A host of information is now available regarding the geological and thermal structure as well as deformation rate across the Himalaya of central Nepal. These data are reconciled in a two-dimensional mechanical model that incorporates the rheological layering of the crust which depends on the local temperature and surface processes. Over geological timescale (5 Ma) the ∼20 mm/yr estimated shortening rate across the range is accommodated by localized thrust faulting along the Main Himalayan Thrust fault (MHT). The MHT reaches the surface along the foothills, where it is called the Main Frontal Thrust fault (MFT). The MHT flattens beneath the Lesser Himalaya and forms a midcrustal ramp at the front of the Higher Himalaya, consistent with the river incision and the anticlinal structure of the Lesser Himalaya. Farther northward the MHT roots into a subhorizontal shear zone that coincides with a midcrustal seismic reflector. Aseismic slip along this shear zone is accommodated in the interseismic period by elastic straining of the upper crust, increasing the Coulomb stress beneath the front of the Higher Himalaya, where most of the microseismic activity clusters. Negligible deformation of the hanging wall requires a low apparent friction coefficient (μ) less than ∼0.3 on the flat portion of the MHT. On the ramp, μ might be as high as 0.6. Sensitivity tests show that a rather compliant, quartz-rich rheology and a high radioactive heat production in the upper crust of ∼2.5 μW/m^3 is required. Erosion affects the thermal structure and interplays with crustal deformation. A dynamic equilibrium is obtained in which erosion balances tectonic uplift maintaining steady state thermal structure, topography, and deformation field. Using a linear diffusion model of erosion, we constrain the value of the mass diffusivity coefficient to 0.5–1.6×l0^4 m^2/yr. This study demonstrates that the data are internally consistent and compatible with current understanding of the mechanics of crustal deformation and highlight the role of viscous flow in the lower crust and of surface erosion in orogeny processes on the long term as well as during interseismic period.


This article develops the first measures of age-industry job risks to examine the age variations in the value of statistical life. Because of the greater risk vulnerability of older workers, they face flatter wage-risk gradients than younger workers, which we show to be the case empirically. Accounting for this heterogeneity in hedonic market equilibria leads to estimates of the value of statistical life-age relationship that follows an inverted-U shape. The estimates of the value of statistical life range from $6.4 million for younger workers to a peak of $9.0 million for those age 35-44, and then a decline to $3.7 million for those age 55-62. The decline of the estimated VSL with age is consistent with there being some senior discount in the Clear Skies Initiative analysis.


The brief life of Theresa Marie Schiavo and the dispute over her end-of-life care captured public awareness in a way that few such cases have done. The reasons for the nearly unprecedented public attention to her case are two-fold. The decision by various religious groups and governmental entities to intervene in the dispute surrounding her care in order to promote conservative causes (some of them only tenuously related to her particular medical circumstances) prompted unusually intense media coverage. In addition, the ensuing publicity surrounding Theresa's tragic condition -- an unexpected cardiac arrest left her in a permanent vegetative state at the age of twenty-six -- provided a vivid and poignant reminder of the very precarious nature of life. The case placed multiple issues in dispute. First, there was some debate over whether Theresa's medical condition was indeed hopeless. Second, although the Florida courts repeatedly confirmed that the evidence of Theresa's wishes under the circumstances provided a legally sufficient basis for withdrawing life support, many onlookers questioned whether she would in fact choose to die. In particular, the case raised questions about the appropriate role of Catholic and Christian principles in end-of-life decision-making. This essay focuses on the latter question in light of the relevant ethical and legal principles, as well as guidance from the Catholic Church on end-of-life decision-making. As explained within, the Church's teachings fail to address the most complex issues, leaving many end-of-life decisions to the conscience of the individual patient. Adding to the difficulty, although courts certainly consider patients' religious principles in making determinations about end-of-life care, judicial inquiry into religious principles generally lacks nuance. Finally, the essay considers the effects of the intervention of various political and religious conservative organizations in the dispute over Theresa's care and examines the implications of such interventions for future cases.


A novel wave-mechanics approach is developed specifically for understanding instabilities that form large natural fluid-transmissivity networks in unconventional reservoirs located in a nominally impermeable matrix. These natural flow networks are trapped in the ductile equivalent of brittle faults characterized by the solid-mechanical Arthur-Vardoulakis angle. The main mechanism for ductile deformation and in situ fluid generation is identified to be a chemical reaction such as diagenesis. Diagenesis involves fluid-release mineral reactions of the general type AB solid ⇄ A solid + B fluid and switches on suddenly in the diagenetic window between 100°C and 200°C. Diagenetic reactions often relate to dewatering reactions of phyllosilicates and can involve concentrations of smectite, aqueous silica compound, illite, potassium ions, quartz, feldspar, goethite, hematite, pyrite, calcite, kaolinite, organic matter, water, and gas. In classical petroleum engineering, such interlayer water/gas release reactions are considered to cause cementation and significantly reduce porosity and permeability. However, if a tectonic load is applied, there are critical loading conditions in which the inverse dissolution reaction can form fluid-channeling instabilities. This new wave-mechanics approach might assist in the next paradigm shift for exploration, production, and flow assurance of unconventional gas and oil, underpinned by a better understanding of significant instabilities from volumetric deformation controlled by diagenetic reactions.


Digital maps of the coral reef ecosystem (<~30m deep) of Majuro Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands, were created through visual interpretation of remote sensing imagery. Digital Globe's Quickbird II satellite images were acquired between 2004 and 2006 and georeferenced to within 1.6 m of their true positions. Reef ecosystem features were digitized directly into a GIS at a display scale of 1:4000 using a minimum feature size of 1000 square meters. Benthic features were categorized according to a classification scheme with attributes including zone (location, such as lagoon or forereef, etc.), structure (bottom type, such as sand or patch reef, etc.) and percent hard bottom. Ground validation of habitat features was conducted at 311 sites in 2009. Resulting maps consisted of 1829 features covering 366 square kilometers. Results demonstrate that reef zones occurred in a typical progression of narrow bands from offshore, though forereef, reef flat, shoreline, land, backreef, and lagoon habitats. Lagoon was the largest zone mapped and covered nearly 80% of the atoll, although much of it was too deep to have structures identified from the satellite imagery. Dominant habitat structures by area were pavement and aggregate reef, which covered 29% and 18% of the mapped structures, respectively. Based on the number of features, individual and aggregated patch reefs comprised over 40% of the features mapped. Products include GIS based maps, field videos and pictures, satellite imagery, PDF atlas, and this summary report. Maps and associated data can be used to support science and management activities on Majuro reef ecosystems including inventory, monitoring, conservation, and sustainable development applications.


Most vegetation is limited in productivity by nutrient availability, but the magnitude of limitation globally is not known. Nutrient limitation is directly relevant not only to ecology and agriculture, but also to the global carbon cycle by regulating how much atmospheric CO2the terrestrial biosphere can sequester. We attempt to identify total nutrient limitation in terrestrial plant productivity globally using ecophysiological theory and new developments in remote sensing for evapotranspiration and plant productivity. Our map of nutrient limitation qualitatively reproduces known regional nutrient gradients (e.g., across Amazonia), highlights differences in nutrient addition to croplands (e.g., between "developed" and "developing" countries), identifies the role of nutrients on the distribution of major biomes (e.g., tree line migration in boreal North America), and compares similarly to a ground‐based test along the Long Substrate Age Gradient in Hawaii, U.S.A. (e.g., foliar and soil nutrients, litter decomposition). Nonetheless, challenges in representing light and water use efficiencies, disturbance, and comparison to ground data with multiple interacting nutrients provide avenues for further progress on refining such a global map. Global average reduction in terrestrial plant productivity was within 16–28%, depending on treatment of disturbance; these values can be compared to global carbon cycle model estimates of carbon uptake reduction with nutrient cycle inclusion.


Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) has been used to explain how mechanisms related to socialization, sexual objectification, and psychological variables interact to predict mental health difficulties. Among a sample of 626 undergraduate women (age 18-24), this study empirically tested components of Moradi and Huang's (2008) model and extended it by including additional socialization experiences (i.e., sexual abuse, societal pressures regarding weight and body size). Structural equation modeling analyses suggested that the model provided a good fit to the data and the model was tested in the confirmatory sample. Across the two samples, high levels of Body Shame and low levels of Internal Bodily Awareness directly led and high levels of Societal Pressures Regarding Weight and Body Size, Internalization of Cultural Standards of Beauty, and Self-objectification indirectly led to increased Bulimic Symptomatology and accounted for 65 to 73% of the variance in Bulimic Symptomatology. A history of sexual abuse and sexual objectification were not consistently supported within the model and do not appear to be as salient as the experience of societal pressures regarding weight and body size in understanding women's experience of bulimic symptomatology. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.


Physiotherapy offers organizations to individuals and peoples to make, keep up, restore and improve prosperity and limit all through the future. This joins offering organizations to people jeopardized by maturing, injury, ailment or regular components. Physiotherapy recognizes and grows individual personal satisfaction and improvement potential by using the principles of progression, avoidance, treatment/mediation, and restoration. This fuses physical, mental, passionate, and social success.


