Introduction
Edema formation in malnourished children is multifactorial and not necessarily caused by hypoalbuminemia. In Sudan, studies that evaluate serum albumin level in malnourished children are scarce, if any. The aim of this study is to assess serum albumin concentrations in Sudanese children with edematous and non-edematous malnutrition.
Material and Methods
The study involved 23 males matched for age and weight with 17 females. The ages of studied subjects ranged between 6 – 36 months. Weight and serum albumin levels were measured according to the standards. Patients were classified according to the presence of edema, Wellcome and Gomez classifications. In addition, patients were classified according to their levels of albumin into normal (3.5 - 4.8 g/dl), mild (2.8 - 3.4 g/dl), moderate (2.1 - 2.7 g/dl) and severe (< 2.1 g/dl) hypoalbuminemia.
Results
Serum albumin levels were significantly lower in malnourished subjects with edema (M±SD = 2.4±0.8 g/dl) compared to those with malnutrition but no edema ((M±SD = 3.1±0.8 g/dl, P = 0.026) However, classifying studied malnourished children according to their albumin levels revealed no significant differences in the mean of albumin when albumin levels of edematous patients were compared with non-edematous subjects in each class (P> 0.05). There was no significant correlation between weight and serum albumin level (correlation coefficient (CC) = 0.156, P = 0.337).
Conclusion
The current study demonstrates the tendency of edematous malnourished children to have hypoalbuminemia; nevertheless, some children with significantly low albumin are still not suffering from edema. These paradoxical results display the possible variations in the pathophysiological response to food deprivation.


This paper seeks to explain how Iran's regime persisted in the face of international sanc-tions during Mahmud Ahmadinejad's presidency, from 2005 to 2013. It reconstructs the interplay between the intensifying UNSC, US and EU sanctions and the targeted regime's strategies to advance the nuclear program and maintain intra-elite cohesion. Initially, the nuclear program was expanded due to high oil income in combination with explicit resistance to the presumed regime-change ambitions of the Western sanction senders. At the end of Ahmadinejad's presidency, the decline of foreign exchange earnings from oil exports and the continued regime-change scenario contributed to the neglect of this regime-legitimizing strategy in favor of the maintenance of intra-elite cohesion. My main argument is that once the US and EU oil and financial sanctions curtailed the cost-intensive further development of the nuclear program, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei used these sanctions as an external stimulus to contain burgeoning factional disputes.


Javanese has a phonemic contrast between two series of stops. Tense stops are modern reflexes of Proto-Austronesian voiceless stops while lax stops correspond to former voiced stops. This complex contrast includes acoustic properties such as pitch, voice quality, vowel quality and VOT. Although different acoustic studies have yielded similar results, there is still disagreement over the type of articulatory mechanism(s) responsible for the tense~lax opposition. In this study, a laryngoscopic video of two Javanese speakers recorded by Katrina Hayward in 1994 is reanalyzed to determine if vertical laryngeal position is playing a role in the Javanese stop contrast. Results reveal a consistent lowering of the larynx during lax stops, suggesting similarities with Mainland Southeast Asian register.


This essay offers a rationale for the design of Collex, the social software and faceted browsing system that powers NINES, a "networked infrastructure for nineteenth-century electronic scholarship." It describes how Collex serves as a clearinghouse and collaborative hub for NINES, allowing scholars to search, browse, collect, and annotate digital objects relevant to nineteenth-century studies from a variety of peer-reviewed sources. It also looks forward to the next version of Collex, which will include a sophisticated exhibits builder, through which scholars can "remix" or re-purpose collected objects into annotated bibliographies, course syllabi, illustrated essays, and chronologies – and contribute these resources back into the NINES collective. A detailed guide to using Collex, complete with screenshots, is included. This article frequently links directly into the NINES system (in which, by virtue of its publication in Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, it is already included), thereby gesturing at the future of networked, "born-digital" scholarship.


Studies comparing transfusion and non-transfusion patients suggest an increased risk of postoperative infections in transfusion groups. Supernatants of blood com-ponents have been shown to affect the function of T lymphocytes and natural killer cells. Here, we found that supernatants from stored red blood cells (RBCs) inhibit human neutrophil migration in response to formyl peptides and stimulate neutrophil locomotion. These effects can be observed with high dilutions of RBC supernatants, such as 1:5 (cid:1) 10 6 (vol/vol), able to trigger locomotion as well as desensitization of the cells to alternative chemoattractants. The phenomenon might be mediated by chemoattractants present in the supernatants. As RBC supernatants failed to mobilize intracellular free calcium, the chemoattractants should belong to the group of pure chemoattractants, that is, soluble Fas ligand (sFasL) and transforming growth factor– (cid:2) 1 (TGF- (cid:2) 1), known to act without increasing calcium levels. Recombinant TGF- (cid:2) 1, but not sFasL, was found to reproduce the ability of RBC supernatants to both inhibit neutrophil response to formyl peptides and stimulate neutrophil locomotion. Moreover, TGF- (cid:2) 1–immunodepleted supernatants did not display neutrophil-directed activities. Finally, RBC supernatants from RBCs stored after depletion of leukocytes were incapable of affecting neutrophil function. With neutrophils act-ing as a first-line antimicrobial defense, the ability, shown here, of high dilutions of RBC supernatants to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis through TGF- (cid:2) 1 may be a relevant determinant of infections in the postoperative period for transfusion pa-tients.Consistently,theneutrophilchemo- tactic response to formyl peptide was inhibited by the plasma obtained from 5 transfusion patients. (Blood. 2003;102: 1100-1107)


The optical characteristics of colored dye-forming couplers of a type suitable for use in color films, such as Kodacolor or Ansco Color, are described. Destruction of the color of the coupler by the image dye-forming reactions of color development leads to a negative image composed of the color-developed dye and a positive image composed of unused coupler. It is shown that the effect on color reproduction of the overlapping absorptions of the image dyes available for use in color negative films can be eliminated by the use of colored couplers which have the proper spectral-absorption characteristics. The role of the six masks which are found to be required by a number of the theoretical treatments of the problem of exact color reproduction can be filled by colored couplers having the proper spectral-absorption characteristics. The effect of colored couplers on film speed is also discussed.


Culicoides biting midges serve as vectors of pathogens affecting humans and domestic animals. Culicoides sonorensis is a vector of several arboviruses in North American that cause substantial economic losses to the US livestock industry. Previous studies showed that C. sonorensis saliva, like the saliva of many hematophagous arthropods, contains numerous pharmacological agents that affect hemostasis and early events in the inflammatory response, which may enhance the infectivity of Culicoides-borne pathogens. This paper reports on the immunomodulatory properties of C. sonorensis salivary gland extracts on murine immune cells and discusses the possible immunomodulatory role of C. sonorensis saliva in vesicular stomatitis virus infection of vertebrate hosts. Splenocytes treated with C. sonorensis mitogens were significantly affected in their proliferative response, and peritoneal macrophages secreted significantly less NO. A 66-kDa glycoprotein was purified from C. sonorensis salivary gland extract, which may be in part responsible for these observations and may be considered as a vaccine candidate.


We investigate the effects of group identity on hiring decisions with adverse selection problems. We run a laboratory experiment in which employers cannot observe a worker's ability nor verify the veracity of the ability the worker claims to have. We evaluate whether sharing an identity results in employers discriminating in favor of ingroup workers, and whether it helps workers and employers overcome the adverse selection problem. We induce identities using the minimal group paradigm and study two settings: one where workers cannot change their identity and one where they can. Although sharing a common identity does not make the worker's claims more honest, employers strongly discriminate in favor of ingroup workers when identities are fixed. Discrimination cannot be explained by employers' beliefs and hence seems to be taste-based. When possible, few workers change their identity. However, the mere possibility of changing identities erodes the employers' trust towards ingroup workers and eliminates discrimination.


Introduction: Acute and chronic hypoxia influence blood glucose levels and decrease body weight. Ghrelin increases appetite and body weight and regulates energy metabolism and also glucose homeostasis. Therefore, in the present study the effects of ghrelin administration on blood glucose, body weight, food intake and hematocrit were investigated in a model of systemic normobaric acute and chronic hypoxia in adult male rats. Materials and methods: Forty-eight adult male Wistar rats were divided into six groups [acute control + saline, chronic control + saline, acute or chronic hypoxia + saline, acute or chronic hypoxia + ghrelin (80 µg/kg/day, ip)]. Control groups remained in room air (21% O2) and hypoxia (11% O2) induced by a normobaric hypoxic chamber for two days (acute) or ten days (chronic). Blood glucose levels, body weight, food intake and hematocrit were assessed. Results: Chronic hypoxia caused a significant (P<0.001) decrease in blood glucose levels. Administration of ghrelin increased blood glucose levels significantly in acute (P<0.05) and chronic (P<0.01) hypoxia. Body weight decreased (P<0.001) in both acute and chronic hypoxic groups. Administration of ghrelin could (P<0.001) prevent decrease in body weight in chronic hypoxia group. Acute and chronic (P<0.001) hypoxia significantly decreased food intake. Ghrelin however increased food intake in both the acute (P<0.001) and chronic (P<0.05) hypoxia groups. Acute (P<0.01) and chronic (P<0.001) hypoxia also increased hematocrit. Conclusion: Ghrelin administration is useful in modulating blood glucose, body weight and food intake in hypoxic situations.


