While probably the biggest piece of health care related legislation to come from the 2012 Unicameral Session was LB599, the low-income prenatal care program bill, other health care related legislation was also passed. LB541 was passed in hopes of reinforcing the State's Medicaid program's fiscal integrity. The law allows the Department of Health and Human Services to contract with one or more recovery audit contractors who would provide services to: review provider claims and overpayment recovery; cost avoidance through identifying third-party liability; cost recovery of third-party liability through postpayment reimbursement; and identification and recovery of claims that were the result of accident or neglect and payable to a casualty insurer. LB1083 clarifies permitted practices under the Nebraska Nurse Practitioner Act as well as clarifies that licensed nurses may be hired to provide home health care to family members and friends. LB788 changes the current state statute to reflect changes in the standards adopted by the federal government and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services by expanding the ability to order respiratory therapy beyond a licensed physician to include a licensed physician assistant, a nurse practitioner and a certified registered nurse anesthetists. K N U D S E N , B E R K H E I M E R , R I C H A R D S O N & E N D A C O T T , L L P


Hypertension is a global disease that many effected people in developing countries is not aware of. Hypertension is linked with cardiovascular disease. Prehypertension is not a disease but if not correctly treated, it could develop into hypertension. The aim of the study was to investigate if there are any differences in circadian blood pressure between two study groups, one group with normal blood pressure and one group with prehypertension. This study was a explorative study and its design is based on measurements of blood pressure values and a questionnaire was used to help get the data collection. 51 students volunteered to have their blood pressure taken from them and out of these 51, 24 where selected into two groups of 12 each for the Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring.hese 24 students would be a part of our study and an ambulatory (Schiller-102 plus) blood pressure monitor was used to collect the data. The prevalence of prehypertension findings in the clinical testing phase was 37% of the population. There was a variation between the groups during the day (systolic) but there was not a significant difference during the night.


For several decades, the issue of mismanaged waste has been of paramount importance. While 75% of waste in the United States is stated to be recyclable, only about 34% truly is. Furthermore, one in four pieces of waste is recycled incorrectly, leading to inefficient, expensive, and environmentally detrimental impacts. The foundations of this problem lie in the lack of environmental awareness and personal knowledge about waste disposal. This project takes a stance to combat the pillars of mismanaged waste through a modern means of convenience: the TracedWaste app. The purpose of this study was to identify how individuals' waste disposal habits improved and knowledge increased (i.e. correctly disposing of waste, understanding negative incorrect waste disposal) due to their use of an informational waste management app as measured by a survey using a 1-5 Likert Scale. We surveyed 104 participants using 27 questions regarding the effectiveness and specifications of the app. A chisquared test of independence was performed for the survey data, revealing a significant relationship between TracedWaste app usage and improved waste disposal habits, (X² = 477.75, p < .001). Ultimately, this indicates that the data is statistically significant, with a confidence level of over 99%, demonstrating that the app created a positive difference in individuals' everyday lives. Therefore, the results supported our hypothesis: the TracedWaste app helped conserve abundant resources such as energy and wood, decrease carbon emissions, and minimize financial toll all through reducing individual impact.


Speculative execution is an important source of parallelism for VLIW and superscalar processors. A serious challenge with compiler-controlled speculative execution is to accurately detect and report all program execution errors at the time of occurrence. In this paper, a set of architectural features and compile-time scheduling support referred to as sentinel scheduling is introduced. Sentinel scheduling provides an effective framework for compiler-controlled speculative execution that accurately detects and reports all exceptions. Sentinel scheduling also supports speculative execution of store instructions by providing a store buffer which allows probationary entries. Experimental results show that sentinel scheduling is highly effective for a wide range of VLIW and superscalar processors.


Coordinate loss of one copy of the p53 gene and mutation of the remaining copy occur in colorectal carcinomas and in many other human malignancies. However, the prevalence of p53 gene mutations in carci nomas which maintain both parental copies of p53 has not previously been evaluated. Moreover, it is not known whether p53 gene mutations are limited to malignant tumors or whether they can also occur in benign neoplasms. To answer these questions, a total of 58 colorectal tumors have been examined; in each tumor, allelic losses were assessed using restriction fragment length polymorphisms and p53 gene mutations were assessed by sequencing cloned polymerase chain reaction products. The following conclusions emerged: (a) p53 gene mutations occurred but were relatively rare in adenomas, regardless of size and whether the adenomas were derived from patients with familial adenomatous polyposis; (b) In carcinomas as well as in adenomas, p53 gene mutations were infrequently observed in tumors which contain both copies of chromosome 17p (17% of 30 tumors), while tumors which lost one copy of chromosome 17p usually had a mutation in the remaining p53 alÃ-ele(86% of 28 tumors); (c) p53 gene mutations were found at similar frequencies in primary tumor samples and in cell lines derived from tumors. These and other data suggest that the rate limiting step in p53 inactivation is point mutation and that once a mutation occurs, loss of the remaining wildtype alÃ-elerapidly follows. Both mutations and allelic losses generally occur near the transition from benign to malignant growth, and the p53 gene may play a causal role in this progression.


SUMMARY The long-term incidence (% of apiaries infested) of the mite Acarapis woodi in southern Greece was monitored. Over 10 years the overall average infestation was 5.43%. Yearly maximum infestation (average 28.9%) exhibited a decreasing trend from 1986 to 1995. Infestation tended to peak in November and March and was restricted or absent during the summer. Additionally, seasonal variation of A. woodi density (% of individuals infested per colony) in three groups of colonies was followed for almost three years. At the beginning, Groups I and II had infestation rates of 10.75% and 11.25%, respectively, while Group III was not infested. Group I received no acaricide treatment while Group II was treated with 50 g menthol twice a year. There was no evidence that mites had transferred from infested Groups I and II to nearby non-infested Group III, and no difference in honey production between the groups was observed. There was a rapid decline in the infestation in all three groups, irrespective of treatment, with complete disappearance about seven months before the end of the experiment.


As an organizing concept, whiteness rests on insecure theoretical ground—specifically, the notions of identity and agency. It replaces racism with race and equates race with racial identity, which it accepts uncritically both as an empirical datum and as a tool of analysis. It thereby establishes a false parallel between the objects and the authors of racism and between Afro-Americans and other Americans of non-European ancestry. Whiteness is the ideological counterpart of race relations, both of them ways of skirting around the relations of political, social, and economic power that have determined the place of Afro-Americans in American society.


Solid-Phase Microextraction (SPME) is a very simple and efficient, solventless sample preparation method, invented by Pawliszyn and coworkers at the University of Waterloo (Canada) in 1989. This method has been widely used in different fields of analytical chemistry since its first applications to environmental and food analysis. SPME integrates sampling, extraction, concentration and sample introduction into a single solvent-free step. The method saves preparation time, disposal costs and can improve detection limits. It has been routinely used in combination with gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and successfully applied to a wide variety of ompounds, especially for the extraction of volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds from environmental, biological and food samples.
Since the last twenty years, SPME in headspace (HS) mode is used as a valuable sample preparation technique for identifying degradation products in polymers and for determination of rest monomers and other light-boiling substances in polymeric materials. For more than ten years, our laboratory has been involved in projects focused on the application of HS-SPME-GC/MS for the characterization of polymeric materials from many branches of manufacturing and building industries. This book chapter describes the application examples of this technique for identifying volatile organic compounds (VOCs), additives and degradation products in industrial plastics, rubber, and packaging materials.


This title contains four hilarious and provocative stories from Boccaccio's Decameron, featuring cuckolded husbands, cross-dressing wives and very bad priests. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Boccaccio's Decameron is available in Penguin Classics in both a complete and selected edition.


Service providers have begun to offer multimedia-on-demand services to residential estates by installing isolated, small-scale multimedia servers at individual estates. Such an arrangement allows the service providers to operate without relying on a highspeed, large-capacity metropolitan area network, which is still not available in many countries. Unfortunately, installing isolated servers can incur very high server costs, as each server requires spare bandwidth to cope with fluctuations in user demand. The authors explore the feasibility of linking up several small multimedia servers to a (limited-capacity) network, and allowing servers with idle retrieval bandwidth to help out servers that are temporarily overloaded; the goal is to minimize the waiting time for service to begin. We identify four characteristics of load sharing in a distributed multimedia system that differentiate it from load balancing in a conventional distributed system. We then introduce a GWQ load sharing algorithm that fits and exploits these characteristics; it puts all servers' pending requests in a global queue, from which a server with idle capacity obtains additional jobs. The performance of the algorithm is captured by an analytical model, which we validate through simulations. Both the analytical and simulation models show that the algorithm vastly reduces wait times at the servers. The analytical model also provides guidelines for capacity planning. Finally, we propose an enhanced GWQ+L algorithm that allows a server to reclaim active local requests that are being serviced remotely. Simulation experiments indicate that the scheduling decisions of GWQ+L are optimal, i.e., it enables the distributed servers to approximate the performance of a large centralized server.


