of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Guillermo Goldstein. No. of pages in text. (119) The Tropical savannas of central Brazil (cerrado) and the Everglades wetland (Florida) ecosystems are ideal systems to study landscape spatial mosaics and their interactions. Both ecosystems show a variety of plant physiognomies distributed within small spatial scales and elevation gradients. Such variety of plant physiognomies provide an opportunity to investigate the roles of climate, topography, nutrient availability and water table dynamics as determinants of plant physiognomic distributions, and their role in shaping regional systems. South Florida Wetlands and the tropical savannas of central Brazil are examples of hydrologically-controlled ecosystems. In hydrologicallycontrolled ecosystems water sources, the availability of nutrients, and the patterns of water movement play important roles in determining vegetation structure and function. The main objective of this study was to understand ecosystem level processes that shape different physiognomies in two hydrologically-controlled ecosystems. I conducted field work at the IBGE ecological reserve, a field experimental station located in Brasilia, Brazil. I also worked at the Everglades National Park in an area located near the south entrance of the Park in Homestead, Florida. I carried out three interconnected studies investigating water and nutrient dynamics: (1) In a Brazilian savanna I manipulated levels of litter input and measured changes to soil properties, organic matter decomposition and tree growth. I found that changes in litter input affect soil physicochemical properties and soil biochemical processes. I also found that litter dynamics influence tree growth through their effects on soil physicochemical properties. (2) I also studied the effect of water table depth and its temporal variation on spatial patterns of vegetation distribution in the cerrado landscape. I monitored diurnal and seasonal changes in water table depth along two tree-density and topographic gradients. In addition, I measured woody species composition, growth rates of four tree species, litter production, soil nutrients, and nutrient resorption efficiency along those two gradients. I found that water table depth has an important role in determining the spatial distribution of cerrado physiognomies; it also affects tree growth, species composition and nutrient resorption efficiency. (3) In the Everglades I studied patterns of underground water uptake by two vegetation types. I monitored seasonal and diurnal changes in water table depth in a Hammock forest, in a stand dominated by the invasive woody species Schinus terebinthifolius, as well as the water level in an adjacent lake. I estimated stand level transpiration using two different approaches: with sap flow measurements and diurnal oscillations in water table levels. Then, I calculated the total quantity of groundwater withdrawn by evapotranspiration for the wet and dry seasons in the Hammocks and in the exotic invaded site and then compared the results. I found that water uptake by Everglades trees is well coupled to diurnal changes in water table depth and that the amount of water withdrawn from the groundwater was larger during the wet season than during the dry season. Finally, I detected hydrological feedbacks between different vegetation types and nearby bodies of water. Results of this study contributes to the current knowledge of ecosystem level processes in tropical and subtropical ecosystems where water circulation and water availability play a dominant role in shaping vegetation structure and function.


Distribution networks represent a huge capital investment. To make sensible decisions about their investments, electricity utilities need to form clear-cut design policies and adopt the most accurate systemdesign procedures. Customers' expectations of the reliability of supply continue to rise, market pressures on the design engineer are growing stronger, and the increasing use of computers has changed the entire approach to distribution system design. Technical innovations have presented the design engineer with the means to improve system efficiency. Electricity Distribution Network Design was the first book to be entirely devoted to the planning and design of modern distribution systems, as apposed to the more general aspects of transmission and generation. This second edition has updated its treatment of computer-based planning and reliability. It also covers the implications of international standards, network information systems and distribution automation. With comprehensive and up-to-date bibliographies at the end of each chapter, the book will be useful both for students and for practising engineers involved in distribution network design.


We point out some of the outstanding challenges for embedding inflationary cosmology within string theory studying the process of reheating for models where the inflaton is a closed string mode parameterising the size of an internal cycle of the compactification manifold. A realistic model of inflation must explain the tiny perturbations in the cosmic microwave background radiation and also how to excite the ordinary matter degrees of freedom after inflation, required for the success of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We study these issues focusing on two promising inflationary models embedded in LARGE volume type IIB flux compactifications. We show that phenomenological requirements and consistency of the effective field theory treatment imply the presence at low energies of a hidden sector together with a visible sector, where the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model fields are residing. A detailed calculation of the inflaton coupling to the fields of the hidden sector, visible sector, and moduli sector, reveals that the inflaton fails to excite primarily the visible sector fields, instead hidden sector fields are excited copiously after the end of inflation. This sets severe constraints on hidden sector model building where the most promising scenario emerges as a pure N = 1 SYM theory, forbidding the kinematical decay of the inflaton to the hidden sector. In this case it is possible to reheat the Universe with the visible degrees of freedom even though in some cases we discover a new tension between TeV scale SUSY and reheating on top of the well-known tension between TeV scale SUSY and inflation.


Occupant behavior has significant impacts on building energy performance and occupant comfort. However, occupant behavior is not well understood and is often oversimplified in the building life cycle, due to its stochastic, diverse, complex, and interdisciplinary nature. The use of simplified methods or tools to quantify the impacts of occupant behavior in building performance simulations significantly contributes to performance gaps between simulated models and actual building energy consumption. Therefore, it is crucial to understand occupant behavior in a comprehensive way, integrating qualitative approaches and dataand model-driven quantitative approaches, and employing appropriate tools to guide the design and operation of low-energy residential and commercial buildings that integrate technological and human dimensions. This paper presents ten questions, highlighting some of the most important issues regarding concepts, applications, and methodologies in occupant behavior research. The proposed questions and answers aim to provide insights into occupant behavior for current and future researchers, designers, and policy makers, and most importantly, to inspire innovative research and applications to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy use in buildings.


Background. Emotional intelligence is an essential competence that must be evaluated within a personnel selection process. The level of IE influences the results of a company favorably. In this research, the dependence that exists between the effective productivity of the workers in specific of the commercial area and the emotional intelligence was analyzed.
Methodology. The studied population was 88 active workers in the area as mentioned earlier; 40% were male and 60% female. Those evaluated were aged 25 to 40 years, with experience in the average sales area of 3 years. To validate the questions that were handled as an instrument, the Pearson correlation was used; Chi-square to calculate the dependence of variables.
Results and discussion. As a result, we obtained ten dependent variables with which we can conclude that there is a relationship between the level of emotional intelligence with the effective productivity that collaborates with the commercial area within an organization.
Conclusion. Based on the results we conclude that people with a high level of Emotional Self-understanding (AE) can control their emotions to act correctly in each situation.


We introduce a system of nonlinear coupled-mode equations (CMEs) for Bragg gratings (BGs) where the Bragg reflectivity periodically switches off and on as a function of the evolution variable. The model may be realized in a planar waveguide with the Kerr nonlinearity, where the grating is represented by an array of parallel dashed lines (grooves), aligned with the propagation direction. In the temporal domain, a similar system can be derived for matter waves trapped in a rocking optical lattice. Using systematic simulations, we construct families of gap solitons (GSs) in this system, starting with inputs provided by exact GS solutions in the averaged version of the CMEs. Four different regimes of the dynamical behavior are identified: fully stable, weakly unstable, moderately unstable, and completely unstable solitons. The analysis is reported for both quiescent and moving solitons (in fact, they correspond to untilted and tilted beams in the spatial domain). Weakly and moderately unstable GSs spontaneously turn into persistent breathers (the moderate instability entails a small spontaneous change of the breather's velocity). Stability regions for the solitons and breathers are identified in the parameter space. Collisions between stably moving solitons and breathers always appear to be elastic.


Dear members of the CAYC community, We would like to share with you exciting news about the CAYC journal. Journal Name Change In April 2016, the CAYC Board decided unanimously to change the name of the journal. Formerly titled  Canadian Children: Journal of The Canadian Association for Young Children , the journal is now called: The Canadian Association for Young Children Journal of Childhood Studies. The new title reflects contemporary changes in the conception of childhoods and its growing relation to a wider array of fields of studies and practices. This change also responds to, and opens up, questions about identities and belonging in light of the transient nature of contemporary childhoods, and the necessity to actively respond to histories, present and future, of Indigenous childhoods. Increase in Number of Issues Over the past couple of years, with the support of a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the journal has grown in its scope, depth, and accessibility. Our goal is to publish four issues per year (an increase of two issues per year). To this end, we regularly put out calls for papers from researchers and practitioners. The  Journal of Childhood Studies  invites papers that explore childhoods through theory, research, and practice across diverse disciplines. Free Access As one of the leading journals on the topic of childhood on the Canadian landscape, CAYC has committed to making The  Journal of Childhood Studies  freely accessible online.  In its new format, local and international early childhood practitioners, students, and researchers can access the journal on a regular to basis learn about and respond to alternative approaches and conceptualizations of childhood and its related practices.