The alteration of compressed video bitstream due to embedding of digital watermark tends to produce unpredictable video bit rate variations which may in turn lead to video playback buffer overflow/underflow or transmission bandwidth violation problems. This paper presents a novel bit rate control technique for real-time MPEG watermarking applications. In our experiments, spread spectrum watermarks are embedded in the quantized DCT domain without requantization and motion reestimation to achieve fast watermarking. The proposed bit rate control scheme evaluates the combined bit lengths of a set of multiple watermarked VLC codewords, and successively replaces watermarked VLC codewords having the largest increase in bit length with their corresponding unmarked VLC codewords until a target bit length is achieved. The proposed method offers flexibility and scalability, which are neglected by similar works reported in the literature. Experimental results show that the proposed bit rate control scheme is effective in meeting the bit rate targets and capable of improving the watermark detection robustness for different video contents compressed at different bit rates.


Color discrimination ellipsoids were obtained for several colors throughout the range of luminances, 10 to 0.03 ft-L. The ellipsoids were determined from three-color matches by two observers, using a colorimeter with a two-part circular field subtending an angle of two degrees, and a dark surrounding field. It was found that sensitivity to color differences remains constant for a normal observer until the field luminance drops below about one foot-lambert. Below this level, discrimination decreases rapidly and a normal observer appears tritanomalous. Sensitivity to luminance differences is essentially independent of chromaticity and decreases with luminance in the same manner as the data obtained from measurement of the Weber fraction with monochromatic or white fields.


Electric utilities throughout the Nation are experimenting with strategies to reduce total electricity consumption or to alter the timing of electrical power use by their customers. This report focuses on one such strategy, time-of-use (TaU) electric rates, and the likely effect of this pricing option on the New York dairy sector. The purpose of the study is to assess the change in farm electrical energy costs when power is sold to dairymen at higher rates for periods of peak power demand and at substantially lower rates for off-peak periods. This study is based on the results derived from a farm-level, computer decision model which calculates farm energy consumption by major end uses--such as milk cooling and feeding--and by time of day. The model differentiates power use on farms depending on the type of electricai equipment and the timing of its use. Results show that, in the case of the TaU rates now being implemented by Niagara Mohawk, moving from flat rates to TOU rates has only marginal effects on electric energy costs incurred by dairy farmers. For the 28 representative farm businesses considered, larger farms have the most significant cost savings under the new rate Gust over 12 percent), with smaller dairy operations approximately breaking even when electric power is purchased at Tau rates. These results also show that initial concerns over abrupt increases in power costs under new energy pricing schemes were misplaced. While power costs clearly increase during the summer and winter when rates increase to reflect peak power use, dairy farmers receive a concomitant windfall gain when purchasing power at relatively lower rates off-peak. The authors are Professor, Associate Professor, former Research Support Specialist, and former Graduate Research Assistant, respectively, in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Cornell University. This report is based on research supported by Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation.


Using CROPGRO-Chickpea model (revised version), we investigated the impacts of climate change on the productivity of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) at selected sites in South Asia (Hisar, Indore and Nandhyal in India and Zaloke in Myanmar) and East Africa (Debre Zeit in Ethiopia, Kabete in Kenya and Ukiriguru in Tanzania). We also investigated the potential benefits of incorporating drought and heat tolerance traits in chickpea using the chickpea model and the virtual cultivars approach. As compared to the baseline climate, the climate change by 2050 (including CO2) increased the yield of chickpea by 17% both at Hisar and Indore, 18% at Zaloke, 25% at Debre Zeit and 18% at Kabete; whereas the yields decreased by 16% at Nandhyal and 7% at Ukiriguru. The yield benefit due to increased CO2 by 2050 ranged from 7 to 20% across sites as compared to the yields under current atmospheric CO2 concentration; while the changes in temperature and rainfall had either positive or negative impact on yield at the sites. Yield potential traits (maximum leaf photosynthesis rate, partitioning of daily growth to pods and seed-filling duration each increased by 10%) increased the yield of virtual cultivars up to 12%. Yield benefit due to drought tolerance across sites was up to 22% under both baseline and climate change scenarios. Heat tolerance increased the yield of chickpea up to 9% at Hisar and Indore under baseline climate, and up to 13% at Hisar, Indore, Nandhyal and Ukiriguru under climate change. At other sites (Zaloke, Debre Zeit and Kabete) the incorporation of heat tolerance under climate change had no beneficial effect on yield. Considering varied crop responses to each plant trait across sites, this study was useful in prioritizing the plant traits for location-specific breeding of chickpea cultivars for higher yields under climate change at the selected sites in South Asia and East Africa.


Conformalized quantile regression is a procedure that inherits the advantages of conformal prediction and quantile regression. That is, we use quantile regression to estimate the true conditional quantile and then apply a conformal step on a calibration set to ensure marginal coverage. In this way, we get adaptive prediction intervals that account for heteroscedasticity. However, the aforementioned conformal step lacks adaptiveness as described in (Romano et al., 2019). To overcome this limitation, instead of applying a single conformal step after estimating conditional quantiles with quantile regression, we propose to cluster the explanatory variables weighted by their permutation importance with an optimized k-means and apply k conformal steps. To show that this improved version outperforms the classic version of conformalized quantile regression and is more adaptive to heteroscedasticity, we extensively compare the prediction intervals of both in open datasets.


Medical errors originating in healthcare facilities are a signi cant source of preventable morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. Voluntary error report systems that collect information on the causes and contributing factors of medical errors regardless of the resulting harm may be useful for developing e ective harm prevention strategies. Some patient safety experts question the utility of data from errors that did not lead to harm to the patient, also called near misses. A near miss (a.k.a. close call) is an unplanned event that did not result in injury to the patient. Only a fortunate break in the chain of events prevented injury. We use data from a large voluntary reporting system of 836,174 medication errors from 1999 to 2005 to provide evidence that the causes and contributing factors of errors that result in harm are similar to the causes and contributing factors of near misses. We develop Bayesian hierarchical models for estimating the log odds of selecting a given cause (or contributing factor) of error given harm has occurred and the log odds of selecting the same cause given that harm did not occur. The posterior distribution of the correlation between these two vectors of log-odds is used as a measure of the evidence supporting the use of data from near misses and their causes and contributing factors to prevent medical errors. In addition, we identify the causes and contributing factors that have the highest or lowest log-odds ratio of harm versus no harm. These causes and contributing factors should also be a focus in the design of prevention strategies. This paper provides important evidence on the utility of data from near misses, which constitute the vast majority of errors in our data.


This paper presents a preliminary framework to inform the analysis and design of tangible narratives. Researchers and designers have been using tangible user interfaces (TUIs) for storytelling over the past two decades, but to date no comprehensive analysis of these systems exists. We argue that storytelling systems that use digitally-enhanced physical objects form a unique medium with identifiable narrative characteristics. Our framework isolates these characteristics and focuses on the user's perspective to identify commonalities between existing systems, as well as gaps that can be addressed by new systems. We find that the majority of systems in our sample require the user to perform exploratory actions from an external narrative position. We note that systems that cast the user in other interactive roles are rare but technologically feasible, suggesting that there are many underexplored possibilities for tangible storytelling.


Using arresting case studies of how ordinary people understand the concepts of race, class, and gender, Celine-Marie Pascale shows that the peculiarity of commonsense is that it imposes obviousness-that which we cannot fail to recognize. As a result, how we negotiate the challenges of inequality in the twenty-first century may depend less on what people consciously think about "difference" and more on what we inadvertently assume. Through an analysis of commonsense knowledge, Pascale expertly provides new insights into familiar topics. In addition, by analyzing local practices in the context of established cultural discourses, Pascale shows how the weight of history bears on the present moment, both enabling and constraining possibilities. Pascale tests the boundaries of sociological knowledge and offers new avenues for conceptualizing social change. In 2008, Making Sense of Race, Class and Gender was the recipient of the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award, of the American Sociological Association Section on Race, Gender, and Class, for "distinguished and significant contribution to the development of the integrative field of race, gender, and class."


Frege appears to hold both (a) that thoughts are internally articulated, in a way that mirrors the semantic articulation of the sentences that express them, and (b) that the same thought can be analyzed in different ways, none of which has to be more fundamental than the others. Commentators have often taken these theses to be mutually incompatible and have tended to polarize into two camps, each of which attributes to Frege one of the theses, but maintains that he is only apparently committed to the other. This paper argues (i) that there are good exegetical and philosophical reasons for reconciling the two theses; (ii) that this reconciliation can be achieved by rejecting an assumption shared by the two opposite camps of the exegetical debate, i.e., the assumption that essential articulatedness implies unique articulation; and finally (iii), that this crucial assumption can be resisted by appreciating Frege's anti-atomistic and 'organic' conception of the internal complexity of thoughts.