This book examines the repercussions of the EU's agricultural policies and its regional, bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. It presents the analyses and findings of the European Network of Agricultural and Rural Policy Research Institutes (ENARPRI), a unique collaboration of experts from across the EU. Their contributions to this volume focus on trade flows and economic development, exploring how the agreements affect the EU and the other countries and regions involved.
The importance of a sustainable agricultural sector, with its multifunctional character in support of the environment and the livelihood of rural communities, is increasingly recognised. Thus, the book also examines the correlation between the EU's policies and its trade commitments within the framework of multifunctionality and sustainable development. Different approaches are used to predict and compare the multifunctionality effects of various agricultural policy reforms in several country case studies.


BACKGROUND
Polymorphisms (1082A>G, - 819C>T, and -592G>A) in the interleukin-10 (IL10) promoter are associated with its transcriptional activity. IL10 induction by cigarette smoking plays a role in smoking-related lung tumor progression. We therefore expected to find a difference in impact of IL10 haplotypes on overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS) between squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) and adenocarcinomas (ADC) of lung.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Normal lung tissues adjacent to resected tumors from 439 lung cancer patients were collected to determine IL10 haplotypes (ATA and non-ATA) by direct sequencing and polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Kaplan-Meier and multivariate Cox regression models were used to assess the impact of IL10 haplotype on OS and RFS. Resluts: The non-ATA haplotype was more prevalent in patients with nodal metastatic tumors (N1 and N2) than in those with non-nodal metastatic tumors (N0). This observation was only made for patients with SCC and not ADC. Patients with SCC with the non-ATA haplotype had poorer OS and RFS when compared to those with the ATA haplotype, whereas IL10 haplotype was not associated with the clinical outcome of patients with ADC.

CONCLUSION
The IL10 haplotype may independently predict survival and relapse in patients with surgically resected SCC, but not ADC.


Homocysteine has been associated to the stroke, which enhances the interest for the investigation about the role of vitamins involved on its metabolism. Stroke Prone rats were treated by pyridoxine and folic acid at doses correspondent to five, ten and twenty times their nutritional needs. The systolic blood pressure and general parameters were analyzed and compared to control group. The doses correspondents to 10 and 20 times RDA promoted a hypotensive effect, but doses correspondents to 5 times, did not. The treated animals at 190 days of age presented a significant reduction of systolic blood pressure: 204 ± 3mmHg when compared to control group: 230 ± 5mmHg. At seven months of age the animals under treatment did not present signs of stroke naturally detected in that linkage. Our results suggest that vitamins B6 and B9 could be beneficial for preventive therapy of stroke.


Is horizontal equity (HE) the "most widely accepted principle of equity"? Or does it stand in "opposition to the advancement of human welfare"? This paper argues that the case for the HE principle is not as straightforward as is usually thought and that it requires advanced notions of justice and well-being. The most likely ethical basis HE appears to combine a Rawlsian maximin principle and a view of well-being that allows for relative local comparison effects. The paper also explores some of the dimensions of equality and well-being along which the HE principle can be applied and presents a number of examples showing how HE considerations can provide an important input into policy analysis.


Eighty-nine fully photo-documented case reports were examined in order to get a clear picture of the effect of LMesitran. This honey-based ointment is new on the market and clinical data was unavailable till now. A free, computer wound registration program was used to collect data from different locations in a standardized way in order to facilitate wound data analysis.

Depending on the underlying pathology the wounds healed with a mean healing time of 32 days. The small amount of cases per pathology and the variability within the different pathologies made it very difficult to evaluate the results in a clear and comprehensive way.

A non-randomised comparison with a similar photodocumented
standardized database with other dressings suggests that the honey ointment is faster healing than other high tech dressings. We surmise that this ointment has a very quick debriding and antibacterial activity. The new honey ointment should be compared directly to other available high tech dressings to quantify any difference in effect on healing.


Medial artery calcification (MAC) is a characteristic feature of diabetes. MAC represents a concentric calcification that proceeds via matrix vesicle-nucleated mineralization accompanied with apatitic calcium phosphate deposits in the arterial tunica media in the absence of atheroma and neointima. Multiple factors contribute to the induction and progression of diabetic MAC including inflammation, oxidative stress, adiposity, insulin resistance, advanced glycation end-products, and hyperphosphatemia. Osteoblast-like cells form in the vessel wall from vascular smooth muscle cells and multipotent vascular mesenchymal progenitors. These mineralizing cells as well as the recruitment of undifferentiated progenitors to the osteochondrocyte lineage play a critical role in the calcification process. Important transcription factors such as Msx 2, Osterix, and RUNX2 are crucial in the programming of osteogenesis. Currently, no therapy is available to reverse vascular calcification. Available therapies can only reduce and slow the progression of vascular calcification. Targeting regulatory proteins and enzymes directly involved in osteochondrogenesis and hydroxyapatite accumulation in the vascular wall may be beneficial for generating new efficient anti-calcific drugs.


Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is the etiological agent of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL), an aggressive malignant proliferation of activated CD4+ T lymphocytes. The viral Tax oncoprotein is critically involved in both HTLV-1-replication and T-cell proliferation, a prerequisite to the development of ATLL. In this study, we investigated the in vivo contribution of the Tax PDZ domain-binding motif (PBM) to the lymphoproliferative process. To that aim, we examined T-cell proliferation in humanized mice (hu-mice) carrying a human hemato-lymphoid system infected with either a wild type (WT) or a Tax PBM-deleted (ΔPBM) provirus. We observed that the frequency of CD4+ activated T-cells in the peripheral blood and in the spleen was significantly higher in WT than in ΔPBM hu-mice. Likewise, human T-cells collected from WT hu-mice and cultivated in vitro in presence of interleukin-2 were proliferating at a higher level than those from ΔPBM animals. We next examined the association of Tax with the Scribble PDZ protein, a prominent regulator of T-cell polarity, in human T-cells analyzed either after ex vivo isolation or after in vitro culture. We confirmed the interaction of Tax with Scribble only in T-cells from the WT hu-mice. This association correlated with the presence of both proteins in aggregates at the leading edge of the cells and with the formation of long actin filopods. Finally, data from a comparative genome-wide transcriptomic analysis suggested that the PBM-PDZ association is implicated in the expression of genes regulating proliferation, apoptosis and cytoskeletal organization. Collectively, our findings suggest that the Tax PBM is an auxiliary motif that contributes to the sustained growth of HTLV-1 infected T-cells in vivo and in vitro and is essential to T-cell immortalization.


Recent studies using water isotopes have shown that trees and streams appear to return distinct water pools to the hydrosphere. Cryogenically extracted plant and soil water isotopic signatures diverge from the meteoric water lines, suggesting that plants would preferentially use bound soil water, while mobile soil water that infiltrates the soil recharges groundwater and feeds streamflow all plots on meteoric water lines. These findings have been described under the "two water worlds" (TWW) hypothesis. In spite of growing evidence for the TWW hypothesis, several questions remain unsolved within the scope of this framework. Here, we address the TWW as a null hypothesis and further assess the following: (a) the theoretical biophysical feasibility for two distinct water pools to exist, (b) plant and soil processes that could explain the different isotopic composition between the two water pools, and (c) methodological issues that could explain the divergent isotopic signatures. Moreover, we propose a way forward under the framework of the TWW hypothesis, proposing alternative perspectives and explanations, experiments to further test them, and methodological advances that could help illuminate this quest. We further highlight the need to improve our sampling resolution of plants and soils across time and space. We ultimately propose a set of key priorities for future research to improve our understanding of the ecohydrological processes controlling water flows through the soil–plant‐atmosphere continuum.


We develop a model linking contraceptive efficiency to birth spacing decisions that incorporates the costs and benefits of child-rearing on the potential mother, as well as the stochastic process surrounding human reproduction. The model fits within the realm of optimal stopping-time problems, which naturally leads to the development of a First Hit Time duration model that we estimate using data from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Increased contraceptive efficacy is found to increase time to first birth. Furthermore, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that children are normal goods, in that both income and child-related benefits are associated with decreased durations to childbirth.


'Housing'– the practical provision of a roof over one's head – is experienced by users as 'home'– broadly described as housing plus the experiential elements of dwelling. Conversely, being without housing, commonly described as 'homelessness', is experienced not only as an absence of shelter but in the philosophical sense of 'ontological homelessness' and alienation from the conditions for well-being. For asylum seekers, these experiences are deliberately and explicitly excluded from official law and policy discourses. This article demonstrates how law and policy is propelled by an 'official discourse' based on the denial of housing and the avoidance of 'home' attachments, which effectively keeps the asylum seeker in a state of ontological homelessness and alienation. We reflect on this exclusion and consider how a new 'oppositional discourse' of housing and home – taking these considerations into account – might impact on the balancing exercise inherent to laws and policies concerning asylum seekers.


Adhesive bonding is employed along with spot welding to a hybrid joining method and applied to the left hand side door opening section of the SAAB 9 5 sedan to increase strength and decrease weight and cost of the parts and assembly process. Advantages of hybrid bonding are explored regarding several aspects of automobile design and manufacturing. Materials sensitive to stress concentrations, such as boron steel, are suggested to be improved regarding joint integrity by the use of hybrid joining. The micro structure of a boron steel reinforcement is believed to be protected by using the adhesive bonding. The joint configurations in the B-pillar and the lower rocker have been changed to obtain more strength in the structure. One new integrated part located inside the lower rocker is introduced combining 5 parts of the present design, leading to considerable cost saving. The new Bpillar design with removed lateral flanges ruptured in the crash simulation suggesting the necessity of the flanges.


