ABSTRACT Aim: Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) is characterized by a lack of receptors for estrogen (ER), progesterone (PR), and hormone epidermal growth factor 2 (HER-2). TNBC occurs in ∼20% of diagnosed breast cancers. Hormone targeted therapies are ineffective thus making TNBC more aggressive and difficult to treat. Studies have shown that P21-Activated Kinase 4 (PAK4) is elevated in TNBC. PAK4 regulates cell survival, cell division and apoptosis. PAK4 overexpression in mammary epithelial cells leads to abnormal acini formation and drives tumorigenensis in mice. Methods: Tissue microarrays were used to evaluate PAK4 expression in normal and cancerous breast tissue. We identified and tested selective, orally bioavailable, small molecule PAK4 allosteric modulators (PAMs) against breast cancer cell lines. MTS assay was used to determine effects on proliferation and viability of 30 breast cancer (BC) cell lines including 13 TNBCs. mRNA was analyzed using the Genome Atlas (TCGA) and deep sequencing. Immunoblots were used to measure protein steady state levels and phosphorylation. TNBC xenograft models were used to test efficacy. Results: PAMs demonstrated anti-tumor activity against BC cell lines (IC50 0.04- > 10 µM) of which TNBC were the most sensitive: ∼80% of TNBC lines had IC50 Conclusions: Oral PAMs inactivate PAK4 by directly inducing PAK4 destabilization. This represents a novel mechanism of the protein kinase inactivation involving degradation of PAK4 rather than direct inhibition of the kinase activity. Oral PAMs have potent anti-tumor activity against BC cells including TNBC both in vitro and in vivo where they induce tumor cell growth arrest and apoptosis with excellent tolerability. Based on this anti-tumor activity and high tolerability, PAMs show promise for the treatment of TNBC. Disclosure: W. Senapedis, Y. Landesman, J. Ellis, R. Carlson and E. Baloglu: I am a current employee of Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc.; O. Kalid: I currently am a consultant with Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc.; D. McCauley: I am a current employee of Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc. I own stock in Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc.; S. Shacham: I am a current employee of Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc. I am a stock holder of Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc. I am on the scientific advisory board of Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc.


To evaluate peripheral infiltrative growth (inf) of breast catrcinomas as a prognostic factor, overall survival probabilities in 169 patients with tumor less than 5 cm in diameter were analysed in relation to the degree of inf (alpha, beta, gamma) using Kaplan-Meier method. There were statistically significant correlations between inf alpha and beta, inf alpha and gamma. On the other hand, the boundary echo (BE) observed at the peripheral margin of tumor in ultrasonogram is considered to reflect inf patterns of breast carcinomas. Therefore, BE was classified into three types as follows. Type I; negligible or regular thin marginal hyperecho. Type II; irregular thick marginal hyperecho. Type III; radiating boundary echo. These three types were matched to the patterns of infiltration so as to find any correlation between ultrasonogram and a corresponding histrogical specimen. Three types of ultrasonographic infiltrative grades (U-INF alpha, beta, gamma) were defined as follows. U-INF alpha; Type I BE is observed almost all surface of tumor. U-INF beta; Type II or III BE is observed in less than 50% of tumor surface. U-INF gamma; Type II or III BE is observed in over 50% of tumor surface. Total of 108 cases with tumor less than 3cm in diameter were received preoperative ultrasonographic studies. U-INF had highly significant correlation with inf and the occurrence of lymph node metastasis.


Recently, some studies examined how downtown parking space limitation re-shapes the morning commute in the case of a single origin–destination network. This paper further formulates and analyses the commuting equilibrium problem of both mode and departure time choices in a bi-modal (auto and public transit) many-to-one network. Several properties of the equilibrium under parking space constraints and the proposed parking reservation system are discussed. Procedures for computing the dynamic user equilibrium with a parking space constraint (either trading of reservations is allowed or not) have been developed. We show that parking reservation can help reduce deadweight loss due to parking competition and roadway congestion. We also found that assigning more reservations to travellers from a specific origin does not necessarily reduce total travel cost of them, while doing so might raise the total travel cost of travellers from other origins. When parking supply is less than the potential demand but is relatively large, it is socially preferred to retain some parking spaces open for competition. However, when the total parking supply is relatively small, all parking spaces should be reserved to travellers. Besides, we show that trading of reservations among travellers would yield an efficiency loss. This loss can be fairly large thus trading should be prohibited.


For most of this century, Mexico has been the primary supplier of low-wage workers for agricultural labor in the southwestern U.S. Studies of Mexican migrants have focussed on routes (Jones 1982a, Jones 1982b and Jones 1984), source and destination areas (Dagodag 1975, Jones 1982a, Jones 1982b, Jones 1984, McHugh 1989 and Roberts 1984), and push-pull factors associated with migration (Dinerman 1978, Jenkins 1977 and Portes 1978). Most investigations have involved only mestizos (of "mixed" origin, both Indian and Spanish) from central Mexico. Overlooked are U.S. immigrant-worker settlements on the Mexican side of the border and other non- mestizo ethnic groups who engage in seasonal labor migration to the U.S. A small but growing number of migrants to this country are Mixtec Indians from Oaxaca in southern Mexico. They have established a satellite community to their villages in Oaxaca in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. By comparison with mestizos from central Mexico, Mixtec migrants fit some, but not all, of the generalized patterns of Mexican migration to the U.S. One important difference is the settlement of Mixtec immigrants in the Tijuana satellite community to become international daily-commuters to work in the U.S. This is strictly a border-related phenomenon, which is explained by both the recent U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) passed in 1986, and historical Mixtec migration patterns.


The Taylor rule has become one of the most studied strategies for monetary policy. Yet, little is known whether the Federal Reserve follows a non-linear Taylor rule. This paper employs the smooth transition regression model and asks the question: does the Federal Reserve change its policy-rule according to the level of inflation and/or the output gap? I find that the Federal Reserve does follow a non-linear Taylor rule and, more importantly, that the Federal Reserve followed a non-linear Taylor rule during the golden era of monetary policy, 1985-2005, and a linear Taylor rule throughout the dark age of monetary policy, 1960-1979. Thus, good monetary policy is associated with a non-linear Taylor rule: once inflation approaches a certain threshold, the Federal Reserve adjusts its policy-rule and begins to respond more forcefully to inflation.


An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a bioelectrical signal which records the heart's electrical activity versus time. It is an important diagnostic tool for assessing heart functions. The interpretation of ECG signal is an application of pattern recognition. The techniques used in this pattern recognition comprise: signal pre-processing, QRS detection, feature extraction and neural network for signal classification. In this project, signal processing and neural network toolbox will be used in Matlab environment. The processed signal source came from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Beth Israel Hospital (MIT-BIH) arrhythmia database which was developed for research in cardiac electro-physiology.Five conditions of ECG waveform were selected from MIT-BIH database in this research. The ECG samples were processed and normalised to produce a set of features that can be used in different structures of neural network and subsequent recognition rates were recorded. Backpropagation algorithm will be considered for different structures of neural network and the performance in each case will be measured. This research is focused on finding the best neural network structure for ECG signal classification and a number of signal pre-processing and QRS detection algorithms were also tested. The feature extraction is based on an existing algorithm.The results of recognition rates are compared to find a better structure for ECG classification. Different ECG feature inputs were used in the experiments to compare and find a desirable features input for ECG classification. Among different structures, it was found that a three layer network structure with 25 inputs, 5 neurons in the output layer and 5 neurons in its hidden layers possessed the best performance with highest recognition rate of 91.8% for five cardiac conditions. The average accuracy rate for this kind of structure with different structures was 84.93%. It was also tested that 25 feature input is suitable for training and testing in ECG classification. Based on this result, the method of using important ECG features plus a suitable number of compressed ECG signals can dramatically decrease the complexity of the neural network structure, which can increase the testing speed and the accuracy rate of the network verification. It also gives further suggestions to plan the experiments for the future work.


Background: Tuberculous meningitis (TBM), the most severe form of tuberculosis (TB), results in death or neurological disability in >50%, despite World Health Organisation recommended therapy. Current TBM regimen dosages are based on data from pulmonary TB alone. Evidence from recent phase II pharmacokinetic studies suggests that high dose rifampicin (R) administered intravenously or orally enhances central nervous system penetration and may reduce TBM associated mortality. We hypothesize that, among persons with TBM, high dose oral rifampicin (35 mg/kg) for 8 weeks will improve survival compared to standard of care (10 mg/kg), without excess adverse events. Protocol: We will perform a parallel group, randomised, placebo-controlled, double blind, phase III multicentre clinical trial comparing high dose oral rifampicin to standard of care. The trial will be conducted across five clinical sites in Uganda, South Africa and Indonesia. Participants are HIV-positive or negative adults with clinically suspected TBM, who will be randomised (1:1) to one of two arms: 35 mg/kg oral rifampicin daily for 8 weeks (in combination with standard dose isoniazid [H], pyrazinamide [Z] and ethambutol [E]) or standard of care (oral HRZE, containing 10 mg/kg/day rifampicin). The primary end-point is 6-month survival. Secondary end points are: i) 12-month survival ii) functional and neurocognitive outcomes and iii) safety and tolerability. Tertiary outcomes are: i) pharmacokinetic outcomes and ii) cost-effectiveness of the intervention. We will enrol 500 participants over 2.5 years, with follow-up continuing until 12 months post-enrolment. Discussion: Our best TBM treatment still results in unacceptably high mortality and morbidity. Strong evidence supports the increased cerebrospinal fluid penetration of high dose rifampicin, however conclusive evidence regarding survival benefit is lacking. This study will answer the important question of whether high dose oral rifampicin conveys a survival benefit in TBM in HIV-positive and -negative individuals from Africa and Asia. Trial registration: ISRCTN15668391 (17/06/2019).