A para-poly(oxyethylene) dipicolinic acid derivative coupled to methylumbelliferone was synthesized and used as a ligand for coordination with europium ions. Characterization of the complex by mass spectrometry and spectrophotometry was performed in aqueous solution and points to the formation of the 1:3 Eu/L complex. Physicochemical properties are close to those of already reported dipicolinato complexes, confirming that the presence of a coumarin chromophore does not interfere with complex formation. Photophysical measurements result in observed lifetimes of 1.4 ms and intrinsic quantum yields, Phi(Eu)(Eu), ranging from 33 to 50% (depending on the solvent used). Selective excitation can be performed either mostly on the dipicolinate (DPA) backbone (at 280 nm) or exclusively on the coupled coumarin chromophore in the near visible range (320 nm). Despite the spatial distance between the antenna and the lanthanide ion, europium emission was observed upon 320 nm excitation together with the coumarin emission. The different sensitization pathways have been explored and rationalized. Finally, the complex has been used to probe the ratio of a binary mixture of solvent, establishing the potential interest of this new class of ligands in many fields of research, from photophysics to applied chemistry.


Objective: To analyze a novel compound, which inhibits serine-threonine protein kinase p38, for its possible bioactivity against HIV-1 infection. Methods: Proteins involved in cellular signal transduction pathways represent a novel class of host therapeutic targets for infectious diseases. In this regard the serine/threonine kinase p38 MAPK, a member of the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase superfamily of signal transduction molecules may play an important role in HIV-1 infection. We analyzed the ability of this compound (RWJ67657) to inhibit HIV replication in primary T cells and monocytes. Cellular expression of phospho-p38MAPK was studied by Western blot analysis. Blockade of HIV infection induced apoptosis was measured by Annexin V staining. Results: p38 inhibitor RWJ67657 was effective in inhibiting HIV-1 replication in both T-cell and monocyte cell lines, irrespective of the coreceptor used by the virus for entry into the cell. Importantly, both reverse transcriptase and protease resistant escape mutant viruses were effectively suppressed by RWJ67657. In addition, the tested compounds block HIV-induced T-cell apoptosis, a critical means of T-cell depletion linked to AIDS progression. Conclusion: Several steps in the HIV-1 virus life cycle appear to depend on cellular activation, including activation of the p38 pathway. Without activation virus replication is thought to be blocked due to incomplete reverse transcription and a lack of proviral DNA integration. The data collectively illustrate that inhibition of the p38 pathway can affect HIV-1 replication. Interruption of HIV infection by p38 inhibitors underscores the value of exploring antiviral drugs that target host cellular proteins.


We demonstrate quasi-optical, diffraction-limited two-dimensional image production by means of reflected pulses of terahertz (THz) radiation. A spherical mirror is used to form a real one-to-one THz image of two 1-mm-diameter steel spheres, which is then scanned over a THz receiver. Diffraction-limited spatial (cross-range) resolution and THz pulse range resolution are simultaneously observed.


New isolates Mayfair 2 and Laird 2 of the blackleg fungus [Phoma lingam, perfect stage Leptosphaeria maculans (Desm.) Ces. et de Not.] cause blackleg on the traditionally resistant brown mustard (Brassicajuncea). Mayfair 2/Laird 2 isolates of the blackleg fungus produce a diverse array of secondary metabolites in liquid cultures in minimal media. The isolation (FCC, RP-FCC, prep TLC) and characterization (NMR, MS, X-ray) of these metabolites resulted in the identification of four groups of compounds: polanrazines, sesquiterpenes, phomapyrones, and depsilairdin, where eleven of them were new. Phytotoxic assays conducted with these metabolites on B. napus (resistant), B. juncea (susceptible), and S. alba (resistant) indicated depsilairdin (122) to be a host-selective toxin. Studies on the biosynthetic origin of phomapyrone A suggested phomapyrones to be ofpolyketide origin. Sixteen Thlaspi isolates of blackleg fungus originating from Saskatchewan were characterized on the basis of their secondary metabolite profiles, and it was determined that two of them were Polish type isolates and the remaining fourteen were weakly virulent type isolates. The investigation of Thlaspi arvense (stinkweed) for phytoalexins led to the isolation of two phytoalexins: arvelexin (142) and wasalexin A (38). The structures of these phytoalexins as well as that of isovitexin, a secondary metabolite of T. arvense, were established based on spectroscopic methods and by synthesis. Arvelexin, as a phytoalexin, was reported for the first time here, but wasalexin A was previously reported from wasabi (Wasabiajaponica, syn. Eutrema wasabi). Arvelexin (142) exhibited similar antifungal activity as indole-3-acetonitrile against L. maculanslP. lingam. The secondary metabolites potentially involved in mediating the interactions between Brassica species and the new blackleg isolates Mayfair 2 and Laird 2 were analysed in infected plant tissues by HPLC. The host-selective toxins phomalairdenone A


The causes of childhood overweight are numerous and inter-related. The mother-child relationship is of great significance for the child's health. Previous studies have found patterns of dysfunctional interaction in families with obese children. Therefore, development of childhood overweight could be due to the mother-child relationship. The aim of this study was to investigate how, and to what degree, the mother-child relationship, assessed by the mothers, was related to overweight among children aged seven to nine years. The study was a cross sectional case-controlled one. It included 111 overweight and 149 non-overweight seven to nine year old children and their mothers. Weight status was determined according to the International Obesity Task Force reference for children Body Mass Index, age and gender adjusted. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to categorize the mother-child relationship as: complementary, asymmetrical, symmetrical or symbiotic prototypes. There was no difference in mother-child relationships – characterized by the prototypes – between the overweight and non-overweight mother-child pairs. Therefore, we conclude that the mother-child relationship has no bearing on the child's weight status according to the prototypes. It is suggested that it is more the culture, or the universal phenomenon of expressing love through food, than the mother-child relationship, which influences the development of childhood overweight, or that the mothers are not capable of assess the true attachment style between themselves and their children.


This study develops a numerical technique for the approximation of the magnetosphere-ionosphere (MI) coupling equation, which is a crucial step in the Rice Convection Model (RCM), a physical model that treats plasma in Earth's inner and middle magnetosphere via a multi-fluid approximation. The MI coupling equation is a second-order elliptic boundary value problem that describes conservation of current between the magnetosphere and the ionosphere. The current RCM solver is based on a finite difference scheme and produces unphysical results when the ionospheric conductance has large spatial gradients. We develop an alternative finite element approximation of the MI coupling equation, applying the method of fictitious domains to treat the high-latitude boundary condition along the immersed boundary Γ, a boundary that varies in time and does not align with the computational grid. The result of using fictitious domains is a domain decomposition problem that we solve via a mixed finite element formulation.
We compare both a nonconforming and conforming finite element approach within the framework of the mixed formulation. We are able to demonstrate that both the conforming and nonconforming methods generate solutions that are compatible with the current RCM solver when actual RCM data is used. Furthermore, we demonstrate on several analytic test examples that the finite element approximation is more accurate than the finite difference approximation. Therefore, we conclude that the finite element solver is more robust than the finite difference solver. In addition, we provide convergence results for the nonconforming approximation when the conductance coefficients are bounded and measurable, and we use spectral theory from the harmonic Steklov eigenproblem to derive a precise definition of the trace space on the interface Γ. Our overall approximation technique is generalizable to a class of elliptic boundary value problems in which the boundary varies in time or does not align with a fixed grid. Finally, our numerical solver can be modified for use in the RCM-Jupiter that is currently being developed.


Clinical case studies are fundamental in cementing theoretical training, especially for neurological disorders where diagnosis can be difficult. This book describes a variety of clinical scenarios associated with either the misdiagnosis or incorrect management of cognitive and behavioral neurological syndromes, identifying common pitfalls, which are discussed in detail. Each case emphasizes the importance of information derived from the patient's history and physical examination in forming a correct diagnosis. Focusing on disorders and presentations that are a frequent source of confusion, key diagnostic principles are illustrated clearly. Questions to the reader move the narrative along logically, whilst highlighting specific aspects of clinical presentation that lead to the correct diagnosis. Videos of patients connect readers to the cases and demonstrate how to avoid diagnostic pitfalls. An online version of the book can be accessed on Cambridge Core, via the code printed on the inside of the cover.


