Purpose

Ward rounds in hospitals are crucial for decision-making in the context of patient treatment processes. However, these tasks are not systematically managed and are often extended due to missing information or equipment or staff unavailability. This research aims to assess whether ward rounds can be structured more efficiently and effectively from the perspective of patients and staff.

Design/methodology/approach

This mixed-method approach examines the ward rounds conducted in three units within a haematology department of a major Danish hospital. Baseline measures were collected to capture the value of the ward round described by patients and staff. The information on patient and equipment flows associated with a typical ward round was mapped with recommendations for improvement.

Findings

Staff aspired to deliver a good-quality ward round, but what this meant was never articulated and there were no established standards. The duration of the ward round was unpredictable and could take 6 hours to complete. Improvements identified by the team allow the ward rounds to be completed by mid-day with much more certainty.

Research limitations/implications

This research provides an insight as to how ward rounds are conducted within a Danish haematology department.

Practical implications

The research has implications for those involved in ward rounds to reduce the time taken whilst maintaining quality and safety of patient care.

Social implications

This research has implications for patients and their families who wish to spend time with consultants.

Originality/value

Previous research has focused on the interactions between doctors and nurses. This research focuses on the operational process of the ward round and presents a structured approach to support multi-disciplinary teams with a focus on value from the patient's perspective.


Social networking services (SNS) have increased in popularity over the last decade. They have become major platforms for e-commerce, personal branding, socialization and information. The success of social networking services like Facebook and Twitter as well as LinkedIn, LiveJournal andFoursquare and the variety of their usages leads their users to create a set of profiles on different SNS. Recently, social networking service aggregators have proposed centralizing the multiple social networking profiles of a given user in order to facilitate his interactions with social networking services. Such aggregators allow the messages received by a profile over multiple SNS to be retrieved, edited and posted with much less effort. Despite their obvious advantages, we highlight in this paper the risk of potential data leaks due to the inexperienced use of such tools. For this purpose, we provide a classification of online SNS and present their specificities with regard to the publicly exposed data of a user. Based on this classification, we investigate the possible insecure use of aggregators with an inappropriate set of SNS, which could lead to rendering sensitive data accessible to people it wasn't intended for. We present a decision tree approach for identifying a possible data leak based on the three following criteria: opinion, interest and location. We finally show the result of this approach on popular social networking aggregators.


This paper analyzes how countries with international and local truck traffic decide to switch from a simple fuel tax system to a dual system of fuel and kilometer taxes. We show what drives a country to switch and how this affects the level of fuel taxes and the incentives for the other countries to also adopt the dual system. The model is partially able to explain the gradual extension of kilometer charging for trucks in Europe. The model also shows that, in the absence of diesel cars, the gradual introduction of kilometer charges will make fuel taxation for trucks virtually disappear and will lead to a system where truck use is (1) taxed mainly based on distance, but (2) is taxed too heavily. When the fuel tax must in addition serve as an externality tax for diesel cars, the introduction of distance charges for trucks will give rise to diesel taxes that are lower than the external cost of diesel cars. For trucks, this leads to a sum of diesel taxes and distance charges that are higher than the external cost of trucks.


Over 25 recipes to build projects and applications for multiple platforms with Banana Pi About This BookDesign, develop, and customize real-world applications and projects rapidly and easily using Banana PiQuick solutions to the most common real-world problems on the amazing Banana PiStep-by-step recipes to help you experience the vast possibilities of the device by setting up interesting applicationsWho This Book Is ForThis book is intended for anybody who wants to learn how they can utilize the capabilities of the Banana Pi to its full potential. It's full of step-by-step guides and detailed descriptions for the whole range of possibilities in a language that is appropriate for computer enthusiasts and experts alike. It would be helpful to have a basic knowledge of Unix-like operating systems or programming, but no prior experience is required as every concept is explained in the appropriate sections.What You Will Learn Discover how to configure and maintain your Banana Pi device Install Android and a Linux-based distribution onto Banana Pi Attach external drives to your Banana Pi by using the USB or SATA interfaces Share files between your Banana Pi and other devices either in your internal network or over the Internet Connect remotely to your Banana Pi using SSH and VNC Build simple electrical circuits and connect simple hardware elements such as LEDs, resistors, and buttons to the GPIO pins Configure a multimedia center that is able to play high-definition content In DetailBanana Pi is a dual core single board microcomputer like Raspberry Pi but is much faster, more cost-effective, and performs more efficiently than Raspberry Pi.Banana Pi Cookbook is a practical guide that starts with setting up Banana Pi and moves on to exploring the more advanced capabilities of the device. You will learn to build a decent Linux-based operating system that can resolve common server tasks (Samba, Web, DLNA) and multimedia challenges. Also, you will see how to use the GPIO opportunities by building simple but straightforward circuits.By the end of this book, you will be an expert in using Banana Pi to deploy a variety of hardware and software applications.


A published meta-analysis on breast cancer and vegetables and fruit consumption was described to present a methodology used on meta-analysis in Epidemiology. Meta-analysis confirmed the association between intake of vegetables (RR=0.74; 95%CI 0.65-0.84) and, to a lesser extent, fruit and breast cancer risk (RR=0.93; 95%CI 0.79-1.09). Using this methodology, present in a peer-reviewed journal, a systematic meta-analysis on melanoma was conducted extracting RRs from published studies. Fully adjusted estimates were obtained from those studies, when available; RRs adjusted for confounders not related to sun exposure, such as naevi, were considered for sun exposure and sunburns pooled estimates. Pooled estimates were obtained for all main risk factors for melanoma: sun exposure (total, intermittent and chronic), sunburns (in childhood and in adulthood), indicators of actinic damage, family history of melanoma and phenotype characteristics. Investigation of biases and inconsistencies among studies was one of the key phases of the meta-analysis to look for patterns among studies that might explain discrepant findings. The analyses on pigmented lesions and sun exposure showed that the choice of sources of cases and controls influenced significantly the estimate. An indication of a protective effect of chronic sun exposure came from studies that did not include subjects with dermatological problems (significantly different from the other studies: p=0.01). Publication year was an important factor for total sun exposure (p=0.005). Latitude of the study seemed to be an important factor for sunburns (p=0.002) and for high density of freckles (p=0.04). Estimates for hair colour and eye colour adjusted for phenotype and/or photo-type were significantly lower than unadjusted ones (p=0.06 and p=0.06, respectively). This study highlighted how several features of study design, type of analysis, categorization of exposures, study location and populations significantly explained between-study heterogeneity.


BACKGROUND: Some maternal infections are associated with impaired infant cognitive and motor performance. Periodontitis results in frequent bacteremia and elevated serum inflammatory mediators. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine if periodontitis treatment in pregnant women affects infant cognitive, motor, or language development. METHODS: Children born to women who had participated in a previous trial were assessed between 24 and 28 months of age by using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Third Edition) and the Preschool Language Scale (Fourth Edition). Information about the pregnancy, neonatal period, and home environment was obtained through chart abstractions, laboratory test results, and questionnaires. We compared infants born to women treated for periodontitis before 21 weeks' gestation (treatment group) or after delivery (controls). In unadjusted and adjusted analyses, associations between change in maternal periodontal condition during pregnancy and neurodevelopment scores were tested by using Student's t tests and linear regression. RESULTS: A total of 411 of 791 eligible mother/caregiver-child pairs participated. Thirty-seven participating children (9.0%) were born at <37 weeks' gestation. Infants in the treatment and control groups did not differ significantly for adjusted mean cognitive (90.7 vs 91.4), motor (96.8 vs 97.2), or language (92.2 vs 92.1) scores (all P > .5). Results were similar in adjusted analyses. Children of women who experienced greater improvements in periodontal health had significantly higher motor and cognitive scores (P = .01 and .02, respectively), although the effect was small (∼1-point increase for each SD increase in the periodontal measure). CONCLUSION: Nonsurgical periodontitis treatment in pregnant women was not associated with cognitive, motor, or language development in these study children.


High-resolution mid-infrared spectra are presented for 155 nuclear and extranuclear regions from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS). The fluxes for nine atomic forbidden and three molecular hydrogen mid-infrared emission lines are also provided, along with upper limits in key lines for infrared-faint targets. The SINGS sample shows a wide range in the ratio of [S iii] 18.71 μm/[S iii] 33.48 μm, but the average ratio of the ensemble indicates a typical interstellar electron density of 300–400 cm−3 on ∼23″ × 15″ scales and 500–600 cm−3 using ∼11″ × 9″ apertures, independent of whether the region probed is a star-forming nuclear, a star-forming extranuclear, or an active galactic nuclei (AGN) environment. Evidence is provided that variations in gas-phase metallicity play an important role in driving variations in radiation field hardness, as indicated by [Ne iii] 15.56 μm/[Ne ii] 12.81 μm, for regions powered by star formation. Conversely, the radiation hardness for galaxy nuclei powered by accretion around a massive black hole is independent of metal abundance. Furthermore, for metal-rich environments AGN are distinguishable from star-forming regions by significantly larger [Ne iii] 15.56 μm/[Ne ii] 12.81 μm ratios. Finally, [Fe ii] 25.99 μm/[Ne ii] 12.81 μm versus [Si ii] 34.82 μm/[S iii] 33.48 μm also provides an empirical method for discerning AGN from normal star-forming sources. However, similar to [Ne iii] 15.56 μm/[Ne ii] 12.81 μm, these mid-infrared line ratios lose their AGN/star-formation diagnostic powers for very low metallicity star-forming systems with hard radiation fields.