&NA; A mix of public policy and market interventions in the mid‐2000s led to historic reductions in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The collateral impact of these forest conservation policies on agricultural production is still poorly understood, though evidence is sorely needed given the economic importance of agriculture in Brazil and many other forest‐rich countries. We construct a ten‐year panel dataset for agriculture and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (2004‐2014), and use two complementary difference‐in‐difference strategies to estimate the causal effect of one of Brazil's flagship anti‐deforestation strategies, the Priority List (Municípios Prioritários), on agricultural production and productivity in three sectors: beef, dairy, and crop production. We find no evidence for trade‐offs between agriculture and forest conservation. Rather, reductions in deforestation in priority municipalities were paired with increases in cattle production and productivity (cattle/hectare), consistent with a model where policy‐induced decreases in the value of clearing new land cause credit‐constrained farmers to shift investments from deforestation to capital investments in farming. The policy had no consistent effect on dairy or crop production. Our results suggest that in regions with large yield gaps and where technologies for increasing yields are readily available, efforts to constrain agricultural expansion through improved forest conservation policies may induce intensification.


Certain types of power plant operation require a bypass system across one or more power units, with suitable energydissipation arrangements. Except in the low turbine head range, 'vortex shafts' frequently provide the answer to the problem, especially in the case of underground power stations. There three main parts of a "vortex shaft" are as follows: 1. A spiral chamber and its supply canal ; 2. A vertical shaft ; 3. An elbow at the bottom of the shaft. The spiral chamber imparts swirling motion to the flow, so that it 'hugs' the shaft walls on its way down. Though this swirling motion is very stable, care is nevertheless required in designing the spiral chamher to ensure an even water distribution around the shaft. Inflow conditions to a flat-bottomed spiral chamber should he of the streaming flow type. Chamber water level variation is linear with rate of flow. Assuming negligible loss of head in the spiral chamber and constant atmospheric pressure within the fluid vein, the kinetic energy along the shaft is found by application of the incompressible fluid flow and universal head loss formulae : Jds = λ / a Rh V2 / 2g ds The kinetic energy V2/2 g at level z is given by the following relationship : z = v2/2g 0 d (V2/2 g) / 1 - (λπD√2g/4Q) (V2/2g)3/2 The Reynolds number is constant, and hence also λ for hydraulically smooth flow. These relationships show that the theoretical velocity limit for a shaft of infinite depth is as fol1ows : V∞2/2g = 4e/λ As the energy of rotation is much smaller than the potential energy, it can be considered that the only effect of the swirling motion is to stabilise the flow along the shaft walls, and that its effect on the loss of energy is negligible. These various relationships have been checked on a model shaft 25 centimetres in diameter, with varying wall roughness. Residual energy in the flow is absorbed at the foot of the shaft by a cushion of water, the depth of which is determined by the elbow connecting the shaft to the tailrace. The latter should preferably be of the free-flow type, in order to separate the air out from the emulsified water. The results of this study were applied in designing a relief bypass system for the Oraison power plant, in which the water falls through a shaft 7 metres in diameter from a height of 65 metres ; the peak discharge is 88 cubic metres/sec. 62 per cent of the energy is dissipated by wall friction in the shaft, and the remainder in the bottom elbow, and the flow very nearly reaches the velocity limit. This system has been operating satisfactorily for 1,600 hours.


The study describes implementation of legislation that excludes youth offenders from juvenile court jurisdiction and examines two elements of deterrence theory that underscored the legislation's rationale. Between-court analyses comparing youths decertified to juvenile court with those remaining in criminal court report no between-court differences concerning the certainty of punishment. Although the criminal court was more likely to impose more severe sentences, controls on legal sentencing factors explained the between-group differences. Legal and extralegal factors predicted the likelihood of certainty and severity of punishment within the juvenile and adult systems respectively. Implications for the restorative justice model are discussed.


Augustine's Confessions is one of the most influential and most innovative works of Latin literature. Written in the author's early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Books I-IV are concerned with infancy and learning to talk, schooldays, sexual desire and adolescent rebellion, intense friendships and intellectual exploration. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible. This volume, which aims to be usable by students who are new to Augustine, alerts readers to the verbal echoes and allusions of Augustine's brilliant and varied Latin, and explains his theological and philosophical questioning of what God is and what it is to be human. The edition is intended for use by students and scholars of Latin literature, theology and Church history.


This 2017 PNG Economic Survey is written at the start of Prime Minister O'Neill's second full term, following the June/July 2017 national elections. How can the new government respond both to the current economic difficulties and to longer-term growth and revenue challenges? This Survey examines PNG's recent growth performance and fiscal and macroeconomic settings. It argues that economic policy in recent years has been broadly pro-cyclical. A high level of government borrowing during the boom years has made it more difficult to borrow when it is needed: now, after the boom. A flexible exchange regime during the boom led to appreciation of the Kina, but now a fixed exchange rate is preventing the economy from adjusting, and deepening the down-swing. Economic and fiscal recovery will require different policy settings. The new "100 Day Plan" has some important fiscal reform commitments, but no reform program will be successful without re-introducing flexibility into PNG's exchange rate regime.


In recent years, the technological developments in mobile and communication networks have paved the way for smart environments, whose final goal is to provide users with enhanced experiences. The measure of user experience satisfaction, or quality of experience, may be defined as an affective state in response to a service. Thus, an experiment was devised to explore the relationship between users' affective state and their context, for assessing quality of experience in urban public transport services. A pilot study, conducted to evaluate the feasibility and requirements of such an experiment is presented, leading to a large scale field study.


The Trump administration has taken concrete action to streamline some federal agency guidance documents, just as it did with respect to so-called "significant regulatory actions." In particular, the administration strongly reaffirmed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) cost-benefit review of agency rules, and implemented new regulatory "budgeting" considerations on the whole. The primary vehicle was Trump's Executive Order 13771, "Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs," which established a one-in/two-out policy for implementing new rules, and implemented a net freeze on net costs for regulation.

Trump also set up regulatory reform task forces to identify "outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective" regulations, those with costs greater than benefits, and those that inhibit jobs and job creation; and launched an executive branch reorganization plan.

In the process the Trump White House reinforced OMB review of "significant guidance documents," as specified a decade before in the George W. Bush administration's 2007 "Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices."

While interpretative rules and guidance and other such "regulatory dark matter" are not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act's notice-and-comment requirement, they are subject to the Congressional Review Act's (CRA) requirement to submit to the Government Accountability Office and to both houses of Congress, so that Congress might choose to enact a "resolution of disapproval."

Many observers have called for Congress to act on regulatory streamlining. A non-legislative option in the meantime is for the president should supplement the administrative actions already taken, and issue a new executive order to strengthen review and control of sub-regulatory guidance.

The new order should incorporate longevity lessons from President Ronald Reagan's E.O. 12291 that first formalized OMB regulatory analysis and review of notice-and-comment rules, a process that largely remains in effect. While presidents often eliminate predecessors' executive orders, orders addressing regulation have enjoyed staying power. A new order focused on guidance—with a proper management framework that is compelling and comprehensive—could greatly amplify executive oversight of agencies. Moreover, since revoking or easing guidance does not require going through the notice-and-comment process as revoking a rule does, the streamlining enabled and encouraged via a new executive order may become more important as the two-for-one low-hanging fruit is picked.

Features should include:
Plank 1: Reaffirm Already "Official" Procedures for Guidance Document Oversight;
Plank 2: Improve Disclosure of Specific Guidance and Summary Statistics;
Plank 3: Incorporate Guidance into the "Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda for Federal
Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions";
Plank 4: Designate Guidance as "Regulatory" or "Deregulatory";
Plank 5: Modify the CRA Reporting Template to Clearly Designate Guidance, Not Just Rule
Types;
Plank 6: Future Guidance—Affirm that Future Agency Guidance is Null Unless Submitted to
GAO and Both Houses of Congress;
Plank 7: Past Guidance—Affirm that Prior Improperly Issued Guidance Will not be Regarded In
Effect Unless Agencies Formally Submit It;
Plank 8: Secure a Comprehensive Compendium of All Validly Issued Guidance;
Plank 9: Disallow Guidance without Congressional Approval;
Plank 10: Ban the Initiation of Certain Federal Agency Guidance, Especially in Frontier Sectors;
Plank 11: Require Public Notice and Comment Procedures for Guidance;
Plank 12: Liberally Deem Guidance "Significant" and Escalate Formal OMB Review of It.


The eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) is a useful tool for modeling the growth of discrete cracks in structures made of concrete and other quasi‐brittle and brittle materials. However, in a standard application of XFEM, the tangent stiffness is not complete. This is a result of not including the crack geometry parameters, such as the crack length and the crack direction directly in the virtual work formulation. For efficiency, it is essential to obtain a complete tangent stiffness. A new method in this work is presented to include an incremental form the crack growth parameters on equal terms with the degrees of freedom in the FEM‐equations. The complete tangential stiffness matrix is based on the virtual work together with the constitutive conditions at the crack tip. Introducing the crack growth parameters as direct unknowns, both equilibrium equations and the crack tip criterion can be handled within the same standard nonlinear iterations. This new solution strategy is believed to provide the modeling capabilities to deal with simultaneous growth of several cracks. A cohesive crack modeling is used. The method is applied to a partly cracked XFEM element of linear strain triangle type with the crack length as the unknown crack growth parameter. In this paper, two examples are given. The first example verifies the theory and the implementation. The second example is the benchmark test three point bending test, where the efficiency of the complete tangential behavior is shown. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


ABSTRACT This article examines the celebrification of drag culture in the USA, and reflects on social media's role therein. This transformation is contextualised historically by charting the evolution of drag media representation from the subversive drag collectives immortalised in arthouse documentaries like The Cockettes (2002) to the emergence of highly-polished, brand-conscious celebrity drag entrepreneurs propelled to fame by the reality television programme RuPaul's Drag Race (2009–). The success of RuPaul's Drag Race (RPDR) has lent drag unprecedented levels of mainstream visibility. In so doing, we argue that RPDR has facilitated drag culture's move from the fringes to the mainstream, and contributed to drag's celebrification. In the second half of the article, we draw on celebrity studies and self-branding literatures to outline the central role that social media have played in the celebrification of drag culture. We also critique the politics this celebrification props up. Through analysis of queen-generated content on social media platforms, and of RPDR transcripts, we home in on the ethics of drag's celebrification – specifically the ways it supports homonormative narratives of the 'good queer', and delimits the sorts of queer bodies and politics that are acceptable in the mainstream.