This thesis focuses on the rational design of fast and low temperature synthetic routes for the preparation of energy storage nanostructures with potential applications as electrode materials for Li-ion batteries. The materials synthesised in this work have been fully investigated by powder X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy and potentiodynamic measurements. Where possible, high resolution powder X-ray and neutron diffraction, X-ray and neutron pair distribution function (PDF) analysis and muon spin relaxation (µ+SR) studies have been conducted in order to have a better understanding of the structure-property relationship and have a complete and detailed characterisation of these battery materials.
Chapter 1 includes a general introduction about Li-ion batteries and a brief analysis of the most promising electrode materials used in Li-ion batteries. Furthermore, a short description about different synthetic methodologies such as solid state, microwave-assisted and solvothermal syntheses is included. In particular, the benefits of single source precursor processes are highlighted. Finally, the main aims of this thesis are also discussed.
The objective of Chapter 2 is to provide detailed experimental procedures of all materials synthesis and also to briefly describe the main characterisation techniques employed during this research, exploring in more detail those not commonly used, such as pair distribution function analysis and muon spin relaxation.
In Chapter 3, a microwave-assisted solvothermal approach for the preparation of a family of LiFe1-xMnxPO4 (x=0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1) olivines using commercial starting materials is presented. To fully characterise and have a deeper insight of the structure-property relationship of these nanocrystalline phases, high resolution powder neutron diffraction and neutron PDF analyses of these phases are conducted, allowing the examination of the local structure, cation distribution, presence of defects and Li content. Moreover, muon spin relaxation is used for the first time to investigate the lithium diffusion in this series of olivine mixed metal phosphate phases. By understanding how this double transition metal system operates, it may be possible to synthesise high performing electrode nanomaterials with higher energy density than LiFePO4 with no significant increase in cost and exhibiting charge/discharge rates acceptable for commercial applications.
Chapter 4 covers a fast and energy-efficient synthetic route to olivine nanostructured LiFe1-xMnxPO4 cathodes and Mn3O4 hausmannite conversion anodes for Li-ion batteries using a new class of metal alkoxides containing one or two transition metals. The main advantage of metal alkoxides over commercially available inorganic salt mixtures is that the different metals of the final product are already present in a single precursor, which significantly reduces the energy required for reaction of a multicomponent precursor mixture employed in conventional synthesis. Furthermore, thermal decomposition of these metal alkoxide compounds can be performed at relatively low temperatures, allowing decreased temperatures during synthesis and making the process more energy efficient. This work intends to emphasise the versatility of metal alkoxide precursors in the preparation of nanostructured Li-ion battery materials for both positive and negative electrodes through relatively fast and low temperature microwave and ultrasound-assisted methods.
In Chapter 5, having confirmed the suitability of employing transition metal alkoxide precursors for the preparation of nanostructured electrodes via microwave or ultrasound assisted methods, efforts have been directed to develop the synthesis of a series of heterometallic alkoxide complexes containing both Li and a transition metal (Fe, Mn). These heterometallic alkoxide precursors are then used for the generation of highly crystalline LiFe1-xMnxPO4 olivine nanostructures exhibiting an outstanding electrochemical performance. Co-location of all the required metals in these metallorganic precursors could bypass the need of diffusional mixing and allow the reactions to proceed faster and at lower temperatures generating better crystallised materials. X-ray PDF analyses of these LiFe1-xMnxPO4 olivine nanophases are conducted in an effort to examine the local structure, defect chemistry and show that microwave processes produce highly crystalline materials even after short reaction times. Finally, a ionothermal microwave-assisted synthesis of LiFePO4 nanoparticles using heterometallic alkoxide precursors has been examined in order to study the influence of the solvent in the resulting electrochemical performance.
Chapter 6 explores the preparation of olivine LiFe1-xMnxPO4 nanostructures through conventional solvothermal processes using the same single source heterometallic alkoxide precursors. A reduction in particle size and an enhancement in the electrochemical behaviour are achieved when using single source precursor metallorganic compexes compared to commonly used commercial starting materials. Moreover, the fabrication of Fe3O4 magnetite nanoparticles by the room temperature hydrolysis of the [FeLi2Br(OtBu)4(THF)2]n heterometallic alkoxide precursor and its application as anode material for Li-ion batteries is presented.
Chapter 7 further develops this family of heterometallic precursors by examining the preparation of olivine nanostructured Ni-doped LiFePO4 cathodes via microwave processes. The effect of the addition of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in the reaction mixture, which could act as a capping and dispersing agent to prevent particle growth and agglomeration as well as a possible carbon source for all-in-one carbon coating procedures, is investigated. The preparation of a Li and Ni containing metal alkoxide and its utilisation as a Ni precursor for the preparation of nanostructured LiFe1-xNixPO4 olivine cathodes and NiO conversion anodes is presented, demonstrating again the versatility of single source precursor synthesis using heterometallic alkoxides in the preparation of both Li-ion battery cathode and anode materials.
Finally, Chapter 8 includes some general conclusions and an outlook for future work including some preliminary investigations on microwave syntheses of non-olivine β-LiFe1-xMxPO4 (M=Fe, Co, Ni) and maricite NaFe1-xMnxPO4 nanostructures for Li and Na-ion battery applications.


Based on 13 interviews with Eritrean status holders and professionals in Amsterdam this article explores how paying attention to media skills and media literacies may help gain a better understanding of what matters in exchanges between professionals and legal refugees in the mandatory Dutch integration process. Media literacy needs to be decolonised in order to do so. Starting as an inquiry into how professionals and their clients have different ideas of what constitutes "inclusive communication," analysis of the interviews provides insight into how there is a need to (a) renegotiate citizenship away from the equation of neoliberal values with good citizenship and recognising needs and ambitions outside a neoliberal framework, (b) rethink components of formal and informal communication, and (c) reconceptualise media literacies beyond Western-oriented definitions. We propose that professionals and status holders need to understand how and when they (can) trust media and sources; how what we might call "open-mindedness to the media literacy of others" is a dialogic performative skill that is linked to contexts of time and place. It requires self-reflective approach to integration, and the identities of being a professional and an Eritrean stakeholder. Co-designing such media literacy training will bring reflexivity rather than the more generic term "competence" within the heart of both media literacy and inclusive communication.


Percentage survival and mean percentage change in height were compared for 19 native tree and shrub species planted at Ankafobe Forest, a degraded fragment of highland forest, at ten months after planting. The species varied considerably in both, survival and growth. Best performers included Macaranga alnifolia (Euphorbiaceae), Harungana madagascariensis (Clusiaceae), Filicium decipiens (Sapindaceae) and Dodonaea madagascariensis (Sapindaceae). A comparison of survival between relatively short seedlings compared to relatively tall seedlings revealed no significant difference. This information will be used to increase the efficiency of forest restoration at this site.


Matriculating in December 2013 from a co-educational government school in the Western Cape, the writer was the top student in the National Senior Certificate examinations for History in the Province. She shares her personal experience, by providing insight from a learner's perspective, on the importance of studying history. She further shares her opinion on how a learner's achievement can be directly affected by a teacher's input and method of teaching. Based on her experience, she comments on the traits present in a superior teacher, teaching methods and techniques which she found effective in her learning experience, and what aspects of teaching contributed to her academic success, passion for history and its utility, and development as a person.


There is increasing need for participatory approaches to support the development of sustainable farming systems, based on the active involvement of stakeholders in the definition of research objectives and priorities. This paper reports the experience of a team of agronomy researchers involved in the SLIM project (http://slim.open.ac.uk), around a case study of nitrate pollution. The agro-ecosystem analysis included biophysical processes at microcatchment scale and the stakeholders' perceptions, interests and practices related to the nitrate issue (stakeholders analysis). The conceptual SLIM framework model supported new interactions among stakeholders, that were facilitated by researchers, using dialogical tools to enable them to use scientific data and to integrate their own knowledge on the farming system. The agro-environment policies, based on compulsory prescriptions, revealed weak assumptions and insufficient integration of scientific knowledge. The stakeholder analysis contributed to the identification of priorities both for scientific research and agro-environment policies. Researchers provided the site-specific scientific knowledge, in a way that enabled stakeholders to identify the relationships between agricultural practices, landscape values and the nitrate pollution issue and to elaborate shared strategies to develop concerted actions. New spaces for interaction between researchers and stakeholders should be created to face complex agro-environment issues at catchment scale, such as the nitrate pollution of groundwater. The implication for agronomy research is that the experiments should be designed to produce suitable results to facilitate participatory sessions and that it is worthwhile to invest in specific skills of communication science and group dynamics management within the agronomy researchers' community, in order to integrate agronomy knowledge into high quality participatory processes.


"The Optic of the State" traces the production of nationalist imaginaries through the public visual representation of modern state formation in Brazil and Argentina. As Jens Andermann reveals, the foundational visions of national heritage, territory, and social and ethnic composition were conceived and implemented, but also disputed and contested, in a complex interplay between government, cultural, and scientific institutions and actors, as a means of propagating political agendas and power throughout the emerging states. The purpose of these imaginaries was to vindicate the political upheavals of the recent past and secure the viability of the newly independent states through a sense of historic destiny and inevitable evolution. The careful presentation of artifacts and spectacles was also aimed abroad in order to win the favor of European imperial powers and thereby acquire a competitive place in the nascent global economy of the late nineteenth century. "The Optic of the State" offers a fascinating critique of the visual aspects of national mythology. It exposes how scientific and cultural institutions inscribed the state-form in time and space, thus presenting historical processes as natural "givens."


In this study, we aimed to develop an understanding of the triple effects of sulfamethoxazole-erythromycin-tetracycline (ETS) and the dual effects of sulfamethoxazole-tetracycline (ST), erythromycin-sulfamethoxazole (ES) and erythromycin-tetracycline (ET) on the anaerobic treatment of pharmaceutical industry wastewater throughout a year of operation. Concentrations of the antibiotics in the influent were gradually increased until the metabolic collapse of the anaerobic sequencing batch reactors (SBRs), which corresponded to ETS (40 + 3 + 3 mg/L) and ST (25 + 2.5 mg/L), ET (4 + 4 mg/L) and ES (3 + 40 mg/L). Acetate accumulation in the anaerobic SBRs, acetoclastic activity of the anaerobic sludge taken from different antibiotic feeding stages and also expression of acetyl-coA synthetase from the acetoclastic methanogenic pathway on the mRNA level were assessed. The results indicated that, while acetate accumulation and decrease of acetoclastic activity were observed after stage 3 in the ST and ES reactors, and stage 7 in the ETS and ET reactors, the expression of acetyl-coA synthetase was mostly decreased in the last stages in all SBRs, in which antibiotic mixture feeding was terminated. It might be speculated that acetoclastic methanogens have an important role in acetate degradation by expressing acetyl-coA synthetase.