Original data consisted of 31,777 records of progeny of 1442 sires for calvings between 1975 and 1983. Unadjusted means for milk yield (kg), days in milk, days dry, calving interval, days carried calf, and age at calving were 4281, 267, 88, 421, 145, and 36.6. Estimated total variance for first lactation milk yield by Henderson's method 3 was 1,385,436 kg2 with sire and error variances accounting for 1.8 and 98.2%. Heritabilities for milk yield, lactation length, age at calving, and days carried calf were .07, .06, 2.59, and .01. High estimate for age was attributed to confounding of sires with season of calving. Genetic and phenotypic correlations between traits were milk and lactation length, .76 and .72; milk and age at calving, .17 and -.04; milk and days carried calf, -2.11 and .13; lactation length and age at calving, -.13 and -.06; lactation length and days carried calf, .87 and 16.; age at calving and days carried calf, -.60 and -.03. Sires with at least 10 daughters were evaluated by best linear unbiased prediction procedures. First lactation sire values for milk ranged from 359 to -340 kg with an average difference between sires of 12 kg. Sire values using all lactations ranged from 505 to -286 kg with an average difference between sires of 13 kg. Rank correlation between all and first lactation evaluations was .77.


Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.Now "Citizen," Louise W. Knight's masterful biography, revealsAddams's early development as a political activist and social philosopher.In this bookwe observea powerful mindgrappling withthe radical ideas of her age, most notably the ever-changing meanings of democracy. "Citizen" covers the first half of Addams's life, from 1860 to 1899. Knight recounts how Addams, a child of a wealthy family inrural northern Illinois, longed for a life of larger purpose. She broadened her horizons through education, reading, and travel, and, after receiving an inheritance upon her father's death, moved to Chicago in 1889 to co-found Hull House, the city's first settlement house. "Citizen" shows vividly what the settlement house actually was a neighborhood center for education and social gatherings and describes how Addams learned of the abject working conditions in American factories, the unchecked power wielded by employers, the impact of corrupt local politics on city services, and the intolerable limits placed on women by their lack of voting rights. These experiences, Knight makes clear, transformed Addams. Always a believer in democracy as an abstraction, Addams came to understand that this national ideal was also a life philosophy and a mandate for civic activism by all. As her story unfolds, Knight astutely captures the enigmatic Addams's compassionate personality as well as her flawed human side. Written in a strong narrative voice, "Citizen" is an insightful portrait of the formative years of a great American leader. Knight s decision to focus on Addams s early years is a stroke of genius. We know a great deal about Jane Addams the public figure. We know relatively little about how she made the transition from the 19th century to the 20th. In Knight s book, Jane Addams comes to life. . . . "Citizen" is written neither to make money nor to gain academic tenure; it is a gift, meant to enlighten and improve. Jane Addams would have understood. Alan Wolfe, "New York"" Times Book Review" My only complaint about the book is that there wasn t more of it. . . . Knight honors Addams as an American original. Kathleen Dalton, "Chicago"" Tribune""


Many are addicted. Few are treated. Yet many who are not treated recover. Promoting Self-Change from Addictive Behaviors examines natural recovery as a clinical phenomenon, a field of inquiry, and a vital component of therapy. It also brings clinicians and counselors to a new understanding of addiction and recovery.

One of the few books on the topic, this updated edition offers alternatives to disease models of addiction by exploring personal pathways to recovery. Focusing on alcohol and drug problems, it provides a literature review of 40 years of studies on self-change with particular emphasis on the current decade and methodological issues (starting with how much or how little treatment constitutes"treatment"). The 24 experts keep the coverage consistently readable, and dozens of brief narratives from individuals who have successfully recovered from an addictive behavior without formal help lend valuable personal perspectives. More of the book's key features: Core factors in self-change, from cognitive processes to social issues; Case examples of natural recovery from smoking, binge eating, problem gambling, and criminal behavior; Redefining the role of treatment in changing addictive behaviors; Cross-cultural, community, and prevention perspectives on promoting self-change;"Self-change toolbox" chapter offering assessment tools, recovery strategies, web links, and other online resources.

With Promoting Self-Change from Addictive Behaviors, health care professionals and researchers (from psychologists and social workers to nurses, sociologists, and physicians) can find more effective methods to fit client needs, and develop new insights into the recovery process. Public health workers and policymakers will also find informative strategies for tapping this rich therapeutic resource.


Background Pathogen whole-genome sequencing has huge potential as a tool to better understand infection transmission. However, rapidly identifying closely-related genomes among a background of thousands of other genomes is challenging. Methods We describe a refinement to core-genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) where alleles at each gene are reproducibly converted to a unique hash, or short string of letters (hash-cgMLST). This avoids the resource-intensive need for a single centralised database of sequentially-numbered alleles. We test the reproducibility and discriminatory power of cgMLST/hash-cgMLST compared to mapping-based approaches in Clostridium difficile using repeated sequencing of the same isolates (replicates) and data from consecutive infection isolates from six English hospitals. Results Hash-cgMLST provided the same results as standard cgMLST with minimal performance penalty. Comparing 272 pairs of replicate sequences, using reference-based mapping there were 0, 1 or 2 SNPs between 262(96%), 5(2%) and 1(<1%) pairs respectively. Using hash-cgMLST or standard cgMLST, 197(72%) replicate pairs had zero gene differences, 37(14%), 8(3%) and 30(11%) pairs had 1, 2 and >2 differences respectively. False gene differences were clustered in specific genes and associated with fragmented assemblies. Considering 413 pairs of infections within ≤2 SNPS, i.e. consistent with recent transmission, 266(64%) had ≤2 gene differences and 50(12%) ≥5 differences. Comparing a genome to 100,000 others took <1 minute using hash-cgMLST. Conclusion Hash-cgMLST is an effective surveillance tool that can rapidly identify clusters of related genomes. However, cgMLST/hash-cgMLST generates potentially more false variants than mapping-based analysis. Refined mapping-based variant calling is likely required to precisely define close genetic relationships.


This paper evaluates the prospects for protecting critical social functions from "cyber" attacks carried out over electronic information networks. In particular, it focuses on the feasibility of devising international laws, conventions or agreements to deter and/or punish perpetrators of such attacks. First, it briefly summarizes existing conventions and laws, and explains to which technological issues they can apply. The paper then turns to a technical discussion of the threats faced by critical infrastructure. By distinguishing between the different types of attacks (theft of information, destructive penetration, denial of service, etc.) that can be conducted, and examining the role of collateral damages in information security, the paper identifies the major challenges in devising and implementing international conventions for critical infrastructure protection. It then turns to a practical examination of how these findings apply to specific instances of critical networks (power grids and water systems, financial infrastructure, air traffic control and hospital networks), and draws conclusions about potential remedies. A notable finding is that critical functions should be isolated from non-critical functions in the network to have a chance to implement viable international agreements; and that, given the difficulty in performing attack attribution, other relevant laws should be designed with the objective of reducing negative externalities that facilitate such attacks.


This guide is designed to assist History students on the Oakland campus with their research. Includes links to other history guides.


What might result from hearing a particular song, wearing used clothing, or witnessing an accident? Ethnographic accounts of the Navajo refer repeatedly to the influences of events on health and well-being, yet until now no attempt has been made to clarify the Navajo system of rules governing association and effect. This book focuses on the complex interweaving of the cosmological, social, and bodily realms that Navajo people navigate in an effort alternately to control, contain, or harness the power manifested in various effects. Following the Navajo life-course from conception to puberty, Maureen Trudelle Schwarz explores the complex rules defining who or what can affect what or whom in specific circumstances as a means of determining what these effects tell us about the cultural construction of the human body and personhood for the Navajo. Schwarz shows how oral history informs Navajo conceptions of the body and personhood, showing how these conceptions are central to an ongoing Navajo identity. She treats the vivid narratives of emergence life-origins as compressed metaphorical accounts, rather than as myth, and is thus able to derive from what individual Navajos say about the past their understandings of personhood in a worldview that is actually a viable philosophical system. Working with Navajo religious practitioners, elders, and professional scholars. Schwarz has gained from her informants an unusually firm grasp of the Navajo highlighted by the foregrounding of Navajo voices through excerpts of interviews. These passages enliven the book and present Schwarz and her Navajo consultants as real, multifaceted human beings within the ethnographic context.


This thesis attempts to develop features identification and tracking system for an autonomous ground vehicle by focusing on four fundamental tasks: Motion detection, object tracking, scene recognition, and object detection and recognition. For motion detection, we combined the background subtraction method using the mixture of Gaussian models and the optical flow to highlight any moving objects or new entering objects which stayed still. To increase robustness for object tracking result, we used the Kalman filter to combine the tracking method based on the color histogram and the method based on invariant features. For scene recognition, we applied the algorithm Census Transform Histogram (CENTRIST), which is based on Census Transform images of the training data and the Support Vector Machine classifier, to recognize a total of 8 scene categories. Because detecting the horizon is also an important task for many navigation applications, we also performed horizon detection in this thesis. Finally, the deformable parts-based models algorithm was implemented to detect some common objects, such as humans and vehicles. Furthermore, objects were only detected in the area under the horizon to reduce the detecting time and false matching rate.


