Musicians use silent music reading for memorizing, and this includes different types of mental imagery and analytical functions. The aim of this mixed-methods study was to address the effects of musical expertise, general level cognitive traits, and situational strategies on pianists' performances after silent memorizing of notated music. We also compared pianists' silent memorizing strategies between tonal and nontonal music. Thirty pianists performed short musical excerpts from memory after silently reading the notation for 1 minute. Following this, they described their memorizing strategies in an interview, and completed tests of cognitive style, aural skills, working memory, and music-processing style. The performances were assessed in terms of "recall rate" separately for both hands (accuracy of memorization) and "overall impression" (pianistic fluency and style). In tonal music, pianists' aural imagery focused on imagining the melody, whereas in nontonal music, aural imagery typically focused on rhythmic aspects. In tonal music, conceptual strategies were related to traditional music analysis, whereas in nontonal music they were more piecemeal and atomistic in nature. According to linear mixed-effect models, right-hand recall rate was associated with higher aural skills, but left-hand recall rate was related to verbal cognitive style and analytical music-processing style, that is, more frequent use of music analysis in regular practice. Better performances in terms of overall impression were related to higher aural skills. Music education develops skills and strategies that are effective for memorizing, and beyond one's working memory capacity. However, cognitive styles may also play a role in musicians' silent memorizing.


Motivation Statistical analyses of high-throughput sequencing data have re-shaped the biological sciences. In spite of myriad advances, recovering interpretable biological signal from data corrupted by technical noise remains a prevalent open problem. Several classes of procedures, among them classical dimensionality reduction techniques, and others incorporating subject-matter knowledge, have provided effective advances; however, no procedure currently satisfies the dual objectives of recovering stable and relevant features simultaneously. Results Inspired by recent proposals for making use of control data in the removal of unwanted variation, we propose a variant of principal component analysis that extracts sparse, stable, interpretable, and relevant biological signal. The new methodology is compared to competing dimensionality reduction approaches through a simulation study as well as via analyses of several publicly available protein expression, microarray gene expression, and single-cell transcriptome sequencing datasets. Availability A free and open-source software implementation of the methodology, the scPCA R package, is made available via the Bioconductor Project. Code for all analyses presented in the paper are also made available via GitHub.


A three year research project into human behaviour during emergency evacuations was conducted at the University of Sussex from April 2004. Three different kinds of research were carried out: real-life role-play evacuations, virtual reality computer programs of simulated evacuations, and interview studies with survivors of various mass emergencies. Based on a review of the literature and these studies, it was concluded that, far from mass panic occurring, behaviour during emergencies is often ordered and meaningful, with social norms and conventions remaining, even during extreme danger. Co-operation rather than selfish behaviour appears to predominate, even amongst crowds of total strangers. It was argued that a common identity emerges amongst those affected during emergencies that explains this co-operation. Fire Service commanders should view the emergence of such a common identity as a source of potential help, and look at ways of encouraging this co-operative identity as a means to enhancing safe and efficient evacuations of large numbers of people from danger during emergencies.


A book for both the general reader of American history and the student of art, Flexner's study of Copley (1738-1815) brings into vivid detail the struggle the artist endured against an unfavorable environment in the New World, his rise to fame, the development of his unique style, and the personal growth of the man who became America's first great artist. Copley's life began in the humble surroundings of Boston's waterfront. As a poor boy growing up in a city where no formal art instruction was available, rigorous self-instruction was Copley's only means to his goal of becoming a painter. Through laborious work Copley mastered his craft; the portraits he produced between 1753 and 1774, at the height of his fame, were distinguished by the fully rounded modeling and realism which make the personalities of his subjects come alive. His paintings in these years were the best works a colonial American artist had ever produced. Yet his personal letters reveal that he found life in Boston limited; he cites the dearth of great art from which to learn and by which to be inspired, and complains of what he perceives to be the underappreciation of his patrons. The Boston Tea Party and other events led inexorably toward the Revolution. Copley was unwillingly drawn into the troubled political arena; his loyalist connections made his life in Boston increasingly turbulent and precarious. In 1774, at the suggestion of Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West, Copley became convinced he was wasting his talents in the colonies and moved to London to study the European masters. This decision marked the second period of his life, lasting forty years, and instigated a no less dramatic shift in the style and subject of his art. Copley's tour of European cities and galleries broadened the range and scope of his work. He produced large canvases of sweeping historical scenes of war, political subjects, and religious subjects considered taboo in the colonies.


Flow boiling is an important process in energy conversion applications such as power generation and heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems. Recently, it has drawn interest in the high heat flux electronics cooling community. Flow boiling enhancement, in addition, has the benefit of early onset of nucleate boiling, potentially lowering wall superheat, and increasing the heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux (CHF). The objective of this paper was to investigate the use of fine metal wire mesh screens to enhance nucleate boiling in microchannels. Contact resistance between the wire mesh and channel heating surface was essentially eliminated by employing a diffusion brazing process to attach the screen to the wall. The parallel microchannels were 1000 μm in width and 510 μm in depth. A dielectric working fluid, HFE 7000, was investigated during this paper. Flow boiling results were compared for channels with and without wire mesh. According to the flow boiling curves obtained in this investigation for the bare and mesh channels, the amount of wall superheat was substantially reduced for the mesh channels at all four stream-wise locations. This indicated that nucleate boiling in the mesh channel was enhanced due to the increase of nucleation sites the mesh introduced. The mesh channels also displayed a higher flow boiling heat transfer coefficient. Both the nucleate boiling dominated regime and convective evaporation dominated regime were identified, with the overall trend of increasing the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient with respect to vapor quality until this quantity reached approximately 0.4. The CHF for the mesh channel was also significantly higher than that for the bare channel. The flow boiling enhancement was achieved with no apparent pressure drop penalty. The results presented here provide a practical means to implement this surface enhancement technique.


In this paper we applied two well known empirical models, the 'pricing-to-market' and the 'residual demand elasticity' approach, to test for market power of German food and beverage exporters on the main international markets (beer, cocoa powder, chocolate, and sugar confectionary). We compared the estimation results and considered the time series properties of the model variables, which both had an impact on the conclusions drawn from the model estimates. On many international food markets conditions for the existence of market power are fulfilled, such as concentrated supply and/or demand structures, or specific product qualities. For the products under study we have shown that the supply side is highly concentrated. For instance, for beer, cocoa powder, chocolate, and sugar confectionary the six biggest importers hold a significant share of total imports of the respective destinations. In addition, many products are well known for their specific quality characteristics. The 'pricing-to-market' model identifies market power by the estimation of the exchange rate transmission elasticity. A significant transmission elasticity above minus one indicates the use of market power. The 'residual demand elasticity' approach signalizes market power if the estimates for the elasticity lie in the range of minus one to less than infinity. Both frameworks utilize the effects of exchange rate variations on export volumes and prices. On four markets, US and Canadian beer market, UK sugar confectionary, and Italian cocoa powder market, we find significant parameters for the exchange rate transmission elasticity which indicate a 'pricing to market' behavior with similar estimates around – 0.7. Thus, the use of market power by German exporters cannot be rejected for these products and destinations. Because the RDE model results do not indicate market power at all, both approaches partly result inconsistent conclusions, which further do not fit to the fact that the law of one price is significantly violated for all products. Even though markets obviously indicate to some extent market power, the applied model approaches do not consistently detect it. Therefore, the observed price discrimination must be caused by some other factors than the deviation of demand elasticities between international markets. The explicit consideration of competitors' behaviour on the international markets can be one factor that might be worthwhile to enhance the understanding of the pricing process on these markets.


The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has created a global race for a cure. One approach focuses on designing a novel variant of the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) that binds more tightly to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and diverts it from human cells. Here we formulate a novel protein design framework as a reinforcement learning problem. We generate new designs efficiently through the combination of a fast, biologically-grounded reward function and sequential action-space formulation. The use of Policy Gradients reduces the compute budget needed to reach consistent, high-quality designs by at least an order of magnitude compared to standard methods. Complexes designed by this method have been validated by molecular dynamics simulations, confirming their increased stability. This suggests that combining leading protein design methods with modern deep reinforcement learning is a viable path for discovering a Covid-19 cure and may accelerate design of peptide-based therapeutics for other diseases.


Due to the open-access nature of the environment we consider an ad hoc adjustment of people's footprints. People's environmental concerns are intensified (diminished) as the quality of the environment falls below (rises above) a threshold. Changes in the quality of the environment affect Earth's carrying capacity. We claim that without technological, social and international progress the interplay between the nonoptimally changing environmental concerns and carrying capacity embarks the world's environment and human population on a clockwise oscillating course that leads to a unique interior steady state with population similar to the current one residing in a slightly more degraded environment. (JEL O13, Q20)


We develop a computational framework to support the planning and evaluation of development strategies towards the 2030 Agenda. The methodology takes into account the complexities of the political economy underpinning the policymaking process, for example, the multidimensionality of development, the interlinkages between these dimensions, the inefficiencies of implementing policy interventions, as well as the institutional factors that promote or disencourage these inefficiencies. The framework is scalable and usable with publicly-available development-indicator data, and it can be further refined as more data becomes available, for example, on public expenditure. We demonstrate its usage through an application for the Mexican federal government. For this, we infer historical policy priorities, i.e. non-observable allocations of transformative resources that generate changes in development indicators. We also show how to use the tool to assess the feasibility of development goals, to measure policy coherence, and to identify accelerators. Overall, the tool provides a systemic framework that allows policymakers and other stakeholders to embrace a complexity view to tackle the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals.