Architecture design for content-based publishsubscribe service networks is challenging for two reasons: first, communication in such systems is guided by the content of event publications and subscriptions, rather than by network addresses; second, while an event often matches subscriptions from multiple locations, the highly diversified matching patterns and hence communication needs imply that existing multicast techniques cannot be readily used for efficient event delivery. In this paper, we propose a new architectural approach called MEDYM – Match Early with DYnamic Multicast. Unlike existing approaches, MEDYM does not build static overlay networks for event delivery. Instead, an event is matched against subscriptions as early as possible, to identify destinations with matching subscriptions; then, a multicast tree is dynamically constructed to route the event to the destinations with high network efficiency. We evaluate the MEDYM architecture using detailed simulations, and compare it with the two major existing design approaches: Content-based Forwarding and Channelization. Experimental results show that MEDYM significantly improves efficiency of event delivery, and is highly flexible and robust. We also analyze potential overheads introduced in MEDYM, and found them to be well acceptable and more than outweighed by the benefits of the approach. We expect the basic MEDYM architecture to scale to pub-sub networks of thousands of servers, which we believe is adequate for many interesting applications. Keyword — System design, Simulations, Publish-subscribe,


In ROC analysis, covariate adjustment is advocated when the covariates impact the magnitude or accuracy of the test under study. Meanwhile, for many large scale screening tests, the true condition status may be subject to missingness because it is expensive and/or invasive to ascertain the disease status. The complete‐case analysis may end up with a biased inference, also known as "verification bias." To address the issue of covariate adjustment with verification bias in ROC analysis, we propose several estimators for the area under the covariate‐specific and covariate‐adjusted ROC curves (AUCx and AAUC). The AUCx is directly modeled in the form of binary regression, and the estimating equations are based on the U statistics. The AAUC is estimated from the weighted average of AUCx over the covariate distribution of the diseased subjects. We employ reweighting and imputation techniques to overcome the verification bias problem. Our proposed estimators are initially derived assuming that the true disease status is missing at random (MAR), and then with some modification, the estimators can be extended to the not missing at random (NMAR) situation. The asymptotic distributions are derived for the proposed estimators. The finite sample performance is evaluated by a series of simulation studies. Our method is applied to a data set in Alzheimer's disease research.


Your money or your liberty? Barring certain limitations, monetary penalty or incarceration awaits service members who have fines and contingent confinement — i.e., sentence conditions allowing for the imposition of confinement if an individual fails to pay a punitive fine — adjudged against them under the military justice system. This is the case despite recent significant changes to the Manual for Courts-Martial (MCM) and Rules for Courts-Martial (RCM) and contrary interpretations of how to implement contingent confinement. The RCM outlines military fine enforcement through contingent confinement in Rule 1003(b)(3), which states that sentences including fines "may be accompanied by a provision" providing "that, in the event the fine is not paid," the convicted individual may be "confined until a fixed period considered an equivalent punishment to the fine has expired." Although another rule addressing this punishment was removed from the RCM by Executive Order 13825 in 2018 — Rule 1113(e)(3), which described contingent confinement as replacing any associated fine and the manner in which this substitution must take place — Rule 1003(b)(3) was left unchanged. Both courts and scholars, however, have stumbled in interpreting this Rule, creating confusion as to its true legal effect and viability for achieving certain penological outcomes. In light of the aforementioned recent removal of Rule 1113(e)(3) from the RCM and inaccurate scholarly and judicial presentations, this article clarifies the law of military fine enforcement through contingent confinement and offers recommendations for its use.


Distributed control and decision making increasingly play a central role in economical and sustainable operation of cyber-physical systems. Nevertheless, the full potential of the technology has not yet been fully exploited in practice due to communication limitations of real-world infrastructures. This work investigates the fundamental properties of gradient methods for distributed optimization, where gradient information is communicated at every iteration, when using limited number of communicated bits. In particular, a general class of quantized gradient methods are studied where the gradient direction is approximated by a finite quantization set. Conditions on the quantization set are provided that are necessary and sufficient to guarantee the ability of these methods to minimize any convex objective function with Lipschitz continuous gradient and a nonempty, bounded set of optimizers. Moreover, a lower bound on the cardinality of the quantization set is provided, along with specific examples of minimal quantizations. Furthermore, convergence rate results are established that connect the fineness of the quantization and number of iterations needed to reach a predefined solution accuracy. The results provide a bound on the number of bits needed to achieve the desired accuracy. Finally, an application of the theory to resource allocation in power networks is demonstrated, and the theoretical results are substantiated by numerical simulations.


Desires lead to actions, influence feelings, and determine what counts as a reward. Recent empirical evidence shows that these three aspects of desire stem from a common biological origin. Informed by contemporary science as much as by the philosophical tradition, Three Faces of Desire reveals this common foundation and builds a striking new philosophical theory of desire that puts desire's neglected face-reward-at its core. Schroeder delves into the way that actions and feelings are produced in the brain, arguing that a distinctive system is responsible for promoting action, on the one hand, and causing feelings of pleasure and displeasure, on the other. This system, the brain's reward system, is the causal origin of both action and feeling, and is the key to understanding the nature of desire.


Higher education administrators are continually trying to control the costs of Information Technology (IT) investments and demonstrate the value of IT to the organization. As many administrators implement structures and processes, it is important to understand the impact of these on IT performance. Using a national sample of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and high-level administrators, this study of higher education institutions examines the influences of IT performance. This research study examines the impact of IT governance, decision-making location, alignment of priorities, communication, and organizational strategy. As part of this research study, measures of organizational performance were developed to measure CIO perceptions of performance. As a result, this study provides a general profile of top performing IT organizations at higher education institutions.


OBJECTIVE
Outcome measures for pulmonary arterial hypertension associated with systemic sclerosis (PAH-SSc) are only partially validated. The aim of the present study was to establish an expert consensus regarding which outcome measures are most appropriate for clinical trials in PAH-SSc.

METHODS
Sixty-nine PAH-SSc experts (rheumatologists, cardiologists, pulmonologists) rated a list of disease domains and measurement tools in an Internet-based 3-stage Delphi consensus study. In stages 2 and 3, the medians of domains and measurement tools and frequency distributions of ratings, along with requests for re-ratings, were distributed to respondents to provide feedback. A final score of items was identified by means of cluster analysis.

RESULTS
The experts judged the following domains and tools as most appropriate for randomized controlled trials in PAH-SSc: lung vascular/pulmonary arterial pressure and cardiac function both measured by right heart catheterization and echocardiography, exercise testing measured by 6-minute walking test and oxygen saturation at exercise, severity of dyspnea measured on a visual analog scale, discontinuation of treatment measured by (serious) adverse events, quality of life/activities of daily living measured by the Short Form 36 and Health Assessment Questionnaire disability index, and global state assessed by physician measured by survival.

CONCLUSION
Among experts in PAH-SSc, a core set of outcome measures has been defined for clinical trials by Delphi consensus methods. Although these outcome measures are recommended by this expert group to be used as an interim tool, it will be necessary to formally validate the present measures, as well as potential research measures, in further studies.


textabstractIn the first part of the thesis performance of the Manchester Triage System in paediatric
emergency care was evaluated.
In chapter 1 we reviewed the literature to evaluate realibility and validity of triage systems in
paediatric emergency care. The Manchester Triage System was used to triage patients when
presenting at the emergency department of a general teaching hospital and the emergency
department of a university paediatric hospital. The system's reliability was evaluated in
chapter 2. Its validity and specific patients groups for which validity was not optimal were
discussed in chapter 3. Chapter 4 evaluates patient problems for which the MTS performs
severe under-triage. The second part focuses on improvements of the MTS. Chapter 5 focuses
on the value of temperature as discriminator in triage systems. The MTS was modified for
patient groups with a low validity and the effect of the modification on the reliability and
validity are studied in chapter 6.
In the third part of this thesis we assess the ability of the MTS to safely identify low urgent
patients. In chapter 7 determinants of hospitalisation for low urgent patients were evaluated.
Chapter 8 reports about compliance and effect on costs when low urgent children, when
presenting to the ED are referred to the general practitioner cooperative.
Chapter 9 provides a summary of the findings and the future prospects.


Explaining change in the behavior of states and other international actors is at the core of the study of international relations. The proficiency with which states respond to changes in the international environment has important consequences for world peace and the world economy as well as domestic politics and well being. One way to understand changes in behavior is to consider whether and how states learn. Key to understanding this is considering how the groups responsible for making decisions learn and make decisions.Andrew Farkas presents an evolutionary theory of how states adjust their foreign policies in response to international changes. Employing both formal models and computer simulations, Farkas explores the relative efficacy of a wide range of alternative strategies for dealing with unanticipated changes in the international environment, and goes a long way toward reconciling the success of rational choice modeling with criticism from psychological studies of decision making.Farkas looks at the way small groups charged with making policy decisions work. He explicitly models the process of search and policy selection. He demonstrates how a group of disparate individuals can act as if it were a unitary rational actor and provides the first endogenous account of when and why groups curtail their search for satisfactory policies. Farkas uses the general model to explore the effects of different institutional designs on the decisionmaking process.This book will be of interest to scholars of international relations, learning models and group processes.Andrew Farkas is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University.


