In the spring of 1931, in a rugged desert canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border, an army of workmen began one of the most difficult and daring building projects ever undertaken - the construction of Hoover Dam. Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West.Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of human ingenuity, yet the full story of this monumental endeavor has never been told. Now, in an engrossing, fast-paced narrative, Joseph E. Stevens recounts the gripping saga of Hoover Dam. Drawing on a wealth of material, including manuscript collections, government documents, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and personal interviews and correspondence with men and women who were involved with the construction, he brings the Hoover Dam adventure to life. Described here in dramatic detail are the deadly hazards the work crews faced as they hacked and blasted the dam's foundation out of solid rock; the bitter political battles and violent labor unrest that threatened to shut the job down; the deprivation and grinding hardship endured by the workers' families; the dam builders' gambling, drinking, and whoring sprees in nearby Las Vegas; and the stirring triumphs and searing moments of terror as the massive concrete wedge rose inexorably from the canyon floor. Here, too, is an unforgettable cast of characters: Henry Kaiser, Warren Bechtel, and Harry Morrison, the ambitious, headstrong construction executives who gambled fortune and fame on the Hoover Dam contract; Frank Crowe, the brilliant, obsessed field engineer who relentlessly drove the work force to finish the dam two and a half years ahead of schedule; Sims Ely, the irascible, teetotaling eccentric who ruled Boulder City, the straightlaced company town created for the dam workers by the federal government; and many more men and women whose courage and sacrifice, greed and frailty, made the dam's construction a great human, as well as technological, adventure. Hoover Dam is a compelling, irresistible account of an extraordinary American epic.


People's right to consent to pain, injury or death has always been one of the most controversial issues in criminal law and moral philosophy. In recent years, that issue has moved to the forefront of public, legislative, and academic debates in the United States and abroad due to a series of high-profile criminal trials, which involved consenting victims in various contexts - from sadomasochism and cannibalism to experimental medical treatment and mercy killing. Currently, American criminal law does not recognize consent of the victim as a defense to bodily harm, except in a few historically defined circumstances. That rule has been criticized for its arbitrary scope, outdated rationales, and potential for moralistic manipulation. Yet, despite those criticisms, no principled alternative has been worked out. This article is an attempt to develop a set of normative requirements for a new rule governing consensual bodily harm and a general defense of consent. The new rule would treat valid (voluntary and rational) consent of the victim as a defense of partial or complete justification. Partial justification is warranted by the mere fact that consensual harm does not involve at least one aspect of a paradigmatic offense, namely a rights' violation. The victim was a "co-author" of his own injury and thus the perpetrator should not bear full responsibility for it. Complete justification, on the other hand, would require that, in addition to the victim's consent, the perpetrator had a "good reason" for his harmful action: he intended to achieve a better balance of harms/evils and benefits and, in fact, managed to achieve it. This article rejects the absolute character of today's law. Instead, it promotes a balancing test that takes into account the severity of harm to the victim's interests and dignity as well as the importance of the reasons that caused the harmful act.


Some studies date the origins of US intercollegiate football—and, by extension, the modern game of American football—back to a soccer-style game played between Princeton and Rutgers universities in 1869. This article joins with others to argue that such a narrative is misleading and goes further to clarify the significance of two "international" fixtures in 1873 and 1874, which had a formative and lasting impact on football in the United States. These games, contested between alumni from England's Eton College and students at Yale University, and between students at Canada's McGill University and Harvard University, combined to revolutionize the American football code. Between 1875 and 1880, previous soccer-style versions of US intercollegiate football were replaced with an imported, if somewhat modified, version of rugby football. It was the "American rugby" that arose as a result of these transnational exchanges that is the true ancestor of the gridiron game of today.


Implementation science is the science of the effectiveness of research for real-world practitioners. This book is an indispensable, highly innovative and evidence-based resource aimed at utilizing research in psychology to improve all aspects of education, from individual teaching programs to organizational development. It addresses the widespread confusion and disappointment about the lack of effectiveness of real-world psychology and provides twenty-seven chapters offering proven policies, strategies and approaches for designing, supporting and improving interventions in schools. Collectively, the chapters go beyond the realm of psychology and education, tackling concerns about how to promote positive change in any context, covering topics from epistemology through statistics to examples of implementation approaches, frameworks and protocols. This book creates an immensely relevant body of information and evidence for any practitioner or organization facing the challenges of change. Essential reading for practitioners, policy makers, stakeholders and funders in psychology, education and beyond.