Aims: To survey current, Danish industrial noise levels and the use of hearing protection devices (HPD) over a 10-year period and to characterise the association between occupational noise and hearing threshold shift in the same period. Furthermore, the risk of hearing loss among the baseline and the follow-up populations according to first year of occupational noise exposure is evaluated. Materials and Methods: In 2001–2003, we conducted a baseline survey of noiseand hearing-related disorders in 11 industries with suspected high noise levels. In 2009–2010, we were able to follow up on 271 out of the 554 baseline workers (49%). Mean noise levels per industry and selfreported HPD use are described at baseline and follow-up. The association between cumulative occupational noise exposure and hearing threshold shift over the 10-year period was assessed using linear regression, and the risk of hearing loss according to year of first occupational noise exposure was evaluated with logistic regression. Results:Over the 10-year period, mean noise levels declined from 83.9 dB(A) to 82.8 dB(A), and for workers exposed >85 dB(A), the use of HPD increased from 70.1 to 76.1%. We found a weak, statistically insignificant, inverse association between higher ambient cumulative noise exposure and poorer hearing (−0.10 dB hearing threshold shift per dB-year (95% confidence interval (CI): −0.36; 0.16)). The risk of hearing loss seemed to increase with earlier first year of noise exposure, but odds ratios were only statistically significant among baseline participants with first exposure before the 1980s (odds ratio: 1.90, 95% CI: 1.11; 3.22). Conclusions:We observed declining industrial noise levels, increased use of HPD and no significant impact on hearing thresholds from current ambient industrial noise levels, which indicated a successful implementation of Danish hearing conservation programs.


Although private parties have performed government functions throughout most of Western history, mainstream administrative law scholarship is dotted with concerns over the extent to which modern federal government activities are outsourced to private contractors. Federal contractors routinely exercise authority that is classically "executive" in nature. They write regulations, interpret laws, administer foreign aid, manage nuclear weapons sites and intelligence operations, interrogate detainees, control borders, design surveillance systems, and provide military support in combat zones. Administrative law places few constraints on private contractors, and prevailing constitutional principles — the state action and private delegation doctrines, in particular — are either inept at holding private contractors to constitutional norms or utterly moribund. A common theme that appears in the vast literature on privatization, therefore, is accountability. There is no recognized constitutional theory that meaningfully prohibits Congress or the President from transferring significant amounts of discretionary governmental power to wholly private entities that operate beyond the purview of the Constitution, and there is relatively sparse scholarly analysis of the subject. This Article searches for a constitutional principle that could be employed to address hypothetical outsourcing arrangements that go too far for the American appetite. In that pursuit, it looks to the law governing independent agencies as a natural starting point for evaluating the propriety of outsourcing relationships from the standpoint of the structural Constitution. It then introduces two ideas with an eye toward sparking fresh thinking about the constitutionality of privatization: first, the notion that all actors exercising federal government power should be viewed along a constitutional continuum and not as occupying separate private/public spheres; and, second, that a democratic accountability principle may be derived from the Supreme Court's recent decision in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Board, as a constitutional hook for addressing government-by-contract gone awry.


Human-kind and ecological systems are currently facing one of the toughest challenges: how to feed more billions of people in the future within the perspective of climate change, energy shortages, economic crises and growing competition for the use of renewable and non renewable resources. This challenge is even more crucial given that we have not yet come close to achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger. Scientists and relevant stakeholders are now voicing a clear message: that multiple challenges the world is facing require innovative, multifaceted, science-based, technological, economic and political approaches in theoretical thinking, decision making and action. With this background central to survival and well-being, the purpose of this volume is to formulate and promote relevant theoretical analysis and policy recommendations. The major perspective of this publication is that paradigm and policy shifts at all levels are needed urgently. This is based on the evidence that agriculture in the 21st century will be undergoing significant demands, arising largely from the need to increase the global food enterprise, while adjusting and contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Global Food Insecurity aims at providing structure to effect achievement of this critically needed roadmap.


Organised community seed banks (OCBSs) are one of the main tools to preserve crop diversity at a local level and therefore constitute an important driver for local resilience, as well as an important tool to move society towards sustainability. Agriculture is a fundamental leverage point for society: it fulfils a basic survival need as well as being one of the causes of humans' unsustainable impact on the environment. It also holds the key to the preservation of biodiversity, which is increasingly important in the face of climate change and extreme weather conditions, and the reduction in use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which is necessary to move towards sustainability. Organised community seed banks have the potential to be a tool for this preservation of biodiversity, however, there is currently a lack of literature, resources and guidelines to position them as such. This research set out to identify the challenges that OCSBs face that could affect their success in contributing to a sustainable society, and the gaps between what management resources are available to them and their current management practices. With the aid of organised seed bank representatives and experts from around the world, the result was the design of a strategic approach to help OCSBs address their challenges and allow them to better contribute to the provision of food sovereignty, food security and socio-ecological sustainability.


This paper describes a Directed Query Dissemination Scheme, DirQ that routes queries to the appropriate source nodes based on both constant and dynamic-valued attributes such as sensor types and sensor values. Location information is not essential for the operation of DirQ. DirQ only uses locally available information to route queries accurately and to allow nodes to adapt autonomously to changes in network topology. This is due to certain cross-layer features that allow it to exchange information with the underlying MAC protocol. Our simulations illustrate how both the accuracy and efficiency of the routing of queries are affected by the chosen level of threshold.


The Aracena metamorphic belt, in the southwest Iberian Massif, is characterized by the presence of MORB-derived amphibolites and continental rocks deformed and metamorphosed during the Hercynian orogeny. Geochemical relationships of these amphibolites indicate the existence of a multiple fractionation process from a set of parental magmas, implying the existence of a multi-chamber system beneath the ridge where the basalt protolith was extruded. Neodymium isotopic ratios are typical of MORB, and oxygen isotopes indicate that these amphibolites have been derived from the uppermost part of the oceanic crust Thermal evolution, revealed from the study of chemical variations in the amphibole chemistry, is interpreted as resulting from subduction in a low-pressure regime in which the thermal structure of the continental hanging-wall played an important role. This continental wall was previously heated by subduction of a slab window resulting from migration of a triple junction along the continental edge during plate convergence. Three petrologic arguments support this tectonic model These are: (1) the low-pressure inverted metamorphic gradient of amphibolites of the oceanic domain; (2) the high-temperaturelow-pressure metamorphism of the continental hanging wall; (3) the early intrusion of boninites into the continental domain.


Images usually exhibit regions that particularly attract the viewer's attention. These regions are typically referred to as regions-of-interest (ROI) and the underlying phenomenon in the human visual system is known as visual attention (VA). In the context of image quality one may expect that distortions occuring in the ROI are perceived as being more annoying, as compared to distortions in the background. However, VA is only seldom taken into account in existing image quality metrics. In this paper, we thus provide a VA framework to extend existing image quality metrics with a simple VA model. The performance of the framework is evaluated on three contemporary image quality metrics. We further consider the context of wireless imaging where a broad range of artifacts can be observed. To facilitate the VA based metric design, we conducted subjective experiments to both obtain a ground truth for the subjective quality of a set of test images and to identify ROI in the corresponding reference images. A methodology is further discussed to optimize the VA metrics with respect to quality prediction accuracy and generalization ability. It is shown that the quality prediction performance of the three considered metrics can be significantly improved by deploying the proposed framework.


The hexosamine biosynthetic pathway has been hypothesized to be involved in mediating some of the toxic effects of hyperglycemia. Glutamine:fructose-6-phosphate amidotransferase (GFA), the first and rate limiting enzyme of the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway, was overexpressed in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue of transgenic mice. A 2.4-fold increase of GFA activity in muscle of the transgenic mice led to weight-dependent hyperinsulinemia in random-fed mice. The hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp technique confirmed that transgenic mice develop insulin resistance, with a glucose disposal rate of 68.5 +/- 3.5 compared with 129.4 +/- 9.4 mg/kg per min (P < 0.001) for littermate controls. The decrease in the glucose disposal rate of the transgenic mice is accompanied by decreased protein but not mRNA levels of the insulin-stimulated glucose transporter (GLUT4). These data support the hypothesis that excessive flux through the hexosamine biosynthesis pathway mediates adverse regulatory and metabolic effects of hyperglycemia, specifically insulin resistance of glucose disposal. These mice can serve as a model system to study the mechanism for the regulation of glucose homeostasis by hexosamines.


A scheme based on conjugate Fourier series is proposed for the determination of the dissipative mode of an optical constant from the corresponding dispersive mode, and vice versa. The connection between the conjugate Fourier series and Fourier integral method is discussed. The advantages of the method in relation to the Kramers-Kronig approach are outlined.


Under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), a broadly defined group of landowners, transporters, and generators of hazardous waste are liable for the costs of cleaning up hazardous waste sites. CERCLA provides the government with powerful tools to impose this liability. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the authority both to compel responsible parties to clean up the site or to clean up the site itself and recover its expenses from these parties. The government is not the only party, however, that can impose liability for hazardous waste cleanup costs. Section 107(a)(4)(B) of CERCLA provides that responsible parties are also 'liable for . . . any other necessary costs of response incurred by any other person consistent with the national contingency plan.' This new cause of action creates a significant role for private parties in the national hazardous waste cleanup effort. This Article examines issues raised by the section 107(a)(4)(B) private cause of action. Section I provides an overview of the provisions of CERCLA that are essential to understanding the issues under section 107(a)(4)(B). Section II addresses the threshold question of whether section 107(a)(4)(B) does, in fact, provide an independent cause of action for recovery of hazardous waste cleanup costs. Section III examines the requirements for asserting the cause of action. Issues examined range from standing requirements to questions of ripeness. The most difficult questions, however, may involve the requirement that private cleanups be 'consistent with the national contingency plan.' EPA's recent revisions to this national cleanup plan attempt to provide some control over private cleanup efforts. Section IV discusses significant problems that may constrain parties from undertaking private hazardous waste cleanups.