As different types of knowledge may have different effects on new product positional advantage, knowledge portfolio management in concert with the firm's strategic orientation is indispensable for new product success. However, previous research has not dealt with the knowledge resources and strategic implementations that affect new product development (NPD). To fill in this gap, the current study focuses on two dimensions of knowledge type (knowledge complexity and knowledge tacitness) and two forms of strategic orientation (technological orientation and market orientation), which influence the positional advantages as determinants of NPD outcomes. Drawing on the resource-based view, this study explains how these knowledge and strategic orientation variables influence new product creativity, which comprised the novel and meaningful characteristics of new products. Finally, it demonstrates how these two dimensions of new product creativity differentially provide product advantages in terms of customer satisfaction and product differentiation, which lead to superior new product performance. A conceptual framework is developed and the related hypotheses provided to incorporate the study variables and to test their relationships in a sample based on data collected from both marketing and project managers from 100 U.S. high-technology firms.

The model estimation results from path analysis demonstrate that reliance on knowledge of high tacitness harms meaningfulness, while reliance on knowledge of high complexity increases both novelty and meaningfulness of new product. As expected, market orientation and technological orientation improve the meaningfulness and novelty dimensions of the new product, respectively. New product novelty and meaningfulness are shown to enhance new product advantage in terms of product differentiation and customer satisfaction, both of which contribute to new product performance. It is also found that the combinative use of market orientation and knowledge complexity, and technological orientation and knowledge tacitness positively influence both the novelty and meaningfulness of new products. This study, using the product-level analysis, contributes to the literature by clarifying how the firm's different knowledge properties and strategic orientations both play a role as a source of new product creativity, and how new product creativity, as a valuable and rare resource, enhances new product advantage. The study results suggest that project/product managers should increase the transferability and codifiability of unstructured knowledge by stimulating intraorganizational knowledge sharing among NPD team members, and that they should promote both technology and market-orientated practices to fully develop creativity of new products.


The foreign exchange risk premium in an exchange rate target zone regime with devaluation/realignment risks is derived. In contrast to previous literature, the exchange rate's heteroscedasticity within the bard, as well as a separate devaluation/realignment risk, is taken into account. The risk premium is then the sum of two separate risk premia, arising from stochastic exchange rate movements within the bard and from stochastic devaluations/realignments when the band is shifted. Both real and nominal exchange rate premia are considered. The real and nominal risk premia from movements within the band are very small for narrow target zones and can therefore be disregarded. The real and nominal risk premia from devaluations/realignments are larger but still relatively small proportions of the expected rate of devaluation/realignment.


This Book Review uses Michael Barnett's argument that the United Nations (UN) refrained from intervening to stop the Rwandan genocide out of considered self-interest as a case-study through which to examine whether absolute rights exist in practice. The UN's actions in Rwanda represent a staggering failure to protect absolute rights, namely, the Rwandan people's right to freedom from genocide. The Rwandan case-study demonstrates that absolute rights, which have an impressive pedigree in legal and philosophical scholarship, are nothing more than a theoretical ideal-they are non-existent in practice. Nonetheless, there are hopeful signs, such as the international community's 1999 intervention in Kosovo, that absolute rights need not be "dead" as a useful concept. In order to maintain relevance as practical, as opposed to normative, ideals, absolute rights must be given greater priority in policymaking, allowing the existing, powerful regime of human rights law to prevent future absolute rights catastrophes.


The Ambiguity Function was originally used to describe the mathematics of radar signal processing. The Ambiguity Function can also be used as a mathematical tool to describe computational imaging systems. This tool allows a clear understanding and physical insight into the fundamental limits of imaging systems.


In the emerging industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) era, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication technology is considered as a key underlying technology for building IIoT environments, where devices (e.g., sensors, actuators, and gateways) are enabled to exchange information with each other in an autonomous way without human intervention. However, most of the existing M2M protocols that can be also used in the IIoT domain provide security mechanisms based on asymmetric cryptography resulting in high computational cost. As a consequence, the resource-constrained IoT devices are not able to support them appropriately and thus, many security issues arise for the IIoT environment. Therefore, lightweight security mechanisms are required for M2M communications in IIoT in order to reach its full potential. As a step toward this direction, in this paper, we propose a lightweight authentication mechanism, based only on hash and XOR operations, for M2M communications in IIoT environment. The proposed mechanism is characterized by low computational cost, communication, and storage overhead, while achieving mutual authentication, session key agreement, device's identity confidentiality, and resistance against the following attacks: replay attack, man-in-the-middle attack, impersonation attack, and modification attack.


Background: H3K9 methylation is one of the essential histone post-translational modifications for heterochromatin formation and transcriptional repression. Recently, several studies have demonstrated that H3K9 methylation negatively regulates the type I interferon response.
Results: I report the application of EHMT1 and EHMT2 specific chemical inhibitors to sensitize CML cell lines to interferon and imatinib treatments. Inhibition of EHMT1 and EHMT2 with BIX01294 enhances the cytotoxicity of IFNα2a in four CML cell lines, K562, KCL22, BV173 and KT1. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assay shows that BIX01294 treatment enhances type I interferon response by reducing H3K9me2 at the promoters of interferon-stimulated genes. Additionally, BIX01294 treatment augments IFNα2a- and imatinib-mediated apoptosis in CML cell lines. Moreover, my data suggest that the expression level of EHMT1 and EHMT2 inversely correlates with the type I interferon responsiveness in CML cell lines.
Conclusions: My study sheds light on the role of EHMT1 and EHMT2 as potential targets in improving the efficacy of standard treatments of CML.


Flood warning mainly depends on reliable flood forecast models. Literature is rich in flood modelling techniques, but failures of these models, especially on the very short scale such as hourly flows, do often cause devastating impacts on the communities affected by these floods, and on many occasions result in loss of lives. This paper presents a new approach for flood forecasting of river flows based on the projection theorem in Hilbert space. The new modelling process obtains the projection of hourly flow rates on hourly rainfalls over the catchment at previous hours to the projected flow rate. A total of 25 flow events observed for the Leith River in Dunedin, New Zealand, along with their corresponding observed rainfalls at two sites in the catchment have been identified and applied to calibrate and validate the derived model. The proposed modelling technique was capable of simulating the flow process for the Leith River, and is a promising tool for flood forecast when other models fail. The proposed model is easy to apply, doesn't imply a lot of assumptions or parameters, as other models usually require, and can be used for long term forecast based on forecasted hourly rain one day or more before the event, or real time forecast during the event itself based on rainfall which has been already gauged. However, for real time (short term) forecast, the forecast time can be a few hours based on the catchment area and its topography which can lead to a fast flow to the outlet.


We study whether the introduction of a private label could be profitable for retailers and manufacturers. We also investigate if cooperative advertising could be considered a manufacturer's counterstrategy to the store brand's harmful effects. The literature that dealt with the issue of private label introduction was mainly concerned with pricing strategies. However, this problem has not been addressed considering other marketing efforts (flyers, displays, etc.). In this paper, we consider a distribution channel formed by one manufacturer and one retailer, and propose a game theoretic model that accounts for marketing efforts for the national brand, in addition to retail prices. Results are found by comparing outputs from three Manufacturer-Stackelberg games: 1the retailer offers only the manufacturer's brand; 2the retailer sells a private label in addition to the national brand; 3the manufacturer offers a co-op advertising agreement to the retailer. Our findings generalize previous results and show that the private label introduction is profit-improving for both the retailer and the channel although it could harm the manufacturer's profits. We show however that for a specific range of the retailer's advertising efficiency and of the price competition intensity, the manufacturer could profit from the private label introduction. Further, our findings suggest that the coop plan is be an efficient counterstrategy for the manufacturer. Our model also predicts that the retailer would accept the implementation of the coop plan only if the national brand competes strongly with the private label.


Abstract Etymologically related, the concepts of terroir and territoriality display divergent cultural histories. While one designates the palatable characteristics of place as a branded story of geographic distinction, the other imbues the soil with political meaning. This paper traces the production of eno-locality in a contested space on both sides of the Green Line in Israel/Palestine. The case of the Yatir award-winning winery shows how terroir and territory are blended in the political economy and cultural politics of colonial place-making. Located on a multiscalar frontier—climatic, geopolitical, and viticultural—Yatir Winery positions itself simultaneously within the Mediterranean transnational landscape and in a biblical site of historical authenticity. Enacting strategic regimes of signification to target the increasing demand for high-end wines on both the global and local markets, it makes a claim for place, while appropriating Palestinian land and redefining ancient Jewish heritage. The result articulates a settler colonial landscape whose symbolic and material transformations are reflected in the Israeli search for rooted identity. Analytically, we explore the power of border and frontier wines to reconfigure the differences between New World and Old World paradigms. We conclude by outlining a comparative framework of the charged relations between terroir and territory that articulates the nexus between border typologies and the colonial politics of wine.