Image processing techniques primarily focus upon enhancing the quality of an image or a set of images and to derive the maximum information from them. Image Fusion is such a technique of producing a superior quality image from a set of available images. It is the process of combining relevant information from two or more images into a single image wherein the resulting image will be more informative and complete than any of the input images. A lot of research is being done in this field encompassing areas of Computer Vision, Automatic object detection, Image processing, parallel and distributed processing, Robotics and remote sensing. In this paper, we have described the various 11 fusion methods (IHS, PCA, Pyramid method, Wavelet transform etc.) and the different quality assessment parameter (PSNR, MSE, average difference, NAE etc.) used to assess the quality of the fused image. The various application areas of image fusion are also included in this paper.


We have constructed a sample of radio-loud objects with optical spectroscopy from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) project over the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (Herschel-ATLAS) Phase 1 fields. Classifying the radio sources in terms of their optical spectra, we find that strong-emission-line sources ('high-excitation radio galaxies') have, on average, a factor of ∼4 higher 250-μm Herschel luminosity than weak-line ('low-excitation') radio galaxies and are also more luminous than magnitude-matched radio-quiet galaxies at the same redshift. Using all five H-ATLAS bands, we show that this difference in luminosity between the emission-line classes arises mostly from a difference in the average dust temperature; strong-emission-line sources tend to have comparable dust masses to, but higher dust temperatures than, radio galaxies with weak emission lines. We interpret this as showing that radio galaxies with strong nuclear emission lines are much more likely to be associated with star formation in their host galaxy, although there is certainly not a one-to-one relationship between star formation and strong-line active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity. The strong-line sources are estimated to have star formation rates at least a factor of 3–4 higher than those in the weak-line objects. Our conclusion is consistent with earlier work, generally carried out using much smaller samples, and reinforces the general picture of high-excitation radio galaxies as being located in lower-mass, less evolved host galaxies than their low-excitation counterparts.


Abstract Cross-sections of 36 post oaks (Quercus stellata Wang.) were examined to determine the fire history of a post oak woodland in Hamilton County, Illinois. The 226-year tree ring record contained three distinct periods; a fire era from 1776 to1850 having a mean fire return interval of 1.97 years, a fire-free period from 1851 to1884, and a second fire era from 1885 to 1996 having a mean fire return interval of 1.44 years. The fire-free interval corresponds with the rapid settlement of Hamilton County during 1850–85. The fires between 1770 and 1850 are considered landscape fires associated with Native Americans and/or early European settlers, while those between 1885 and 1996 are thought to be due to burning of local woodlands, a practice that became increasingly less common in the late 20th century. Three post oak cohorts were identified, including 211–224 year-old (217-year mean), 137–151 year-old (144-year mean), and 104–115 year-old (105-year mean) age classes. Post oak recruitment ended and fire sensitive hickories (Carya ovata and C. tomentosa), black cherry (Prunus serotina), sassafras (Sassafras albidum), and black oak (Quercus velutina) now dominate the seedling and sapling layers of the woodland.


Studies of food systems education have largely avoided questions concerning race. In this commentary, we interrogate the racial assumptions behind certain food systems education projects. Food systems educators are often motivated by a whitened cultural desire to "bring good food to others" and see garden-based learning projects, which seek to instill healthy nutritional behaviors, as the solution to the problem of purported food deserts. We argue that food systems education is in need of a critical intervention. In this commentary, we propose critical food systems education (CFSE) as a theoretical framework, set of pedagogies, and vision for policy that moves beyond teaching students about the food system, and helps them realize their potential to structurally transform it through collective action. The CFSE perspective is theoretically grounded in food justice, food sovereignty, political agroecology, and critical pedagogy. The CFSE approach is not merely theoretical, but arises from the examples of grassroots social movements throughout the world that have developed radical forms of food systems education. We highlight this approach using the example of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST). The MST opposes a racialized discourse of the "peasantry" as backwards and ignorant. The movement's leaders reject a vision of education that reproduces white modernity, and instead support a vision that advances radical agroecological education programs that train students to be political subjects capable of creating a socially and environmentally equitable food system. The example of the MST underscores the potential of CFSE as a corrective for the food systems education's racialized assumptions.


This study conducted to determine the amount of the heavy metals such as Cd, Ni, and Pb in the muscle tissue of Hoof benthic fish (Psettodes erumei) and urban pelagic fish () in Qeshm Island in the north of the Persian Gulf. Overall, the heavy metal content Lethrinus nebulosus of 30 tissue samples was randomly measured by atomic absorption spectrometer. *Correspondence S Aghanajafizadeh, Department of Environment, Maybod Branch, Islamic Azad University, Maybod, Iran (email: firstname.lastname@example.com) The mean amount of Cd (0.16+ 0.002 ) and Ni( 0.56+ 0.03 ) in benthic Hoof was significantly greater than that in the Urban pelagic fish while the concentration of (29.64+ 3.72) in urban pelagic fish was higher than that in the Hoof tissue samples (P<0.05). Our results showed that the concentration of the three measured heavy metals in the fishes studied was less than the standard levels proposed by WHO and FAO.


Using a small body of empirical data concerning the types of information studentshandle, this paper inquires into the problematic of knowledge creation, artifacts ofknowledge, and the possible role of examination as a negative factor in students' reflectiveachievements. Habermas' theory of communicative action is proposed as the theoreticalframework for analyzing the educational environment seen as a lifeworld. From the observedfact that types of information students themselves produce (papers, essays, lecture notes,master theses, etc.) are hardly mentioned as information they say they handle, the tentativeconclusion is drawn that these missing types are systematically excluded. The theoreticalframework provides an explanation for this state of affairs. The overall goal of highereducation is to increase knowledge in a particular field. In teaching, however, this goal isdealt with in a training manner, clearly manifest in the examination process. Therefore, theaction orientations of the students will differ more or less from the overall goal. Claims ofvalidity connected with knowledge turn in a normative direction in action situations orientedtowards examination. Since information is the link anchoring claims of validity, studentsbecome inclined to exclude the artifacts of their own knowledge creation. The latter are notviewed as dealing with information linking the claims connected with the overall goal ofincreasing 'real' knowledge, instead being taken as constituting the links for normativeclaims. The paper also proposes certain means in line with the theory for improving this stateof affairs.


In the 1990s, rural areas and small towns in the United States, which had been losing population, became the destinations for an increasing number of Hispanic immigrants and their families, slowing and in some cases reversing population declines. In this paper, we examine whether faster growth in the Hispanic population is linked to faster growth in income per capita in rural areas and small towns. Our results indicate strong support for the hypothesis that Hispanic population growth has fueled increased economic growth in those small, rural communities whose populations had been in decline during the 1970s and 1980s.


The horizontal‐to‐vertical spectral ratios (HVSRs) of ambient vibrations are commonly used to observe soil resonance frequencies, which are revealed by HVSR curve peaks. These resonances have been explained either in terms of S ‐wave transfer function or in terms of Rayleigh‐wave ellipticity. In this study, ambient vibration recordings have been carried out next to nine boreholes in the eastern Mitidja basin (Algeria), all of which have been characterized by downhole geophysical surveys. Using velocity profiles obtained from the downhole surveys, we compare the frequency of the second HVSR peak ( f HV) to frequencies obtained with (1) the time‐averaged velocity ( f T ), (2) depth‐averaged velocity ( f D ), (3) the SH transfer function ( f SH ), and (4) the fundamental‐mode Rayleigh‐wave ellipticity ( f E ). We find that f SH , f T , and f D fit well with f HV, whereas this is not the case for f E , implying that the HVSR peak frequency is better explained by the SH transfer function peak than by the Rayleigh‐wave ellipticity.


Conducting natural resource damage assessments and adopting compensatory restora- tion plans for endangered and threatened species have special constraints. These constraints are illustrated by the agency responses to evaluate impacts of the North Cape oil spill on piping plovers Charadrius melodus in Rhode Island, and to establish appropriate compensatory restoration. Adopt- ing a precautionary principle implies that strict adherence to an α-value of 0.05 in formal tests for injury on endangered species, where rarity implies low statistical power, would result in overlooking many true impacts. Criteria for concluding that injury took place must nonetheless exist, including (1) existence of a conceptually valid mechanism to link exposure to the stressor and the documented negative responses; (2) field data supporting the existence of the stressor-response link; and (3) sam- pling designs that consider impacts of potentially confounding factors such as natural temporal change. Choosing restoration options is also challenging for endangered species because ethical considerations and risks associated with some interventions preclude otherwise acceptable actions for common species. For the piping plover, a synthesis of population limitations done for the species recovery plan was used to design compensatory restoration of protection of nesting on newly colonized beaches, an action difficult to scale in advance to match the estimated injury from oil, but adaptively adjustable if monitoring shows a need.


