Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent psychiatric disorder. Several studies have attempted to characterize molecular alterations associated with PTSD, but most findings were limited to the investigation of specific cellular markers in the periphery or defined brain regions. In the current study, we aimed to unravel affected molecular pathways/mechanisms in the fear circuitry associated with PTSD. We interrogated a foot shock-induced PTSD mouse model by integrating proteomics and metabolomics profiling data. Alterations at the proteome level were analyzed using in vivo 15N metabolic labeling combined with mass spectrometry in the prelimbic cortex (PrL), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), basolateral amygdala, central nucleus of the amygdala and CA1 of the hippocampus between shocked and nonshocked (control) mice, with and without fluoxetine treatment. In silico pathway analyses revealed an upregulation of the citric acid cycle pathway in PrL, and downregulation in ACC and nucleus accumbens (NAc). Chronic fluoxetine treatment prevented decreased citric acid cycle activity in NAc and ACC and ameliorated conditioned fear response in shocked mice. Our results shed light on the role of energy metabolism in PTSD pathogenesis and suggest potential therapy through mitochondrial targeting.


Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide a context for the contributions which follow in this special issue. Attention is drawn to the range of possible motives for the increase in interest in youth sport evinced by a selection of major stakeholders including international sport federations, domestic federations and event organizers. The paper draws attention to the changing relationship between young people and sport where the former are seen increasingly as a resource to help meet the organizational objectives of the latter. The paper concludes with a summary of, and commentary on, the nine papers in the special issue.


Performance Evaluation of an Active Filter Non-Regenerative AC Drive. (December 2007) Alex Joseph Skorcz, B.S.E., Arkansas State University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Mehrdad Ehsani The purpose of this work is to evaluate the performance of a specific ac drive topology that is of current interest in industry. With the increasing pressure for compliance with IEEE–519 and other international harmonic standards, many ac drive manufacturing companies are seeking innovative and cost effective solutions for controlling the amount of harmonics produced at the point of common coupling (PCC). The proposed topology is a potential alternative to the three-phase diode bridge which is the conventional rectifier topology for non-regenerative applications. The work of this thesis explains the theory of operation, control algorithms, and potential improvement strategies for the proposed "half-controlled" boost rectifier topology. The entire ac drive system with load is then modeled and the results verified using the Simulink simulation package. It is shown that the proposed topology has several distinct advantages over a traditional diode rectifier such as improved total harmonic distortion (THD) of the current waveforms, dc bus voltage regulation, and power factor control. In addition, these advantages are created at a price point which is significantly lower than that of a iv conventional fully-controlled pulse-width modulated (PWM) rectifier. The main disadvantage is that the current waveforms in the utility contain even harmonics which may cause significant problems in the power system.


This paper reveals the main findings of two research studies carried out in cooperation with the University of Finance and Administration in Prague within the realization of research projects focused on the needs of businesses. The research in smalland medium- sized enterprises was looking into the application of decisive market competencies and the removal of possible contradictions in small- and medium-sized enterprises: it explored the key marketing activities in the companies with independent marketing units and in the companies where the marketing functions are managed by other business units. The research was aiming to find differences in the intensity and scope of marketing activities in these two tested segments and major obstacles to the application of marketing principles in everyday commercial life of businesses, the values of competitive advantages, etc. The analysis of the size and structure of marketing communication agencies in the Czech Republic identifies the key requirements of marketing communication practice on the system and on the structure of university preparation for marketing communication professionals.


The Tordera River Delta is made up of coarse sand bodies which were formed during the last sea level rise. Marine and land seismic profiles and wells show three depositional Holocene sequences corresponding to a) the transgressive base level, b) the progradant intermediate unit and c) the progradant unit which onlaps the Plio-Pleistocene sequence seawards and the granitic basement on the present delta plain and northern coast. The morphology of the sedimentary bodies, isobath maps and marine geophysical data enabled us to gain fresh insights into the evolution of the delta and its prodelta and into the various relict sand bodies on the inner shelf. The evolution of the coastline can be followed during the prograding process of the lower units from the successive coastal and internal lagoons. These coastal lagoons were conditioned by river changes and basement morphology. Once the sea level maximum was attained, the prograding units covered these morphologies, resulting in the present delta configuration.


Anthemis chrysantha (Asteraceae) is a winter annual plant with erect habit which reaches a height of 30 cm. Its emergence period begins in autumn, flowering occurs from early March to late May, and fruits mature mostly in June, after that the plant dies. This species is endemic to North Africa and Cartagena (Murcia, southeast of Spain) and it is classified as Critically Endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categories, and as En Peligro de Extincion in the Catalogo Regional de Flora Silvestre Protegida de la Region de Murcia. Due to this fact and the little prior knowledge about the species, the aim of this thesis is to study biological ad ecological traits of A. chrysantha in order to establish appropriate measures for its conservation. Thus, this work includes the study of: (1) morphology, anatomy and germination behavior of the heteromorphic achenes of A. chrysantha; (2) the spatial and temporal dispersal traits of the achenes and the implication of their dispersal strategy for the species; (3) the ability of the species to form a soil seed bank and the role that it can play in the maintenance of the population in an arid and unpredictable environment; (4) the level of genetic diversity, including the genetic variation within and between natural populations of the species, using ISSR markers; and (5) two different introduction methods, transplant of plants grown in a greenhouse and direct achene sowing, for testing them regarding to the survival and the establishment of the populations.
According to the obtained results from the conducted tests, A. chrysantha produces two morphs of achenes: white and dark achenes which differ in size, weight, anatomy, and germination behavior. White achenes germinate in high percentages at different conditions, but dark achenes do not germinate. Dark achenes have dormancy due to the thickness of their pericarp, which makes difficult the entry of water and also prevents germination by mechanical restriction. This work also demonstrates the two achenes type remain on the dead mother plant from the fruiting period (early summer) to late spring forming a seasonal aerial seed bank, and rain is necessary to release the achenes from the capitula (ombrohydrochory), which are mainly dispersed at short distances (atelechory). The aerial seed bank is an effective trait to ensure the maintenance of this species in its unpredictable habitat, but A. chrysantha has also the ability to form a persistent soil seed bank (PSB), with fluctuations of achene density due to the variability in annual rainfall and where dark dormant achenes are largely responsible for the permanent fraction. A PSB plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the annual population of this endangered plant and the study, carried out during five consecutive years, highlights its importance in dry years. In addition, the genetic diversity study of the Spanish populations shows that both at the species and population level the genetic variation of A. chrysantha is high, with a high within-population variability and a low, differentiation between populations. The ISSR markers have detected genetic variation among Spanish and Algerian A. chrysantha populations, which could support the proposal of Sanchez et al. (2002) for recognizing the rank of subspecies, at least, for the Spanish populations. Finally, the two introduction methods seem to be valid for the establishment of A. chrysantha, in spite of the reproductive failure after two years due to the dry spring in 2012. However, if the next years are conducive, the formation of a possible PSB could provide dramatic populations recovery and this fact could be of great interest for the species conservation.
In conclusion, this work goes into the biology of this threatened species and we hope that it will become a very useful tool for establishing appropriate measures for the species conservation when the Regional Administration carry out its recovery plan.


Putzke et al. report the identification and characterization of Fer-related kinase 1 (FRK-1) in Caenorhabditis elegans. FRK-1 is most similar to a truncated form of Fer (FerT) that lacks a coiled-coil region. The greatest similarity between mammalian Fer and FRK-1 lies in the SH2 domain and a tyrosine kinase domain. The kinase activity of FRK-1 was confirmed by its ability to autophosphorylate. Worms lacking FRK-1 (either through RNAi or through genomic deletion) showed defective epidermal enclosure and differentiation. Expression of frk-1 in seam cells of the epidermis rescued the morphogenic defects. The kinase domain was not necessary for FRK-1 to rescue the epidermal enclosure phenotype, because a kinase-inactive mutant version of FRK-1 (D308R) was effective in rescue assays. The localization of FRK-1 was dynamic and varied with mitotic activity. In dividing cells, FRK-1 was found in the nucleus and at points of cell-cell contact. During periods of mitotic inactivity, such as just before epidermal enclosure, FRK-1 is detectable only in the cytoplasm and at the plasma membrane. However, FRK-1 localization at the plasma membrane was disrupted in worms lacking β-catenin (HMP-2 in C. elegans) or p120 catenin (JAC-1 in C. elegans) or β-integrin (PAT-3, which is expressed in the body wall muscle and not the epidermis), which suggests that an interaction with adhesion complexes and possibly communication from the body wall muscles to the epidermis controls FRK-1 localization. Because worms with these genetic backgrounds did not show disrupted epidermal enclosure phenotypes, it remains unclear exactly how the interaction with cell adhesion complexes contributes to the morphogenic functions of FRK-1. A. P. Putzke, S. T. Hikita, D. O. Clegg, J. H. Rothman, Essential kinase-independent role of a Fer-like non-receptor tyrosine kinase in Caenorhabditis elegans morphogenesis. Development 132, 3185-3195 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Uncertainty exists widely in the subjective and objective world. In all kinds of uncertainty, randomness and fuzziness are the most important and fundamental. In this paper, the relationship between randomness and fuzziness is discussed. Uncertain states and their changes can be measured by entropy and hyper-entropy respectively. Taken advantage of entropy and hyper-entropy, the uncertainty of chaos, fractal and complex networks by their various evolution and differentiation are further studied. A simple and effective way is proposed to simulate the uncertainty by means of knowledge representation which provides a basis for the automation of both logic and image thinking with uncertainty. The AI (artificial intelligence) with uncertainty is a new cross-discipline, which covers computer science, physics, mathematics, brain science, psychology, cognitive science, biology and philosophy, and results in the automation of representation, process and thinking for uncertain information and knowledge.