High performance is often attributed to an organization's culture. However, culture can just as easily undermine performance when it blinds decision makers to important performance issues and entraps them in unfortunate courses of action from which they cannot disengage. The dynamics of cultural entrapment are explored in the case of the Bristol Royal Infirmary, in which pediatrie cardiac surgeries continued for over a fourteen-year period despite evidence of poor quality care and performance that was far below that of other comparable pediatrie surgical centers. A single organizational process of behavioral commitment explains how the cultural mindset originated and why it persisted. The sequence of small, public, volitional, and irrevocable action; socially acceptable justification for that action; and the potential for subsequent activities to validate or threaten the justification created a causal loop that stabilized subsequent action patterns.


This review will attempt to provide an overview as well as a theoretical and practical understanding of the use of microextraction technologies for drug analysis. In many cases only a small fraction of the initial analyte is extracted for analysis. The extraction efficiency is determined by the partitioning of analyte between the sample matrix and the extraction phase. The higher the affinity the analyte has for the extraction phase relative to the sample matrix, the greater the amount of analyte extracted. Microextraction techniques represent an important contribution to the improvement of sample preparation performance, which especially addresses the issues of miniaturization, automation, onsite analysis, and time efficiency. Sample preparation is essential for isolating desired components from complex matrices and greatly influences their reliable and accurate analysis. Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a new and effective sample preparation technique. Fibers and capillary tubes coated with an appropriate stationary phase are usually used for SPME, but alternative microextraction techniques are also used.


We investigated the forces that connect the genetic program of development to morphogenesis in Drosophila. We focused on dorsal closure, a powerful model system for development and wound healing. We found that the bulk of progress toward closure is driven by contractility in supracellular "purse strings" and in the amnioserosa, whereas adhesion-mediated zipping coordinates the forces produced by the purse strings and is essential only for the end stages. We applied quantitative modeling to show that these forces, generated in distinct cells, are coordinated in space and synchronized in time. Modeling of wild-type and mutant phenotypes is predictive; although closure in myospheroid mutants ultimately fails when the cell sheets rip themselves apart, our analysis indicates that βPS integrin has an earlier, important role in zipping.


This exhibition represents the cross-discipline collaboration of more than sixty of Drake's students. After studying several of the Bard's plays, students in Sarah Hogan's Reading Shakespeare courses (ENG 058) worked in small groups to direct and perform scenes from "The Merchant of Venice", "Hamlet", and "Twelfth Night". They then collectively drafted a series of short essays on their imagined full-length productions. These modern adaptations, explained in the collaboratively-authored programs, ranged from a "Hamlet" set in the impoverished town of Denmark, South Carolina, to a "Twelfth Night" that explores the gender politics of corporate America. Students in the Graphic Design Two courses (ART 116) taught by Hilary Williams then worked in pairs to create theater posters and program covers that drew on these materials for inspiration and interpretation. All along the way, students have shared ideas, debated visions, and re-imagined Shakespeare.


The Acton Institute's three-volume series on the Foundations of Economic Personalism contributes much to the dialogue between theology and economics. This article, however, identifies a number of shortcomings. These include an overly individualistic bias and a reliance on the Austrian school of economics that are not consonant with Christian and especially Catholic social thought on economic life. There is a certain naiveté about the philosophy of science and an artificial bifurcation between "economic" life (where values are assumed to be subjective) and the rest of life (where objective values are endorsed). The dialogue between theology and economics is badly needed, but it requires a strong dose of self-criticism from all its participants.


The babirusa ( Babyrousa babyrussa ), an endangered suid endemic to Sulawesi, Indonesia, has scarcely been studied in the wild. Sixty hours of observation on social organization of babirusa and patterns of visitation to a natural salt lick were made during 32 months in 1989–1994. Babirusa groups observed at the lick were 1–13 individuals ( n = 393 groups), and solitary adult males or matriarchal groups were the most frequently sighted group types. A daily pattern of visits to the lick was discernible with the highest number of groups at the lick between 1700–1800 h. Mean duration of visit was greatest (17.4 min) between 1700–1800 h. Use of the lick differed markedly among mammalian species; 98.0% of all activity was of babirusa compared with <1.0% by each of three other endemic Sulawesi mammals. Chemical analysis of soil and water at the lick revealed higher levels of minerals than in control samples. Possible reasons for geophagy by babirusa are discussed.