Recently, convex solutions to low-rank matrix factorization problems have received increasing attention in machine learning. However, in many applications the data can display other structures beyond simply being low-rank. For example, images and videos present complex spatio-temporal structures, which are largely ignored by current low-rank methods. In this paper we explore a matrix factorization technique suitable for large datasets that captures additional structure in the factors by using a projective tensor norm, which includes classical image regularizers such as total variation and the nuclear norm as particular cases. Although the resulting optimization problem is not convex, we show that under certain conditions on the factors, any local minimizer for the factors yields a global minimizer for their product. Examples in biomedical video segmentation and hyperspectral compressed recovery show the advantages of our approach on high-dimensional datasets.


New Horizons unveils the Pluto system In July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft flew through the Pluto system at high speed, humanity's first close look at this enigmatic system on the outskirts of our solar system. In a series of papers, the New Horizons team present their analysis of the encounter data downloaded so far: Moore et al. present the complex surface features and geology of Pluto and its large moon Charon, including evidence of tectonics, glacial flow, and possible cryovolcanoes. Grundy et al. analyzed the colors and chemical compositions of their surfaces, with ices of H2O, CH4, CO, N2, and NH3 and a reddish material which may be tholins. Gladstone et al. investigated the atmosphere of Pluto, which is colder and more compact than expected and hosts numerous extensive layers of haze. Weaver et al. examined the small moons Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, which are irregularly shaped, fast-rotating, and have bright surfaces. Bagenal et al. report how Pluto modifies its space environment, including interactions with the solar wind and a lack of dust in the system. Together, these findings massively increase our understanding of the bodies in the outer solar system. They will underpin the analysis of New Horizons data, which will continue for years to come. Science, this issue pp. 1284, 10.1126/science.aad9189, 10.1126/science.aad8866, 10.1126/science.aae0030, & 10.1126/science.aad9045 Pluto and Charon display a complex geology, including evidence for tectonics and cryovolcanoes. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has revealed the complex geology of Pluto and Charon. Pluto's encounter hemisphere shows ongoing surface geological activity centered on a vast basin containing a thick layer of volatile ices that appears to be involved in convection and advection, with a crater retention age no greater than ~10 million years. Surrounding terrains show active glacial flow, apparent transport and rotation of large buoyant water-ice crustal blocks, and pitting, the latter likely caused by sublimation erosion and/or collapse. More enigmatic features include tall mounds with central depressions that are conceivably cryovolcanic and ridges with complex bladed textures. Pluto also has ancient cratered terrains up to ~4 billion years old that are extensionally faulted and extensively mantled and perhaps eroded by glacial or other processes. Charon does not appear to be currently active, but experienced major extensional tectonism and resurfacing (probably cryovolcanic) nearly 4 billion years ago. Impact crater populations on Pluto and Charon are not consistent with the steepest impactor size-frequency distributions proposed for the Kuiper belt.


In 2002, Turkey's starting health on the transformation process management of the health system and organization, service delivery, on factors such as human resources and finance context reflections, it was tried to be assessed in light of data obtained from secondary sources and analyzed. In this respect, a study carried out to identify communication problems between administrator and other medical personel in Public Health Department of Kahramanmaras and survey applied on 77 healthcare personnel. Analyses of information obtained by the data acquisition tools carried out using SPSS 15.0 software package. A statistically significant difference weren't found between communication problems between administrator and healthcare personnel toward perceptions and gender, age, profession, experience, employment period in the institution, level of education and receiving a training on communication. This difference were just found between communication problems between administrator and healthcare personnel toward perceptions and position. As a result, managers doesn't have problem with other personnel about communication but other personnel found to have problem with managers about communication.


Should regulatory bank examinations be made public? Regulators have argued that the confidentiality of the examination process promotes frank exchanges between bankers and examiners and that public disclosure of examination results could have a chilling effect. I examine the tradeoffs in a world in which examination results can be kept confidential, but regulatory interventions are observable by market participants, as they typically are for stress tests. Inducing banks to communicate truthfully requires regulators to engage in forbearance, which is priced into banks' uninsured debt and raises the costs of inducing truthful communication. Regulators that disclose exam results bear higher monitoring costs and impose excessive capital requirements because interventions are not as sensitive to underlying risks. My model predicts that disclosure is optimal when the regulator's model is relatively inaccurate.


INTRODUCTION As funders and journals increasingly create policies that require effective data management and data sharing, many institutions have developed research data management (RDM) programs to help researchers meet these mandates. While there is not a standard set of services for these RDM programs, some institutions, particularly those with repositories that accept data deposits, provide data curation services as a way to add value to research data and help make data more accessible and reusable. Stakeholder communities within the field, such as the Data Curation Network (DCN), are also developing guidelines, procedures, and best practices to support and expand data curation practices. DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT This paper examines the data curation activities defined by the DCN, and describes an activity undertaken by library staff at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to create a structured model of these tasks to more easily conceptualize and communicate data curation within these two institutional settings. The purpose of this paper is to describe how this model provided a basis for the implementation and expansion of data curation services at each institution and concludes with overall lessons learned. NEXT STEPS As we develop our services, libraries have an opportunity to make the often-invisible work of curation more transparent. This paper aims to provide a point of reference for other libraries as they consider how to scale up their data curation programs as well as contribute to discussions around prioritization of services, program assessment, and communication with stakeholders.


Several researches asserts that as teachers are responsible for the content of teaching and by formulating teaching "Why, ""How" and "What", that will also give signals to students about what is important knowledge. This essay addresses the difficulties teachers may face in terms of self-disclosure student texts and awareness of this in the design of teaching and writing tasks. Research shows that self-disclosure and self-therapy student texts exist and that teachers are experiencing a difficulty with regard to assessment and treatment. Through qualitative interviews examined seven teachers' design of any, to the student, self-disclosure information from curriculum and policy documents. Another purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which teachers, through the information they give to their pupils, may affect the texts students submit. It turns out that the respondents are united in the belief that they, through their data, may affect the texts they receive from their students when they are the ones that control the content of teaching, and they agree that the curricula gives them a great choice for design data. The survey shows that the perception of the curriculum that will open up for self-disclosure texts differ as some of the respondents believe that the curriculum is very much about the students way to express feelings and opinions, while others believe that they may try to package this data in another purpose or exercise. This essay shows that there are different approaches on self-disclosure students texts, some encouraging these texts and others are trying to stay more neutral in the choice of writing topics.


If you know how to program, you have the skills to turn data into knowledge using the tools of probability and statistics. This concise introduction shows you how to perform statistical analysis computationally, rather than mathematically, with programs written in Python. You'll work with a case study throughout the book to help you learn the entire data analysis processfrom collecting data and generating statistics to identifying patterns and testing hypotheses. Along the way, you'll become familiar with distributions, the rules of probability, visualization, and many other tools and concepts. Develop your understanding of probability and statistics by writing and testing code Run experiments to test statistical behavior, such as generating samples from several distributions Use simulations to understand concepts that are hard to grasp mathematically Learn topics not usually covered in an introductory course, such as Bayesian estimation Import data from almost any source using Python, rather than be limited to data that has been cleaned and formatted for statistics tools Use statistical inference to answer questions about real-world data


Using a fully vectorial three-dimensional numerical approach (generalized field propagator, based on Green's tensor technique), we investigate the near-field images produced by subwavelength objects buried in a dielectric surface. We study the influence of the object index, size, and depth on the near field. We emphasize the similarity between the near field spawned by an object buried in the surface (dielectric contrast) and that spawned by a protrusion on the surface (topographic contrast). We show that a buried object with a negative dielectric contrast (i.e., with a smaller index than its surrounding medium) produces a near-field image that is reversed from that of an object with a positive contrast.


A number of Late Cretaceous ophiolitic bodies are located between the metamorphic massifs of the southeast Anatolian orogenic system. One of them, the Göksun ophiolite (northern Kahramanmaraş), which crops out in a tectonic window bounded by the Malatya metamorphic units on both the north and south, is located in the EW-trending nappe zone of the southeast Anatolian orogenic belt between Göksun and Afşin (northern Kahramanmaraş). It consists of ultramafic–mafic cumulates, isotropic gabbro, a sheeted dyke complex, plagiogranite, volcanic rocks and associated volcanosedimentary units. The ophiolitic rocks and the tectonically overlying Malatya–Keban metamorphic units were intruded by syn-collisional granitoids (∼ 85 Ma). The volcanic units are characterized by a wide spectrum of rocks ranging in composition from basalt to rhyolite. The sheeted dykes consist of diabase and microdiorite, whereas the isotropic gabbros consist of gabbro, diorite and quartzdiorite. The magmatic rocks in the Göksun ophiolite are part of a co-magmatic differentiated series of subalkaline tholeiites. Selective enrichment of some LIL elements (Rb, Ba, K, Sr and Th) and depletion of the HFS elements (Nb, Ta, Ti, Zr) relative to N-MORB are the main features of the upper crustal rocks. The presence of negative anomalies for Ta, Nb, Ti, the ratios of selected trace elements (Nb/Th, Th/Yb, Ta/Yb) and normalized REE patterns all are indicative of a subduction-related environment. All the geochemical evidence both from the volcanic rocks and the deeper levels (sheeted dykes and isotropic gabbro) show that the Göksun ophiolite formed during the mature stage of a suprasubduction zone (SSZ) tectonic setting in the southern branch of the Neotethyan ocean between the Malatya–Keban platform to the north and the Arabian platform to the south during Late Cretaceous times. Geological, geochronological and petrological data on the Göksun ophiolite and the Baskil magmatic arc suggest that there were two subduction zones, the first one dipping beneath the Malatya–Keban platform, generating the Baskil magmatic arc and the second one further south within the ocean basin, generating the Göksun ophiolite in a suprasubduction zone environment.


