).

Also less focus on institutional bottlenecks under the project means that trade officials are increasingly becoming an obstacle rather than facilitators. Interviews and surveys carried out revealed how Customs officials have transmogrified into opponents of schemes that are instituted to reduce paperwork and duplication of effort within the country's cargo clearance system.

The research documents trends and gains with regards to trade facilitation programmes in Ghana. Relevant literatures were given exhaustive reviews with the aim of navigating all relevant elements that form part of trade facilitation.

Notable conclusions drawn at the end of the study were that; institutional failure, bribery and corruption, incompetence among stakeholders, lack of adequate control, etc are some of the challenges bedevilling the Ghana Gateway Project (GGWP).

The study also unearthed measures that must be implemented to help resuscitate the dwindling fortunes of trade facilitation initiatives in Ghana. The summary of recommendations given is found below:
-Establishing a credible system that will reward excellence among Customs officials and punish corrupt officials
-Massive investment in the human element of the Ghana Gateway Project (GGWP) by education and training
-Tightening control over the entry of people into the freight forwarding industry of Ghana by ensuring that they are adequately qualified
-Repeal the freight forwarding law SMCD 188 of 1978 to be in line with new trends on the global stage.


Social commerce, the use of social media in e-commerce, has become increasingly popular in research and practice. As social commerce initiatives are enabled by technologies, their success considerably depends on the ability of companies to select adequate candidates from the available social commerce technologies. However, with the popularity of social commerce, the number of technologies is steadily increasing. Without guidance, the selection of technologies becomes cumbersome and risky. Moreover, while social commerce initiatives are most effective if they combine multiple different technologies, existing software selection approaches are limited to a specific technology and only support selecting one product from a set of technologically equivalent alternatives. Combining design science research with action research, we therefore propose a new method to support the selection of multiple complementary social commerce technologies. The contribution is twofold: (1) we propose a procedure model that describes the problem of selecting a set of multiple technologies as tailor-made decision-making process; (2) we introduce a technology assessment catalog as a consolidated information base to assess social commerce technologies with respect to their impact on customers' buying behavior. The results of an evaluation in a social commerce project indicate that the method supports the selection of social commerce technologies.


Maxwell and Donmoyer both argue in this issue of Qualitative Inquiry that narrow definitions of causality in educational research tend to disqualify qualitative research from influence (and funding) among policy makers. They propose a process view of causality that would allow qualitative researchers to make causal claims more grounded in the thick description of practice settings. In this article, we build on this notion of process causality, but further argue that unless we also broaden traditional notions of context in qualitative research, we will continue to seek policy solutions primarily at individual, local institutional, and cultural levels. Although qualitative researchers have made progress in acknowledging the intersectionality of race, class, and gender at the cultural level, this intersectionality seldom extends to macro level structures and forces, in part because current notions of causality make such links difficult at low levels of inference. Borrowing on Donmoyer's notion of preponderance of evidence, we suggest a way to use process causality as a scaffolding for multilevel analysis.


Dr Borradaile thanked Dr Tarling for allowing him to read a pre-print of the paper and asked what would be the effects on the palaeolatitude results if some correction were made for tectonic distortion of the pre-deformation magnetic fabrics. Such a correction would seem necessary since Spencer's memoir illustrates many features indicative of tectonic deformation and the author had noted that the rocks were cleaved. Furthermore, some finite strain analysis results had just been made available for dolomitic lithologies in a very similar position within the regional structure on the Island of Islay where Borradaile & Johnson (I973, Tectonophysics 18, 249–259) had there determined strains associated with the formation of the first cleavage. The minimum strains they found (33% shortening normal to cleavage; 22% and 25% principal extensions within the cleavage) might be used as a conservative guide to the degree of deformation in the Garvel-lachs. Dr A. M. Spencer congratulated Dr Tarling on a most interesting piece of research and offered two comments. Firstly, the deformation which affected these rocks during the Caledonian orogeny produced a cleavage dipping southeast at 65°. The shortening normal to this cleavage is from 17% to 33%, as assessed using deformed oolite pebbles in the mixtite beds. Dr Tarling has corrected his data for the tectonic tilt of 31° towards 185°. This is probably not the exact correction applicable in order to subtract the effects of the tilting and shortening. The resulting error is, however, probably small (of the order of 4-10° ± -20°)


We have developed a technique to provide short‐term warnings of solar energetic proton (SEP) events that meet or exceed the Space Weather Prediction Center threshold of J (>10 MeV) = 10 pr cm−2 s−1 sr−1. The method is based on flare location, flare size, and evidence of particle acceleration/escape as parameterized by flare longitude, time‐integrated soft X‐ray intensity, and time‐integrated intensity of type III radio emission at ∼1 MHz, respectively. In this technique, warnings are issued 10 min after the maximum of ≥M2 soft X‐ray flares. For the solar cycle 23 (1995–2005) data on which it was developed, the method has a probability of detection of 63% (47/75), a false alarm rate of 42% (34/81), and a median warning time of ∼55 min for the 19 events successfully predicted by our technique for which SEP event onset times were provided by Posner (2007). These measures meet or exceed verification results for competing automated SEP warning techniques but, at the present stage of space weather forecasting, fall well short of those achieved with a human (aided by techniques such as ours) making the ultimate yes/no SEP event prediction. We give some suggestions as to how our method could be improved and provide our flare and SEP event database in the auxiliary material to facilitate quantitative comparisons with techniques developed in the future.


Despite huge differences in population, household income and development levels, Australia and Brazil have some temporal convergences in their water governance systems. Over the last 20 years, both countries have significantly reformed their water policies and practices by introducing a legal foundation for more integrated and participatory catchment/basin management based on the best information available. A critical test of any water reform is how effective it is in meeting the challenges of extreme and unpredictable conditions of drought and floods, which are expected to increase under climate changes scenarios. This paper compared the contemporary water governance frameworks of Australia and Brazil in relation to three elements of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM): integration, participation, and information/knowledge. We focused on insights from Brazil's recent drought and Australia's fluctuating water crises to derive lessons and recommendations for future changes. Among the main recommendations, we stress the need for both systems to improve effective participation and to embrace a more comprehensive approach to cope with water scarcity in future scenarios. Furthermore, water related decisions should be based on a transparent and well informed process, and take into account the lessons from similar situations worldwide in order to avoid unnecessary or ineffective measures. As demonstrated in the Australian case during the Millennium Drought, the most effective initiatives were those involving government, the private sector and society to achieve a more sustainable consumption pattern in all sectors. There is much to learn from the Brazilian and Australia experiences in water reforms and crises, but it is imperative to understand the social, economic and environmental context within which these took place. Continuing to develop the capacity and willingness of researchers and policy makers to work together can make an important contribution towards meeting the growing and spreading challenges in water resource management around the world.