This paper considers the application of classical control methods, designed for unconstrained nonlinear systems, to systems with nontrivial input constraints. As shown throughout the literature, unconstrained classical methods can be used to stabilize constrained systems, however, (without modification) these unconstrained methods are not guaranteed to work for a general control problem. In this paper, we propose conditions for which classical unconstrained methods can be guaranteed to exponentially stabilize constrained systems - which we term "feasibility" conditions - and we provide examples of how to construct explicitly feasible controllers. The control design methods leverage control Lyapunov functions (CLF) describing the "desired behavior" of the system; and we claim that in the event that a system's input constraints prevent the production of an exponentially stabilizing input for a particular CLF, a new, locally feasible CLF must be produced. To this end, we propose a novel hybrid feasibility controller consisting of a continuous-time controller which implements a CLF and a discrete parameter update law which finds feasible controller parameters as needed. Simulation results suggest that the proposed method can be used to overcome certain catastrophic infeasibility events encountered in robot locomotion.


We demonstrate digital holographic microscopy that, while being based on phase-shifting interferometry, is capable of single-shot measurements. A two-dimensional (2-D) diffraction grating placed in a Fourier plane of a standard in-line holographic phase microscope generates multiple copies of a sample image on a camera sensor. The identical image copies are spatially separated with different overall phase shifts according to the diffraction orders. The overall phase shifts are adjusted by controlling the lateral position of the grating. These phase shifts are then set to be multiples of π/2. Interferograms composed of four image copies combined with a parallel reference beam are acquired in a single shot. The interferograms are processed through a phase-shifting algorithm to produce a single complex image. By taking advantage of the higher sampling capacity of the in-line holography, we can increase the imaging information density by a factor of 3 without compromising the imaging acquisition speed.


In this article, we consider the estimation of a panel data binary response model with a weak restriction imposed on the individual specific effects. Our estimator is -consistent and asymptotically normal under reasonable regularity conditions. Furthermore, we allow the error terms to be heteroscedastic over time. The proposed estimator has a closed form expression and thus is very easy to compute. Simulations and the empirical illustration demonstrate the usefulness of our proposed estimator.


This study aims to develop a theory of social intelligence or mirror neurons. This study serves to determine the effect of social intelligence in various things. Especially mirror neurons in the perspective of Islamic education. Neuron mirror is a mirror brain, the intention of the mirror brain is the ability of the brain to mimic what he sees and perceives. The working of the mirror brain like Javanese philoshopy is Witing tresna Jalaran Saka Kulina which means that love comes because habitually.So,brain mirror will work to imitate something optimally if done habituation or done continuosly.Mirror neurons in the present era are widely studied because mirror neurons affect the social ability of a person. The results of this study indicate that a good social ability of a person affect the level of social intelligence. Human as social beings interact with each other in various things.
Keywords: influence, social brain, mirror neuron


Data from a large-scale outcrop analogue (Upper Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation, Wasatch Plateau, central Utah, USA) were used to construct three-dimensional, object-based reservoir models of low to moderate net-to-gross (NTG) ratios (11–32%). Two descriptive spatial statistical measures, lacunarity and Ripley's K function, were used to characterize sandbody distribution patterns in the different models. Lacunarity is sensitive to sandbody abundance and NTG ratio, while Ripley's K function identifies clustered, random and regular spacing of sandbodies. The object-based modelling algorithm reproduces sandbody dimensions and abundances, but patterns of sandbody distribution generated by river avulsion are poorly replicated because pseudo-well spacing provides only limited constraint on sandbody positions. In common with previous studies, the connected sand fraction in the reservoir models increases with increasing NTG ratio and increasing range of sandbody orientations, but there is significant stochastic variation around both of these trends. In addition, low NTG reservoir models in which sandbodies exhibit strong clustering may also have a low connected sand fraction across the model volume because the sandbody clusters are widely spaced and, thus, tend to be isolated from each other. Consequently, connected sand fraction could be overestimated if avulsion-generated sandbody clusters are not identified and replicated in models of such reservoirs.


Alpine glacier responses to climate change reveal increases in significant retreat with corresponding increases in the production of glacier meltwater and development of supraglacial lakes. The rate of occurrence and spatial extent of lakes in the Himalaya are difficult to determine because current spectral-based image analyses of glacier surfaces are limited through anisotropic reflectance and lack of high-quality digital elevation models (DEMs). Additionally, the limitations of multivariate classification algorithms to classify glacier features in satellite imagery have led to an increased interest in non-parametric methods, such as classification and regression trees. This article demonstrates the utility of a semi-automated approach that integrates classification tree-based image segmentation and spatial metrics in an object-oriented analysis to differentiate supraglacial lakes from glacier debris, ice, ice-cliffs, and lateral and medial moraines. We used 2000 and 2004 Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) imagery to characterize and assess supraglacial conditions on the Baltoro Glacier in the Karakoram Himalaya. Input variables for the image segmentation include ASTER VNIR and SWIR spectral bands, indices (e.g. normalized difference water index (NDWI), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and normalized difference snow index (NDSI)), image band ratios (e.g. NIR/red, middle infrared (MIR)/green, and MIR/red), and DEM derivatives. Classification tree analysis was used to generate initial image segments and it was particularly effective in differentiating water from ice and other glacier surface features. The object-oriented analysis included the use of Boolean logic and squared pixel (SqP) spatial metric to refine the classification tree output. The results of classification tree-based image segmentation show that NDWI is the most important single variable for characterizing glacier surface features followed by NDVI, NIR/red ratio, and green and red spectral bands. Lake features extracted from both images show that there were 131 lakes in 2000 as compared to 157 lakes in 2004. In general, there was a significant increase in the planimetric area of these lakes from 2000 to 2004, and we documented the formation of 26 new lakes. It appears that lake-size increments occur mostly in the lower part of the ablation zone, whereas most of the new lakes are formed in the upper part of the ablation zone. The classification tree outputs are intuitive and the data-derived thresholds eliminate commonly subjective visual determination of such threshold values used in image segmentation. The results of this study show that glacier lakes in high-mountain environments can be characterized without topographic information, which is difficult to obtain from a DEM. Also, the semi-automated method described in this article can potentially eliminate the often laborious visual multitemporal analysis of glacier lake surface change, thereby producing consistent and replicable results needed to assess the trends of alpine glacier response to climate change in the Himalaya.


This article examines the World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations that inhere from US persons or couples contracting with Indian women for gestational surrogacy. Surrogacy contracts are considered in the context of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the differing laws on surrogacy of different US states. By exploring WTO Appellate Body (AB), Panel and GATT Panel decisions, this article endeavors to determine what WTO obligations bind the US in circumstance of cross–border surrogacy contract. This article addresses how the varying state laws on surrogacy affect the WTO obligations of the US in market access, national treatment and most–favoured–nation (MFN) treatment. The article concludes that there are a variety of ways in which the different state laws have the capacity to violate US trade commitments in relation to international surrogacy contracts. In addition, the analysis serves to illuminate the process under which US trade obligations can be scrutinized to determine what commitments are relevant to a service not contemplated in the US Schedule.


Abstract Objective The objective of the present study was to investigate (a) if daily physical activity at the within-person level is related to four different core affects the same evening, (b) if core affects in the evening predict physical activity the following day, and (c) if physical activity predicts core affects the following day. Design A total of 166 university students were asked to complete the affect and physical activity measures once a day (in the evening), for seven days. Bivariate unconditional latent curve model analyses with structured residuals were performed to investigate the relations within days and across days between the core affects and physical activity. Main outcome measures Core affects and physical activity. Results Physical activity had positive within-day associations with pleasant-activated and pleasant-deactivated core affects and a negative within-day association with unpleasant-deactivated affective responses. There were, however, no statistically significant relations between core affects and physical activity across days. Conclusion These results highlight that the measurement interval might be an important factor that influences the association between core affects and physical activity behaviors.


OF THESIS. The Corn Laws and the movement for their repeal were both indigen:oua products of Scotland, although even in the eighteenth centur,y, less intrinsically Scottish than the polemics of the debate woul~ sug:est. The evolution of aim, attitude, and vehicle of agitation in Scotland, and its contribution to the formation of the later AntiCorn-Law League has been substantially ignored. The peculiar identification of Manchester vith the Corn Law question and ~th the League largely succeeded the latter's formation, and even then the conception of a "Manchester League" must be qualified. Although leadership was clearly vested nationally in Manchester, regions suCh as Scotland made substantial contributions to the free trade move:ment in terms of local leadership, pecuni~ donations, and ideas there was a difference in emphasis between the well-defined aims of the League in Manchester and the more ~de-ranging aspirations of the Scots repealers. However, the strength of the League in Scotland has been exag:gerated, partly due to a misinterpretation of Scottish support for Whig concepts of "free traden. In particular, its support among agriculturists and the working-classes has been grossly over-estimated. Even among the urban middle-classes, its principal source of strength, substantial pockets of protectionist sympathisers existed, especially in Glasgow. Nevertheless the assumption that the League's campaign was conducted in a distinct political, economic, religious, and social environment in Scotland was correct, and was evidenced by the com:plexion of the interest groups which it attracted and the polemical debate which reflected separate (if similar) interests and social values, at least to some extent. As a pressure group in parliamentary politics, the League's activities on the Corn Law issue had been anticipated, albeit in milder forms, ~ free traders and protectionists in the late eight:eenth and early nineteenth centuries. The schismatic tactics of the radicals, frequently emphasising the corn question, in the 1830 1s constituted recent precedents, emulated by the League. In Scotland, the apathy of the free traders in the field of registration to some degree attributable to the distinct provisions of the Scots Reform Act of 1832 gave the League cause for considerable concern. To some extent, this eased the embarrassment of the Whigs, under pressure in Scotland from both sides on the free trade question, Who lost little ground on the issue, principally due to the conservative provisions of the Reform Act, and to the reluctance of the electors to forsake the Whigs and moderate reform for the radicals of the League and the excl:usive aim of total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws. The free trade movement was a British movement in Scotland, not a Scottish movement in Britain, but the region and locali~ in Which it campaigned determined to some extent its characteristics.