Abstract
The term Vilyuisk encephalitis refers to a clinically distinct and geographically isolated form of encephalitis that has, for at least several generations, been recognized among the population of Vilyuisk and neighboring regions of the Yakut Republic in the U.S.S.R. Clinically, it can occur in an acute or chronic form, in which syndromes of diffuse meningoencephalitis, dementia-schizophrenia, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are recognized. About one-third of the patients progress from the acute to the chronic stage after an interval of weeks to months, but the chronic stage may follow repeated exacerbations of acute symptoms, or appear without any recognized antecedent acute stage. Examination of tissues taken at autopsy has revealed widespread inflammatory-degenerative changes in the nervous system, especially in the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia. The possible role of rodent or avian hosts in the transmission of the disease is under study; migratory birds traveling between Yakutsia and the western Pacific are especially intriguing because of the foci of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Japan and the Marianas. A virus related to the mengo- and encephalomyocarditis group has been isolated from animals inoculated with tissue from patients with Vilyuisk encephalitis, but the same virus is known to be latent in wild and laboratory rodents. Occasional clustering of cases in the same family, often after long intervals, and the interval between acute and chronic forms of the illness rather suggest that it may be due to an agent within the group of slow, latent, and temperate viruses.


English has now become the lingua franca of much of technological, business and academic endeavours. Consequently, learning the English language is now seen as vital, especially at the university level where proficiency in the language has become a selection criterion. At present, the Malaysian University English Test (MUET)
has been adopted by Malaysian public universities as an indicator of English language proficiency. A student's overall result depends on all the four language components of the MUET and often determines the number and nature of the English language courses he or she has to attend at university. This study seeks to examine whether MUET is an accurate predictor of performance and success at university and how the MUET can be finetuned as an entry level English language test. It was carried out among 52 third year
undergraduates of the Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia, admitted into the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) programme. The findings of the study do not offer conclusive evidence about the validity of MUET as a predictor of academic success. However, six models of various combinations of scores on language components on the MUET scores are examined in terms of their effectiveness in increasing the accuracy in selecting students for the TESL programme. The correlations obtained using these models indicate that the combination of various components of the MUET can be used to more accurately predict student achievement at tertiary level than the cumulative MUET score itself. The results of these correlations and their implications in using language tests as admission requirements in general are also discussed.


The value of wild edible vegetables in food security has not been given sufficient attention in South Africa. Consequently, there are no formal interventions that seek to encourage people to use traditional vegetables as sources of essential nutrients. Studies on the role of wild leafy vegetables in food security could provide important information for development of policies on careful exploitation of natural resources for human sustenance. The objective of this study was to provide a rapid assessment of general knowledge about wild leafy vegetables among subsistence farmers from Ezigeni, a rural location in South Africa, and to determine the availability of wild leafy vegetables from cropping fields during spring - before the cropping season started. A focus group discussion and transect walk were used to collect qualitative data on knowledge of traditional vegetables. Availability of wild leafy vegetables was quantified using one-square-meter plots, randomly located in a cropping field and in an area that has never been cultivated (veld). Results showed that knowledge of wild leafy vegetables among the participants was positively correlated with age. Education status improved knowledge of wild vegetables for middle-aged participants, but not for the youth (35 years or younger). Availability of wild edible leafy vegetables (plant numbers and yield) increased from August to October, but there was a significant difference between species. Data from a focus group discussion showed that wild leafy vegetable availability occurred early in spring, when traditional crops were less abundant. It is concluded that knowledge of wild leafy vegetables may be lost in the near future, unless efforts are made to educate younger generations about their importance. They could be used as an important source of nutrients during the pre-cropping season, before traditional crops are available for human consumption. It is recommended that agronomic investigations into cultivation of wild leafy vegetables that are adapted to rural areas where exotic leafy vegetables are not widely available be undertaken. Those studies could contribute significantly in government policies to improve food security in rural areas, and in the improvement of wild vegetable status, whose potential as sources of nutrition is currently undervalued. Keywords : availability, knowledge, wild leafy vegetables African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development Vol. 6(1) 2006


Images reconstructed from computer-generated holograms synthesized by the iterative direct binary search (DBS) technique suffer from noise due to leakage from uncontrolled parts of the diffraction pattern. The statistics of the nonhomogeneous leakage noise are analyzed under the assumption of independent, identically distributed (iid) addressable hologram cell transmittances. Three measures for the effect of the leakage, root-mean-squared (rms) error, efficiency, and contrast are defined and compared for ensemble statistics based on the model and for sample statistics of the leakage noise in images reconstructed from iid holograms and from actual DBS holograms. To assess the relative significance of the leakage noise, these measures are compared with the rms representation-related error and the total efficiency in images reconstructed from DBS holograms. Except for a cross artifact due to a nonzero mean hologram transmittance, the leakage noise is found to exhibit specklelike unity contrast.


A US-led assault on Iraq will have unpredictable and possibly profound effects on Iraqi society. Moreover, those effects will vary with the objectives and strategy adopted by the US and its allies as well as by the pace and scope of the collapse of Iraqi resistance. Further, the reach of Washington's post-war objectives has not yet been settled. Given these multiple sources of uncertainty, understanding the relationship between Iraqi society and the Iraqi state after three decades of Ba'ath rule is all the more crucial to the success of post-war efforts to reconstruct the country and reconstitute its political system. Yet that relationship is poorly understood in the West. The Iraq of today cannot easily be mapped on to a neat diagramme of sect, tribe, or party. The rentier structure of the state economy, the regime's manipulation of group identity to control the population, the emergence of a shadow state that distributes public goods to advance regime interests, and pervasive violence have transformed Iraq's socio-political landscape into dangerous and unfamiliar ground for intervention. These essays delineate the options now being debated in Washington and provide up-to-date assessments of how Iraqi state and society will respond to the impact of war and the removal of a deeply-rooted authoritarian regime.


—Hyperspectral image (HSI) denoising is essential for enhancing HSI quality and facilitating HSI processing tasks. However, the reduction of noise in HSI is a difficult work, primarily due to the fact that HSI consists much more spectral bands than other remote sensing images. Therefore, comparing with other image denoising jobs that rely primarily on spatial information, efficient HSI denoising requires the utilization of both spatial and spectral information. In this paper, we design an unsupervised spatial–spectral HSI denoising approach based on Monte Carlo sampling (MCS) technique. This approach allows the incorporation of both spatial and spectral information for HSI denoising. Moreover, it addresses the noise variance hetero-geneity effect among different HSI bands. In the proposed HSI denoising scheme, MCS is used to estimate the posterior distribution , in order to solve a Bayesian least squares optimization problem. Based on the proposed scheme, we iterate all pixels in HIS and denoise them sequentially. A referenced pixel in hyper-spectral image is denoised as follows. First, some samples are randomly drawn from image space close to the referenced pixel. Second, based on a spatial–spectral similarity likelihood, relevant samples are accepted into a sample set. Third, all samples in the accepted set will be used for calculating the estimation of posterior distribution. Finally, based on the posterior, the noise-free pixel value is estimated as the discrete conditional mean. The proposed method is tested on both simulated and real hyperspectral images, in comparison with several other popular methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is capable of removing the noise largely, while also preserving image details very well.


While considerable research has been conducted on consumer attitude towards foreign products, most of these studies focuses on the attitude of products from Western developed countries. Our study intends to investigate the effects of consumers' national identification and culture sensitivity on their perceived risk of buying products from Eastern developing countries. Especially, this study advances the literature by identifying the mediation effect of consumer ethnocentrism and the moderating effect of consumer value consciousness. Taking China and India as focal emerging economies, the consumer survey (n=308) in the UK produced the following results. First, UK consumers' national identification is positively related to their perceived risk of buying eastern products through consumer ethnocentrism, whilst their cultural sensitivity has a negative relationship. Second, the effect of consumer ethnocentrism on the perceived risk of buying eastern products is moderated by consumer value consciousness. Third, value consciousness also attenuates the indirect relationships between national identification / cultural sensitivity and perceived risk via consumer ethnocentrism.