The study of single-plume sprays into cross-flowing air is found extensively in literature, however, with the continued development of the Spark Ignition Direct Injection (SIDI) engine, the behaviour of multi-plume sprays in cross-flowing conditions is of interest. In the present work, the injection of a multi-plume spray into a high-velocity crossflow is investigated; an experimental apparatus capable of providing a cross-flow with core velocities higher than 200 m/s is developed; analysis techniques are developed to characterize the cross-flow and multi-plume spray independently; the multi-plume spray is characterized as it issues into the cross-flowing air. The round air jet used for the cross-flow was designed using the concepts put forth for the design of wind tunnel contractions. The axial and radial velocities were measured using a Particle Image Velocimetry system from LaVision Inc. and the potential core length determined for the core velocities corresponding to Mach numbers of 0.35 and 0.58. It was determined that the potential core length increases with increasing Mach number and that increased compressibility, leads to reduced mixing within the core. Furthermore, velocity profiles of the air jet show that self-similarity is preserved within the shear layer of the initial region. The multi-plume spray was also characterized in quiescent conditions for 10 and 15 MPa injection pressures. It was found that the penetration depth and spray width increased with increasing injection pressure, but that the spray angle decreased with increasing pressure. The increase in penetration depth is consistent with the findings presented in literature, while the decrease in spray angle with increasing pressure is contrary to literature. Next, the multi-plume spray, injected at 10 and 15 MPa, is characterized as it issues into the cross-flowing air stream at Mach numbers equal to 0.35 and 0.58. The tail length and penetration are measured and it is found that for the first, the cross-flow velocity is the primary factor with higher cross-flow velocity resulting in a longer tail length, while for the latter, the injection pressure is the major factor, with higher injection pressures resulting in higher penetrations. That being said, the injection pressure does play a small role in the tail length, with the 15 MPa injection having a slightly longer tail length than the 10 MPa injection in the Mach number 0.58 cross-flow. This is attributed to the finer atomization, which is expected from the 15 MPa injection which leads to quicker entrainment of fuel droplets into the cross-flow. iii The spray axis was predicted for each set of conditions from 0.1 ms to 1.0 ms after Start of Fuel (SOF). It was found that before 0.3 ms, the spray retains its multi-plume nature, while after 0.3 ms it behaves like a single-plume spray. Once the spray has crossed this transition point, the spray axis is temporally independent and can be predicted by the logarithmic models, similar to those used for single-plume sprays in cross-flow. The accuracy of this fit is improved upon, with the presentation of a modified correlation, which includes the momentum flux ratio inside of the logarithmic term. Finally, the multi-plume spray issuing into the cross-flow is characterized using PIV to measure droplet velocities. It is observed that the cross-flow momentum is imparted to the smaller droplets within the 15 MPa spray more easily than to those of the 10 MPa injection, but that the 15 MPa sprays also retain their momentum in the radial direction longer than the 10 MPa sprays. As such, the 10 MPa sprays align with the cross-flow axis faster.


Currently multi-threaded C or C++ programs combine a single-threaded programming language with a separate threads library. This is not entirely sound [7].
 We describe an effort, currently nearing completion, to address these issues by explicitly providing semantics for threads in the next revision of the C++ standard. Our approach is similar to that recently followed by Java [25], in that, at least for a well-defined and interesting subset of the language, we give sequentially consistent semantics to programs that do not contain data races. Nonetheless, a number of our decisions are often surprising even to those familiar with the Java effort:We (mostly) insist on sequential consistency for race-free programs, in spite of implementation issues that came to light after the Java work. We give no semantics to programs with data races. There are no benign C++ data races. We use weaker semantics for trylock than existing languages or libraries, allowing us to promise sequential consistency with an intuitive race definition, even for programs with trylock.
 This paper describes the simple model we would like to be able to provide for C++ threads programmers, and explain how this, together with some practical, but often under-appreciated implementation constraints, drives us towards the above decisions.


Forced convective heat transfer in a passage with a porous medium matrix subjected to uniform blowing has been fully analyzed, using a local thermal non-equilibrium approach, in application of transpiration systems on the basis of porous medium. An exact solution was found for the asymptotic case of infinitely high interstitial Biot number. In order to extend the problem to general local non-thermal equilibrium cases, an analytical solution procedure has been developed, introducing 6 unknown parameters to describe both fluid and solid temperature profiles, which are then determined by solving 6 independent differential and integral equations based on the two energy equations for individual phases and their corresponding boundary conditions. The important performance index for the problem, namely, the overall cooling effectiveness is found quite sensitive not only to the blowing ratio, but also to the interstitial Biot number and fluid to solid effective thermal conductivity ratio. It rises with the blowing ratio and effective thermal conductivity ratio, while it drops as increasing the interstitial Biot number toward the local thermal equilibrium. The present analysis reveals that the local non-thermal equilibrium analysis is definitely needed for accurate estimation of the transpiration-cooled wall temperature.


The production of speech and music are two human behaviors that involve complex hierarchical structures with implications for timing. Timing constraints may arise from a human proclivity to form 'self-organized' metrical structures for perceived and produced event sequences, especially those that involve repetition. To test whether the propensity to organize events in time arises even for simple motor behaviors, we developed a novel experimental tapping paradigm investigating whether participants use the beat structure of a tapped pattern to determine the interval between repetitions. Participants listened to target patterns of 3, 4, or 5 events, occurring at one of four periodic rates, and tapped out the pattern 11 times, creating 10 inter-pattern intervals (IPIs), which participants chose freely. The ratio between mean IPI and mean inter-tap interval (ITI) was used to measure the beat-relatedness of the overall timing pattern; the closer this ratio is to an integer, the more likely the participant was timing the IPI to match a multiple of the target pattern beat. Results show that a beat-based strategy contributes prominently, although not universally, to IPI duration. Moreover, participants preferred interval cycles with even numbers of beats, especially cycles with four beats. Finally, the IPI/ITI ratio was affected by rate, with more beats of silence for the IPI at faster rates. These findings support the idea that people can generate a larger global timing structure when engaging in the repetition of simple periodic motor patterns, and use that structure to govern the timing of those motor events.


Objective: To compare the acceptability and preference between manikin models and fresh frozen cadaver (FFC) for direct laryngoscopic orotracheal intubation training. Methods: In this prospective crossover trial, participants in the airway workshop performed direct laryngoscopic orotracheal intubation on four airway training manikins: Airway Management Trainer (Ambu, St Ives, UK), Airway Trainer (Laerdal, Medical, Stavanger, Norway), Airsim (Trucorp, Belfast, Northern Ireland) and "Bill 1" (VBM, Sulz, Germany), and FFC. Participants were asked to access the following: reality of jaw mobility, difficulty with mouth opening, reality of neck flexibility, difficulty with intubation, overall model reality and model preference for each model using a visual analogue scale (VAS) of 0–10 cm. The VAS scores for each model were compared. Results: Fifty-six participants were included in the study. The FFC had a highest VAS score for reality of jaw mobility, overall reality and preference of model. Trucorp manikin and Laerdal manikin followed cadaver. There were no significant statistical differences between Trucorp manikin and Laerdal manikin. In difficulty with mouth opening and difficulty with intubation, Trucorp manikin had the lowest VAS score. Conclusion: The FFC is a more realistic and preferred model for direct laryngoscopic orotracheal intubation training. Trucorp and Laerdal manikin can be used as alternative models.


Banks have established valuable goodwill in such well known names as ALLFIRST[R], CRESTAR[R], and SIGNET[R]. Suntrust Banks, Inc. for example, has federally registered more than 40 trademarks for banking-related products and services, including SUNTRUST[R], SUNTRUST ATM BANKING[R], TOTAL BUSINESS BANKING[R], and VALUTREE[R]. Product names, logos, and slogans can become valuable assets, attracting purchasers who have come to rely on the quality of branded goods and services. Trademarks generally have little or no value initially, but can dramatically appreciate in value through successful use. And, unlike copyrights and patents that eventually expire, trademark rights can last forever. Trademark rights can last indefinitely if the mark continues to perform a source-indicating function. (The term of a federal trademark registration is ten years, indefinitely renewable for ten-year periods.) Because trademarks are an appreciating asset with a potentially perpetual life, it is important to choose them carefully and protect them through federal registration and controlled licensing. What is a trademark? A trademark is any word, symbol, design, or combination of words and design that distinguishes one seller's goods from another's. For example, the words COKE[R] and EXCEDRIN[R] are both trademarks, as are the Ralston Purina Checkerboard Square design and the hourglass-shaped Coca-Cola[R] bottle. A slogan like Nike's JUST DO IT[R] can also be a trademark. When used to identify a service, the mark is called a service mark. McDONALD'S[R] is a service mark for restaurant services, as is the "golden arches" design. Some marks function as both trademarks and service marks. LEXUS [R] is both a trademark for automobiles and a service mark when used to advertise automobile repair services. Because trademark law is based on the idea that trademarks serve as badges of quality, legal protections exist both to protect the public from deception and confusion, and to protect the mark owner's goodwill in the mark. Trademark clearance Before distributing a product or advertising a service under a mark, or seeking to register a mark with the U.S. Patent Trademark Office, a trademark search should be undertaken. This will determine whether prior rights in the mark exist. Comparable in some respects to a real estate title search, the trademark search reveals prior users who could prevent registration of the mark or assert a claim of trademark infringement. Some business owners mistakenly believe that because the Corporations Division of the Secretary of State in their state accepted a corporate charter or trade name filing, the name can be used for any product or service the business promotes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Acceptance by a state agency has no bearing on whether that same name might infringe on another's federal trademark or service mark. Generally, state acceptance means only that no other entity within that state has incorporated or registered to do business under the same name. Bankers should first conduct a low-cost, online search of federal records, followed by a full trademark search. The cost of a search generally ranges between $400 and $800. Full trademark searches are comprehensive and will reveal whether another user or registrant of the same or a similar mark has established superior rights in the relevant field of goods or services. Logo designs, on the other hand, require different searching strategies. It is impossible to search designs as thoroughly as words. Typically, the search firm confines its review to a search of similar designs in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office records. Trademark search reports provide raw data that must be interpreted and evaluated. For example, a potentially conflicting mark may not be identical or may be used for different goods or services, or a pattern of inter partes oppositions (a type of litigation) may show up in the patent and trademark office file history--all of which need to be evaluated to determine whether a proposed use poses real risks. …