Vision based tracking can provide the spatial location of construction entities such as equipment, workers, and materials in large scale, congested construction sites. It tracks entities in video streams by inferring their locations based on the entities' visual features and motion histories. To initiate the process, it is necessary to determine the pixel areas corresponding to the construction entities to be tracked in the following consecutive video frames. In order to fully automate the process, an automated way of initialization is needed. This paper presents the method for construction worker detection which can automatically recognize and localize construction workers in video frames. The method first finds the foreground areas of moving objects using a background subtraction method. Within these foreground areas, construction workers are recognized based on the histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) and histogram of the HSV colors. HOG's have proved to work effectively for detection of people, and the histogram of HSV colors helps differentiate between pedestrians and construction workers wearing safety vests. Preliminary experiments show that the proposed method has the potential to automate the initialization process of vision based tracking.


Cell membrane plays a crucial role in several biological processes and fatty acids, as structural membrane components and lipid mediators, have well-known protective and regulatory effects.
Stress and inappropriate lifestyle, with enhanced free radical production, can induce membrane modifications that can be monitored by fatty acid lipidomics, a powerful diagnostic tool for the follow-up of membrane fatty acid remodeling that can be correlated with different physiological and pathological conditions.
The experimental work described in this thesis was initially focused on the fatty acid analysis and the hyperspectral characterization of erythrocytes membranes of autistic and healthy children, leading to an important result of membrane-based diagnostics with high predictive value for autism.
In the frame of the Marie Curie "ClickGene" network, the membrane fatty acid remodeling induced by two apolipoprotein isoforms, ApoE3 and ApoE4, being ApoE4 allele the major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, was also investigated. The results showed consistent differences in the membrane fatty acid profiles, opening a debate about the role of nutritional and metabolic adaptations as epigenetic determinants over genetic predisposition.
Additionally, the biophysical role of trans fatty acids (TFAs), which can be formed by cis-trans isomerization in the presence of sulfur-centered radicals, was evaluated using liposomes as membrane models. Consistent differences in the membrane properties were established, foreseeing the insertion of toxic trans fatty acids in tumor cell membranes to achieve a synergic antitumoral effect;
Finally, the full characterization of the mono-trans isomers of DHA achieved by a dual synthetic approach, was carried out. These experiments were useful for the identification of trans isomer contaminants in commercially available nutraceutical formulations.
Taken together, these results could better clarify the role of fatty acids in the cell membrane composition, providing a palette of methodologies for the examination of membrane changes linked with the fatty acid geometry and types.


Current and expected job tenure have fallen significantly over the last two decades. Over the same period, traditional defined benefit pensions, designed to reward long tenure, have become steadily less common. This paper uses a contract-theoretic matching model with moral hazard to explain changes in pension structure and job tenure. In our model, a decline in the value of existing jobs relative to new jobs reduces expected match duration and thus the appeal of DB pensions. We show that this explanation is consistent with observed trends and suggests an additional consequence of technological change that has not been closely studied.


For most ethnic Chinese, the main energy source of traditional homemade meals is cereals: rice and wheat products. In recent years, with an improved socio-economic status for the Chinese in Taiwan, many people have tended to eat less cereal than in the past, thus changing the distribution of carbohydrate, fat, and protein in energy-supplying nutrients. This study compares dietary characteristics and blood parameters for people with high, medium and low fat diets; it also identifies different influences on blood lipid levels in high, medium, and low fat intake. Healthy middle-aged government employees were interviewed to obtain 24-hour dietary recall and other lifestyle information, at their annual health examination at the Government Employees Clinic Center in Taipei. Data was collected including height, weight, blood pressure, ante cibum blood glucose (AC), fasting serum triglyceride (TG), serum cholesterol (TC). Of the 137 subjects studied, 49 (35 females, 14 males) were in the high fat group (HFG), with fat intake over 45% of total calories; 39 subjects (28 females, 11 males) were in the medium fat group (MFG), with fat intake between 30% to 45%; and 49 subjects (33 females, 16 males) were in the low fat group (LFG), had a fat intake under 30%. Results showed that: 1) Same trend in total calorie intake were observed for males and females, HFG>MFG>LFG; The percent of calories from protein was similar in all three groups; carbohydrate intake was the compensation as fat intake increased. 2) Although for difference were not significant, AC was highest in HFG, lowest in LFG for both males and females; TC was highest in HFG of both males and females; highest TG in LFG for females, whereas highest in HFG for males were observed. Using the backward method, a prediction equation was developed for AC, TG, and TC.


The aim of this paper is to analyse and empirically test how to unlock volatility information from option prices. The information content of three option based forecasts of volatility: Black-Scholes implied volatility, model-free implied volatility and corridor implied volatility is addressed, with the ultimate plan of proposing a new volatility index for the Italian stock market. As for model-free implied volatility, two different extrapolation techniques are implemented. As for corridor implied volatility, five different corridors are compared. Our results, which point to a better performance of corridor implied volatilities with respect to both Black-Scholes implied volatility and model-free implied volatility, are in favour of narrow corridors. The volatility index proposed is obtained with an overall 50% cut of the risk neutral distribution. The properties of the volatility index are explored by analysing both the contemporaneous relationship between implied volatility changes and market returns and the usefulness of the proposed index in forecasting future market returns.


This study investigates a brand of theatre that is oppositional to oppression. This theatre,
which this study calls protest theatre, predicates its practice upon democratic intentions and
values. In Zimbabwe, some scholars valorise protest theatre's oppositional and adversarial
stance to the state as an indicator of how it imbues democratic values. Some scholars also
celebrate the manner in which it provides counter hegemonic space to enhance citizenship as
a reinforcement of pro-democracy's protest theatre's democratic affinity. This, in my view,
creates a problem in the sense that, these scholars pay scant attention to subtle processes of
exclusion, paternalism and domination that are, unfortunately, inherent in protest theatre.
Whilst there can be little doubt to the fact that protest theatre provides democratic space that
enhances citizenship through theatre, there is also a need to interrogate the manner in which it
accords subaltern voices agency or authority over their intellectual and physical actions in
designing, implementing and modifying the discourse of social and political reform that prodemocracy
protest theatre espouse during and after the Zimbabwean crisis. To this effect, this
study investigates the harmony, dissonance and tension between democratic intentions and
practice in prodemocracy protest theatre. It interrogates how selected performances of protest
theatre represent the agency and interests of marginalised sections of society. It examines
relations of power that obtain in protest theatre with the intention of exploring how protest
theatre accords subaltern citizens the ability to design, modify, implement and lead, at an
intellectual level, the struggle for democratic reform in Zimbabwe. This study, therefore,
investigates practices that undermine the democratic intentions of protest theatre such as
exclusion, paternalism and construction of derogatory identities through biased representation
of the agency of various social groups in various performances. Consequently, the study
analyses how various performances mediate on the identities of various social groups in order
to legitimise the moral and intellectual control of the struggle for democratic change by
certain social groups at the expense of others. The study also explores how selected
productions liberated or undermined the semiotic autonomy of the spectators. It looks at the
relationship between style and democracy with the intention of analysing how selected
performances enabled or undermined the audience's right to create their own meanings from
various performances. Hence, this study also extends its democratic thrust by way of
analysing directorial endeavours to create open performances as opposed to enclosed
performance that lock meaning and interpretation to directorial intention. Thus the efficacy of
style to democratic commitment is a key aspect of inquiry in this study. This study employs
post-linear performance theory to examine issues of power between the performance and
their spectator in as far as the generation of meaning is concerned. It also deploys theories of
democracy, particularly those of the public sphere and counter public sphere in order to
ascertain the extent to which selected productions created citizen forums that were in keeping
with democratic expectations. Theories of power have been useful as they help to track issues
of domination and strategies of domination that normally undermine democratic intentions.
The study uses techniques of performance reconstruction in addition to those of analysing
live performances. It also makes use of semiotic theory. The data gathered through these
methods is interrogated through the theoretical framework thereby linking theory to
methodology.