Journal of Animal Health and Production (JAHP)  (ISSN 2308-2801) is an open access, Peer reviewed International journal that publishing high quality work related to animal husbandry and veterinary sciences. It includes all the key disciplines of ruminants and non-ruminants including nutrition, management, microbiology, pathology, anatomy, pharmacology, parasitology, veterinary public health, surgery, reproduction, breeding and genetics, physiology, animal products quality and technology, disease management practices etc. JAHP also welcome the in vitro and/or in vivo studies related to laboratory and wild animals.


This article begins by documenting the pervasive extent of corruption in the Philippines. It then identifies low salaries, red tape, low risk of detection and punishment for corrupt offenses, the importance of family and cultural values, and lack of political will as the five major causes of rampant corruption in the Philippines. The anti-corruption measures initiated by the various administrations since 1950 are analyzed and their effectiveness evaluated. The ineffectiveness of the many anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) and laws is reflected in the consistently low rankings and scores of the Philippines on Transparency International's 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, the Political Economic Risk Consultancy's 2009 survey on corruption, and the World Bank's 2008 control of corruption indicator. The lack of political will is responsible for the Philippines' ineffective anti-corruption strategy which relies on overlapping, uncoordinated, and inadequately staffed and funded multiple ACAs. This article concludes that curbing corruption in the Philippines remains an impossible dream until its political leaders demonstrate that they have the political will to minimize the major causes of corruption and to relinquish their reliance on the existing ineffective multiple ACAs.


Thermal effects and their influences on kilowatt ytterbium-doped double-clad (YDDC) fiber lasers are studied through numerical modeling. Solutions to suppress the thermal effects in the YDDC fiber lasers under bidirectional end pump and distributed pump are presented and compared for the first time. It is shown that lower operating temperature and more uniform heat dissipation in fibers can be obtained by optimizing the arrangement of pump powers, pump absorption coefficients, and fiber lengths.


The future of Ukraine's gas transit pipeline is back on the agenda, and it is time for the European Union to come up with constructive ideas on what to do. Ukrainian President Yanukovich has signalled his interest in the idea of a tripartite Ukrainian-Russian-European consortium for the gas pipeline; the basic mechanism for which is clear enough, although many details would need to be negotiated, such as the distribution of shares between Ukrainian, European and Russian partners. The main question is whether it is worthwhile for the EU to pick up the issue and make a proposal. In this new Commentary, CEPS Senior Research Fellow Michael Emerson argues that there are four reasons why the EU should do so.


Purpose: To collect and analyze normative data about corneal topography and axial length in various refractive errors in Indian population.Design: Cross-sectional observational study. Materials and Method: Three hundred eyes (150 patients) of age group 12-35 yrs were arranged in 5 groups according to refractive status; Group 1 (n=44): myopia of SphericalEquivalent (SE) > 6 D; Group 2 (n=67): myopia of SE >0.5 D to 6 D; Group 3 (n=88): nearly emmetropic of SE -0.5 D to +0.5 D; Group 4 (n=59): hypermetropia of SE >0.5 to 6 D; Group 5 (n=42): hypermetropia of SE > 6 D. Axial length(AL), central radius of curvature of cornea (CR), central power of cornea (CK) , Al/CR ratio for each group were documented . Correlation with SE and among each other was studied. Results: Mean AL (in mm) of myopic patients (n=111) was 24.23 ± 1.34, emmetropic (n=88) 22.62 ± 0.94 and hypermetropics (n=101) 20.73 ±0.94. Mean CR (in mm) of myopic patients was 7.55 ± 0.35, emmetropics was 7.70 ±0.32, and hypermetropes was 7.99 ±0.35. Mean CK (in D) of myopics was 44.86±2.59, emmetropes was 43.91±1.76, and hypermetropes was 42.32±1.89. Mean AL/CR ratio of myopics was 3.22 ± 0.29, emmetropics 2.94± 0.07, and hypermetropics 2.60 ± 0.19. AL was negatively correlated with SE(r=-0.91, p<0.0001) and positively with AL/CR(r=0.88, p<0.0001) and CK (r=0.36, p<0.0001). CR was negatively correlated with AL/CR (r=-0.74, p<0.0001) while positively correlated with SE (r=0.62, p<0.0001). CK showed positive correlation with AL/CR (r=0.75, p<0.0001) while negative correlation with SE (r=-0.61, p<0.0001). AL/CR was negatively correlated withSE(r=-0.95, p<0.0001). Conclusion: This study showed a negative correlation between axial length and refractive error and between AL/CR ratio and refractive error with stronger inverse relationship in hypermetropes than myopes. There was a positive correlation of CR with SE with a weaker direct relationship in myopes than hypermetropes.


During the time that I was stationed at Port Dickson (State of Negri Sembilan) on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, a small zoological collection was made. The specimens were brought to me by the personnel of different units of the Royal Netherlands Forces, while I am also indebted to Major C. Rae, RASC, for some interesting specimens. Nearly all specimens belong to common species. However, this area has not been studied so very extensively and therefore, it seems worth while to place these species on record. Unless otherwise stated the specimens are from the strip of country along the coast road to the south of Port Dickson to about ten miles from the township. Where no unit is mentioned, the specimens have been collected by personnel of my own unit (NICA-NRX Detachment). The collection has been presented to the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden.
Bufo melanostictus Schn. 1 specimen, Major L. D. Brongersma, Herp. reg. no. 8488.
Bufo parvus Blgr. 1 ♂ halfgrown, Herp. reg. no. 8486. 1 juv., among dry leaves in a rubber plantation, March 1946, Sergt.
Everaarts, Herp. reg. no. 8487.
I am indebted to Mr. H. W. Parker, London, for his advise that both these specimens should be referred to Bufo parvus Blgr.
In the male (length from snout to vent 33 mm), the cranial ridges are distinct. The supraorbital ridges are slightly divergent behind, while the short parietal ridges converge posteriorly; thus the whole of the ridge is somewhat curved. In a fullgrown Sumatran specimen these ridges are straight.


In this paper, we introduce a low decoding complexity space-time modulation scheme that achieves full transmit diversity without the need of channel knowledge at the transmitter (Tx) nor at the receiver (Rx). The scheme is based on differential encoding of a low-complex quasi-orthogonal space-time block code (STBC). The idea of the differential encoding is based on mapping the original system to an equivalent system which is composed of two orthogonal subsystems. The differential encoding and decoding approach is described and the receiver metric is derived. The described technique is valid for any number of transmit antennas M for which a square orthogonal code of size M/2 exists, and is valid for any number of receive antennas. The proposed scheme is favourable in that it has single complex symbol decoding complexity while achieving a performance close to other differential quasi orthogonal codes of higher complexity and a remarkable performance advantage compared to differential orthogonal schemes especially at high data rates.