The aims of this experiment are to evaluate the yield of pea cultivated in conventional and reduced tillage and the economy of minimum tillage systems application. Soil is the primary factor determining the plants yield of a particular area. Yield of pea is determined by multiple factors and the yield variability may be difficult to predict. The experimental factors are: factor A-the experimental years 2014 and 2015, factor B-three tillage systems: conventional, minimum and no tillage. In 2014 was obtained a higher production than in 2015, with a very significant difference. Pea production decreases after applying conservative systems, with 204 kg/ha in minimum system and 611 kg/ha in no tillage system. Fuel consumption used for to perform basic works is higher in the variant to which the soil is plowed compared with minimum tillage systems. The highest costs in achieving the yield/1 ha are recorded in the classical tillage variant, with 12.78% respectively 19.31% higher than in minimum tillage systems. Seedbed preparation is the element of the culture technology where by applying minimum tillage systems can reduce the cost, in no tillage system this technological stage being eliminated.


Public lecturing on astronomy was prevalent in Britain throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Many lecturers were private entrepreneurs operating lecturing businesses without institutional affiliations. Private lecturers enjoyed popularity in various places and sites ranging from metropolitan theatres to provincial town halls. By focusing on private lecturers, including Deane Franklin Walker (1778–1865), John Bird (d. 1840) and Robert Children, this paper explores the private astronomy lecturing trade and compares it with public lectures that took place inside scientific institutions. The careers of two London-based institutional lecturers, John Wallis (1788–1852) and George Henry Bachhoffner (1810–1879), are analysed as a comparison. Despite the trend towards institutionalized science, the activities of private astronomy lecturers had not been undermined by institutional competitors until the early 1860s. Astronomy remained largely an amateur practice in early Victorian Britain; public lecturing on astronomy was also far from a profession. Many astronomical lecturers, whether private or institutional, were not scientific practitioners working on original research or observational tasks. Some of their lecturing, and particularly their Lenten astronomical lectures, purveyed a distinctive kind of popular astronomy, which was a blend of instruction, amusement and religious sentiments. They indicate complex features of performance and showmanship beyond simply conveying popularized scientific knowledge.


Abstract Muscles, tendons, joints and nerves are susceptible to injury when stressed or traumatised repetitively, or over an extended period of time. Regardless of the nature of the work, a large proportion of the working population's time is spent engaged in repetitive movements and maintaining postures for extended periods of time. The reported incidence of work-related back and neck pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome, is between 15–60%,1–3 indicating that a high proportion of the working population is at risk of developing one or more work-related musculoskeletal disorders. The parts of the body that are most commonly affected are the lower back, neck and shoulder girdle, and upper limbs. Based on current literature, we shall discuss conditions affecting these areas in order to gain a better understanding of the conditions, as well as their prevention.


Abstract In this article, we propose a Stein-type two-sample procedure for comparing the means of k(> 1) experimental normal populations among themselves and with the reference to the mean of a controlled normal population, when the variances of all (k + 1) populations are unequal and unknown. Our selection formulation follows closely to that by Bechoffer and Turnbull (1978), who considered the comparison of k normal means with a specific nonrandom standard value, when the variances are either known or unknown and equal. Instead of comparing the k experimental populations to a nonrandom standard value, our comparison is made with reference to a random controlled normal population. Moreover, we broaden their assumption of equal unknown variances to unequal unknown variances. The proposed procedure satisfies two probability requirements: (1) the probability of selecting the control is at least prespecified when the largest experimental mean is significantly smaller than the mean of the control and (2) the probability of selecting the largest experimental mean is at least prespecified when the largest experimental mean is significantly largest than the second largest experimental mean and the mean of the control.


The Atmospheric Visualization Collection is one of the NSF National STEME Digital Library projects, which seek to develop the digital library through novel collaborative methods. This project is based on research-oriented data collected from the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program. It seeks to establish educational materials that are appropriate for all levels of learning while incorporating interactive assessment and development activities. Learning activities include online and offline tools for visualization and manipulation of atmospheric data, interfaces for independent learning, educational units that include streaming video and hypothesis testing, and code development opportunities.


Over the last twenty years the situation of women in the German Democratic Republic has been the subject of a considerable number of studies. The approach has generally been of a sociological or socio-political nature. In this thesis I propose to go one step further by examining the information that may be gained from literary sources. In a state where the media are subject to censorship, and thus controlled, one can refer to literature as an acknowledged source of inside information. Literary works often provide a forum for the formulation and discussion of ideas, which could not be aired elsewhere. Chapter 1 shows why literature, which had always been allocated a special role by the GDR's leading party, the SED, may be regarded as a reliable indicator of everyday life in that country. In this thesis I compare the findings of an analysis of women's literature with sociological data on the one hand and the portrayal of the "ideal" women in GDR media and official writings on the other. The thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach and draws on sources in political, legal, sociological, and cultural fields alike. This constellation of sources allows me to show that the views that female writers expressed in their works frequently coincide with sociological findings. Both of these sources were frequently found to be at odds with statements made in official writings and the media. Such insights could not have been provided by a study conducted from within one discipline.


Background: Smoking rates in Aboriginal Australians are gradually reducing in some age groups, but not for people in the peak reproductive years.¹ Smoking cessation is vital for cancer prevention.² Many regional programs avoid the use of threat messages when targeting Australian Aboriginal smokers.³

Aim: To assess, for the first time, the responses of Aboriginal smokers, 18–45 years, to Risk Behaviour Diagnosis scales (RBD)⁴ and intentions to quit smoking, including gender differences.

Methods: We interviewed 121 Aboriginal smokers, using a structured questionnaire including adapted RBD scales. The RBD measured perceived threat (susceptibility and severity of threat) and perceived efficacy (self-efficacy and response efficacy) on Likert scales. Intentions to quit were assessed. Scales were recoded into high-low responses. Face validity was assessed via an Aboriginal panel, and scales assessed for reliability. Chi-square tests investigated the associations between intention to quit, efficacy/threat and gender.

Results: Among men, intention to quit was associated with perceived efficacy (X² = 15.23;df = 1; p < 0.0001), but not with perceived threat. For women, intention to quit was neither associated with efficacy nor threat. Both genders were more likely to have high intention to quit, with high efficacy and high threat (n = 54;45%:maleX² = 12.6;df = 1; p < 0.001:femaleX²= 5.6;df = 1; p < 0.05). There was no difference in intention to quit with low efficacy-high threat for either gender (n = 39;32%). In contrast, all of the men with low threat-high efficacy (n = 5;4%) intended to quit, whereas all of the women with low threat-low efficacy (n = 6;5%) intended to quit.

Conclusions: High-perceived threat was associated with high intention to quit smoking only when perceived efficacy was high. Gender differences may be a consideration. The RBD scales could be used to tailor messages to the level of efficacy and threat in clinical consultations, and in regional programs. All Aboriginal Australian smokers may benefit from increased efficacy to quit smoking.


Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks(VANETs) can facilitate many applications such as road safety, intelligent transportation and advertising. These applications usually call for multi-hop data delivery from access points to moving vehicles with user specified delay requirements. However, most existing routing protocols for VANETs only focus on message forwarding from vehicles to access points or take no account of the delay constraint. In this paper, we focus on the development of a carry-and-forward scheme that delivers data from access points to vehicles. Utilizing the vehicle's trajectory obtained from the navigation system, we propose TaDB, a Trajectory-assisted Delay-Bounded Message Delivery Algorithm. To choose delivery route within delay constraint while minimizing transmission cost, TaDB uses a Cluster-Aware Link Delay Model to estimate link delay for both the Carry and the Forward strategies on each road segment. TaDB also leverages the vehicle's planned trajectory to estimate its future location. Simulation results show that TaDB can achieve a delivery ratio very close to optimal.