Australian Government spending on infrastructure projects has increased rapidly in recent years, and especially so over the course of 2009. In this paper, we examine the processes for project evaluation, in the light of the Government's commitment, in the 2008-09 Budget, to "(infrastructure) decision making based on rigorous cost-benefit analysis to ensure the highest economic and social benefits to the nation over the long term...(and to) transparency at all stages of the decision making process". We find that contrary to this commitment, significant projects have been approved either with no cost-benefit analysis or with cost-benefit analysis that is clearly of poor quality. Moreover, despite the commitment to transparency, very little information has been disclosed as to how most projects were evaluated. To better assess the quality of project evaluation, we examine the largest single project the Commonwealth Government has committed to - the construction of a new National Broadband Network - and find that in present value terms, its costs exceed its benefits by somewhere between $14 billion and $20 billion dollars, depending on the discount rate used. We also find that it is inefficient to proceed with the project if its costs exceed $17 billion, even if the alternative is a world in which the representative consumer cannot obtain service in excess of 20 Mbps and even if demand for high speed service is rising relatively quickly. This amount of $17 billion is well below current estimates of the costs the NBN will involve, especially if (as the Government has pledged) the NBN is to serve non-metropolitan areas. We also examine the cost-benefit assessment undertaken for the second largest infrastructure project the Government has committed to, which involves the construction of a rail link in Victoria. We find that lower-cost alternatives to the project were not taken into account in the evaluation, in particular the option of increasing capacity through improved efficiency and better governance of the rail network. Even taking that exclusion on board, we find that the appraisal that was approved by Infrastructure Australia (or at least, the only version of that appraisal that has been made available) is seriously flawed, including errors of double counting and manifestly incorrect estimates of project benefits. Absent these errors, the project would generate benefits that fall well short of its costs. We conclude by noting that high quality project evaluations will not be made if governments do not see value in them. This appears to be the case in Australia, especially with respect to major projects. Nonetheless, we advance a number of proposals for improving the process, including transparency (which is now largely lacking), serious audits and reappraisal of projects at predetermined milestones and steps to introduce greater rigor into key aspects of the analysis.


This dissertation presents a multi-method research approach for the systematic study of wicked problem domains (Rittel, 1984 [1972]), developed through an investigation of an information system (IS) within a health service organisation, BreastScreen Tasmania (BST). BST is an accredited organisation within a national screening and assessment Progam, BreastScreen Australia. The Program is a population health initiative that also provides multi-disciplinary diagnostic clinical services to individual clients/patients, measured against 176 National Accreditation Standards.
The demographic change of ageing population is a crisis that threatens the sustainability of future health services and highlights a role for IS/ICT to deliver work efficiencies. Conflicting perspectives and competing models for assuring the quality and safety of health services assume a role for IS/ICT to provide data processing capabilities to support health service practices and to evaluate health service outcomes. An 'e-health' vision assumes that well-integrated information and standardised work practices will result in efficiency, effectiveness, safety and quality. But IS/ICT solutions often fail to accommodate the complexities of information use in health settings. This situation of competing perspectives, opposing forces and health IS/ICT failures indicates that health service delivery into the future is a wicked problem that cannot be easily defined and will not be solved by better IS design.
The methodological contribution of this research is a structured process of inquiry that emphasises a human-centred perspective: patient-centred care, human centred computing and human centred research. The dissertation shows how a multi-method approach is systematically conducted, how appreciation of a problem situation for an organisation emerges and is studied over three-phases. Soft Systems Methodology was adopted as the conceptual framework for the research process. Grounded Theory Methodology provided a range of flexible strategies and lenses for qualitative data collection and analysis. A construct, 'People, place and things' (PPT), was developed and used as a heuristic device to sensitise the researcher to different units of analysis, techniques and lenses for structuring and modelling data, particularly drawing on Distributed Cognition, Communities of Practice and Activity Theory.
Substantively, the research contributes a detailed single case of a health service delivery organisation with wicked problem properties. The investigation focused on the role and impact of a client record (electronic and paper) on two BST activities and their inter-relationships. Firstly, accrediting the delivery of its breast screening and assessment services and secondly supporting decision-making of both individual clinicians and clients/patients. More broadly, it also analysed how the IS impacted on the roles and interactions amongst the professionals working within BST. BST's problem situation was identified as a nexus between accreditation and practice in which two forms of accreditation are in tension. These tensions are embedded in the information system supporting BST activities. BST uses a client information system to measure its performance at organisation level, which can conflict with social forms of accreditation such as professional memberships. This conflict is mirrored by the difference between population-level, evidence-oriented data and the meaning of data in the context of a specific client receiving a health service.
Theoretically, the research contributes two conceptual models. Model one highlights that the nexus is embedded in the organisation's information system and work practice design such that two forms of accreditation are in tension and must be managed. Artefacts used to measure performance construct organisation-level accreditation; individuals are accredited socially via membership. Model two highlights that the client record is fully integrated to provide data that is oriented to support three different purposes: evidence of organisation performance, supporting professional judgment and client decision-making. Boundary maintenance activities by a staff member in the role of institutional broker are required to manage the differences in meaning for each information orientation.
This research has implications for the role of IS/ICT in health service delivery and accreditation, including assumptions on the benefits of information integration and work practice standardisation. IS design can readily embed principles and work processes that align with measuring standardised work by population-level data for health service quality assurance. However, the wicked problem characteristics affecting health services means that IS that prioritises population-level data-oriented accrediting models can fail to provide information to support social information interactions, including how work is measured for quality within professional memberships. In addition, providing an information system to monitor performance is important, but IS/ICT is also needed to effectively support health service practitioners and clients in making decisions and to provide feedback on individual performance.
The outcomes of using this method demonstrate the value of a three phase, process inquiry approach utilising multiple methods. Socio-technical perspectives are useful for understanding wicked problem domains and the PPT-construct keeps the analysis open to a range of insights for understanding the information support provided in the context of health care delivery. Identifying social insights and social methods of measuring quality of performance of relevance to IS design is time consuming but critical to facilitate human-centred uses of information being supported by the design of technical artefacts for health service delivery contexts. IS design to support standardised work processes and that embeds non-social, quantitative forms of measuring that work is relatively straightforward. Understanding, modelling and developing IS that reflects social insights is much more complex but critical if the e-health IS are to have a positive impact on the current vision for patient-centred, safe and quality assured, effective and efficient health services into the future.


41 Aging impairs endothelium-dependent NO-mediated dilatation, which results from increased 42 production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The local generation of angiotensin II (ANGII) is 43 increased in aging arteries and contributes to inflammatory and fibrotic activity of smooth 44 muscle cells and arterial wall remodeling. Although prolonged in vivo ANGII inhibition improves 45 the impaired endothelial dilatation of aging arteries, it is unclear whether this reflects inhibition of 46 intravascular or systemic ANGII systems. Experiments were therefore performed on isolated 47 tail arteries from young (3-4 months) and old (22-24 months) F344 rats to determine if a local 48 renin-angiotensin system contributes to the endothelial dilator dysfunction of aging. Aging 49 impaired dilatation to the endothelial agonist, acetylcholine, but did not influence responses to a 50 NO donor (DEA NONOate). Dilatation to acetylcholine was greatly reduced by NO synthase 51 inhibition (LNAME) in young and old arteries. In isolated arteries, acute inhibition of angiotensin 52 converting enzyme (ACE) (perindoprilat), renin (aliskiren) or AT1 receptors (valsartan, losartan) 53 did not influence dilatation to acetylcholine in young arteries, but increased responses in old 54 arteries. After ANGII inhibition, dilator response to acetylcholine were similar in young and old 55 arteries. ROS activity, which was increased in endothelium of aging arteries, was also reduced 56 by inhibiting ANGII (perindoprilat, losartan). Renin expression was increased by 5.6 fold and 57 immunofluorescent levels of ANGII were confirmed to be increased in aging compared to young 58 arteries. Exogenous ANGII inhibited acetylcholine-induced dilatation. Therefore, aging-induced 59 impairment of endothelium-dependent dilatation in aging is caused by a local intravascular 60 renin-angiotensin system. 61 62


The rapidly increasing human population is an alarming issue and would need more food production under changing climate. Abiotic stresses like heat stress and temperature fluctuation are becoming key issues to be addressed for boosting crop production. Maize growth and productivity are sensitive to temperature fluctuations. Grain yield losses in maize from heat stress are expected to increase owing to higher temperatures during the growing season. This situation demands the development of maize hybrids tolerant to heat and drought stresses without compromising grain yield under stress conditions. The chapter aimed to assess the updates on the influence of high-temperature stress (HTS) on the physio-biochemical processes in plants and to draw an association between yield components and heat stress on maize. Moreover, exogenous applications of protectants, antioxidants, and signaling molecules induce HTS tolerance in maize plants and could help the plants cope with HTS by scavenging reactive oxygen species, upregulation of antioxidant enzymes, and protection of cellular membranes by the accrual of compatible osmolytes. It is expected that a better thought of the physiological basis of HTS tolerance in maize plants will help to develop HTS maize cultivars. Developing HTS-tolerant maize varieties may ensure crops production sustainability along with promoting food and feed security under changing climate.


A significant problem in many machine learning tasks is that it is time consuming and costly to gather the necessary labeled data for training the learning algorithm to a reasonable level of performance. In reality, it is often the case that a small amount of labeled data is available and that more unlabeled data could be labeled on demand at a cost. If the labeled data is obtained by a process outside of the control of the learner, then the learner is passive. If the learner picks the data to be labeled, then this becomes active learning. This has the advantage that the learner can pick data to gain specific information that will speed up the learning process. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) have many properties that make them attractive to use as a learning algorithm for many real world applications including classification tasks. Some researchers have proposed algorithms for active learning with SVMs, i.e. algorithms for choosing the next unlabeled instance to get label for. Their approach is supervised in nature since they do not consider all unlabeled instances while looking for the next instance. In this thesis, we propose three new algorithms for applying active learning for SVMs in a semi-supervised setting which takes advantage of the presence of all unlabeled points. The suggested approaches might, by reducing the number of experiments needed, yield considerable savings in costly classification problems in the cases when finding the training data for a classifier is expensive.


