Dual-tree wavelet decompositions have recently gained much popularity, mainly due to their ability to provide a good directional analysis of images combined with a reduced redundancy. When the decomposition of a random process is performed ‐ which occurs in particular when an additive noise is corrupting the signal to be analyzed ‐ it is useful to characterize the statistical properties of the dual-tree wavele t coefficients of this process. As dual-tree decompositions constitute overcomplete frame expansions, correlation structures are introduced among the coefficients, even when a white noise is analyzed. In this paper, we show that it is possible to provide an accurate description of the covariance properties of the dual-tree coefficients of a wide-sen se stationary process. The expressions of the (cross-)covariance sequences of the coefficients are derived in th e one and two-dimensional cases. Asymptotic results are also provided, allowing to predict the behaviour of the second-order moments for large lag values or at coarse resolution. In addition, the cross-correlations between the primal and du al wavelets, which play a primary role in our theoretical analysis, are calculated for a number of classical wavelet f amilies. Simulation results are finally provided to validate these results.


Background: Training in communication skills is prominent in many undergraduate medical programmes. In South Africa, training in this highly complex skill is developing rapidly, especially against the backdrop of a multilingual and multicultural society. Little work has been done locally to evaluate which training works best in our context. In 1999, the Stellenbosch University Faculty of Health Sciences introduced a new curriculum that included considerably more communication skills training. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the communication skills used in the consultations of two groups of final-year medical students who had different levels of communication skills training in order to make recommendations on appropriate changes in this training.
Methods: Standardised doctor-patient interviews performed by students during the final-year examinations in 2003 and 2004 were videotaped. These were assessed by two independent, blinded evaluators using an abbreviated version of the Calgary- Cambridge communication guide for skills not done (0) and done (1). The data was analysed using STATISTICA 7.
Results: A total of 161 interviews were analysed. Both groups performed well (mean = 1) in listening to the opening question, encouraging the patients to tell their story, and demonstrating appropriate non-verbal behaviour. However, ending the session by summarising and clarifying the plan was poorly performed (mean = 0.4). The 2004 group was statistically significantly better in structuring the consultation by using signposting (p value = 0.02).
Conclusion: There are a number of influences on the effectiveness of communication skills training, including issues around language, culture and gender, student attitudes, the significance of communication skills training in the programme and, most importantly, the integration of this training into the curriculum as a whole. Merely adding more time to communication skillstraining does not seem to be the answer. Incorporating a wider range of training methods is also important. The results of this impact study acted as an impetus for innovative curriculum development in our faculty, leading to the development ofa comprehensive clinical model and a "golden thread" for communication skills in the curriculum to ensure the longitudinal integration of communication skills.


This report provides insights into the status of renewable energy development at the state level. Renewable resources are increasing in development overall, but state development varies by resource and rates of change. The factors contributing to renewable energy development at the state level are identified and discussed, including the challenges of understanding the role of different factors in development. The report also compiles and evaluates the status of 'best practice' state policy design and connects the existence of some policies with increased renewable energy development through correlation analysis. The report also proposes a strategy for better understanding the role of policy in renewable energy development, based on market-transformation principles. Correlation analysis illustrates the potential for further application of these principles to renewable energy. The final section provides resources for state policy makers for better understanding and developing renewable energy resources.


In late 2005, a number of German open ended funds suffered significant withdrawals by unit holders. The crisis was precipitated by a long term bear market in German property investment and the fact that these funds offered short term liquidity to unit holders but had low levels of liquidity in the fund. A more controversial suggestion was that the crisis was exacerbated by a perception that the valuations of the fund were too infrequent and inaccurate. As units are priced by reference to these valuations with no secondary market, the valuation process is central to the process. There is no direct evidence that these funds were over-valued but there is circumstantial evidence and this paper examines the indirect evidence of the process to see whether the hypothesis that valuation is an issue for the German funds holds any credibility. It also discusses whether there is a wider issue for other funds of this nature or whether it is a parochial problem confined to Germany. The conclusions are that there is reason to believe that German valuation processes make over-valuation in a recession more likely than in other countries and that more direct research into the German valuation system is required to identify the issues which need to be addressed to make the valuation system more trusted.


Modern Baltic Paganism grew out of nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklore research into the folk music, folklore and traditional ethnic cultures of Latvia and Lithuania. Research into native Latvian daina and Lithuanian daino folk songs with their rustic beauty, symbolic richness, and intriguing linkages to ancient Indo-European cultures and religions generated a new sense of pride and ethnic identity among Latvians and Lithuanians. Spiritually inclined folklorists developed religious movements that recreated rituals and beliefs linked to the dainas and dainos . Repressed during Soviet times, these movements have reemerged and flourished in the post-Soviet period. There can be no doubt that music, which over the centuries has played such a crucial role in the transmission of Latvian and Lithuanian folk traditions including native Pagan religions, will remain front and center in the continuing evolution of modern Baltic Pagan religions in Latvia and Lithuania and beyond.


Outlier detection has been a very important concept in the realm of data analysis and the complex relationships that appear with regard to patient symptoms, diagnoses and behavior are the most promising areas of outlier mining. This paper elaborates how the outliers can be detected by using statistical methods. The importance of outlier detection is due to the fact that outliers in data predict significant (and often critical) information in a wide variety of application domains. There are numerous different formulations of an outlier detection problem which have been explored in diverse disciplines such as statistics, machine learning, data mining and information theory. In fact, the study with medical data by using the DM techniques is virtually an unexplored frontier which needs extraordinary attention. In this study, the pima data set was used in the simulation carried out by TANAGRA. A total of 193 outliers were detected for the statistics namely leverage, R-standard, R-student, DFFITS, Cook's D and covariance ratio. The results of the present investigation suggested that the extraordinary behavior of outliers facilitates the exploration of the valuable knowledge hidden in their domain and help the decision makers to provide improved, reliable and efficient healthcare services.


For many college students, studying the hard sciences seems out of the question. Students and professors alike collude in the prejudice that physics and molecular biology, mathematics and engineering are elite disciplines restricted to a small number with innate talent. Gregory Light and Marina Micari reject this bias, arguing, based on their own transformative experiences, that environment is just as critical to academic success in the sciences as individual ability. Making Scientists lays the groundwork for a new paradigm of how scientific subjects can be taught at the college level, and how we can better cultivate scientists, engineers, and other STEM professionals. The authors invite us into Northwestern University's Gateway Science Workshop, where the seminar room is infused with a sense of discovery usually confined to the research lab. Conventional science instruction demands memorization of facts and formulas but provides scant opportunity for critical reflection and experimental conversation. Light and Micari stress conceptual engagement with ideas, practical problem-solving, peer mentoring, and--perhaps most important--initiation into a culture of cooperation, where students are encouraged to channel their energy into collaborative learning rather than competition with classmates. They illustrate the tangible benefits of treating students as apprentices--talented young people taking on the mental habits, perspectives, and wisdom of the scientific community, while contributing directly to its development. Rich in concrete advice and innovative thinking, Making Scientists is an invaluable guide for all who care about the future of science and technology.


What trade-offs in privacy do low-income people make in dealing with state identity systems, and on what basis? We examine perspectives on Aadhaar, a national identification system for Indian residents that assigns a 12-digit number based on biometric identifiers. We draw on qualitative interviews with low-income respondents ( N = 150) in six sites spanning three Indian states. In their encounters with state identity systems, respondents weigh their privacy concerns against their need to be seen by the state and in light of their previous interactions with the state. They negotiate their privacy practices by gauging what they are offering their data in exchange for and whether the rationale for data collection resonates with them. In parallel, they use their previous interactions with the state to make decisions about when to be visible to the state and when they value their privacy more and in evaluating whether information collectors and their tools are credible. Finally, we find preliminary indications that respondents harbor unique privacy concerns around the networked nature of identity systems such as Aadhaar.


'From Marx to Market' is not only the title of a well-known book or a play on words: the slogan can also be used as a telegraphed history of the Swedish labour movement. The late 19th century pioneers of the movement were strongly influenced by German marxists and had as a concrete goal the transfer of the means of production into collective ownership. Their modern followers have abandoned - as have most socialists in Western democracies - the issue of ownership as the essence of socialism. The market economy is now generally accepted as the arena for the exchange of privately produced goods and services - albeit with restrictions and modifications in the interest of a fair distribution of wealth.


ABSTRACT We present the results of a chromosomal study (C-, Ag-NOR-, endonuclease digestion, DAPI and CMA3 banding) carried out on four Tunisian species of amphibians: Bufo mauritanicus, B. viridis, Rana saharica and Discoglossus pictus auritus. For comparative purposes, our cytogenetic analysis was also extended to Moroccan specimens of B. mauritanicus and D. pictus scovazzi. Tunisian specimens of B. viridis display chromosome and chromatin characters very similar to those found in other specimens, both North African and Euro-Asian. By contrast, chromosomes of Tunisian specimens of B. mauritanicus differed from the Moroccan specimens in presenting a different Q-banding phenotype. Tunisian specimens of R. saharica displayed the plesiomorphic Pelophylax karyotype of 2n = 26 biarmed chromosomes and NORs on the eleventh pair. The Tunisian specimens of D. pictus auritus had the typical D. pictus 2n = 28 karyotype with the 13th pair of telocentric elements, in contrast to the Spanish auritus specimens that display the chromosomes of this pair shaped as metacentric. Similarities and differences of the four studied Tunisians anuran taxa are discussed with references to published data on their relatives.