In Part I of this two-part investigation we described a methodology for the development of robust, analytic, many-body atom-atom potentials for small organic molecules from first principles and demonstrated how the CamCASP program can be used to derive the damped, distributed multipole models for pyridine. Here we demonstrate how the theoretical ideas for the short-range models described in Part I, which are implemented in the CamCASP suite of programs, can be used to develop a series of many-body potentials for the pyridine system. Even the simplest of these potentials exhibit r.m.s. errors of only about 0.6kJ mol-1 for the low-energy pyridine dimers, significantly surpassing the best empirical potentials. Our best model is shown to support eight stable minima, four of which have not been reported in the literature before. Further, the functional form can be made systematically more elaborate so as to improve the accuracy without a significant increase in the human-time spent in their generation. We investigate the effects of anisotropy, rank of multipoles, and choice of polarizability and dispersion models.


Too often a design or architecture degree is seen as a means to an end (a job in an established practice). But imagine for one moment that there are no employers, no firms to send your CV to, no interviews to be had – what would you do? How would you forge your own path after graduation? The current economic climate has seen many graduates chasing a finite number of positions. The most ingenious and driven designers have found weird and wonderful ways of making opportunities for themselves, often by applying their skills across the creative disciplines of art, design, architecture and interiors. Knowing what you want from your design career and being able to adapt your strategy to suit is basic and vital – just like in the wild, designers need to evolve. The book celebrates the various strategies that students and graduates are taking to gain exposure, while also including interviews and inspirational advice from those who are now enjoying success as a result of their creative approach to employment.


Colleges and universities must expose their students of computer science to object-oriented programming (OOP) even if the majority of the faculty believes that OOP is not the proper programming paradigm for novices. OOP is an important paradigm of thought, and OOP languages are widely used in commercial settings. Ignoring these facts means to ignore the students' needs.In the past, institutions that introduce functional programming first have explained object-oriented programming via closures and method-oriented dispatch. Put differently, in such courses, students learn to implement objects, message passing, and delegation. They do not learn to design object-oriented programs. Although I firmly believe that our students benefit from such knowledge, I will argue that it is inappropriate as an introduction of object-oriented programming.My talk will instead present a novel approach to the first-year programming curriculum. Specifically, I will explain how a functional semester ideally prepares students for the true essence of object-oriented programming according to Alan Kay: the systematic construction of small modules of code and the construction of programs without assignment statements. Experience shows that these courses prepare students better for upper-level courses than a year of plain object-oriented programming. Initial reports from our students' co-op employers appear to confirm the experiences of our upper-level instructors.


This thesis is mainly devoted to show how EEG data and related phenomena can be reproduced and analyzed using mathematical models of neural masses (NMM). The aim is to describe some of these phenomena, to show in which ways the design of the models architecture is influenced by such phenomena, point out the difficulties of tuning the dozens of parameters of the models in order to reproduce the activity recorded with EEG systems during different kinds of experiments, and suggest some strategies to cope with these problems. In particular the chapters are organized as follows: chapter I gives a brief overview of the aims and issues addressed in the thesis; in chapter II the main characteristics of the cortical column, of the EEG signal and of the neural mass models will be presented, in order to show the relationships that hold between these entities; chapter III describes a study in which a NMM from the literature has been used to assess brain connectivity changes in tetraplegic patients; in chapter IV a modified version of the NMM is presented, which has been developed to overcomes some of the previous version's intrinsic limitations; chapter V describes a study in which the new NMM has been used to reproduce the electrical activity evoked in the cortex by the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS); chapter VI presents some preliminary results obtained in the simulation of the neural rhythms associated with memory recall; finally, some general conclusions are drawn in chapter VII.