In this paper, we investigate the evolution from imperatives to discourse markers in Romance, with a corpus-based approach. We focus on the case of items coming from verbs meaning 'to look', in a semasiological perspective: Spanish and Catalan mira , Portuguese olha , Italian guarda , French regarde , Romanian uite . We show that they all share many uses, among which turn-taking, introduction of reported speech, hesitation phenomenon, topic-shifting and modalization, except for French regarde . We then establish (against Waltereit, 2002) that the development of these uses is the result of a process of grammaticalization, from lexical, clause-internal uses to uses as discourse markers, in a cline which tends to confirm the predictions made by Brinton and Traugott (2005). The lesser grammaticalization of French regarde could seem unimportant, but is in apparent contradiction with the now well-established fact that French is, of all Romance languages, the most grammaticalized. We try, in conclusion, to address this paradox: is French not so grammaticalized after all, or is this just an exception to the rule?


It is proposed that the ground-state manifold of the neutral nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond could be used as a quantum two-level system in a solid-state-based implementation of a broadband noise-free quantum optical memory. The proposal is based on the same-spin Λ-type three-level system created between the two E orbital ground states and the A1 orbital excited state of the center, and the cross-linear polarization selection rules obtained with the application of a transverse electric field or uniaxial stress. Possible decay and decoherence mechanisms of this system are discussed, and it is shown that high-efficiency, noise-free storage of photons as short as a few tens of picoseconds for at least a few nanoseconds could be possible at low temperature.


Abstract This paper presents a modified Adaptive Tabu Search Algorithm, namely mATS by adding an adaptive neighborhood mechanism under the main purpose enhancing search potential of ATS. An application of mATS to the real world problem is to solving the parameter identification problem of frequency modulation sounds (FMS) which is multimodal and also hard to solve by classical methods. Performance evaluations are elaborated with three surface optimization functions, Bohachevsky's, Rastrigin's and Shekel's foxholes. From the performance test, the results showed that the mATS were faster than those of the original ATS. Moreover, the proposed mATS approach obtained the better quality of the optimal solution than any other methods of previous works. Keywords : Adaptive tabu search algorithms, Modified adaptive tabu search algorithms, frequency modulation sounds (selected from 1 st Symposium on Hands-on Research and Development, Chiang Mai)


BACKGROUND
Heterogeneity in aspects of development, structure and context of oncology guidelines was not evaluated. We analysed and critically examined its implications.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Nine cancer clinical practice guidelines were selected on the basis of popularity among oncologists. The relevant Web sites and publications on three tumours were examined and characteristics grouped in the data domains: producing organisation, methodology, guideline structure and content, implementation and evaluation and scientific agreement.

RESULTS
ASCO, ESMO, NICE, SIGN, START, NHMRC, NCI, NCCN and CCO guidelines were examined. Development was initiated by stakeholders or authorised bodies, run by task forces with varying degrees of multidisciplinarity, with rare endorsement of external guidelines. Recommendation formulation was on the basis of evidence, shaped via interactive processes of expert review and public consultation-based modifications. Guidelines varied in comprehensiveness per tumour type, number, size, format, grading of evidence, update and legal issues. Orientation for clinic use or as reference document, end-users and binding or elective nature also varied. Standard dissemination strategies were used, though evaluation of adoption and of impact on health outcomes was implemented with considerable heterogeneity.

CONCLUSIONS
Heterogeneity in development, structure, user and end points of guidelines is evident, though necessary in order to meet divergent demands. Crucial for their effectiveness are adherence to methodological standards, a clear definition of what the guideline intends to do for whom and a systematic evaluation of their impact on health care.


We have carried out first-principles calculations to explore reaction mechanisms of the 2e reduction of CO2 to HCOOH or CO in photochemical reactions catalyzed by anatase (101) surface. Two energetically competitive reaction pathways to HCOOH were identified, which involve initial 1e (via bidentate) and 2e (via monodentate) reduction steps, respectively. The pathways of producing CO were also explored. From the electronic structure analysis, we have shown the role of the anatase surface in facilitating electron and proton transfer in CO2 reduction. Based on the determined rate-limiting step, we have carried out screening of substitutional surface cation doping and found metallic elements that could substantially lower the reaction barriers. A simple model describing the relationship between the activation barriers and the binding energies of CO2− to the dopant surface site is proposed.


Taiwan is considered the archetypical orogen in the development of critical wedge models of mountain building; however, the issue of how arc collision progressed along the margin remains poorly understood. To resolve this, the detrital archive of orogenesis preserved in Coastal Range rocks of eastern Taiwan was used to reconstruct the erosional response of arc collision. The spatial and temporal distribution of exhumation recorded in this detrital record is consistent with southwards progression of arc–continent collision in a punctuated rather than sequential manner with deposition confined to segmented foredeep basins. Apparent increases in sedimentation rates in Taiwan during the Pleistocene may not reflect increased erosion, but instead may be due to the collisional margin architecture. Supplementary materials: Analytical details and dating results are available at www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18693.


We've gambled too much on succeeding in preventing or mitigating anthropogenic dangerous climate change and the anthropogenic extinction crisis. Because we were unwilling to face up to the alternative. But the alternative is not as simple as an instantaneous end of life would be. The alternative is complex, involving many possible variants of 'unthinkably' horrendous, bad, and even good. Most crucially: there is a huge difference between the various versions of complete irrecoverable societal collapse, on the one hand, and the rise of a successor civilisation(s) out of the wreckage of this one, on the other. We have to be willing to think this. And face it. We have to get serious about the processes of transformational and deep adaptation that are now necessary. We cannot any longer avoid the vast effort involved in attempting to adapt our communities to cope with our changed and changing world; not least because the time-lags built into the climate system mean that, even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that we manage to stop massively damaging our climate further, it is bound to deterioriate further for a long time to come. And, more fundamentally, because this civilisation is finished. The only way in the hard times to come that it might appear to persist is if we manage to transform it beyond recognition... That transformed civilisation would in no meaningful sense be the same civilisation as ours. This paper asks, given that this civilisation is finished, what exactly, among those willing to face up to this terrifying and liberating reality, is to be done?


This study investigates phenomena that have been claimed to be indicative of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in German, focusing on subject-verb agreement marking. Longitudinal data from fourteen German-speaking children with SLI, seven monolingual and seven Turkish-German successive bilingual children, were examined. We found similar patterns of impairment in the two participant groups. Both the monolingual and the bilingual children with SLI had correct (present vs. preterit) tense marking and produced syntactically complex sentences such as embedded clauses and wh-questions, but were limited in reliably producing correct agreement-marked verb forms. These contrasts indicate that agreement marking is impaired in German-speaking children with SLI, without any necessary concurrent deficits in either the CP-domain or in tense marking. Our results also show that it is possible to identify SLI from an early successive bilingual child's performance in one of her two languages.


Background/Context The U.S. federal government has been interested in improving the performance of students who come from low-income homes since the time of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" initiatives in the 1960s. The current administration strongly supports the belief that good schools can be created and has funded the Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) program to support these beliefs. This article provides information about recent school reform research and conditions of schooling. The article then reviews our research findings (drawing on all the preceding articles in the special issue) and considers implications for policy makers, principals, teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. Purpose The basic intent of this study was to inform working theories of learning, motivation, and social/emotional development in school contexts in Grades 3–5. We hoped that an emphasis on theory, contextual enactment, and participant mediation would yield a richer picture of classroom practices and motivational dynamics that might underlie student achievement and CSR effectiveness. This study focused in particular on perspectives (principals and students) and classroom practices associated with CSR programs in elementary schools in the state of Arizona. Research Design The research program includes interview (with principals), observation (of classroom practices), and survey measures, and an adaptation of Thematic Apperception Test procedures (with students). Conclusion/Recommendations School reform initiatives can profit from more research on participant perceptions, actual classroom practices, and student mediation of those practices. These understandings can better link program design and student achievement to enhance the effectiveness of CSR initiatives. We believe that it is now possible to conduct field experiments for improving normative (typical) practice in elementary school classrooms. We offer considerations for doing this research and suggest the need for attention to students, both as social beings and learners, while altering classroom practices in small measured steps.


Staff in a nursing home, elderly and families meets numerous difficulties during the institutionalized process in a nursing home. Some problems are linked to the development of different, sometimes competitive logics in two human groups unbalanced in terms of capacity, namely the family system and the geriatric institution. The loss of sense is the core of the moral pain for families, nursing staff and old patients. To give a meaning to the contents of what is perceived is as essential for life and biological surrounding as well. Sense is a part of person-centered care quality in a nursing home, for residents, their family, and the nursing staff quality of life at work. When an early implementation of an intersubjective approach has not been organized, negotiated and accepted by families and the nursing staff as well, possible misunderstanding or even conflicts may appear. Medical doctors, nurse-managers and psychologists can bridge the gap between the semiospheres and this have an essential role in the prevention of this drift. The question of the sense and of its elaboration in human relationships is analyzed in this article through the model of the semiosphere.