The interpretations and practices of widening participation are explored using a case study of an academic School within a post-1992 University. The research is based upon the assumption that there are no shared understandings of the agenda and that policy may be reinterpreted by stakeholders. Consequently individuals' interpretations and practice of widening participation were explored. Semi structured interviews with apposite staff were used to uncover their understandings of the agenda. The individuals held a range of posts, as it was believed important to explore differing perspectives of the agenda, but all were identified with the decision making process attached to widening participation.The research uncovers the multiple and complex factors which affect the interpretation and practice of widening participation. The role of government is important to that practice as it is argued that the University and School engage with it in a reactive manner. The impact of government policy is complex, and is seen to operate in both a direct and indirect manner upon the Institution. What is evident is that the relationship of government and the higher education institution is contested and that the practice of widening participation within the Institution is in part an outcome of this.Through the data the role of the university and academics was identified as important to the interpretation and practice of widening participation, as was the binary divide. However for both academics and Institution there were more pressing and important priorities which side-lined the agenda. In particular widening participation appeared to challenge perceived academic roles and purposes. The agenda was not seen as being a defining function of that role and hence was not owned by academics; a consequence of this is the way that it was interpreted and practiced.The implication for practice is that government needs to acknowledge the culture of higher education during policy construction, in order for it to be owned. In addition there is a need for academics to reflect upon their own practice and to reject instrumental constructions of the agenda. Rather, they need to engage in a redevelopment of their role which affords the learner an opportunity to contribute to the meaning of higher education. It is at this level, it is concluded, that the agenda can become transformative and move beyond quantitative definitions.


Given the increasing scarcity of IPv4 addresses, network operators are resorting to measures to expand their address pool or prolong the life of existing addresses. One such approach is Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN), where many end-users in a network share a single public IPv4 address. There is limited data about the prevalence of CGN, despite the implications on performance, security, and ultimately, the adoption of IPv6. In this work, we present passive measurement-based techniques for detecting CGN deployments across the entire Internet, without the requirement of access to machines behind a CGN. Specifically, we identify patterns in how client IP addresses are observed at M-Lab servers and at the UCSD network telescope to infer whether those clients are behind a CGN. We apply our methods on data collected from 2014 to 2016. We find that CGN deployment is increasing rapidly. Overall, we infer that 4.1K autonomous systems are deploying CGN, 6 times the number inferred by the most recent studies.


Purpose of review There is a history of inadequate treatments for cryptosporidiosis and a lack of understanding of the species that cause human disease. Against this background, we review the efficacy of antiparasitic agents, particularly nitazoxanide, which has led to increased treatment options, the potential for immunotherapy, and consider the role of highly active antiretroviral therapy in reducing the incidence of this opportunistic infection. Recent findings Nitazoxanide is effective for cryptosporidiosis in immunocompetent and probably immunocompromised patients (with an alteration in the duration of treatment or the dosing regimen). HIV-infected patients on highly active antiretroviral therapy have a dramatically lower incidence of cryptosporidiosis, attributable to the effects of intestinal immune reconstitution as well as the effect on the CD4 cell count. Protease inhibitors have a direct inhibitory effect on Cryptosporidium infection, suggesting a further reason for the reduction in the incidence of cryptosporidiosis and implying a further possible therapeutic modality. Summary Cryptosporidiosis remains a significant public health threat. Risk avoidance guidance could be viewed in the more relative terms of risk management depending on the degree of immunosuppression. Of established efficacy in immunocompetent patients, nitazoxanide is also useful for immunocompromised patients. Better prevention and treatment options mean that, in the immunocompromised, this disease is now less common. Immune reconstitution is the key to prevention. Further database mining of the Cryptosporidium genome will assist in the discovery of new genes, biochemical pathways and protective antigens that can be targeted to develop novel therapies for cryptosporidiosis.


This thesis focuses on how recalling past behaviour affects attitudes, intentions and behaviour in the domain of moral decision-making. It extends the existing literature on moral licensing and moral cleansing by exploring whether different individual difference variables moderate such licensing and cleansing effects. Five empirical studies are reported.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the moral licensing and moral cleansing literature and also outlines research into the predictive effects of moral norms on behavioural intentions within the structure of the TPB.

In chapter 2, the first study reveals evidence of moral cleansing effects: participants in an immoral condition were more likely to donate to charity than were participants in a moral condition or control group. Study 2 investigated whether self monitoring moderated licensing and cleansing effects.

Chapter 3 (study 3) investigated the mediation effect of emotion and the moderation effect of moral identity regarding licensing and cleansing effects on attitudes, intentions and moral norm and behaviour. A partial mediation of condition and behaviour by negative emotions was identified. The results also indicated evidence of a cleansing effect. Moreover, in studies 1, 2 and 3 mediation of the moral norms – intention relationship via attitudes was examined. Moral norms were identified as a strong predictor of charitable donation intentions.

In Chapter 4, environmental attitude was investigated as a moderator of the effect of individuals' past pro-environmental behaviour on TPB components. Internally motivated pro-environmental attitude was found to be a significant moderator.

Chapter 5 draws upon the idea that conception of morality differs in different cultures and examined how different moral foundation values and cultural orientations affect moral attitudes and intentions in the UK and Iran. Surprisingly, moral norms were a more useful predictor of intention than were attitudes in both national cultures.


A fault tolerant network on chip (FT-NoC) system with reconfigurable architecture for aerospace applications is proposed. Applying different types of redundancy on chip increases reliability, efficiency and effectiveness of the NoC and, at large, the aircraft control system itself. The central theme is the application of redundancy to tolerate hardware faults in the processor cores of the NoC system's functional units. Second theme is the implementation of an application-specific configuration topology for the aircraft control system. The elements inside the chip are designed by considering reliability, fault tolerance and power consumption. Time, information and structural redundancies are implemented to achieve tolerance against potential permanent or transient faults. The proposed NoC system benefits aircraft control systems through higher reliability, parallelism in wire speed, reconfigurability of hardware for real time data processing, and also by lowering power consumption.


Turkish secularism has been employed as a foundation of modernization since the founding of the Turkish Republic. But it has also been criticized severely, given its dilemmas. One basic dilemma is caused by the fact that Sunnism, the faith held by the majority, has become established as one of tenets of the Turkish national identity by the founders. The role and influence of Sunnism have been enhanced with multi-party democracy, to be accelerated after the 1980 coup. As a result, the non-Sunnis have faced difficulties and discrimination when practicing their faith. Political discourses about the largest non-Sunni group, the Alevis, are studied in this master's thesis, in relation with the discussion, perception and presentation of their demands regarding the practice of Alevism during the 2000s. Like in previous periods, different parties used different discourses to defend or challenge the status quo. Unity has been a popular discourse, strengthened by the conspiracy and separatism discourses, used to justify the status quo and the differential treatment of non-Sunnis. Alevis, on the other hand, have used diversity and identity discourses to demand their rights, until the 2000s. The 2000s has been a debated period regarding transformations in terms of democracy, secularism and pluralism. During this era, Alevis began using democracy and equal citizenship discourses, leaving the identity and diversity discourse. On the other side, unity discourse has become to be increasingly used with reference to faith. But the debates has not led to positive, concrete outcomes for Alevis except for the increasing visibility of their faith and demands.


Paleo-Eskimos were the first people to settle vast regions of the American Arctic around 5,000 years ago, and were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yupik. The genetic relationship between Paleo-Eskimos and Native American populations remains uncertain. We analyze ancient and present-day genome-wide data from the Americas and Siberia, including new data from Alaskan Iñupiat and West Siberian populations, and the first genome-wide DNA from ancient Aleutian Islanders, ancient northern Athabaskans, and a 4,250-year-old individual of the Chukotkan Ust'-Belaya culture. Employing new methods based on rare allele and haplotype sharing as well as established methods based on allele frequency correlations, we show that Paleo-Eskimo ancestry is widespread among populations who speak Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages. Using phylogenetic modelling with allele frequency correlations and rare variation, we present a comprehensive model for the complex peopling of North America.


The response of the phytoplanktonic community (primary production and algal biomass) to contrasted Sa-haran dust events (wet and dry deposition) was studied in the framework of the DUNE ("a DUst experiment in a low-Nutrient, low-chlorophyll Ecosystem") project. We simu-lated realistic dust deposition events (10 g m −2) into large mesocosms (52 m 3). Three distinct dust addition experiments were conducted in June 2008 (DUNE-1-P: simulation of a wet deposition; DUNE-1-Q: simulation of a dry deposition) and 2010 (DUNE-2-R1 and DUNE-2-R2: simulation of two successive wet depositions) in the northwestern oligotrophic Mediterranean Sea. No changes in primary production (PP) and chlorophyll a concentrations (Chl a) were observed after a dry deposition event, while a wet deposition event resulted in a rapid (24 h after dust addition), strong (up to 2.4-fold) and long (at least a week in duration) increase in PP and Chl a. We show that, in addition to being a source of dis-solved inorganic phosphorus (DIP), simulated wet deposition events were also a significant source of nitrate (NO − 3) (net in-creases up to +9.8 µM NO − 3 at 0.1 m in depth) to the nutrient-depleted surface waters, due to cloud processes and mixing with anthropogenic species such as HNO 3 . The dry deposi-tion event was shown to be a negligible source of NO − 3 . By transiently increasing DIP and NO − 3 concentrations in N–P starved surface waters, wet deposition of Saharan dust was able to relieve the potential N or NP co-limitation of the phy-toplanktonic activity. Due to the higher input of NO − 3 relative to DIP, and taking into account the stimulation of the bio-logical activity, a wet deposition event resulted in a strong increase in the NO − 3 /DIP ratio, from initially less than 6, to over 150 at the end of the DUNE-2-R1 experiment, suggest-ing a switch from an initial N or NP co-limitation towards a severe P limitation. We also show that the contribution of new production to PP strongly increased after wet dust de-position events, from initially 15 % to 60–70 % 24 h after seeding, indicating a switch from a regenerated-production based system to a new-production based system. DUNE ex-periments show that wet and dry dust deposition events in-duce contrasting responses of the phytoplanktonic commu-nity due to differences in the atmospheric supply of bioavail-able new nutrients. Our results from original mesocosm ex-periments demonstrate that atmospheric dust wet deposition Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 4784 C. Ridame et al.: Phytoplanktonic response to Saharan dust events greatly influences primary productivity and algal biomass in LNLC environments through changes in the nutrient stocks, and alters the NO − 3 /DIP ratio, leading to a switch in the nu-trient limitation of the phytoplanktonic activity.