We employ a novel multiconfigurational self-consistent Green's function approach (MCSCG) for the simulation of nanoscale Schottky-barrier-field-effect transistors (SB-FETs). This approach allows the calculation of electronic transport with a seamless transition from the single-electron regime to room-temperature FET operation. The particular improvement of the MCSCG stems from a self-consistent division of the channel system into a small subsystem of resonantly trapped states for which a many-body Fock space approach becomes numerically feasible and the rest of the system which can be treated adequately on a conventional mean-field level. The Fock space description allows for the calculation of few-electron Coulomb charging effects beyond the mean-field. We compare a conventional Hartree nonequilibrium Green's function calculation with the results of the MCSCG approach. Using the MCSCG method, Coulomb blockade effects are demonstrated at low temperatures while, under strong nonequilibrium and high-temperature conditions, the Hartree approximation is retained. Finally, the visibility of quantum and single-electron effects in scaled transistor structures is discussed


Current fuel management strategies for light water reactors (LWRs), in countries with high back-end costs, progressively extend the discharge burnup at the expense of increasing the 235U enrichment of the fresh UO2 fuel loaded. In this perspective, standard non-destructive assay (NDA) techniques, which are very attractive because they are fast, cheap, and preserve the fuel integrity, in contrast to destructive approaches, require further validation when burnup values become higher than 50 GWd/t. This doctoral work has been devoted to the development and optimisation of non-destructive assay (NDA) techniques based on gamma-ray emissions from irradiated fuel. It represents an important extension of the unique, high-burnup related database, generated in the framework of the LWR-PROTEUS Phase II experiments. A novel tomographic measurement station has been designed and developed for the investigation of irradiated fuel rod segments. A unique feature of the station is that it allows both gamma-ray transmission and emission computerised tomography to be performed on single fuel rods. Four burnt UO2 fuel rod segments of 400 mm length have been investigated, two with very high (52 GWd/t and 71 GWd/t) and two with ultra-high (91 GWd/t and 126 GWd/t) burnup. Several research areas have been addressed, as described below. The application of transmission tomography to spent fuel rods has been a major task, because of difficulties of implementation and the uniqueness of the experiments. The main achievements, in this context, have been the determination of fuel rod average material density (a linear relationship between density and burnup was established), fuel rod linear attenuation coefficient distribution (for use in emission tomography), and fuel rod material density distribution. The non-destructive technique of emission computerised tomography (CT) has been applied to the very high and ultra-high burnup fuel rod samples for determining their within-rod distributions of caesium and europium fission-product radionuclides. As indicated above, results provided by the transmission tomography measurements were employed in the emission tomography reconstruction phase, together with a calculated global efficiency matrix and input sinograms derived from the processing of measured projections. Different tomographic algorithms were tested and "tuned", on the basis of known test distributions, before being applied to the actual fuel rod measurements. Amongst the various possibilities, the Paraboloidal Surrogates Coordinate Ascent (PSCA) penalised likelihood method has been chosen for presentation of the final results, because it ensures high precision, especially in resolving the most difficult peripheral regions of the rods. The results of the emission tomography have indicated large central depressions in the caesium distributions, but of varying extent from sample to sample. Particularly interesting is the case of the 126 GWd/t sample, showing a very deep central depression (a factor of ∼2.5 for 137Cs, a factor of ∼3 for 134Cs). Differences in the relative activity distributions of 137Cs and 134Cs have, in fact, been observed for all the samples. The depression of 134Cs is more marked than that of 137Cs, probably due to the different origins of the two isotopes. In contrast, the europium shows an almost flat distribution. In order to support the tomographically measured caesium distributions, the results of destructive chemical techniques applied on samples from the same fuel rod (126 GWd/t sample) were examined and found to show reasonably good agreement with the tomography, thus confirming the depressed distributions at the centre of the rod. In addition to the tomographic reconstructions, the present research has also investigated the possibility to use single isotope activities, and/or isotopic concentration ratios from 134Cs, 137Cs, and 154Eu, as burnup indicators at very high and ultra-high burnups. The corresponding non-destructive measurements, performed using three different approaches, have been compared with chemical assays, as well as with reactor physics calculations (CASMO). Whereas the chemical results confirm the current gamma-spectroscopic measurements within uncertainties, the agreement between measurements and calculations is not satisfactory. It has been shown that certain indicators, well established for application at low and medium burnups, suffer a serious loss of reliability at high burnup. Nevertheless, the possibility of successfully employing other burnup monitors has been clearly highlighted. Considering that the overall effort required for the destructive chemical analysis of fuel samples is much greater, the current investigations have clearly demonstrated that non-destructive gamma spectrometry, in conjunction with corresponding transmission and emission tomography measurements, can indeed be considered a valid approach for characterising fuel burnup in the high/ultra-high range.


Background and objectives: The emergence of multidrug resistance among Pseudomonas species and Acinetobacter species is a notable threat. Acquisition of the metallo-β-lactamase (MBL) gene is an important mechanism of broadspectrum-β-lactam resistance. The aim of the study is to detect the prevalence of MBL among Pseudomonas spp. and Acinetobacter spp. isolated from various clinical samples collected from different age groups. Materials and Methods: A total of 54 meropenem resistant Pseudomonas spp. and Acinetobacter spp., tested by the disc diffusion method, were included in the study .The strains were isolates obtained from burn wounds, ulcers, sputum and urine collected from the patients aged from one year to 90 years. The strains were identified up to the species level and the EDTA disk synergy test was used, with simultaneous testing of different β-lactams (meropenem and aztreonam). Results: Of the 54 meropenem resistant strains, 16(30%) were MBLs producing isolates, of which 13(81%) were isolates of samples from male patients and 3(19%) were those from female patients. More strains of MBLs [13(81%)] were seen in the age group of 40-75 years and only few strains of MBLs [3(19%)] were isolated from samples in the age group below 40 years and above 75 years. MBLs were more prevalent in respiratory specimens 4(45%) and less prevalent in urine specimens 3(21%) when compared to other specimens. Pseudomonas putida 7(64%) had more number of MBLs producing organisms as compared to other species of Pseudomonas. The isolates producing MBLs were more resistant to Tobramycin [16(100%)] and Gentamicin [15 (94%)] and were less resistant to Piperacillin [10(63%)] than meropenem -non susceptible isolates which did not produce MBLs. Conclusion: The rapid discrimination of MBL producers is worrisome and necessitates the implementation of not just surveillance studies, but also the proper and judicious selection of antibiotics, especially carbapenems.


We discuss a novel approach for dealing with single-stage stochastic constraint satisfaction problems (SCSPs) that include random variables over a continuous or large discrete support. Our approach is based on two novel tools: sampled SCSPs and (α, ϑ)-solutions. Instead of explicitly enumerating a very large or infinite set of future scenarios, we employ statistical estimation to determine if a given assignment is consistent for a SCSP. As in statistical estimation, the quality of our estimate is determined via confidence interval analysis. In contrast to existing approaches based on sampling, we provide likelihood guarantees for the quality of the solutions found. Our approach can be used in concert with existing strategies for solving SCSPs.


Government action to address climate change has been very varied and industries in the developed world, especially those that which are energy intensive, are increasingly concerned about the potential negative impacts of abatement measures on their international competitiveness. This paper looks at the potential impacts of one measure which has been proposed to address these competitiveness concerns – border tax adjustments (BTAs). It finds that the potential impacts of such measures may not justify the complexity of their imposition. The impacts on competitiveness are likely to be limited and potential negative side effects on some poor developing countries cannot be ruled out. The country most likely to be impacted by BTAs in the EU and USA markets is China, while the low-income countries most likely to be affected are Niger, Mozambique and Tadjikistan, in the EU market and Liberia, Tadjikistan, and Uzbekistan in the USA market.


Background Systematic reviews play an important role in improving understanding of the comparative effectiveness of medical interventions, but economic data have not usually been included despite their importance in determining the value of interventions. This paper addresses the usefulness of incorporating economic evaluation data into systematic reviews of medical interventions. Methods A consensus process including outside experts was used to develop a conceptual framework for including economic evidence alongside systematic reviews, and to define tradeoffs in presenting economic data. The framework was based on five questions: (1) Why are stakeholders interested in economic evaluation data? (2) When should economic evaluation data be requested in a systematic review? (3) Who is interested in economic evaluation data? (4) What economic evidence is of interest? and (5) How should the economic evaluation be conducted? Results Decisions about inclusion of economic data in systematic reviews should be based on the magnitude of the incremental cost, magnitude of the incremental effect, and the probability that economic evidence will change a decision. Economic data should be given a high priority when evidence indicates a small effect at a high level of expenditure with a high probability of influencing a decision. All stakeholders (including public and private insurers) should be interested in economic data and the perspectives of patients, providers, and manufacturers because patients and providers together determine the demand for care and manufacturers determine the supply. Economic data are of interest for decisions at many levels, including decisions about approval and monitoring of services, formulary inclusion, insurance coverage, reimbursement rate, preferred practice guideline, technology adoption or nonadoption, or clinical management. Economic data of interest include information that contributes directly to cost-effectiveness analyses, as well as data on productivity changes related to a disease or its treatment, basic price data, and data on responses to price changes. When it is appropriate to include economic data in a systematic review, it may be sufficient to review available economic analyses, but it may be necessary to perform a new economic evaluation if previous evaluations are inadequate (absent, low quality, or very heterogeneous) or if important new data are available. Conclusion The approach to gathering economic data alongside a systematic review of evidence will be governed by the decision context and the need for a new economic evaluation consistent with the other findings of the systematic review.