In this thesis, I use the new generation of radio interferometer along with X-ray observations to investigate the dynamics and energetics of radio-loud active galaxies which are key to understanding AGN feedback and the evolution of galaxies as a whole. I present new JVLA observations of powerful radio source and use innovative techniques to undertake a detailed analysis of JVLA observations of powerful radio galaxies. I compare two of the most widely used models of spectral ageing, the Kardashev-Pacholczyk and Jaffe-Perola models and also results of the more complex, but potentially more realistic, Tribble model. I find that the Tribble model provides both a good fit to observations as well as providing a physically realistic description of the source. I present the first high-resolution spectral maps of the sources and find that the best-fitting injection indices across all models take higher values than has previously been assumed. I present characteristic hot spot advance speeds and compare them to those derived from dynamical ages, confirming that the previously known discrepancy in speed remains present in older radio sources even when ages are determined at high spectral and spatial resolutions. I show that some previously common assumptions made in determining spectral ages with narrow-band radio telescopes may not always hold. I present results from a study of the powerful radio galaxy 3C223 at low frequencies with LOFAR to determine its spectrum on spatially small scales and tightly constrain the injection index, which I find to be consistent with the high values found at GHz frequencies. Applying this new knowledge of the low energy electron population, I perform synchrotron / inverse-Compton model fitting and find that the total energy content of the radio galaxy lobes increases by a factor greater than 2 compared to previous studies. Using this result to provide revised estimates of the internal pressure, I find the northern lobe to be in pressure balance with the external medium and the southern lobe to be overpressured. I go on to present the first large sample investigation of the properties of jets in Fanaroff and Riley type I radio galaxies (FR-I) at X-ray energies based on data from the Chandra archive. I explore relations between the properties of the jets and the properties of host galaxies in which they reside. I find previously unknown correlations to exist, relating photon index, volume emissivity, jet volume and luminosity, and find that the previously held assumption of a relationship between luminosities at radio and X-ray wavelengths is linear in nature when bona fide FR-I radio galaxies are considered. In addition, I attempt to constrain properties which may play a key role in determination of the diffuse emission process. I test a simple model in which large-scale magnetic field variations are primarily responsible for determining jet properties; however, we find that this model is inconsistent with our best estimates of the relative magnetic field strengths in my sample.


The purpose of this study is to monitor the execution of the investment program approved by the state unitary enterprise GUP Belvodokanal for the construction, reconstruction, modernization and development of the centralized water supply systems, sewerage and purification of waste water of the city of Belgorod in the period from 2014 to 2018, as well as the proposals related to the improvement of the investment program. The scientific methods, general scientific principles of dialectical development and system approach are used in this article. The main results: The analysis of the existing problems of Belgorod GUP of Belgorod are presented, the efficiency of the investment under the approved investment program is assessed, the analysis and evaluation of the efficiency of capital investments under the project as well as the risk assessment and the planned specific decline in the introduction of the additional measures to the investment program in the field of water supply, approved by Belvodokanal GUP, are conducted.


The electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the most common ways to record, in an non-invasive manner, a patient's cardiac activity. Once recorded the information can be pre-processed and subsequently analyzed to assess if the patient is suffering from any forms of cardiac abnormality which may require clinical intervention. In the current study we investigate ways in which more can be obtained from the ECG through analysis of the diagnostic properties of body surface potential maps (BSPM). A set of 192 lead BSPMs recorded from a mixture of 116 normal and abnormal subjects (59 normal vs 57 old myocardial infarction) were analyzed. For each patient, diagnostic features were obtained by calculating isointegral measurements from the QRS, STT, and entire QRST segments. These isointegrals provide a measure of the mean distribution of potential during ventricular depolarization, repolarisation, and a combination of both, respectively. For each isointegral type, 192 discrete measurements, and hence 192 features, were obtained; these correspond with the 192 leads recorded. Subsequent to this a signal-to-noise ratio-based feature ranking methodology was applied to select subsets of the best three, six and ten measurements (features) from the 192 available for each isointegral. These subsets of features were then applied to four different classifiers Naive Bayes (NB), support vector machine (SVM), multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and random forest (RF) and in each application ten-fold cross validation was employed. It was found that when using the subsets of features obtained from the STT or QRST isointegrals, classification results in excess of 80% were attainable. This was in contrast to the results obtained using the QRS isointegral features where poorer performance (between 62.9% and 74.1%) was observed. The results from this study have illustrated that, for the studied dataset, the mean distribution of potentials during ventricular depolarization, and during ventricular repolarization and depolarization combined possessed greater diagnostic information. Overall it was concluded that this approach to BSPM analysis does provide a useful means for illustrating the usefulness of various features in diagnostic classification.


The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in media output aimed at "tweens" (preadolescent girls), and the expansion more broadly of tween popular culture. This
exclusively female preadolescent consumer demographic is seen to emerge alongside a heightened visibility of girls within popular culture since the mid-1990s, and continuing anxieties about girlhood in this intensely mediated environment. However, this burgeoning field has yet to be matched in academic attention. This thesis offers a timely examination of mainstream tween films, television programmes, celebrities and extra-texts from 2004 onwards, including "princess" narratives The Prince & Me
(2004, 2006, 2008, 2010) and A Cinderella Story (2004, 2008, 2011), and Disney Channel programming and Original Movies, Hannah Montana (2006-2011) and Camp Rock (2008, 2010). It forges a dialogue between postfeminism, film and television, celebrity, and the figure of the tween, in order to examine how the tween is both constructed and addressed by the films and television programmes that make up tween popular culture.
Tweenhood is a discursive construction emerging in the mid-1990s and coming to cultural prominence in the early twenty-first century. The tween is understood to be defined by her transitional status, her "becoming"-woman; as such,
the texts that make up tween popular culture can be seen to guide the tween in her development of an "appropriately" feminine and (post)feminist identity through a rhetoric of "choice". Such identities are predicated on revealing and maintaining an "authentic" self. The need to develop an "appropriately" feminine and (post) feminist identity whilst remaining "authentic" requires the tween to be the ideal selfsurveilling, transforming subject of neoliberalism. Celebrity plays a central role in tween popular culture, articulating the parallels between "becoming"-woman and
"becoming"-celebrity. Through a combination of textual analysis, and broader discursive and contextual analysis, this thesis highlights the centrality of femininity and celebrity to the tween as a figure constructed by the texts that make up tween popular culture. It analyses the ideal tween consumer as projected by the texts. This thesis draws attention to the culturally and academically devalued subject of the construction of tweenhood within a gendered, age-specific popular culture.