Law enforcement has gradually amassed a sizable DNA database that holds considerable promise for solving cold cases and identifying suspects. The Supreme Court has blessed this effort, allowing investigators to include profiles of arrestees as well as convicted persons in the database. At present, though, law enforcement has a near monopoly on use of the DNA database, leaving defendants at the whim of the law enforcement officials who control access to this tool. Legal scholars have alternatively praised and decried the database, but none has examined its prospects for proving defendants' innocence post-conviction. This Article fills that void by identifying a limited due process right to defense-initiated DNA database searches. The Article argues that the database is a powerful truth-promoting tool that should be available to law enforcement and defendants alike. Because legislators have failed to promote the search for actual offenders through statutory rights of access, this Article presents the constitutional authority for defense-initiated searches to vindicate the rights of innocent defendants.


Liver transplantation is the only definitive treatment for transthyretin amyloidosis, with an excellent
5-year survival in endemic countries where the Met30 mutation is predominant. We report our
experience of liver transplantation for transthyretin amyloidosis. We reviewed the clinical records
of 17 transplanted patients (11 males, 6 females; age at liver transplant: 45.7±11.7 years).
We had a wide spectrum of non-Met30 mutations (52.9%), with a predominance of Gln89 (23.5%).
Five-year survival after transplantation was 43.8%; at multivariate analysis, both non-Met30
mutations (HR 17.3, 95% CI 1.03-291.7) and modified BMI (HR 0.50, 95% CI 0.29-0.87) showed
significant and independent prognostic roles (P=0.048 and P=0.015, respectively). Five out of the 9
non-Met30 carriers received combined heart transplantation because of severe cardiomyopathy;
they showed a trend towards a better prognosis vs. the 4 patients who did not receive combined
heart transplantation (although not statistically significant; P=0.095). At follow-up, no significant
improvement of transthyretin amyloidosis manifestations was observed.
The results of liver transplantation for transthyretin amyloidosis in our population are poorer than
those reported in the literature probably because of the high prevalence of non-Met30 mutations.


Objective—To determine if smokers and non-smokers cluster into meaningful, discrete subgroups with distinguishable attitudes and behaviours regarding smoking and smoking restrictions. Design—Qualitative research with 45 smokers guided development of questionnaire items applied in a population based telephone survey of 432 current smokers and 1332 non-smokers in Ontario, Canada. Methods—Cluster analysis of questionnaire items used to categorise adult smokers and non-smokers; comparison of clusters on sociodemographic characteristics and composite knowledge and attitude scores. Results—Smokers clustered in three groups. "Reluctant" smokers (16%) show more concern about other people discovering that they smoke, but parallel "easygoing" smokers (42%) in supporting restrictions on smoking and not smoking around others. "Adamant" smokers (42%) feel restrictions have gone too far, and are less likely to accommodate non-smokers. Significant gradients across categories in the expected direction were observed with respect to smoking status, stage of change, knowledge, and attitude scores, and predicted compliance with restrictions, validating the proposed typology. Non-smokers also clustered into three groups, of which the "adamant" non-smokers (45%) are the least favourably disposed to smoking. "Unempowered" non-smokers (34%) also oppose smoking, but tend not to act on it. "Laissez-faire" non-smokers (21%) are less opposed to smoking in both attitude and behaviour. A significant gradient across categories in the expected direction was observed with respect to composite scores regarding knowledge of the health eVects of active and passive smoking and a composite score on support for restrictions on smoking in public places. Conclusion—Recognition and consideration of the types of smokers and non-smokers in the population and their distinguishing characteristics could inform the development of tobacco control policies and programmes and suggest strategies to assist implementation. (Tobacco Control 2000;9:364–371)


Why do some cities adopt practices to resolve social and environmental problems more rapidly and extensively than others? Although diffusion studies emphasize administrative adoption by central authorities, a range of private and public organizations are involved in the distributed adoption of innovations. The author argues that variation in the adoption of urban innovations results from persistent differences in cities' organizational communities. An econometric analysis of the geographic dispersion of green construction practices and policies demonstrates that cities with greater civic capacity, where values-oriented organizations recognize and tackle social problems, see quicker and more extensive adoption. The effect is largest early in the diffusion process because nonprofits are themselves early adopters of green construction. Municipal policies later legitimate green building, but they follow prior individual organizations. The sequential framework of distributed and administrative adoption contributes to the understanding of the institutional determinants of responses to climate change, nonprofits as catalysts of urban innovation, and the consequences of urban governance on an intercity scale.


The following graduate report is an overview of my artistic endeavors spanning the past three years at the University of Texas at Austin. While at UT, I have concentrated on making paintings that focus on the relationship between abstraction, representation, and entropy. Using banal, often overlooked cultural objects as subject matter, I paint ambiguous scenes that teeter between disintegration and formation. Representations of banal detritus within an ambiguous natural space become a metaphor for memory, culture, and life and death alluding to unseen forces and, ultimately, a lack of control. Using a combination of random and deliberate decisions, I aim to create a commentary about the unpredictable yet conformist aspects of the world in which we participate.


Research on underlying behavior of both current and prospective consumer within banking industry is an important issue. The choice of consumer in selecting banking institution not only determined by economical facto rs but also may influence noneconomic factors, such as their attitude and belief s. This article was based on the research conducted to identify factors that could differenti ate consumers' choice on selecting banking services; between conventional and syaria banks. The sample of this study was divided into four groups; syaria customer, conventi onal bank's customer, customer of both syaria and conventional banks, and non-consume r neither syaria nor conventional banks. The sample was selected by using convenience sampling technique located in municipalities and regencies where there exist both syaria and conventional banks offices. The respondent of the study varies based o n their demography characteristics which consist of 310 repondents. The data was analy sed by utilizing descriptive approach and crosstab analysis. Further, in order to determi ne the dimension of factors underlying the buying decision of customer in selecting the ba nks, this study employs factor analysis. The result of factor anlysis indicates th at ere exist differences in the dimension underlying their decision in selecting banks. In ca se of syaria bank, there are several dimensions, namely; perception, personnal selling, family, cost and benefit, religion and beliefs. Meanwhile for conventional bank such under lying dimension influenced by; rational motivation, cost and benefit, family, prom tional activities, and life style. Further analysis through crosstab analysis, there exist sev eral relationships between several dimensions utilized in the study. Such relationship as been found between the age, income, educational level, occupation and the banki ng type that the respondent selects. The research also found that there is no relationsh p between repondent's perception on interest and the type of bank that they choose. In other word, the majority of respondent of this study did not agree with the interest princ iple but they still choose to deal with banking institution based on their economic rationa le.


The usual legal story about partisan gerrymandering is relentlessly pessimistic. The courts did not even recognize the cause of action until the 1980s; they have never struck down a district plan on this basis; and four sitting Justices want to vacate the field altogether. The Supreme Court's most recent gerrymandering decision, however, is the most encouraging development in this area in a generation. Several Justices expressed interest in the concept of partisan symmetry — the idea that a plan should treat the major parties symmetrically in terms of the conversion of votes to seats — and suggested that it could be shaped into a legal test.In this Article, we take the Justices at their word. First, we introduce a new measure of partisan symmetry: the efficiency gap. It represents the difference between the parties' respective wasted votes in an election, divided by the total number of votes cast. It captures, in a single tidy number, all of the packing and cracking decisions that go into a district plan. It also is superior to the metric of gerrymandering, partisan bias, that litigants and scholars have used until now. Partisan bias can be calculated only by shifting votes to simulate a hypothetical tied election. The efficiency gap eliminates the need for such counterfactual analysis.Second, we compute the efficiency gap for congressional and state house plans between 1972 and 2012. Over this period as a whole, the typical plan was fairly balanced and neither party enjoyed a systematic advantage. But in recent years — and peaking in the 2012 election — plans have exhibited steadily larger and more pro-Republican gaps. In fact, the plans in effect today are the most extreme gerrymanders in modern history. And what is more, several likely will remain extreme for the remainder of the decade, as indicated by our sensitivity testing.Finally, we explain how the efficiency gap could be converted into doctrine. We propose setting thresholds above which plans would be presumptively unconstitutional: two seats for congressional plans and eight percent for state house plans, but only if the plans probably will stay unbalanced for the rest of the cycle. Plans with gaps above these thresholds would be unlawful unless states could show that the gaps either resulted from the consistent application of legitimate policies, or were inevitable due to the states' political geography. This approach would neatly slice the Gordian knot the Court has tied for itself, explicitly replying to the Court's "unanswerable question" of "how much political...effect is too much."


Bioaccumulation of polonium‐210 (t1/2 = 138 d) in marine phytoplankton can introduce this naturally occurring radioisotope into food chains, where it accounts for most of the radiation dose to marine organisms and to human consumers of seafood. Moreover, this isotope could be useful as a tracer of the flux of organic matter in ocean surface waters. We performed laboratory experiments with eight algal species representing six algal divisions to quantify the uptake, cellular partitioning, and retention of 210Po by algae. Biological uptake was unaffected by temperature or light, and volume concentration factors (VCFs) for these algal species ranged between 0.5 and 3.0 × 104. Interspecific differences in VCFs could be explained by considering the surface area to volume ratios of the cells and cellular protein content. Once associated with the cells, between 30 and 60% of the total cellular 210Po was in the cytoplasm of the different species. 210Po was not irreversibly bound to the cells but displayed a biological half‐life of ~23 d. Because 210Po associates appreciably with organic matter inside cells, unlike other particlereactive nonessential metals, it could have promise as a tracer of sinking organic matter in the ocean.