Studies on the recent wave of recentralization have focused on understanding when national authorities push for such reforms and on identifying the diversity of factors that contribute to their success. Most studies assume that regional or local politicians will oppose recentralization. This paper argues that the position of subnational politicians will depend on how recentralization affects their interests: while they will oppose fiscal and political recentralization, they may find incentives to support administrative recentralization. Within this framework, the position of Mexican state governors is analyzed with regard to the administrative and political recentralization experienced in the country during the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.


In spite of numerous socioeconomic problems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), there has been an increasing growth of Internet connectivity, and much business activity has arisen to take advantage of this technology. This dissertation investigates experts' assessments of the pertinent factors affecting e-business in SSA from the dual perspective of national infrastructure and culture.
I review the literature related to e-business in SSA and develop three conceptual models that identify various pertinent factors and hypothesize their interrelationships in determining e-business outcomes. The first model includes all the factors I identify; the second model examines those factors that operate at the national level; and the third includes those that operate at the cultural level. For empirical insight into my research questions, I design and conduct a survey that empirically solicits information from business practitioners, government officials, officials of nongovernmental organizations, and academics that have expertise related to e-business among urban SMEs in SSA. I use the survey responses to test the research models and to help answer my research questions.
The overall model explains approximately 30 percent of the variation in e-business capabilities and in e-business value. I find that from a national infrastructure perspective, experts believe that non-specific general information and communication technology (ICT) policies are not very influential, while policies targeted specifically towards e-business are important in affecting e-business capabilities and in obtaining value from e-business, as well as ICT infrastructure. ICT infrastructure only affects e-business capabilities, but not its value. Experts believe that national governance institutions positively affect e-business value, but not capabilities. They do not believe that commercial infrastructure significantly affects e-business outcomes. Additionally, from the cultural perspective, experts believe that ICT transfer implementation strongly affects both e-business capabilities and value, but that among SSA countries, there are no significant cultural effects of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, or technology culturation. Furthermore, they do not believe that there is any significant interaction between culture and transfer implementation within SSA. I conclude by discussing the findings in light of the existing literature related to e-business in SSA, and by noting implications for management, research and teaching.


Introduction: Tissue expansion is an important reconstruction method to solve defects such as burns and giant nevi or breast reconstruction. This article aims to report the experience of the Plastic Surgery Service of the Hospital de Clínicas of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) with the use of expanders. Methods: This is a retrospective, descriptive, and analytical study of patients who underwent tissue expansion for reconstructive surgery at the Hospital de Clínicas da UFPR, from January 2010 to December 2016. Results: 61 patients and 80 surgeries were analyzed, including re-expansion procedures. Age ranged from 2 to 73 years (mean 31). The majority of patients were female (83.6%), aged over 40 years, undergoing breast reconstruction treatment after radical mastectomy (36%). The complications observed in these patients were: signs of infection (14.7%), suture dehiscence (3.2%), seroma (3.2%), defect in the expander (3.2%), exposure of the expander (3, 2%), necrosis (1.6%) and signs of hypoperfusion (1.6%). Patients undergoing breast reconstruction had the highest number of complications (40.1%). Reexpansion was necessary for 37.7% of patients. Conclusion: The skin expansion technique is indicated for several pathologies' treatment. The tissue expansion procedure has high complication rates. Knowing the patient's profile, the main types of complications, and the factors associated with these complications can help prevent them. ■ ABSTRACT


Abstract Tribological systems working under severe conditions like high pressures, sliding velocities and temperatures are subjected to different phenomena such as wear, oxidation and changes in mechanical properties. In many cases, there are several mechanisms occurring simultaneously. The predominating type(s) of wear mechanism(s) presented will depend on the materials in contact, operating parameters and surrounding environment. In this work, high temperature tribological studies of boron steel sliding against tool steel were conducted using a pin-on-disc machine under unlubricated conditions at five different temperatures ranging from 25 to 400°C, three different loads: 25, 50 and 75 N (contact pressures of 2, 4 and 6 MPa respectively) and a sliding speed of 0·2 ms−1. Scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive spectroscopy and X-ray techniques were used for analysing the resulting damage and tribolayers of the worn surfaces. Additionally, hardness measurements were carried out in a special hot hardness rig in the same temperature range as that used in pin-on-disc tests. The results have shown that for a given load, the wear rate of boron steel decreased as the temperature increased, reaching its lowest value at 400°C at 50 N. In the case of the tool steel, it could be observed that at 200°C and above, the wear rate decreased as the load increased. This behaviour is consistent with the formation of a protective oxidised layer initiated at 100°C. At higher temperatures, such layers become more pronounced. The obtained data were finally used to construct a friction and wear mechanism map for this material pair that takes temperature and pressure into account.


The article reports on a study of 11 schools that were labeled as low-performing by the state accountability systems of Maryland and Kentucky, nationally known for complex performance-based assessments. The study shows that putting schools on probation only weakly motivated teachers because the assessments were largely perceived as unfair, invalid, and unrealistic. Administrators responded with control strategies that rigidified organizations, forestalling dialog and learning processes. Instructional reform developed only feebly. On the other hand, some schools remedied inefficiencies and were able to "harvest the low-hanging fruit." The schools struggled with severe problems of teacher commitment.


Andean knitters possess inherent creative skills that have been refined over centuries (Willoughby 2004). The need to reendorse the connection with their culture, to perpetuate Andean traditional knitting, exhibiting significant mastery of stitch and structure, to establish markets and create a sustainable industry is critical. Currently the Andean communities' attitude towards their knit textile work is one of economic necessity, compared with that of the leisure and Art House knitters in the developed world. The UK has lost a generation of hand knitters due to extensive use of the domestic knitting machine, marketed by Knitmaster and Jones during the 1960s coupled with availability of affordable, well designed high street knitwear. Re emergence of interest in hand knitting (Stitch n' Bitch USA) has produced a large number of amateurs who have an altered comprehension of the subject, discovering materiality, structure and maximizing its use in an unlimited range of outcomes, which is moving the craft further from the developing world context. However in both cultures, networks of knitters gather to practice, disguising knitted 'cosiness' to produce work with political and social subtexts. This richly illustrated presentation will discuss and contrast social, environmental, economic and aesthetic characteristics of both cultures whose makers share a fundamental passion for the discipline, in order to establish if a more sustainable future for hand knit producers can exist.


This study builds on employee motivation theories and human resource management (HRM) in order to explore empirically whether employee participation in workforce diversity management (WDM) initiatives affects their job satisfaction and other hotel key performance indicators (KPIs) (profitability, voluntary staff turnover rates and staff absenteeism rates). To provide an empirical answer to the above question a survey of 70 employees in total (managerial and non-managerial) of a three-star hotel i.e. Paphos Gardens Resort (PGR) in Cyprus was undertaken with a response rate of 98% that yielded 68 useable questionnaires. The exploratory descriptive analyses of the primary data revealed interesting results as they make the case for a better understanding on which WDM initiatives are enhancing (or not) employee job satisfaction and consequently hotel performance.


To understand the principles and practice of software development, there is no better motivator than participating in a software project with real-world value and a life beyond the academic arena. Software Development: An Open Source Approach immerses students directly into an agile free and open source software (FOSS) development process. It focuses on the methodologies and goals that drive the development of FOSS, combining principles with real-world skill building, such as debugging, refactoring, and writing. The text explains the software development process through an integration of FOSS principles, agile techniques, modern collaboration tools, community involvement, and teamwork. The authors highlight the value of collaboration as a fundamental paradigm for software development. They show how an effective development team can often create better quality software than an individual working in isolation. Written by experienced software developers and educators, this book enables students to gain a rich appreciation of the principles and practice of FOSS development. It also helps them become better writers, programmers, and software community members. Web Resource The books companion website at http://myopensoftware.org/textbook provides a wealth of resources: Downloadable FOSS development projects, including design documents, use cases, and code bases A discussion forum for instructors and students to share their experiences and exchange ideas about particular issues raised by these projects Supporting materials for common FOSS development tasks, such as setting up a version control system, an IDE, a project code base, and a unit test suite Additional exercises that reflect a wide variety of software projects and other activities


RATIONALE
Nicotinic systems in the hippocampus play important roles in memory function. Decreased hippocampal nicotinic receptor concentration is associated with cognitive impairment in schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease.

METHODS
We modeled in rats the cognitive effects of chronic decrease in hippocampal alpha7 or alpha4beta2 receptors with 4-week continuous bilateral local infusions of the alpha7 nicotinic antagonist methyllycaconitine (MLA) or the alpha4beta2 antagonist dihydro-beta-erythroidine (DHbetaE). The working memory effects of these infusions were assessed by performance on the radial-arm maze. To test the effect of antipsychotic medication, we gave acute injections of clozapine and to determine the impact of nicotine, which is widely used by people with schizophrenia approximately half of the rats received chronic systemic infusions of nicotine.