This article discusses the future of social protection in Latin America and the challenges the region faces in the three key performance areas: coverage, sufficiency and sustainability. In particular, the article analyses how coverage is strongly determined by the structure of employment; the limits to expand it given the inability to generate sufficient fiscal space; the consequences of widespread economic and labour informality; the governance deficits; and the acceleration of population aging. It also discusses the increasing need of an adequate combination of contributory and non-contributory social protection provision, as well as the need for a better articulation of social protection systems with the sustainable development framework and its three main spheres: economic, social and environmental. Finally, it is addressed the future of social protection in a context of a growing employment in the services sector, technological change and automation of production and employment; and the relevance of an adequate social protection response to the consequences of climate change and the effects of natural disasters.


Circulating IGFs are important regulators of prenatal and postnatal growth, and of metabolism and pregnancy, and change with sex, age and pregnancy. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes coding for these hormones associate with circulating abundance of IGF1 and IGF2 in non-pregnant adults and children, but whether this occurs in pregnancy is unknown. We therefore investigated associations of plasma IGF1 and IGF2 with age and genotype at candidate SNPs previously associated with circulating IGF1, IGF2 or methylation of the INS – IGF2 – H19 locus in men (n=134), non-pregnant women (n=74) and women at 15 weeks of gestation (n=98). Plasma IGF1 concentrations decreased with age (P<0.001) and plasma IGF1 and IGF2 concentrations were lower in pregnant women than in non-pregnant women or men (each P<0.001). SNP genotypes in the INS – IGF2 – H19 locus were associated with plasma IGF1 (IGF2 rs680, IGF2 rs1004446 and IGF2 rs3741204) and IGF2 (IGF2 rs1004446, IGF2 rs3741204 and H19 rs217727). In single SNP models, effects of IGF2 rs680 were similar between groups, with higher plasma IGF1 concentrations in individuals with the GG genotype when compared with GA (P=0.016), or combined GA and AA genotypes (P=0.003). SNPs in the IGF2 gene associated with IGF1 or IGF2 were in linkage disequilibrium, hence these associations could reflect other genotype variations within this region or be due to changes in INS – IGF2 – H19 methylation previously associated with some of these variants. As IGF1 in early pregnancy promotes placental differentiation and function, lower IGF1 concentrations in pregnant women carrying IGF2 rs680 A alleles may affect placental development and/or risk of pregnancy complications.


The generally unsaturated residual soils segment located above the groundwater table possess negative pore-water pressures. This amount of water content and resulting matric suction is an important geotechnical relationship for the unsaturated residual soil. This paper describes a
field study that examined the water content and matric suction in the unsaturated weathered residual soil over one of the commonly found soil/rock types constituting the tropical Malaysian terrain i.e. residual soil over sandstones at various weathering grades. The soilwater
characteristic curve (SWCC) was found to be characterized by two distinct curves, a wetting (sorption) curve and a drying (desorption) curve, each showing distinctive water
retention propensity. Higher weathering grades appear to have a higher suction for a given water content.


The northwest-striking Campo Grande fault of trans-Pecos Texas has a surface trace of about 45km. It divides the downthrown, central part of the Hueco basin, which contains as much as 2850m of Cenozoic fill, from the shallower northeastern flank that has 150-300m of fill. This normal fault is composed of three main en echelon segments, which are composed of numerous en echelon fault strands that are 1.5-10 km long at the surface. These strands strike N25°-75°W and dip 60°-90° southwestward. Erosion-resistant calcrete (stage IV-V) at the surface aids in preserving scarp heights of between 1.5 and 11.5m and scarp slopes of between 4° and 17°. Surface analysis of faulted upper Tertiary and Quaternary units along the southeastern Campo Grande fault segment indicates that successively younger units have less displacement. The last surface rupture was late Pleistocene. On the hanging wall of one fault strand, faulted calcic soil horizons (stage III) as much as 1m thick with vertical separations of 1-2 m indicate at least five episodes of fault movement, sediment deposition, and surface stabilization since middle Pleistocene time. The maximum vertical offset during the latest surface rupture was about 1-1.5m.


Longitudinal segmented helicoidal eigenstates in laser resonators, with different field distributions of either identical or opposite handedness, are studied theoretically and experimentally. The eigenmodes and frequencies are derived in the framework of the Jones-matrix formalism. Double helices can be applied to birefringence compensation for helicoidal waves. A novel Fabry–Perot laser cavity is realized in which both spatial hole-burning suppression and birefringence compensation are simultaneously achieved.


The notion of constant cycle curves on K3 surfaces is introduced. These are curves that do not contribute to the Chow group of the ambient K3 surface. Rational curves are the most prominent examples.
We show that constant cycle curves behave in some respects like rational curves. E.g. using Hodge theory one finds that in each linear system there are at most finitely many such curves of bounded order.
Over finite fields, any curve is expected to be a constant cycle curve, whereas over number fields this does not hold. The relation to the Bloch--Beilinson conjectures for K3 surfaces over global fields is discussed.


Miniaturized-vehicles are witnessing an increasing demand in many areas such as lab-on-chip, flexible fabrication, micro fluidics and small object manipulation. Lots of effort has therefore been made to build a small-scale, controllable, robust and adaptable carrying vehicle. To explore an alternative way, an innovative vehicle driven by liquid metal droplet "wheels" is presented with a geometric size in the millimeter scale. Unlike former trials, this vehicle is a movable structure composed of soft wheels and a rigid body. Such a hybrid construction adapts to multiple electrolytes especially NaOH solution. Under variable conditions of electrical voltages and channels, the present vehicle can be controlled precisely to achieve progression, steering and more complex locomotion. With a boat-like core body, the vehicle can take burdens up to 0.4 gram at a speed of about 25 mm s−1. More sophisticated vehicles with integrated manipulators and power supplies could still be built based on the current attempt. This kind of vehicle design realizes complex and accurate control as well as driving of a miniaturized robotic structure. The present finding may shed light on the construction of further complex miniaturized machines or robots in the future.


Background: Otoplasty techniques using permanent sutures to mold cartilage have high rates of incidence of granulomatous issues (up to 22%) during the postoperative period. In order to control these complications, Horlock et al. developed the adipofascial retroau ricular flap in 2001. In the present study, we compared patients who underwent otoplasty with or without the use of this flap. We aimed to quantify the incidence of complications affecting the sutures, evaluate the efficacy of the retroauricular adipofascial flap in the prevention of problems associated with the permanent sutures applied to the auricular cartilage, and analyze if the preparation of this flap increased the rates of other types of complications not related to the sutures, particularly suture dehiscence or defective wound healing during the postoperative period. Methods: We consulted the medical records of 24 patients who underwent otoplasties from 2007 to 2009 at the Hospital das Clinicas da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirao Preto da Universidade de Sao Paulo (Clinics Hospi tal of Ribeirao Preto, Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sao Paulo). The patients were divided into 2 groups, one where a "classic" technique was used (n = 24 ears) and another where the "flap" technique was used (n = 24 ears). Patients were reviewed in a retrospective manner and had a minimal postoperative period of 24 months. Results: The total incidence of important complications related to the sutures was zero in the "flap" group and 20.8% in the "classic" group. Edema was more pronounced in the first 14 postoperative days, and was identified in 41.6% of patients in the flap group versus 12.5% of the patients in the classic group. The technical steps involved in preparing the adipofascial retroauricular flap did not increase surgical time. It is possible that the retroauricular tissue covering the sutures (which is stronger) and the tissue connecting these sutures (preserved subcutaneous tissues) were the main factors responsible for the significant decrease in granulomatous complications after otoplasties in which the flap was used. Conclusions: After the retroauricular adipofascial flap was introduced, the incidence of complications was reduced to zero, demonstrating the efficacy of this flap in the prevention of complications related to granulomas. This benefit was obtained without an increase in the incidence of other complications or surgical time. This study suggests that the retroauricular adipofascial flap may be an important addendum to the technical tools used during otoplasty.


A large fraction of email spam, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and click-fraud on web advertisements are caused by traffic sent from compromised machines that form botnets. This paper posits that by identifying human-generated traffic as such, one can service it with improved reliability or higher priority, mitigating the effects of botnet attacks. The key challenge is to identify human-generated traffic in the absence of strong unique identities. We develop NAB (" Not-A-Bot "), a system to approximately identify and certify human-generated activity. NAB uses a small trusted software component called an attester, which runs on the client machine with an untrusted OS and applications. The attester tags each request with an attestation if the request is made within a small amount of time of legitimate keyboard or mouse activity. The remote entity serving the request sends the request and attestation to a verifier, which checks the attestation and implements an application-specific policy for attested requests. Our implementation of the attester is within the Xen hypervisor. By analyzing traces of keyboard and mouse activity from 328 users at Intel, together with adversar-ial traces of spam, DDoS, and click-fraud activity, we estimate that NAB reduces the amount of spam that currently passes through a tuned spam filter by more than 92%, while not flagging any legitimate email as spam. NAB delivers similar benefits to legitimate requests under DDoS and click-fraud attacks.