Nigeria Agriculture is the mainstay of Nigerian economy. The welfare and the livelihood of the rural dwellers is the major concern of extension. In recent years, several efforts have been made to enhance rural development. Agricultural extension is a non-formal system of education where farmers are taught how to use new agricultural innovations to improve their economic conditions. The transfer of agricultural technological innovation is therefore essential for sustainable rural development. The choice of communication methods for extension teaching must therefore be based on the target participants, the subject matter, the steps involved in the teaching, the resources available, the teaching skills and knowledge and the teaching situations. Modern agricultural technology has contributed significantly to agricultural development. This is particularly important when it is recalled that the gap between developed and developing countries can be largely attributed to differences in the level of technological development, adaptation and transfer process. In most developed nations, there is an advanced level of technological innovations resulting in high productive capability in agriculture as well as in industry. These technologies are not often available to farmers in developing countries. Farmers find such innovations difficult to maintain even when they are appropriate to local condition. This results in low agricultural production levels that cannot sustain the rapidly increasing population and the growing demand of the people for better living standards. Furthermore, the means of disseminating agricultural information is essential for sustainable rural development. To build a self-reliant nation, effective teaching methods are essential to educate the farmers (especially women) on the use of improved technologies. Sweet potato (though not popular) is one of the important root crops in Nigeria. It serves as food at home and is useful in food industry. Sweet potato can be boiled or fried. It can be made into potato crisps, potato chips, starch, alcohol, wine, flour, "gari" and animal feed. One hundred and twenty respondents were randomly selected from 5 of the 6 geopolitical zones of Nigeria (Women In-Agriculture Unit of the ADP). Respondents were asked to answer questions based on their sources of information on transfer of sweet potato "gari" and "lafun" through the three major methods of extension communication--individual method, group method, and mass media method. Results showed that the mass media method (through a farm radio program) is contributing effectively to having sustainable rural development. A major conclusion of this paper is that the use of appropriate and effective methods or a combination of the three extension methods will enhance the promotion and development of the sweet potato industry in Nigeria.


In land surface models, which account for the energy balance at the land surface, subsurface heat transport is an important component that reciprocally influences ground, sensible, and latent heat fluxes and net radiation. In most models, subsurface heat transport parameterizations are commonly simplified for computational efficiency. A simplification made in all models is to disregard the sensible heat of rain, Hl, and convective subsurface heat flow, qcv, i.e., the convective transport of heat through moisture redistribution. These simplifications act to decouple heat transport from moisture transport at the land surface and in the subsurface, which is not realistic. The influence of Hl and qcv on the energy balance was studied using a coupled model that integrates a subsurface moisture and energy transport model with a land surface model of the land surface energy balance, showing that all components of the land surface energy balance depend on Hl The strength of the dependence is related to the rainfall rate and the temperature difference between the rain water and the soil surface. The rain water temperature is a parameter rarely measured in the field that introduces uncertainty in the calculations and was approximated using the either air or wet bulb temperatures in different simulations. In addition, it was shown that the lower boundary condition for closing the problem of subsurface heat transport, including convection, has strong implications on the energy balance under dynamic equilibrium conditions. Comparison with measured data from the Meteostation Haarweg, Wageningen, the Netherlands, shows good agreement and further underscores the importance of a more tightly coupled subsurface hydrology–energy balance formulation in land surface models.


Trehalose diesters exhibiting α,ω-unsaturation are glycolipids which can be easily polymerized by ADMET (acyclic diene metathesis) polymerization. In this paper, enzymatic esterification was performed to selectively esterify primary hydroxyl groups of trehalose (6 and 6′-positions) with vinyl undecenoate. The vinyl ester was beforehand obtained by palladium-catalyzed transesterification of undecenoic acid with vinyl acetate. The resulting trehalose diundecenoate was homopolymerized and copolymerized with undecenyl undecenoate in order to obtain random copolymers with different compositions. The synthesis of such copolymers was confirmed by 1H NMR spectroscopy and size exclusion chromatography (SEC). Their solid-state phase separation was investigated by DSC and X-ray scattering as a function of temperature and their solution self-assembly was investigated by dynamic light scattering (DLS) in water.