RESULTS
Chronic ventral hippocampal DHbetaE infusion caused a significant (p < 0.001) working memory impairment. Acute systemic clozapine (2.5 mg/kg) caused a significant (p < 0.005) working memory impairment in rats given control aCSF hippocampal infusions. Clozapine significantly (p < 0.025) attenuated the memory deficit caused by chronic hippocampal DHbetaE infusions. Chronic ventral hippocampal infusions with MLA did not significantly affect the working memory performance in the radial-arm maze, but it did significantly (p < 0.05) potentiate the memory impairment caused by 1.25 mg/kg of clozapine. Chronic systemic nicotine did not significantly interact with these effects.

CONCLUSIONS
The state of nicotinic receptor activation in the ventral hippocampus significantly affected the impact of clozapine on working memory with blockade of alpha7 nicotinic receptors potentiating clozapine-induced memory impairment and blockade of alpha4beta2 receptors reversing the clozapine effect from impairing to improving memory.


In this thesis the chief object of study are hypersurface flows of fourth order, with the speed of the flow varying from the Laplacian of the mean curvature, to the more general constrained flows which include a function of time in the speed, and satisfy various conditions. Our aim is to instigate a study of the regularity of these flows, answering questions of local and global existence, and some preliminary singularity analysis. Among our results are positive lower bounds for smooth and regular existence, classification of stationary solutions, interior estimates, and blowup asymptotics. Applying these results to a certain class of constrained surface diffusion flows, we obtain long time existence and exponential convergence to spheres for initial surfaces with small L norm of tracefree curvature. We present one application of this theorem, using it to deduce the isoperimetric inequality with optimal constant for 2-surfaces satisfying the above smallness condition. The theorem can be thought of as a stability of spheres result, as the smallness condition is an averaged distance from a standard round sphere to the initial manifold in L. This strengthens a related earlier result specialised to surface diffusion flow where the distance is small in C, obtained through a completely different method. The results throughout this thesis are new contributions for both surface diffusion flow, which has been considered by many authors, and the constrained flows, which have only recently been considered.


Grammar-based test generators are highly efficient in producing syntactically valid test inputs, and give their user precise control over which test inputs should be generated. Adapting a grammar or a test generator towards a particular testing goal can be tedious, though. We introduce the concept of a grammar transformer, specializing a grammar towards inclusion or exclusion of specific patterns: "The phone number must not start with 011 or +1". To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first approach to allow for arbitrary Boolean combinations of patterns, giving testers unprecedented flexibility in creating targeted software tests. The resulting specialized grammars can be used with any grammar-based fuzzer for targeted test generation, but also as validators to check whether the given specialization is met or not, opening up additional usage scenarios. In our evaluation on real-world bugs, we show that specialized grammars are accurate both in producing and validating targeted inputs.


The past decade has seen the rapid proliferation of low-priced devices for recording image, audio and video data in nearly unlimited quantity. Multimedia is Big Data, not only in terms of their volume, but also with respect to their heterogeneous nature. This also includes the variety of the queries to be executed. Current approaches for searching in big multimedia collections mainly rely on keywords. However, manually annotating every single object in a large collection is not feasible. Therefore, content-based multimedia retrieval -using sample objects as query input - is increasingly becoming an important requirement for dealing with the data deluge. In image databases, for instance, effective methods exploit the use of exemplary images or hand-drawn sketches as query input. In this paper, we introduce ADAM, a novel multimedia retrieval system that is tailored to large collections and that is able to support both Boolean retrieval for structured data and similarity-based retrieval for feature vectors extracted from the multimedia objects. For efficient query processing in such big multimedia data, ADAM allows the distribution of the indexed collection to multiple shards and performs queries in a MapReduce style. Furthermore, it supports a signature-based indexing strategy for similarity search that heavily reduces the query time. The efficiency of ADAM has been successfully evaluated in a content-based image retrieval application on the basis of 14 million images from the ImageNet collection.


This study investigated the impact of internal displacement on Post Truamatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among adolescents, with a view to reducing the incidence of PTSD among victims. 283 participants of both male and female adolescents were used for the study. Data were collected by the aid of PTSD K-scale. In-depth interview as well as focused group discussion was also adopted. Result showed a significant 3- way interaction between internal displacement, age and gender in trauma symptomatology (F (1,275) =3.87, P=.05); internally displaced adolescents showed higher mean than non-displaced ones, internally displaced female adolescents exhibited more trauma than the internally displaced males; older displaced female adolescents had the highest mean trauma symptomatology of 31.35, while older displaced male adolescents had the lowest trauma symptomatology score of 27.93. Recommendation was given based on the findings.


An essential component of criminal investigation involves the interrogation of large databases of information held by police and other criminal justice agencies. Data mining and decision support systems have an important role to play in assisting human inference in this forensic domain that creates one of the most challenging decision‐making environments. Technologies range widely and include social network analysis, geographical information systems, and data mining technologies for clustering crimes, finding links between crime and profiling offenders, identifying criminal networks, matching crimes, generating suspects, and predicting criminal activity. This paper does not intend to cover the gamut of techniques available to the investigator of crime as this has been presented elsewhere (Oatley GC, Ewart BW, Zeleznikow J. Decision support systems for police: lessons from the application of data mining techniques to 'soft' forensic evidence. Artif Intell Law 2006, 14:35–100). Rather, the objective is to highlight issues of implementation and interpretation of the techniques available to the crime analyst. To this end, the authors draw from their experiences of working with real‐world crime databases (Oatley GC, Belem B, Fernandes K, Hoggarth E, Holland B, Lewis C, Meier P, Morgan K, Santhanam J, et al. The gang gun‐crime problem—solutions from social network theory, epidemiology, cellular automata, Bayesian networks and spatial statistics. Accepted: book chapter for IEEE publication Computational Forensics; 2008; Oatley GC, McGarry K, Ewart BW. Offender network metrics. WSEAS Trans Inf Sci Appl 2006, 3:2440–2448; Oatley GC, Ewart BW. Crimes analysis software: pins in maps, clustering and Bayes net prediction. Expert Syst Appl 2003, 25:569–588), involving gun and gang crime, fraud, terrorism, burglary, and retail crime. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2011 1 147‐153 DOI: 10.1002/widm.6


Data Mining is a technique of discovering hidden patterns & relationship in data with the help of various tools & techniques to make a valid prediction . Clustering is defined as process of partitioning a set of objects or data into a set of meaningful sub-classes called as clusters. It helps the users to understand the structure in a data set. Classification groups the data under different classes. Bioinspired approaches are various evolutionary algorithms inspired from nature and solves hard and complex computing problems. In this work , we first form the clusters of the dataset of a bank with the help of h-means clustering. This work is also based on comparative study of GA, PSO & BFO based Data clustering methods. To compare the results we use different performance parameters for classification such as precision, cohesion, recall and variance. The results prove that BFO yields better outputs as compared to GA and PSO. So this work shows that BFO results as a better optimization technique Keywords— Data Mining; Clustering; Bio-inspired approaches; GA; BFO; PSO


Standard sparse pseudo-input approximations to the Gaussian process (GP) cannot handle complex functions well. Sparse spectrum alternatives attempt to answer this but are known to over-fit. We suggest the use of variational inference for the sparse spectrum approximation to avoid both issues. We model the covariance function with a finite Fourier series approximation and treat it as a random variable. The random covariance function has a posterior, on which a variational distribution is placed. The variational distribution transforms the random covariance function to fit the data. We study the properties of our approximate inference, compare it to alternative ones, and extend it to the distributed and stochastic domains. Our approximation captures complex functions better than standard approaches and avoids over-fitting.


Optimization is used at all stages of aircraft design. In the early phases (also called preliminary or conceptual design) multicriteria Pareto optimization [11] based on heuristic laws is carried out. Conversely, in the late design phases, accurate structural and aerodynamics predictions are required to steer small changes of a baseline shape through mono-objective optimization. This article is devoted to the local and global optimization methods actually used during this second part of the design process.
Through discretization, parametrization, and numerical simulation, the design problem can be formulated mathematically as a finite-dimensional optimization. Hence a good knowledge of global and local optimization algorithms is important to aerodynamic design engineers. The classical algorithms which are currently used at Onera for shape design are presented. Besides, many local optimization algorithms require the gradient of the functions of interest with respect to the design parameters. The different ways to
compute those derivatives - often called "sensitivities" - are also described. Numerous 2D and 3D applications were dealt with at Onera using the methods described; they are presented in a companion article [14] and also briefly described in a course [1].


ABSTRACT Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) which simplifies the public key and certificate management at Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is an important alternative to public key encryption. However, one of the main efficiency drawbacks of IBE is the overhead computation at Private Key Generator (PKG) during user revocation.Efficient revocation has been well studied in traditional PKI setting, but the cumbersome management of certificates is precisely the burden that IBE strives to alleviate. In this paper, aiming at tackling the critical issue of identity revocation, we introduce outsourcing computation into IBE for the first time and propose a revocable IBE scheme in the serveraided setting. Our scheme offloads most of the key generation related operations during key-issuing and key-update processes to a Key Update Cloud Service Provider, leaving only a constant number of simple operations for PKG and users to perform locally. This goal is achieved by utilizing a novel collusion-resistant technique: we employ a hybrid private key for each user, in which an AND gate is involved to connect and bound the identity component and the time component. Furthermore, we propose another construction which is provable secure under the recently formulized Refereed Delegation of Computation model. Finally, we provide extensive experimental results to demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed construction.