Stochastic block models provide a rich, probabilistic framework for modeling relational data by expressing the objects being modeled in terms of a latent vector representation. This representation can be a latent indicator vector denoting the cluster membership (hard clustering), a vector of cluster membership probabilities (soft clustering), or more generally a real-valued vector (latent space representation). Recently, a new class of overlapping stochastic block models has been proposed where the idea is to allow the objects to have hard memberships in multiple clusters (in form of a latent binary vector). This aspect captures the properties of many real-world networks in domains such as biology and social networks where objects can simultaneously have memberships in multiple clusters owing to the multiple roles they may have. In this paper, we improve upon this model in three key ways: (1) we extend the overlapping stochastic block model to the bipartite graph case which enables us to simultaneously learn the overlapping clustering of two different sets of objects in the graph, the unipartite graph is just a special case of our model, (2) we allow objects (in either set) to not have membership in any cluster by using a relevant object selection mechanism, and (3) we make use of additionally available object features (or a kernel matrix of pair wise object similarities) to further improve the overlapping clustering performance. We do this by explicitly encouraging similar objects to have similar cluster membership vectors. Moreover, using nonparametric Bayesian prior distributions on the key model parameters, we side-step the model selection issues such as selecting the number of clusters a priori. Our model is quite general and can be applied for both overlapping clustering and link prediction tasks in unipartite and bipartite networks (directed/undirected), or for overlapping co-clustering of general binary-valued data. Experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets from biology and social networks demonstrate that our model outperforms several state-of-the-art methods.


We argue for breaking data-parallel jobs in compute clusters into tiny tasks that each complete in hundreds of milliseconds. Tiny tasks avoid the need for complex skew mitigation techniques: by breaking a large job into millions of tiny tasks, work will be evenly spread over available resources by the scheduler. Furthermore, tiny tasks alleviate long wait times seen in today's clusters for interactive jobs: even large batch jobs can be split into small tasks that finish quickly. We demonstrate a 5.2× improvement in response times due to the use of smaller tasks.

In current data-parallel computing frameworks, high task launch overheads and scalability limitations prevent users from running short tasks. Recent research has addressed many of these bottlenecks; we discuss remaining challenges and propose a task execution framework that can efficiently support tiny tasks.


Models of spatial reasoning often assume distinct visual and spatial representations. In particular, the visual impedance effect – slower response time when more visual details are represented in three-term series spatial reasoning tasks – has been taken as evidence for the distinctive roles of visual and spatial representations. In this paper, we show that a memory model of spreading activation based on the ACT-R architecture can explain the visual impedance effect without the assumption of distinct visual and spatial representations. Using the same memory representation, varying levels of visual features associated with an object are represented in the model. The visual impedance effect is explained by the spreading activation mechanism of ACT-R. The model not only provides a more parsimonious explanation to the visual impedance effect, but also leads to testable predictions of a wide range of memory effects in spatial reasoning.


CONTEXT
As they reach adulthood, young men are less likely to use condoms and are at increased risk for exposure to AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Little is known about which prevention efforts reach men in their 20s.

METHODS
Longitudinal data from the 1988, 1990-1991 and 1995 waves of the National Survey of Adolescent Males are used to identify sources of information about AIDS and STDs among 1,290 young men aged 22-26. Information receipt from four main sources, the topics covered by each source and the personal characteristics associated with getting more information are all explored.

RESULTS
Twenty-two percent of men surveyed discussed disease prevention topics with a health provider in the last year, 48% attended a lecture or read a brochure, 51% spoke to a partner, friend or family member, and 96% heard about AIDS or STDs from the media (e.g., television advertisements, radio or magazine). Excluding media sources, 30% of young men reported getting no STD or AIDS prevention messages in the last year. Being black or Hispanic, having had a physical exam or an AIDS test in the last year, and having discussions about AIDS or STDs with parents or a health care provider in the past were associated with receiving more information.

CONCLUSIONS
Although young men who are at higher risk for STD or HIV infection are more likely than other young men to get information about disease prevention, young adult men are much less likely than adolescents to receive AIDS or STD prevention education. More prevention efforts need to be aimed at young adults.


The purpose of this undertaking was to come up with a generational construct for faculty recruitment and retention on the basis of the findings from the study. Mixed research methods, quantitative and qualitative, were utilized involving 301 full-time faculty respondents, 81 focus group participants and five in-depth interview key informants from the five tertiary schools in Davao City. Using Pearson r, it was found out that there was a significant relationship between locus of control and work commitment of faculty. Through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, it was gathered that Baby Boomers were more committed than the Generation X faculty and that most of Baby Boomers were inflexible to change while Generation Xers were generally lazy but technically oriented. It was found out, though, that both BB and GX were moderate internals. One novel finding of this study was that quantitative and qualitative methods worked well together in probing, at great length, the work commitment of a particular group of individuals. It is recommended, therefore, that the strategies incorporated in the generational construct for faculty recruitment and retention be given consideration by the administrators and human resource officers of private tertiary schools.


Tensor regression has shown to be advantageous in learning tasks with multi-directional relatedness. Given massive multiway data, traditional methods are often too slow to operate on or suffer from memory bottleneck. In this paper, we introduce subsampled tensor projected gradient to solve the problem. Our algorithm is impressively simple and efficient. It is built upon projected gradient method with fast tensor power iterations, leveraging randomized sketching for further acceleration. Theoretical analysis shows that our algorithm converges to the correct solution in fixed number of iterations. The memory requirement grows linearly with the size of the problem. We demonstrate superior empirical performance on both multi-linear multitask learning and spatio-temporal applications.


The coordination efficiency of Supply Chain Management is determined by two opposite poles: benefit from improved planning results and associated coordination cost. The centralization grade, applied coordination mechanisms and IT support have influence on both categories. Therefore three reference types are developed and subsequently detailed in business process models for different network structures. In a simulation study the performance of these organization forms are compared in a process plant network. Coordination benefit is observed if the planning mode is altered by means of a demand planning IT tool. Coordination cost is divided into structural and activity-dependent cost. The activity level rises when reactive planning iterations become necessary as a consequence of inconsistencies among planning levels. Some characteristic influence factors are considered to be a reason for uninfeasible planning. In this study the effect of capacity availability and stochastic machine downtimes is investigated in an uncertain demand situation. Results that if the network runs with high overcapacity, central planning is less likely to increase benefit enough to outweigh associated cost. Otherwise, if capacity constraints are crucial, a central planning mode is recommendable. When also unforeseen machine downtimes are low, the use of sophisticated IT tools is most profitable.


Synthesizing controllers for rotational movements in feature space is an open research problem and is particularly challenging because of the need to precisely regulate the character's global orientation, angular momentum and inertia. This paper presents feature‐based controllers for a wide variety of rotational movements, including cartwheels, dives and flips. We show that the controllers can be made robust to large external disturbances by using a time‐invariant control scheme. The generality of the control laws is demonstrated by providing examples of the flip controller with different apexes, the diving controller with different heights and styles, the cartwheel controller with different speeds and straddle widths, etc. The controllers do not rely on any input motion or offline optimization.


Version 3.5 of Community Land Model (CLM) has incorporated a river routing module, called the River Transport Model (RTM), to simulate the runoff routing process over a hydrologic basin. RTM treats river routing as a linear reservoir process propagated through a gridded domain. Because the flow velocity at each grid is set as a constant, RTM cannot simulate river routing well. In this paper, we developed a large scale catchment-based kinematic wave routing (KWR) model to be coupled with CLM, which simulates the movement of water through floodplains and river channels. An advantage of KWR over RIM is that the flow velocity is calculated by the Manning equation, which considers the difference in friction slope and hydraulic radius in each sub-basin (or grid) and time step. A second advantage is that the KWR velocity parameterization accounts for spatial temporal variability. Using the daily runoff simulations in continental China over the time period 1995-2004 from CLM3.5 as inputs to both RTM and KWR, we found that the simulated discharge of KWR is closer to observed discharge than that of RTM. Our study has shown that KWR may be a valid alternative to RTM in CLM.


SUMMARY Conflicts between resource users and managers are common and well documented on Mafia Island (Tanzania), where there has been a history of unresolved conflict over marine conservation initiatives. The perceptions of fisheries and park restrictions among resource users and managers were evaluated to try to understand the underlying causes of these conflicts. Responses concerning management preferences of government officials employed by the Mafia Island Marine Park (MIMP), personnel of the fisheries department, and heads of households in three villages in and out of the Park were compared. The largest differences in perceptions were found between villagers and managers, but all respondents agreed that minimum fish lengths and gear restrictions were beneficial and that benefits increased along the scale of the individual – community – national government. Villagers and government officials differed most in their perceptions towards area-based management, spatial and temporal closures, and species restrictions. Perceptions of management restrictions and benefits were only weakly correlated with the socioeconomic status of the villagers, but more strongly correlated with their living in or out of the Park and their family's economic options. The most negative perceptions towards restrictions were found in villages near fisheries closures, where there was a heavy reliance on marine resources and a higher numbers of jobs per household, but less reliance on cash crops, animal husbandry and tourism. The lack of these three options appears to have produced lower levels of support for MIMP and associated restrictions, and might be overcome by (1) using gear and minimum size restrictions more than fisheries closures and (2) increasing access to tourism, cash crops, animal husbandry and salaried employment, rather than simply increasing livelihood diversity.


Europe needs improved competitiveness to escape the current economic malaise, so it might seem surprising that there is no common European definition of competitiveness, and no consensus on how to consistently measure it.

To help address this situation, this Blueprint provides an inventory and an assessment of the data related to the measurement of competitiveness in Europe. It is intended as a handbook for researchers interested in measuring competiveness, and for policymakers interested in new and better measures of competitiveness.

MAPCOMPETE has been designed to provide an assessment of data opportunities and requirements for the comparative analysis of competitiveness in European countries at the macro and the micro level.