The market for video entertainment is growing and becoming more diverse as technology reduces barriers to entry for small, independent moviemakers and distributors and increases consumers' ability to access the media of their choice. The growing complexity of the market, however, increases transaction costs for new entrants who must obtain licenses to copyrighted music, characters, storylines, or scenes that they incorporate into their movies. The entertainment bonanza offered by new technologies may not be realized in practice because of market failure. The purposes of the Copyright and Patents Clause are frustrated because creators of new works wishing to use new technologies to build on prior creative effort confront a legal regime intertwined with older technologies and industry structures.This Article argues that the market needs new public and private law mechanisms to make it function more efficiently, by making it easier for creators of new works to (1) find the owners of preexisting content and (2) overcome other barriers to obtaining licenses, such as strategic behavior, irrational protection of entrenched bureaucracies, and obsolete, embedded capital. This Article begins with a hypothetical story of an independent moviemaker. It explains the problems that he confronts in making his movie, explores the relationship between the structure of the market for entertainment works and the circumstances that have traditionally justified legal intervention in a market economy, analyzes various models for such intervention, and proposes legislative, common law, and equitable solutions to mitigate the problems. The proposals afford a privilege for a new creator to use preexisting works when he cannot identify the holders of rights in the preexisting work, when he is unsuccessful in communicating with those rights holders, or when he proposes a reasonable royalty and is rebuffed.The purpose of copyright law is to encourage and reward creative effort. Current conditions frustrate achievement of that goal by making it easy for copyright owners to hide and then ambush creators of new works that build upon existing works. Amendment of the Copyright Act or application of the interpretive principles proposed in this article would further the law's purpose.


Product review sites such as Trip Advisor, Yelp or Amazon provide a single, non personalized ranking of products. The sparse review data makes personalizing recommendations difficult. Topic Profile Collaborative Filtering exploits review texts to identify user profiles as a basis for similarity. We show that careful use of the available data and separating users into classes can greatly improve the performance of such techniques. We significantly improve MAE, RMSE, and Kendall tau, compared to the previous best results. In addition, we show that personalization does not benefit all the users to the same extent. We propose switching between a personalized and a non personalized method based on the user opinion profile. We show that the user's opinionatedness is a good indicator of whether the personalization will work or not.


A parallel program must execute correctly even in the presence of unpredictable thread interleavings. This interleaving makes it hard to write correct parallel programs, and also makes it hard to find bugs in incorrect parallel programs. A range of tools have been developed to help debug parallel programs, ranging from atomicity-violation and data-race detectors to model-checkers and theorem provers. One technique that has been successful for debugging sequential programs, but less effective for parallel programs, is running the program using assertion predicates provided by the developer. These assertions allow programmers to specify and check their assumptions. In a multi-threaded program, the programmer's assumptions include both the current state, and any actions (e.g. access to shared memory) that other, parallel executing threads might take. We introduce parallel assertions which allow programmers to express these assumptions for parallel programs using simple and intuitive syntax and semantics. We present a proof-of-concept implementation, and demonstrate its value by testing a number of benchmark programs using parallel assertions.


Many applications in machine learning handle bags of features or histograms rather than simple vectors. In that context, defining a proper geometry to compare histograms can be crucial for many machine learning algorithms. While one might be tempted to use a default metric such as the Euclidean metric, empirical evidence shows this may not be the best choice when dealing with observations that lie in the probability simplex. Additionally, it might be desirable to choose a metric adaptively based on data. We consider in this paper the problem of learning a Riemannian metric on the simplex given unlabeled histogram data. We follow the approach of Lebanon (2006), who proposed to estimate such a metric within a parametric family by maximizing the inverse volume of a given data set of points under that metric. The metrics we consider on the multinomial simplex are pull-back metrics of the Fisher information parameterized by operations within the simplex known as Aitchison (1982) transformations. We propose an algorithmic approach to maximize inverse volumes using sampling and contrastive divergences. We provide experimental evidence that the metric obtained under our proposal outperforms alternative approaches.


All of us have witnessed a very rapid and robust growth in the industry sector dealing with remote sensing, geographic information systems, global positioning systems, geolocation technologies, and related infrastructure. Industries associated with geospatial information such as mobile computing, mobile mapping, etc., are also seeing a rapid rise in the commercial markets. As the entire globe gets to grip with the high costs of energy and high costs of transportation (e.g. the airline industry), the geospatial information and technologies will play an increasingly important role in business decision-making. We invite our research community to explore the potential applications of the geospatial information and technologies-to-energy sector – from exploration and utilization to conservation. We see a real need for more research in this arena. We hope to publish your research results on these and other themes in the pages of this journal. The papers in this issue cover an interesting range of topics: Santra and Murali Krishna discuss a spatial analysis software tool based on object oriented techniques; Cerney et al. use multitemporal composite photographs to identify landscape changes; Mandal and Sharma have applied GIS tools to a database of salt affected soils for delineation; while Hardin et al. are modelling housing unit density from land cover metrics. These papers make this issue interesting reading. We invite you to send us your feedback.


Side-channel attacks are nowadays a serious concern when implementing cryptographic algorithms. Powerful ways for gaining information about the secret key as well as various counter-measures against such attacks have been recently developed. Although it is well known that such attacks can exploit information leaked from different sources, most prior works have only addressed the problem of protecting a cryptographic device against a single type of attack. Consequently, there is very little knowledge on how a scheme for protecting a device against one type of side-channel attack may affect its vulnerability to other types of side-channel attacks. In this paper we focus on devices that include protection against fault injection attacks (using different error detection schemes) and explore whether the presence of such fault detection circuits affects the resistance against attacks based on power analysis. Using the AES S-Box as an example, we performed attacks on the unprotected implementation as well as modified implementations with parity check circuits or residue check circuits (mod3 and mod7). In particular, we focus on the question whether the knowledge of the presence of error detection circuitry in the cryptographic device can help an attacker who attempts to mount a power attack on the device. Our results show that the presence of error detection circuitry helps the attacker even if he is unaware of this circuitry, and that the benefit to the attacker increases with the number of check bits used for the purpose of error detection.


In this paper we analyze the success of startups in Germany by looking at the social network structure of their founders on the German-language business-networking site XING. We address two related research questions. First we examine university-wide networks, constructing alumni networks of 12 German universities, with the goal of identifying the most successful founder networks among the 12 universities. Second, we also look at individual actor network structure, to find the social network attributes of the most successful founders. We automatically collected the publicly accessible portion of XING, filtering people by attributes indicative of their university, and roles as founders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs. We identified 51,976 alumni, out of which 14,854 have entrepreneurship attributes. We also manually evaluated the financial success of a subsample of 80 entrepreneurs for each university. We found that universities, which are more central in the German university network, provide a better environment for students to found more and more successful startups. University networks whose alumni have a stronger "old-boys-network", i.e. a larger share of their links with other alumni of their alma mater, are more successful as founders of startups. On the individual level the same holds true: the more links founders have with alumni of their university, the more successful their startup is. Finally, the absolute amount of networking matters, i.e. the more links entrepreneurs have, and the higher their betweenness in the online network of university alumni, the more successful they are.


The routing problem for shared path protection in multidomain optical mesh
 networks is more difficult than that in single-domain mesh networks due to the lack of
 complete and global knowledge of the network topology and bandwidth allocation. To
 overcome this difficulty, we propose an aggregated network modeling by underestimation
 with a two-step routing strategy. In the first step, a rough routing solution is
 sketched in a virtual network that is the topology aggregation of the multidomain
 network. A complete routing is then determined by solving routing problems within the
 original single-domain networks. The first step can be solved by either using an exact
 mathematical program or a heuristic, whereas the second step is always solved by
 heuristics. Computational results show the relevance of the aggregated network modeling.
 They also prove the scalability of the proposed routing for multidomain networks and its
 efficiency in comparison with the optimal solution obtained by use of the complete
 information scenario. In addition, we believe that short working paths lead to a higher
 possibility of sharing backup resources between backup paths. Our mathematical program
 model minimizes the total requested resources and at the same time provides a short
 working path, resulting in a further overall saving of resources.


This working paper by Jan Cremers of the Amsterdam Institute of Advanced Labour Studies summarises the results of an inquiry by the SEEurope network on the current legal framework and practices in 28 European countries regarding non-financial and sustainability-related reporting by European companies and the role and involvement of trade union representatives in this form of reporting.In view of recent efforts at EU level to stimulate companies to go beyond the traditional financial and economic reporting, the results of the study are rather patchy and disappointing. Even in the best countries there is little evidence that non-financial reporting practices of companies go beyond traditional items. Moreover, workforce and workplace conditions are not seen as a key part of sustainability concerns and workers' representatives are not sufficiently involved in the long-term sustainability policy of their companies.Last but not least, the crisis has placed labour organizations on the defensive in the sense that sustainability issues come to be perceived as a "luxury" at a time when labour law and collective bargaining are subject to organized deregulation attacks.