Of all the institutional arrangements for monetary union in Europe, the fiscal convergence criteria have proved the most difficult to achieve and the most controversial because of their presumed deflationary impact on economies already suffering high unemployment. This paper examines what fiscal corrections would be necessary in the four largest European economies to reach the 3% deficit criterion by 1999, and to maintain that criterion thereafter. It argues that because these criteria are defined as ratios, a change in the policy mix is required – not simply fiscal contractions. The interaction between fiscal and other policies is the crucial factor therefore. The change in policy mix might involve monetary relaxation, a currency depreciation, or perhaps most effectively, wage restraint to boost competitiveness. Certainly some action is needed to maintain (or boost) the ratio's denominator, since fiscal cuts will otherwise cut both the numerator and denominator and leave the ratio unchanged. But, because there is also a debt criterion and it is most unlikely that the deficit and debt criteria are reached simultaneously, it is very hard to reach the deficit criterion and stay there without accompanying policies designed to maintain output. Fiscal cuts will otherwise continue to deflate the economy, and hence inflate the deficit ratio, in an attempt to reach the required debt ratio. To offset this there must be reform of the tax regime as well. These results point to growth and the design of the tax regime as being the key features of the fiscal side of a successful monetary union.


ABSTRACT Objective: Our aims were to report an analysis of the concept of cultural competency and to explore how the cultural competency of the palliative care workforce impacts the holistic care of young people with palliative care needs from South Asian cultures. Method: Using keywords, we searched the online databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, ScienceDirect, and PubMed from January of 1990 through to December of 2016. Some 1543 articles were retrieved, and inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. A total of 38 papers were included in the concept analysis. The data were analyzed using Coad's (2002) adapted framework based on Rodgers's (1989) evolutionary concept analysis, focusing on the attributes, antecedents, consequences, and related terms in relation to culturally competent care. A model case of culturally competent care was also constructed. Results: The literature provides evidence that the concept of culturally competent care is a complex one, which is often expressed ambiguously. In addition, there is a paucity of research that involves service users as experts in defining their own needs and assessing their experiences related to cultural care. Significance of Results: Cultural care should be integral to holistic patient care, irrespective of a person's race or ethnicity. There is an urgent need to involve young BAME patients with palliative care needs and their families in the development of a robust tool to assess cultural competency in clinical practice.


Despite tremendous success in many application scenarios, deep learning faces serious intellectual property (IP) infringement threats. Considering the cost of designing and training a good model, infringements will significantly infringe the interests of the original model owner. Recently, many impressive works have emerged for deep model IP protection. However, they either are vulnerable to ambiguity attacks, or require changes in the target network structure by replacing its original normalization layers and hence cause significant performance drops. To this end, we propose a new passport-aware normalization formulation, which is generally applicable to most existing normalization layers and only needs to add another passport-aware branch for IP protection. This new branch is jointly trained with the target model but discarded in the inference stage. Therefore it causes no structure change in the target model. Only when the model IP is suspected to be stolen by someone, the private passport-aware branch is added back for ownership verification. Through extensive experiments, we verify its effectiveness in both image and 3D point recognition models. It is demonstrated to be robust not only to common attack techniques like fine-tuning and model compression, but also to ambiguity attacks. By further combining it with trigger-set based methods, both black-box and white-box verification can be achieved for enhanced security of deep learning models deployed in real systems. Code can be found at this https URL.


Logicality means clear and sound reasoning according to the rules of logic or formal argument. Logicality is a traditional, associated with thinking and speech, value, which has a great importance in the area of scientific discovery. In the era of trans-disciplinary research, cognitive sciences unite the efforts of philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, linguists, anthropologists, biochemists and the artificial intelligence specialists to understand the thinking and cognition, thus increasing the importance of logicality. Perhaps therefore it has been presumed that the speech we use for communication is functioning according to the rules of logic, using the rules of grammar as a base. The speech is a highly important part of thinking, although the actual role it plays in the process of thinking is highly debatable. Since we cannot observe directly the moments when thoughts turn into words, we do not know why the structures of speech that consist of the same words can be slightly different or why the same words have both, direct as well as indirect, meanings. The changes in thinking can be observed only via the changes in speech. However, here the factors that influence these changes must be taken into account. One of such factors discussed in this paper is the long term effect of information technologies on human thinking.


"The Crescent on the Temple" elucidates how the Dome of the Rock came to stand for the Temple of Solomon in Christian, Muslim, and Jewish art. That "Temple," represented as the Muslim shrine, is often surmounted by a crescent.


Various lifelike computer characters have been proposed in recent years [LCC'94, LCC'95]. In this paper, we introduce an innovative way of using a lifelike computer character to enhance the human-human and human-computer communication. We propose an interactive performance system in which a virtual CG dancer enables two players (musicians) to interact with each other not only through music but also through 3-D computer animation. The players not only improvise together as in a conventional jam session, but also observe the virtual dancer, whose motion is changed in real time according to their musical performance. In other words, they can communicate using both auditory information and visual information. The purpose of this research is to achieve a new mode of interaction in which CG and music are closely integrated by a lifelike computer character. Interaction between a player and a lifelike computer character through musical performance was reported [Goto, 1993], but interaction between players was not considered in those reports. In real jam sessions, musical interaction between players is essential and is achieved by exchanging not only auditory information but also auxiliary visual information such as gestures that indicate repetition or the end of song. To enhance the visual interaction in a jam session and provide players with more expressive way to communicate, we introduce a virtual dancer called Cindy visible to both players. Two players, a drummer and a guitarist (or pianist), can choreograph Cindy together by their musical improvisation in real time. The players can use three kinds of interaction at the same time: 1) interaction between the players through their musical sounds, 2) interaction between each player and Cindy, 3) interaction between the players through Cindy. The first interaction is the musical interaction of a conventional jam session, and the second interaction is both direct and indirect. In the direct interaction the drummer determines the timing of a Cindy's motion, since each drum-sound is directly mapped to a Cindy's motion. There are six predefined sets of mappings between seven kinds of drum-sounds and Cindy's motions, each for a different mood of dance motions. In the indirect interaction the guitarist switches these mapping sets by changing a mood of his musical improvisation. If the guitarist plays, Cindy does not move unless the drummer determines the motion timing; information from both players is necessary to choreograph the dance totally. The third interaction, cooperation between the two players, is therefore important in creating a complete performance. This lifelike computer character system has been implemented on distributed workstations connected by the Ethernet. MIDI data of two players' performance is sent to a graphics workstation that displays Cindy and to a workstation that controls a MIDI instrument that produces sounds. In our experimental setup, the three kinds of interaction were performed on the system, and the multimodal interaction produced very satisfactory results.


In our study nanocomposites of TiO2-Au and ZnO-Au core-shell nanoparticles have been prepared via colloidal chemical method. The particle size, shape and chemical composition have been determined via high resolution transmission electron microscope (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. These nanomaterials have been used as a photocalalysts for photodegradation of organic waste for water purification. Primicarb is one of the most commonly used pesticides in Egypt, the degradation of 20 ppm primicarb under ultraviolet (UV) and visible light in the presence and absence of TiO2, TiO2-Au, and ZnO-Au nanocomposite was analyzed with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and UV-Visible Spectra. The rate of the photodegradation and the catalytic activity of these nanomaterials have been determined and compared. The results indicate that the core-shell nanoparticles is much more active catalyst in presence of sun light than pure TiO2 nanomaterials which has absorption maximum at 370nm.


With continuous depletion of conventional sources of energy, Wind Energy
Conversion Systems (WECS) are turning out to be one of the major players
with immense potential to meet the future energy demands. It is one of the
most preferable source, as it can be installed onshore as well as offshore. But
with the increasing penetration of wind energy into power system, wind energy
conversion systems (WECSs) should be able to control the power flow for
limited as well as maximum power point tracking. Apart from tracking desired
power, there are some other issues which needs to be addressed for stable and
reliable operation of WECS in grid connected as well as islanded mode.
In the grid connected mode synchronization of the system to the grid and
maintenance of dc-link voltage in absence of ESS are the main control
requirements apart from controlled power extraction from the wind turbine.
Unlike the grid connected mode, where most of the system level dynamics are
imposed by the grid and hence load voltage magnitude an frequency are
dictated by the grid itself, in the autonomous operation of WECS the load
voltage magnitude and frequency control comes in as additional control
requirements other than controlled power extraction from Wind Turbine.
However the usage of batteries in the system is unavoidable due to stability
and reliability issues.
In contrast to the traditional pitch angle control, this work focusses on field
oriented speed control of permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG)
for controlling the active power flow based on the wind turbine characteristics.
A back to back AC/DC/AC topology is implemented for interfacing the
WECS to the distribution network with various power electronic interfaces
providing the necessary control over the power flow. By maintaining the dclink
voltage constant and by deploying PLL, power balance and grid
v
synchronization are attained respectively in grid connected operation of
WECS.
For the standalone operation of WECS, however the ideology for controlled
power extraction from WECS remains same but the load voltage magnitude
and frequency control are attained by carrying out the analysis and design
exercise in synchronously rotating reference frame so that linear control
techniques can be employed easily and sinusoidal command following problem
gets transformed to an equivalent dc command tracking thus yielding desired
performance with zero steady state error. The motive behind using batteries
in the system is to facilitate transient stability and enhance reliability. Proper
decoupling and feed forward techniques have been deployed to eliminate crosscoupling
and mitigate the effect of load side disturbances.
Simulations are carried out under varying load demand as well as changing
weather conditions to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the
proposed control strategies for grid connected as well as standalone WECSs.
Overall, the project work involves study, design, modelling and simulation of
grid connected as well as standalone Wind Energy Conversion System.