That women play a central role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water is one of the four internationally accepted principles of water management. This principle is especially important for the developing world where millions of women lack access to water for their basic needs. The objectives of this chapter are to summarize what is known about women with respect to water and about water with respect to women as well as to provide a sense of the current debates around these themes. A review of the literature suggests that the lack of gender-disaggregated data on the impacts of water policies, and underlying disagreements on how gender and development should be theorized, makes it difficult to reach robust conclusions on which policies can best assure poor women reliable access to water for their lives and livelihoods.


This article presents a qualitative risk assessment of the acquisition of meticillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in pet dogs, representing an important first step in the exploration of risk of bidirectional MRSA transfer between dogs and humans. A conceptual model of the seven potential pathways for MRSA acquisition in a dog in any given 24‐hour period was developed and the data available to populate that model were considered qualitatively. Humans were found to represent the most important source of MRSA for dogs in both community and veterinary hospital settings. The environment was found to be secondary to humans in terms of importance and other dogs less still. This study highlights some important methodological limitations of a technique that is heavily relied upon for qualitative risk assessments and applies a novel process, the use of relative risk ranking, to enable the generation of a defensible output using a matrix combination approach. Given the limitations of the prescribed methods as applied to the problem under consideration, further validation, or repudiation, of the findings contained herein is called for using a subsequent quantitative assessment.


The aim of this study is to assess the adopted water scarcity adaptation and coping strategies of rural households to climate variability. It also identifies suitable strategies that minimize the impact of climate variability on water sources in arid and semi-arid (ASALs) in Kenya. The study was carried out in Makindu Sub-county, Makueni County, Kenya. Data collection techniques such as questionnaires and in-depth interview with 370 households, key informants interviews were used to assess the adaptation and coping strategies of rural households and identify the most suitable strategies for the study area. Rainfall data was collected from Makindu Meteorological station and used for meteorological drought characteristics analysis. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was used to analyze drought severity in the study area between 1980 and 2011. SPI was used to quantify precipitation deficit for various time scales. Drought Intensity (DI) was used to determine decadal drought intensities.  SPI results showed that 18 years out of 31 with negative SPI values an indication of drought severity occurrence. The year 2005 was the driest in the area with an SPI of -1.76. The study also showed increasing drought intensities from 1990s to 2000s.   The study showed that the rural households had adopted varied adaptation and coping strategies to cope with impact of drought extremes on water sources. However, increase in drought characteristics occurrences minimized their resilience and adaptive capacities. The study observed that the strategies employed are unlikely to enable them cope with recent climate change and variability regimes, therefore need for most suitable and viable ones. The study identified viable strategies such as rainwater harvesting and sinking boreholes as long term measures that can enhance rural households' resilience to climate change extremes in ASALs of Kenya.


Stroke or "brain attack" occurs when a blood clot carried by the blood vessels from other part of the body blocks the cerebral artery in the brain or when a blood vessel breaks and interrupts the blood flow to parts of the brain. Depending on which part of the brain is being damaged functional abilities controlled by that region of the brain is lost. By interpreting the patient's symptoms it is possible to make a coarse estimate of the location of the stroke, e.g. if it is on the left or right hemisphere of the brain. The aim of this study was to evaluate if microwave technology can be used to estimate the location of haemorrhagic stroke.In the first part of the thesis, CT images of the patients for whom the microwave measurement are taken is analysed and are used as a reference to know the location of bleeding in the brain. The X, Y and Z coordinates are calculated from the target slice (where the bleeding is more prominent). Based on the bleeding coordinated the datasets are divided into classes. Under supervised learning method the ISC algorithm is trained to classify stroke in the left and right hemispheres; stroke in the anterior and posterior part of the brain and the stroke in the inferior and superior region of the brain. The second part of the thesis is to analyse the classification result in order to identify the patients that were being misclassified.The classification results to classify the location of bleeding were promising with a high sensitivity and specificity that are indicated by the area under the ROC curve (AUC). AUC of 0.86 was obtained for bleedings in the left and right brain and an AUC of 0.94 was obtained for bleeding in the inferior and superior brain. The main constraint was the small size of the dataset and few availability of dataset with bleeding in the front brain that leads to imbalance between classes. After analysis it was found that bleedings that were close to the skull and few small bleedings that are deep inside the brain are being misclassified. Many factors can be responsible for misclassification like the antenna position, head size, amount of hair etc.The overall results indicate that SDD using ISC algorithm has high potential to distinguish bleedings in different locations. It is expected that the results will be more stable with increased patient dataset for training.


The paper deals with reconfigurable embedded control systems following different component-based technologies and/or Architecture Description Languages used today in industry. We define a Control Component as a software unit to support control tasks of the system, which is assumed to be a network of components with precedence constraints. We define an agent-based architecture to handle automatic reconfigurations under well-defined conditions by creating, deleting, or updating components to bring the whole system into safe and optimal behaviors. To cover all possible reconfiguration forms, we model the agent by nested state machines according to the formalism Net Condition/Event Systems (NCESs), which is an extension of Petri nets. In addition, we apply a model checking to verify functional and extra-functional properties according to the temporal logic "Computation Tree Logic" (CTL). The goal is to check the agent reactivity after any evolution of the environment. Several complex networks can implement the system, where each one is executed at a given time when a corresponding reconfiguration scenario is automatically applied by the agent. To check the correctness of each one of them, we apply in several steps a refinement-based approach that automatically specifies feasible Control Components according to NCES. The model checker SESA is automatically applied in each step to verify deadlock properties of new generated components, and it is manually used to verify CTL-based properties according to user requirements. We implement the reconfiguration agent by three modules that allow interpretations of environment evolutions, decisions of useful reconfiguration scenarios, and finally, their applications. Two Industrial Benchmark Production Systems FESTO and EnAS available in our research laboratory are applied to explain the contributions of the paper.