"If the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal", Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was not alone in believing that the Constitution could be interpreted by any of the three branches of the government. Today, however, the Supreme Court's role as the ultimate arbiter of constitutional matters is widely accepted. But as Robert Burt aims to show in his book, this was not always the case, nor should it be. In a reconstruction of constitutional history, Burt traces the controversy over judicial supremacy back to the founding fathers, with Madison and Hamilton as the principal antagonists. The conflicting views these founders espoused - equal interpretive powers among the federal branches on one hand and judicial supremacy on the other - remain plausible readings of "original intent" and so continue to present us with a choice. Drawing extensively on Lincoln's conception of political equality, Burt argues that judicial supremacy and majority rule are both inconsistent with the egalitarian democratic ideal. The proper tasks of the judiciary, he contends - as epitomized in Brown vs Board of Education - is to actively protect minorities against "enslaving" legislative defeats while, at the same time, to refrain from awarding conclusive "victory" to these minorities against their adversaries. From this premise, Burt goes on to examine key decisions such as Roe vs Wade, US vs Nixon, and the death penalty cases, all of which demonstrate how the Court has fallen away from egalitarian jurisprudence and returned to an essentially authoritarian conception of its role. With an eye to the urgent issues at stake in these cases, Burt identifies the alternative results that an egalitarian conception of judicial authority would dictate. The first fully articulated presentation of the Constitution as a communally interpreted document in which the Supreme Court plays an important, but not predominant, role, "The Constitution in Conflict" has dramatic implications for both the theory and the practice of constitutional law.


Cemeteries could be regarded as non-social spaces due to a believed negligible amount of daily social activity between the living, the dead and the space. At the same time, the spaces of the dead are regarded as spiritually charged, dangerous and even polluted. My paper suggests that the spaces of the dead, such as the cemeteries of Mexico City, are clear examples of dynamically active memory-making spaces in which the dead are daily revered, socialised and memorialised through a combination of secular and religious contemporary funerary practices, the daily interaction between the living, the dead, the ánima and material culture. The paper analyses the phenomenon, socio-cultural and political conditions of the objectification of the dead in the internal and external spaces of the cemetery. The paper includes the investigation of life histories of its workers, mourners and daily visitors in order to explore why various communities in Mexico City have embraced and revered the materialisation and objectification of the dead such as the following of the Santa Muerte. This paper then digs deeper into the array of meanings interwoven into the fabrics of social life and spiritual stability of the living, in which the widespread embrace of material culture plays a dynamic role in the contemporary social rituals dedicated to the dead in the cemeteries of a megalopolis.


Reservoir operations must respond to changing conditions, such as climate, water demand, regulations, and sedimentation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) can reallocate reservoir storage to respond to such changes. We assembled and analyzed a database of reservoir reallocations implemented and proposed by the Corps. While only a small portion of total reservoir storage nationwide has been reallocated, there are substantial differences in reallocation frequency and magnitude across the nation: some Corps Districts and Divisions use reallocation while others do not, relying more on discretion and small‐scale adaptation of operations. This difference illustrates how water resource agencies like the Corps decentralize management decisions to allow responding to disparate conditions. Decentralized decision‐making provides a responsive approach to water management, while centralized and hierarchical decision‐making is a slower, more deliberative approach. Decentralized decision‐making may lead to the accumulation of short‐term, local decisions over time to the point that the system is managed differently than anticipated. Reallocation, which is a form of planned adaptive management, can be accommodating of multiple competing demands and different stakeholders, yet expensive and less temporally responsive. The challenge for any large water resource management agency is to balance between local‐level, responsive discretion vs. centralized, planned decision‐making.


Thin film material properties and measurement characterisation techniques are crucial for the development of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) devices. Furthermore, as the technology scales down from microtechnology towards nanotechnology, nanoscale materials such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are required in electronic devices to overcome the limitations encountered by conventional materials at the nanoscale. The integration of CNTs into micro-electronics and material applications is expected to provide a wide range of new applications. The work presented in this thesis has contributed to the development of thin film material characterisation through research on the thermal conductivity measurement and the control of the residual stress of thin film materials used commonly in MEMS devices. In addition, the use of CNTs in micro-electronics and as filler reinforcement in composite materials applications have been investigated, leading to low resistivity CNTs interconnects and CNTs-Polyimide (PI) composites based resistive humidity sensors. In the first part of this thesis, the thermal conductivity of conductive thin films as well as the control of the residual stress arising from fabrication process in PI micro-cantilevers have been studied. A MEMS device has been developed for the thermal conductivity characterisation of conductive thin films showing good agreement with thermal conductivity of bulk material. Low energy Ar+ ion bombardment in a plasma has been used to control the residual stress present in PI cantilevers. Appropriate ion energy and exposure time have led to stress relaxation of the beams resulting in a straight PI cantilever beam. In the second part of this thesis, low resistivity CNTs interconnects have been developed using both dielectrophoresis (DEP) and Focused Ion Beam (FIB) techniques. An investigation of the effects of CNT concentration, applied voltage and frequency on the CNTs alignment between Al and Ti electrodes has resulted in the lowering of the CNTs' resistance. The deposition of Pt contact using FIB at the CNTs-metal electrodes interface has been found to decrease the high contact resistances of the devices by four and two orders of magnitude for Al and Ti electrodes respectively. The last part of this thesis focuses on the preparation of CNTs-PI composite materials, its characterisation and its application as resistive humidity sensor. The integration of CNTs inside the PI matrix has resulted in enhancing significantly the electrical and mechanical properties of the composites. In particular, a DEP technique employed to induce CNTs alignment inside the PI matrix during curing has been attributed to play an important role in improving the composite properties and lowering the percolation threshold. In addition, the fabrication and testing of CNTs-PI resistive humidity sensors have been carried out. The sensing performance of the devices have shown to be dependent highly on the CNT concentration. Finally, the alignment of CNTs by DEP has improved the sensing properties of CNTs-PI humidity sensors and confirmed that the change of resistance in response to humidity is governed by the change of the CNTs' resistances due to charge transfer from the water molecules to the CNTs.


Part-time jobs are popular among partnered women in many countries. In the Netherlands the majority of partnered working women have a part-time job. Our paper investigates, from a supply-side perspective, if the current situation of abundant part-time work in the Netherlands is likely to be a transitional phase that will culminate in many women working full-time. We analyze the relationship between part-time work and life satisfaction, and between job satisfaction and preferred working hours using panel data on life and job satisfaction for a sample of partnered women and men. We also utilize time-use data to consider the distribution within the household of market work and housework, and discuss the work specialization hypothesis in this context. Our main results indicate that partnered women in part-time work have high levels of job satisfaction, a low desire to change their working hours, and live in partnerships in which household production is highly gendered. Taken together, our results suggest that part-time jobs are what most Dutch women want.


This paper is concerned with organizational information systems. Examples of such systems include intelligence systems, communications systems, management information systems, decision support systems, and administrative control systems. Systems such as these are critical to an organization's functioning; indeed to its survival.

The paper is intended to be of use to three types of professionals: those who study organizations; those who design information systems; and those who manage. This fact causes the paper to differ in a number of ways from earlier works dealing with organizational communications and related topics. For example, the paper draws on three different literatures: the psychological literature dealing with perception and cognition, the social-psychological literature dealing with the role of motivation in communications, and the organizational literature dealing with behavior in information systems. Further, the paper gives greater attention than do earlier works to logistical determinants of information system effectiveness, such as the workload of the unit processing the message or the priority assigned to a message, as contrasted with social-psychological determinants. Finally, the explicit introduction of judgment and argument by analogy when direct evidence is unavailable is a third way in which the paper differs from earlier works.

The paper focuses in particular on the determinants of the performance and behavior of systems such as those mentioned above. It discusses in some detail the impact of these determinants on four processes that are of key importance in the operation of information systems. Two of these processes are used to increase system efficiency. One, message routing causes any particular message to be distributed to relatively few organizational units, and thus greatly reduces the information processing load of the many units that might otherwise be involved in receiving or relaying the message. The other, message summarizing, plays a similar role. It has as its purpose reducing the size of the message while at the same time faithfully reproducing its meaning.

The remaining two processes follow from the fact that organizational units necessarily exercise some discretion in the way that they handle messages. Message delay is a consequence of the priority assignment given a message, and in many cases enhances the effectiveness not only of the operating unit but of the organization as a whole. Message modification refers to the distortion of message meaning. Its source may be either the cognitive limitations or the motivations of the sender or receiver. Modifications may be conscious or unconscious, well-intended or malicious.

Each of these four processes is discussed in some depth. More specifically, the several determinants of the probability or extensiveness of each process's occurrence are identified. The literature related to the various process-determinant pairings is then reviewed, and is summarized in the form of propositions. Several areas where additional research is needed are noted and recommendations are made concerning what the nature of such research should be.


Cyc is the largest existing common-sense knowledge base. Its ontology makes heavy use of higher-order logic constructs such as a context system, first class predicates, etc. Many of these higher-order constructs are believed to be key to Cyc's ability to represent common-sense knowledge and reason with it efficiently. In this paper, we present a translati on of a large part (around 90%) of the Cyc ontology into FirstOrder Logic. We discuss our methodology, and the tradeoffs between expressivity and efficiency in representation and reasoning. We also present the results of experiments using VAMPIRE, SPASS, and the E Theorem Prover on the firstorderized Cyc KB. Our results indicate that, while the use of higher-order logic is not essential to the representabilit y of common-sense knowledge, it greatly improves the efficiency of reasoning.