Through the Internet, the organizations managers had access to massive amounts of data and these data are presented in different formats, namely, structured, semi-structured and unstructured. These variety of data is essentially generated from social networks, but not only, they also are generated from the Internet of Things, from machines, sensors, among others. While the structured data has techniques well studied, mature and validated, otherwise the other types of techniques, semi-structured and unstructured, this is no longer true. In this poster, a set of data analysis techniques is presented for the semi-structured and unstructured data by using as main bibliography data analytics conferences.


Highly-skilled migrants are becoming a more important part of the world economy and of policy debates in a diverse set of countries. The proliferation of skills around the world, increases in world trade, the growth of R&D, and the general increase in the labor market demand for diverse sets of skills, have all contributed to the emergence of high-skilled migration as a major issue. High-skilled migration is often discussed in narrow terms of "brain drain/brain gain", when both the pattern of migration and its effects appear to be much more complex. However, our understanding of the effects of high skilled migration is much less than for international migration in general, and is based upon much less research and data. This paper reviews the possible effects of high skilled international migration, and the major research and policy questions that need answering.


Computing optimal routes subject to geometric constraints is a fundamental area of research in computational geometry. This thesis is devoted to the study of some specific geometric routing and optimization problems.
The first main area of the thesis addresses a class of multicommodity flow problems in geometric domains: For a given planar domain P populated with obstacles of different types, we consider routing thick paths corresponding to motion of vehicles of different classes, from a source edge on the boundary of P to a sink edge on the boundary of P. Each class of vehicle has an associated path width required and a given set of types of obstacles it must avoid, while it can freely pass through other types of obstacles. The problem arises in air traffic management with different classes of aircraft that must avoid various types of weather disturbances. We show that the decision problem is NP-hard even when there are only two classes of vehicles and two types of obstacles. We present approximation algorithms for the multicriteria optimization problems that arise when trying to maximize the number of routable paths. We also give heuristics and provide an experimental analysis of their effectiveness.
The second problem we address is that of computing a path or cycle that is constrained to be convex and to intersect a given set of connected, compact sets. In particular, we resolve an open problem posed more than two decades ago by Arik Tamir: Given a collection of compact sets, can one efficiently determine if there is a convex body whose boundary intersects every set in the collection? We prove that it is NP-hard, in general, to decide the existence of a convex traversal path, even if the input is a set of line segments in the plane. Further, we generalize our proof to show that deciding the existence of a convex surface stabbing a set of balls in three dimensions is NP-hard. On the positive side, we give a polynomial-time algorithm to find a convex transversal of a maximum number of pairwise-disjoint segments in 2D, assuming the vertices of the transversal are restricted to a given set of points.
In the third part of the thesis, we investigate the problem of computing paths and trees within an uncertain geometric domain, in which the set of obstacles is not known deterministically, but is specified by a stochastic model. The problems arise in routing aircraft through uncertain weather systems, especially in the case of merging flows of aircraft arriving to a terminal airspace in the presence of uncertain events that impact the availability of airspace. We formalize the problem of computing a highly probably path in geometric settings and prove NP-hardness of the general problem. Further, we develop efficient algorithms for computing paths and trees in the presence of uncertain geometric obstacles. We apply our methods to the problem of computing routes and trees for flows of aircraft that are designed to be robust to off-nominal events that may impact the super-dense operations airspace through which they are routed.


Parentheses are included in their host sentences, but at the same time they show unintegrated behavior. This article studies this Janus-faced phenomenon from a syntactic point of view. There are two main parts. The first introduces the term Invisibility for syntactic independence based on the absence of c-command relations, which is a particular way of defining structural independence. A number of tests indicate that parentheses and other paratactic constituents are indeed invisible, but specific attention is paid to the various difficulties that show up in establishing such a conclusion. The examples are drawn primarily from Dutch and English. The second part develops a structural proposal for parentheses within a Minimalist type of grammar which takes into account their contradictory properties. Parentheses, it is argued, are adverbial phrases attached by means of a nonsubordinative inclusion relation that can be used in other paratactic configurations as well, in particular appositional constructions.


In order to solve mine problems in the Republic of  Croatia , a unique project CROMAC GIP (Croatian Mine Action Centre Geoinformation Project) has been initiated significantly increasing the functional quality of the existing Mine Information System (MIS). Since mine problems are closely related to space, geodata are a crucial part of MIS intended for monitoring and planning of demining. Since the moment the Croatian Mine Action Centre was funded till today, the process of demining has progressed. The implementation of a topographic database in accordance with the CROTIS  data model  and the usage of orthophoto data produced according to the official product specifications can be pointed out in that progress. Usage of such geodata requires a sophisticated information system that enables a simultaneous usage of geodata and other data connected with solving mine problems. In order to reach all goals in demining and to use all advantages of geodata, it was indispensable to upgrade the existing Mine Information System by merging geodata and HCR data and to collect new data according to the standardized procedures, but controlling at the same time the quality and automated procedures of uploading into the system. Apart from being constructed in accordance with the Standard Operative Procedures (SOP), the modernised MIS is also based on generally accepted standards in the field of geoinformation and it is implemented on advanced technology. The core of the system is the Oracle database, and GeoMedia is a WebMap Professional tool on the basis of which the distribution and the work with spatial data is possible on intranet/Internet. In order to achieve full efficiency of the system, it is necessary to provide high quality and updated geodata. In this respect, photogrammetric data are the most efficient solution.


Convection associated with the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) is organized over a broad range of time and space scales within a large-scale envelope of activity. The large-scale envelope of convection is characterized as an eastward propagating disturbance, predominantly of zonal wavenumber 2, which is confined over the warmest waters of the Indian and western Pacific oceans. Large-scale convection is shifted toward the disturbance's temperature anomaly, which appears to result from frictional effects in the boundary layer. Synoptic and mesoscale convective activity is enhanced within the wet phase of the large-scale envelope. The increase at synoptic scales occurs uniformly over all scales, but little difference in the character of the variability is observed between dry and wet phases. The enhanced mesoscale activity within the wet phases exhibits a marked tendency to be organized into westward propagating clusters with periods near 2 days and half wavelengths of about 1000 km. The role of these modes for the evolution of the MJO is discussed.


Objective: review the scientific production from the vascular complications post percutaneous coronary intervention procedures in order to update technical scientific information that direct an evidence-based practice by professional nursing. Methodology: exploratory descriptive study based on librarian survey from national and international journals of nursing published in the period of 2003 to 2008. Results: There have been four national articles selected and six international ones. After the evaluation of studies, the information was organized into themes according to the following considerations identified: vascular complications rate and severity, ratio of means of access and arterial complications, predictors factors, degree of dependency of patients undergone percutaneous coronary procedures and time to rest, form of hemostasis after removal of the arterial introducer and the complication rate of its removal by nurses. Conclusion: The study of the vascular complications post percutaneous coronary procedures emphasizes the presence and role of nurses in patient care to minimize complications. This requires further research on the technical-scientific knowledge to ensure quality of patient care and safety to the professionals.


Based on a period of participant observation I examine the exit of the Managing Director from a family owned business. The study reflects on theories of entrepreneurial exit at both the level of the individual and the organisation. Through the adoption of a two step empirical analysis based on narrative theory, conclusions are drawn regarding the events and the Managing Director's actions which were antecedent to his announcement of exit. The article contributes insights regarding how an individual entrepreneur might come to make decisions regarding their exit from their firm, with respect to the context in which the firm operates. The article provides both a thick description of one local culture that will be useful for stimulating reflection amongst practitioners and prompting the operationalisation of more nuanced variables that might be adopted in future survey research.