Textile-based electrodes show great potential as substitution of conventional electrodes when long-time monitoring is required. The flexibility and high skin-electrode contacting area make it possible to avoid the use of contact gel, which may cause irritation to the patients' skin. In this study, textile-based electrodes were made by combining conductive materials with high absorption nature fibres with the intention to create and maintain a microenvironment that improve the contact between the skin and electrode by local sweating at the electrode site. Alternatively artificial sweat (i.e. saline) may be added for a similar effect. However, by adding nature fibres into the electrodes, the electrical properties of the electrodes are modified due to the ration of conductive yarns is decreased. In this paper, the surface resistivity in the warp and weft directions and its distribution were measured in a four-wire resistance mode. The resistivity of the conductive yarns, the type of nature fibres, the textile construction and the fabric pick density were selected as the independent variables and the surface resistivity in warp and weft measurement directions was the dependent variable to be analysed. Preliminary results show that the conductivity of the conductive yarns are more important than the fabric pick density; surface resistance were not measurable in warp direction of most plain weave fabrics since the conductive yarns were only involved in the weft direction, however, the resistance were measureable in the case of satin fabrics; and that the surface resistivity is more evenly distributed in weft direction than the warp direction


This book is unique in occupying a gap between standard undergraduate texts and more advanced texts on quantum field theory. It covers a range of renormalization methods with a clear physical interpretation (and motivation), including mean-field theories and high-temperature and low-density expansions. It then proceeds by easy steps to the famous epsilon-expansion, ending up with the first-order corrections to critical exponents beyond mean-field theory. Nowadays there is widespread interest in applications of renormalization methods to various topics ranging over soft condensed matter, engineering dynamics, traffic queueing and fluctuations in the stock market. Hence macroscopic systems are also included, with particular emphasis on the archetypal problem of fluid turbulence. The book is also unique in making this material accessible to readers other than theoretical physicists, as it requires only the basic physics and mathematics which should be known to most scientists, engineers and mathematicians.


ABSTRACT The alpha/beta interferon (IFN-α/β) system represents one of the first lines of defense against virus infections. As a result, most viruses encode IFN antagonistic factors which enhance viral replication in their hosts. We have previously shown that a recombinant influenza A virus lacking the NS1 gene (delNS1) only replicates efficiently in IFN-α/β-deficient systems. Consistent with this observation, we found that infection of tissue culture cells with delNS1 virus, but not with wild-type influenza A virus, induced high levels of mRNA synthesis from IFN-α/β genes, including IFN-β. It is known that transactivation of the IFN-β promoter depends on NF-κB and several other transcription factors. Interestingly, cells infected with delNS1 virus showed high levels of NF-κB activation compared with those infected with wild-type virus. Expression of dominant-negative inhibitors of the NF-κB pathway during delNS1 virus infection prevented the transactivation of the IFN-β promoter, demonstrating a functional link between NF-κB activation and IFN-α/β synthesis in delNS1 virus-infected cells. Moreover, expression of the NS1 protein prevented virus- and/or double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)-mediated activation of the NF-κB pathway and of IFN-β synthesis. This inhibitory property of the NS1 protein of influenza A virus was dependent on its ability to bind dsRNA, supporting a model in which binding of NS1 to dsRNA generated during influenza virus infection prevents the activation of the IFN system. NS1-mediated inhibition of the NF-κB pathway may thus play a key role in the pathogenesis of influenza A virus.


The 1988 and 2002 phocine distemper virus (PDV) outbreaks in European harbour seals Phoca vitulina are among the largest mass mortality events recorded in marine mammals. Despite its large impact on harbour seal population numbers, and 3 decades of studies, many questions regarding the spread and temporal origin of PDV remain unanswered. Here, we sequenced and analysed 7123 bp of the PDV genome, including the coding and non-coding regions of the entire P, M, F and H genes in tissues from 44 harbour seals to shed new light on the origin and spread of PDV in 1988 and 2002. The phylogenetic analyses trace the origin of the PDV strain causing the 1988 outbreak to between May 1987 and April 1988, while the origin of the strain causing the 2002 outbreak can be traced back to between June 2001 and May 2002. The analyses further point to several independent introductions of PDV in 1988, possibly linked to a southward mass immigration of harp seals in the winter and spring of 1987-1988. The vector for the 2002 outbreak is unknown, but the epidemiological analyses suggest the subsequent spread of PDV from the epicentre in the Kattegat, Denmark, to haul-out sites in the North Sea through several independent introductions.


One of America's most popular Jewish writers, Chaim Potok (b. 1929) is the author of such novels as The Chosen (1967), The Promise (1969), The Book of Lights (1981), and Davita's Harp (1985). Each of his novels explores the tension between tradition and modernity, and the clash between Jewish culture and contemporary Western civilization, which he calls "core-to-core culture confrontation." Although primarily known as a novelist, Potok is an ordained Conservative rabbi and a world-class Judaic scholar who has also published children's books, theological discourses, biographies, and histories. Conversations with Chaim Potok presents interviews ranging from 1976 to 1999. Potok discusses the broad range of his writing and the deep influence of non-Jewish novels-in particular, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man-on his work. Interviews bear witness to Potok's many other influences-Orthodox Jewish doctrine, Freudian psychoanalytical theory, Picasso's Guernica, and Jewish kabbalah mysticism. Though labeled an American Jewish writer, Potok argues that Flannery O'Connor should then be called an American Catholic writer and John Updike an American Protestant writer. "In his mind," editor Daniel Walden writes, "just as Faulkner was a writer focused on a particular place, Oxford, Mississippi, ...so Potok's territory was a small section of New York City." Potok often explores conflict in his writings and in his interviews. Strict Jewish teachings deem fiction an artifice and therefore unnecessary, yet since the age of sixteen Potok has been driven to write novels. At the root of all of these conversations is Potok's intense interest in the turmoil between Jewish culture, religion, and tradition and what he calls "Western secular humanism." As he discusses his work, he continually includes broader issues, such as the state of Jewish literature and art, pointing out with pride and enthusiasm his belief that Jewish culture, in the twentieth century, has finally begun to have a significant role in producing and shaping the world's art and literature. Whether discussing the finer details of Talmudic textual analysis or his period of chaplaincy during the Korean War, Potok is articulate and philosophical, bringing deep consideration into what may seem small subjects. Although his novels and histories take place primarily in the recent past, the Chaim Potok that emerges from this collection is a writer deeply rooted in the tensions of the present. Daniel Walden is Professor Emeritus of American Studies, English and Comparative Literature at Penn State University. He has written or edited several books, including On Being Jewish (1974), Twentieth Century American Jewish Writers (1984), The World of Chaim Potok (1985), and American Jewish Poets: The Roots and the Stems (1990).


Abstract SWI-Prolog is neither a commercial Prolog system nor a purely academic enterprise, but increasingly a community project. The core system has been shaped to its current form while being used as a tool for building research prototypes, primarily for knowledge-intensive and interactive systems. Community contributions have added several interfaces and the constraint (CLP) libraries. Commercial involvement has created the initial garbage collector, added several interfaces and two development tools: PlDoc (a literate programming documentation system) and PlUnit (a unit testing environment). In this article, we present SWI-Prolog as an integrating tool, supporting a wide range of ideas developed in the Prolog community and acting as glue between foreign resources. This article itself is the glue between technical articles on SWI-Prolog, providing context and experience in applying them over a longer period.


A numerical simulation of the effect of turbulent conditions on the propagation of acoustic waves in the atmosphere has been developed. The turbulence is represented as a set of realizations of a random field generated by a limited number of random Fourier modes [Karweit et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 52–62 (1991)]. Through each individual realization, the acoustic pressure field is computed in the parabolic approximation. Ensemble averaging is thus performed to obtain the statistical properties of the field: mean level, standard deviation of the fluctuations, probability density functions, etc. Results will be given in particular for upward refracting conditions, when turbulence diffracts sound into the deterministic shadow zone.


We propose a theory that explains why international trade can widen a wage gap between top income earners and others and cause job polarization. In the basic model, we consider two symmetric countries in which individuals with different abilities work either as knowledge workers, who develop products produced in a differentiated-good sector, or as production workers, who engage in actual production processes. In equilibrium, ex ante symmetric firms post different wages for knowledge workers and hence attract workers with different abilities, creating the firm heterogeneity in product quality. International trade will benefit firms that produce high-quality products and harm firms that produce low-quality products. The relative wage gap between individuals with high ability and those with low ability expands as a result. Indeed, we show that international trade increases the real wages for those with lowest and highest abilities but decreases the real wages for those with intermediate abilities. We also extend the basic model to the one with asymmetric countries and show that income inequality worsens in the smaller or talent-scarce country while it lessens in the talent-abundant country as a result of international trade.