In the efforts to create sustainable production of heat and power and to reduce the net CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, alternative fuels are today being utilised. These fuels are, for example, biofuels and waste derived fuels such as different residues from the agricultural sector and the pulp and paper industry, municipal sewage sludge and municipal sorted solid waste. These fuels put new demands on the combustion facilities due to their chemical composition and this in turn calls for methods of prediction for the evaluation of their combustion behaviour. Most significant for the majority of these fuels are the high alkali and chlorine concentrations which cause bed agglomeration, deposit formation and corrosion on heat transfer surfaces. These problems can be solved if sufficient knowledge is obtained of the specific fuel or fuel mix. In this work, chemical fractionation, a step by step leaching method, was used on fuels, fuel mixes and fly ashes from co-combustion in a fluidised bed combustor. In addition, XRD and SEM-EDX were used for the fuel and fly ash characterisation. Different alkali chloride reducing additives i.e. kaolin, zeolites and sulphur were investigated as was the influence of various bed materials: silica sand, olivine sand and blast furnace slag (BFS). Some of the new, alternative fuels, such as municipal sewage sludge and meat and bone meal (MBM) contain high concentrations of phosphorus which is a very important nutrient essential in many biological processes. Phosphorus rock used as raw material in the phosphate industry is a depleting natural resource estimated to last for only 30-200 years according to different sources. The combustion of municipal sewage sludge enriches the phosphorus in the ashes while hazardous components such as pathogens and organic pollutants are rendered harmless after combustion. However, toxic heavy metals are also enriched in the ashes. One aim of the work was to find a sufficiently effective and low cost method for phosphorus extraction from fly ashes derived from municipal sewage sludge combustion. Two types of municipal sewage sludges were investigated using different chemicals for the phosphorus cleaning step in the waste water treatment plants. The first sewage sludge derived from a plant using iron sulphate as flocculant to precipitate phosphorus as iron phosphate. The second sludge meanwhile came from a plant using aluminium sulphate as flocculant to precipitate phosphorus as aluminium phosphate. Both sewage sludges were dewatered prior to combustion and co-combusted with wood pellets. At pH 1 nearly all the phosphorus was released from the fly ash derived from the sewage sludge where aluminium sulphate was used as a phosphorus precipitation agent. Iron sulphate as precipitant inhibited the phosphorus extraction from the ashes, resulting in only 50-80% of the phosphorus being released. Furthermore, the mobility of heavy metals to the leachates was investigated to establish whether the leachates were suitable as fertilisers. Only minor fractions of Pd, Hg, Cr, Cu, Mn, Co, Ni, As, Sb, V and Zn were found in the leachates, all well within the legislated limitations for fertilisers. However, one exception was Cd that was nearly totally dissolved in the leachate. Thus a decadmiation of the leachate is necessary prior to any utilisation of the ashes and reuse of phosphorus as fertiliser.


Long term forecasting, as popularized by some recent models of the world, appears to be a-scientific from the standpoint of the social scientists. The basis for this radical judgment is threefold: First, structural relations incorporated into these models of the world seldom go further than stating rigid relations between some physical variables and world output. Second, the factual basis on which these relations are built is often not validated by past trends. Finally, the framework within which these models are cast rules out all possibly for the social sciences to contribute to our understanding of the future. Political and economic adaptation mechanisms are excluded. Futurology as developed by some models is based on poor measurement and poor theory.


Is minor jurisprudence tallow or is it tar? Taking its cue from Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet's 'Damnation's Cellar (1993), this introduction presents the idea of 'minor jurisprudence' as it was first proposed in the mid-1990s, and explores its current potential as discussed, developed, and applied in the essays in this issue of Law Text Culture. The introduction also presents the enterprise known as 'Law As ...' – a biennial symposium under the umbrella of which this exploration of minor jurisprudence took place. One important question for the symposium was, 'can "Law As ..." be a form of minor jurisprudence'? Should it be? The authors answer by example, or explicitly, as they develop their own encounters with minor jurisprudence


What is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation? Empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been difficult to answer with modern data: 1) Does the existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation? And 2) May patent laws influence the direction - as opposed to the rate - of technical change? Economic history can also help to shed light on the effectiveness of policy tools that are intended to address problems with the current patent system: 3) How do patent pools, as a mechanism to mitigate litigation risks, influence the creation of new technologies? 4) Will compulsory licensing, as a mechanism to improve access to essential innovations in developing countries, discourage innovation in the developing countries? This essay summarizes results of existing research and highlights promising areas for future research.


The construction industry is a complex and dynamic industrial sector. Malaysia, as a developing country, considers the construction industry as one main contributor of the country"s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Due to the combination of problems and issues that have recently arisen in current construction methods, such as time delay,
rising costs in raw materials, lack of communication and coordination, inefficient management, and many other problems, the government has come out with a new
solution through an industrialisation technology called Industrialised Building System (IBS). However, after five years of implementation in the Malaysian construction
industry, the acceptance level of IBS is still below government expectation. Supply chain management (SCM) is very much covered in the more glamorous industrial sectors such as electronics and manufacturing, and has the potential for improving and solving these problems. In-line with investigating this effort, this research paper aims to provide alternative solutions in addressing these problems. A survey of the current industry and application of SCM that fits in this industry needs to be performed. This research hopes to answer these problems and help toward the betterment of the construction industry in order to enhance the implementation of IBS in the Malaysian construction industry.


WHO AM I?: THE REFLEXIVITY OF SELF-IDENTITY THROUGH TOURISM by Matthew L. Milde This study has set forth to close gaps, explore innovative methods, and create a better understanding of "Who am I?", in tourism research. Few studies in tourism research focus on how experiences gained from traveling shape self-identity through personal biographies. Building on the work of seminal authors on self-identity, personal narrative, and tourism, this study explores the reflexivity of self-identity as represented in travel narratives. The lived experiences offered through narrative condition spontaneous instances of self-discovery allowing for the (re)creation of new self-identities. Participants were selected through a snowball sample; in-depth interviews were held with fifteen (15) adults born and raised in the United States who have traveled abroad for leisure purposes. Two, ninety-minute, digitally recorded and empirically observed interviews were held with each participant. These interviews, thirty in total, were transcribed verbatim and a member check was conducted. The qualitative design of the research triangulates grounded theory with narrative analysis, which is insubordinately unique in the field of tourism research. The principal results of this research uncovered tools, not yet applied in tourism research, concerning self-identity: e-mail, online applications (e.g., Skype, blogs, etc.), journals, diaries, scrapbooks, and self edited DVDs. Moreover, the narratives reveal how the "Other" becomes a venue for reflexivity in generating a range of dimensions of the "Self," further exploring, "Who am I?"


IZA DP No. 14485 JUNE 2021 Equality of Opportunity and the Expansion of Higher Education in the UK Using nine waves of data from Understanding Society (UKHLS), we study the expansion of higher education in the UK, since the landmark Robbins Report in 1963, and its consequences for levels of and inequalities in household income, physical and mental health. We estimate fixed effects models accounting for both cohort and lifecycle effects and use entropy balancing to build a counterfactual scenario that fixes the opportunity set, in terms of the likelihood of being a graduate, at pre-Robbins levels. We confirm that the university expansion was characterised by a large increase in the proportion of graduates, with higher rates of graduation among individuals from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Having controlled for birth cohort and lifecycle effects, there is evidence of significant inequality of opportunity in the actual outcomes. However, comparing actual outcomes with counterfactual projections, we do not detect an impact of the expansion of higher education on inequality of opportunity (IOp) in income and only small reductions in IOp in physical and mental health. JEL Classification: C1, D63, I12, I14


Prior data have revealed striking contrasts between 18 and 24-month-old children in place learning, an ability knownto dependon the hippo campus(Newcombe, Huttenlocher, Drummey, & Wiley, 1998). The current research examined the development of three other basic abilities of mature spatial competence: the representation of multiple locations, the learning of relations among objects, and the recall of a single location after a substantial filled delay. Results indicated a transition from 18 to 24 months in all three abilities. This evidence supports a general transition in spatial representation that occurs towards the end of infancy. Existing neurobehavioral data suggest that a corresponding change in hippocampal functioning underlies this development.