We propose a new interval constraint propagation algorithm, called MOnotonic Hull Consistency (Mohc), that exploits monotonicity of functions. The propagation is standard, but the Mohc-Revise procedure, used to filter/contract the variable domains w.r.t. an individual constraint, uses monotonic versions of the classical HC4- Revise and BoxNarrow procedures. Mohc-Revise appears to be the first adaptive revise procedure ever proposed in constraint programming. Also, when a function is monotonic w.r.t. every variable, Mohc-Revise is proven to compute the optimal/ sharpest box enclosing all the solutions of the corresponding constraint (hull consistency). Very promising experimental results suggest that Mohc has the potential to become an alternative to the state-of-the-art HC4 and Box algorithms.


The school buildings in and around the city of Patras in the prefecture of Achaia, Greece, are classified on the basis of the prevailing environmental conditions and the existing human activities in the surrounding area. School buildings in urban and rural environment are investigated. The type and the sources of pollutants reaching the soil or the air in the school environment, air particles and noise are considered in this investigation. A number of school buildings have been constructed near traffic roads. As a result of this, the school environment is affected by noise and air particles produced from the combustion of petrol by the vehicles. In other cases, fine particles, related to resuspension of soil of the school yard and the surrounding area, affect the school environmental conditions. Similarly, under specific meteorological conditions, some schools in the rural environment can be affected by the agriculture activities, such as the use of fungicides. Specific measures are suggested to be taken for all groups of schools for the protection of the students' and the teachers' health.


Spectacular fossil trees and shrubs are preserved within fossil soils in their original growth positions in mid Cretaceous rocks on Alexander Island, Antarctic Peninsula. These fossils indicate that diverse forest communities grew upon the floodplain areas of Alexander Island during the
Albian at a palaeolatitude of 69-75 ° S. The fossil forests are preserved within the fluvial sediments of the Triton Point Formation of the Fossil Bluff Group, which represents the infill of a fore-arc basin.

The fluvial environment matured from a braided river system, with frequent floods and unstable channel banks, to a more mature meandering river system with more stable floodplain areas. Low energy floods preserved plants that grew on the river channel banks in fine muds and silts. Catastrophic floods occurred rarely, possibly as a result of volcanic activity upon the magmatic arc 200 km away. These high-energy floods covered floodplain areas in coarse sands, entombing trees. Well-drained mollisols formed on emergent surfaces becoming rich and fertile and supporting diverse forest communities.

The flora within the forests occurred as well structured communities that occupied different parts of the river floodplain. Open-woodland forests dominated by araucarian conifers, ferns and shrubs, occupied stable areas of the floodplain characterised by low-energy floods. Disturbance
vegetation dominated by Taeniopteris, liverworts, angiosperms and ferns, occupied river channel banks where frequent floods provided fresh surfaces for these early colonising plants to flourish. Patch forest communities dominated by podocarp conifers, ginkgo trees, cycadophytes and ferns, grew on stable areas of the floodplain distal to the river channel. These mature climax forests were rarely disturbed by catastrophic floods.

Evidence from the palaeosols, sediments and fossil wood of Alexander Island suggest that the climate was warm, temperate, and semi-arid with seasonal precipitation and intermittent wet phases. In structure and composition the Alexander Island forest are very similar to the warm temperate rainforests of New Zealand which experience mean summer temperatures of 16-22 °C and mean winter temperatures of 3-8 ° C. This study and other palaeobotanical data suggests that the Alexander Island forests are likely to have grown under similar temperatures.


This paper studies SEC no-action letter decisions that determine whether companies can exclude shareholder proposals from their proxy statements. During the period 2007–2019, the market reacted positively when the SEC permitted exclusion, suggesting that investors viewed those proposals as value-reducing on average. We also find that a company's stock price drifted down over time while waiting for an SEC decision, suggesting that challenged proposals imposed "distraction" costs on companies. The SEC's decisions can be predicted by regulatory rules, but are also related to a proposal's predicted votes—more popular types of proposals were less likely to be removed. We find no robust evidence that no-action letter decisions differed when the SEC was controlled by Democrats versus Republicans. Taken together, the evidence suggests that managers may be serving shareholder interests in opposing some proposals, and that the no-action letter process may be helping shareholders by weeding out value-reducing proposals.


For a neuroscientist working under the assumption of a complete correspondence between mind and brain, conscious awareness poses a profound mystery. It is a unique phenomenon in which a state of a physical system – i.e. a distributed pattern of neuronal activity is inexplicably transformed into an absolutely private and internal mental experience. Thus, the relevant point of view that needs to be taken when considering neuronal mechanisms underlying phenomenal experience must also be intrinsic – that of the brain's neurons themselves. In contrast, the perspective taken by most neuroscience research examines neuronal activity from an external observer perspective. Here I will conjecture that the intrinsic perspective is implemented in the brain through rapid and recurrent neuronal activity – local neuronal "ignitions". In this dynamics, the information about the state of a local neuronal assembly is distributed back to the neurons that form the assembly through recurrent activations. A conscious percept emerges when, through these neuronal reflections, the ambiguity inherent in the activity of isolated neurons is converted into a unique and meaningful assembly state. The rapid distribution of assembly information necessitates high firing rates, sustained activity, and dense local connectivity. All these conditions fit nicely with recent experimental findings. The fourth consequence – the founding of conscious awareness on local reverberatory activity – is still highly controversial – and should be viewed, at this stage, as a prediction of the local "ignition" hypothesis.


Four friends, three big and one little, are out for a walk. Suddenly, they spot it - a beautiful bird perched high in a tree! They simply MUST have it and - SHH! - they have a PLAN. So they tip-toe, tip-toe very slowly, nets poised - "Ready one ...ready two ...ready three ...GO!" But, at the turn of the page, we find a ridiculous bunch of very tangled characters and a blissfully oblivious bird, flying away. One hilarious foiled plan after another and it's clear that this goofy trio CANNOT catch that elusive birdie! But the littlest of this group, a quiet spectator up until now, knows that a bit of kindness and sweetness can go a lot further than any elaborate scam. Will his three friends follow his gentle lead or will they get themselves into even more trouble?


Cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and represents a tremendous burden to the individual, family and society. External factors such as tobacco, chemicals, radiation, viruses and internal factors such as inherited mutations and immune status may act together or in sequence to initiate or promote carcinogenesis. Cancer chemoprevention is recognized as the most promising and novel approach to prevent, inhibit or reverse the carcinogenic processes by intervention with natural products or synthetic chemical substances. A large number of traditional medicinal plants and their active principles were reported to have chemopreventive properties. Chemopreventive agents may act on one or several steps (initiation, promotion, progression) of carcinogenesis. Agents that possess antimutagenic, anticar- cinogenic, inhibitory effects on cell proliferation, antioxidant function and modulating effect on carcinogen detoxification are considered as good chemopreventive agents. The aim of the present review paper is to provide the list of chemopre- ventive agents and their mechanism of actions, reported for the past 10 to 15 years, against chemical carcinogen induced oral, mammary and skin carcinogenesis.


In 1795 the British took control of the Cape colony (South Africa) from the Dutch; and in 1843 they exogenously changed the legal basis of landholding, giving more secure property rights to landholders. Since endowments and other factors were held constant, these changes offer clean tests of the effects on economic growth of colonial identity and secure property rights. The effects of both changes were immediate, positive and large. Other legal and institutional changes, such as the move to a common law system in 1827, had no such effects on economic growth.


This study asks the question, "Is Black Economic Empowerment a South African growth catalyst?" It addresses the question with reference to the theoretical literature on economic and organizational structures. This literature argues that structures reflect values and influence patterns of behavior, empowerment and opportunities for economic growth. The paper shows that South Africa's economic structures have had negative influences on both racial access and economic opportunity, creativity and responsiveness. The proposition is that transformation and growth require change in economic structures; the same BEE-induced changes will work for both goals. However, some observe that BEE is not effecting change. This raises a counter proposition that BEE will not catalyze growth. The two propositions are examined in a study of BEE responses in twenty-five JSE listed firms. The basic finding is that while firms are actively responding to BEE requirements they are also doing so within a static structural context, where firms keep looking to established networks for solutions. This limits the number of beneficiaries of BEE. It also exacerbates constraints on the number of people in these groups—especially manifesting in added pressure on skilled groups. A number of firms are also not developing vertical connections that might open opportunities for entrepreneurs. Firms that are developing vertical connections are creating capacities to bridge the network divides that exist. The payoff seems very high in these initiatives, evident in trained and screened talent, new jobs and new enterprises. These findings lead the paper into a discussion of what could be done to improve BEE—such that it does become a policy that catalyzes growth.


Since several years, High Frequency (HF) Over-The-Horizon (OTH) radar is used to measure océanographie parameters, such as currents, waves, and wind direction over large areas up to 200 km off the coast. Cost effective low power systems transmitting less than 50 Watts have been developed, e.g. the WERA (WEUen RAdar), and are now commercially available. Besides their applications in oceanography within coastal monitoring systems, these systems can also be used to detect and track ships, if they are modified for this functionality. A ship detection and tracking algorithm for HF-radar has been developed at the University of Hamburg (UHH) in cooperation with the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH). A first evaluation of this algorithm has been done using a data set acquired at Figueira, Portugal, using an 8 MHz WERA system. In May 2009, the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC) initiated a measurement campaign in the Ligurian Sea off La Spezia, Italy, which involved two WERA HF-radar systems operated at 12.5 MHz, one directional waverider and a meteorological buoy. In addition AIS data were recorded and satellite borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images were acquired. This paper presents preliminary results which show the effectiveness of the HF-radar as a long range (∼130 km) continuous-time coverage surveillance system, despite of its low spatial resolution of 1.5 km. The performance of the HF-radar ship detection and tracking algorithms are evaluated by comparison to AIS and SAR. The detection error found for this data set is less than 1 km for ∼68% of the comparisons between HF-radar and (AIS) reported locations, which is comparable to previous results from the Figueira data set.