We live in an increasingly digital world, fully equipped with smart mobile devices that allow us to connect to anyone, anytime. Such possibilities have wide reaching consequences particularly for the world of work. They challenge traditional boundaries between work and private life, fundamentally alter how we conduct work and have major implications on organizational power relations. And despite increasing scholarly interest in the phenomenon of connectivity, the study of connectivity particularly in relation to work, remains at a nascent state and the concept of connectivity under-conceptualized.
In this thesis I set out to develop our understanding of connectivity further by theoretically advancing and empirically exploring exactly these issues in one large multinational organization – TechComp. To what extent does connectivity with work, work connectivity, and more precisely the connectivity with one's work at the periphery of the workday, -week and – place, what I call peripheral work connectivity (PWC), exist at TechComp and what role does PWC play in relation to power negotiations? These are the questions I seek to answer, by means of a mixed methods case study, drawing on a large web-based survey (N=19,564), ethnographic work and in-depth interviews (N=87), all conducted between March 2014 and August 2015.
These multiple sources of data have allowed me to gain a thorough understanding of the extent of PWC at TechComp, highlighting that PWC is much more wide-spread across a diverse mix of job roles than previous research that primarily focused on high status professionals has led us to believe.
Moreover, I argue that peripheral work connectivity is more than a driver of changing norms of availability. Drawing on Foucault's concept of disciplinary power, undergirded by a sociomaterial understanding of the world, I show that PWC is a platform where power relations become rendered visible and contested. Peripheral work connectivity thus becomes a space of possibility. At the same time though, I argue that PWC is also a disciplinary agent, a mechanism that leads TechComp employees to self-discipline in an attempt to meet others' and their own expectations. Peripheral work connectivity is hence a platform and an agent, the reason for and an actor in power negotiations at TechComp.


In this paper we analyzed β-aminobutyric acid (BABA)-primed epigenetic adjustment of potato cv. "Sarpo Mira" to Phytophthora infestans. The first stress-free generation of the potato genotype obtained from BABA-primed parent plants via tubers and seeds showed pronounced resistance to the pathogen, which was tuned with the transcriptional memory of SA-responsive genes. During the early priming phase before the triggering stress, we found robust bistable deposition of histone marks (H3K4me2 and H3K27me3) on the NPR1 (Non-expressor of PR genes) and the SNI1 gene (Suppressor of NPR1, Inducible), in which transcription antagonized silencing. Switchable chromatin states of these adverse systemic acquired resistance (SAR) regulators probably reprogrammed responsiveness of the PR1 and PR2 genes and contributed to stress imprinting. The elevated levels of heritable H3K4me2 tag in the absence of transcription on SA-dependent genes in BABA-primed (F0) and its vegetative and generative progeny (F1) before pathogen challenge provided evidence for the epigenetic mark for intergenerational memory in potato. Moreover, our study revealed that histone acetylation was not critical for maintaining BABA-primed defense information until the plants were triggered with the virulent pathogen when rapid and boosted PRs gene expression probably required histone acetyltransferase (HAT) activity both in F0 and F1 progeny.


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Lipid membranes play a fundamental role in vital cellular functions such as signal transduction. Many of these processes rely on lateral diffusion within the membrane, generally a complex fluid containing ordered microdomains. However, little attention has been paid to the alterations in transport dynamics of a diffusing species caused by long-range interactions with membrane domains. In this paper, we address the effect of such interactions on diffusive transport by studying lateral diffusion in a phase-separated Langmuir phospholipid monolayer via single-particle tracking. We find that attractive dipole-dipole interactions between condensed phase domains and diffusing probe beads lead to transient confinement at the phase boundaries, causing a transition from two- to one-dimensional diffusion. Using Brownian dynamics simulations, the long-term diffusion constant for such a system is found to have a sensitive, Boltzmann-like, dependence on the interaction strength. In addition, this interaction strength is shown to be a strong function of the ratio of domain to particle size. As similar interactions are expected in biological membranes, the modulation of diffusive transport dynamics by varying interaction strength and/or domain size may offer cells selective spatial and temporal control over signaling processes.


Obesity is one of the major risk factors for developing atherosclerosis accompanied by other cardiovascular risk factors. Aims To determine the incidence of obesity in the group of children, the accompanying risk factors (high blood glucose and blood pressure values, dyslipidemia) important for the development of atherosclerosis, their frequency in the group of obese, overweight and normal weight children and the importance of sports activities in the existing risk factors in children Methods The degree of nourishment is determined by calculating the body mass index (BMI). The overweight were classified with BMI of 25–29.9 kg/m2, obese with BMI>30kg/m2. Everyone was measured blood pressures (systolic and diastolic), the concentrations of glucose (gl), total cholesterol (TC/mmol/l), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C/mmol/l, Triglicerid (Tg/mmol/l). Concentration of low density lipoproteins was calculated (LDL-C/mmol/l). The percentage of children with values of TC, HDL-C, LDL-C and Tg which are high risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease in adulthood was determined. National good clinical practice guide 'Lipid disorders' was used. Results 389 children aged 2 to 19 were examined, 12.34% obese, 22.62% overweight and 61.44% normal weight children. Values od systolic blood pressure, blood glucose, Tg were higher, HDL-C value was lower in overweight children than in normal weight, but without significant statistic diference. Values of diastolic blood pressure, TC and LDL-C were significantly higher in overweight children. In obese children these values were significantly higher than in normal weight. In obese children the largest number had values of TC, LDL-C and Tg which are high-risk factor for the development of cardiovascular diseases in adulthood (14.58%, 12.5%, 22.9%) as compared to overweight (11.36%, 9.64%, 5.68%) and the normal weight children (5.44%, 5%, 5.02%). In normal weight sport inactive children values of TC, HDL-C and Tg were higher compared to sport active children but without statistically significant difference and also was the percentage of children with values of LDL-C and HDL-C that are high risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. In obese sport inactive children lipids values were higher than in sport active but without significant statistic diference (>0.05) and also was the percentage of children with the values of TC, HDL-C and LDL-C levels that are high risk factor for developing of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Conclusions It is necessary to detect the obese children, to clarify the cause of obesity and as early as possible to include them in the diet, and if necessary, the drug treatment. In monitoring these children it is essential to monitor the blood pressure, and lipid status. In the prevention of obesity health education of parents, especially mothers, is essential.


Previous observations of the Galileo spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that Callisto possesses a neutral atmosphere which is mostly composed of O2 and additionally contains H2O and CO2.
The first aim of our study is to constrain density and structure of the atmospheric O2.
Based on existent observations and findings, we construct a phenomenological model of Callisto's atmosphere.
Then, we use this atmosphere model as input information for an ionosphere model, which is based on physical principles and has been developed by us specifically for Callisto.
Using this coupled description of Callisto's atmosphere-ionosphere system, we calculate the spatial distribution of ionospheric electron densities and the atmospheric ultraviolet emission, i.e., airglow.
By varying the prescribed O2 atmosphere and comparing calculated electron densities with Galileo radio occultation measurements and calculated UV emission intensities with Hubble Space Telescope observations, we are able to constrain density and structure of Callisto's O2 atmosphere.
We find an average O2 column density of 2.1 (+/-1.1) x 10^{19} 1/m^2 and a likely day-night asymmetry of the O2 atmosphere.
In the framework of our ionosphere model we calculate the electron energy distribution function at each point in the ionosphere by solving a coupled set of equations consisting of the Boltzmann equation for suprathermal electrons and the continuity and energy equation for thermal electrons.
Since we can neglect electron transport for our purposes, we assume a stationary balance between local sources and sinks of electrons and electron energy.
Photoionization is expected to be the major source of ionospheric electrons at Callisto.
Therefore, our model includes photoionization and secondary ionization processes from collisions of photoelectrons with neutrals.
Using our ionosphere model, we also investigate the formation process of Callisto's O2 atmosphere.
Atmospheric O2 is most likely generated by surface sputtering and sublimation.
Assuming that surface sputtering is the main source and causes an orbital phase dependent atmospheric O2 density, we predict atmospheric UV emission intensities for different orbital phases of Callisto.
These predictions can be used by other scientists to interpret telescope observations of Callisto regarding the question about the origin of Callisto's atmosphere.
Further, we wonder whether electromagnetic induction within Callisto's ionosphere can explain observed magnetic field disturbances that have been interpreted as evidence for a subsurface ocean.
The rotation of Jupiter's magnetic field causes a periodically time varying magnetic field in the rest frame of Callisto, which induces currents within Callisto's ionosphere.
We derive the conductivity structure of Callisto's ionosphere from our ionosphere model and simulate this induction process. From analytic considerations, we expect a nearly perfect Cowling channel in Callisto's ionosphere and, hence, only a weak continuation of ionospheric currents in the surrounding magnetospheric plasma.
Based on these findings, we construct a detailed numerical model to calculate the induced currents and according secondary magnetic fields quantitatively.
We compare our results with the magnetic field measurements from the Galileo flybys C-3 and C-9, during which magnetic field disturbances have been observed that are diagnostic for induction in a conductive spherical shell.
Our model results show that induction within Callisto's ionosphere is an important and non-negligible process that is responsible for a major part of the observed magnetic field disturbances.
Due to the present model-uncertainties regarding Callisto's ionosphere, we can not rule out the existence of an conductive subsurface layer like a subsurface ocean.
However, if properties of such a subsurface layer are derived from future observations, for example, observations of the JUpiter ICy moon Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft, a consideration of induction in the ionosphere is mandatory.