The paper is concerned with the structure and functional properties of bismuth ferrite–barium titanate, 0.75BiFeO3–0.25BaTiO3, solid solutions. Such materials are attracting attention due to their potential applications in high temperature piezoelectric transducers for use in demanding environments in process monitoring, for example. The article focuses on the mechanism of incorporation of the minor dopant lanthanum oxide, either in the form of isovalent or donor-type substitution. It is shown that the development of chemical heterogeneity in the form of core–shell grain microstructures, linked to donor-type substitution, plays a key role in controlling the functional behaviour. The use of an air-quenching procedure results in dramatic improvements in the ferroelectric properties, accompanied by a transformation of the shell regions from a pseudo-cubic, Pmm, to rhombohedral, R3c, structure. These observations are interpreted in terms of a novel mechanism involving nanoscale phase separation in the 'shell' regions during slow cooling, which impedes the development of ferroelectric ordering and leads to the formation of a nano-polar relaxor ferroelectric state. The work highlights the importance of immiscibility in bismuth-based ferroelectric perovskite solid solutions and illustrates how their ferroelectric, piezoelectric, dielectric energy storage, ferromagnetic and magneto-electric properties can be tuned by consideration of the substitution mechanism and control of thermal processing parameters.


Esophageal cancer is the sixth leading cause of death from malignancies in the world. Given its importance, it is a disease that needs further studies to deepen its understanding and epidemiological behavior. The aim of this work is to evaluate the epidemiological profile of EC in the ABC, Southeast and the national territory of Brazil between 2008 and 2017. This is an ecological study that evaluated the temporal trend of esophageal cancer in the elderly population, between 50 and 79 years of age, between 2008 and 2017 in the ABC region compared to the Southeast region and Brazil as a whole.  The number of male hospitalizations has shown an increasing pattern over the years studied in the Southeast and Brazil. The mean number of days of hospitalization tended to decrease for both genders, whereas in the male gender this reduction was expressed in all of the analyzed regions, and in the female gender only in the Southeast and in national scale in Brazil, in a statistically significant way. The average cost of hospitalizations increased in the Southeast and Brazil for males. These findings are important public health markers, which should be considered for the establishment of preventive and health promotion measures for the public network.

 Key words: Esophagus, cancer, epidemiology


As a result of the popularization of the narrative idea and the considerable diversity existing among narrative studies, a rather "all included" conception has arisen, in which the framework of narrative inquiry has been significantly blurred. For narrative inquiry to persist as a unique mode of investigation into human nature, a complementary dialogue is required that aims at outlining its core, alongside the emphasis given in the literature on diversity as its hallmark. As a possible reference point for this debate, recognizing the narrative paradigm that has crystallized since the "narrative turn" is suggested. The narrative paradigm is discussed in light of six major dimensions — ontology, epistemology, methodology, inquiry aim, inquirer posture and participant/narrator posture — indicating that it coincides with other interpretive paradigms in certain aspects yet proffers a unique philosophical infrastructure that gives rise to particular methodological principles and methods. Considering the narrative paradigm as the essence of narrative inquiry asserts that the latter is not confined to a methodology, as often implied. Rather it constitutes a full-fledged research Weltanschauung that intimately connects the "hows" of investigation to the "whats", namely premises about the nature of reality and our relationships with it.


The fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of microchannel heat sinks with micro-fins were investigated. A comparative study was performed between the proposed heat sinks and the conventional rectangular microchannel heat sink. The result shows that the extended surface enhances the heat transfer performance. The presence of micro-fins in the heat sinks helps to disrupt the thermal boundary layer and also increases the pressure drop. The performance of the microchannel heat sink with micro-fins is found to be 16 % higher than its rectangular counterpart.


Still myopically chasing quarterly profits, producing the same product the same way, issuing directives to increasingly disengaged employees? Too many organizations cling to outdated practices—to their detriment and almost certain demise.

 In today's unpredictable, interconnected world you cannot rely on the old rules of business to get stellar results. The New Corporate Facts of Life charts a clear path through the obstacles facing all companies—disruptive innovation, economic instability, environmental degradation, increasing stakeholder power, and other global forces—explaining exactly how to transform each challenge into competitive advantage.

 Based on interviews with over 50 top executives and thought leaders, including Coca-Cola Enterprises CEO John Brock, Georgia Tech President G.P. "Bud" Peterson, and UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn, the book recounts how leading-edge companies have begun re-shaping strategy, culture, vision, engagement, and leadership to succeed in this brave new world.

 Change is the only constant in business. Packed with inspiring stories and compelling examples, The New Corporate Facts of Life offers a bird's-eye view of the shifting landscape and reveals how any organization, large or small, can begin creating a profitable, sustainable future.


Frederick S. Frank--Fred to all who knew and learned from him-- explored the minor manifestations of the Gothic spirit with as much relish and attention to detail as his important work on its major authors. Whether tracking down illustrations from Gothic chapbooks or uncovering Gothic elements in Asian writers, Fred worked tirelessly and with his characteristic enthusiasm to expand our understanding of the reach of the Gothic (and it is worth emphasizing that he paved the way for today's growing interest in the International Gothic). As I worked on this essay concerning a minor Gothic figure--and a reluctant one at that--I kept thinking, "What would Fred think, what would he have to say?" These kind questions indicate that Fred's spirit of inquiry will live on in the writing of those of us fortunate enough to have known and worked with him. In July of 1796 Robert Southey expressed a fascination, as did many of his contemporaries, (1) with the appearance of two translations of Gottfried August Burger's ballads in the Monthly Magazine, "Lenora" and "The Lass of Fair Wone" (from the German "Des Pfarrers Tochter von Taubenhain")--poems that would exert a tremendous influence on the short-lived craze for Gothic balladry at the end of the eighteenth century. Although both were published anonymously, Southey soon learned the identity of the translator, William Taylor of Norwich, and wrote to Grosvenor Charles Bedford seeking information about him: "Who is this Taylor? I suspected they were by Sayers" (Collected Letters [31 July 1796]). Southey refers here to Frank Sayers (1763-1817), a close friend of Taylor's and, at this time, the better-known author of Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology (1790) and Poems (1792), the latter of which contains one of the earliest published ballads in the German style, "Sir Egwin." Following the lead of Thomas Percy's Five Pieces of Runic Poetry and Thomas Gray's northern Odes, Sayers wrote that the Dramatic Sketches aimed to invoke "the splendid and sublime religion of our Northern ancestors" and to recommend "a freer introduction of its imagery into the poetry of the English nation" ("Preface" 20-21). Southey knew Sayers's work well, claiming that the Dramatic Sketches was "the first book I was ever master of money enough to order at a country bookseller's" (Robberds 1: 447). Given what we would now term the Gothic imagery and modality of some of the Sketches and "Sir Egwin"--a descent into a gloomy underworld to force a prophecy from a "new slain cor[p]se"; an erring bride punished by having to drink from the skull of her murdered lover--one can understand why Southey would think that "Lenora" came from the pen of Sayers. Southey would later meet the two men, form a productive literary friendship with them, and, following their lead, pen his own Gothic ballads. The little notice taken of Sayers by the critical tradition mainly concerns his place in that "almost famous" literary society of Norwich, his well-documented influence on Southey, and, in historical accounts of prosody, his revival of blank verse in sections of the Dramatic Sketches.2 Still, Sayers deserves to be recognized for the minor role he played in the story of the meteoric rise and fall of the Gothic ballad in the 1790s, both as one of its earliest practitioners and as an author who would come to regret and renounce his association with the poetry of terror. Frank Sayers may have superseded William Taylor to the press with his Gothic ballad "Sir Egwin," but in every other respect Taylor led the way as, in the words of George Borrow, "the founder of the Anglo-German school in England" (318). Taylor met Sayers when the two attended the Barbaulds' Palgrave Academy, both of them members of a Dissenting community that had its own interesting affiliations with the story of the Gothic ballad in England.3 After leaving Palgrave in 1779, Taylor travelled widely in Europe, learning French and Italian, and then went on to Germany where, according to his biographer J. …


Humanitarian aid operations save many lives, but they also fail to help many people and can have unintended political consequences. A major reason for the deficit is poor coordination among organizations. In contrast to "lessons learned" studies that dominate the literature on this topic, this article uses systemic network theory, drawn from business management literature. It presents the humanitarian aid community as a complex, open, adaptive system, in which interaction of structure and processes explain the quality of the response to environmental demands. Comparison of aid operations in Rwanda in 1994 and Afghanistan in 2001 probes the argument that the humanitarian system is becoming more effective by developing characteristics of a network through goal-directed behavior of participating organizations. The study finds development of network characteristics in the system when clusters of organizations learn to coordinate more closely, but the system is constrained by the workload of a crisis environment, lack of trust among organizations, and the political interests of donor governments.


In
this rather short communication we hope to draw attention to a new and rather
exciting finding which we think represents an important and non-trivial insight
into the current dark energy and dark matter cutting edge research [1-11]. In short we found that a combination of the basic invariant of
Einstein D = 4 and Kaluza D = 5 spacetime
manifold is the simplest and optimal setting to perform computation [7, 8] and gain insight into the major cosmological problem of dark matter,
accelerated cosmic expansion, missing dark energy of the universe [1] as well as the corresponding measurable ordinary energy density which
was found, to the surprise of the entire scientific community, to be a mere
4.5% of what was expected [1, 2] based on some of our otherwise most cherished and trusted theories [1-4]. In particular we must stress the importance of the physical insight
gained about the source of the difference between the three distinct categories
of energy as afforded by the new spacetime picture [7, 8]. Roughly speaking our new conception of spacetime considers a 5
dimensional Kaluza spacetime manifold effectively encasing the 4 dimensional
Einstein spacetime [7-9].