Angiosperm sexual reproduction is unique and remarkable. Unlike for other living organisms, fertilisation involves the fusion of two sperm cells to two cell types of female gametophyte, the egg and central cell. This fertilization process is called double fertilisation. Fusion of the egg and the sperm yields a zygote whereas the interaction of the central cell and the sperm gives the nutritive endosperm. This fertilization process has been studied extensively for many years. However, despite these studies, relatively little is known at the molecular level about either of the plant gametes. This is primarily due to the difficulties in plant gamete isolation. Both plant gametes reside within enclosed tissues, pollen grains and embryo sacs. In this study, sperm isolation techniques were successfully developed for Brassica oleracea and Arabidopsis thaliana which ultimately utilised fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to obtain pure cell samples. Proteomic studies utilising two-dimensional protein electrophoresis and mass spectrometry (MS) were carried out on both semi-purified and FACS-purified sperm cells. In parallel with the proteomic studies a bioinformatics approach was taken which used sperm transcriptome data of maize, Plumbago zeylanica, rice and tobacco to identify homologues in Arabidopsis. Transcriptional analyses, RT-PCR and GFP translational fusion experiments were used to investigate these Arabidopsis sperm cell-expressed gene candidates. As a result, two sperm cell-expressed genes (At1g10090 and At5g39650) were identified and these are being analysed to confirm their functions in the reproductive process. Moreover, the sperm cell-expressed gene candidates derived from the bioinformatics were also screened for roles in plant reproduction by a reverse genetics approach (Arabidopsis T-DNA insertion mutagenesis plant screening) and eight genes were identified. In addition, for the first time, sperm cell size dimorphism was identified for Arabidopsis in this study utilising a GFP-labelled sperm line and confocal microscopy. Overall the techniques for sperm cell-expressed gene candidate selection were proven to be effective and will certainly facilitate further sperm cell-specific gene identification studies. Further the Arabidopsis sperm purification technique successfully developed in this project will surely be useful for any plant sperm cell studies in the future.


Data papers have been defined as scholarly journal publications whose primary purpose is to describe research data. Our survey provides more insights about the environment of data papers, i.e., disciplines, publishers and business models, and about their structure, length, formats, metadata, and licensing. Data papers are a product of the emerging ecosystem of data-driven open science. They contribute to the FAIR principles for research data management. However, the boundaries with other categories of academic publishing are partly blurred. Data papers are (can be) generated automatically and are potentially machine-readable. Data papers are essentially information, i.e., description of data, but also partly contribute to the generation of knowledge and data on its own. Part of the new ecosystem of open and data-driven science, data papers and data journals are an interesting and relevant object for the assessment and understanding of the transition of the former system of academic publishing.


With tropical deforestation a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, the land use decisions of small-scale farmers at the forest margins have important implications for the global environment. In some tropical forests, such as the Eastern Brazilian Amazon, farmers practice a shifting cultivation system that maintains large amounts of land under forest fallow. I examine whether local benefits of fallowing such as soil restoration, erosion mitigation and hydrological regulation are of sufficient value to farmers to stem the expansion of permanent cropland at the expense of forest. I quantify the value of ecosystem services provided by fallow to agriculture and test whether local forest externalities are economically significant, using farm survey and GIS data from the Eastern Amazon. I estimate a production function to determine the contribution of on-farm and upstream fallow to income, using an instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity. I find that on-farm and upstream fallow are both associated with higher farm income. This result both confirms the agronomic evidence that fallow boosts yields and suggests that fallow provides positive hydrological externalities to downstream farms. I also examine whether farmers respond strategically to their neighbors' land use, taking advantage of ecosystem services provided by upstream farms. I use a spatial econometric model to estimate the effect of upstream farms' fallow on downstream land allocation. I find no evidence that farmers alter their fallowing based on land use upstream. I then investigate whether market failures encourage fallowing. If farmers cannot purchase inputs used in cultivation due to liquidity constraints, they may keep more land under fallow than optimal. I use the estimated production function parameters to determine whether each farm's allocation of land between cropping and fallow is efficient from an individual perspective. I then estimate the effect liquidity indicators on land use efficiency. I find that over-fallowing is negatively associated with commercial credit use and off-farm income, suggesting that liquidity constraints do hinder agricultural intensification. Because I find evidence to support the existence of positive externalities to fallow, the loosening of liquidity constraints that encourage fallowing has ambiguous implications for community-level welfare.


An animal's interaction with its environment is facilitated by the complex workings of the musculoskeletal system via movement. An animal's method of moving through its environment is fundamental to its way of life, how it finds food, shelter, escapes predators, interacts with conspecifics, disperses or migrates. Musculoskeletal anatomy is well correlated with ecology; craniodental morphology is highly adaptive with respect to feeding strategy, while variation in postcranial anatomy reflects adaptation principally for locomotion. Marsupials and monotremes fill a diverse range of ecological niches that are reflected in a great diversity of structural forms. Patterns in the form and function of animals can inform our understanding of the evolution of diverse groups and the relationships between them. In this chapter, we consider examples of musculoskeletal anatomy of marsupials and monotremes that highlight patterns of both phylogenetic history and evolutionary adaptation.


Despite an increasing interest in the study and analysis of research grant proposals (e.g., Connor 1998, 2000; Connor & Mauranen 1999; Connor & Wagner 1999; Feng & Shi 2004), this newly emerged genre has so far not been addressed in the Chinese context. This chapter presents results of a genre analysis of nine successfully funded Chinese research grant proposals written by nine Chinese scholars. Proposals were analyzed in terms of the rhetorical moves and strategies. Interviews with the grant writers were also conducted. The study revealed some distinctive features of Chinese grant proposal writing that are attributable to various local contextualities, such as "face" and "networking" concerns, research and literacy traditions, sociopolitical structure and economic conditions.


Pollinators provide essential ecosystem services, and declines in some pollinator communities around the world have been reported. Understanding the fundamental components defining these communities is essential if conservation and restoration are to be successful. We examined the structure of plant-pollinator communities in a dynamic Mediterranean landscape, comprising a mosaic of post-fire regenerating habitats, and which is a recognized global hotspot for bee diversity. Each community was characterized by a highly skewed species abundance distribution, with a few dominant and many rare bee species, and was consistent with a log series model indicating that a few environmental factors govern the community. Floral community composition, the quantity and quality of forage resources present, and the geographic locality organized bee communities at various levels: (1) The overall structure of the bee community (116 species), as revealed through ordination, was dependent upon nectar resource diversity (defined as the variety of nectar volume-concentration combinations available), the ratio of pollen to nectar energy, floral diversity, floral abundance, and post-fire age. (2) Bee diversity, measured as species richness, was closely linked to floral diversity (especially of annuals), nectar resource diversity, and post-fire age of the habitat. (3) The abundance of the most common species was primarily related to post-fire age, grazing intensity, and nesting substrate availability. Ordination models based on age-characteristic post-fire floral community structure explained 39-50% of overall variation observed in bee community structure. Cluster analysis showed that all the communities shared a high degree of similarity in their species composition (27-59%); however, the geographical location of sites also contributed a smaller but significant component to bee community structure. We conclude that floral resources act in specific and previously unexplored ways to modulate the diversity of the local geographic species pool, with specific disturbance factors, superimposed upon these patterns, mainly affecting the dominant species.


Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is a disease of lower socioeconomic class and has reemerged as a priority in global health. Disability-adjusted life years because of RHD is >10 million. The World Health Organization set the goal of reducing the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100 000 births. A variety of pregnancy-associated cardiovascular changes often exacerbate the signs and symptoms of valvular lesions. This importance arises from the fact that drugs used for preventing or relieving pain during labor and delivery exert a major influence – for better or for worse – on the prognosis of the mother and newborn. Properly administered anesthesia and analgesia can contribute to the reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity. In this case we examine 38yr old female, G3P2L2 with 43 weeks gestation (covid 19 suspect), previous two normal home deliveries presenting with eclampsia. Caesarian section was done under general anesthesia and patient recovered. Patient was subsequently found to have rheumatic heart disease with mitral stenosis.


The FREQUENTLY OCCURRING EPISODES involving sports and games in the Icelandic sagas (1) serve a variety of dramatic purposes and again raise questions about the verisimilitude of saga literature. Dramatic episodes centered on competitive activities--most notably ball games, horse fights, swimming contests, and table games--provide both psychological insight into and a social context for the deeds of chief actors in the sagas as well as insight into the role that such competitive activities played in medieval Scandinavian society. In order to understand the functions of competitive activities in the sagas, this essay will first examine a number of such episodes as literary constructions explicating their role in character revelation and in the depiction of social dynamics between groups of characters. Afterward, the literary depictions of the social dynamics surrounding competitive activities will be considered in light of real-world data on the role of such activities in warrior societies. It will be argued that the resemblance between the social dynamics depicted in the sagas and similar dynamics observed in real world cultures is too strong to be coincidental and that in their depictions of social interactions surrounding competitive activity, at least, the saga compilers were writing as close to life as they could. The guiding idea that the sagas can provide useful ethnographic data about life in medieval Scandinavia, an idea that has gained much scholarly acceptance in recent years (Palsson 1-25; Whaley 161-202), will inform much of the work presented here. SPORTS, GAMES, AND CONFLICT: THE GREAT OUTDOORS Early in Egils saga Skalla-Grimssonar, we read the following description of the eponymous hero's father: Skalla-Grimr hendi mikit gaman at aflraunum ok leikum; um pat potti honum gott at roeda. Knattleikar varu pa tidir; var par i sveit gott til sterkra manna i pann tima, en po hafdi engi afl vid Skalla-Grim; hann gerdisk pa heldr hniginn at aldri. (IF 2:98-9) (Skalla-Grimr delighted greatly in contests of strength and sports; that seemed good to him. Ball games were in fashion then, and at that time there was a good supply of strong men in the district. But none of them had any strength compared to Skalla-Grimr. He was, at that time, rather stricken with old age.) After this description of Skalla-Grimr's prodigous athletic prowess and enthusiasm, there follows an episode in which the young Egill, having been roughly treated by an older boy named Grimr, avenges himself on Grimr by driving an axe into his skull (IF 2:100). Egill's killing of his competitor at a public sporting event precipitates a general melee in which seven men are killed before the violence can again be brought under control. At this early point in the saga, ball games are already associated with violent conflict in that they provide a social outlet for aggression that quickly moves from non-lethal violence whose scope is limited by rules to lethal battle with considerably fewer restraints. The incident provides one of the first illustrations of Egill's violent temper and leads to conflict within his family as his father and mother react differently to his deeds. Aware of the potential dangers posed by so recklessly violent a son, his father disapproves, while his mother expresses her pride in his martial skill. In this particular episode, the social consequences of Egill's killings at the ball game are limited. No one demands compensation for the killings, nor does anyone from the family of the murdered boy take revenge on Egill or his family. In another episode from the saga, though, the bloodshed on the playing field produces significant repercussions. In a fit of rage recalling his lycanthropic ancestry as the son of Kveld-Ulfr, Skalla-Grimr kills Egill's playmate, Pordr, along with the slave woman, Porgerdr Brak. To avenge their deaths, Egill himself kills the overseer of his father's estates (IF 2:100). …