Significance The ability to predict an individual's potential response to treatment would permit clinicians to more prudently allocate resources that support cognitive behavioral therapy for obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), an often stressful and time-consuming treatment. The current study lays important groundwork for an exciting advance toward personalized medicine in psychiatry that up to this point has eluded the field. This study marks a success in using multivariate pattern recognition to identify neurobiological predictors of treatment response. In addition, it advances knowledge of the neurophysiology of OCD and of mechanistic processes involved in the therapeutic response, which could be used to refine existing treatments or to develop novel treatments based on identified potential brain targets. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for many with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). However, response varies considerably among individuals. Attaining a means to predict an individual's potential response would permit clinicians to more prudently allocate resources for this often stressful and time-consuming treatment. We collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging from adults with OCD before and after 4 weeks of intensive daily CBT. We leveraged machine learning with cross-validation to assess the power of functional connectivity (FC) patterns to predict individual posttreatment OCD symptom severity. Pretreatment FC patterns within the default mode network and visual network significantly predicted posttreatment OCD severity, explaining up to 67% of the variance. These networks were stronger predictors than pretreatment clinical scores. Results have clinical implications for developing personalized medicine approaches to identifying individual OCD patients who will maximally benefit from intensive CBT.


The validity and reliability of the Borg's 6-20 Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale has not been tested among Chinese people from Mainland China. Leung and Wang each have published a Chinese version RPE scale but neither has been validated in Chinese speaking people from Mainland China. PURPOSE: This study assessed: 1. The validity of Leung Chinese version (n=22) and Wang Chinese version (n=23) of the Borg 6-20 scales; 2. The reliability of Wang Chinese version (n=11) of RPE scale; and 3. The agreement of these two Chinese versions (n=21) of the RPE scales during the Bruce treadmill protocol testing among young healthy adults from Mainland China. METHODS: A total of 26 subjects (11 males, and 15 females), age 22.7±3.0 yr., volunteered to participate. They performed one (n=3), two (n=14), or three trials (n=9) of the identical Bruce treadmill protocol exercises within a time span of 9.0±5.1 days (validation trials), and 30.4±27.9 days (reliability trials). The objective measures of exercise intensity (power output, heart rate, and oxygen consumption) and the subjective measure of effort (RPE) were observed during the incremental exercise. RESULTS: Significant (p<0.01) Pearson linear correlations coefficients (r) were found where RPE values were strongly correlated with power output (Leung version rs≥0.75, Wang version rs≥0.73), heart rate (Leung version rs≥0.84, Wang version rs≥0.87), and oxygen consumption (Leung version rs≥0.80, Wang version rs≥0.81). The overall testretest interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.94. All the Bland-Altman plots for stage 1 to 3 showed that at most 1 data point was outside of the limits of agreement. Fisher z-transformation test found no significant differences in correlation (all ps>0.05) between trials for the reliability test of Wang version scale, and found no significant difference (p>0.05) in correlation with objective measures between the two Chinese versions of RPE scale. CONCLUSIONS: Both Leung and Wang Chinese versions Borg's 6-20 RPE scales are valid psychophysiological tools to measure perceptions of exertion during controlled Bruce treadmill protocol exercise among young healthy Chinese adults. The Wang scale is reliable, and the Leung and Wang scales show good agreement with each other.


It is well known that the uncertainties in determination of biogenic emissions are very large (some authors claim that these emissions are underestimated in certain areas of the world by up to ten times). On the other hand, anthropogenic emissions in some areas of the world have been reduced very considerably during the last two decades (this is especially true for Europe). This fact shows clearly that the importance of biogenic emissions is increasing, because the ratio of biogenic emissions to total emissions, where the total emissions are equal to the sum of biogenic and anthropogenic emissions, is increasing. It is, therefore, necessary to study carefully the sensitivity of pollution levels to variations of biogenic emissions. A long series of runs with different scenarios, in which both biogenic and anthropogenic emissions were varied, has been performed. The influence of both types of emission on AOT40 values, which have damaging effects on corns when certain critical values are exceeded, was studied. The results show clearly that biogenic emissions must also be taken into account when control strategies are developed for reducing anthropogenic emissions in order either to reduce some high pollution levels to prescribed critical levels or to keep them below the critical levels.


ABSTRACT Solid tumors are more than an accumulation of cancer cells. Indeed, cancerous cells create a immune permissive microenvironment by exploiting non-transformed host cells. Thus, solid tumors rather resemble abnormal organs composed of the tumor cells itself and the stroma providing the supportive framework. The stroma can be divided into the extracellular matrix consisting of proteoglycans, hyaluronic acid, and fibrous proteins, as well as stromal cells including mesenchymal and immune cells; moreover, it contains various peptide factors and metabolites. Each of these components may exert immune modulating effects. More recent advances have further revealed that tumor-host interactions extend well beyond the local microenvironment. Indeed, similar to organs tumors are not existing on their own, but take up residence in the host, i.e. the patient. Moreover, tumors not only respond to, but actively perturb host organs at distant anatomic sites in order to facilitate immune escape and metastatic spread, e.g. by modification of fibroblasts and the extracellular matrix at premetastatic sites. However, the detailed modus operandi of the crosstalk between tumor cells, the tumor microenvironment and the host macroenvironment to date is not completely understood. Emerging mechanisms of communication include miRNAs as well as tumor-derived exosomes. The latter contribute to metastatic invasion by carrying both messenger proteins (as well as mRNAs, miRNAs, and DNA) that direct bone marrow–derived cells toward a prometastatic phenotype or do generate a state of chronic inflammation. Consequently, many aspects of tumor biology and tumor immunology can only be explained by a detailed understanding of both local and systemic interactions. Disclosure: The author has declared no conflicts of interest.


The Reflections series takes a look back on historical articles from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America that have had a significant impact on the science and practice of acoustics.


Sustainable design is booming, but the men and women dedicated to reducing their carbon impact have lost sight of what they are trying to save: the natural world. Author Neil Chambers has been at the forefront of cutting-edge, sustainable architecture for years, and Urban Green is his revolutionary vision for bringing the power of the conservation and design movements together. He advocates looking to nature for the missing components of the green revolution: oysters that can clean water at up to 5 liters an hour; beavers that reshape their environments while simultaneously enriching ecosystems; and mountains that offer a new way of imagining how a city could be built. By designing our homes and cities in harmony with the natural world, we can take the next step in the sustainable revolution.


Self-Organizing Networks (SON) are currently being introduced by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as part of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) system as a key driver for improving the operation of wireless networks. Given that many challenges have been identified when moving from the SON concept to practical implementation, this article claims the suitability to gain insight into the problem by taking advantage of optimization mechanisms in live Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks. From that perspective, this article outlines a roadmap from actual manual optimization toward the inclusion of SON concepts in future networks. In particular, an optimization framework is developed considering different stages that include the collection of inputs from different sources (network counters, measurement reports, drive tests), the tuning parameters to achieve optimization, and the optimization procedure itself. Even though the proposed framework is presented and evaluated for convenience in a UMTS context, it is rather generic and technology-agnostic and, therefore, it can be formulated as an initial reference for LTE self-optimization use cases. The proposed framework is applied to a practical coverage optimization use case supported by data extracted from a real UMTS network in a European city, illustrating the capability to automatically identify a cell with sub-optimal coverage and to provide a solution to the problem. The extension of the case study to LTE is also analyzed. Finally, as a result of the lessons learned, the article makes a projection to the LTE context by identifying the key points to be solved for the materialization of a self-optimization procedure.


Abstract Knowledge exchange, innovation policy, and international trade flows are key aspects of the knowledge-based economy. In her introduction to the special issue on The Knowledge-Based Society: Transition, Geography, and Competition Policy the author briefly reviews these aspects. She begins with spillovers, emphasising the effects that drive the variety of results in this literature, and their role in a model of research joint venture formation among asymmetric partners. She then moves on to the linkages between universities and industry, underlining the diversity of these linkages and their goals. She discusses the interaction among innovative skills, minimum quality standards, and patent protection, noting how these generate welfare outcomes that vary with industry innovative skill levels. Finally, the author examines threshold effects in the relation between innovation and exports.


Beyond the stories of collapse, devastation, and moral uncertainty in Iraq's recent history there are tales of connections, relations, and the entanglements of lives which are named in forms such as friendship and family, and modes of comporting to others such as care, attention, and even love, which have yet to become part of how one thinks and writes about life after the invasion. In this article the authors draw attention to a picture of the lives of Iraqis as caught not merely in the forms and structures of tribal obligations and sectarianism, and the violence and destruction of terror, but also in the rough ground of mundane affairs and encounters. We argue that in the overlappings and relations of lives and intentionalities resides an intercorporeal ethics of the rough ground of the everyday. An ethics of the rough ground of the everyday is one understood not only in terms of the ways in which life is open to the pain, suffering, joy, and ennui of others, but in terms of how in the entanglements and relations of lives with other lives in the everyday, lines of care and concern emerge, are fostered, and also frayed.