This paper introduces a captcha based on upright orientation of line drawings rendered from 3D models. The models are selected from a large database, and images are rendered from random viewpoints, affording many different drawings from a single 3D model. The captcha presents the user with a set of images, and the user must choose an upright orientation for each image. This task generally requires understanding of the semantic content of the image, which is believed to be difficult for automatic algorithms. We describe a process called covert filtering whereby the image database can be continually refreshed with drawings that are known to have a high success rate for humans, by inserting randomly into the captcha new images to be evaluated. Our analysis shows that covert filtering can ensure that captchas are likely to be solvable by humans while deterring attackers who wish to learn a portion of the database. We performed several user studies that evaluate how effectively people can solve the captcha. Comparing these results to an attack based on machine learning, we find that humans possess a substantial performance advantage over computers.


Cluster computing has come to prominence as a cost-effective parallel processing tool for solving many complex computational problems. The key to making cluster computing work well is the middleware technologies that can manage the policies, protocols, networks, and job scheduling across the interconnected set of computing resources. The research question addressed in this paper is the on-line job scheduling problem for multi-cluster systems. To this end, we propose an on-line dynamic scheduling policy that manages multiple job streams across both single and multiple cluster computing systems with the objectives of improving the mean response time and system utilization. The performance of the proposed scheduling policy is compared against a space-sharing policy and a time-sharing policy. The results of the experiments show that the proposed policy produces significantly better response times than the other two policies.


A disadvantage of multiple-choice tests is that students have incentives to guess. To discourage guessing, it is common to use scoring rules that either penalize wrong answers or reward omissions. These scoring rules are considered equivalent in psychometrics, although experimental evidence has not always been consistent with this claim. We model students' decisions and show, first, that equivalence holds only under risk neutrality and, second, that the two rules can be modified so that they become equivalent even under risk aversion. This paper presents the results of a field experiment in which we analyze the decisions of subjects taking multiple-choice exams. The evidence suggests that differences between scoring rules are due to risk aversion as theory predicts. We also find that the number of omitted items depends on the scoring rule, knowledge, gender and other covariates.


The subject of this paper is an asymptotically fast and incremental algorithm for computing collision translations of convex polyhedra, where the problem at hand is reduced to determining collision translations of pairs of planar sections and minimizing a bivariate convex function. There are two main reasons, in our view, why the algorithm is worth consideration. On the one hand, the addressed proximity measure, namely collision translation, is not as widely studied as distance. On the other, its peculiar computation strategy may be interesting in itself, being well suited to work without initialization and also endowed with an inherently embedded mechanism to exploit spatial coherence. After outlining the main ideas of this novel approach and providing an estimation of the computational costs, we summarize a broad set of numerical experiments meant to explore extensively the behavior of the algorithm, both without and with initialization. Finally, in order to assess the efficacy and the potential of the approach under analysis, the attained performances are contrasted with those of other popular algorithms designed to compute distances between polyhedra. A thorough comparison of the reported query times and, more significantly, of the corresponding trends shows that the behavior of the collision translation algorithm is quite interesting, especially when used without initialization or under variable coherence, which should encourage further work on this approach.


The aim of this study was to develop delirium care pathways (DCPs) useable and relevant for registered practitioners in all care settings: community; acute; and nursing homes. A qualitative approach was adopted to develop the pathways inductively. Focus groups and one-to-one interviews with registered practitioners (n = 45) working as managers, practitioners and clinical nurse consultants were undertaken to develop draft versions of the pathways, which was pilot trialled across 19 clinical settings. The publication of the DCPs was a concise and easily readable document for registered practitioners who required immediate guidance on how to implement evidence-based delirium care for older people and their family carers, including three patient journeys explaining best-practice delirium care in community, acute and nursing home care settings, a webpage resource and printable posters of the pathways' patient journeys to promote the use of the pathways in clinical settings. The work undertaken to develop the pathways was further developed through new policy documents, state-wide initiatives to improve delirium care in hospitals, development of educational resources on delirium care and other knowledge translation projects on this topic.


This paper presents an approach to enhance robot control using Mixed-Reality. It highlights the opportunities and challenges in the interaction design to achieve a Human-Robot Collaborative environment. In fact, Human-Robot Collaboration is the perfect space for social inclusion. It enables people, who suffer severe physical impairments, to interact with the environment by providing them movement control of an external robotic arm. Now, when discussing about robot control it is important to reduce the visual-split that different input and output modalities carry. Therefore, Mixed-Reality is of particular interest when trying to ease communication between humans and robotic systems. 1


We investigate techniques to generate new classes of exact solutions to the Einstein– Maxwell field equations which represent the gravitational field of charged perfect fluid spherically symmetric distributions of matter. Historically, a large number of solutions have been proposed but only a small number have been demonstrated to satisfy elementary conditions for physical acceptability. Firstly we examine the case of the constant density and constant electric field charged fluid sphere and show empirically that such configurations of matter are unlikely to exist as basic physical requirements are violated. We then make an ansatz relating the fluid's electric field intensity to one of the gravitational potentials thereby simplifying the system of partial differential equations. This prescription yields an algorithmic process to generate new classes of exact solutions. We present a number of new solutions and comment on their viability as stellar models. Graphical plots generated by symbolic software of the main dynamical and geometrical quantities verify that one of our models is suitable to represent a physically relevant distribution of charged matter in the form of a spherical shell. In particular, positive definiteness of energy density and pressure are guaranteed, a pressure free hypersurface denoting the boundary of the star exists, the sound speed is shown to be sub–luminal and the energy conditions are satisfied everywhere in the interior of the star.


ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is one of the most common cardio vascular diseases in Taiwan. The management strategies for STEMI are to do early diagnosis, minimize delay of medical contact, and administration of reperfusion therapy as rapidly as possible. Initial evaluation in emergency department for STEMI includes concise history taking, physical examination, electrocardiogram and cardiac biomarkers measurement. A 12-lead electrocardiogram should be performed within 10 minutes of emergency department arrival. Oxygen, nitroglycerin, analgesia, dual antiplatelet therapy and anticoagulation drugs should be given immediately. Patients with STEMI should receive reperfusion therapy either by primary percutaneous coronary intervention with door-to-balloon time within 90 minutes or by thrombolytic therapy with door-to-needle time within 30 minutes. The pharmacological treatment after admission includes antiplatelet drugs, anticoagulation drugs, beta blockers, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers and statins. STEMI patients should be watched out for hypotension, heart failure or even cardiogenic shock. Mechanical complications, such as acute mitral regurgitation, septum rupture and free wall rupture, cause high mortality after STEMI. Tachy-and bradyarrhythmias are also common in patients with STEMI and should be treated accordingly. Permanent cardiac pacing and implantable cardioverter defibrillator may be necessary after STEMI. Coronary artery bypass grafting surgery may be performed as a definitive or adjunctive revascularization therapy after STEMI. Surgery is also necessary if there are mechanical complications. Before discharge, cardiac rehabilitation should be considered when patients are stabilized. Referral for outpatient rehabilitation should also be encouraged. Antiplatelet drugs, beta blockers, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers and statins should be continued after discharge for secondary prevention. Effective hypertension, diabetes and lipid control are important after STEMI.


Background and Aims: Hernia formation is associated with alterations of collagen metabolism. Collagen synthesis and degradation cause a systemic release of products, which are measurable in serum. Recently, we reported changes in type V and IV collagen metabolisms in patients with inguinal and incisional hernia. The aim of this study was to determine if the altered collagen metabolism was persistent after hernia repair. Material and Methods: Patients who had undergone repairs for inguinal hernia (n = 11) or for incisional hernia (n = 17) were included in this study. Patients who had undergone elective cholecystectomy served as controls (n = 10). Whole venous blood was collected 35–55 months after operation. Biomarkers for type V collagen synthesis (Pro-C5) and degradation (C5M) and those for type IV collagen synthesis (P4NP) and degradation (C4M2) were measured by a solid-phase competitive assay. Results: The turnover of type V collagen (Pro-C5/C5M) was slightly higher postoperatively when compared to preoperatively in the inguinal hernia group (P = 0.034). In addition, the results revealed a postoperatively lower type V collagen turnover level in the inguinal hernia group compared to controls (P = 0.012). In the incisional hernia group, the type V collagen turnover was higher after hernia repair (P = 0.004) and the postoperative turnover level was not different from the control group (P = 0.973). Conclusion: Patients with an inguinal hernia demonstrated a systemic and persistent type V collagen turnover alteration. This imbalance of the collagen metabolism may be involved in the development of inguinal hernias.


Britain's most popular artist presents a brilliantly original format that very young children will delight in time and again. The witch has hidden a trick and a treat in her magical kitchen cupboards! Which one you find depends on how you open the doors. Whether it's frogspawn or popcorn, lollipops or rabbit plops there are hilarious rhymes to discover inside in this innovative new novelty book from Nick Sharratt. Perfect for children to read again and again, this spooky title is great not only for halloween but all year round.


Electric vehicles are considered as an important means to cope with increasing environmental problems in the transport sector. Many governments worldwide have set targets to increase the number of electric vehicles, although their environmental benignity is not ensured in the scope of the policies implemented. The core objective of this paper is to investigate the overall environmental impact of electric vehicles in different regions. The analysis is based on a life cycle assessment of electric vehicles including emissions from electricity generation, vehicle production and disposal, and vehicle use. The major conclusion is that the environmental benignity of electric vehicles is very sensitive on: electricity mix (a); number of km driven per year (b) and embedded emissions in car production (c), as well as battery recycling. Yet, as shown in this paper the highest sensitivity is with respect to the electricity mix. Hence, to make electric vehicles more environmentally friendly it is most important to increase the share of renewable energy sources in electricity generation.