Many functions in living cells are governed by macromolecular complexes. To fully describe the underlying mechanisms, they have to be understood at atomic level. The present study combines data obtained by X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Two functions of macromolecular complexes, the downregulation of neurotransmitter release by the SNARE protein complex under oxidative stress and the translocation of transfer RNAs (tRNAs) through the ribosome during protein synthesis, were investigated.
First, the hypothesis that oxidation of two cysteines on linker of the SNARE protein SNAP-25B and consequent disulfide bond formation shortens this linker sufficiently to hinder complex formation was tested. For this purpose, MD simulations of the SNARE complex with and without the disulfide bond were compared. Disulfide bond formation lead to conformational changes of the linker and of three central hydrophobic layers necessary to form the SNARE complex. Previously, mutations of residues contributing to these layers have been shown to reduce neurotransmitter release, suggesting that the stability of these layers is crucial for complex formation. The results from the simulations agree with the hypothesis that disulfide bond formation leads to a destabilization of the SNARE complex thus rendering it dysfunctional. This mechanism is interpreted as a chemomechanical regulation to shut down neurotransmitter release under oxidative stress, which has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases.
In a second part I investigated the ribosome, where after peptide bond formation, bound tRNAs translocate by more than 7 nm to adjacent binding sites (A and P to P and E), accompanied by large-scale conformational motions (L1-stalk, intersubunit rotation) of the ribosome. By combining existing cryo-EM reconstructions of translocation intermediates with high resolution crystal structures, we obtained 13 near-atomic resolution structures. Subsequently, MD simulations of were carried out for each intermediate state. The obtained dynamics within these states allowed to estimate transition rates between states for motions of the L1-stalk, tRNAs and intersubunit rotations. Rapid motions of the L1-stalk and the small (30S) subunit on sub-microsecond timescales were revealed, whereas tRNA motions were seen to be rate-limiting for most transitions. By calculating the interaction free energy between L1-stalk and tRNA, molecular forces were derived showing that the L1-stalk is actively pulling the tRNA from P to E binding site, thereby overcoming barriers for the tRNA motion. Further, ribosomal proteins L5 and L16 guide the tRNAs by 'sliding' and 'stepping' mechanisms involving key protein-tRNA contacts. This explains how tRNA binding affinity is kept sufficiently constant to allow rapid translocation despite large-scale displacements. Translocation is accompanied by rotations of the 30S ribosomal subunit of more than 20 degrees relative to the large (50S) subunit. For each translocation intermediate, the affinity of the two subunits with each other must be finely tuned enabling such conformational flexibility while maintaining integrity of the ribosomal complex. Analyzing the trajectories at residue level reveals two classes of intersubunit contact interactions: i) persistent residue contacts which are independent of 30S rotation and primarily located close to the axis of rotation. ii) contacts that are formed and ruptured depending on the rotation angle, seen mainly on the periphery. Strikingly, also these rotation specific contacts substantially contribute to the overall stability of the ribosomal assembly and are expected to maintain a constant interaction energy with low barriers for rotation. The simulations reveal that upon removal of tRNAs peripheral contacts are weakened and, in turn, intersubunit rotation angles decrease, in agreement with cryo-EM analysis of tRNA depleted ribosomes. The identified mechanisms for lowering free energy barriers and for fine-tuning affinities might have developed similarly in other macromolecular complexes.


We compute damping of mechanical oscillations of a cantilever that contains flipping paramagnetic spins. This kind of damping is mandated by the dynamics of the total angular momentum, spin + mechanical. Rigorous expression for the damping rate is derived in terms of measurable parameters. The effect of spins on the quality factor of the cantilever can be significant in cantilevers of small length that have large concentration of paramagnetic spins of atomic and/or nuclear origin.


Minecraft's four bestselling handbooks are available in this stunning, gold-foiled boxed set! Includes the Essential Handbook, Redstone Handbook, Combat Handbook, and Construction Handbook. For the first time ever, Minecraft's four bestselling handbooks are available in a stunning, gold-foiled boxed set! This ultimate collection includes the Essential Handbook, Redstone Handbook, Combat Handbook, and Construction Handbook. Minecraft--the indie sandbox video game that took the world by storm--has been hailed as one of the greatest phenomena amongst gamers and educators for both its simplicity and its brilliance. Allowing players to build, explore, create, collaborate, and even survive, Minecraft has created a brave new world of gameplay. Each handbook contains helpful tips and information from the creators themselves, all of which will prove vital to your survival and creativity as you learn to mine, craft, and build in a world that you control.