Two selective functional polychelatogens, namely hydroxyethylaminoglycerol functioned poly(glycidylmethacrylate (PNS) and Poly(4-Vinyl-1,3-dioxalan-2-one-co-vinyl acetate) (COP) were synthesized and utilized in polymer-enhanced ultrafiltration (PEUF) to remove boron from the aqueous solution. The effect of operating parameters on boron retention was investigated. PNS was synthesized in three molecular weights to observe the effect of molecular weight in borate retention. Increase in pH increased boron retention for all of the synthesized polymers. Decrease in loading resulted in an enhancement in retention values when COP, medium (PNSM) and the low molecular weight of PNS (PNSL) were used. No significant change was observed in the permeate flux with COP (41 L/m2 · h), PNSL (48 L/m2 · h) and PNSM (47 L/m2 · h). However, a decrease in the loading led to a decrease in the permeate flux for high molecular weight PNS (PNSH). Conformational changes in the polymer structure were examined using dynamic and static light-scattering. Retention results for all of the polymers were found to be remarkably higher than the literature, when polyvinyl alcohol was used as the chelating agent. Satisfactory retention results were obtained using both PNSL (R: ∼54%) and PNSM (R: ∼57%), showing that PEUF can be employed effectively for borate removal using the specifically tailored polymers.


Ischaemia of the foot in infants is a cause for concern leading to gangrene, amputation and medicolegal inquiry. The causes of gangrene are usually complicated and multifactorial. The gangrene usually develops following a severe bacterial or viral infection. Septicaemia is usually accompanied by dehydration, shock and severe metabolic derangements. Mechanical causes include invasive vascular procedures and venipuncture especially in newborns. The gangrenous change may imply surgical error especially when the infections occur following surgery or plaster cast immobilisation. Children who survive these infections are at a higher risk for complex orthopaedic problems later with growth. Involvement of the physeal circulation due especially to bacterial septicaemia may take several years to manifest resulting in longitudinal and transverse growth problems. Ischaemic insults to the developing skeleton result in gangrene, skin necrosis and irregularities of epiphysis, metaphysis and physis with premature physeal closure. This may require skin grafting (and later release of contractures), amputation (and later revision of stump) and orthopaedic procedures to address deformity and leg length discrepancy. It is important for the orthopaedic surgeon to become involved early in the treatment team to decide on fasciotomy, amputation level, prosthetic fitting and anticipated long-term growth problems.


The oxygen consumption is an indirect measure of the breathing rate of an organism, and is an important factor to incorporate into ecological models of economically and scientifically important bays. The models require reliable data on how this breathing rates change according on the physiological state the most common organisms are in, as well as the way rates change with the seasons. As Cancer setosus is one of the most common invertebrates found in Paracas bay, in-situ experiments, using a system of underwater chambers, were carried out to measure how oxygen consumption rates vary with age, sex and reproductive state on summer (March) and winter (September). Results (μmolO2 min-1 g-1) show that: (1) Breathing rates (y) decreases as the size (x) increases on males and females, a tendency that remained in both seasons (Males: summer y = -0.0182x + 0.2626, winter y = -0.0097x + 0.1713; females summer: y = -0.0212x + 0.2732, winter y = -0.0095x + 0.1744). (2) No significant differences in the breathing rates were found between sexes in juveniles and adults on neither of the seasons sampled. And (3) in brooding females a clear increase in the breathing rate was measured as the developmental stage of the eggs progressed on winter (early stage: 0.037 vs. late stage: 0.073) but was not the case on summer where no significant differences were found (early stage: 0.055 vs. Late stage: 0.063). Possible reasons of this behaviour are, here by, discussed by the authors.


This paper presents a numerical procedure of material parameter identification for the coupled hydro‐mechanical boundary value problem (BVP) of the self‐boring pressuremeter test (SBPT) in clay. First, the neural network (NN) technique is applied to obtain an initial estimate of model parameters, taking into account the possible drainage conditions during the expansion test. This technique is used to avoid potential pitfalls related to the conventional gradient‐based optimization techniques, considered here as a corrector that improves predicted parameters. Parameter identification based on measurements obtained through the pressuremeter expansion test and two types of holding tests is illustrated on the Modified Cam clay model. NNs are trained using a set of test samples, which are generated by means of finite element simulations of SBPT. The measurements obtained through expansion and consolidation tests are normalized so that NN predictors operate independently of the testing depth. Examples of parameter determination are demonstrated on both numerical and field data. The efficiency of the combined parameter identification in terms of accuracy, effectiveness and computational effort is also discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This paper offers an analysis of our experience of working at a University which is currently developing internationalisation across its programme provision. We examine the role of global education within internationalisation of the curriculum and we offer some examples of learning and teaching strategies to put this approach into practice. Whilst we examine our experience with reference to modules within Initial Teacher Education and Continuing Professional Development programmes in Education, we argue that the practical strategies drawn on as exemplars of practice are generic and can be transferred across subject disciplines. By incorporating the global dimension in the curriculum we aim to enrich the learning experience. We discuss the rationale for the active and participatory learning methodology we employ which involves and engages students in learning with and from one another and in questioning beliefs and ideas about issues of meaning and value. We also demonstrate how this methodology provides opportunities for deep learning. Our aim is not to achieve a 'quick fix' in terms of putting a tick in the box to comply with the institutional policy requirements for internationalisation of the curriculum. Instead we advocate an approach which we believe has integrity. It is a holistic approach to planning which starts from our shared human experience and sees global education as an integral and generic dimension across the curriculum rather than something to be added on as an extra.


3ds max 7 provides unparalleled character animation functionality, and in this book you will learn how to take advantage of all of these tools. Simple step-by-step tutorials, glorious full-color examples, and an easy-to-understand approach to tricky concepts will have you creating and animating your own characters within hours! Author and award-winning animator Michele Bousquet answers all your questions about character modeling, rigging, and animating in 3ds max -- in the process illuminating the techniques used by game developers, broadcast and film companies, industrial designers, and more. As you complete the book's projects and exercises -- using the files contained on the companion CD -- you'll learn the fundamentals of character modeling, character rigging, creating rigs with custom controls, skinning, character animation, and more.


With the anticipated boom in the 'blue economy' and associated increases in industrialization across the world's oceans, new and complex risks are introduced to ocean ecosystems. As a result, conservation and resource management increasingly look to factor in potential interactions among the social, ecological and economic components of these systems. Investigation of these interactions requires interdisciplinary frameworks that incorporate methods and insights from across the social and biophysical sciences. Risk assessment methods, which have been developed across numerous disciplines and applied to various real-world settings and problems, provide a unique connection point for cross-disciplinary engagement. However, research on risk is often conducted in distinct spheres by experts whose focus is on narrow sources or outcomes of risk. Movement towards a more integrated treatment of risk to ensure a balanced approach to developing and managing ocean resources requires cross-disciplinary engagement and understanding. Here, we provide a primer on risk assessment intended to encourage the development and implementation of integrated risk assessment processes in the emerging blue economy. First, we summarize the dominant framework for risk in the ecological / biophysical sciences. Then, we discuss six key insights from the long history of risk research in the social sciences that can inform integrated assessments of risk: 1) consider the subjective nature of risk, 2) understand individual social and cultural influences on risk perceptions, 3) include diverse expertise, 4) consider the social scales of analysis, 5) incorporate quantitative and qualitative approaches, and 6) understand interactions and feedbacks within systems. Finally, we show how these insights can be incorporated into risk assessment and management, and apply them to a case study of whale entanglements in fishing gear off the U.S. west coast.