We present a novel class of mixed membership models for joint distributions of groups of observations that co-occur with ordinal response variables for each group for learning statistical associations between the ordinal response variables and the observation groups. The class of proposed models addresses a requirement for predictive and diagnostic methods in a wide range of practical contemporary applications. In this work, by way of illustration, we apply the models to a collection of consumer-generated reviews of mobile software applications, where each review contains unstructured text data accompanied with an ordinal rating, and demonstrate that the models infer useful and meaningful recurring patterns of consumer feedback. We also compare the developed models to relevant existing works, which rely on improper statistical assumptions for ordinal variables, showing significant improvements both in predictive ability and knowledge extraction.


RATIONALE
Pulmonary infection in cystic fibrosis (CF) is polymicrobial and it is possible that anaerobic bacteria, not detected by routine aerobic culture methods, reside within infected anaerobic airway mucus.

OBJECTIVES
To determine whether anaerobic bacteria are present in the sputum of patients with CF.

METHODS
Sputum samples were collected from clinically stable adults with CF and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) samples from children with CF. Induced sputum samples were collected from healthy volunteers who did not have CF. All samples were processed using anaerobic bacteriologic techniques and bacteria within the samples were quantified and identified.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Anaerobic species primarily within the genera Prevotella, Veillonella, Propionibacterium, and Actinomyces were isolated in high numbers from 42 of 66 (64%) sputum samples from adult patients with CF. Colonization with Pseudomonas aeruginosa significantly increased the likelihood that anaerobic bacteria would be present in the sputum. Similar anaerobic species were identified in BALF from pediatric patients with CF. Although anaerobes were detected in induced sputum samples from 16 of 20 volunteers, they were present in much lower numbers and were generally different species compared with those detected in CF sputum. Species-dependent differences in the susceptibility of the anaerobes to antibiotics with known activity against anaerobes were apparent with all isolates susceptible to meropenem.

CONCLUSIONS
A range of anaerobic species are present in large numbers in the lungs of patients with CF. If these anaerobic bacteria are contributing significantly to infection and inflammation in the CF lung, informed alterations to antibiotic treatment to target anaerobes, in addition to the primary infecting pathogens, may improve management.


Among conductive polymers, polyaniline (PANI) has been widely used to improve electronic conductivity, solar energy transfer and photocatalytic activity of TiO2, due to its ease preparation and excellent environmental stability. In this study, a green and low-cost synthesis procedure was developed for the preparation of PANI–TiO2 nanocomposite films. A non-toxic and low-cost polymerization route, starting from aniline dimer and polystyrene sulphonate as emulsioning/doping agent in water, was employed to synthesize the conductive form of PANI (emeraldine salt, ES). Anatase TiO2 nanocrystalline mesoporous films were prepared by a novel and green sol–gel spin coating method, which employs titanium tetraisopropoxide, acetic acid and a nonionic surfactant (Tween 20) in excess of water, avoiding the use of flammable solvents. Uniform PANI–TiO2 composite films, containing PANI in either ES or pernigraniline base (PB) forms, i.e. PANI/TiO2 and PANIox/TiO2, respectively, were then prepared by a simple impregnation method. The films were characterized by means of XRD, ATR, FESEM and TEM techniques and their photocatalytic activity was assessed using them as photoelectrochemical water splitting photoanodes. Both PANI/TiO2 and PANIox/TiO2 showed an enhanced water oxidation efficiency under AM 1.5G simulated sunlight irradiation, reaching about 2 and 1.6 fold higher photocurrent densities, respectively, than a pure TiO2 nanoparticles film. They also demonstrated good stability after several hours of operation. UV-Vis spectrophotometry and IPCE analysis reveal the main role of PANI, in the system PANI/TiO2 for the PEC water oxidation, is as sensitizer of TiO2 in the UV light by significantly increasing charges separation, electrons transport and collected photoelectrons, indirectly contributing to the generation of O2. Indeed, PANI-ES photogenerated e− are transferred to the TiO2 conduction band while its h+ can react with OH− to produce OH radicals that generate H2O2, which can subsequently be photooxidized on the TiO2 NPs surface generating more O2 than such produced by the direct water oxidation on the TiO2 holes.


The effectiveness of multirobot learning in achieving optimal, cooperative solutions is potentially affected by various factors having to do with the nature and configuration of the robots and the nature and configuration of the robots and the nature of the learning entities. Varying one factor wrongly may lead to undesirable results. There is no reported work on how systematically to set up these factors. In this paper, we methodically test the effect of varying four common factors (reward scope, global information delay, diversity of robots, and number of robots) in a decentralized multirobot system, first in simulation and then on real robots. The results show that two of these factors, reward scope and global information delay, if set up incorrectly, can prevent optimal, cooperative solutions.


Economists typically assume that preferences are fixed - that people know what they like and how much they like it relative to all other things, and that this rank-ordering is stable over time. But this assumption has never been accepted by any other discipline. Economists are increasingly having difficulty arguing that the assumption is true enough to generate useful predictions and explanations. Indeed, law and economics scholars increasingly acknowledge that preferences are constructed, and that the law itself can help construct preferences. Still, fixed preferences are often treated as a normative ideal: Even if people don't have fixed preferences, they should. Behavioral law and economics scholars offer approaches to deal with this normative shortcoming. My article argues that preference construction, properly understood, is not normatively undesirable. Having fixed preferences means having a complete and stable rank ordering of what we want that dictates our choices. But we often do not have such an ordering, and rationally so. My article argues instead for an alternative process-based, account of preference construction. Rather than having a complete rank ordering, we have ways of making choices. We construct narratives, using evaluative criteria against a backdrop of wants, desires and inclinations, some of which we rank order and some of which we do not. The evaluative criteria embed a consideration of transaction costs: critically, where a decision is not very consequential, a formulaic decision rule that permits a ready choice among roughly comparable alternatives may serve our purposes better than a more considered alternative-by-alternative assessment. Our wants, desires and inclinations are for both traditional objects of choice and higher order values and desires; they are both previously constructed and constructed and elicited in the choice-making process. My article makes the case for such an account's potential explanatory power, as well as its tractability.


In this experiment, a comparative study of ion and X-ray emission from both a SiO2 aerogel foam and a quartz target is performed. The experiment is performed using Nd:glass laser system operated at laser energy up to 15 J with a pulse duration of 500 ps with focusable intensity of 1013–1014 W/cm2 on target. X-ray fluxes in different spectral ranges (soft and hard) are measured by using X-ray diodes covered with Al filters of thickness 5 µm (0.9–1.56 keV) and 20 µm (3.4–16 keV). A 2.5 times enhancement in soft X-ray flux (0.9–1.56 keV) and a decrease of 1.8 times in hard X rays (3.4–16 keV) for 50 mg/cc SiO2 aerogel foam is observed compared with the solid quartz. A decrease in the flux of the K-shell line emission spectrum of soft X rays is noticed in the case of the foam targets. The high-resolution K-shell spectra (He-like) of Si ions in both the cases are analyzed for the determination of plasma parameters by comparing with FLYCHK simulations. The estimated plasma temperature and density are T c = 180 eV, n e = 7 × 1020 cm−3 and T c = 190 eV, n e = 4 × 1020 cm−3 for quartz and SiO2 aerogel foam, respectively. To measure the evolution of the plasma moving away from the targets, four identical ion collectors are placed at different angles (22.5, 30, 45, and 67.5°) from target normal. The angular distribution of the thermal ions are scaled as cosnθ with respect to target normal, where n = 3.8 and 4.8 for the foam and quartz, respectively. The experimental plasma volume measured from the ion collectors and shadowgraphy images are verified by a two-dimensional Eulerian radiative–hydrodynamic simulation (POLLUX code)


Objective To study the effects of L-arginine (L-Arg) on total body aerobic capacity and muscle metabolism as assessed by 31Phosphorus Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (31P-MRS) in patients with MELAS (Mitochondrial Encephalomyopathy with Lactic Acidosis and Stroke-like episodes) syndrome. Methods We performed a case control study in 3 MELAS siblings (m.3243A>G tRNAleu(UUR) in MTTL1 gene) with different % blood mutant mtDNA to evaluate total body maximal aerobic capacity (VO2peak) using graded cycle ergometry and muscle metabolism using 31P-MRS. We then ran a clinical trial pilot study in MELAS sibs to assess response of these parameters to single dose and a 6-week steady-state trial of oral L-Arginine. Results At baseline (no L-Arg), MELAS had lower serum Arg (p = 0.001). On 31P-MRS muscle at rest, MELAS subjects had increased phosphocreatine (PCr) (p = 0.05), decreased ATP (p = 0.018), and decreased intracellular Mg2+ (p = 0.0002) when compared to matched controls. With L-arginine therapy, the following trends were noted in MELAS siblings on cycle ergometry: (1) increase in mean % maximum work at anaerobic threshold (AT) (2) increase in % maximum heart rate at AT (3) small increase in VO2peak. On 31P-MRS the following mean trends were noted: (1) A blunted decrease in pH after exercise (less acidosis) (2) increase in Pi/PCr ratio (ADP) suggesting increased work capacity (3) a faster half time of PCr recovery (marker of mitochondrial activity) following 5 minutes of moderate intensity exercise (4) increase in torque. Significance These results suggest an improvement in aerobic capacity and muscle metabolism in MELAS subjects in response to supplementation with L-Arg. Intramyocellular hypomagnesemia is a novel finding that warrants further study. Classification of Evidence Class III evidence that L-arginine improves aerobic capacity and muscle metabolism in MELAS subjects. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01603446.