Research on complex problem solving (CPS) has reached a stage where certain standards have been achieved, whereas the future development is quite ambiguous. In this situation, the editors of the Journal of Dynamic Decision Making asked a number of representative authors to share their point of view with respect to seven questions about the relevance of (complex) problem solving as a research area, about the contribution of laboratory-based CPS research to solving real life problems, about the roles of knowledge, strategies, and intuition in CPS, and about the existence of expertise in CPS.


Introduction Teledermatology has emerged as an important strategy to enhance access to high-quality skin care. VA Telederm is a provider-facing, web-based mobile app designed to integrate into the existing teledermatology workflow in the US Veterans Health Administration (VHA). In this study, we will conduct a systematic evaluation of VA Telederm on access outcomes in VHA facilities using a pragmatic trial guided by clinical and operational leaders. Methods and analysis The study is a prospective, stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial with cross-sectional exposure and outcome measurement via retrospective database analysis of administrative records. Each cluster is a VHA facility deemed eligible for the trial. We assign the intervention using a cluster-level balanced randomisation scheme based on facility size, baseline teledermatology uptake and geographic location. The trial will test whether patients receiving dermatological care at participating facilities will have better access compared with patients receiving care through the current standard process. The primary outcomes proxy for patient-level access to dermatology services, including (1) consult completion time for teledermatology consults; (2) appointment completion time for new dermatology consults; and (3) travel distance for dermatology services. As secondary outcomes, we will assess facility-level adoption outcomes, that is, the number of dermatology encounters and the proportion of teledermatology consults out of all dermatology encounters. To account for secular trends in outcomes and for correlation across individuals within clusters, we will assess the impact of the intervention using generalised linear mixed regression models. Discussion Streamlining the current practice for store-and-forward teledermatology in the VHA can improve access to expert dermatological care for US veterans. The lessons learnt in this trial could validate the use of mobile technology for consultative store-and-forward dermatology in a large healthcare organisation. The results may also be of interest to other medical specialties assessing the merits of implementing mobile telehealth. Protocol version Version 3; 7 November 2018. Trial registration number NCT03241589; Pre-results.


Adversarial robustness measures the susceptibility of a classifier to imperceptible perturbations made to the inputs at test time. In this work we highlight the benefits of natural low rank representations that often exist for real data such as images, for training neural networks with certified robustness guarantees.
Our first contribution is for certified robustness to perturbations measured in $\ell_2$ norm. We exploit low rank data representations to provide improved guarantees over state-of-the-art randomized smoothing-based approaches on standard benchmark datasets such as CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100.
Our second contribution is for the more challenging setting of certified robustness to perturbations measured in $\ell_\infty$ norm. We demonstrate empirically that natural low rank representations have inherent robustness properties, that can be leveraged to provide significantly better guarantees for certified robustness to $\ell_\infty$ perturbations in those representations. Our certificate of $\ell_\infty$ robustness relies on a natural quantity involving the $\infty \to 2$ matrix operator norm associated with the representation, to translate robustness guarantees from $\ell_2$ to $\ell_\infty$ perturbations.
A key technical ingredient for our certification guarantees is a fast algorithm with provable guarantees based on the multiplicative weights update method to provide upper bounds on the above matrix norm. Our algorithmic guarantees improve upon the state of the art for this problem, and may be of independent interest.


Work-stealing is promising for scheduling and balancing parallel workloads. It has a wide range of applicability on middleware, libraries, and runtime systems of programming languages. OpenJDK uses work-stealing for copying garbage collection (GC) to balance copying tasks among GC threads. Each thread has its own queue to store tasks. When a thread has no task in its queue, it acts as a thief and attempts to steal a task from another thread's queue. However, this work-stealing algorithm requires expensive memory fences for pushing, popping, and stealing tasks, especially on weak memory models such as POWER and ARM. To address this problem, we propose a work-stealing algorithm that uses double queues. Each GC thread has a public queue that is accessible from other GC threads and a private queue that is only accessible by itself. Pushing and popping tasks in the private queue are free from expensive memory fences. The most significant point in our algorithm is providing a mechanism to maintain the load balance on the basis of the use of double queues. We developed a prototype implementation for parallel GC in OpenJDK8 for ppc64le. We evaluated our algorithm by using SPECjbb2015, SPECjvm2008, TPC-DS, and Apache DayTrader.


nition of a cardiomyopathy by the World Health Organization recognises that ventricular dysfunction can result from a failure to correct volume or pressure overload in valve disease or to control hypertension. Loss of myocardium caused by coronary artery disease also leads to severe ventricular dysfunction. All of these end stage conditions are categorised as specific cardiomyopathies. The second form of cardiomyopathy is caused by intrinsic disorders of the myocardium itself and is subdivided on the basis of the pathophysiology. Such a functional rather than an aetiological classification has drawbacks but reflects our current state of knowledge. The diVerent functional abnormalities produce characteristic changes in ventricular shape easily recognised in short axis echocardiographic planes and by pathologists (fig 1). Dilated cardiomyopathy


Summary Phosphorylation of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2 alpha (eIF2&agr;) by the kinase GCN2 attenuates protein synthesis during amino acid starvation in yeast, whereas in mammals a family of related eIF2&agr; kinases regulate translation in response to a variety of stresses. Unlike single-celled eukaryotes, mammals also possess two specific eIF2&agr; phosphatases, PPP1R15a and PPP1R15b, whose combined deletion leads to a poorly understood early embryonic lethality. We report the characterisation of the first non-mammalian eIF2&agr; phosphatase and the use of Drosophila to dissect its role during development. The Drosophila protein demonstrates features of both mammalian proteins, including limited sequence homology and association with the endoplasmic reticulum. Of note, although this protein is not transcriptionally regulated, its expression is controlled by the presence of upstream open reading frames in its 5′UTR, enabling induction in response to eIF2&agr; phosphorylation. Moreover, we show that its expression is necessary for embryonic and larval development and that this is to oppose the inhibitory effects of GCN2 on anabolic growth.


Gordon and Mollenauer, in their famous paper published in 1990, laid out how the interplay between the nonlinear Kerr effect in optical fibers and the amplified spontaneous-emission (ASE) noise from the optical-amplifiers results in enhanced levels of noise and degrades the performance of modulation schemes that encode information in, particularly, the phase of the optical carrier. This phenomenon has been termed as nonlinear phase noise in the literature. In this paper, we first present a comparative and critical review of previous techniques that have been proposed for the analysis of nonlinear phase noise by forming a classification framework that reveals some key underlying features. We then present a unifying theory and a comprehensive methodology and computational techniques for the analysis and characterization of nonlinear phase noise and its impact on system performance by building on and extending previous work that we identify as most favorable and systematic. In our treatment, we consider a multichannel multispan optically amplified dense wavelength-division multiplexed system and develop general techniques for the analysis of the intricate interplay among Kerr nonlinearity, chromatic dispersion, and ASE noise, and for computing the bit-error-ratio performance of differential phase-shift-keying (DPSK) systems. By means of the extensive results we present, we demonstrate and argue that correlated noise behavior plays a most significant role in understanding nonlinear phase noise and its impact on DPSK system performance.


SUMMARY Two different hive entrance dead-bee traps designed using standard beekeeping materials were compared to assess their usefulness in determining honey bee (Apis mellifera) mortality. Two trials were carried out on 10 modified Langstroth hives in February and April, 1998, with two simple traps distributed randomly among colonies. In trial 1, five hives were tested with a modified pollen collector trap and the other five with an 'underbasket' trap. In trial 2, the same hives were used but with different traps. The strength of each colony was measured by counting the spaces between frames occupied by bees. On day 0, 100 dead marked bees were introduced into each hive and trapped bees were counted periodically. More than 91% of the dead bees were collected in both traps with similar results. No relationship was established between efficacy and the strength of the colony, but there was a relationship between efficacy and collection time. There was a direct relationship between the number of spaces between frames full of bees and the time of recovering dead bees. Both traps tested seem to provide an economical and simple way to assess bee mortality in a shortterm test.


O'Dowd offers a new, discourse-functional account of the categories "prepositon" and "particle" in English. She explains why certain words have membership in both categories, and solves many intriguing puzzles long associated with the syntax and semantics of these words. Based on linguistic data from a series of actual conversations, O'Down provides new insights into how prepositions and particles are used, and how their meanings can change across different discourse contexts or over time.


This study presents bacterial population analyses of microbial communities inhabiting three sites of acid mine drainage (AMD) in the Shen-bu copper mine, Gansu Province, China. These sites were located next to acid-leached chalcopyrite slagheaps that had been abandoned since 1995. The pH values of these samples with high concentrations of metals ranged from 2.0 to 3.5. Amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis (ARDRA) was used to characterize the bacterial population by amplifying the 16S rRNA gene of microorganisms. A total of 39 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were obtained from the three samples and sequenced from 384 clones. Sequence data and phylogenetic analyses showed that two dominant clones (JYC-1B, JYC-1D) in sample JYC-1 represented 69.5% of the total clones affiliated with Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans (γ- Proteobacteria ), and the most dominant clones of JYC-2 and JYC-3 were affiliated with Caulobacter crescentus (α- Protebacteria ). At the level of bacterial divisions, differences in the relative incidence of particular phylogenetic groups among the three samples and discrepancies in physicochemical characteristics suggested that the physico-chemical characteristics had an influence on phylogenetic diversity. Furthermore, the relationships between the discrepancies of physicochemical characteristics and the diversity of the bacteria communities in the three samples suggested that the biogeochemical properties, pH and concentration of soluble metal, could be key factors in controlling the structure of the bacterial population.