The declining number of ultrasound‐guided obstetric procedures in clinical practice mandates a shift toward simulation‐based teaching. Current uterine simulation aids are animal tissue–sourced or expensive, and improvement is needed. We describe a low‐cost reusable uterine model with "fetus," cord and skin, constructed from synthetic gel and silicone rubber. Ultrasound appearance and tactile feedback approximate clinical use, and all parts of the model are portable, durable, and shelf‐stable. Those made of ballistics gel can be recycled numerous times without noticeable effect. This appears to be ideal for proctored learning and independent practice within an ultrasound procedural curriculum.


Distributed machine learning has typically been approached from a data parallel perspective, where big data are partitioned to multiple workers and an algorithm is executed concurrently over different data subsets under various synchronization schemes to ensure speed-up and/or correctness. A sibling problem that has received relatively less attention is how to ensure efficient and correct model parallel execution of ML algorithms, where parameters of an ML program are partitioned to different workers and undergone concurrent iterative updates. We argue that model and data parallelisms impose rather different challenges for system design, algorithmic adjustment, and theoretical analysis. In this paper, we develop a system for model-parallelism, STRADS, that provides a programming abstraction for scheduling parameter updates by discovering and leveraging changing structural properties of ML programs. STRADS enables a flexible tradeoff between scheduling efficiency and fidelity to intrinsic dependencies within the models, and improves memory efficiency of distributed ML. We demonstrate the efficacy of model-parallel algorithms implemented on STRADS versus popular implementations for topic modeling, matrix factorization, and Lasso.


Manufacturers often face a choice of whether to recover the value in their end-of-life products through remanufacturing. In many cases, firms choose not to remanufacture, as they are (rightly) concerned that the remanufactured product will cannibalize sales of the higher-margin new product. However, such a strategy may backfire for manufacturers operating in industries where their end-of-life products (cell phones, tires, computers, automotive parts, etc.) are attractive to third-party remanufacturers, who may seriously cannibalize sales of the original manufacturer. In this paper, we develop models to support a manufacturer's recovery strategy in the face of a competitive threat on the remanufactured product market. We first analyze the competition between new and remanufactured products produced by a monopolist manufacturer and identify conditions under which the firm would choose not to remanufacture its products. We then characterize the potential profit loss due to external remanufacturing competition and analyze two entry-deterrent strategies: remanufacturing and preemptive collection. We find that a firm may choose to remanufacture or preemptively collect its used products to deter entry, even when the firm would not have chosen to do so under a pure monopoly environment. Finally, we discuss conditions under which each strategy is more beneficial.


Scarf's economy has been a vehicle in understanding stability properties in exchange economies. The full set of market equilibria and Pareto optimal allocations for this economy has not been analysed. This paper aims to do that. Firstly, we examine the Pareto optima and we find three different classes. Only Class I exhausts the aggregate endowments of all the goods. Class II and III involve throwing away partially or totally one good in order to achieve Pareto efficiency. Secondly, we explore the price and endowment distribution combinations which sustain the different Pareto Optima as market equilibria. A Pareto optimum which involves throwing away the whole endowment of one of the goods is globally stable.


The role of the food industry in the response to the epidemic of obesity is guided by many factors, including the current state of knowledge of the problem. There have been efforts among food and beverage companies to help increase our knowledge about the factors contributing to overweight and to investigate product and marketing changes that may help reduce the risk of weight gain. The value of their future contributions is dependent on corporate resolve, but also on interactive guidance from government and health institutions on the best strategies to take and the best research to support. This is especially clear given the complex nature of the causes of obesity and approaches for treatment.


Innovation is the result of an interactive process. Knowledge-intensive interactions among different partners are associated with a variety of advantages and disadvantages for the actors involved. Therefore, a rich body of literature investigating the impact of R&D collaboration networks on the innovation performance of firms and regions has developed over the last two decades. Those studies come to different results. The aims of this paper are manifold. First, the paper summarizes the results of the relevant literature. Second, a brief overview of the established methods and approaches used in the literature to investigate this research question is given. The third objective is to answer the question whether the achieved results in the literature are predetermined by the employed methods. Finally, relevant gaps for further research are identified. To answer these questions a meta-analysis of the relevant literature is conducted. This study shows that knowledge-intensive interactions have a rather positive impact on the performance of firms and regions. There is also evidence that the employed methods and approaches used in the literature to investigate this research question predetermine the outcome of the research.


The use of electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) in determining the electronic properties of Si and thickness dependent loss function of Si with 0.14 eV energy resolution were investigated. The dielectric response function was used to describe the interaction of a transmitted electron beam with the solid specimen. The specimen was oxidized in air for several days so that a thin amorphous SiO2 layer was formed covering both surfaces. It was observed that for fine structure investigations a high energy resolution of the electron source and the spectrometer were essential. The tails of the zero loss peak (ZLP) have also to be removed for extreme low loss spectroscopy.


This paper was written for a symposium on legal transitions. The central question in the transitions literature is whether or to what extent the government should provide compensation for (or seek in some way to ameliorate) the losses of wealth occasioned by unexpected changes in the law or social policy. This Article argues that the prevailing normative framework for evaluating legal transitions - the consequentialist or economic framework - relies critically on two assumptions: the assumption that private parties (whose incentives are sought to be affected by the choice of transition norm) will behave with rational expectations and the assumption that the law will tend to change in a desirable direction, that there will be "legal progress." Perhaps the most important, and certainly the most well-known, insight of the consequentialist framework has been that, if both of these assumptions hold, a powerful case can be made in favor of a norm of applying legal change retroactively. To the extent, however, that these assumptions do not apply, the case for retroactivity becomes considerably weaker, at least on incentive- or anticipation-grounds. One conclusion of the Article is that those assumptions are quite likely to apply - and hence a retroactivity norm will likely make good sense - with respect to two fairly narrow types of legal change: 1) expansions in products liability law (or expansions in product safety or environmental regulation generally) that are based on the incorporation of the latest (and adequately confirmed) scientific discoveries; and 2) moves, by Congress, courts, or the IRS to eliminate abusive tax shelter transactions. In both of these admittedly unrelated cases, there is a strong case to be made that the relevant parties - manufacturers in one and sophisticated taxpayers in the other - can rationally predict the future course of law and its application to them. And there is a strong case that these types of legal change will tend to be desirable. One way of putting my conclusion is that, if retroactivity is ever going to make sense on incentive grounds, it will make sense in these cases.


This research uses neo-institutional theory to explain the growth of past-related concepts in brand positioning. After a literature review presenting the socio-cultural context, bibliometric and historical analysis show that the past as positioning axis emerge from the 2000s as a result of institutional work simultaneously in marketing research, education and practice. Results contribute to research on the circulation of novel ideas in marketing, they also question the hierarchy of the three pillars of legitimacy when it comes to positioning.


Breeding populations of southern dunlin Calidris alpina schinzii in South Fennoscandia and the Baltic are severely fragmented and declining dramatically. Information on the genetic structure and diversity is therefore of importance for the conservation and management of these populations. Here we present the results of comparative genetic analyses of these populations with other populations of the schinzii, alpina and arctica subspecies in northern Europe. We sequenced the mitochondrial DNA control region and the Z-chromosome intron VLDLR-9, and analyzed microsatellites and AFLPs, for analyses of within-population genetic diversity. We also extended previous analyses of the phylogeographic structure of dunlins in northern Europe with a larger sample of individuals and populations. Our results revealed no evidence of reduced genetic diversity or increased levels of inbreeding in the small and fragmented populations around the Baltic Sea as compared to the more vital and larger populations elsewhere. Nevertheless, their small population sizes and presumably high degree of isolation may lead to local extinctions, indicating that demographic and ecological factors may pose a greater threat to the survival of these populations than purely genetic factors. Phylogeographically, the schinzii populations in Scandinavia and the Baltic do not form a separate genetic clade, but are part of larger cline of genetic variation encompassing several recognized subspecies of dunlins in the western Palearctic region. Only the Icelandic population showed some distinctiveness in genetic structure and might therefore be considered a separate management unit. Our study highlights the general problem of lack of genetic support for subspecies in avian taxonomy and conservation genetics.