The definitive guide to fixed income investing--revised and updated for the new era of investing The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities is the investing industry's most trusted, widely followed fixed income reference. For nearly three decades, investors have been drawn to its unparalleled scope, detail, and expertise. Now, the world's most authoritative fixed income resource has been updated with facts and formulas to help you better analyze, value, and manage fixed income instruments and their derivatives in today's evolving marketplace. This thoroughly revised eighth edition includes detailed discussions of: Types, features, and uses of fixed income securities Active and structured portfolio management strategies Basics of fixed income analytics, from bond pricing to price volatility measures Risks and risk control strategies Interest rate and credit derivatives and their portfolio management applications Asset-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and innovative fixed income applications The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities is the most all-inclusive, up-to-date source available for fixed income facts and analyses. Its valuable perspective and insights will help you enhance investment returns and avoid poor performance in the fixed income market.


This thesis consists of an introduction, a summary and 7 papers. The papers are devoted to problems in ergodic theory, equidistribution on compact manifolds and random walks on groups. In Papers A and B, we generalize two classical ergodic theorems for actions of abelian groups. The main result is a generalization of Kingman's subadditive ergodic theorem to ergodic actions of the group Zd. In Papers C,D and E, we consider equidistribution problems on nilmanifolds. In Paper C we study the asymptotic behavior of dilations of probability measures on nilmanifolds, supported on singular sets, and prove, under some technical assumptions, effective convergences to Haar measure. In Paper D, we give a new geometric proof of an old result by Koksma on almost sure equidistribution of expansive sequences. In paper E we give necessary and sufficient conditions on a probability measure on a homogeneous Riemannian manifold to be non–atomic. Papers F and G are concerned with the asymptotic behavior of random walks on groups. In Paper F we consider homogeneous random walks on Gromov hyperbolic groups and establish a central limit theorem for random walks satisfying some technical moment conditions. Paper G is devoted to certain Bernoulli convolutions and the regularity of their value distributions.


With improving survival of children with complex congenital heart disease (CCHD), postoperative complications, like protein-losing enteropathy (PLE) are increasingly encountered. A 3-year-old girl with surgically corrected CCHD (ventricular inversion/L-transposition of the great arteries, ventricular septal defect, pulmonary atresia, post-double switch procedure [Rastelli and Glenn]) developed chylothoraces. She was treated with pleurodesis, thoracic duct ligation and subsequently developed chylous ascites and PLE (serum albumin ≤0.9 g/dL) and was malnourished, despite nutritional rehabilitation. Lymphangioscintigraphy/single-photon emission computed tomography showed lymphatic obstruction at the cisterna chyli level. A segmental chyle leak and chylous lymphangiectasia were confirmed by gastrointestinal endoscopy, magnetic resonance (MR) enterography, and MR lymphangiography. Selective glue embolization of leaking intestinal lymphatic trunks led to prompt reversal of PLE. Serum albumin level and weight gain markedly improved and have been maintained for over 3 years. Selective interventional embolization reversed this devastating lymphatic complication of surgically corrected CCHD.


Generalized Linear Mixed Models in the Agricultural and Natural Resources Sciences provides readers with an understanding and appreciation for the design and analysis of mixed models for non-normally distributed data. It is the only publication of its kind directed specifically toward the agricultural and natural resources sciences audience. Readers will especially benefit from the numerous worked examples based on actual experimental data and the discussion of pitfalls associated with incorrect analyses.


This document redefines selected ICMP messages to support multi-part
operation. A multi-part ICMP message carries all of the information
that ICMP messages carried previously, as well as additional
information that applications may require. Multi-part messages are
supported by an ICMP extension structure. The extension structure is
situated at the end of the ICMP message. It includes an extension
header followed by one or more extension objects. Each extension
object contains an object header and object payload. All object
headers share a common format. This document further redefines the
above mentioned ICMP messages by specifying a length attribute. All of
the currently defined ICMP messages to which an extension structure
can be appended include an "original datagram" field. The "original
datagram" field contains the initial octets of the datagram that
elicited the ICMP error message. Although the original datagram field
is of variable length, the ICMP message does not include a field that
specifies its length. Therefore, in order to facilitate message
parsing, this document allocates eight previously reserved bits to
reflect the length of the "original datagram" field. The proposed
modifications change the requirements for ICMP compliance. The impact
of these changes on compliant implementations is discussed, and new
requirements for future implementations are presented. This memo
updates RFC 792 and RFC 4443. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Particle Filtering (PF) methods are an established class of procedures for performing inference in non-linear state-space models. Resampling is a key ingredient of PF, necessary to obtain low variance likelihood and states estimates. However, traditional resampling methods result in PF-based loss functions being non-differentiable with respect to model and PF parameters. In a variational inference context, resampling also yields high variance gradient estimates of the PF-based evidence lower bound. By leveraging optimal transport ideas, we introduce a principled differentiable particle filter and provide convergence results. We demonstrate this novel method on a variety of applications.


One in every twenty difficult conflicts ends up grinding to a halt. That's fully 5 percent of not just the diplomatic and political clashes we read about in the newspaper, but disputations and arguments from our everyday lives as well. Once we get pulled into these self-perpetuating conflicts it is nearly impossible to escape. The 5 percent rule us. So what can we do when we find ourselves ensnared? According to Dr. Peter T. Coleman, the solution is in seeing our conflict anew. Applying lessons from complexity theory to examples from both American domestic politics and international diplomacy--from abortion debates to the enmity between Israelis and Palestinians--Coleman provides innovative new strategies for dealing with intractable disputes. A timely, paradigm-shifting look at conflict, The Five Percent is an invaluable guide to preventing even the most fractious negotiations from foundering.


Ion beam LIGA allows the etching of 3D nano-structures by direct writing with a nano-sized beam. However, this is a relatively time consuming process. We propose here another approach for etching structures on large surfaces and faster, compared to the direct writing process. This approach consists of replicating 3D structured masks, by scanning an unfocused ion beam. A polymer substrate is placed behind the mask, as in UV photolithography. But the main advantage is that the 3D structure of the mask can be replicated into the polymer. For that purpose, the masks (developped at LMIS1, EPFL) are made of a silicon nitride membrane 100 nm thick, on which 3D gold structures up to 200 nm thick, are deposited. The 3D Au structures are made with the nanostencil method, based on successive gold deposition. The IMA institute, from HE-Arc, owns a High Voltage Engineering 1.7 MV Tandetron with both solid and gaseous negative ion sources, able to generate ions from almost every chemical element in a broad range of energies comprised between 400 keV and 6.8 MeV. The beam composition and energy are chosen in such a way, that ions lose a significant fraction of their energy when passing through the thickest regions of the mask. Ions passing through thinner regions of the mask loose a smaller fraction of their energy and etch the polymer with larger thicknesses, allowing a replication of the mask into the polymer. For our trials, we have used a carbon beam with an energy of 500 keV. The beam was focussed to a diameter of 5 mm with solid slits, in order to avoid border effects and thus ensure a homogeneous dose distribution on the beam diameter. The feasibility of this technique has been demonstrated, allowing industrial applications for micro-mould fabrication, micro-fluidics and micro-optics.


Antihypertensive agents differ as to the degree of hypotension which results from their use. In an attempt to evaluate various agents, a double-blind study was begun in January, 1956. Seventy-four patients received placebo and ergotoxine alkaloids parenterally. Sixty received placebo and drugs orally. For 59 weeks, parenteral placebo administration caused a significant decrease in systolic pressure. Parenteral drug and placebo administration was followed by a significant decrease in diastolic pressure through the 143rd week. Patients receiving placebo orally experienced no significant change in pressure. Decreases in systolic and diastolic pressure followed oral administration of the ergotoxine alkaloids, reserpine, and a combination of rauwolfia, protoveratrine, and phenoxybenzamine hydrochloride. Dihydroergocornine orally did not decrease the blood pressure.