We introduce Fillables: low-cost and ubiquitous everyday vessels that are appropriated as tangible controllers whose haptics are tuned ad-hoc by filling, e.g., with water. We show how Fillables can assist users in video navigation and drawing tasks with physical controllers whose adjustable output granularity harmonizes with their haptic feedback. As proof of concept, we implemented a drawing application that uses vessels to control a virtual brush whose stroke width corresponds to the filling level. Furthermore, we found that humans can distinguish nine levels of haptic feedback when sliding water-filled paper cups (300 ml capacity) over a wooden surface. This discrimination follows Weber's Law and was facilitated by sloshing of water.


Background: The objective was to evaluate the association of albuminuria with cancer mortalities in adults ages 50 and older. Methods: A total of 6,112 adults ages 50 years and above without a history of cancer at baseline in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III, 1988-1994) were included in the analysis. Albuminuria was measured with urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) in mg/mmol. Cancer mortality was obtained from the NHANES III–linked follow-up database (up to December 31, 2006). Cox-regression models were used to examine the associations of interest. Results: Albuminuria was present in 705 men (17.5%) and 592 women (14.3%). During an average follow-up of 149 months, 613 subjects died of cancers including 184 lung cancers, 65 colorectal cancers, 55 prostate cancers, and 309 other cancers. There was an increased mortality risk associated with logarithmically transformed UACR for all-cancer [relative risk (RR), 1.20; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.06-1.36], lung cancer (RR, 1.22; 95% CI, 1.05-1.43), and prostate cancer mortality (RR, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.01-1.95) in men. No associations between UACR and cancer were apparent in women. Conclusions: The analysis shows that albuminuria is associated with an increased risk of cancer death, specifically for all-cause, lung, and prostate cancers in men ages 50 and above. Impact: Further studies are needed to explore the relationship between albuminuria and specific cancers. Understanding the biological link between albuminuria and cancer will be critical for determining whether albuminuria represents an early marker or a potential therapeutic target. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(11); 2950–7. ©2010 AACR.


. Flazasulfuron is one of the newest sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides to be registered for use in the fine turf industry. Flazasulfuron is safe for use on bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon), and zoysiagrass (Zoysia japonica) yet controls several grass, broadleaf, and sedge weeds. In fine turf, flazasulfuron controls cool-season grasses such as tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) and perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) without harming warmseason grasses. Although SU herbicides like flazasulfuron bring several potential benefits to turfgrass markets, there are also several concerns related to using these herbicides in turfgrass areas. For many plant species, SU herbicides can cause phytotoxicity or death at less than 1 g ai/haindicating small quantities of active ingredient are required to cause problems if herbicide moves in the environment. Herbicide moves to nontarget plants either after it has been applied via lateral relocation or during application via spray drift. Trials were conducted to evaluate flazasulfuron and trifloxysulfuron sodium tracking, runoff and drift in turfgrass environments. Field trials were conducted at six locations across the US to evaluate effects of irrigation, herbicide treatment, nontreated buffer distance, and time of tracking on creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera) putting green response to dislodged herbicide residues. Although average turf injury did not exceed 2%, significant differences were noted when treated plots were irrigated prior to tracking. In addition, putting green injury was negatively correlated and normalized difference vegetative index was positively correlated with increasing buffer distance. Data indicate the importance of post treatment irrigation to reduce lateral relocation of SU herbicides like flazasulfuron and trifloxysulfuron sodium in turfgrass. In other studies, herbicides were applied to turfgrass on 7 to 11 % slopes and perennial ryegrass injury was assessed at various distances down slope following an irrigation or rainfall event. Herbicide movement in runoff water was indicated by perennial ryegrass discoloration as much as 18 m below treated plots when excessive herbicide rates were applied to saturated soils. Based on perennial ryegrass injury, flazasulfuron at the rates tested was equivalent or more mobile than trifloxysulfuron sodium and equivalent or less mobile than pronamide when subjected to irrigation or rainfall soon after application to saturated soils. To assess spray drift, a bioassay based on corn height reduction was conducted and corn plants were exposed to potential spray drift in field conditions using conventional turfgrass spray equipment. A sprayer was operated when wind speeds were between 6.4 and 9.6 km h and sentry plants were placed various distances between 0 and 30 m down wind. Wind speeds and direction were confirmed with anemometers and neutrally-buoyant balloons. Herbicide drift was not detected beyond 4.6 m downwind of either herbicide application. Data suggest a 5to 8-m nontreated buffer area should sufficiently protect neighboring cool-season


Prosecutors can force witnesses to testify and use perjury prosecutions to hold them to the provable truth. More controversially, prosecutors also offer witnesses inducements for favorable testimony, including leniency, immunity, and even cash. This ubiquitous behavior would be illegal as witness bribery, except for a longstanding tradition of sovereigns using this power, which legal doctrine now reflects. A causal analysis shows that even if prosecutors use this power only in good faith, these inducements undermine the epistemic value of witness testimony.
Due process requires, and legal doctrine assumes, that when such inducements are disclosed to the jury, they will discount the witness testimony accordingly. However, juries' success in doing so is an empirical question. We conducted three randomized experiments with 1,000 human subjects in roles of witnesses and jurors deciding vignettes based on real cases. We find that incentives have large effects on witnesses, allowing prosecutors to routinely procure favorable testimony regardless of its truth. Yet, disclosure has no detectable effects on either witnesses or jurors.
We discuss two potential reforms. First, courts could borrow from the practice with expert witnesses and use the current rules of evidence to conduct Daubert-like pretrial screening of incentivized witnesses for reliability. We frame the appropriate counterfactual question about whether the incentives would cause a witness to give the same testimony even if it were false. Second, we present the novel suggestion that prosecutors could decide whether to offer benefits to a witness based on whether she will testify to material information, but without knowing whether the information is favorable to the Government. These mechanisms may preserve the value of incentives to produce information, while minimizing false testimony.