Community detection is an important task in network analysis. A community (also referred to as a cluster) is a set of cohesive vertices that have more connections inside the set than outside. In many social and information networks, these communities naturally overlap. For instance, in a social network, each vertex in a graph corresponds to an individual who usually participates in multiple communities. One of the most successful techniques for finding overlapping communities is based on local optimization and expansion of a community metric around a seed set of vertices. In this paper, we propose an efficient overlapping community detection algorithm using a seed set expansion approach. In particular, we develop new seeding strategies for a personalized PageRank scheme that optimizes the conductance community score. The key idea of our algorithm is to find good seeds, and then expand these seed sets using the personalized PageRank clustering procedure. Experimental results show that this seed set expansion approach outperforms other state-of-the-art overlapping community detection methods. We also show that our new seeding strategies are better than previous strategies, and are thus effective in finding good overlapping clusters in a graph.


Human hepatocytes were isolated with EGTA and collagenase perfusion method from eleven different liver tissues in this experiment. The viability of freshly isolated human hepatocytes was between 65% and 85%, and the primary hepatocytes could survive in the collagen G coated culture plate for 2 to 4 weeks. During this time, the hepatocytes presented the typical polygonal shape, and expressed epithelial cell markers, CK 8 and CK 18. They also expressed albumin, ASGPR, alpha1-antitrypsin and metabolized lidocaine, which are the characters of differentiated hepatocytes.
Human intrahepatic BECs were isolated with immunomagnetic separation method from ten different liver tissues. The BECs could proliferate in the culture medium (containing EGF and HGF) for at least 4 weeks, and some BECs had proliferated for more than 18 weeks and been passaged for 12 times. Primary BECs were small and oval, and they expressed biliary cell markers (CK 7 and CK 19) and epithelial cell markers (CK 8 and CK 18), while they did not express desmin (marker of hepatic stellate cell), factor VIII (marker of endothelial cell).
The further characterization repeatedly found that proliferating BECs not only kept on expressing CK 7, CK 19, CK 8 and CK 18, but some also expressed c-kit, chromogranin-A, albumin, AFP, vimentin (after passage), alpha1-antitrypsin, which are the markers of liver stem cells. Some BECs had the morphology of hepatocytes and could survive for more than 4 weeks without the change of culture medium. Double-fluorescent immunostaining identified the biliary origin of these cells. All of these phenomena suggested that there were some liver stem-like cells co-purified with intrahepatic BECs in vitro. Liver stem cells might be residents among intrahepatic BECs and activated in vitro by the growth factors.
This finding supported the hypothesis that the human biliary tree may harbour liver stem cells, and the liver stem cells could be co-purified with intrahepatic BECs.


Background Few studies have been undertaken on off-label drug use in Spain since the introduction of new legislation in 2009 in which the responsibility for off-label use was transferred from the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products to the physician. Purpose To analyse which clinical units requested off-label drugs more often, for what treatments and indications they were used, and to establish the economic impact this had on a Spanish university hospital. Materials and methods Descriptive observational study from October 2009 to December 2012. We included all individual requests for off-label drugs received in the pharmacy service. The request was submitted by physicians who indicated prior treatment received and the reasons deemed appropriate for the requested treatment. Individualised assessment reports were written with an analysis of efficacy, safety, convenience and cost, which were referred to the hospital's medical administration to make the decision to authorise or deny their use. Results A total of 512 requests were analysed, of which 72.7% were for antineoplastics (372), followed by the musculoskeletal system with 8.2% (42). The most-requested drugs were bevacizumab with 13.3% (68) and rituximab with 8.2% (42) of requests. It was observed that the most frequent off-label indications were for glioblastoma with 7.8% (40) and breast cancer 5.3% (27) of requests. Requests for adult units represented 80.5% (412), being mostly oncology at 43.9% (181) and haematology with 15.5% of requests (64). Paediatric clinical units performed 9.5% (100) of requests, of which the most frequent were onco-haematology with 49% (49) and rheumatology with 11% (11). The cost of off-label drugs authorised was 4,938,808 € with a median cost per patient of 7,340 € [1,307 €, 16,728 €] and represented 3.03% of the total expenditure of the pharmacy service. Treatments that were rejected would have meant an expenditure of 1,656,644 € and this would have been 1.02% of drug spending. Conclusions Off-label drugs were requested mostly in the field of oncology and haematology. The authorised off-label drugs are very expensive. Unapproved treatments would have increased costs with theoretically minimal health benefits. No conflict of interest.


Abstract
The objective of this thesis is to investigate whether a switch from exchange-rate targeting (de-facto a fixed exchange rate) to inflation targeting will facilitate a more appropriate monetary policy and a more stable macroeconomic environment in developing economies. To achieve this objective, the thesis starts by developing the argument that the exchange-rate peg, as a nominal variable, might be unimportant for affecting long-run growth performance, but detrimental to short-run output stability, particularly in times of real shocks. By using a dynamic system-GMM panel estimator, the research finds that the exchange-rate regime is not significant in explaining growth, either overall or in developing countries. Next, the Hausman-Taylor panel method is used to investigate whether the exchange-rate regime is important in determining output volatility. To overcome the spurious-regression problem arising from the potentially persistent rolling-standard-deviation based measure of output volatility, a new measure is defined; namely, the difference between the potential and the actual output, which might arise from either economic policies or external disturbances. The empirical evidence suggests that, for the overall sample and for the developing countries, a terms-of-trade shock larger than 7 percentage points under a fixed, and larger than 9 percentage points under limited-flexible and flexible exchange-rate regimes, will give higher output volatility compared to a float. These findings are in line with the expectation that pegs provide early gains in terms of inflation stabilization, but longer pegs begin to develop into a threat for output stabilization in the aftermath of an aggregate-supply shock and as the economy becomes more financially integrated. Given these findings, the thesis suggests the exchange rate be made flexible and a new nominal anchor established. The thesis argues that the direct targeting of inflation is a rational choice in the aftermath of peg exit. To investigate whether monetary-policy responses change and produce a more stable macroeconomic environment under regime switching from exchange-rate targeting to inflation targeting, allowing for the possibility of an endogenous switch, the thesis adopts the framework of a fairly classical Taylor rule, augmented by the exchange rate. Two modelling approaches are used to undertake the empirical research: a panel switching regression; and a Markov-switching VAR. Results from both suggest that inflation targeting represented a real switch in developing countries and is characterized by a more stable economic environment, by more independent monetary-policy conduct, by policy geared to strict observation of inflation and by marginal consideration of the real fluctuations of the economy.


We explore the intersection of human and machine creativity by generating sculptural objects through machine learning. This research raises questions about both the technical details of automatic art generation and the interaction between AI and people, as both artists and the audience of art. We introduce two algorithms for generating 3D point clouds and then discuss their actualization as sculpture and incorporation into a holistic art installation. Specifically, the Amalgamated DeepDream (ADD) algorithm solves the sparsity problem caused by the naive DeepDream-inspired approach and generates creative and printable point clouds. The Partitioned DeepDream (PDD) algorithm further allows us to explore more diverse 3D object creation by combining point cloud clustering algorithms and ADD.


OBJECTIVE: To determine the compliance and safety of a plant-based low-fat diet and obtain preliminary data on its effects on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), clinical outcomes, lipids, insulin and body weight in relapsing remitting MS patients.
BACKGROUND: Emerging evidence suggests diet and vascular risk factors including obesity and hyperlipidemia may influence MS disease progression.
DESIGN/METHODS: A prospective, RC, rater-blinded 1-year study with subjects assigned to a low-fat diet (diet) or wait-listed (control) group. Study outcomes: changes over one year in: brain MRI new T2 lesion count and other MRI disease activity and atrophy parameters; safety, changes in: relapse rate, disability [expanded disability status score (EDSS)], Timed 25-foot walk (T25W), Fatigue Severity Score (FSS), blood lipids, body weight and compliance.
RESULTS: 61 subjects [diet -32 (including 6 drop outs); control - 29 (including 2 drop outs)]; median age 41 (range 24-55) y, mean disease duration 5.3 (range 0.8-14.7) y, mean EDSS 2.5 (range 0-4.5) were randomized. After baseline difference adjustment, the groups showed no significant changes in the number of active lesions (0.4, 95% CI -1.2 to1.9, p=0.6) or other MR parameters, relapse rate, EDSS, T25W and FSS. Mean (SD) change in Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) and Total Cholesterol (TC)(mg/dL): Diet compliant (22/26) : -12.4 (22.4) and -16.2(28.5) vs. Control: -5.6 (24.8), -4.7 (28.5); Weight change (lbs) [mean (SD, range)]: Diet compliant (22/26): -16.3 (17.4, +6.8 - -52.1) vs. Control: +1.6 (12, +28.2 - -32.9). Results of fasting glucose, insulin and novel lipid markers will be presented.
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated safety and achievable compliance of this diet. Small sample size, use of disease modifying therapies by many subjects, and one-year follow up likely contributed to the reduced power to detect changes on MRI and clinical outcomes. Improved lipid profile and weight may yield longer term vascular health benefits. Longer future studies with larger sample size are needed.
Support: McDougall Research & Education Foundation, OHSU Foundation, Department of Veterans Affairs. Disclosure: Dr. Yadav has received personal compensation for activities with Bayer, Teva Neuroscience, and Novartis. Dr. Yadav has received research support from Biogen Idec. Dr. Marracci has received royalty payments. Dr. Kim has received personal compensation for activities with Biogen Idec as a speaker. Dr. Spain has nothing to disclose. Dr. Cameron has received personal compensation for activities with Acorda Therapeutics, and the MS Association of America. Dr. Cameron has received research support from Acorda Therapeutics, and the VA Rehabilitation Research Development Service. Dr. Overs has received personal compensation for activities with Biogen Idec. Dr. McDougall has received personal compensation for activities with the McDougall Health & Medical Center. Dr. McDougall holds stock and/or stock options in the McDougall Health & Medical Center. Dr. Lovera has received personal compensation for activities with EMD Serono, Teva Neuroscience, and Biogen Idec as a consultant. Dr. Bourdette has received personal compensation for activities with Biogen Idec, Serono Inc., and Teva Neuroscience.