Nitrogenous fertilizer has remarkably improved rice (Oryza sativa L.) yield across the world since its discovery by Haber-Bosch process. Due to climate change, future rice production will likely experience a wide range of environmental plasticity. Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is an important trait to confer adaptability across various abiotic stresses such as flooding, drought and salinity. The problem with the increased N application often leads to a reduction in NUE. New solutions are needed to simultaneously increase yield and maximize the NUE of rice. Despite the differences among flooding, salinity and drought, these three abiotic stresses lead to similar responses in rice plants. To develop abiotic stress tolerant rice varieties, speed breeding seems a plausible novel approach. Approximately 22 single quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and 58 pairs of epistatic QTLs are known to be closely associated with NUE in rice. The QTLs/genes for submergence (SUB1A) tolerance, anaerobic germination (AG, TPP7) potential and deepwater flooding tolerance (SK1, SK2) are identified. Furthermore, phytochrome-interacting factor-like14 (OsPIL14), or loss of function of the slender rice1 (SLR1) genes enhance salinity tolerance in rice seedlings. This review updates our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance and discusses possible approaches for developing N-efficient rice variety.


The sub-prime crisis has shown a harsh spotlight on the practices of securities underwriters, which provided too many complex securities that proved to ultimately have little value. This uproar calls attention to the fact that the literature on intermediaries has carefully analyzed their incentives, but that we know little about the broader strategic dimensions of this market. The paper explores three related strategic dimensions of the certification market: the publicity given to applications, the coarseness of rating patterns and the sellers' dynamic certification strategies. In the model, certifiers respond to the sellers' desire to get a chance to be highly rated and to limit the stigma from rejection. We find conditions under which sellers opt for an ambitious certification strategy, in which they apply to a demanding, but non-transparent certifier and lower their ambitions when rejected. We derive the comparative statics with respect to the sellers' initial reputation, the probability of fortuitous disclosure, the sellers' self-knowledge and impatience, and the concentration of the certification industry. We also analyze the possibility that certifiers opt for a quick turnaround time at the expense of a lower accuracy. Finally, we investigate the opportunity of regulating transparency.


Originally published in 1993, Under Fire was widely hailed as the first objective examination of the NRA and its efforts to defeat gun control legislation. Now in this expanded edition, Osha Gray Davidson shows how the NRA's extremism has cost the organization both political power and popular support. He offers a well-reasoned and workable approach to gun control, one that will find many supporters even among the NRA membership.


This paper presents a novel, unsupervised approach to detecting anomalies at the collective level. The method probabilistically aggregates the contribution of the individual anomalies in order to detect significantly anomalous groups of cases. The approach is unsupervised in that as only input, it uses a list of cases ranked according to its individual anomaly score. Thus, any anomaly detection algorithm can be used for scoring individual anomalies, both supervised and unsupervised approaches. The applicability of the proposed approach is shown by applying it to an artificial data set and to two industrial data sets — detecting anomalously moving cranes (model-based detection) and anomalous fuel consumption (neighbour-based detection).


Tests of equivalence, which are designed to assess the similarity of group means, are becoming more popular, yet very little is known about the statistical properties of these tests. Monte Carlo methods are used to compare the test of equivalence proposed by Schuirmann with modified tests of equivalence that incorporate a heteroscedastic error term. It was found that the latter were more accurate than the Schuirmann test in detecting equivalence when sample sizes and variances were unequal.


Gaussian-PLDA (G-PLDA) modeling for i-vector based speaker verification has proven to be competitive versus heavytailed PLDA (HT-PLDA) based on Student's t-distribution, when the latter is much more computationally expensive. However, its results are achieved using a length-normalization, which projects i-vectors on the non-linear and finite surface of a hypersphere. This paper investigates the limits of linear and Gaussian G-PLDA modeling when distribution of data is spherical. In particular, assumptions of homoscedasticity are questionable: the model assumes that the within-speaker variability can be estimated by a unique and linear parameter. A non-probabilistic approach is proposed, competitive with stateof-the-art, which reveals some limits of the Gaussian modeling in terms of goodness of fit. We carry out an analysis of residue, which finds out a relation between the dispersion of a speakerclass and its location and, thus, shows that homoscedasticity assumptions are not fulfilled.


The lowest-birth-weight premature is very susceptible for nosocomial infections. These infants require the most invasive therapeutic interventions and the longest exposure to environment conductive for microbial colonization. Incidence of nosocomial infection and risk factors in premature has been compared over two years, 2010 and 2015. We examined the effects of common procedures on the incidence of nosocomial sepsis. Birth weight, distribution of pathogens and the therapeutically procedures had been analysed. We tried to find strategies to minimise the risks for acquiring sepsis. Hospital documentation from neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) has been analysed retrospectively during two different years in the University Hospital Osijek. Incidence of nosocomial sepsis among hospitalised premature has been 8.9% in 2010, and 4.8% in 2015. The highest rate of affected infants weighed below 1,500 g in both periods. Statistically significance in these two periods has been found in the percentage of pre-term infants with umbilical vein catheter (UVC), and in the number of pre-term on invasive mechanical ventilation. The most common pathogen in 2010 was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis (MRSE), and in 2015 coagulase negative Staphylococci (CONS). The percentage of Candida parapsylosis was higher in 2015. Lowering the incidence of late-onset sepsis has been accomplished by using peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) and non-invasive mechanical ventilation. Invasive procedures must be avoided as much as possible.


Over the past six and a half years, GfK NOP has carried out surveys of public attitudes to inflation on behalf of the Bank of England. As part of an annual series, this article analyses the results of the surveys from May 2005 to February 2006. Public perceptions of past and future inflation picked up recently, while most people thought interest rates had risen over the past year. Public understanding about the monetary policy framework remained limited, but people were generally satisfied with the way the Bank has been setting interest rates.


We investigate some basic questions about the interaction of regular and rational relations on words. The primary motivation comes from the study of logics for querying graph topology, which have recently found numerous applications. Such logics use conditions on paths expressed by regular languages and relations, but they often need to be extended by rational relations such as subword or subsequence. Evaluating formulae in such extended graph logics boils down to checking nonemptiness of the intersection of rational relations with regular or recognizable relations (or, more generally, to the generalized intersection problem, asking whether some projections of a regular relation have a nonempty intersection with a given rational relation).
We prove that for several basic and commonly used rational relations, the intersection problem with regular relations is either undecidable (e.g., for subword or suffix, and some generalizations), or decidable with non-primitive-recursive complexity (e.g., for subsequence and its generalizations). These results are used to rule out many classes of graph logics that freely combine regular and rational relations, as well as to provide the simplest problem related to verifying lossy channel systems that has non-primitive-recursive complexity. We then prove a dichotomy result for logics combining regular conditions on individual paths and rational relations on paths, by showing that the syntactic form of formulae classifies them into either efficiently checkable or undecidable cases. We also give examples of rational relations for which such logics are decidable even without syntactic restrictions.


Literature ABSTRACT about childhood attitudes on sex roles has shown that sexism has already taken root by the time the child is three years old. By this age, activities children have already learned that different characteristics, and behaviours are expected of males and females. In fact, sex-role stereotyping as a form of sexism is prevalent in the lives of young children.

This dissertation focuses on the exploration of the factors that influence the existence or elimination of sexism in education in terms of young children's sex-role stereotyping in preprimary classes. In Western Australia the preprimary stage, i.e. the year the child turns five years old is currently considered to be the child's first experience of schooling. To effect this exploration a project was initiated and planned by this writer who acted as researcher and undertook the roles of participant-observer and interviewer. The project involved the observations of preprimary classrooms and informant interviews.

A sociological phenomenologist stance was assumed for the project. In keeping with this stance descriptions of a more wholistic nature are presented in the context of a detailed case study. The development of some conceptualization of the sociological relationships of influence factors was generated. A feature of this conceptualization was the focus on the preprimary class as a total environment and the nature of the educator's role. Although this dissertation relates specifically to preprimary classes and schools in Western Australia, it may have relevance for similar educational settings in other places.


This paper considers the effect of spouse's characteristics on three aggregated non-paid time uses, active leisure time; child caregiving time; and home production time, using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The time diary of each married individual with children under the age of 13 (mothers and fathers) is analyzed, both in terms of the level of non-paid time and the wife's share of the total level of the daily activity for the couple. Three spousal variables: the relative wage of the wife compared to her husband, spouses' weekly hours of employment; and, in the level equations only, the spouses' time in the same activity are considered. Each of these spousal variables needs to be estimated in order to address issues of both endogeneity and missing data. Three alternative strategies to address these problems are explored: predictions within the sample, predictions from outside the sample and propensity matching which "marries" mothers with time diaries to fathers with time diaries who have propensity scores similar to the women's husband. The results show very little effect of one spouse on the level of other spouse's unpaid time use. This absence of spousal effects is similar to the reduction of spousal effects in employment time described in Blau and Kahn (2005). In terms of the share of wife's time in the activity, we find higher relative wages of the mother compared to her husband leads to a greater share of child care done by the mother on both weekdays and weekends. No consistent effect of relative wages is found on the mother's share of leisure or home production.


This paper examines how women in Ohio fare on eight indicators of women's economic status, in comparison with women in other states, including in Ohio's region, and with women nationally. It highlights where Ohio women have seen economic progress and where their conditions have stagnated and examines differences among Ohio's women by race and ethnicity. It also details a number of recommendations for policy and practice to improve women's lives and to promote a more productive state economy. February 2007 Institute for Women's Policy Research