KB Kookmin Card has separated as an independent corporation from KB Kookmin Bank Credit Card Business Group on March, 2011. Ever since, KB Kookmin Card worked to build its own brand identity. The strategic preparation and conscientious implementations made KB Kookmin Card position in consumer`s mind with a strong and unique brand image. Its new brand image was rooted in the inherited strengths of reliable and sincere image. However, it faced the challenge to compete in credit card industry in which most competitors had an advanced and sophisticated image. The strengths of KB Kookmin Card were also at the same time their limitations. KB Kookmin Card took a strategy that strengthened the strengths and improved the weaknesses. It focused on the core competence of being a people`s sincere life supporter that helps people make savings from everyday events to make a good sum rather than being a lump sum benefit. The brand introduction strategy was implemented in 2011. The implementation focused on the activities that made internal as well as external customers be aware of the brand. Communication programs using a variety of media were executed to attain this goal. In 2012, second phase communication programs were introduced to elaborate the newly established brand image. It introduced many extended products as well as accessory programs which targeted the segments. Also, various CSR activities in many social domains helped consumers and the public to consider KB Kookmin Card an authentic, caring, trustworthy, and consistently-developing supporter in their everyday lives.


The perfect companion to any book on Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7, and the quickest way to access critical information Focusing just on the essentials of command-line interface (CLI), Windows Command-Line Administration Instant Reference easily shows how to quickly perform day-to-day tasks of Windows administration without ever touching the graphical user interface (GUI). Specifically designed for busy administrators, Windows Command-Line Administration Instant Reference replaces many tedious GUI steps with just one command at the command-line, while concise, easy to access answers provide solutions on the spot. Provides practical examples, step-by-step instructions, and contextual information Quick-reference style delivers the commands needed for managing data and the network; working with Active Directory; performing diagnostics and maintenance; and, creating batch files and scripts Covers administration for Windows Server 2008 Server Core, Windows Server 2008 (including R2), and Windows 7 Administrators can get more done in less time with CLI than they can with the standard GUI. Compact enough to keep on hand at all times, Windows Command-Line Administration Instant Reference provides administrators with a convenient, fast and simple way to use CLI.


The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of inter-municipal cooperation on local taxation. Municipalities that join/create an inter-municipal jurisdiction choose between three tax regimes, which may induce both horizontal and vertical tax externalities. Using the differences in differences method with a quasi-exhaustive panel for French municipalities over the 1994-2010 period, we show a positive causal effect of cooperation on the level of cumulative tax rates (i.e. the sum of municipal and inter-municipal tax rates). Moreover, we show that cooperation leads to a convergence of tax rates within an inter-municipal structure, which thus reduces tax disparities among municipalities.


This Article examines the controversial article 1(1) of the Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) giving that tribunal the competence "to prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility" for serious international and domestic crimes committed during the latter part of the notoriously brutal Sierra Leonean conflict. The debate that arose during the SCSL trials was whether this bare statement constituted a jurisdictional requirement that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt or merely a type of guideline for the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. The judges of the court split on the issue. This paper is the first to critically assess the reasons why the tribunal's judges disagreed in the interpretation of this seemingly simple legal question. It then attempts to discern the common ground in the judicial reasoning, and argues that the ultimate conclusion that "greatest responsibility" implied that leaders as well as the worst killers may be prosecuted is a welcome jurisprudential contribution to our understanding of personal jurisdiction in international criminal law. The paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, it takes up and highlights a widely ignored but important legal question. Second, it demonstrates why the reasoning of the Appeals Chamber was results-oriented and wrong. Finally, it identifies the lessons of Sierra Leone and builds on them to offer preliminary recommendations on how the greatest responsibility conundrum can be avoided when drafting personal jurisdiction clauses for future ad hoc international penal tribunals.


This paper provides an analysis of the efficacy of a known iterative improvement meta-heuristic approach from the AI area in solving the Blocking Job Shop Scheduling Problem (BJSSP) class of problems. The BJSSP is known to have significant fallouts on practical domains, and differs from the classical Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) in that it assumes that there are no intermediate buffers for storing a job as it moves from one machine to another; according to the BJSSP definition, each job has to wait on a machine until it can be processed on the next machine. In our analysis, two specific variants of the iterative improvement meta-heuristic are evaluated: (1) an adaptation of an existing scheduling algorithm based on the Iterative Flattening Search and (2) an off-the-shelf optimization tool, the IBM ILOG CP Optimizer, which implements Self-Adapting Large Neighborhood Search. Both are applied to a reference benchmark problem set and comparative performance results are presented. The results confirm the effectiveness of the iterative improvement approach in solving the BJSSP; both variants perform well individually and together succeed in improving the entire set of benchmark instances.


Red Sea mangroves occur in an oligotrophic sea without permanent freshwater inputs. Understanding the mechanisms to cope with nutrient limitation is, therefore, important to understand their distribution and nutrient dynamics in coastal ecosystems. We measured total number of meristems to estimate their leaves production and nutrients (N, P, and Fe) as a function of age in Avicennia marina leaves. Then estimated resorption rates; the recovery of nutrients from senescing leaves before they are shed in a total of 91 leaf from four different mangroves stands in the Central Red Sea. We found that the concentration of N and P but not Fe declined with age. Nutrient content also declined in the older leaves with high resorption capacity of 69% and 72% in N and P vs. low resorption of 42% in Fe. The role of Fe resorption is poorly studied in plants, nevertheless, this study could provide an insight into our knowledge of iron resorption in the mangroves, which has never been assessed before. The leaf nutrient export flux from senescing leaves in monospecific stand of Avicennia marina was 9, 0.4 and 1 g m-2 y-1 for N, P and Fe respectively, suggesting mangrove litter-fall to be an important source of bioavailable iron in particular, due to its low resorption, to the adjacent oligotrophic ecosystem.


Knowledge distillation is a critical technique to transfer knowledge between models, typically from a large model (the teacher) to a more fine-grained one (the student). The objective function of knowledge distillation is typically the cross-entropy between the teacher and the student's output distributions. However, for structured prediction problems, the output space is exponential in size; therefore, the cross-entropy objective becomes intractable to compute and optimize directly. In this paper, we derive a factorized form of the knowledge distillation objective for structured prediction, which is tractable for many typical choices of the teacher and student models. In particular, we show the tractability and empirical effectiveness of structural knowledge distillation between sequence labeling and dependency parsing models under four different scenarios: 1) the teacher and student share the same factorization form of the output structure scoring function; 2) the student factorization produces more fine-grained substructures than the teacher factorization; 3) the teacher factorization produces more fine-grained substructures than the student factorization; 4) the factorization forms from the teacher and the student are incompatible.


Cecil John Rhodes is on record as saying he had only met two creators in South Africa, one being himself and the other James Douglas Logan. The orchestrator of the 190I South African cricket tour to England, J.D. Logan was born in Reston, Scotland on November 26, 1857. The son of a Borders Railwayman, Logan had emigrated to South Africa where, with an entrepreneurial mind, he quickly made his fortune within South Africa's burgeoning colonial society. Affectionately referred to by the South African press as the 'Laird of Matjiesfontein', after the small Karoo town he had developed, Logan's deep affection for cricket undoubtedly helped to popularise the game in South Africa. An important figure culturally as well as politically, Logan's life and contribution to the game is the focus ofthis socio-historical study. In order to explore the processes and events that shaped South African cricket between 1888 and 1910, a wealth of original data was collected from archives in the United Kingdom and South Africa predominantly. A range of secondary sources were also used. The study examines the links between the development of the 'empire game' in South Africa and the social and political environment of the time, with particular reference to the role of James Logan. In many respects, Logan's involvement in politics and the early cricket tours reflected wider processes at work in South Africa's colonial society. This pugnacious Scotsman epitomised the process of cultural imperialism forged between Britain and Her far-flung colonies. His is a story of sport, politics and opportunity and is a distinctive contribution to any history of cricket and colonialism in late nineteenth century South Africa.


A new secondary curriculum has been developed to increase flexibility for both teachers and pupils. With less prescription on subject content and the opportunity for teachers and subject leaders to tailor the curriculum to the needs of individual learners, there will be more time and space within the school day for pupils to study areas in more depth. The new curriculum will need to be in place by 2011. This allows teachers to plan ahead and to choose whether to make changes incrementally year-by-year or whether to introduce the changes all at once.
To help you implement the new curriculum, our guide provides a variety of resources that enable you to explore the concepts, processes, range and content in the new programme of study. They include background information, articles from 'Teaching History', exemplar schemes of work, lists of useful resources and suggestions for further reading and INSET activities. You can work through the material on your own or use the materials for departmental INSET. The guide is under development and some sections have yet to be completed. It will be updated as new ideas and exemplars are devised. The guide has been produced by a number of top history teaching professionals and has been compiled and edited by Sue Bennett, freelance education consultant and Suzy Powling, freelance editor.