The technological needs to achieve CO2 neutrality during glass manufacturing have been investigated by theoretical calculations on energy balances and experimental investigations on batch reactivity and fining efficiency. The concept is based on the assumption of utilization of woody bio fuel combustion directly over the batch blanket and glass melt bath for heating the glass furnace. Energy balance calculations were made for a "hot top", 50 tonnes per day continuous furnace. Furthermore, elimination of the chemically bound CO2 in the glass batch has been considered by investigating the possible substitution of the batch carbonates by other compounds not bearing chemically bound CO2. Compounds not emitting oxides of carbon, nitrogen or sulphur were considered as candidate batch components. Studies on the effect of batch melting and fining indicate a beneficial effect on energy efficiency and melting rate when using carbonate substitutes. It is concluded that the combustion concept is theoretically fully possible for glass tank application. The substitution of batch carbonates by non carbon compounds is questionable from an environmental point view since the alternatives are expected to be synthesized by routes emitting CO2.


Ordovician cephalopods from the Valongo Formation are among the first Ordovician fossils described from the Iberian Peninsula. The present review shows a lower taxonomical diversity than previously reported. Large endocerids and orthocerids are abundant in beds of early Oretanian (Middle Darriwilian) age, and
orthocerids and some tarphycerids occur in strata of early Dobrotivian (Late Darriwilian) age. Despite the poor preservation in shales and the absence of internal structures, five different forms of longicones were identified, remaining them in open nomenclature. Tarphycerids are better recognizable and belong to the late Darriwilian forms Trocholites fugax and T. cf. depressus, with the former species recorded over a wide area of Ibero-Armorica and Bohemia, and the second related to a Baltic form. The occurrence of the genus Trocholites among Circumpolar Gondwana cephalopod faunas is consistent with the sporadic transfer of warm to temperate water masses southwards from the vicinity of Baltica, through a period of climatic
disturbances affecting the southern hemisphere during the late Darriwilian.


Objective- To evaluate the some serum biochemical alterations after urinary diversion with colonic segment.
Design- Experimental in vivo study.
Animals- five adult healthy mixed breed dogs of both sexes weighing between 25-40 kg.
Procedures- In this approach, fifteen centimeters of the descending colon with preservation of its mesenteric vessels was resected and this segment longitudinally was opened and flushed with copious amount diluted Povidon Iodine 0.1% and the remaining colon re-anastomosed with seromuscular sutures. Then two ends of transected ureters were drawn into the resected colon by mosquito hemostatic forceps and simple interrupted sutures were placed between the ureters and the colonic mucosa for uretero-colonic anastomosis. The uretero–colonic part in a cap form transplanted to partially cystectomized bladder with one layer of Cushing pattern suture. In this study, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), serum creatinine, Ca, P, Na, K, Cl ions, pH, and bicarbonate levels were measured before surgery and at the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 20, 25, 35 and 45 postoperative days.
Results- BUN and serum creatinine concentrations were increased significantly at first three postoperative days but regressed to the normal levels gradually. After operation, hyperchloremic metabolic acidosis with low sodium and potassium levels was diagnosed in 5 dogs. In all animals, hypocalcemia and hyperphosphatemia were significant. All of the biochemical parameters except calcium, phosphor, and sodium regressed to the normal levels within the study.
Conclusions and Clinical Relevance- In conclusion, the salt-loss syndrome and metabolic acidosis are the most complications after urinary diversion with colonic segment in dog.


Research has established that student-athletes drink more alcohol and experience greater consequences compared to their non-athlete peers, prompting many investigators to consider university athletes an at risk subpopulation of college students. However, a dearth of research exists on explaining drinking behavior among student-athletes in general, and among team leaders compared to nonleaders in particular. This article responds to calls in the literature for more explanatory research assessing differences in alcohol use between team members and team leaders. Specifically, the aim of this study was to investigate, in a multivariate assessment, the ability of normative beliefs, perceptions of risk, coaches' attitudes toward drinking, and socio-demographic variables to discriminate among four groups of student athletes classified across levels of drinking intensity and leadership status. An anonymous survey was administered to 211 student-athletes at a mid-size, southeastern university. Results indicated substantial drinking behavior among this group. A multiple discriminant function analysis revealed that student-athletes who were non-leaders and engaged in heavy, episodic drinking perceived greater risks associated with alcohol consumption, greater leniency from coaches, and greater levels of alcohol use among peers. Implications for university interventions are discussed. ********** During the 1980's, the connection between collegiate athletic participation and substance use gained increasing attention throughout the United States, as media outlets began reporting incidents of alcohol and other drug problems among student-athletes (Anderson, Albrecht, McKeag, Hough, & McGrew, 1991; Overman & Terry, 1991; Selby, Weinstein, & Bird, 1990). This connection was surprising, in that athletic participation was perceived as a structured experience for young adults that supposedly provided insulation from substance related problems (Overman & Terry). The increased focus on alcohol and drug use by student-athletes prompted an examination by the NCAA as well as academic researchers (Anderson et al.; Overman & Terry). Research since this time has established that student-athletes often drink more alcohol and experience greater drinking related consequences than their non-athletic peers, prompting many researchers to categorize student-athletes as an at risk subpopulation of students (Leichliter, Meilman, Presley, & Cashin, 1998; Thombs, 2000; Wechsler et al., 1997). For instance, Leichliter et al. found that the per week average of drinks and percentage of respondents reporting heavy, episodic drinking increased as the level of athletic participation increased. In a survey of students at 140 American colleges, Wechsler and colleagues found that student-athletes engaged in binge drinking more often than non-athletes. The 2001 NCAA Study of Substance Use Habits of College Student Athletes (The National Collegiate Athletic Association Research Staff, 2001), a nationwide investigation of 21,225 participants, noted significant involvement in alcohol related consequences across a number of events including having a hangover (52.4%), nausea or vomiting (43.7%), and driving a car while under the influence (29.7%). Clearly, heavy alcohol use and associated consequences remains a serious issue for coaches, administrators, and campus personnel. Social norm theory has been one model of college drinking that has received considerable attention in the literature (Berkowitz, 2004; Borsari & Carey, 2003; Perkins, 2002). According to Berkowitz, this model is predicated on the assumption that peer influences have a greater impact on individual behavior than biological, personal, and cultural/familial variables. At its core, social norm theory predicts that behavior is impacted by false perceptions of how other individuals in our social environments think and act. In an effort to avoid isolation, individual behavior converges to a perceived (and often false) norm. …


There is widespread public concern regarding the status of American schooling. There has been substantial interest evolving over the recent years concerning the role of the teacher in decisions made in the operation of schools. This paper examines the degree of congruence between teachers perceived and aspired level of shared decision making and teacher self-efficacy, which is believed to be a central component in the restructuring of schooling. Also discussed are ancillary questions which the literature suggests may contribute to teacher self efficacy. It is asserted that there is a lack of clarity regarding role expectations and aspirations of teachers regarding decision making, which results in a lack of general and personal self-efficacy. Based upon the literature review, the author states that the teacherOs sense of competency and self-efficacy is at the heart of reform and is the sine qua non of ********** There is widespread public concern regarding the status of American schooling. Since the early 1970Os American education has been at the forefront of public policy analysis. In the ensuing decades, we have witnessed a parade of panels, task forces and commissions press for reform of education. Subsequently, these groups promulgated a spate of critical documents in the 1980Os followed with more than 200 state commissions and task forces reporting the demise of public education in the United States. The rhetoric of these reports was often accusatory and strident. One of the major reports, A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, (Commission for Excellence in Education, 1983) discussed education in terms of war and surrender. In an effort to respond to the reports detailing the failure of schooling in America, educational reform was initiated with great energy and determination. The first wave of restructuring efforts to increase the quality and effectiveness of the educational enterprise was comprised of public policy mandates and inducements. This wave was characterized by adherence to the Industrial Age model of management (Taylor, 1947). It was authoritarian, teacher centered, competitive, stressed uniform minimum standards, accountability and was single pathed and linear (Sergiovanni, 1993). These coercive initiatives did little to change either the functioning or the public perception of the status of American schools. Following this unsuccessful attempt at school reform, came the second wave of reform. This current wave has emphasized capacity-building and system-changing activities that address fundamental transformation of the infrastructure of public schools. It espouses learner centered teaching, participation, cooperation and collaboration and is multi-pathed. This era is characterized by attempts to increase the use of democratic principles and approaches consonant with the current shared decision making (SDM)) and site-based management (SBM) focus. Although the intent of this wave appears lauditory, there was little, if any preparation of school personnel to meet this lofty call for change. This lack of preparation for an innovation is evidenced throughout the attempted reforms of the educational system, and this failing has had a substantive effect on teacher attributes of efficacy and empowerment. Empowerment and Shared Decision Making: Teacher Issues In response to the second wave of reform calling for school management decentralization and increased participation and collaboration in decision making, there has been substantial interest evolving over the recent years concerning the role of the teacher in decisions made in the operation of schools (Morrison, G.M, Wakefield, P., Walker, D. & Solberg, S. 1994; Husband, R.E. & Short, P.M., 1994; Keedy, J.L. & Finch, A.M., 1994; Hess, G. A., 1994). Numerous journal articles have been written about the need for decentralization of authority and the inclusion of teachers in site-based decision-making and provided evidence of positive outcomes (Weiss, 1993, Reyes, 1992; Chase, 1991; Sebring & Camburn, 1992), but there is little research to provide information regarding the role, beliefs and aspirations of the teachers. …


Abstract : In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, port security has emerged as a significant part of the overall debate on U.S. homeland security. Many security experts believe ports are vulnerable to terrorist attack because of their size, easy accessibility by water and land, and the tremendous amount of cargo they handle. To raise port security standards, Congress passed the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-295) in November 2002. In the 108th Congress, there is growing debate about whether current efforts to improve port security are proceeding at sufficient pace and whether the nation is devoting enough resources for this purpose. This report will be updated periodically.