Hydraulic flood routing is advantageous for computational accuracy; however, it requires individual calculations of an extensive pipe network in the case of a two-dimensional analysis. In this study, a method for considering the characteristics of a two-dimensional pipe network has been developed using the meta-channel concept to simplify the detailed calculations involved in the estimation of runoff from urban catchments. In essence, the meta-channel concept turns a two-dimensional pipe network into a one-dimensional pipe with an effective hydraulic geometry. Once such geometry has been identified, the flood routing can then be performed for an urban drainage system. A nonlinear diffusion wave equation, derived from the Saint-Venant equation, was used for flood routing, with an explicit method used for the numerical solution. The celerity and diffusion coefficients, which are two parameters of the diffusion wave equation, were estimated for the Goonja drainage from a two-dimensional pipe network using the meta-channel concept. A comparison of the results of the meta-channel-based pipe routing with the distributed SWMM simulation and observed data, showed close similarities, and identified the applicability of the meta-channel concept in an urban drainage setting.


Abstract. Harmonized time series of column-averaged mole fractions of atmospheric methane and ethane over the period 1999–2014 are derived from solar Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) measurements at the Zugspitze summit (47° N, 11° E; 2964 m a.s.l.) and at Lauder (45° S, 170° E; 370 m a.s.l.). Long-term trend analysis reveals a consistent renewed methane increase since 2007 of 6.2 [5.6, 6.9] ppb yr−1 (parts-per-billion per year) at the Zugspitze and 6.0 [5.3, 6.7] ppb yr−1 at Lauder (95 % confidence intervals). Several recent studies provide pieces of evidence that the renewed methane increase is most likely driven by two main factors: (i) increased methane emissions from tropical wetlands, followed by (ii) increased thermogenic methane emissions due to growing oil and natural gas production. Here, we quantify the magnitude of the second class of sources, using long-term measurements of atmospheric ethane as a tracer for thermogenic methane emissions. In 2007, after years of weak decline, the Zugspitze ethane time series shows the sudden onset of a significant positive trend (2.3 [1.8, 2.8]  ×  10−2 ppb yr−1 for 2007–2014), while a negative trend persists at Lauder after 2007 (−0.4 [−0.6, −0.1]  ×  10−2 ppb yr−1). Zugspitze methane and ethane time series are significantly correlated for the period 2007–2014 and can be assigned to thermogenic methane emissions with an ethane-to-methane ratio (EMR) of 12–19 %. We present optimized emission scenarios for 2007–2014 derived from an atmospheric two-box model. From our trend observations we infer a total ethane emission increase over the period 2007–2014 from oil and natural gas sources of 1–11 Tg yr−1 along with an overall methane emission increase of 24–45 Tg yr−1. Based on these results, the oil and natural gas emission contribution (C) to the renewed methane increase is deduced using three different emission scenarios with dedicated EMR ranges. Reference scenario 1 assumes an oil and gas emission combination with EMR  =  7.0–16.2 %, which results in a minimum contribution C  >  39 % (given as lower bound of 95 % confidence interval). Beside this most plausible scenario 1, we consider two less realistic limiting cases of pure oil-related emissions (scenario 2 with EMR  =  16.2–31.4 %) and pure natural gas sources (scenario 3 with EMR  =  4.4–7.0  %), which result in C  >  18 % and C  >  73 %, respectively. Our results suggest that long-term observations of column-averaged ethane provide a valuable constraint on the source attribution of methane emission changes and provide basic knowledge for developing effective climate change mitigation strategies.


Abstract The purpose of this article is to expose lack of clarity that surrounds the justification for teaching critical thinking and to argue for communally beneficial reasons for teaching this important skill. An explication of critical thinking is done and the prerequisite conditions for its optimal utilisation are indicated. The views of eight educators on why we teach critical thinking are offered. An argument for a semiotic understanding of culture is presented and this is followed by views on why critical thinking is taught.