Interannual climate variability poses the greatest risk that farmers face. Until recently, seasonal climate forecasts have been weak and therefore rarely observed by farmers in making management decisions. Farm management is generally based on long-term mean expectations of climate and crop responses to local edaphic conditions. Currently, significant progress is being made in the skill level of predictions of seasonal to interannual climate, primarily because of new understanding of the teleconnections between ocean circulation and atmospheric processes. The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) refers to fluctuations in both sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) in the eastern equatorial Pacific and in sea-level pressures in the southern Pacific at a time scale of roughly 3 to 7 years. Using ocean circulation models, we are now able to forecast the SST anomaly up to a year in advance with an 80% level of accuracy (Latif et al., 1994). Thus, associated climate phenomena may be predicted with a high degree of skill using this tool. Given the strong relationship between crop growth and climate, this predictability carries significant implications for improved efficiency of agricultural production (Adams et al., 1995; Sonka et al., 1986). In some regions, the teleconnection between climate and ENSO has been well established. In others, however, the relationship is only now being elucidated. Thus, the spatial extent of the potential for use of ENSO forecasts is not well defined. We are developing a methodology that uses analysis of historical climate and crop data as well as models of crop growth and farm management to explore the extent of ENSO impacts and implications for using forecasts in agricultural management. Based on the few studies that have been done, there is indication of a significant link between ENSO and climate in the midwestern United States. Using reconstruction from white oak tree rings in Iowa going back to 1640, Cleveland and Duvick (1992) showed a strong correlation with the Southern Oscillation Index, one indicator of the ENSO phase. Handler (1984) used yield data from the major Corn Belt states going back to 1868 and a classification scheme ranking event intensity. He found a strong relationship, with El Niño years associated with positive maize yield anomalies and La Niña with negative anomalies. Our current work extends the analysis of the U.S. Corn Belt, with the objective of testing the potential for using long-range ENSO/climate forecasts to increase profit margins and decrease risk for maize farmers in the United States. Findings in the U.S. Corn Belt


This article, prepared for the Michigan State Law Review's "Business Law and Narrative" symposium, analyzes corporate legal theory's use of myth as a rhetorical device. Corporate legal theories offer competing stories about how and why corporations originate and how they operate. The leading theories do so by maintaining that the abstraction we call a corporation can be decomposed into constituent human individuals, who serve as characters in stories of corporate origins and ongoing corporate action. Narratives that justify the existence of social institutions serve a rhetorical purpose sometimes referred to as "myth". Corporate legal theories serve to justify the existence of corporations and certain approaches to the role of regulation, the role of markets, and the relative roles of managers, directors, shareholders, and other corporate stakeholders. Theories of the corporation perform this function by reference to fundamental moral preferences about the role of the state, the rights of the individual, and her relationship to society. The dominant corporate legal narratives in American law, then, have significant moral and ideological content. This analysis of legal theory as narrative myth shows that law does not simply impose ideology, but influences ideology through the use of rhetorical conventions. Law appeals to existing ideology, but also attempts to remake ideology, though it can only do so incrementally, in recursive fashion, by taking advantage of its relationship to existing beliefs.


This paper explores the links between remediating land for Olympic event spaces and the pursuit of legacy. In particular, it considers ways in which redevelopment of the sizeable spaces prepared for staging the event take their place in broader strategies intended to bring long-term benefits to the host city and society in order to compensate for the costs and inconvenience originally incurred in hosting the Games. There are six main sections. The first analyses the diverse nature of brownfield land and highlights salient characteristics of its remediation for use in urban regeneration. The second supplies background to Olympic legacy and indicates the importance of the changing climate of ideas in understanding the formulation of legacy over the past two decades. The third section documents the role of remediation as an option employed recently by Games' organisers when needing to find spaces of suitable size to stage the Olympics, noting how choosing remediation ab initio involves commitment to legacy. The fourth and fifth parts analyse approaches to implementing remediation, with respect to the key event spaces for two of the twenty-first century's Summer Games: Homebush Bay, which housed the Olympic Park for Sydney 2000; and the Lower Lea Valley, which served the same function for London 2012. The final section provides commentary on the wider narratives of transformation associated with deployment of remediated sites for Olympic event spaces and indicates the significance of the values that have underpinned those narratives.

https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/file/256848b4-d48c-4e49-9ba2-dceb4524a7be/1/Land remediation and legacy - 2012 - Gold Gold.pdf


The mammalian constitutive photomorphogenesis 9 (COP9) signalosome (CSN), a protein complex involved in embryonic development, is implicated in cell cycle regulation and the DNA damage response. Its role in tumor development, however, remains unclear. Here, we have shown that the COP9 subunit 6 (CSN6) gene is amplified in human breast cancer specimens, and the CSN6 protein is upregulated in human breast and thyroid tumors. CSN6 expression positively correlated with expression of murine double minute 2 (MDM2), a potent negative regulator of the p53 tumor suppressor. Expression of CSN6 appeared to prevent MDM2 autoubiquitination at lysine 364, resulting in stabilization of MDM2 and degradation of p53. Mice in which Csn6 was deleted died early in embryogenesis (E7.5). Embryos lacking both Csn6 and p53 survived to later in embryonic development (E10.5), which suggests that loss of p53 could partially rescue the effect of loss of Csn6. Mice heterozygous for Csn6 were sensitized to γ-irradiation-induced, p53-dependent apoptosis in both the thymus and the developing CNS. These mice were also less susceptible than wild-type mice to γ-irradiation-induced tumorigenesis. These results suggest that loss of CSN6 enhances p53-mediated tumor suppression in vivo and that CSN6 plays an important role in regulating DNA damage-associated apoptosis and tumorigenesis through control of the MDM2-p53 signaling pathway.


Background: Carbohydrates are found in most of our everyday diet; however, sugar analysis is difficult and inconvenient in food materials such as beverages, fruits and vegetables. Here, we report a new method for labeling the sugar ingredients in beverages and plant foods. The mentioned method provides a high sensitive and efficient tool for sugar compositional analysis by labeling the aldoses in beverages and foods with 2,3-naphthalenediamine via an iodine-promoted oxidative condensation reaction to form highly fluorescent aldo-naphthylimidazole (NAIM) derivatives. We have also separated the natural glycosides from dietary foods, for instance, solanines from tomato and potato. The various types of solanines with different sugar moieties were analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS). The glycan is released by acidic hydrolysis, and the sugar components are subjected to NAIM labeling. These aldo-NAIM derivatives not only show enhanced mass signaling, but also provide fluorescent moiety at the reducing end of sugar to assist the detection in HPLC analysis. Objective: To develop a rapid and sensitive sugar detection method for research and commercial use, as well as to understand the sugar composition in dietary beverages and functional foods. Results: Five beverages in Taiwan were examined for the composition of six common sugars. Two Solanaceae samples extracted from the potato and tomato plants were measured by MALDI MS and ESI-MS/MS. The structures of solanines were elucidated and the glycan moieties were converted to the fluorescent NAIM derivatives to confirm their composition. Conclusions: The results suggest that the aldo-NAIM method is efficient and rapid for evaluation of sugar composition and concentration in beverages and foods. Key words: beverages, foods, potato, tomato, aldose, sugar analysis, fluorescence, NAIM kit


Abstract The benefits of farming organically in the USA are increasingly known; however, organic farmers also encounter considerable risks, especially from weeds. Without herbicides, organic farmers can rely only on crop rotations, mechanical cultivation, manual weeding, beneficial insects and other cultural practices, termed ecological weed management (EWM), to control weeds. Despite promising results and the many ways in which EWM can be employed, it remains poorly adopted by the organic community. Organic farmers resist research and recommendations from University scientists and Extension, instead preferring to rely on local family and friends and their own experience to guide decisions. Here we investigate factors that may lead organic farmers to recognize that they need additional information about EWM and to seek that information out. Using a national survey of organic farmers (n = 554) and a risk-information seeking and processing model, we show that farmers' risk and benefit perceptions, worry, social norms encouraging seeking out information, and farmers' own perceived knowledge gaps, particularly with respect to their most problematic weed, influence information-seeking behavior. Identifying characteristics that may distinguish those organic farmers who need and want additional information, we provide recommendations to Extension and University scientists about how best to communicate, build trust and provide decision support to the organic community with respect to EWM.


The paper proposes a framework for modeling and analysis of the dynamics of supply, demand, and clearing prices in power systems with real-time retail pricing and information asymmetry. Characterized by passing on the real-time wholesale electricity prices to the end consumers, real-time pricing creates a closed-loop feedback system between the physical layer and the market layer of the system. In the absence of a carefully designed control law, such direct feedback can increase sensitivity and lower the system's robustness to uncertainty in demand and generation. It is shown that price volatility can be characterized in terms of the system's maximal relative price elasticity, defined as the maximal ratio of the generalized price-elasticity of consumers to that of the producers. As this ratio increases, the system may become more volatile. Since new demand response technologies increase the price-elasticity of demand, and since increased penetration of distributed generation can also increase the uncertainty in price-based demand response, the theoretical findings suggest that the architecture under examination can potentially lead to increased volatility. This study highlights the need for assessing architecture systematically and in advance, in order to optimally strike the trade-offs between volatility/robustness and performance metrics such as economic efficiency and environmental efficiency.