Lianas (woody vines) reduce growth and survival of host trees in both temperate and tropical forests; however, the relative strength of liana-tree competition in comparison to tree-tree competition remains unexplored. When controlling for biomass, lianas may have greater competitive effects than trees because the unique morphology of lianas allows them to reach the forest canopy at relatively small stem diameters and deploy a substantial crown above their host. We tested the hypothesis that lianas have a greater negative effect on canopy trees than do trees of similar biomass with a liana- and tree sapling-cutting experiment in a seasonal tropical moist forest in Panama. The response of canopy trees to the cutting treatments was characterized as the change in their daily water use by measuring their sap velocity before and after cutting. We compared the responses of canopy trees around which a similar biomass of either lianas or tree saplings had been cut to control trees with no cutting. Liana cutting increased canopy-tree sap velocity by ∼8% from before to after cutting relative to control trees during the dry season. In contrast, canopy-tree sap velocity did not respond to tree cutting, probably because trees with biomass similar to lianas were confined to the forest understory. We observed a similar pattern of sap velocity changes during the wet season, but treatment differences were not significant. Our results demonstrate that release from liana competition, but not tree competition, resulted in increased water transport in canopy trees, and suggests that relative to their biomass, lianas have greater competitive effects on canopy tree performance than do competing trees.


2D barcodes were designed to carry significantly more data than its ID counterpart. These codes are often used in industrial information tagging applications where high data capacity, mobility, and data robustness are required. Mobile phones have evolved from just a mobile voice communication device to what is now a mobile multimedia computing platform. Recent integration of these two mobile technologies has sparked some interesting applications of 2D barcodes in mobile phones with camera. Nonetheless, this new mobile applications area is still at its infancy. Each proposed mobile 2D barcode application has its own choice of code, but no standard exists nor is there any study done on what are the criteria for setting a standard 2D barcode for mobile phones. Our study is to address this void. In this paper we have detailed our study of all published 2D barcodes. We have also carefully selected features desirable for a standard 2D barcode optimized for the mobile phone platform. These features are based on the operating limitations and attributes of camera mobile phones in general use today. Based on our selected criteria, we will identify the most suitable 2D barcode for mobile phones


Technological advances embedded within algorithmic decision systems are being deployed every day. Some of these investments are unquestionably worthwhile, while some others prioritize commercialization of technology ahead of societal impact. The article uses a real-world case from the healthcare sector to demonstrate the design and governance shortfalls of an algorithmic tool through its lifecycle. The healthcare sector sits on a mine of data, making it one of the most lucrative fields for big data–based analytics. However, the remunerative healthcare sector is particularly sensitive to the quality of data and algorithmic design decisions, making it paramount for all stakeholders to safely and ethically develop, deploy and implement the algorithmic tools. Otherwise, these systems can have detrimental effects on the life, well-being, and safety of patients. The authors provide guidance on responsible and sustainable deployment practices applicable across industries. The systematic dissection of this case can be applied to different systems across different domains like employment, credit scoring, housing, education, criminal justice, and many others. Every business automating and streamlining processes and core functions through digital transformation needs to implement new accountability and governance mechanisms and invest in the inevitable culture change necessary.


Background — Ancient Egypt might be considered the cradle of medicine. The modern literature is, however, sometimes rather too enthusiastic regarding the procedures that are attributed an Egyptian origin. I briefly present and analyze the claims regarding orthopedic surgery in Egypt, what was actually done by the Egyptians, and what may have been incorrectly ascribed to them. Methods — I reviewed the original sources and also the modern literature regarding surgery in ancient Egypt, concentrating especially on orthopedic surgery. Results — As is well known, both literary sources and the archaeological/osteological material bear witness to treatment of various fractures. The Egyptian painting, often claimed to depict the reduction of a dislocated shoulder according to Kocher's method, is, however, open to interpretation. Therapeutic amputations are never depicted or mentioned in the literary sources, while the specimens suggested to demonstrate such amputations are not convincing. Interpretation — The ancient Egyptians certainly treated fractures of various kinds, and with varying degrees of success. Concerning the reductions of dislocated joints and therapeutic amputations, there is no clear evidence for the existence of such procedures. It would, however, be surprising if dislocations were not treated, even though they have not left traces in the surviving sources. Concerning amputations, the general level of Egyptian surgery makes it unlikely that limb amputations were done, even if they may possibly have been performed under extraordinary circumstances.


This is a highly anticipated examination of the popular film and fiction consumed by Britons in the 1920s and 1930s. Departing from a prevailing emphasis on popular culture as escapist, Christine Grandy offers a fresh perspective by noting the enduring importance of class and gender divisions in the narratives read and watched by the working and middle classes between the wars. This compelling study ties contemporary concerns about ex-soldiers, profiteers, and working and voting women to the heroes, villains, and love-interests that dominated a range of films and novels. Heroes and Happy Endings further considers the state's role in shaping the content of popular narratives through censorship.

An important and highly readable work for scholars and students interested in cultural and social history, as well as media and film studies, this book is sure to shift our understanding of the role of mass culture in the 1920s and 1930s.


Continuous coherent light conversion in a train of short pulses with good efficiency is possible with a multipass interferometer in which the frequency is shifted at every pass with an acousto-optic frequency shifter. This technique allows one to generate a spectrum made of equidistant components, interferences of which build intense light pulses. Unfortunately, both the width and efficiency of the pulses are limited by the losses undergone by the waves traveling through the interferometer cavity. Improvement of the pulse duration, the peak intensity, and the contrast can be expected in such an experiment when an amplifier is set up inside the cavity. I report on theoretical computations related to this apparatus and apply this theoretical model to a high-pressure CO2 amplifier.


This paper presents a dynamic model of child labour supply in a farming household. The model clarifies the roles of land, income and household size, allowing labour and credit market imperfections. If labour markets are imperfect, child labour is increasing in farm size and decreasing in household size. The effect of income is shown to depend upon whether the effective choice is between work and school or whether leisure is involved. Credit market constraints tend to dilute the positive impact of farm size and reinforce the negative effect of income. The model is estimated for rural Ghana and Pakistan. A striking finding of the paper is that the effect of farm size at given levels of household income is significantly positive for girls in both countries, but not for boys. This is consistent with the finding, in other contexts, that females exhibit larger substitution effects in labour supply. Increases in household income have a negative impact on work for boys in Pakistan and for girls in Ghana but there is no income effect for the other two groups of children. We find interesting effects of household size and composition, female headship, and mothers' post-secondary education.


The paper describes a new mathematical model of soil erosion and deposition on a plane land element. The model makes use of an approximate analytic theory of runoff on a plane assuming kinematic flow. Rates of the following simultaneously occurring erosion/deposition processes are represented mathematically: rainfall detachment, sediment deposition, and soil entrainment by overland flow. The concept of stream power is used in representing the entrainment process. The form of analysis reduces the first- order partial differential equation expressing conservation of mass of sediment to an ordinary differential equation, which can thus be solved analytically. This solution gives sediment concentration at any time as a function of distance down the plane in terms of four defined soil factors, the slope of the land, two separate cover factors, and the rainfall and runoff rates. The product of water flux and sediment concentration gives sediment flux at any time and position on the plane.


Through systematic review, in this study, we state that PA, especially curricular PE programs, benefits several aspects of academic achievement and classroom behaviors in youth. CONTEXT: The effect of physical activity (PA) on different areas of academic achievement and classroom behaviors and how different characteristics of PA interventions could modify the effect remain unclear. OBJECTIVE: The objective was twofold: (1) to assess the effect of PA interventions on academic achievement and classroom behaviors in childhood and (2) to determine the characteristics of individuals and PA programs that enhance academic performance. DATA SOURCES: We identified studies from the database inception to October 16, 2016. STUDY SELECTION: We selected intervention studies aimed at examining the effect of exercise on academic achievement and classroom behaviors at developmental age. DATA EXTRACTION: Random-effects models were used to calculate pooled effect size for all primary outcomes (language- and mathematics-related skills, reading, composite score, and time in on-task behavior). Positive values represent a direct relationship between PA programs and academic achievement scores or on-task behaviors. RESULTS: A total of 26 studies (10 205 children, aged from 4 to 13) were included. Pooled effect size (95% confidence interval) estimates were as follows: (1) 0.16 (−0.06 to 0.37) for language-related skills; (2) 0.21 (0.09 to 0.33) for mathematics-related skills; (3) 0.13 (0.02 to 0.24) for reading; (4) 0.26 (0.07 to 0.45) for composite scores; and (5) 0.77 (0.22 to 1.32) for time in on-task behaviors. LIMITATIONS: Limitations included the variety of tools used to measure academic achievement and the limited number of studies that reported the effect of after-school PA interventions. CONCLUSIONS: PA, especially physical education, improves classroom behaviors and benefits several aspects of academic achievement, especially mathematics-related skills, reading, and composite scores in youth.


In this paper, we mainly report on our experience and strategy in programming graphics processing units (GPUs) as fast parallel floating point coprocessors to accelerate the simulation of travelling shock waves of the 2-D Euler equation by the finite volume method. The GPU code is specialized in CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) for which we develop exclusive algorithm in the management of memory access for high efficiency. Through simulations of Rayleigh– Taylor instability problem, its performance has been inspected and is about 119~174 times faster than CPU code. Beside that, the potential of multi-GPU parallelism is also been investigated for the future of large-scale computing. Keyword: GPU, CUDA, parallel computing, finite volume, Euler equation, shock wave.