Picoplankton, i.e., cells smaller than 2–3 μm, dominate in most open oceanic regions, such as in the Pacific Ocean. In these areas, the dominant carotenoid of photosynthetic eukaryotes is 199‐hexanoyloxyfucoxanthin (19HF), considered to be a diagnostic marker for prymnesiophytes. This suggests that this class could be a major component of eukaryotic picoplankton, despite the fact that virtually no prymnesiophyte has been described to date from this size class. To address this question, we assessed prymnesiophyte diversity and abundance in natural picoplankton coμmunities, using a molecular approach. Total genomic DNA was isolated from 3‐μm‐filtered samples collected in the Pacific Ocean. Small subunit (18S) ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) were amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using universal eukaryotic primers. The relative abundance of 18S rDNA from prymnesiophytes was quantified using group‐specific and eukaryotic 18S rDNA probes. The percentage of the prymnesiophyte versus total 18S rDNA was much lower than the percentage of prymnesiophytes calculated on the basis of pigment analyses for the same samples. 18S rDNA libraries from five samples were screened using a prymnesiophyte‐specific oli‐gonucleotide probe, and 14 nearly complete 18S rDNA sequences were retrieved. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences established the presence of several prymnesiophyte lineages with no equivalent among cultivated species.


Depth information is essential for 3DTV applications, as it is used for rendering in many modern 3D displays. In this paper, we propose a new approach for 3DTV content synthesis, by integrating an existing state-of-the-art MRF-based disparity estimation method with additional pre- and post-processing steps. The key of the proposed method is the decomposition of the scene in foreground and background. To this end, chroma key technology is used to facilitate the detection of foreground objects and to significantly improve depth estimation for these objects. Then, we can combine the foreground objects with any background, for both color images and depth maps, to generate a new representation of the scene. Experimental results have shown that the proposed approach can produce satisfactory depth maps with improved silhouettes for foreground objects and a stable background for all the frames of the sequence.


The producers, most of whom are illiterate and have never used a phone, can master the technology within a few days, and are making full use of the service and the accurate price data it provides in their negotiations with the bana-banas, or middlemen. Previously, producers had little alternative but to rely on the word of the bana-banas who visited their farms to buy their produce. The prices they offered were usually unreliable, distorted in the bana-bana´s favour, and were a frequent source of disagreement. Producers who were able to go to the market to verify prices knew they were being cheated.

Manobi has developed a system that collects data in real time and makes use of Internet and mobile technologies to follow the daily price fluctuations and deliveries of produce to markets. This information is transferred to and stored in a central database, analyzed and transmitted to users via a unique ´multi-modal´ data platform. The Manobi platform offers value-added services at lower cost than the standard first-generation voice networks of mobile phone operators.

Manobi´s services are based on an integrated vision of a well-functioning agricultural supply network. The company processes and compiles market information that enables both the bana-banas and producers to target their markets and choice of products. Thus, for both parties, the dynamics of the market have been restored.

The accurate information provided by Manobi is accepted as a point of reference that both parties can trust - a service that is not available elsewhere. As a result, the relations between the producers and bana-banas have improved. Their exchanges have become more productive, and both parties now consider themselves members of a community with the same interests. The producers´ net incomes, after deducting the service fee, have increased significantly, as have the earnings of the bana-banas, who are now better able to identify and take advantage of market opportunities. The markets are better supplied, and the producers have reduced the risks of losses or unsold produce.

Manobi is now preparing to extend its system in partnership with Sonatel, the mobile phone operator in Senegal. Sonatel was impressed by the originality of Manobi´s services and the quality of its technological platform. Manobi has also formed partnerships with organizations representing producers and middlemen, who will play a key role in defining and selecting priority services that will be part of the system in the future.
In order to put its technologies to full use, Manobi has built up a new cooperative framework between end users, operators and service providers, and is promoting innovative uses that will effectively contribute to the economic development of Senegal.

Daniel Annerose is http://www.manobi.net Manobi´s executive-director.


Collecting data from representative users with disabilities for accessibility research is time and resource consuming. With the proliferation of social media websites, many online spaces have emerged for people with disabilities. The information accumulated in such places is of great value for data collection and participant recruiting. However, there are also many active non-representative users in such online spaces such as medical practitioners, caretakers, or family members. In this work, we introduce a novel co-training model based on the homophily phenomenon observed among online users with the same disability. The model combines a variational label propagation algorithm and a naive Bayes classifier to identify online users who have the same disability. We evaluated this model on a dataset collected from Reddit and the results show improvements over traditional models.


In their 1990 Review article, Ian Budge and Richard Hofferbert analyzed the relationship between party platform emphases, control of the White House, and national government spending priorities, reporting strong evidence of a "party mandate" connection between them. Gary King and Michael Laver successfully replicate the original analysis, critique the interpretation of the causal effects, and present a reanalysis showing that platforms have small or nonexistent effects on spending. In response, Budge, Hofferbert, and Michael McDonald agree that their language was somewhat inconsistent on both interactions and causality but defend their conceptualization of "mandates" as involving only an association, not necessarily a causal connection, between party commitments and government policy. Hence, while the causes of government policy are of interest, noncausal associations are sufficient as evidence of party mandates in American politics.


In recent years, a great deal of scholarship has examined the adequacy of special education and other support services for children with disabilities in the U.S. and in other industrialized states. By contrast, there has been comparatively little study of services for children with disabilities in developing countries. In this paper, we attempt to bridge this gap in the literature. Focusing on the case of Mexico, we examine the provision of special education and other support services, and the availability and cost of private services. The focus of the analysis is on children with autism. Drawing upon a theoretical approach that combines modern political economy and comparative institutionalism, we also develop a tentative explanation of the politics of policy-making among parents and other stakeholders in the autism advocacy community.


Characterization and evaluation of (oil and gas) reservoirs is typically achieved using a combination of seismic and well data. It is therefore critical that the two data types are well calibrated to correct and account for the fact that seismic data are measured at a scale of tens of meters while well data at a scale of tens of centimeters. In addition, seismic data can be poorly processed; some well logs can be damaged, affected by mud filtrate invasion or completely missing. This research addresses the methods of (1) editing, conditioning and petrophysical analysis of well logs and (2) joint calibration of seismic and well data to improve correlation and consistency between the two data types. A case study using a data set from the Gullfaks filed is presented; this field is in tail production and therefore improved seismic reservoir characterization to prolong its production life is quite essential. With the help of Geoview, Elog and AVO modules of Hampson-Russell software and Geovation/Geocluster software; post-stack processing, petrophysical modeling and analysis, and joint-calibration of the data were carried out. The results show that locally calibrated rock physics models (of for instance Gardner's and Castagna's equations) produce more accurate synthetic well logs (of missing or damaged curves) than those produced using 'Global' relations. Fluid replacement modeling was carried out to factor in the presence of hydrocarbons in the reservoir zones; the results show more accurate prediction of well logs in the reservoir zones. The quality of well logs was greatly enhanced, in preparation for the joint calibration process. Multi-well wavelet extraction and analysis was done to extract a single wavelet; the wavelet so extracted produced synthetic data that correlates well at all well locations. In some of the wells the correlation coefficient was over 0.50. In one of the wells the correlation coefficient rose from -0.40 (for an individually extracted wavelet) to 0.30 (using a multi-well extracted wavelet). The study demonstrates that it is possible to obtain a high correlation between seismic and well data, if the data are well processed and conditioned. Multi-well wavelet extraction produces a wavelet that is applicable at all well locations.


Dioscorea was a member of Dioscoreaceae, ordo of liliales and class of Monocotyledoneae, Two types of Dioscorea were annual and perennial. As much as 50-60 species of 600 species was cultivated as food source. This research was conducted to study tuber characters and nutrition content of Dioscorea sp. Plant material was Dioscorea collection from some places in Indonesia. Five accessions of Dioscorea alata. Dioscorea esculenta and Dioscorea hispida. were analyzed for the content of fat, protein and starch. Tube characters observed were tuber number, tuber weight, length and diameter. There were significant differences of tube character, protein and starch content between Dioscorea accession. The highest tuber weight and starch content were resulted by D.alata especially accession number 49. The highest protein content was resulted by accession number 67 of D. esculenta. Positive correlation between tuber diameter and tuber weight of D. alata showed that higher accumulation of fotosynthate was followed by increasing tuber diameter. In other words, sink capacity was determined by tuber diameter. Key words: Tuber, Dioscorea spp., Nutrition content