The aim of this project originally was to improve the rear suspension system of a race classic car called Garbi GTS, a very similar model to the famous Lotus 7, due to its lack of grip and low stability in turn. In order to introduce a significant improvement to the rear suspension, it was necessary to extract the rear live axle and to install an independent suspension to solve the lack of grip that was experimenting the car. However, it was not the only cause of this fact; a design problem in the front suspension was observed. Due to a suitable suspension system is made accordingly to, in part, a correct relation between the front and rear suspension geometry, it was necessary to re-design all the Garbi's suspension system. Therefore, the aim of this project became to design a suitable suspension system rather than improve only the rear one. Because of this, it was impossible to a single person in the project's time limits to perform all stablished milestones. For example, an important one was to perform dynamic simulations of the designed suspension components as well as of the new chassis in order to prove enough resistance of them in driving conditions and to improve their design to reduce weight.
In this project, it can be found a brief description of the basic parameters which directly affect the suspension systems, as well as live axle and double A-Arm suspension description, which are two different types of suspension used. Moreover, there is general theory related to kinematics and dynamics of the suspension systems.
Following an iterative design process, a kinematic and dynamic study of the suspension has been performed in order to find a suitable suspension system to the Garbi GTS. On the one hand, simulations in heave and roll motion have been made with a software called Optimum Kinematics for the Kinematic study. The originated charts from the final suspension system simulations can be found in this project. On the other hand, the dynamic study consisted of a series of calculations to basically determine required stiffness of the springs and the torsional resistance of the anti-roll bars. Finally, Solidworks was used to design some suspension components and to assemble them to the Garbi's old chassis, which also had to be re-designed.
It has been obtained good kinematic and dynamic results in the final suspension system, which although are not optimized, are expected to solve the problem on vehicle behaviour caused by the bad old suspension design.


Using the fourth and fifth wave of the Ghanaian Living Standard Household Survey, I empirically investigate whether the implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme affects child labour in Ghana. My findings suggest that the implementation of the insurance scheme leads to a decrease in out-of-pocket payments for health purposes, which is linked to a substantial reduction in the incidence of child labour. Furthermore, I find that the overall reduction in child labour is strongest in rural areas and the agricultural sector. I conclude that the provision of public health insurance improves the financial protection of households, which removes the necessity for households to send their children to work. Thus, health insurance schemes seem to be an effective social protection instrument to fight child labour. JEL classification: I13, I15, J43, O12


At present time, most of the process industries are in the position to monitor and control many different processes in their manufacturing process at the same instant of time. Global monitoring and controlling of all the process at a same time of instance will lead to increase the process productivity and plant safety. Distributed control and centralized monitoring are the key-factors to ensure the plant safety. This paper aims to enhance the flexibility in controlling and monitoring of industrial pressure process by configuring and developing a HMI using DCS with SCADA. The field output of industrial pressure process are fetched and the parameters have been sent to the Field Control Station (FCS) where the controlling is distributed and monitoring is centralized.Hence the optimized control of different industrial process has been achieved.


Most insights come as a surprise: a burst of understanding, an elegant solution to a problem. This decade9s main insight in climate science was a different breed. For 40 years, researchers had wrestled with three big questions: Is the world warming? If so, are humans behind the warming? And are natural processes likely to rein it in? In the past few years, climate scientists finally agreed on solid answers: yes, yes, and no—just as they had suspected.


This project contributes to the field of ecocriticism by reconsidering the idea of nature in the Romantic period in order to explore a new mode of artistic ecological thought. Ecocriticism develops in tandem with the environmental urgency of recent decades, responding mostly with an intense focus upon material nature in order to remind an increasingly artificial society of its earthly foundations and to encourage, in some kind or degree, a return to nature. Though the call for return is a powerful story, modern scientific and philosophical developments indicate that it is not ecologically sound. The return narrative requires at its base a stable nature to which to return; modern ecology, however, increasingly reveals nature as an unstable and uncertain process. It is therefore time to rethink the stories at the heart of our relationship with nature. This project looks to British Romanticism as the return story's most influential incarnation. Romantic ecocriticism often hails the Romantic "return to nature" as ecologically progressive: an assumption I aim to destabilize. Pairing close readings of works by William Wordsworth, John Clare, and Percy Bysshe Shelley with the post-structuralist theory often disregarded by ecocriticism, especially the community theory of Jean-Luc Nancy, I question the construction of Romantic nature. Community theory questions the ethics of reunion and instead posits difference as the basis of relation. Given that ecology is essentially the study of natural relationships, community theory enables a new mode of ecological consciousness that is both thought and felt. In Romanticism, community theory reveals an uncertain nature that is paradoxically and proleptically faithful to modern ecological thought, advocating not return or reunion but relation: specifically, a passionate relation experienced as joy. Navigating key concepts such as identity and difference, work and ii play, productivity and creativity, economy and ecology, and ecstasy and joy, I explore a Romantic imagination of ecology as joyful community: I term this uncommon ecological imagination the Romantic oikos, calling upon the etymological root of ecology as home to think through the complexity of being together in place. The Romantic oikos creatively re-imagines humanity's place in nature: a creative task we are called to perform today.


Refining a network topology is an important network management technique. Nevertheless, determining the appropriate steps to transform a network from one topology to another, in a way that minimizes service disruptions, has received little attention. This is a critical problem since service disruptions can be particularly harmful and costly for networks hosting mission-critical services. In this paper, we introduce the incremental network transformation (INT) problem and explore this problem in the context of automated planning. We define two metrics to measure the quality of generated transformation plans, one of which is amenable to classical propositional planning. We find that while state-of-the-art domainindependent planning techniques are effective at finding highquality solutions for small problem instances, they cannot scale to solve realistically sized INT instances. To address the shortcomings of existing approaches, we developed a number of domain-dependent planners that use novel domain-specific heuristics. We empirically evaluated our planners on a wide range of synthetic network topologies. Our results illustrate that our automated planning inspired techniques are effective on realistically sized INT problems. We envision that our approach could eventually provide a compelling addition to the arsenal of techniques employed by network practitioners to support network refinement with minimal disruption to running services.


One way to think about the relationship between the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment is to view due process as backward-looking (evaluating a law in light of its historical precedents), and equal protection as forward-looking (evaluating a law in light of its utility for future social projects). Professor Eskridge challenges this contrast. He shows that such a contrast is supported by neither the text and history of the Fourteenth Amendment nor by the Supreme Court's precedents applying the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Due process is just as often destabilizing as equal protection, which like due process often defers to past practices. Notwithstanding the analytical vacuity of the backward-looking/forward-looking contrast, the two clauses display potentially different roles for minority groups: The Due Process Clause secures libertarian protections at the retail (individual) level that are important when the group is socially despised, while the Equal Protection Clause potentially offers minorities wholesale (group) level protections when (or if) the Court recognizes their legitimacy as partners in American pluralist democracy.