The impact of Elizabeth Bishop's maternal loss on the symbolic order of her poems is well-established, but the ways in which Bishop draws on literary tradition in exploring that loss have received less attention. This essay offers a close reading of "The Bight" that demonstrates how the poem unites the key elements of danse macabre—skeletal imagery, musical procession, grisly humor—with apprehensions of the absent mother, an approach founded upon but aesthetically distinct from original symboliste works such as Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, or the work of American symbolists such as Wallace Stevens. The essay argues that, in contrast to the imitative earlier poems "Florida" and "Current Dreams," "The Bight" constitutes an intimate, modern reinvigoration of the danse macabre tradition, representative of both a post- Freudian sensibility alert to psychological submergence and repression, and of Bishop's characteristically subtle deployment of symbolic planes in her apparently realist work.


Full-duplex Wireless: Design, Implementation and Characterization. by Melissa Duarte One of the fundamental assumptions made in the design of wireless networks is that the wireless devices have to be half-duplex, i.e., they cannot simultaneously transmit and receive in the same frequency band. The key deterrent in implementing a full-duplex wireless device, which can simultaneously transmit and receive in the same frequency band, is the large power differential between the self-interference from a device's own transmissions and the signal of interest coming from a distant source. In this thesis, we revisit this basic assumption and propose a full-duplex radio design. The design suppresses the self-interference signal by employing a combination of passive suppression, and active analog and digital cancellation mechanisms. The active cancellations are designed for wideband, multiple subcarrier (OFDM), and multiple antenna (MIMO) wireless communications systems. We then implement our design as a 20 MHz MIMO OFDM system with a 2.4 GHz center frequency, suitable for Wi-Fi systems. We perform extensive over-the-air tests to characterize our implementation. Our main contributions are the following: (a) the average amount of active cancellation increases as the received self-interference power increases and as a result, the rate of a full-duplex link increases as the transmit power of communicating devices increases, (b) applying digital cancellation after analog cancellation can sometimes increase the self-interference and the effectiveness of digital cancellation in a full-duplex system will depend on the performance of the cancellation stages that precede it, (c) our full-duplex device design achieves an average of 85 dB of self-interference cancellation over a 20 MHz bandwidth at 2.4 GHz, which is the best cancellation performance reported to date, (d) our full-duplex device design achieves 3Q-84% higher ergodic rates than its half-duplex counterpart for received powers in the range of [ -75, -60] dBm. As a result, our design is the first one to achieve Wi-Fi ranges; in comparison, no implementation to date has achieved Wi-Fi ranges. Consequently, we have conclusively demonstrated that Wi-Fi full-duplex is practically feasible and hence shown that one of the commonly made assumptions in wireless networks is not fundamental.


Socio-demographic factors, such as group size, and their effect on predation vulnerability, have, in addition to intrinsic factors, dominated as explanations when attempting to understand animal vigilance behaviour. It is generally assumed that animals evaluate these external factors visually, however many socially foraging species adopt a foraging technique that directly compromises the visual system. In these instances, such species may instead rely more on the acoustical medium to assess their relative risk and guide their subsequent anti-predator behaviour. We addressed this question in the socially foraging meerkat (Suricata suricatta). Meerkats forage with their head down, but at the same time frequently produce close calls ("Foraging" close calls). Close calls are also produced just after an individual has briefly scanned the surrounding environment for predators ("Guarding" close calls). Here, we firstly show that these Guarding and Foraging close call variants are in fact acoustically distinct and secondly subjects are less vigilant (in terms of frequency and time) when exposed to Guarding close call playbacks than when they hear Foraging close calls. We argue that this is the first evidence for socially foraging animals using the information encoded within calls, the main adaptive function of which is unrelated to immediate predator encounters, to coordinate their vigilance behaviour. In addition these results provide new insights into the potential cognitive mechanisms underlying anti-predator behaviour and suggest meerkats may be capable of signalling to group members the "absence" of predatory threat. If we are to fully understand the complexities underlying the coordination of animal anti-predator behaviour we encourage future studies to take these additional auditory and cognitive dimensions into account. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-011-1202-6 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-54306 Published Version Originally published at: Townsend, S W; Zöttl, M; Manser, M B (2011). All clear? Meerkats attend to contextual information in close calls to coordinate vigilance. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 65(10):1927-1934. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-011-1202-6


Abstract Abstract. There appear to be two phases to the homing migration of maturing Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar , from feeding areas in the north Norwegian Sea to the home rivers in Norway: a first phase with crude navigation from the feeding areas towards the Norwegian coast and a second phase with more precise navigation in coastal and estuarine waters towards the home river. This was indicated by recaptures of Atlantic salmon individually tagged as: (1) smolts released in four Norwegian rivers; (2) smolts released on the Norwegian coast; (3) post-smolts transported from Norway and released in the feeding area north of the Faroe Islands during winter; (4) adults captured, tagged and released in the feeding areas in the Norwegian Sea outside northern Norway; and (5) maturing adults captured, tagged and released on the Norwegian coast and at the mouth of fjords. Experience gained as outward migrating smolts was required for salmon to navigate precisely along the coast, into the fjords and towards the home river, but not for the crude, eastward navigation from the feeding grounds towards Norway. Ocean currents appeared insignificant for the precise homing in coastal waters. Migration speed in the ocean increased with time during spring. Fish moving in the coastal current swam faster than those approaching the home stream in fjords. The return migration of Atlantic salmon is an active process where more than one set of navigational cues are needed.


The normal-incidence efficiencies of two laminar gratings and the reflectances of two parabolic mirrors with matching multilayer coatings were measured by monochromatic synchrotron radiation and were compared with modeling calculations. These optics were developed for the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer to be launched on the Japanese Solar-B mission. Each optic has two sectors coated with Mo/Si multilayers that reflect the 17-21-nm and 25-29-nm wave bands at normal incidence. The measured peak grating efficiencies are in the 8%-12% range and are in good agreement with efficiency calculations that account for the effects of groove profile and the microroughness as determined by atomic force microscopy.


The article aimed to find the causes ofmicrobial contamination of drinkingwater source by exploring the influencing factors of water on the incidence of diarrhea in children. Random stratified-cluster sampling was used to study Li and Han communities of rural Lingshui County with regard to water quality and environmental sanitation. Water samples were evaluated for microbial contamination using National Standard of the Peoples Republic of China andWorld Health Organization drinkingwater standards. Data were compared between ethnic groups. Li communities had more contamination than Han. The correlation between the frequency of diarrhea among children and the presence of microorganisms in thewaterwas positive for both total coliforms and Escherichia coli (E. coli). Regression analysis showed the substandard risk factors of total coliforms for source water were type of water supply (OR= 3.508) and garbage disposal methods (OR= 2.430). For E. coli risk factors included the source of water supply (OR= 2.417); depth ofwells (OR= 0.536) and distance ofwells fromthe cesspit (OR= 0.723). The content of bacterium in drinking water source was high in the rural county. Water from open wells had higher contamination rates thanwater fromcentralized systems and tube-well sources. Improvement ofwater supply and environmental hygiene would decrease diarrheal diseases among children under five.


Objectives. The objective of this study was to investigate symptoms and predicting factors of depression and anxiety among reindeer-herding Sami in Sweden. Study design. A total of 319 reindeer-herding Sami (168 men, 151 women) were compared with urban and rural reference populations comprising 1,393 persons (662 men, 731 women). Methods. A cross-sectional questionnaire study on mental health, which included the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Data were analysed with regard to population, gender, age group, education and work-related stress. Results. The Sami population disclosed higher mean values for both depression and anxiety than the reference groups, with Sami men reporting the highest rates. Work-related stress was associated with anxiety and depression in the Sami group. Conclusions. By comparing Sami men and women with reference groups of men and women living in urban and rural areas in northern Sweden, this study identified that reindeer-herding Sami men require special attention with regard to mental health problems.


The aim of the current study was to analyse and compare the peculiarities of physical abilities and body build of the students of the primary school classes (Year 1–4) of ordinary classes and sports classes at Tallinn Lillekula Secondary School. The sample consisted of 170 primary school students – 93 boys and 77 girls. It involved 56 boys and 29 girls in sports classes and 37 boys and 48 girls in ordinary classes. The body height and weight of all the students were measured and their BMI was calculated. All the students also performed four physical abilities tests, which were standing long jump test, forward bending test, 4 × 10m shuttle run test ja 3 minute endurance run test. The reliability and validity of these tests have been checked earlier. Arithmetic means and standard deviations were calculated. To find the differences between the groups and assess the results, Student's paired t-test was used; the lowest level of significance was set at p<0.05. The study revealed that, comparing the test results of boys' and girls' physical abilities, differences appear with an increase in age. In most cases, boys of Year 4 outdo girls statistically significantly. Girls are better than boys only in flexibility. Physical abilities tests showed that in nine cases statistically significant differences in physical abilities appeared between the students of the ordinary class and the sports class. In eight cases, the mean result in physical abilities was better in the sports classes than in the ordinary classes. In their stature and physical abilities the students of primary school classes of Tallinn Lillekula Secondary School are similar to their peers Estonia.