This text suggests a critical reading of the rescaling theory through the case of Montreal. The authors stress the importance of institutional context for analysing the process of construction and legitimisation of the metropolitan level in a context of scale restructuring. The Montreal example illustrates the strength of local inertia and questions the idea that collective action and mobilization emerge at the metropolitan scale; they are mostly carried at the provincial and local level.


We present GradientDICE for estimating the density ratio between the state distribution of the target policy and the sampling distribution in off-policy reinforcement learning. GradientDICE fixes several problems of GenDICE (Zhang et al., 2020), the state-of-the-art for estimating such density ratios. Namely, the optimization problem in GenDICE is not a convex-concave saddle-point problem once nonlinearity in optimization variable parameterization is introduced to ensure positivity, so any primal-dual algorithm is not guaranteed to converge or find the desired solution. However, such nonlinearity is essential to ensure the consistency of GenDICE even with a tabular representation. This is a fundamental contradiction, resulting from GenDICE's original formulation of the optimization problem. In GradientDICE, we optimize a different objective from GenDICE by using the Perron-Frobenius theorem and eliminating GenDICE's use of divergence. Consequently, nonlinearity in parameterization is not necessary for GradientDICE, which is provably convergent under linear function approximation.


Studies with two species of bacteria, Pseudomonas putida and Hyphomicrobium sp. strain ZV620, were carried out to evaluate the overall net rate of accumulation of biofilm, the biofilm species composition, and individual species shear-related removal rates. Bacterial cells of either or both species were deposited onto glass or biofilm surfaces to initiate multispecies biofilms. Subsequent biofilm development was carried out under known conditions of nutrient concentration and laminar flow. Establishment of a depositing organism in a biofllm composed of another species was found to be a function of the relative growth rates of the bacterial species. In the case of simultaneous species deposition and subsequent binary culture development, the fastergrowing organisms rapidly became the dominant biofilm species, but the slower-growing organisms remained established within the biofilm and continued to increase in numbers over time. The results also indicated that the rate of cell removal by fluid shear for a species was a function of biofilm cell number only if the species concentration was uniform with depth; in essence, only the upper layers of the biofilm were sheared off.


Near-infrared spectra (1300–2500 nm) collected from lysed blood solutions were shown to correlate with the pH of the solutions measured potentiometrically. Cross-validated partial least-squares (PLS) models were developed from these spectral data, which provided standard error of prediction (SEP) values below 0.05 pH units for a pH range of 1.0 (6.8–7.8). Experiments were designed to eliminate possible correlation between pH and other components in the blood in order to ensure that variations in the spectral data correlated to pH were due to hydrogen ion changes only. Further work was performed to discern the primary source of pH information in the lysed blood spectra by using spectra collected from plasma and histidine solutions. The blood, plasma, and histidine data sets were compared with the use of loading vectors from principal component analysis (PCA). These loading vectors show that variations in the spectra of the titrated amino acid histidine mimic those seen in lysed blood, but not those seen in plasma. These results suggest that histidine residues of hemoglobin are providing the spectral variation necessary for pH modeling in the lysed blood solutions. It is further shown that the observed pH-sensitive histidine bands do not arise from the exchangeable proton on the imidazole ring of histidine; rather they arise from the variation in the C–H bonds of the C2 and/or the C4 carbons of the imidazole ring as they are influenced by the titration of the nitrogen-bound proton of the imidazole ring.


Which legal instrument can effectively address current challenges in social media governance and how do companies take their share, shifting away from opaque enforcement of terms of services and increasingly copying governmental structures? In a first step, this article describes and analyzes the way that states address hate speech and misinformation in their respective regulatory projects. Secondly, it examines how social media platforms sanction unwanted content and integrate (or plan on integrating) procedural rules such as appeal and due process principles in their moderation policies. Large social media platforms tend to adopt new structures that resemble administrative law—an uncommon development for non-state actors.


In cancer treatment the response to chemotherapy is often characterized by a wide interpatient variability. The increasing popularity of herbal supplements among cancer patients may contribute to this phenomenon. Since these supplements may affect drug metabolizing cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, plasma concentrations of anticancer drugs could alter due to pharmacokinetic herb-drug interactions. Consequently, patients could be undertreated or have an increased risk of toxicities. To prevent these serious consequences, it is of interest to identify potential pharmacokinetic herb-drug interactions in cancer patients. However, clinical studies concerning pharmacokinetic interactions between herbal supplements and anticancer drugs are relatively scarce. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis was to investigate pharmacokinetic interactions between widely used herbal supplements and anticancer drugs in cancer patients. All investigated herbal supplements showed significant effects on CYP enzymes in vitro. One of our clinical studies showed that Echinacea purpurea (Echinaforce®) at the recommended dose did not significantly alter the pharmacokinetics of docetaxel and therefore this herb-drug combination can be considered safe. Most likely, this result also applies to other batches of Echinaforce®, since the interbatch variation in alkylamide content was relatively small in a quality control analysis of multiple Echinaforce® liquid extracts. In another clinical study St. John's wort (Hyperiplant®) at the recommended dose significantly decreased the plasma levels of docetaxel in cancer patients. Based on this result cancer patients are advised to refrain from St. John's wort during chemotherapy with docetaxel in order to prevent potential undertreatment. The clinical effects of grape seed extract on the activity of CYP2D6, which is an essential enzyme in the biotransformation of tamoxifen, was investigated in healthy volunteers. In this study the sensitive CYP2D6 substrate dextromethorphan served as a model drug for tamoxifen. Supplementation with grape seed extract did not significantly affect the urinary metabolic ratio of dextromethorphan. Thus, grape seed extract appears to be safe to combine with dextromethorphan and drugs extensively metabolized by CYP2D6. In an ongoing study the potential inhibiting effects of milk thistle on the pharmacokinetics of docetaxel and tolbutamide are investigated in cancer patients. In this study tolbutamide and docetaxel served as substrates of CYP2C9 and CYP3A4, respectively. Preliminary results showed that the pharmacokinetics of tolbutamide and docetaxel were not substantially affected by milk thistle supplementation. However, definitive conclusions of this study cannot be drawn prior to evaluation of the last patient. In summary, St. John's wort significantly decreased the systemic exposure of docetaxel, suggesting that this herb-drug combination should be avoided. In contrast, the investigated commercial products of Echinacea purpurea and grape seed extract may be considered safe to combine with CYP3A4 and CYP2D6 substrates, respectively. This thesis shows that significant effects of herbal supplements on CYP enzymes in vitro are often not extrapolatable to humans. Therefore, clinical studies should be performed to confirm significant results obtained in vitro. Considering the results of the clinical studies described in this thesis, the majority of the herbal supplements, except St. John's wort, seems to pose limited risk for causing pharmacokinetic interactions with anticancer drugs.


The Computational Fluid Dynamics code OVERFLOW includes as one of its solver options an algorithm which is a fairly small piece of code but which accounts for a significant portion of the total computational time. This paper studies some of the issues in accelerating this piece of code by using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The algorithm needs to be modified to be suitable for a GPU and attention needs to be given to 64-bit and 32-bit arithmetic. Interestingly, the work done for the GPU produced ideas for accelerating the CPU code and led to significant speedup on the CPU.


I show that, in a benchmark model, debt securities minimize the welfare losses associated with the moral hazards of excessive risk-taking and lax effort. For any security design, the variance of the security payoff is a statistic that summarizes these welfare losses. Debt securities have the least variance, among all limited liability securities with the same expected value. In other models, mixtures of debt and equity are exactly optimal, and pure debt securities are approximately optimal. I study both static and dynamic security design problems, and show that these two types of problems are equivalent. I use moral hazard in mortgage lending as a recurring example, but my results apply to other corporate finance and principal-agent problems.


Statistical modelling techniques for automatic reading systems substantially rely on the availability of compact and meaningful feature representations. State-ofthe-art feature extraction for offline handwriting recognition is usually based on heuristic approaches that describe either basic geometric properties or statistical distributions of raw pixel values. Working well on average, still fundamental insights into the nature of handwriting are desired. In this paper we present a novel approach for the automatic extraction of appearance-based representations of offline handwriting data. Given the framework of deep belief networks – Restricted Boltzmann Machines – a two-stage method for feature learning and optimization is developed. Given two standard corpora of both Arabic and Roman handwriting data it is demonstrated across script boundaries, that automatically learned features achieve recognition results comparable to state-of-theart handcrafted features. Given these promising results the potential of feature learning for future reading systems is discussed.


OBJECTIVE
The study aimed to assess the clinical results after osteotome technique to lift sinus floor, without graft materials in the residual bone height (RBH), below 8 mm.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Twenty-two patients aged from 19 to 70 years old in need of maxillary sinus floor augmentation were enrolled in this study. Preoperative and postoperative cone beam computerized tomography (CBCT) were taken to guide the surgery. Twenty-seven implants were inserted and followed clinically, another CBCT exam was taken at 6 months postoperatively. The diameter of the implants was 4.7 mm (SD 0.4 mm), the length was 10 mm (SD 1.0 mm). The average residual bone height was 6.7 mm (SD 1.2 mm).