This article offers an original analysis of Ireland's and the UK's common EU membership in the light of Brexit, identifies socio-economic decline and threats to the functionality of the Good Friday Agreement as decisive threats emanating from Brexit, and suggests that these can be counteracted by providing a sustainable legal framework for hybridity of Northern Ireland in the categories of citizenship and territory, as well as for deepening socio-economic and civic integration on the island of Ireland, alongside securing antidiscrimination law in Northern Ireland. Instead of protecting these elements, the Draft Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland to the EU–UK Draft Withdrawal Agreement sacrifices the indivisibility of the Internal Market by limiting Northern Ireland's access to markets in goods. Concise changes to the draft are proposed to address these shortcomings and to secure participation of Northern Ireland's representatives in its implementation.


Discussions of 'game literacy' focus on the informal learning and literacies associated with games but seldom address the diversity in young people's gaming practices, and the highly differentiated technologies of digital gaming in use. We use available survey data to show how, in South Africa, income inequalities influence consumption patterns, shaping experiences of digital games. Two case studies of young people's play practices involving digital games in Cape Town suggest the fragmentation and inequalities of contemporary play practices and the need for a more inclusive understanding of digital gaming. Mobile phones offer more accessibility than other digital gaming platforms and local appropriations include display of micro-commodities, concealment of outdated technology, control strategies and deletion of functionality. Young people move between multiple overlapping communicative spaces and hence complex cultural articulations arise when global game narratives are appropriated to make sense of racial otherness, crime and politics in South Africa. Since educational curricula cater for highly fractured publics, we ask whether it is advisable to speak of 'game literacy'. We suggest the need to validate less strongly mediatised forms of play, and to address diverse identification practices in consumer culture, including prestige and status as well as othering and shame.


How the brain implements learning is a long-standing question in neuroscience research. Many studies have indicated a critical role of the hippocampus in establishing memories of facts and episodes. As episodic memories require the association of many different sensory events in the environment, the hippocampus integrates multimodal information acquired from sensory systems. The brain area that sends major afferent inputs to the hippocampus, the entorhinal cortex, can be further divided into two subareas, the medial and lateral entorhinal cortex, each of which primarily transfers either spatial or nonspatial information to the hippocampus. The proper control of these two information streams is essential for constructing neuronal representations of the environment in hippocampus. To understand this process, my studies have focused primarily on the projection from the entorhinal cortex to area CA1, the temporoammonic pathway. Although this pathway has been relatively unexplored, recent studies have suggested that it plays a unique role in hippocampal function. I investigated how the temporoammonic synapses influence hippocampal function from three different perspectives; in single-neuron studies, local-circuit analyses, and behavioral manipulations. I propose that the temporoammonic pathway gives rise to a unique functional circuit in the hippocampus, which allows for the independent control of spatial and nonspatial information processing. Neuromodulators are a key component to this control as they differentially influence two streams of information from the entorhinal cortex. Finally, I describe my studies on the pathophysiology of schizophrenia-like behaviors at a neuronal circuit level. A mouse model of schizophrenia, generated by maternal immune activation, displays several behavioral abnormalities relevant to schizophrenia patients. We found that hippocampal slices prepared from these mice exhibit altered synaptic properties in the temporoammonic pathway. The mice also exhibit behavioral abnormality in novel object recognition. Taken together, my studies shed light on two information streams in hippocampal circuits. Anatomical or neuromodulatory-based disturbance of this control may underlie some of the behavioral abnormalities observed in several mental disorders.


A polynomial P in F[X_1,...,X_n] is said to epsilon-approximate a
boolean function F:{0,1}^n -> {0,1} under distribution D over {0,1}^n
if for a random x chosen according to distribution D, the probability
that P(x) is not equal to F(x) is at most epsilon. Smolensky (1987)
showed that for any constant distinct primes p and q, any polynomial P
in F_p[x_1,...,x_n] that (1/2q - Omega(1))-approximates the boolean
function MOD_q:{0,1}^n->{0,1} -- which accepts its input iff the
number of ones is non-zero modulo q -- under the uniform distribution
must have degree Omega(n^{1/2}).

We consider the problem of finding an explicit function
f:{0,1}^n->{0,1} that has no epsilon-approximating polynomial of
degree less than n^{1/2 + Omega(1)} under *some distribution*, for
some constant epsilon>0. We show a number of negative results in this
direction: specifically, we show that many interesting classes of
functions including symmetric functions and linear threshold functions
do have approximating polynomials of degree O(n^{1/2+o(1)}) under
every distribution. This demonstrates the power of this model of
computation.

The above results, in turn, provide further motivation for this lower
bound question. Using the upper bounds obtained above, we show that
finding such a function f would have applications to: lower bounds for
AC^0 o F where F is the class of symmetric and threshold gates;
stronger lower bounds for 1-round compression by ACC^0[p] circuits;
improved correlation lower bounds against low degree polynomials; and
(under further conditions) showing that the Inner Product (over F_2)
function does not have small AC^0 o MOD_2 circuits.


Adoption of legume inoculation with rhizobia by small-scale farmers in East Africa, and the resultant increase in biological nitrogen fixation requires that quality inoculants meet minimum standards. BIOFIX is one of the commercially available rhizobia/legume inoculants in East Africa, whose standard is at least 10 9 rhizobia g -1 . We examined the effect of carrier material and storage conditions on the populations of two industry standard rhizobia, Bradyrhizobium japonicum USDA 110 for soybean ( Glycine max ) and Rhizobium tropici CIAT 899 for common bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris ) over 165 days, using the drop plate method on Congo Red Yeast Extract Mannitol Agar. Viable populations of rhizobia differed significantly between carriers and rhizobia strains (P<0.05). Rhizobium tropici CIAT899, prepared with filter mud carrier, achieved a shelf-life of 135 days and B. japonicum USDA110 contained over 10 9 cells g -1 for 105 days. Both of these results fall below the stated six months expiry period of BIOFIX. Replacing filter mud carrier with vermiculite, resulted in an inferior product; although, both more thorough sterilisation and refrigerated storage, after a 14 day curing stage, improved the shelf-life thizobia in the inoculant packet. Keywords: BIOFIX, CIAT 899, Kenya, USDA 110


This chapter focuses on the mechanisms by which cotton leaves regulate and use incident light and dissipate the excess light energy when cotton suffers from drought in the field. The photoprotection of non-foliar organs, including bract, capsule wall and stem, will also be considered. This chapter includes a general description of photoprotection from the perspective of leaf movement, drought and non-foliar organs. Leaf diaheliotropic movement and wilting movement can regulate the excess light energy of the photosynthetic apparatus. Besides non-photochemical (heat) energy dissipation, the alternative electron sinks for the electron transport chains are of vital importance for resistance of the photosynthetic apparatus against excess light energy under drought. Thus, the functioning of both photosystem II (PSII) and the photosynthetic electron transport systems of cotton leaves shows a relatively high stability. Compared with leaf, bract mainly relies on high activities of thermal energy dissipation for photoprotection. Nevertheless, capsule wall of bolls is less able to dissipate energy via heat.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore, empirically, the contribution of human capital (HC) to value creation and the external disclosure of HC. The specific aims are to: investigate the relative contribution of HC to the generation of firm value; compare the differences in the perceptions of human resource (HR) directors and finance directors (FDs) in relation to this contribution; examine the relationship between the internal collation and external disclosure of HC information; investigate incentives and disincentives to the external disclosure of HC information; and investigate the most appropriate medium to externally disclose HC information. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey of (HR) directors of UK listed companies was conducted. Responses are compared to those from FDs obtained from a previous survey on the broader concept of intellectual capital disclosure. In total, 13 follow-up interviews were conducted. The matched views of the (HR) specialist and the FD are compared for eight case companies. Findings – Employee skills and education, employee commitment, positive employee attitudes and behaviour, and employee motivation are considered to contribute to value creation the most. Information on employee turnover, employee training and development, and workplace safety is frequently collated. There also appears to be attempts to capture information on aspects such as employee satisfaction, motivation, and commitment. Marked differences exist between the extent to which information is internally collated and externally disclosed. External disclosure appears to be a valuable recruitment tool. However, giving away information which may harm competitive advantage is a serious concern. The annual report was considered the most effective written form of communication for disclosing HC externally. Despite some disparity in views, there is evidence to suggest recognition by FDs of the value of human capital and commitment to its external disclosure. Contrary to prior research, evidence from the small matched sample indicates no significant difference in views between the two functional specialists regarding the importance to value creation of four key HC components. Research limitations/implications – A comparison across the full range of HC issues is not possible as the FD IC survey was unable to address HC in as much detail as the HC survey. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the understanding of HC and its disclosure by comprehensively investigating such issues for a large sample of UK companies.


The current logjam over legislative reform might lead to the pessimistic conclusion that patent reform efforts are likely to be either: 1) ineffectual (the current situation); 2) zero sum (one set of industry interests is able to garner more votes than its opponent and override the legitimate interests of the other); or 3) founded in disparate treatment of different industries (a departure from the much-heralded "unitary" nature of the patent system). This Essay argues that such a conclusion would be premature. One important counter to the pessimistic view is the example of the Supreme Court's recent judicial reform. Although the biopharmaceutical industry has been quite opposed to this judicial reform, the available evidence thus far suggests that the Court's decisions will have only a limited impact on the legitimate interests of the industry. Specifically, although the Court's decisions adopt a facially neutral approach, this approach is likely to have a disparate impact that leaves relatively untouched the patent law that surrounds end product therapeutics. Two other counters to the pessimistic view bear emphasis. First, to the extent that the outlier set of inventions appears to be biopharmaceutical end products, these end products are embedded in a web of non-patent-based regulatory and market structures that do much of the heavy lifting in terms of setting up barriers to entry and influencing price. These non-patent structures are narrowly tailored to the peculiar economic questions raised by end product therapeutics. Second, in those situations where neither existing patent law standards nor existing regulation specific to end product therapeutics is sufficiently sensitive to relevant considerations of economic policy, additional facially neutral standards (and tweaks to FDA and health insurance regulation) could be implemented.