A considerable part of the global carbon budget is stored in the Arctic permafrost landscapes. Several studies suggest that lakes and ponds play a key role in the carbon turnover of these ecosystems as they are considered to be favourable paths of carbon exchange between surface and atmosphere. The direction and strength of the carbon fluxes from Arctic lakes is controlled by a variety of physical and biochemical processes whose climate interactions are complex and still poorly understood. In some Arctic regions the fractional area of lakes and ponds can be as large as 25% highlighting the importance of water bodies in the Arctic ecosystems. Our long-term studies on the energy balance of a typical Arctic lake landscape reveal that the seasonal freeze-thaw dynamic is highly sensitive to small variations in the winter time radiation budget and the subsurface heat flux, especially at shallow ponds. The time required to completely freeze the water body including the subjacent bottom sediments can vary up to several months. This implies that the period of unfrozen ponds, during which biological activity is favourable, highly depends on factors such as the winter time cloudiness and snow cover. Hence, the close interaction between the winter time surface energy balance and biological processes might strongly affect the production and storage of green house gases of Arctic landscapes. This potential climate feedback mechanism is even more important as small water bodies are usually below the spatial resolution of remote sensing products. Therefore, they are not included in landscape classifications used in recent estimates of the global carbon budget or climate models. Nevertheless, small water bodies can make up a considerable percentage of the tundra surface comparable in size to the area occupied by large (thermokarst) lakes. Further investigation on the role of small water bodies appears to be mandatory for a better understanding of the Arctic carbon balance.


This paper revisits the logic of pursuing parallel R&D paths when there is uncertainty as to which approaches will succeed technically and/or economically. Previous findings by Richard Nelson and the present author are reviewed. A further analysis then seeks to determine how sensitive optimal strategies are to parameter variations and the extent to which parallel and series strategies are integrated. It pays to support more approaches, the deeper the stream of benefits is and the lower is the probability of success with a single approach. Higher profits are obtained with combinations of parallel and series strategies, but the differences are small when the number of series trial periods is extended from two to larger numbers. A "dartboard experiment" shows that when uncertainty pertains mainly to outcome values and the distribution of values is skew-distributed, the optimal number of trials is inversely related to the cost per trial.


Studies of a range of taxa, including birds, have revealed latitudinal clines in allele length at the conserved Clock locus, a gene with known influences on behaviour and physiology. Such clines might reflect adaptation to seasonal variation, a suggestion supported by a recent within-population analysis of blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus, which found associations between Clock genotype and timing of breeding in females. To test the generality of this pattern, we sequenced the polymorphic poly-Q locus of the Clock gene in 521 female great tits Parus major, which were selected based on possession of extreme breeding phenotypes. In total, we identified five alleles with one allele accounting for 96% of allelic diversity in the sample set. Overall variability at the poly-Q locus was very low, and the spatial distribution of Clock alleles across Wytham was highly homogenous. Our data further provide no evidence for a connection between Clock genotype and reproductive timing phenotype in female great tits; further, we found no effect of Clock genotype on reproductive success. Hence, these results are in contrast to the pattern found for the sympatric blue tit population inhabiting the same woodlands, suggesting that phenotypic effects of Clock are not general in passerine birds.


This book addresses the question of how to build and upgrade job relevant skills. Specifically, the authors focus on three types of training programs relevant for individuals who are leaving formal general schooling or are already in the labor market: pre-employment technical and vocational education and training (TVET); on-the-job training (OJT); and training-related active labor market programs (ALMPs). ALMPs are usually of shorter duration and target individuals who are seeking a second chance and who do not have access to TVET or OJT; these are often low-skilled unemployed or informal workers. Contrary to training-related ALMPs, pre-employment TVET is usually offered within the formal schooling track and tends to be administered by the ministries of education. The book discusses the main justifications for these programs and how they relate to market failures that can lead to underinvestment in training and misalignment between supply and demand for skills. Unfortunately, governments are also prone to failure and many of the programs that countries have adopted today are part of the problem and not the solution. This book proposes options to improve the design and implementation of current skills development systems. Clearly, the authors cannot cover all issues in detail. Training methods among TVET, OJT, and ALMP programs are quite different, ranging from classroom instruction, laboratory research, TVET workshops, and apprenticeship arrangements and internships in firms. All have different challenges and specificities. The report highlights the most important design features of the different programs and points to the main knowledge gaps and areas for future research and analysis. The book is organized into five chapters. Following this overview, chapter two introduces the policy framework that guides the analysis in the book. This framework describes the main market and government failures that require attention and identifies potential interventions to address them. Chapter's three to five then discuss the main challenges facing, respectively, TVET, OJT, and training-related ALMP programs and outlines recommendations to address them. The rest of this overview summarizes the main messages from each of the chapters and in the last section outlines the main knowledge gaps and proposes an agenda for future research and policy analysis.


Background Mercury is a neurotoxin, and limited prenatal exposure to it can affect long-term child neurodevelopment. However, results of epidemiologic studies of such exposure have been inconsistent. We examined the association of prenatal mercury exposure from maternal fish consumption with child neurodevelopment in northern Italy. Methods A population-based cohort of 606 children and their mothers was studied from pregnancy to age 18 months. Mercury levels were measured in maternal hair and blood during pregnancy and in umbilical cord blood and breast milk. Levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) were measured in maternal serum. Maternal and child intakes of fish were assessed by using a food frequency questionnaire. The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition (BSID-III) was used to evaluate child neurodevelopment. Multivariate linear regression was used to examine the association of mercury exposure with BSID-III scores, after controlling for maternal fish intake, PUFAs during pregnancy, and several other confounders. Results Mean weekly fish intake during pregnancy was less than 2 servings. Mercury concentrations in biological samples were low (mean, 1061 ng/g in hair) and moderately correlated with fish intake, particularly of carnivorous species. Maternal ω-3 PUFA concentrations were poorly correlated with fish intake. Maternal intelligence quotient (IQ) and child intake of fish were significantly associated with neurodevelopment scores. In multivariate models, the level of Hg exposure was not associated with neurodevelopmental performance at 18 months. Conclusions In this Italian population, neurodevelopment at 18 months was associated with child intake of fresh fish and maternal IQ rather than with mercury exposure. The expected beneficial effect of maternal fish intake (from maternal ω-3 PUFAs) was not found.


In the complexity and simulation communities there is growing support for the use of bottom-up computer-based simulation in the analysis of complex systems. The presumption is that because these models are more complex than their linear predecessors they must be more suited to the modeling of systems that appear, superficially at least, to be (compositionally and dynamically) complex. Indeed the apparent ability of such models to allow the emergence of collective phenomena from quite simple underlying rules is very compelling. But does this 'evidence' alone 'prove' that nonlinear bottom-up models are superior to simpler linear models when considering complex systems behavior? Philosophical explorations concerning the efficacy of models, whether they be formal scientific models or our personal worldviews, has been a popular pastime for many philosophers, particularly philosophers of science. This paper offers yet another critique of modeling that uses the results and observations of nonlinear mathematics and bottom-up simulation themselves to develop a modeling paradigm that is significantly broader than the traditional model-focused paradigm. In this broader view of modeling we are encouraged to concern ourselves more with the modeling process rather than the (computer) model itself and embrace a nonlinear modeling culture. This emerging view of modeling also counteracts the growing preoccupation with nonlinear models over linear models.


This chapter aims to put the reception of media content, the interaction between text and receiver, into a wider context by drawing special attention to how the screen-based media, television and computers (with regard to computer games and the Internet), are used in daily life and to the meaning-making practices discernible in the readings of these media. Besides the focus on content, an additional aim is to explore how various media uses and the meanings attached to media, their content and use, are an outcome of a constant mutual interplay between the individual, his or her private settings, experiences, attitudes, and the wider culture and society. Throughout the chapter, the embeddedness of media in children's and adolescents' daily lives becomes evident. In attempting to describe how these are closely intertwined, it is necessary to acknowledge the multiple ways in which young people encounter and appropriate media in different contexts. And this insight is best given by the children themselves. Thus, the use of media is a situated activity (including different types of access and skills) in daily life; it is an integral part of daily routines, of their spatial and temporal flows. These encounters with media are also reflected upon by the individual and elaborated in these contexts and flows.


"When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, took care of you. It is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination," said Marlow in Lord Jim. The fateful abandonment of the ship Patna shattered Jim"s reputation as a seaman. In Marlow, the narrator"s eyes, Jim remained "one of us" - the brother we would love to have, the youth we would love to have been - despite his apparent failing when disaster struck. The heroic and conscientious decision to face the trial plunged Jim to moral wilderness. His public profile became sullied by the legal fact-finding and the stricture of shared code simply could not admit the fear and courage in the youth. The enforced silence shadowed every move Jim made henceforth so he forwent his second chance time after time. This paper seeks to present Joseph Conrad"s take on the tension between intrinsic perfectionism decreed by moral code and the human being"s dubious ability to act on the exalted idealism. This paper will argue that Conrad beautifully construed Jim"s dignified silence by creating scenes full of viewpoints, judgments, noises and despair. The classic themes of fall and suffering find their expression in this elongated novel that sits gloriously alongside Conrad"s Heart of Darkness and Almayer"s Folly.


The planning of specialty training should be informed by knowledge of when doctors make decisions about their choice of career specialty. Our UK nationwide study of career choices showed that about 90% of practising surgeons had indicated their wish to become surgeons when asked during their first year after qualification. Career choices for the surgical specialties as a whole were compared with career choices for non-surgical specialties. We now report on early career choices of and career progression in individual specialties in surgery.