The thesis is focused on the development of a method for the synthesis of silicon nanocrystals with different sizes, narrow size distribution, good optical properties and stability in air.
The resulting silicon nanocrystals have been covalently functionalized with different chromophores with the aim to exploit the new electronic and chemical properties that emerge from the interaction between silicon nanocrystal surface and ligands.
The purpose is to use these chromophores as light harvesting antennae, increasing the optical absorption of silicon nanocrystals.
Functionalized silicon nanocrystals have been characterized with different analytical techniques leading to a good knowledge of optical properties of semiconductor quantum dots.


of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Doris Noel Ugarriza No. of pages in text. (146) The purpose of this study was to analyze the experiences of self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) usage of adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) who are not using insulin. The sample consisted of 11 women and 8 men who were Caucasian Americans, 38 to 79 years of age. Data were analyzed using the grounded theory method including open and axial coding and the constant comparative method. The theory of "SMBG as a Cue in T2DM Self-Care" emerged from the data and is composed of four categories (a) Engaging, (b) Checking, (c) Responding, and (d) Establishing a Pattern. Engaging marks the beginning of SMBG. Participants began on the recommendation of their physician and monitored between 2-6 times a day. Participants monitored because of curiosity and over time reduced or kept their initial frequency. Checking occurs when the blood glucose is obtained. Two subcategories emerged: Evaluating and Validating. The main items participants evaluated or validated were the effects of foods in relation to blood glucose levels. Responding involves reacting to SMBG. Two subcategories emerged: Taking Action and Experiencing Emotion. Most actions involved changing foods consumed. Participants described feeling conflicted and "being bad" when not following through with an action. Emotions such as blame and fear were experienced when blood glucose levels were higher than normal, while happiness was experienced with normal levels. Establishing a Pattern occurs when participants decide on how often to monitor. Two subcategories emerged: Using Regularly and Using Sporadically. The pattern developed was based on obtaining "normal" blood glucose patterns or on the absence of ill symptoms of T2DM. Healthcare provider disinterest in SMBG and fingertip pain contributed to a decreased monitoring frequency. Participants described cyclical, iterative episodes of Checking, Responding, and varying their established patterns throughout their experiences with monitoring. Participants discussed the value and struggles of SMBG in a T2DM self-care regimen. The theory of SMBG as a Cue in T2DM Self-Care could be used to guide the development of effective intervention strategies to help individuals with T2DM achieve blood glucose control which, in turn, leads to avoidance of ill symptoms and complications of T2DM.


by Marianne A. DiQuattro In this dissertation, I ask what happens when spectatorship becomes unsettled by troubling ethical questions directed by the play-world at the spectator. In Chapter One I approach the problem of performance studies—a discipline in which definitions and aims are still hotly contested. In recent years, a new approach to performance has come to prominence through the work of the International Federation for Theatre Research, studying theatre as event. From the works of John Tulloch and Willmar Sauter, I take certain concepts and methodologies, such as frames, borders, and contexts, and analysis and description of audience reaction and composition. I expand on their work by linking this school of performance studies to phenomenological studies of the event by Jean-Luc Marion and Claude Romano. I show how earlier performance theory from a phenomenological standpoint can be enhanced by these notions of the event as unforeseen and the spectator as a receiver who is, in a sense, constructed by the event and not constructing it from his own intending consciousness. I then look at specific ethical quandaries provoked by performances of Antonin Artaud's, Samuel Beckett's and Martin McDonagh's works. In Artaud, I look at the apparent inconsistencies between his acclaimed theories and the dismal performance Marianne A. DiQuattro histories. Comparing him with British playwright, Sarah Kane, I conclude that any Theatre of Cruelty, even in 1990s Britain, alienates audiences because it forces spectators into an uncomfortable proximity to the artist's mental and physical anguish. Chapter Three takes up the question of the centrality of Waiting for Godot's popularity in prison theatre venues and programs to the creation of an Existentialist "Godot construct." By comparing the prison machine to the Cartesian mind-body unity, I conclude that these performances force the spectators who watch them on video recording into an uncomfortable position of dual identification: both with the Godot-machine (the penal system which represents them) and with the actor-inmates, pursuing and at times rejecting an Existentialist concept of freedom. In the final chapter I examine the role of laughter in Martin McDonagh's Leenane Trilogy, and the role of postmodern kitsch and multimedia intertextuality in simultaneously globalizing and hyper-localizing McDonagh. Familiarity with globalized pop culture lulls audiences into incriminating laughter and, often, outrage.


Objective:We examined whether having a psychiatric disorder among HIV-infected individuals is associated with differential rates of discontinuation of HAART and whether the number of mental health visits impact these rates. Design:This longitudinal study (fiscal year: 2000–2005) used discrete time survival analysis to evaluate time to discontinuation of HAART. The predictor variable was presence of a psychiatric diagnosis (serious mental illness versus depressive disorders versus none). Setting:Five United States outpatient HIV sites affiliated with the HIV Research Network. Patients:The sample consisted of 4989 patients. The majority was nonwhite (74.0%) and men (71.3%); 24.8% were diagnosed with a depressive disorder, and 9% were diagnosed with serious mental illness. Main outcome measures:Time to discontinuation of HAART adjusting for demographic factors, injection drug use history, and nadir CD4 cell count. Results:Relative to those with no psychiatric disorders, the hazard probability for discontinuation of HAART was significantly lower in the first and second years among those with SMI [adjusted odds ratio: first year, 0.57 (0.47–0.69); second year, 0.68 (0.52–0.89)] and in the first year among those with depressive disorders [adjusted odds ratio: first year, 0.61 (0.54–0.69)]. The hazard probabilities did not significantly differ among diagnostic groups in subsequent years. Among those with psychiatric diagnoses, those with six or more mental health visits in a year were significantly less likely to discontinue HAART compared with patients with no mental health visits. Conclusion:Individuals with psychiatric disorders were significantly less likely to discontinue HAART in the first and second years of treatment. Mental health visits are associated with decreased risk of discontinuing HAART.


This article applies a capability approach to the problem of unequal participation for working-class, first-generation students at a South African university. Even though access to higher education institutions is increasing for historically excluded students, when race and class disaggregate completion rates, there are persistent patterns of unequal participation. In the first part of the article, the capability approach is used to conceptualise dimensions of equal participation, which include resources, agency, recognition and practical reason. In the second part of the paper, these four principles are applied to an empirical case study, which is drawn from a longitudinal research project that tracked the equality of participation of undergraduate university students at a South African university. The article makes the case for pedagogical and institutional arrangements that enable equal participation for students who are precariously positioned at higher education institutions.