E-commerce – short for 'electronic commerce' – refers to the selling, exchange, distribution and marketing of products and services between a person or organisation and their stakeholders. Especially, within the fashion industry, e-commerce must be a priority for every brand wishing to remain relevant: according to a recent report, global revenue of the clothes and accessories market is expected to be more than $255 billion USD in 2017. Even more importantly, predictions dictate an annual growth of the market by 12.2%, reaching approximately $355 billion USD in 2020. Although these numbers indeed seem appealing, the experiential nature of fashion items makes it harder to sell products like this online. Most people simply prefer to feel and see how an item looks on them before they actually continue with the purchase. Also, companies must deal with the high-costs generated by people who want to overcome the "try-before-buy" barrier. Simply a lot of items that are sold online will be returned to the seller. Some companies even report a return rate of up to 50% of their online sales. Which is not helpful considering the following: when a $40 item gets returned, it costs the seller around $15 in shipping and handling. Many profitable e-retailers highlight their focus on customer experience as the reason behind their success. This article highlights that when a website is designed in a customer-centric way, it can lead to organisational changes that will not only increase customer satisfaction but will also ensure a sustainable digital model for the company. However, a customer-focused design calls for information to be collected regarding the users. Unfortunately, many customers are bit reluctant to fill in their personal data online. Clearly, e-commerce websites need to create a sense of credibility and trust for to build a relationship with their visitors. Especially, i they want to turn them into buyers first and into loyal customers afterwards. As mentioned above, e-commerce is a tactic that has the potential to leverage growth for fashion and apparel companies. Of course, only if strategically designed and in the right way implemented. In the following section of this article, a presentation will be given of the (technological) trends tomorrow's e-commerce pioneers should keep an eye on. Reading the list below helps you to keep ahead of the ever-changing consumer behavior in the digital marketplace. Virtual Fitting Tools To decrease the number of returns, which can really affect an online retailer's profit margin as demonstrated earlier, one can incorporate in their website a virtual sizing tool to help customers in their choice of the right size and model. Either by allowing customers to compare the product they are interested in online to the fit of a previous purchase through your website or to the measurements of their favourite item (e.g.  Virtusize ), or by recommending specific items to visitors based on their fit preferences (e.g.  Fits.me ). So, also depending on your products, there are many options out there for you to consider – while definitely a lot more will be developed that will ensure an even higher ROI. Cutting edge technology, such as augmented reality applications, also is used in specific segments of the market such as accessories, to allow customers to envision how they will look wearing a specific item (e.g.  Glasses.com ). Questionnaires On a similar note, to bridge the inconsistencies between a customer's ideas and reality as regards their style and fit preferences, an increasing number of websites is incorporating short surveys or quizzes that aim to clarify what a customer believes their style is and how they actually prefer to dress. In that way, their buying decisions through the website are closer to their style, leading to fewer items being returned. Personalization A personalized experience on a website -apart from the obvious rapport-building effect with the user- can also allow more efficient customer segmentation for the company. Specifically, by identifying which customers are "serial returners", the company can avoid offering them the option of free shipping, while discounts and special offers can be used to "reward" the customers that do not usually return products. Gamification By making the buying process more fun and interactive, it is possible that visitors will engage more with the website's content and will eventually end up spending more time browsing, that may translate into spending more money too. A reward can be offered to the users that go through with the game/ application (e.g.  Covet Fashion , where visitors dress an avatar with real clothes from the collection and people vote on the best outfits which are then given as prizes) or the company can just use the data collected during the gaming process to offer a more personalized experience to the user in the future (e.g.  Sephora , allowing website visitors to upload a picture of themselves and try various shades of lipstick – which are remembered by the website and then promoted in future visits). Social Validation & Liking Persuading the visitors and potential buyers that the ecommerce environment they are browsing in is safe and credible can be an issue, especially with consumers who are hesitant with online sales. Apart from actually designing prominent Psychology and Marketing specialist suggests that two of the easiest paths to convince even the most skeptical customers, are social validation and liking. More specifically, social approval uses the feelings of "peer pressure" to influence behavior and is generally used in the form of online reviews by existing customers. The feeling of liking refers to the fact that people are most likely to adhere to a suggested action, when they like the source of the suggestion, as is the case in the employment of physically attractive people in advertisements. An actionable way to take advantage of both the social validation and liking factors, would be to encourage customers to share product reviews with their friends through their various social media accounts: people like what their friends like and are more willing to buy it if it's approved by people they trust. Want to know more or need some help from us with this? Contact  Sqetch .


Global illumination adds tremendous visual richness to rendered images. Unfortunately, such illumination proves quite costly to compute, and is therefore often coarsely approximated by interactive applications, or simply omitted altogether. Global illumination is often quite low-frequency, aside from sharp changes at discontinuities. This thesis describes three novel multiresolution image-space methods that exploit this characteristic to accelerate rendering speeds. These techniques run completely on the GPU at interactive rates and require no precomputation, allowing fully dynamic lighting, geometry, and camera.
The first approach, multiresolution splatting, is a novel multiresolution method for rendering indirect illumination. This work extends reflective shadow maps, an image space method that splats contributions from secondary light sources into eyespace. Splats are refined into multiresolution patches, rendering indirect contributions at low resolution where lighting changes slowly and at high resolution near discontinuities; this greatly reduces GPU fill rate and enhances performance.
The second method, image space radiosity, significantly improves the performance of multiresolution splatting, introducing an efficient stencil-based parallel refinement technique. This method also adapts ideas from object-space hierarchical radiosity methods to image space, introducing two adaptive sampling methods that allow much finer sampling of the reflective shadow map where needed. These modifications significantly improve temporal coherence while maintaining performance.
The third approach adapts these techniques to accelerate the rendering of direct illumination from large area light sources. Visibility is computed using a coarse screen-space voxelization technique, allowing binary visibility queries using ray marching. This work also proposes a new incremental refinement method that considers both illumination and visibility variations. Both diffuse and non-diffuse surfaces are supported, and illumination can vary over the surface of the light, enabling dynamic content such as video screens.


This study explores historical iatrosophia texts from Cyprus from a botanical and medico-pharmacological point of view focusing on remedies containing resins and gums. The iatrosophia are a genre of Greek medical literature of Byzantine origin and can be described as medicine handbooks which serve as therapeutic repositories containing recipes or advice. To extract and analyze information on plant usage in such sources – which are largely unedited texts and so far have not been translated – we investigate (i) the relationship of the iatrosophia to Dioscorides' De Materia Medica as well as historic pharmaceutical books or standard texts on modern phytotherapy and (ii) the validity of the remedies by comparing them to modern scientific data on reported biological activities. In the six texts investigated 27 substances incorporating plant exudates are mentioned. They are obtained from over 43 taxa of higher plants and in particular are used to treat dermatological, gastrointestinal, and respiratory tract conditions. The comparison to historic pharmaceutical books and phytotherapy texts reflects the gradual decline of the use of plant exudates in Western medicine. While remarkable parallels to Dioscorides' text exist, the non-Dioscoridean influence suggests a complex pattern of knowledge exchange. Overall, this resulted in an integration of knowledge from so far poorly understood sources. The comparison with bioscientific data reveals a fragmentary picture and highlights the potential of these unexplored substances and their uses. Where relevant bioscientific data are available, we generally found a confirmation. This points to a largely rational use of the associated remedies. Taken together, the iatrosophia are a valuable resource for ethnopharmacological and natural product research. Most importantly they contribute to the understanding of the development of herbal medicines in the (Eastern) Mediterranean and Europe.


Individuals with visual impairments (VI) trend toward lower motor competence when compared with peers without VI. Various forms of perception often affects motor competence. Thus, it is important to explore factors that influence forms of perception and their differential effects on motor competence for those with VI. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to explore and describe the differential effects of age, gender, and degree of vision on self-perceptions, parents' perceptions, metaperceptions, and locomotor skills, and to examine potential associations among all variables with actual locomotor competence for adolescents with VI. Adolescents with VI completed two questionnaires and the Test of Gross Motor Development-Third Edition. Parents completed a parent perception questionnaire. Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis H analyses showed no differential effects for gender or age on any dependent measures. Degree of vision affected locomotor skills, but not any other factor. Spearman rho correlations showed significant associations among locomotor and self-perceptions, degree of vision and locomotor, and metaperceptions with parents' perceptions. Adolescents reported relatively high self-perceptions and metaperceptions; however, their actual locomotor competence and parents' perceptions were relatively low. Findings may help situate future intervention strategies targeting parents supporting their children's locomotor skills through self-perceptions.


During disruption mitigation by massive gas injection (MGI) the thermal energy is expected to be radiated with high efficiency in order to prevent excessive heat loads to first wall and divertor PFCs. The energy loss will take place in two phases: a) the so-called pre-thermal quench phase that lasts from the arrival of the first gas to the onset of increased transport due to MHD activity during b) the second phase the thermal quench (TQ). Quantification of the duration of the pre-TQ phase is essential for the design of the ITER disruption mitigation system (DMS). The DMS has to be designed such that the impurity amount accumulated during pre-TQ stage should be sufficient for re-radiation of more than 90% of heat flux at subsequent TQ phase of ITER disruption. The modeling with the code ASTRA together with ZIMPUR impurity transport and radiation code allows the description of the cooling process at the plasma edge, including the penetration of impurities and the shrinking of the current channel. Newly developed model for the gas flow at the end of delivery tube of MGI system well reproduce experimentally measured evolution. The validation of the simulation approach on available experimental data has demonstrated its ability to produce quantitative estimations of the pre-TQ stage duration and of the accumulated in the plasma amounts of noble gases and deuterium under MGI. Simulation results of the pre-TQ stage in reference ITER scenarios are presented. The ability of the ITER MGI systems to provide injection of necessary impurity amount during pre-TQ stage is discussed.