RESULTS
No implants were lost after the surgery and the 2 years follow-up. There was no obvious marginal bone loss during the 6 months follow-up verified by CBCT. The mean bone gain at the implant sites was 2.5 mm (SD 1.5 mm).

CONCLUSION
The study verified the good and stable clinical result of the OSFE technique without using bone grafting materials when the RBH was only 4.1-8 mm.


This research attempts to explain the realization of ideational meaning that is used by the commentators of 2016 AFF Cup football match final. The subject is the commentator of 2016 AFF Cup football match final. Meanwhile, the objects of this research are ideational meaning, that is realized in 2016 AFF Cup Final commentator text. The type of this research is descriptive qualitative. The technique that is used is library technique. This research uses functional systemic linguistic as the approach. The lingual data that have been collected are analyzed based on the ideational meaning that involves processes, participants and circumstances. They appear in six types of clauses based on the process (transitivity). There are six type of process to analyze: material process, mental process, verbal process, behavioral process, relational process and existential process. As a result, the commentators most dominantly used material process. Verbal process and mental behavioral process are not found in the commentator text.
Keywords: Ideational meaning, processes, participants, circumstance


This paper provides empirical evidence for the importance of institutions in determining the outcome of crises on long-term growth. Once unobserved country-specific effects and other sources of endogeneity are accounted for, political institutions affect growth through their interaction with crises. The results suggest that only countries with strong democracies, high levels of political competition and external constraints on government can potentially benefit from crises and use them as opportunities to enhance long-term output per capita and productivity growth.


Log-Gaussian Cox processes are an important class of models for spatial and spatiotemporal point-pattern data. Delivering robust Bayesian inference for this class of models presents a substantial challenge, since Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms require careful tuning in order to work well. To address this issue, we describe recent advances in MCMC methods for these models and their implementation in the R package lgcp. Our suite of R functions provides an extensible framework for inferring covariate effects as well as the parameters of the latent field. We also present methods for Bayesian inference in two further classes of model based on the log-Gaussian Cox process. The first of these concerns the case where we wish to fit a point process model to data consisting of event-counts aggregated to a set of spatial regions: we demonstrate how this can be achieved using data-augmentation. The second concerns Bayesian inference for a class of marked-point processes specified via a multivariate log-Gaussian Cox process model. For both of these extensions, we give details of their implementation in R.


This indispensable guide to the entire world of fashion has been completely revised to include detailed information on every important designer from 1840 up to the present day, including not only couturiers but also shoe, hat and knitwear specialists, costume designers, jewelers and hairdressers. It also covers the fashion media, photographers and illustrators, influential art movements, fashion terms, garment and accessory styles, technical processes, and every kind of fabric, as well as personalities who have influenced fashion or promoted a style. Extensively illustrated, international in scope and completely up to date, this is an essential sourcebook for designers, students, collectors and enthusiasts.


Hybrid perovskites represent a potential paradigm shift for the creation of low-cost solar cells. Current power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) exceed 22%. However, despite this, record PCEs are still far from their theoretical Shockley–Queisser limit of 31%. To increase these PCE values, there is a pressing need to understand, quantify and microscopically model charge recombination processes in full working devices. Here, we present a complete microscopic account of charge recombination processes in high efficiency (18–19% PCE) hybrid perovskite (mixed cation and methylammonium lead iodide) solar cells. We employ diffraction-limited optical measurements along with relevant kinetic modeling to establish, for the first time, local photoluminescence quantum yields, trap densities, trapping efficiencies, charge extraction efficiencies, quasi-Fermi-level splitting, and effective PCE estimates. Correlations between these spatially resolved parameters, in turn, allow us to conclude that intrinsic electron traps in the perovskite active layers limit the performance of these state-of-the-art hybrid perovskite solar cells.


For agent technology to be accepted in real-world applications, humans must be able to customize and control agent operations. One approach for providing such controllability is to enable a human supervisor to define guidance for agents in the form of policies that establish boundaries on agent behavior. This paper considers the problem of conflicting guidance for agents, making contributions in two areas: (a) outlining a space of conflict types, and (b) defining resolution methods that provide robust agent operation in the face of conflicts. These resolution methods combine a guidancebased preference relation over plan choices with an ability to extend the set of options considered by an agent when conflicts arise. The paper also describes a PRS-based guidance conflict-handling capability applied within a multiagent intelligence-gathering domain.


The Awjila language is a small Berber language spoken in the Libyan oasis of Awjila. It has several features that make the language different from other Berber languages, such as a phonemic accent, schwa in open syllables and the retention of the Proto-Berber *β as v.

This thesis consists of three parts: the grammar, the texts and the lexicon. The grammar is the main analytical part of this thesis, but could not exist without the in-depth study of the available Awjila texts and the lexicon. Due to the political situation in Libya, it was not possible to conduct fieldwork on the language. This thesis is therefore based on the published sources on the language. The texts and word list by Umberto Paradisi are the most important of these sources.

The grammar contains a lengthy discussion on the interpretation and analysis of the transcription and phonology. This part give us many new insights into the interpretation of many factors of the language. Besides the phonology, the grammar also discusses the morphology of the noun and verb, and the syntax of the language.

In the appendix all published Awjila texts have been included, provided with a phonemic transcription and a word-by-word analysis. This analysis is essential for the understanding of the language, and it is referenced extensively in the grammar.

The lexicon contains all lexical material available to us on the Awjila language, with a new phonemic analysis of the transcriptions, and a full concordance of all the attestations of the words in its different grammatical forms in the available sources. The lexicon also contains some etymological notes, comparing Awjila to the other Berber languages which will aid future research into the linguistic history of Awjila and other Berber languages.


Seventeenth-century England saw religious dissension, civil war, the Interregnum
and then the reinstatement of the King, war with the Dutch, France and Spain,
economic growth and then decline, the increasing influence of mercantile
companies, frequent plague epidemics and the Great Fire of London. By a happy
coincidence, Samuel Pepys wrote his famous Diary (1660-1669) during this
tumultuous decade, after Charles II was restored to the English throne. At this
time, nothing was certain, especially life itself, but out of this uncertainty and
change arose opportunity for those with the talent and desire to improve their
lives. Pepys was one man who took advantage of these opportunities to embark on
a stellar career, one that would make him extremely wealthy.
In her excellent biography of Pepys, Claire Tomalin writes that money is one of
the obsessive themes of the Diary: 'how it is made, how borrowed and lent, how
saved, how hidden. ' This is a rather provocative statement, one that would be
interesting to examine more closely. Was Pepys really obsessed with money and
if so, why? Was he different from his contemporaries in this respect, or did other
men monitor their financial affairs in much the same way? What did money
represent to Pepys, and how did he acquire it and use it? The questions raise some
relevant and interesting issues pertaining to Restoration England: the acquisition
of money and the behaviour of ambitious men; consumerism, credit and
indebtedness; financial and administrative systems and corruption. These issues
have not been systematically and collectively addressed in the scholarship of this
period. They are worth considering and the intention of this study is to
'interrogate' Pepys and his attitude to money through his Diary, making
comparisons and contextualising where possible.
Samuel Pepys's Diary has been a rich source of information for scholars and of
interest to anyone who enjoys history. The definitive version of the Diary
published by Robert Latham and William Matthews has become the standard
edition for historical scholars and writers in many fields: political, social,
economic, bureaucratic, and naval; it is the main source of material used for this thesis. This thesis seeks to determine whether the Diary could be useful in
understanding Pepys's attitude to money, how this influenced his behaviour, and
whether this understanding could be extended to the broader community of
Restoration London.


This paper describes our participation to the TREC HARD track (High Accuracy Retrieval of Documents) and the the TREC Enterprise track. The main goal of our HARD participation is the development and evaluation of so-called query profiles: Short summaries of the retrieved results that enable the user to perform more focused search, for instance by zooming in on a particular time period. The main goal of our Enterprise track participation is to investigate the potential of the structural information for this type of retrieval task. In particular, we study the use of the thread information and the subject and header fields of the email documents. As a secondary and long standing research goal, we aim at developing an information retrieval framework that supports many diverse retrieval applications by means of one simple yet powerful query language (similar to SQL or relational algebra) that hides the implementation details of retrieval approaches from the application developer, while still giving the application developer control over the ranking process. Both the HARD system and the Enterprise system (as well as our TRECVID video retrieval system) are based on MonetDB, an open source database system developed at CWI.


Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have taken the materials science world by storm, with potentials of near infinite possibilities and the panacea for adsorption-based carbon capture. Yet, no pilot-scale (or larger-scale) study exists on MOFs for carbon capture. Beyond material scalability issues, this clear gap between the scientific and engineering literature relates to the absence of suitable and accessible assessment of MOFs in an adsorption process. Here, we have developed a simple adsorbent screening tool with process economics to evaluate adsorbents for post-combustion capture, while also considering factors relevant to industry. Specifically, we have assessed the 25 adsorbents (22 MOFs, 2 zeolites, 1 activated carbon) against performance constraints – i.e. CO2 purity and recovery – and cost. We have considered four different CO2 capture scenarios to represent a range of CO2 inlet concentrations. The cost is compared to that of amine-based solvents for which a corresponding model was developed. Using the model developed, we have conceptually assessed the materials properties and process parameters influencing the purity, recovery and cost in order to design the 'best' adsorbent. We have also set-up a tool for readers to screen their own adsorbent. In this contribution, we show that minimal N2 adsorption and moderate enthalpies of adsorption are key in obtaining good process performance and reducing cost. This stands in contrast to the popular approaches of maximizing CO2 capacity or surface area. Of the 22 MOFs evaluated, UTSA-16 shows the best performance and lowest cost for post-combustion capture, having performance in-line with the benchmark, i.e. zeolite 13X. Mg-MOF-74 performs poorly. The cost of using the adsorbents remains overall higher than that of an amine-based absorption process. Ultimately, this study provides specific directions for material scientists to design adsorbents and assess their performance at the process scale. This works intends to bridge the gap between scientific and engineering studies to accelerate CO2 capture adsorbents development. The approach can be extended to other molecular separations.


The legal consciousness of ordinary citizens concerning offensive public speech is a phenomenon whose legal status has been vigorously debated, but which has received little empirical analysis. Drawing on observations in public spaces in three northern California communities and in-depth interviews with 100 subjects recruited from these public locations, I analyze variation across race and gender groups in experiences with offensive public speech and attitudes about how such speech should be dealt with by law. Among these respondents, white women and people of color are far more likely than white men to report being the targets of offensive public speech. However, white women and people of color are not significantly more likely than white men to favor its legal regulation. Respondents generally oppose the legal regulation of offensive public speech, but they employ different discourses to explain why. Subjects' own words suggest four relatively distinct paradigms that emphasize the First Amendment, autonomy, impracticality, and distrust of authority. Members of different racial and gender groups tend to use different discourses. These differences suggest that the legal consciousness of ordinary citizens is not a unitary phenomenon, but must be situated in relation to particular types of laws, particular social hierarchies, and the experiences of different groups with the law. "[H]ey white bitch, come suck my dick!"1 "I hate women; they're all sluts."2 "Monkey for a dollar!"3 "You fucking people need to go back where you came from, I'm sick of this, you come over here and think you can take everything away from us."4 I. Introduction When one experiences remarks such as these in a public place, law may be the last thing that comes to mind. However, ideas about law, both conscious and unconscious, shape how people make sense of such interactions, what types of speech they consider problematic, and what remedies or responses they believe are possible. Examining the links between people's experiences with street harassment and their attitudes about its legal regulation can shed light on the roots and consequences of the "legal consciousness" of different social groups. In this article I analyze the legal consciousness of ordinary citizens by examining how experiences with and legal attitudes toward offensive public speech vary by race, gender, and class. I find that white women and people of color experience dramatically higher levels of offensive public speech and that these experiences significantly affect their daily lives. Yet experiencing harms from offensive public speech does not translate into supporting its legal regulation. Subjects offer a variety of reasons to justify their opposition to the legal regulation of such speech. Members of different racial and gender groups articulate distinctive discourses about offensive public speech and the law that invoke various and competing schemas regarding law. These understandings reflect their prior experiences with the law and their attitudes about the prospects for social change through law. This variation suggests that an explicit comparison of particular legal phenomenon across categories of race, gender, and class provide a more nuanced understanding of legal consciousness. II. Prior Approaches to Offensive Public Speech Racist and sexist speech generate much debate about the proper balance between freedom of speech and protection of historically disadvantaged groups from verbal abuse. First Amendment absolutists argue that speech cannot and should not be legally restricted (Post 1991). Critical race theorists argue that racist speech results in substantial harms for its victims (Matsuda 1993), perpetuates inequality, and must therefore be legally limited to realize the equality guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment (Lawrence 1990). Cultural theorists contemplate how the performative aspects of speech translate into harms (Butler 1997). …


OBJECTIVE
COVID-19 has impacted many facets of daily life and the legal system is no exception. Legal scholars have hypothesized that the effects of the pandemic may contribute to more coercive plea bargains (Cannon, 2020; Johnson, 2020). In this study, we explored defense attorneys' perceptions of whether and how the plea process has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

HYPOTHESES
This study was exploratory, and we made no a priori hypotheses.

METHOD
We surveyed 93 practicing United States defense attorneys about their perceptions of whether and how the pandemic has affected court procedures, plea-bargaining and prosecutorial behavior, and defendant decision-making. We conducted semistructured follow-up interviews with 13 defense attorneys to help contextualize the survey responses.

RESULTS
The majority of defense attorneys (81%, n = 76) reported that the plea process had changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that they experienced difficulty contacting and communicating with their clients, especially those who were detained. Two thirds of defense attorneys (n = 42) who said the plea process had changed thought that prosecutors were offering more lenient deals. One third of defense attorneys with detained clients (n = 23) reported having had clients plead guilty due to COVID-19 related conditions who might not have under normal circumstances.

CONCLUSIONS
The majority of defense attorneys reported that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their ability to access and advise clients, and they believed that leverage in plea negotiations had shifted further to individual prosecutors. At the same time, the attorneys reported that prosecutors were offering more lenient deals, painting a complex picture of the plea negotiation process during the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).


Monetary Policy in Interdependent Economies provides the first comprehensive overview of the implications of using game theory to analyze interactions among national monetary policymakers. It synthesizes the pessimistic view of sovereign policymaking that results from the analysis of one-shot games with the optimistic view derived from the analysis of quid pro quo strategies in repeated games. Good outcomes, the authors conclude, require coordination among noncooperative policymakers, and that sometimes policymakers, must be forced to cooperate. They suggest two roles for supranational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund: the IMF can provide a forum where noncooperative policymakers, can work to achieve good outcomes, and it can police agreements among cooperative policymakers Canzoneri and Henderson take clear stands on controversial issues and make recent advances in game theory accessible by using a single unified framework to explain a wide range of concepts. They begin by analyzing one-shot interactions between two policymakers, In subsequent chapters they extend their analysis to allow for more policymakers, and coalitions, for repeated interactions among policymakers, and for the possibility of time inconsistency.


Traditional simulation of a target architecture by interpreting object code can be improved by translating the object code to an intermediate format. This approach is called interpretive translation. Despite a substantial performance improvement over traditional interpretation, a large part of the overhead is unnecessary. An alternative approach is block translation, where one or more simulated instructions are translated to directly executable code. This approach has several drawbacks. We discuss the problems with block translation, analyse the overhead of interpretive translation, and describe a hybrid approach-partial translation-that combines the benefits of both approaches. Partial translation implements an intermediate format that supports the addition of run-time generated code whenever appropriate. The perfor- mance limit (slowdown) of interpetive translation is around 15, and real implementations have achieved 20-30. Partial translation will perform considerably better. Finally, we present results from an aggressive implementation of interpretive translation, and results from a proof-of-concept implementation of partial translation.


We propose a feedback class-C voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) that has robust start-up and a large oscillation amplitude. It initially starts oscillating as a conventional cross-coupled LC-VCO for robust start-up and subsequently transforms automatically into an amplitude-enhanced class-C VCO when it reaches steady-state to give improved noise performance. Detailed analysis of the start-up conditions, enhanced oscillation swing, and amplitude stability provides valuable insight into oscillator design considerations. The proposed VCO is implemented in a 0.18-μm CMOS process. The measured phase noise at room temperature is - 125 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset with a power dissipation of 3.4 mW at an oscillation frequency of 4.84 GHz. The figure-of-merit is -193 dBc/Hz.


. We provide detailed abundance analyses of 8 candidate super-metal-rich stars. Five of them are con-(cid:12)rmed to have [Fe = H] > 0 : 2 dex, the generally-accepted limit for super-metal-richness. Furthermore, we derive abundances of several elements and (cid:12)nd that the stars follow trends seen in previous studies of metal-rich stars. Ages are estimated from isochrones and velocities calculated. We (cid:12)nd that there do exist very metal-rich stars that are older than 10 Gyr. This is contrary to what is found in several recent studies of the galactic age-metallicity relation. This is tentative evidence that there might not exist a one-to-one relation between age and metallicity for all stars. This is not surprising considering the current models of the independent evolution of the di(cid:11)erent galactic components. We also (cid:12)nd that one star, HD 182572, could with (cid:24) 75% chance be a thick disk star with, for the thick disk, an extremely high metallicity at 0.34 dex. This star is, intriguingly, also somewhat enhanced in the (cid:11) -elements.