This product set contains high-resolution Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR) imagery and geospatial data for the Barrow Peninsula (155.39 - 157.48 deg W, 70.86 - 71.47 deg N) and Barrow Triangle (156.13 - 157.08 deg W, 71.14 - 71.42 deg N), for use in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing software. The primary IFSAR data sets were acquired by Intermap Technologies from 27 to 29 July 2002, and consist of Orthorectified Radar Imagery (ORRI), a Digital Surface Model (DSM), and a Digital Terrain Model (DTM). Derived data layers include aspect, shaded relief, and slope-angle grids (floating-point binary and ArcInfo grid format), as well as a vector layer of contour lines (ESRI Shapefile format). Also available are accessory layers compiled from other sources: 1:250,000- and 1:63,360-scale USGS Digital Raster Graphic (DRG) mosaic images (GeoTIFF format); 1:250,000- and 1:63,360-scale USGS quadrangle index maps (ESRI Shapefile format); a quarter-quadrangle index map for the 26 IFSAR tiles (ESRI Shapefile format); and a simple polygon layer of the extent of the Barrow Peninsula (ESRI Shapefile format). Unmodified IFSAR data comprise 26 data tiles across UTM zones 4 and 5. The DSM and DTM tiles (5 m resolution) are provided in floating-point binary format with header and projection files. The ORRI tiles (1.25 m resolution) are available in GeoTIFF format. FGDC-compliant metadata for all data sets are provided in text, HTML, and XML formats, along with the Intermap License Agreement and product handbook. The baseline geospatial data support education, outreach, and multi-disciplinary research of environmental change in Barrow, which is an area of focused scientific interest. Data are provided on five DVDs, available through licensing only to National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded investigators. An NSF award number must be provided when ordering data.


The sialic acids (Sias), a diverse family of 9-carbon sugars, are among the most important molecules of life. Commonly occurring as terminal residues of glycans on proteins and lipids, they are key elements of glycotopes of cellular lectins and there is accumulating evidence for them to act as chemical messengers in cell recognition and signaling events. Their function in such interactions may be modulated through specific modifications, the most common of which is O-acetylation at Sia carbon atoms C4, C7, C8 and/or C9. These modified Sias have not been studied in great detail, at least in part because of technical hurdles and limitations associated with the analysis of these elusive sugars. Viruses that use Sias as receptor determinant come with a treasure trove of lectins and Sia-modifying enzymes. Hemagglutinin-esterases (HEs), closely related envelope glycoproteins in influenza C, corona- and toroviruses, mediate reversible attachment to O-acetylated (O-Ac) Sias. They do so through concerted action of distinct receptor-binding and receptor-destroying sialate O-acetylesterase domains. Most HEs target 9-O-Ac-Sias. In one lineage of murine coronaviruses, however, HE esterase substrate and lectin ligand specificity changed dramatically as these viruses evolved to use 4-O-Ac-Sias instead. Torovirus HEs also differ in receptor usage, although more subtle. While porcine torovirus HEs recognize 9-O-Ac-Sias, bovine torovirus HEs have a preference for 7,9-di-O-Ac-Sias. The selective forces underlying HE diversity and the molecular basis for Sia specificity are poorly understood. In this thesis we present crystal structures of bovine coronavirus HE, porcine and bovine torovirus HEs and the receptor-binding site of a murine coronavirus HE in complex with receptor-analogues. We show that both corona- and torovirus HEs arose from an influenza C-like hemagglutinin-esterase fusion protein (HEF). In the process, HE was transformed from a trimer into a dimer, while remnants of the fusion domain were adapted to establish novel monomer-monomer contacts. Structure-guided biochemical analysis of the torovirus esterase domains revealed that a functionally, but not structurally conserved Arginine-Sia carboxylate interaction is critical for the binding and positioning of glycosidically-bound Sias in the catalytic pocket. The distinct preference of the porcine torovirus enzyme for 9-mono- over 7,9-di-O-acetylated Sias can be explained from a single residue difference. The structures of the receptor binding domains of bovine coronavirus and torovirus HEs are dramatically different although they bind all their ligand in a 9-O-Ac dependent way. The major shift from 9-O- to 4-O-Ac-Sia receptor usage in murine coronaviruses primarily entailed a change in ligand binding topology and, surprisingly, only modest changes in receptor-binding site architecture. Biochemical analysis of a broad spectrum of corona- and torovirus HEs revealed that porcine torovirus strain P4, bovine coronavirus strain LUN and mouse hepatitis virus strain S bound 9-mono-O-, 7,9-di-O-, and 4-O-Ac-Sias, respectively, with a very high binding affinity and specificity. These virolectins allowed specific detection of and distinction between closely related O-Ac-Sias in mammalian cells and tissues. Differential expression of these Sias suggests that regulation of Sia-O-acetylation is crucial to the development, homeostasis and function of many organs and tissues.


Abstract Cases of convergent evolution, particularly within ecomorphological contexts, are instructive in identifying universally adaptive morphological features across clades. Tracing of evolutionary pathways by which ecomorphological convergence takes place can further reveal mechanisms of adaptation, which may be strongly influenced by phylogeny. Ecomorphologies of carnivorous mammals represent some of the most outstanding cases of convergent evolution in the Cenozoic radiation of mammals. This study examined patterns of cranial shape change in the dog (Canidae) and hyena (Hyaenidae) families, in order to compare the evolutionary pathways that led to the independent specialization of bone-cracking hypercarnivores within each clade. Geometric morphometrics analyses of cranial shape in fossil hyaenids and borophagine canids provided evidence for deep-time convergence in morphological pathways toward the independent evolution of derived bone-crackers. Both clades contained stem members with plesiomorphic generalist/omnivore cranial shapes, which evolved into doglike species along parallel pathways of shape change. The evolution of specialized bone-crackers from these doglike forms, however, continued under the constraint of a full cheek dentition and restriction on rostrum length reduction in canids, but not hyaenids. Functionally, phylogenetic constraint may have limited borophagine canids to crack bones principally with their carnassial instead of the third premolar as in hyaenids, but other cranial shape changes associated with durophagy nevertheless evolved in parallel in the two lineages. Size allometry was not a major factor in cranial shape evolution in either lineage, supporting the interpretation of functional demands as drivers for the observed convergence. The comparison between borophagines and hyaenids showed that differential effects of alternative functional "solutions" that arise during morphological evolution may be multiplied with processes of the "macroevolutionary ratchet" already in place to further limit the evolutionary pathways available to specialized lineages.


Abstract In many cultures, being born female can consign the girl child to the peripheries of society where her safety is denied and her human rights are routinely violated. At each and every stage of development, girls are more likely than boys to confront a host of disadvantages associated with discrimination and violence, although the social norms and cultural rules that influence girls are most intensely felt as she struggles to develop into adulthood. At the onset of puberty, or even before, some girls are pulled out of school and forced into early marriage and high-risk pregnancy. Others become victims of harmful practices, including female genital mutilation and dowry-related violence, or are murdered in the name of honor. Countless numbers are forced into exploitative labor as a means of survival, or trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, while discriminatory inheritance laws and practices condemn many to poverty. Addressing discrimination and violence faced by girls across the globe, and ensuring their access to the same basic opportunities as boys, is crucial to their development and to the realization of their human rights. This paper provides an overview of the international harmful traditional or cultural practices and gender-based social and cultural norms that perpetuate the lower status accorded to girls in the family, the community and society. Recommendations for social policy are presented. Key Words: Discrimination, Violence, Girls, Human Rights Introduction and Overview of the Problem The United Nations (UN) Beijing Platform for Action, including Section L, pledges to eliminate all forms of discrimination against girls, specifically addressing economic exploitation, education, violence, and harmful traditional or cultural practices and attitudes (UN, 1995a; UNICEF, 2010a). It highlights the need to eliminate the detrimental gender stereotypes that prevail in many societies and to create empowering surroundings in which girls can attain their full capacity. It identifies poverty eradication as the greatest global challenge facing the world, and stresses that the growing feminization of poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (UNICEF, 2010b), and other internationally agreed development goals, requires investing sufficient resources for gender equality and empowerment. It promises to support families and to stimulate girls' mindfulness and involvement in their own lives and in their communities, and acknowledges that the advancement of women is not sustainable without attention to the rights of girls. Several international human rights agreements also exist to protect the human rights of the girl child. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), for example, is an important treaty for girls as well as for boys because it establishes the economic, political, civil, social and cultural rights of children (UN, 1989). Approved by every country in the world except the United States of America, and guided by four main principles, it is the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history. The first principle, non-discrimination, is outlined in Article 2 and prohibits sex discrimination; it also implies that girls and boys should enjoy all of the rights provided for in the CRC on an equal basis and in their totality. It further requires that all children are entitled to the rights set out in the CRC, regardless of their religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, race, color, ethnicity, age, language, sex, and disability, property, birth or other status. The principle of best interests of the child (Article 3) supports a child-centered approach and requires those in positions of authority to review programs, policies, regulations and legislation so that they have a positive influence on promoting or fulfilling children's rights. The principle of the right to life, survival and development (Article 6) indicates that children should be protected from situations, including conflict, which would place their lives in jeopardy and that countries must ensure that children do not die from malnutrition, disease or other causes. …


The computation of classical higher-order statistics such as higher-order moments or spectra is difficult for images due to the huge number of terms to be estimated and interpreted. We propose an alternative approach in which multiplicative pixel interactions are described by a series of Wiener functionals. Since the functionals are estimated implicitly via polynomial kernels, the combinatorial explosion associated with the classical higher-order statistics is avoided. First results show that image structures such as lines or corners can be predicted correctly, and that pixel interactions up to the order of five play an important role in natural images.


Parents have an important role in shaping the moral valuess of children. But busyness becomes the main reason parents do not have enough time to educate children, consequently education is left entirely to the teacher. The cultivation of moral values from an early childhood becomes an important point to face the moral decadence that occurs, where the family has a major role in shaping the morals of children. The purpose of writing this article is to know the role of parents in shaping the morality of children in Gesik, Gesikharjo village RT / RW 002/002. The methodology of writing this article is descriptive qualitative. Data were collected through observation, interview and documentation, then analyzed by data reduction, data presentation and conclusion. The result of this research is parents in Gesik, Gesikharjo village RT / RW 002/002 who have quality togetherness with children and who apply democratic parenting, they can shape the children's behaviour rich with moral values.