We compare the noise performance of two optimized readout chains that are based on 4T pixels and featuring the same bandwidth of 265kHz (enough to read 1Megapixel with 50frame/s). Both chains contain a 4T pixel, a column amplifier and a single slope analog-to-digital converter operating a CDS. In one case, the pixel operates in source follower configuration, and in common source configuration in the other case. Based on analytical noise calculation of both readout chains, an optimization methodology is presented. Analytical results are confirmed by transient simulations using 130nm process. A total input referred noise bellow 0.4 electrons RMS is reached for a simulated conversion gain of 160μV/e−. Both optimized readout chains show the same input referred 1/f noise. The common source based readout chain shows better performance for thermal noise and requires smaller silicon area. We discuss the possible drawbacks of the common source configuration and provide the reader with a comparative table between the two readout chains. The table contains several variants (column amplifier gain, in-pixel transistor sizes and type).


Leadership is a process where a leader attempts to influence the behavior of subordinates to achieve the organizational goals. Organizational success and effectiveness lies in the hands of effective leaders displaying effective leadership styles. By adopting the appropriate leadership styles, leaders can affect employee job satisfaction. Therefore this case study aimed to investigate the relationship between school principal leadership style and teachers' job satisfaction level. This was a descriptive correlation study using a mixed-methods research design. The study was conducted in a randomly selected private school located in the Klang valley and involved the total population of 62 teachers and the school principal. Data was collected through the use of a questionnaire and semi structured interviews with 6 randomly selected teachers from the total population of 62 teachers. The findings of the study revealed that the school principal fairly often practiced the transformational leadership style and sometimes practiced the transactional leadership style. The
results also showed that transformational leadership style of the principal had a weak and significant relationship with job satisfaction. Hence the teachers expressed an overall moderate level of job satisfaction working in the school highlighting that they
were most satisfied with the nature of their work and their co-workers. Besides that, the principal also pointed out that the main challenges that she faced in maintaining teachers' job satisfaction level was related to issues surrounding pay, rewards, working conditions, supervision and communication. The findings of this study imply that transformational and transactional leadership style is deemed suitable for not only maintaining teacher job satisfaction levels but also school effectiveness. Henceforth, it
is pertinent that authorities in private schools also look into leadership training initiatives for private school principals. Such a move would enhance teachers' job satisfaction levels as teachers are often viewed as agents of change contributing to school success and school effectiveness.


Summary 1. Mobility and emigration were investigated for the wolf spider Pardosa monticola in grey dune fragments from two high-density and one low-density population, where population density was related to patch quality. Pitfall trapping was applied in combination with absolute density estimates by means of quadrat sampling. Orientation behaviour was additionally observed in the high- and low-density patches during two periods in the adult life-phase (mating and reproduction period). Dune grassland is the core habitat; moss dominated vegetation is the matrix in which dispersal occurs. 2. Our field experiments confirm the hypothesis that increased activities of a dune wolf spider in a low-density habitat result in higher emigration rates. 3. The diffusive emigration rates, which are higher close to the patch border, and mobility within the patch are higher in the low-density population. In the low-density patch, females are even more active than males and emigrate in the same proportions as males. 4. Both males and females were not able to orientate and perform homeward movements during the spring period, in which vegetation height is more or less equal in the core habitat (grassland) and the matrix (moss dune). In June, no homeward orientation was observed in the habitat patch with low quality and low densities (low vegetation height). In the high-density patch, females but not males were able to perform homeward orientation behaviour at distances close to the pronounced border between grassland and moss dune. At distances of 3 m, females also orientated randomly. 5. The pattern of differentiated homeward orientation behaviour indicates that it results from visual perception of high contrast borders by the females but not by the males or by sex-differentiated motivation to return to the core habitat. 6. Increased emigration rates as a result of higher spider mobility together with the absence of visual orientation towards the patch border suggest the presence of an Allee effect in low-density patches.


Drug interactions elicited through inhibition of cytochrome P450 (P450) enzymes are important in pharmacotherapy. Recently, greater attention has been focused on not only parent drugs inhibiting P450 enzymes but also on possible inhibition of these enzymes by circulating metabolites. In this report, an ex vivo method whereby the potential for circulating metabolites to be inhibitors of P450 enzymes is described. To test this method, seven drugs and their known plasma metabolites were added to control human plasma at concentrations previously reported to occur in humans after administration of the parent drug. A volume of plasma for each drug based on the known inhibitory potency and time-averaged concentration of the parent drug was extracted and fractionated by high-pressure liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, and the fractions were tested for inhibition of six human P450 enzyme activities (CYP1A2, CYP2C8, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4). Observation of inhibition in fractions that correspond to the retention times of metabolites indicates that the metabolite has the potential to contribute to P450 inhibition in vivo. Using this approach, norfluoxetine, hydroxyitraconazole, desmethyldiltiazem, desacetyldiltiazem, desethylamiodarone, hydroxybupropion, erythro-dihydrobupropion, and threo-dihydrobupropion were identified as circulating metabolites that inhibit P450 activities at a similar or greater extent as the parent drug. A decision tree is presented outlining how this method can be used to determine when a deeper investigation of the P450 inhibition properties of a drug metabolite is warranted.


In 17 adults, serum, hepatic bile, and saliva samples were analyzed for their sedimentation profile of IgA and secretory component (SC), and for their concentrations of albumin, orosomucoid, transferrin, IgG, IgA, alpha 2-macroglobulin (alpha 2M), IgM, and SC. Polymeric IgA(p-IgA) averaged 13% (50-700 micrograms/ml) of total IgA in serum, 70% (43-88%) in bile, and 93% (74-98%) in saliva. Most of the p-IgA in bile sedimented with SC, which also occurred free (8-44%), and with IgM. In bile, albumin (155-1,485 micrograms/ml) was the predominant protein, followed by IgG (32-480 micrograms/ml), and total IgA (37-209 micrograms/ml). In saliva, p-IgA (72-902 micrograms/ml) predominated, followed by albumin (16-385 micrograms/ml) and IgG (9-178 micrograms/ml). Secretion-to-serum albumin-relative concentration ratios (S/S-ARCR = 1 for albumin) in bile averaged 22 for p-IgA, 1.91 for IgM, 1.28 for monomeric IgA (m-IgA), 0.70 for IgG, and 0.57 for alpha 2M, indicating for p-IgA, IgM, and to a lesser extent for m-IgA, a selective excretion into bile. In saliva, a 16-fold greater selective excretion of p-IgA (mean S/S-ARCR = 354) was found. Labeled m- and p-IgA were injected intravenously into five patients. Specific activities indicated that for p-IgA 50% was serum derived in bile, as compared with 2% in saliva, and to 85% for m-IgA in bile. In the patient with the highest excretion of 125I-p-IgA in bile, only 2.8% of the injected dose was recovered in bile within 24 h after injection. Compared with rats and rabbits, the serum-to-bile transport of p-IgA in humans is much smaller.


It is difficult to learn about systems that contain state variables when those variables are not directly observable. This paper formalizes this learning problem and presents a method called the iterative extension method for solving it. In the iterative extension method, the learner gradually constructs a partial theory of the state-containing system. At each stage, the learner applies this partial theory to interpret the I/O behavior of the system and obtain additional constraints on the structure and values of its state variables. These constraints can be applied to extend the partial theory by hypothesizing additional internal state variables. The improved theory can then be applied to interpret more complex I/O behavior. This process continues until a theory of the entire system is obtained. Several sufficient conditions for the success of this method are presented including (a) the observability and decomposability of the state information in the system, (b) the learnability of individual state transitions in the system, (c) the ability of the learner to perform synthesis of straight-line programs and conjunctive predicates from examples and (d) the ability of the learner to perform theory-driven data interpretation. The method is being implemented and applied to the problem of learning UNIX file system commands by observing a tutorial interaction with UNIX.


The early transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK are unknown but their investigation is critical to aid future pandemic planning. We tested over 11,000 anonymised, stored historic antenatal serum samples, given at two north-west London NHS trusts in 2019 and 2020, for total antibody to SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (anti-RBD). Estimated prevalence of seroreactivity increased from 1% prior to mid-February 2020 to 17% in September 2020. Our results show higher prevalence of seroreactivity to SARS-CoV-2 in younger, non-white ethnicity, and more deprived groups. We found no significant interaction between the effects of ethnicity and deprivation. Derived from prevalence, the estimated incidence of seroreactivity reflects the trends observed in daily hospitalisations and deaths in London that followed 10 and 13 days later, respectively. We quantified community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in London, which peaked in late March / early April 2020 with no evidence of community transmission until after January 2020. Our study was not able to determine the date of introduction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus but demonstrates the value of stored antenatal serum samples as a resource for serosurveillance during future outbreaks.