The human brain is a system of neurons that provides great computational capacity via a complicated communication network. A complete description of this network, also known as the human connectome, is an active topic of research as it would provide invaluable knowledge to cognitive neuroscience. Historically, the study of brain connectivity has been marked by a dichotomy between structure and function. Recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide a potential framework for bridging this divide and allowing for a more complete window onto brain connectivity. Here, a framework for examining structural connectivity and functional connectivity in a network is presented with a focus upon the study of well-known subnetworks. An examination of the thalamo-cortical system exhibits the ability to use multivariate MRI data to model a brain network and identify localized connectivity disruptions. A study of a language-based decision-making task shows how functional and structural connectivity may be used to examine the integration of multiple subnetworks and their influence upon cognitive performance. Finally, a study of lateralization in aging demonstrates that both age-related functional and structural are associated with maintaining a high level of cognitive performance. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Bioengineering First Advisor James Gee


Minority Business Enterprise Program's Impact on African American Businesses in Atlanta, Georgia by William A. Hopkins M. Div., International Theological Center, 2008 M. P. A., Georgia State University, 1988 BA, Albany State University, 1969 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Policy Administration Walden University June 2017 Abstract There was a long history of Jim Crow laws in the State of Georgia, which permeated in social, educational, and economical ways that prohibited African American business owners from competing for the state contracts. In 1982, there was a shift in state policy that implemented an outreach programs to seek out African American businesses and ensure that those interested businesses were enrolled as registered vendors for procurement. Yet little is known about the success of those outreach efforts over the lastThere was a long history of Jim Crow laws in the State of Georgia, which permeated in social, educational, and economical ways that prohibited African American business owners from competing for the state contracts. In 1982, there was a shift in state policy that implemented an outreach programs to seek out African American businesses and ensure that those interested businesses were enrolled as registered vendors for procurement. Yet little is known about the success of those outreach efforts over the last 35 years. Using Swearing and Plank's work on survival of minority business programs as a conceptual framework, this study evaluated (a) the association between the registration status (registered, non-registered, unknown) with the Georgia Minority Business Enterprise Program (GMBE Program) and gender, and (b) descriptive information about the outreach efforts of the MBE Program. Data were collected from 108 randomly selected African American small business owners in the State of Georgia through an online survey. A chi-square test revealed a significant association (p = .08) between gender and enrollment of registered vendors, with women more likely to register as vendors than were men. Descriptive data also revealed that nearly half (48% percent) of respondents had not registered with the MBE Program and were not aware of the educational and economic opportunities offered through the program. Contracts were awarded 4 times more frequently to vendors registered with the MBE Program as compared to businesses not registered. The positive social change implications of this study include recommendation to the state of the Georgia MBE Program to collaborate on outreach efforts to African American business owners to encourage economic development in minority communities and minorities-owned businesses. Minority Business Enterprise Program's Impact on African American Businesses in Atlanta, Georgia by William A. Hopkins M. Div., International Theological Center, 2008 MPA, Georgia State University, 1988 BA, Albany State University, 1969 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Policy Administration


Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are very unique in nature and contribute immensely to the growth of the economy of any country in the world. Hence SMEs can be considered to be the greatest source of growth of the economy. Regardless of these contributions, SMEs seem to be faced with an infinite number of problems and challenges. Although it is quite challenging for all businesses (from micro to large) to sustain and maintain a successful enterprise, SMEs face even more difficult challenges because of their unique small and medium sizes. The majority of which are caused by the Government (through restrictive regulations and a lack of SME focused policies), while some are internal, caused by the owners and/or managers. The fundamental objective of this study was to explore and investigate the challenges and problems faced by SMEs and provide some recommendations to overcome these challenges especially within Klerksdorp Orkney Stilfontein Hartebeesfontein (KOSH) area. A study consisting of 195 SMEs was conducted . Each SME faces its own unique challenges, such as lacking the management skills needed to run the business and difficulty accessing markets. Recommendations are suggested to both the Government and SMEs to help overcome these challenges and problems and to help sustain and grow these businesses successfully. List of key words Challenges, contribution, economy, entrepreneurship, and small and medium enterprises.


From January-March 2018 I investigated the possible influences that a debate club could have on the English literacy language development of 5th grade students in a culturally and linguistically diverse school setting. The lessons on debate forums served as an extra-enrichment activity for students that was ungraded. The goal was to create a classroom environment that supported learning through dialogue. To accomplish this, I worked to gain deep understandings of the lived experiences of students. Using a critical ethnographic case study approach, I worked closely with two focal participants, who will be pseudonymously referred to as Raphael and Camila. Both of whom are classified as English Learners (ELs) or students who classified as not fluent in the four modalities of English. I share their progress or changes that may have occurred in their language development throughout the entire process.


Worldwide, seagrass meadows are under threat. Consequently, there is a strong need for seagrass restoration to guarantee the provision of related ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration and habitat provision. Seagrass often grows in vast meadows in which the presence of seagrass itself leads to a reduction of hydrodynamic energy. By modifying the environment, seagrass thus serves as foundation species and ecosystem engineer improving habitat quality for itself and other species as well as positively affecting its own fitness. On the downside, this positive feedback mechanism can render natural recovery of vanished and destroyed seagrass meadows impossible. An innovative approach to promote positive feedback mechanisms in seagrass restoration is to create an artificial seagrass (ASG) that mimics the facilitation function of natural seagrass. ASG could provide a window of opportunity with respect to suitable hydrodynamic and light conditions as well as sediment stabilization to allow natural seagrass to re-establish. Here, we give an overview of challenges and open questions for the application of ASG to promote seagrass restoration based on experimental studies and restoration trials and we propose a general approach for the design of an ASG produced from biodegradable materials. Considering positive feedback mechanisms is crucial to support restoration attempts. ASG provides promising benefits when habitat conditions are too harsh for seagrass meadows to re-establish themselves.


Although the productivity growth and performance of the food manufacturing
industry has improved in the recent years, the industry is still behind the other
manufacturing industries, specifically the non-resource based industry such as the
electronics and electrical industries after the structural transformation took place in
Malaysian economy in 1987. The manufacturing industry sector becomes as an engine
of growth instead of the agricultural sector. There is imbalance growth between the food
manufacturing industry and the other manufacturing industries, in terms of its
contribution to the output growth, value added, employment generation, exports, imports
and the investment opportunities. The analysis of the food manufacturing sector showed
a characteristic low productivity and inefficiency problem through analysis of the food
manufacturing sector.
In this study autoregression estimator was employed to estimate the sources of
productivity growth in 28 food manufacturing industries in Malaysia for the time series data from 1 970-1 993 obtained from the department of statistics. Two models were
generated from the production function. The first model is the decomposition of the
output growth into the contribution of capital, increased usage of labour, material and
total factor productivity growth. On the other hand, the second model is the
decomposition of the labour productivity growth (output per worker) into the capital
deepening (capital per worker), increasing usage of the material-labour ratio (material
per worker) and total factor productivity growth.
The study found that the output growth is contributing more than the labour
productivity growth to the food manufacturing industry productivity in terms of the
annual average growth rate of the food manufacturing industries. The contribution of the
two indictors to the food manufacturing industry growth as the output of the two models
during the study period were 11% and 1.8% respectively.
The highest contribution in terms of annual average growth rate, of the output
growth to the food manufacturing industry productivity growth was the contribution of
total factor productivity growth (17%). For labour productivity growth, the highest
contribution was the contribution of capital deepening (9.6%). The major sources of
productivity growth of two indicators of the individual industries, are the spices and
curry powder contributed 53% to labour productivity growth of overall food industries.
The major source of productivity growth of output growth was the contribution of
pineapple canning (23%).


Nucleotide excision repair (NER) is critical for protecting against damage from carcinogens in tobacco smoke. We evaluated the influence of common genetic variation in the NER pathway on bladder cancer risk by analyzing 22 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in seven NER genes (XPC, RAD23B, ERCC1, ERCC2, ERCC4, ERCC5, and ERCC6). Our study population included 1,150 patients with transitional cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder and 1,149 control subjects from Spain. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were adjusted for age, gender, region, and smoking status. Subjects with the variant genotypes for SNPs in four of the seven genes evaluated had small increases in bladder cancer risk compared to subjects with the homozygous wild-type genotypes: RAD23B IVS5-15A>G (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.5; P = 0.01), ERCC2 R156R (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.6; P = 0.006), ERCC1 IVS5+33A>C (OR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.0-1.5; P = 0.06; Ptrend = 0.04), and ERCC5 M254V (OR, 1.4; 95% CI, 1.0-2.0; P = 0.04). A global test for pathway effects indicated that genetic variation in NER characterized by the 22 SNPs analyzed in this study significantly predicts bladder cancer risk (P = 0.04). Pairwise comparisons suggested that carrying variants in two genes could result in substantial increases in risk. Classification tree analyses suggested the presence of subgroups of individuals defined by smoking and NER genotypes that could have substantial increases in risk. In conclusion, these findings provide support for the influence of genetic variation in NER on bladder cancer risk. A detailed characterization of genetic variation in key NER genes is warranted and might ultimately help identify multiple susceptibility variants that could be responsible for substantial joint increases in risk. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(3):536–42)


Electron microprobe analysis (EMPA) of geological materials is often carried out assuming stoichiometry for one unanalyzed element to calculate matrix correction (ZAF) factors. Stoichiometric ZAF routines for multielement groups such as carbonate (CO32-) are not commonly available. Consequently, carbonates are commonly analyzed by means of the O stoichiometry techniques applied to silicate and oxide minerals. Using real and simulated analytical data, we show that errors of up to 20% occur if ZAF corrections are made with the assumption of metal valence and stoichiometric O. Two techniques that allow the input of complete compositional data from CO32- analyses to ZAF factor calculations and that give accurate results are discussed. First, a new technique uses carbonate standards with compositions represented by the metal oxide MO4. The results are then recalculated as metal carbonate. The second method assigns incorrect valences to the elements, C is assumed to be stoichiometric, and O is analyzed directly. We show that an analytical total of 100% +/- square-root N, where square-root N represents errors due to X-ray generation statistics, provides a powerful indication of analysis quality. The use of normalized and difference analysis methods, which necessarily assume totals of 100%, are to be avoided for this reason.