Background: Labour induction is one of the most common medical procedures in obstetrics. The aim is to end the pregnancy when continuity is a risk to mother or fetus. Its main side effect is the increase in the cesarean rate, compared to spontaneous onset deliveries. On the other hand, mortality and morbidity in cesareans are higher. The most common pharmacological drugs used for induction are prostaglandins: dinoprostone and misoprostol. The "gold standard" for labour induction is vaginal misoprostol. The oral route is also effective and also has several benefits like faster onset and easear administration. In recent years several publications state that the administration of misoprostol oral solution, given in doses gradually, is associated with a lower cesarean and hyperstimulation rate than the cases where vaginal misoprostol has been used in pregnant women with unripe cervix. Furthermore, being its half life shorter, it may be very useful in case of uterine hyperstimulation and, probably, a high percentage of women prefer this oral administration to the vaginal one. The objective of this study is to compare the efficacy, safety and side effects on mother and fetus on use of oral versus vaginal administration for induction of labour for prolonged gestation (41 weeks) and premature rupture of membranes, both with live fetus. Methods/Design: Design: double blind controlled trial. Study population: Pregnant women whose labour will be induced due to premature rupture of membranes or prolonged gestation. Inclusion Criteria: 1) Bishop Test equal to or less than 7; 2) Single pregnancy; 3) Pregnancy at term (37 - 42 weeks); 4) No history of uterine surgery; 5) Cephalic presentation; 6) Live fetus; 7) No prostaglandins contraindications. Discussion: Nowadays induction rates are very high, ranging from 25% to 30% approximately. In these cases caesarean rates are higher than when the delivery starts spontaneously. That is one of the main reasons why caesareans have increased, mainly in the cases of nuliparous women with immature cervix. If we can prove the hypothetical good results obtained through the use of dosed oral misoprotol, we will be able to reduce the number of induced deliveries by cesarean, and so improve the levels of security for the mother and the foetus, and, as a consequence, provide a higher quality of medical attention to the newborn and the mother.


Depending on the activating signal, activation of phospholipase C–β2 in the plasma membrane can be localized or dispersed. Cells use a limited number of signaling components to control an astounding array of biological processes. This is accomplished, at least in part, through subtle variations in signaling mechanisms that allow specific signals to be conveyed. Gutman et al. provide insight into the molecular details of how such specificity might be accomplished for the enzyme phospholipase C–β (PLCβ). PLCβ is the enzyme that produces the key second messenger molecules inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate and diacylglycerol by cleaving phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate molecules at the plasma membrane. The PLCβ2 isoform can be activated by alpha subunits (αq) of the heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding protein (G protein) Gq, by G protein βγ subunits, or by the small guanosine triphosphatase Rac. These activators use some overlapping and some distinct mechanisms to target PLCβ2 to the plasma membrane and activate signaling. Gutman et al. used a refinement of the fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) method called beam-size analysis that allowed them to track the movement of PLCβ2 molecules activated by each mechanism. The method is useful for such a situation where recovery of fluorescence of tagged PLCβ2 molecules in an area that has been photobleached can occur not only by diffusion of PLCβ2 or the molecules with which it associates within the membrane but also by exchange of unbleached PLCβ2 molecules from the cytoplasm. Expression of a constitutively active form of Rac2 in cultured COS-7 cells (derived from monkey kidney) caused membrane interaction dynamics of PLCβ2, indicating that it diffused slowly and that FRAP was dominated by exchange. Thus, Rac2 appears to enhance interaction of PLCβ2 with slowly diffusing molecules in the membrane, such as transmembrane proteins or protein-lipid clusters. Stimulation of PLCβ2 through αq resulted in less-pronounced PLCβ2 movement to the membrane and movement within the membrane similar to that of lipids, indicating that it may be associated with lipids (perhaps through its PH or C2 domains) or with lipid-associated proteins. Both PLCβ2 diffusion and exchange appeared to contribute to recovery of fluorescence. Activation of PLCβ2 by βγ subunits caused a transient association with the membrane, and FRAP occurred primarily by rapid lateral diffusion in the membrane. The authors propose that such interactions would allow rapid "surfing-like" diffusion of βγ-activated PLCβ2 that would allow it to interact with substrate molecules dispersed throughout large areas of the plasma membrane. Activation by Rac2, on the other hand, seems to create spatially restricted signaling by PLCβ2, with activation by αq falling somewhere in between. These properties may allow PLCβ2 signaling to control distinct biological processes. O. Gutman, C. Walliser, T. Piechulek, P. Gierschik, Y. I. Henis, Differential regulation of phospholipase C-β2 activity and membrane interaction by Gαq, Gβ1γ2, and Rac2. J. Biol. Chem. 285, 3905–3915 (2010). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The JOBS Act opened a new frontier in start-up financing, for the first time allowing small companies to sell stock the way Kickstarter and RocketHub have raised donations: on the web, without registration. President Obama promised this novel form of crowdfunding would generate jobs from small businesses while simultaneously opening up exciting new investment opportunities to the middle class. While the new exemption has its critics, their concern has largely been confined to the limited amount of disclosure issuers must provide. They worry that investors will lack the information they need to separate out the Facebooks from the frauds. This is the wrong concern. The problem with equity crowdfunding is not the extent of disclosure. The problem is that the companies that participate will be terrible prospects. As a result, crowdfunding investors are virtually certain to lose their money. This essay examines the data on angel investing – the closest analogue to equity crowdfunding – and concludes that the majority of the issuers that sell stock to the middle class over the internet will lose money for investors, with many failing entirely. The strategies that help the best angels profit will not be available to crowdfunders. Plus, the losses most issuers inflict will not be offset by a few huge winners. Investors will not find tomorrow's Googles on crowdfunding portals because they will not be there; instead, start-ups with real potential will continue to use other programs, such as the newly expanded Rule 506 exemption. This outcome is the inevitable result of the nature of start-up investing and crowdfunding. No amendments to the Act or rule-making by the SEC can prevent it. The only solution that will protect investors is to abolish equity crowdfunding for the unaccredited.


Aquaculture activities in coastal area potentially produced wastes which leads water pollution. In order to reduce pollution, the use of several bacteria is very promising. This study was aimed to determine the effectivity of commercial bacterial inocculants to reduce pollution in cultured water. Bacterial inocculant tested in this study was SN®, SB®, and the combination of both inocculants for water quality improvements in white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) super intensive culture media. This study was conducting in two steps, namely (i) preliminary study and (ii) primary study. The preliminary study was aimed to determine the time required to add bacteria based on the total number of bacterial colonies. The result showed that total colonies number of media treated with addition of SN® and SB® were reached maximum within 2 days. The result of primary study showed that the combination of SN® and SB® showed best effect in maintaining water quality of the culture media. This combination are proven reduces ammonia by 96%, nitrite-N by 83%, and COD by 42%.


Background The use of dexmedetomidine (dex) in Spanish intensive care units (ICU) patients is still unusual. Purpose To describe the use of dex as a sedative agent and asses the adherence to the 2013-SEMICYUC guideline recommendations, in a 20-bed Spanish ICU. Material and methods Retrospective six-month study (10/13–03/14) of patients treated with dex for sedation. The variables analysed were: indication for and duration of dex use, starting-maximum-maintenance doses, time to reach maintenance dose, co-administration of other sedatives, proportion of time in target sedation range (defined as a RASS score between −3 and 0) before and after dex initiation, duration of mechanical ventilation, % of patients with adverse events (AE) and causes of dex discontinuation. Results 14 patients were included. Dex indications were: to facilitate weaning (8; 57%), patient-ventilator synchrony (5; 36%), or to reduce other sedatives (1; 7%). The mean length of the treatment was 4.1 days (0.2–14.5). The mean starting/maximum/maintenance doses were 0.36 ± 0.15/0.91 ± 0.34/0.87 ± 0.33 µg/kg/h. The starting dose was 51% lower than the recommended (0.7 µg/kg/h) and it took over 53 h (3–192) to reach the maintenance dose. All patients received other sedatives prior to dex, and in 6 (43%) those sedatives could be discontinued. No patients were in the target sedation range >50% of the time prior to dex, 8 (57%) reached this status after dex. The mean duration of mechanical ventilation was 17.1 ± 13 days. All patients suffered several AE (28 AE recorded). Hypotension (8; 57%) and bradycardia (6; 43%) were the most common. The causes of dex discontinuation were extubation (8; 57%), death (2; 14%), lack of efficacy (2; 14%) and AE (2; 14%, extreme bradycardia). Conclusion All the dex indications met the SEMICYUC guidelines. It seems to be useful to reach the sedation range and facilitate successful weaning. The high rate of predictable AE and the need for dosage optimisation make dex a target drug for pharmaceutical monitoring. References and/or Acknowledgements No conflict of interest.