Featuring over 1,000 alphabetically arranged, biographical entries, Who's Who in World War One builds up a complete and vivid picture of the major figures of the Great War. The subjects are drawn not only from the political and military spheres of all thirty-two nations involved, but also from the social and cultural life of the period. This book's breadth of coverage makes it the definitive biographical guide to the First World War; * from the British air ace, Albert Ball, to the German foreign secretary, Richard von Kuhlmann * from David Lloyd George to Rasputin * from the British war poet Siegfried Sassoon to the Serbian assassin Trifko Grabez and the Emperor Wilhelm II. Each entry provides biographical data and basic factual information about its subject's role in the Great War, and in the case of major figures there is also an assessment of their reputation in the light of current scholarship. Maps, cross-referencing, a list of military ranks, a guide to further reading and a thorough introduction complete what is at once a comprehensive work of reference and a fascinating overview of a crucial period in twentieth century history.


Although wetlands were remarkable habitats with their fauna and flora diversity, few studies have been devoted to the study of amphipod biodiversity in this ecosystem type. The amphipod communities of six wetland types belonging to 117 stations were studied with respect to species composition, abundance and their relationship with environmen tal parameters. Amphipods were collected during spring. At each station, eight quadrats of 50 × 50 cm 2 were randomly placed. Animals were preserved in alcohol at 70°C. In the laboratory, the specimens collected were identified and counted. Physicochemical param - eters (organic matter, particle size, heavy metals) of sampled soils were determined. The results showed that the highest species richness was observed in lagoons with the pres - ence of eight species namely Orchestia montagui, Orchestia gammarellus, Orchestia mediterranea, Orchestia stephenseni, Orchestia cavimana, Platorchestia platensis, Deshayesorchestia deshayesii and Talitrus saltator , whereas in the hill lakes and dams banks, no specimens were collected. The biodiversity of amphipod species depends on climatic (temperature, humidity) and edaphic (organic matter, particle size, heavy metals) factors.


The question I shall address in this pa-per is: Can the slowdown in productivity growth be explained, wholly or in part, by the recent slowdown in the growth of real R&D expenditures? But first we have to review the following questions: I) What is to be explained? Which productivity and what slowdown? 2) What is the mechanism by which R&D could have contributed to this slowdown? 3) What did happen to R&D in the relevant period? Besides traversing this somewhat familiar ground and reviewing some of the recent literature on this topic, I shall also report on some estimates of my own. The direct answer to the opening question is "probably not." But how we get there needs documenting and may prove instructive on its own merits.


We revisit the [JKO98] variational characterization of diffusion as entropic gradient flux, and provide for it a probabilistic interpretation based on stochastic calculus. It was shown by Jordan, Kinderlehrer, and Otto in [JKO98] that, for diffusions of Langevin-Smoluchowski type, the Fokker-Planck probability density flow minimizes the rate of relative entropy dissipation, as measured by the distance traveled in terms of the quadratic Wasserstein metric. We obtain novel, stochastic-process versions of these features, valid along almost every trajectory of the diffusive motion in both the forward and, most transparently, the backward, directions of time, using a very direct perturbation analysis; the original results follow then simply by taking expectations. As a bonus, we derive the Cordero-Erausquin version of the so-called HWI inequality relating relative entropy, Fisher information and Wasserstein distance.


Importance Whether a reported decline in the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD) continued for people born during the Baby Boom years (1946-1964) or later is unknown. These data are important to plan for ocular health care needs in the 21st century. Objectives To determine whether the 5-year risk for AMD declined by generation and to identify factors that contributed to improvement in risk. Design, Setting, and Participants Data came from the longitudinal cohort Beaver Dam Eye Study (March 1, 1988, through September 15, 1990, and March 1, 1993, through June 15, 1995) and the Beaver Dam Offspring Study (June 8, 2005, through August 4, 2008, and July 12, 2010, through March 21, 2013). These population-based studies examined residents of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, aged 43 to 84 years in 1987 through 1988 and their adult offspring aged 21 to 84 years in 2005 through 2008. A total of 4819 participants were at risk for developing AMD based on fundus images obtained at baseline visits. Data were analyzed from February 18, 2016, through June 22, 2017, with additional analyses ending September 22, 2017. Main Outcomes and Measures Fundus images were graded for AMD using the Wisconsin Age-related Maculopathy Grading System. The incidence of AMD was defined as the presence at the 5-year follow-up examination of pure geographic atrophy or exudative macular degeneration, any type of drusen with pigmentary abnormalities, or soft indistinct drusen without pigmentary abnormalities. Results Among the 4819 participants, the mean (SD) baseline age of the cohort was 54 (11) years; 2117 were men (43.9%) and 2702 were women (56.1%). The 5-year age- and sex-adjusted incidence of AMD was 8.8% in the Greatest Generation (born during 1901-1924), 3.0% in the Silent Generation (born during 1925-1945), 1.0% in the Baby Boom Generation (born during 1946-1964), and 0.3% in Generation X (born during 1965-1984). Adjusting for age and sex, each generation was more than 60% less likely to develop AMD than the previous generation (relative risk, 0.34; 95% CI, 0.24-0.46). The generational association (relative risk, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.28 to 0.57) remained significant after adjusting for age, sex, smoking, educational attainment, exercise, levels of non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, statins, and multivitamins. Conclusions and Relevance The 5-year risk for AMD declined by birth cohorts throughout the 20th century. Factors that explain this decline in risk are not known. However, this pattern is consistent with reported declines in risks for cardiovascular disease and dementia, suggesting that aging Baby Boomers may experience better retinal health at older ages than did previous generations.


I study the effects of inflation on the purchasing behavior of buyers in an economy where money is essential for certain transactions (as in Lagos and Wright, 2005). A long-standing intuition in this subject is that when inflation increases, agents try to spend their money holdings speedily. The standard framework fails to capture this kind of effect (see Lagos and Rocheteau, 2005). I propose a simple modification of the model that improves it in this dimension. I assume that buyers can rebalance their money holdings only sporadically (i.e., not every period). With this minimal change in the environment, I show that higher inflation induces some buyers to spend their money faster by frontloading their consumption, searching more intensively for transactions, and buying low-quality goods. In this way, the model is able to reproduce distortions in the pattern of transactions that, traditionally, have played an important role in the evaluation of the cost of inflation.


Flow coefficients of intake valves and port combinations were determined experimentally for
a compressed nitrogen engine under steady-state and dynamic flow conditions for inlet
pressures up to 3.2 MPa. Variable valve timing was combined with an indexed parked piston
cylinder unit for testing valve flows at different cylinder volumes whilst maintaining realistic
in-cylinder transient pressure profiles by simply using a fixed area outlet orifice. A one-dimensional modelling approach describing three-dimensional valve flow characteristics has
been developed by the use of variable flow coefficients that take into account the
propagation of flow jets and their boundaries as a function of downstream/upstream
pressure ratios. The results obtained for the dynamic flow cases were compared with steadystate
results for the cylinder to inlet port pressure ratios ranges from 0.18 to 0.83. The
deviation of flow coefficients for both cases is discussed using pulsatile flow theory. The key
findings include: 1. For a given valve lift, the steady-state flow coefficients fall by up to 21
percent with increasing cylinder/manifold pressure ratios within the measured range given
above; 2. Transient flow coefficients deviated from those measured for the steady-state flow
as the valve lift increases beyond a critical value of approximately 0.5 mm. The deviation can
be due to the insufficient time of the development of steady state boundary layers, which
can be quantified by the instantaneous Womersley number defined by using the transient
hydraulic diameter. We show that it is possible to predict deviations of the transient valve
flow from the steady-state measurements alone.


Computational intelligence has been used in many applications in the fields of health sciences and epidemiology. In particular, owing to the sudden and massive spread of COVID-19, many researchers around the globe have devoted intensive efforts into the development of computational intelligence methods and systems for combating the pandemic. Although there have been more than 200,000 scholarly articles on COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, and other related coronaviruses, these articles did not specifically address in-depth the key issues for applying computational intelligence to combat COVID-19. Hence, it would be exhausting to filter and summarize those studies conducted in the field of computational intelligence from such a large number of articles. Such inconvenience has hindered the development of effective computational intelligence technologies for fighting COVID-19. To fill this gap, this survey focuses on categorizing and reviewing the current progress of computational intelligence for fighting this serious disease. In this survey, we aim to assemble and summarize the latest developments and insights in transforming computational intelligence approaches, such as machine learning, evolutionary computation, soft computing, and big data analytics, into practical applications for fighting COVID-19. We also explore some potential research issues on computational intelligence for defeating the pandemic.


We investigate the probability that an insurance portfolio gets ruined within a finite time period under the assumption that the r largest claims are (partly) reinsured. We show that for regularly varying claim sizes the probability of ruin after reinsurance is also regularly varying in terms of the initial capital, and derive an explicit asymptotic expression for the latter. We establish this result by leveraging recent developments on sample-path large deviations for heavy tails. Our results allow, on the asymptotic level, for an explicit comparison between two well-known large-claim reinsurance contracts, namely LCR and ECOMOR. Finally, we assess the accuracy of the resulting approximations using state-of-the-art rare event simulation techniques.