Although the incidence of voyeurism and indecent exposure is relatively low compared to other sexual offenses, both crimes raise fundamental questions about the proper scope of the criminal law in a liberal society. The two offenses mark out, and mutually reinforce, the borders of the ever-changing and culturally variable understanding of what is public and what is private. In voyeurism, the offender violates the victim's right to exclude others from her private domain. In indecent exposure, the offender violates the victim's right not to be included in the private domain of others. The interests and rights at stake in the two offenses are in a sense complementary. But they also reflect significant asymmetries. The wrongs of voyeurism seem relatively clear and uncontested, and this is true even across otherwise wide cultural divides. The law of public indecency, by contrast, will prove to be messier, more sensitive to cultural variations, and more attuned to the specific circumstances in which such exposure occurs. We will see this, for example, when we consider cases in which a person exposes himself in contexts as varied as Mardi Gras parades, political protests, performance art, nude beaches, and fraternity pranks. We will also consider the ways in which the emergence of new technologies and new social practices have simultaneously lowered the threshold of what society regards as private, while increasing the potential for resulting harm to victims.


PURPOSE
To evaluate dosimetric accuracy of a multiple-diode array detector (MapCHECK2 ) for high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy Ir-192 source using two-dimensional dose distributions measured with MapCHECK2, EBT2 Gafchromic films, and TG-43 calculations.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Plans with different patterns of dwell positions and times were delivered to MapCHECK2 and EBT2 films using a remote afterloader Ir-192 HDR brachytherapy Nucletron system. A catheter was placed between phantom slabs with Gafchromic films and the MapCHECK2 positioned 2cm above and 2cm below the source dwell positions, respectively. The dose distributions were also calculated with TG-43 using the phantom setup and I-192 source parameters to compare with dose measurements from MapCHECK2 and film.

RESULTS
Dose distributions measured with MapCHECK2 and calculated with TG-43 were within 5% agreement. Similarly, the dose distributions measured with MapCHECK and EBT2 film agreed within 5% in the range from 10-800 cGy. However, for doses larger than 800 cGy, EBT2 films saturated. In the low range, for doses below 10 cGy, the MapCHECK2 and film measurements were noisy and deviated up to 15% from the TG-43 calculations. The advantage of MapCHECK2 over Gafchromic film is linear response and stability over a wide range of dose levels and dose rates produced from Ir-192 sources. No over-response of MapCHECK2 dose from Ir-192 was observed. The 2D dose distributions from MapCHECK2 are obtained with small detectors and high spatial resolution at positions where the diode detectors are located. However, the separation of the detectors (7 mm) limits the overall spatial resolution of MapCHECK2 in comparison with films.

CONCLUSION
MapCHECK2 provided accurate measurements of 2D-dose distributions from HDR Ir-192 source as validated by TG-43 calculations and EBT2 measurements. The response of MapCHECK2 was linear over a wide range of dose levels and dose-rates while the response of EBT2 Gafchromic film was non-linear and unstable.


Millions of people are multiracial and cannot be classified as being of one distinct race. Similarly, millions of people are transgendered and cannot easily be categorized as either male or female. Racial classification systems have existed for centuries and have been the subject of extensive commentary and critique for decades. Sex and gender classification systems, on the other hand, just started to become the subject of litigation in the last half of the twentieth century and it is only during the last decade that sex classification systems have become the topic of extensive scholarly discussion. Race and sex classification systems originally were based upon two assumptions: (1) race and sex are binary; and (2) race and sex can be biologically determined. Racial categorization has moved away from these two simplistic assumptions. Most scholars and legal institutions now agree that race cannot be defined by biological factors and that race has been socially constructed. Sex classification systems, on the other hand, are still primarily based on the assumptions that sex is binary, unambiguous, and can be biologically determined, despite scientific research that indicates that none of these assumptions is completely accurate. An understanding of the issues that have arisen under a binary racial classification system may assist legal institutions and gender scholars and activists as they seek to understand and modify the current sex classification system. This article explores whether some of the major issues being discussed by race scholars engaged in the "multiracial" category debate should be considered by legal institutions and scholars as they analyze the effect of binary sex/gender classification systems on sexual minorities.


Abstract In constitutional theory, the referendum is an instrument that allows for the expression of the popular will in government decisions and through which people are asked to vote directly on an issue or policy. Over the last decades, the referendum has been the instrument used by minority groups to claim their independence supported by popular will. This paper examines trends in constitutional jurisprudence on the issue of independence referendums. The birth of this constitutional trend can be found in the 1998 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Reference Re Secession of Quebec. The principles developed therein have been further explored in two recent cases, issued by the Italian Constitutional), and by the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal in the latest decision of the Catalonia saga (Judgment no. 114/2017).


Abstract. We measured nitrogen oxides (N2O and NOx), dinitrogen (N2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from a spruce-fir-beech forest soil in the North Tyrolean limestone Alps in Austria. The site received 10.6–11.9 kg N ha−1 y−1 nitrogen as bulk deposition. Fluxes of nitric oxide (NO) were measured by an automatic dynamic chamber system on an hourly basis over a two year period. Daily N2O emissions were obtained by a semi-automatic gas measuring system. In order to cover spatial variability biweekly manual measurements of N2O and CO2 emissions were carried out in addition. For acquiring information on the effects of soil and meteorological conditions and of N-deposition on N-emissions we chose the auto-regression procedure (time-series analysis) as our means of investigation. Hence, we could exclude the data's autocorrelation in the course of the time. We found that soil temperature, soil moisture and bulk N-deposition followed by air temperature and precipitation were the most powerful influencing parameters effecting N-emissions. With these variables, up to 89% of observed temporal variations of N-emissions could be explained. During the two-year investigation period between 2.5 and 3.5% of deposited N was reemitted in form of N2O whereas only 0.2% were emitted as NO. At our mountain forest site the main end-product of microbial activity processes was N2 and trace gases (N2O and NO) were only of minor importance.


Oil is formed in some modern seafloor vent systems after rapid thermal maturation of sedimentary organic matter by hydrothermal fluids. Although most of this petroleum escapes into the ocean, some hydrocarbons may be trapped as fluid inclusions in hydrothermal precipitates or as bituminous residues in cavities. However, the geological record lacks evidence of this phenomenon, which is unfortunate because it could be significant for understanding the history of petroleum genesis, the processes of hydrothermal mineralization, and perhaps the origin and early evolution of life. From the Pilbara craton of Australia, we report the discovery of pyrobitumen and oil in an Early Archean (ca. 3235 Ma) deep-sea volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit. The oil occurs in fluid inclusions within hydrothermal barite, and pyrobitumen is intergrown with polymetallic sulfides. Petrographic textures show that the oil was emplaced and thermally altered (coked) before late-stage sulfide mineralization. The results demonstrate that subseafloor hydrothermal petroleum generation was active during the Early Archean, possibly providing an energy and carbon source for a subsurface microbiota metabolizing hydrothermal sulfur species.


In modern public management the use of statistics for decision making is essential. Evidence-based policy, as well as results-based public management, cannot operate effectively without reliable and timely data. Likewise, without more specialized, quality statistics, the achievement of development objectives cannot be appropriately monitored, or the effectiveness of development plans evaluated. In the specific context of Belize, the importance of a well-functioning statistical system is essential to the process of economic and social development of the country. Yet, according to the evidence collected, the country is characterized by the absence of a statistical system; as such, the agencies that produce data based on administrative registries and surveys usually do their work independently; there is no regulation that governs statistical production in any institution outside the Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB); and there is no common set of classifiers, norms, and definitions based on good practices that meet international standards. Since the SIB does not audit and regulate the production of data in the country, statistical production is disintegrated and there is room for improvement in timeliness and quality. Moreover, Belize's National Statistical System (NSS) does not have any effective mechanism to reach users. To improve this situation, this technical note recommends strengthening the SIB's capacity to produce basic statistics and increasing the country's use of statistics through the implementation of a national statistics strategy in Belize with the SIB in the role as the coordinating agency. This will help to strengthen the entire statistical system.


The septins are a family of homologous proteins that were originally identified in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, where they are associated with the "neck filaments" and are involved in cytokinesis and other aspects of the organization of the cell surface. We report here the identification of Sep1, a Drosophila melanogaster septin, based on its homology to the yeast septins. The predicted Sep1 amino acid sequence is 35-42% identical to the known S. cerevisiae septins; 52% identical to Pnut, a second D. melanogaster septin; and 53-73% identical to the known mammalian septins. Sep1-specific antibodies have been used to characterize its expression and localization. The protein is concentrated at the leading edge of the cleavage furrows of dividing cells and cellularizing embryos, suggesting a role in furrow formation. Other aspects of Sep1 localization suggest roles not directly related to cytokinesis. For example, Sep1 exhibits orderly, cell-cycle-coordinated rearrangements within the cortex of syncytial blastoderm embryos and in the cells of post-gastrulation embryos; Sep1 is also concentrated at the leading edge of the epithelium during dorsal closure in the embryo, in the neurons of the embryonic nervous system, and at the baso-lateral surfaces of ovarian follicle cells. The distribution of Sep1 typically overlaps, but is distinct from, that of actin. Both immunolocalization and biochemical experiments show that Sep1 is intimately associated with Pnut, suggesting that the Drosophila septins, like those in yeast, function as part of a complex.