Objective: Neovascularization of the aortic wall may be associated with aortic dissection (AD). Aortic wall endothelial CD31 deposition together with chronic inflammation indicates angiogenesis that may lead to tissue disruption. We studied the presence of neovascularization of the ascending aortic wall by characterizing CD31 positive endothelial cells. Methods: Aortic wall routine histology and immunohistochemistry for CD31, T- and B-lymphocytes, plasma cells, macrophages, endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, and cell proliferation were performed on 35 selected patients who underwent surgery for the ascending aorta, and the samples were grouped according to the presence of AD. Results: Three subjects with Marfan syndrome were excluded from the study. A total of 14 out of 32 patients had AD. A total of 18 patients were operated on due to dilatation only. Chronic inflammation of the adventitia (p=0.003), media (p=0.001), and intima (p=0.005) was increased in AD. Neovascularization was predominant in the outer third medial layer in AD (p=0.037), corresponding to the site of aortic wall disruption. A receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that neovascularization was associated with AD (AUC 0.750; SE 0.092; p=0.022; 95% CI 0.570–0.930). Conclusion: Endothelial immunohistochemistry confirms neovascularization of the outer third medial layer during AD. Aortic wall remodeling including neovascularization characterizes AD. Chronic inflammation and neovascularization of the dilated ascending aorta suggest susceptibility for AD.


The promiscuous binding behavior of bioactive compounds forms a mechanistic basis for understanding polypharmacological drug action. We present the development and prospective application of a computational tool for identifying potential promiscuous drug-like ligands. In combination with computational target prediction methods, the approach provides a working concept for rationally designing such molecular structures. We could confirm the multi-target binding of a de novo generated compound in a proof-of-concept study relying on the new method.


Preliminary tests for a future slow positron accelerator have been performed in order to find out the best setup for the electromagnetic and geometrical parameters used to confine, transport and accelerate the positron beam. This study combines the development of beam transport simulation models by IES LORENTZ EM software with beamline experiments, in order to improve the understanding of the properties of the extracted particles. The simulation of the beam extraction from an electron source is particularly challenging and interesting, as the initial density distribution at extraction is unknown. By combining magnetic field tracking, experimental measurements and beam diagnostics, we were able to predict beam patterns. Simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental observations. This powerful and sensitive spectrometer offers the possibility for the characterization of advanced materials, by putting in evidence open volumes, nanovoids or point defects concentration and type.


This paper analyzes the adoption patterns of selected internet services such as eCommerce, eBanking and eGovernment in Spain. High quality official data from the Survey on Equipment and Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Households (ICT-H) of the National Institute of Statistics are used. The dataset is a cross section of 16,209 individuals for 2016. Theoretical demand models, grounded in a standard neoclassical utility maximization framework, are adapted to these services. Logistic regression techniques allow quantifying the impact of the socioeconomic characteristics of the individual on the adoption of each service. The resulting models are statistically significant and with a high predictive power. Age, education and levels of internet and computer skills are all significant in explaining the adoption of any of the three services; as are gender and income, but just for eCommerce and eBanking. Interestingly, the level of trust in internet is only significant to explain participation in eCommerce. Finally, policy recommendations are suggested, highlighting the desirability of using specific measures for the different socio-demographic groups and income strata.


Purpose: A phase I study was conducted to determine the dose-limiting toxicities (DLT) and maximum tolerated dose (MTD) for the combination of bortezomib and alvocidib in patients with B-cell malignancies (multiple myeloma, indolent lymphoma, and mantle cell lymphoma). Experimental Design: Patients received bortezomib by intravenous push on days 1, 4, 8, and 11. Patients also received alvocidib on days 1 and 8 by 30-minute bolus infusion followed by a 4-hour continuous infusion. Treatment was on a 21-day cycle, with indefinite continuation for patients experiencing responses or stable disease. Dose escalation employed a standard 3 + 3 design until the MTD was identified on the basis of DLTs. Pharmacokinetic studies and pharmacodynamic studies were conducted. Results: Sixteen patients were treated. The MTD was established as 1.3 mg/m2 for bortezomib and 30 mg/m2 for alvocidib (both the 30-minute bolus and 4-hour infusions). Common hematologic toxicities included leukopenia, lymphopenia, neutropenia, and thrombocytopenia. Common nonhematologic toxicities included fatigue and febrile neutropenia. DLTs included fatigue, febrile neutropenia, and elevated aspartate aminotransferase (AST) levels. Two complete responses (CR; 12%) and five partial responses (PR; 31%) were observed at the MTD (overall response rate = 44%). Pharmacokinetic results were typical for alvocidib and pharmacodynamic studies yielded variable results. Conclusions: The combination of bortezomib and alvocidib is tolerable and an MTD has been established for the tested schedule. The regimen appears active in patients with relapsed and/or refractory multiple myeloma or non–Hodgkin's lymphoma, justifying phase II studies to determine the activity of this regimen more definitively. Clin Cancer Res; 17(10); 3388–97. ©2011 AACR.


THE MUSLIM LEGAL DILEMMA OF PEACE WITH ISRAEL War, Peace and International Relations in Islam: Muslim Scholars on Peace Accords with Israel, by Yitzhak Reiter, Sussex Academic Press, 201 1, 236 pp.Reviewed by Arnon GroissIt is always useful to have God on your side whenever you become engaged in a meaningful enterprise, especially when cardinal decisions related to peace and war are involved. In a religiously devoted society like the Muslim one, God's support is especially essential as well in political controversies such as the debate over the issue of peace with Israel. The present book unfolds a wonderful array of Islamic rulings ifatawa, singular fatwa) for and against such a move and analyzes their background and significance within the wider context of Islam and international relations.Fatwa is a tool of guidance for the ordinary Muslim individual, especially in times of inner conflicts as a result of political and social changes. Since Islam, like Judaism, is an all-encompassing religion, it has relevance to most aspects of daily life and, therefore, a word of guidance from a respected religious authority (termed mufti) is often needed. Over time, this institution has become more established and, as might have been expected, developed into a bone of contention between the state and dissident factions, as is well manifested in the present book.Prof. Yitzhak Reiter is a senior fellow of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. He teaches in the Conflict Studies Program of the Hebrew University and at the Department of Political Science of Ashkelon Academic College. From 1978 to 1986 he served as deputy adviser to the Israeli prime minister on Arab affairs. Prof. Reiters expertise is in the fields of the politics of Israeli Arabs, and Jerusalem and the holy places in the context of the conflict, on which he has written several books and articles. In addition, he has been active in various initiatives related to Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, as well as to the Jewish-Arab dialogue within Israel.The book starts with three theoretical chapters discussing the attitudes of Islamic legal sources (that is, the Koran and the Prophetic Tradition - Sunnah) toward peace and war; the interpretation of such attitudes throughout history from the days of the early caliphs to our own times against the background of historical developments regarding the Muslim state; and the debate among Muslim scholars throughout the ages - especially nowadays in the context of the conflict with Israel - regarding Prophet Muhammad's treaty with his archenemy, the Meccan tribe of Quraysh.Then follow several chapters that analyze the legal debate and the various fatwas issued in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty of 1979, the Oslo Accords of 1993 between Israel and the PLO, the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict of 2006, and the issue of Israel-Hamas armistice (hudnah). …


The purpose of this case study is to show the relationship between teachers´ views on strategies for developing reading comprehension in relation to the results of students in primary school. My hypothesis is that specific choices of methods, not necessarily has a positive effect on all students' reading comprehension. My aim is to, through in-depth interviews and tests from kindergarten to year 2, find out the percentage of risk pupils in kindergarten and year 1, and see how the share of risk students have developed over time . Through the interviews, I want to find out what strategies the interviewed teachers use and how they describe their work, and put their answers in relation to how their students have developed. The classes surveyed are currently in 2nd grade.The survey will be partially implemented with an in-depth interview of the two teachers, and I will use and analyze the accepted, standardized follow-up tests conducted in 2nd grade. These tests are at the current school called base diagnoses and consist of a reading comprehension test, a spelling test and a word decoding test. The survey is a case study, since I have limited myself to investigate only two classes, which means that no generalizations can be made. The purpose is to compare the risk students of the two classes and their development over time.The results of the case study show ambiguous results. Teachers experience their choice of strategies as all-natural and additionally that their students would not have developed in any other way, even if the choice of strategy would have been different. Both teachers believe that their students follow a completely normal curve of development.Unfortunately, we can tell from the student tests the proportion of risk students, in the class who have been under the ASL strategy (reading through writing) from year 1 to year 2 increased by 300%. For the comparison class taught by other strategies, it is possible to conclude that the proportion of risk students increased by 21%. This could be seen as positive, but only in comparison with the class which have been taught according to the ASL strategy. However, it should be desirable that the proportion of risk students decreases.


Extracted from text ... 9
[ Sept / Oct 2006 ] SA Pharmacist's Assistant
Social Skills
sapa
Drugs do not discriminate. They respect no boundaries,
and obey only the laws made by themselves. Infiltrating
all levels of our society, they ask no name, title, age or
gender. Masters of disguise, they have many names, forms,
faces and colours. Drugs destroy whatever they come into
contact with, effectively erasing our health, sanity, homes,
families and eventually our lives.
Experimentation with drugs during adolescence is
common. Some teens will experiment and stop, or continue
to use occasionally, without significant problems. Others
will develop a dependency, moving ..


Distributed inference using multiple sensors has been an active area of research since the emergence of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Several researchers have addressed the design issues to ensure optimal inference performance in such networks. The central goal of this thesis is to analyze distributed inference systems with potentially unreliable components and design strategies to ensure reliable inference in such systems. The inference process can be that of detection or estimation or classification, and the components/agents in the system can be sensors and/or humans. The system components can be unreliable due to a variety of reasons: faulty sensors, security attacks causing sensors to send falsified information, or unskilled human workers sending imperfect information. This thesis first quantifies the effect of such unreliable agents on the inference performance of the network and then designs schemes that ensure a reliable overall inference. In the first part of this thesis, we study the case when only sensors are present in the system, referred to as sensor networks. For sensor networks, the presence of malicious sensors, referred to as Byzantines, are considered. Byzantines are sensors that inject false information into the system. In such systems, the effect of Byzantines on the overall inference performance is characterized in terms of the optimal attack strategies. Game-theoretic formulations are explored to analyze two-player interactions. Next, Byzantine mitigation schemes are designed that address the problem from the system's perspective. These mitigation schemes are of two kinds: Byzantine identification schemes and Byzantine tolerant schemes. Using learning based techniques, Byzantine identification schemes are designed that learn the identity of Byzantines in the network and use this information to improve system performance. When such schemes are not possible, Byzantine tolerant schemes using error-correcting codes are developed that tolerate the effect of Byzantines and maintain good performance in the network. Error-correcting codes help in correcting the erroneous information from these Byzantines and thereby counter their attack. The second line of research in this thesis considers humans-only networks, referred to as human networks. A similar research strategy is adopted for human networks where, the effect of unskilled humans sharing beliefs with a central observer called CEO is analyzed, and the loss in performance due to the presence of such unskilled humans is characterized. This problem falls under the family of problems in information theory literature referred to as the CEO Problem, but for belief sharing. The asymptotic behavior of the minimum achievable mean squared error distortion at the CEO is studied in the limit when the number of agents L and the sum rate R tend to infinity. An intermediate regime of performance between the exponential behavior in discrete CEO problems and the 1/R behavior in Gaussian CEO problems is established. This result can be summarized as the fact that sharing beliefs (uniform) is fundamentally easier in terms of convergence rate than sharing measurements (Gaussian), but sharing decisions is even easier (discrete). Besides theoretical analysis, experimental results are reported for experiments designed in collaboration with cognitive psychologists to understand the behavior of humans in the network. The act of fusing decisions from multiple agents is observed for humans and the behavior is statistically modeled using hierarchical Bayesian models. The implications of such modeling on the design of large human-machine systems is discussed. Furthermore, an error-correcting codes based scheme is proposed to improve system performance in the presence of unreliable humans in the inference process. For a crowdsourcing system consisting of unskilled human workers providing unreliable responses, the scheme helps in designing easy-to-perform tasks and also mitigates the effect of erroneous data. The benefits of using the proposed approach in comparison to the majority voting based approach are highlighted using simulated and real datasets. In the final part of the thesis, a human-machine inference framework is developed where humans and machines interact to perform complex tasks in a faster and more efficient manner. A mathematical framework is built to understand the benefits of human-machine collaboration. Such a study is extremely important for current scenarios where humans and machines are constantly interacting with each other to perform even the simplest of tasks. While machines perform best in some tasks, humans still give better results in tasks such as identifying new patterns. By using humans and machines together, one can extract complete information about a phenomenon of interest. Such an architecture, referred to as Human-Machine Inference Networks (HuMaINs), provides promising results for the two cases of human-machine collaboration: machine as a coach and machine as a colleague. For simple systems, we demonstrate tangible performance gains by such a collaboration which provides design modules for larger, and more complex human-machine systems. However, the details of such larger systems needs to be further explored.


Extracts of Echinacea purpurea (EP, purple coneflower) have been used traditionally in North America for the treatment of various types of infections and wounds, and they have become very popular herbal medicines globally. Recent studies have revealed that certain standardized preparations contain potent and selective antiviral and antimicrobial activities. In addition, they display multiple immune-modulatory activities, comprising stimulation of certain immune functions such as phagocytic activity of macrophages and suppression of the proinflammatory responses of epithelial cells to viruses and bacteria, which are manifested as alterations in secretion of various cytokines and chemokines. These immune modulations result from upregulation or downregulation of the relevant genes and their transcription factors. All these bioactivities can be demonstrated at noncytotoxic concentrations of extract and appear to be due to multiple components rather than the individual chemical compounds that characterize Echinacea extracts. Potential applications of the bioactive extracts may go beyond their traditional uses.


Abstract A temperature-controlled sample stage with an operational range of ~60 °C above or below ambient laboratory temperature (~ -35 to 85 °C) was constructed for in situ X-ray diffraction of minerals and materials using a Bruker D8 Discover diffractometer with θ-θ geometry. The stage was primarily designed for characterizing mirabilite-bearing samples from a Mars analog High Arctic perennial cold spring at an in situ temperature. Operation of the stage was demonstrated through the analysis of a synthetic sample of the hydrated sodium sulfate, mirabilite (Na2SO4·10H2O). Mirabilite was held at -25 °C for approximately two hours without significant dehydration and then incrementally warmed to ambient laboratory temperature at 5 °C intervals, during the acquisition of in situ diffraction data. At ambient laboratory temperature, the mirabilite dehydrated and only polycrystalline thenardite (Na2SO4) remained. Preliminary analysis of the cold spring precipitates demonstrates that when mirabilite is present in the sample the dehydration reaction is occurring between collection and analysis at ambient laboratory temperature. This temperature-controlled stage was designed for versatility and ease of X-ray access, with applications that can extend to many geological and planetary settings, including Mars analog environments.


Background: Growing populations of elderly patients with advanced stages of COPD or heart failure (HF) urge the need for specialized health care in the patients9 home. A telemonitoring study has been initiated including patients using digital pens. Health care was provided by the specialized home care unit at a university hospital. Through an IT system the staff checked all daily patient reports. We hypothesized that the two groups of patients, advanced COPD or HF, would exhibit differences regarding exacerbations and the need of health care. Objective: To study exacerbations of COPD or HF, and patient health care consumption. Methods: A tele-monitoring system, the Health diary , which is based on digital pen technology, was employed. Exacerbations were identified using information provided through the telemonitoring system. Consumed health care was assessed as the number of patient contacts (home visits or telephone consultations). Results: Presently, 33 patients with advanced disease are enrolled (13 COPD and 20 HF patients) of which 11 patients (6 COPD and 5 HF patients) have completed the 1-yr study period or have died during the study period (2 COPD and 4 HF patients). Exacerbations were 2.8 and 0.8 and patient contacts were 96 and 42 per COPD and HF patient, respectively. While HF patients were significantly older than COPD patients, the two groups demonstrated no difference regarding gender distribution and comorbidity. Conclusions: COPD patients exhibit exacerbations more frequently and demand much more home health care than patients with HF do. It seems that this difference of health care consumption is mainly due to disease characteristics.


Narrative research has not traditionally examined the intergenerational transmission and reverberation of narratives within ethnic communities, and yet it is through the chain of generations that voices of the past reverberate and testimonies endure which fuel and form present day notions of the past. This article is a call for and an example of the importance ethnographic investigation into communities of memories, for it is through community storytelling that records are set straight as a memorial for victims and survivors. This line of inquiry is pertinent to various communities throughout the world, as we come to see the role of language, and in particular, narrative in the formation of ideas and conflicts, as scholars such as Slyomovics, (1998) have pointed out. This research takes as its point of departure narrative renditions of the Armenian genocide recounted in both public and private venues by the great-grandchildren of genocide survivors in an ethnic enclave in Central California. In this diasporic community we see how communities of memory are formed in a space of mediation which links the new generation with the old, the present with its past as well as with its imagined communities (Anderson, 1983). Through examination of the linguistic reverberations of this historical and familial narrative, I ask what becomes of authorship when collected stories are salient enough to be included in one's own personal history, and how these narrativizations contribute to one's sense of self? These questions are answered both by linguistic analysis of pronouns and deixis, as well as through analysis of prevalent themes. The results of this research lend into the historical progression of memory through time by those who did not experience the trauma, but rather were witnesses by listening to the trauma of others.


One of the critical factors for understanding the establishment, success and potential impact on native species of an introduced species is a thorough knowledge of how these species manage trophic resources. Two main trophic strategies for resource acquisition have been described: competition and opportunism. In the present study our objective was to identify the main trophic strategies of the non-native amphibian Discoglossus pictus and its potential trophic impact on the native amphibian Bufo calamita. We determine whether D. pictus exploits similar trophic resources to those exploited by the native B. calamita (competition hypothesis) or alternative resources (opportunistic hypothesis). To this end, we analyzed the stable isotope values of nitrogen and carbon in larvae of both species, in natural ponds and in controlled laboratory conditions. The similarity of the δ15N and δ13C values in the two species coupled with isotopic signal variation according to pond conditions and niche partitioning when they co-occurred indicated dietary competition. Additionally, the non-native species was located at higher levels of trophic niches than the native species and B. calamita suffered an increase in its standard ellipse area when it shared ponds with D. pictus. These results suggest niche displacement of B. calamita to non-preferred resources and greater competitive capacity of D. pictus in field conditions. Moreover, D. pictus showed a broader niche than the native species in all conditions, indicating increased capacity to exploit the diversity of resources; this may indirectly favor its invasiveness. Despite the limitations of this study (derived from potential variability in pond isotopic signals), the results support previous experimental studies. All the studies indicate that D. pictus competes with B. calamita for trophic resources with potential negative effects on the fitness of the latter.


We report the measurement of terahertz (THz) radiation, generated via optical rectification in a 20 µm thick ZnTe crystal, as a function of the size of optical excitation. The result shows that, before the onset of significant higher-order nonlinear processes, the THz emission obtained with a fixed excitation power is largely size independent for excitation sizes smaller than the THz wavelength. This experimental finding is well described by a theoretical model including the generation of THz radiation through optical rectification from a subwavelength source and its propagation into the far field. The characteristic size dependence of the radiation from a subwavelength THz source is advantageous for use in apertureless near-field microscopy.