Background: Bedside teaching is a patient-based teaching method in medical education. The present study has been conducted with the aim of investigating the quality of bedside teaching in the internal wards of Qaem and Imam Reza Educational Hospitals. Methods: This study follows a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach using checklists on educational clinical rounds in Imam Reza and Qaem Hospitals in Mashhad. In the first stage consisting of qualitative study, the parts related to the quality of bedside teaching were recognized and a checklist was designed in three domains of patient comfort (8 questions), targeted teaching (14 questions) and group dynamics (8 questions), and its reliability and validity were verified. In the next step, data were collected and then analyzed using SPSS 16 software through statistical techniques of independent t-test, one-way ANOVA and variance analysis. Results: In total, 113 educational rounds were investigated in this study. Among them, 59 (52.2%) and 54 (47.8%) educational rounds have been investigated in Imam Reza and Qaem Hospitals, respectively. The average total score of bedside teaching was 180.8 out of 300 in the internal wards of both Imam Reza and Qaem Hospitals. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that generally the quality of bedside teaching in Imam Reza and Qaem Hospitals of Mashhad is low according to the qualitative standards considered in this study. Holding educational workshops along with more familiarity of the professors with effective bedside teaching strategies could be effective in improving the quality of educational rounds.


The volume collapse transition of Cerium has intrigued physicists since its discovery several decades ago. Various models and mechanisms have been proposed, the most prominent scenarios are based on the Mott transition and the Kondo volume collapse transition. In this study, we explore the volume collapse by a dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) study of the periodic Anderson model with electron-phonon coupling to the conduction band. This allows us to study the effect of the electron-phonon interaction on the volume collapse. In order to faithfully account for the volume collapse, we also include the effects due to the volume and temperature dependent bulk modulus. We find that as the electron-phonon interaction strength increases, the volume collapse effect is enhanced, which is consistent with the suggestion that the phonons have an important contribution in the volume collapse transition. Although we start with the canonical model for the Kondo volume collapse scenario, our results have some of the characteristics of the Mott scenario. For example, when we plot the conduction electron density of states, we find that when the electron-phonon interaction effect dominates over the Kondo effect in this system, the conduction band electron spectra develops a Mott gap at the Fermi energy. Moreover, the width of the gap is proportional to the effective electron-phonon interaction strength. Currently, we cannot determine the order of this Mott transition, however, we conjecture that the transition is continuous due to the fact that the phonon frequency in our model is pretty small, and the fact that the conduction electron is doped away from half filling, both of which tend to suppress a first order phase transition. The study of the two-particle quantities, such as the charge susceptibility and the magnetic susceptibility also reveals several interesting features of the system. From the behavior of the charge and magnetic susceptibilities and the electronic spectral functions, we can clearly see the competition between the electron-phonon interaction and the Kondo effect due to the hybridization between conduction electrons and localized impurity electrons.


A series of brominated furanones (BFs) with closely related structures was synthesized and evaluated for biofilm inhibition activity against Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa). The structure–activity relationships (SARs) indicated that methyl substituent on the furanone ring and on the exocyclic vinyl double bond is important for relieving the inhibitory effect of these molecules on the growth of both E. coli and P. aeruginosa. To explore the mechanism of BFs to inhibit E. coli biofilm, the biofilm inhibition activity of BFs in wild type E. coli and its sdiA knockout mutant (ΔsdiA) was compared, which is proposed to encode the receptor for BFs. We found that ΔsdiA caused ∼2 fold reduction in biofilm inhibition activity of BFs compared with that of the wild type E. coli. To explore the effect of BFs on quorum sensing of P. aeruginosa, we use reporter gene assays that examine the effect of BFs on the las and rhl quorum sensing systems. Interestingly, while BFs exhibited antagonistic activities to LasR protein in the las system, these molecules showed agonistic activity to RhlR protein in the rhl system. Furthermore, one BF molecule, BF15, inhibited the production of the virulence factor elastase B without significant inhibition of biofilm formation. As the growth and biofilm inhibition activity of BFs are closely related to their structural details, this class of molecules bears potential for further design of non-microbicidal agents to control bacterial biofilm formation.


The use of knitting technology with advanced fibres such as glass, carbon and aramid, to produce near-net-shape fabrics has in recent years received increasing interest from the composite materials community. Knitted fabrics have the potential of being used in engineering structures with complex shapes in conjunction with a suitable liquid moulding technique, such as Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM), due to their excellent drapeability and manufacturability. During previous studies in textile reinforced composites, an intimate relationship between the fabric architecture and the damage development has been demonstrated. In this work, the quasi-static tensile loading deformation behaviour and the relation between the fabric architecture and damage development have been studied for a weft knitted glass fabric. Tensile properties have been examined and the failure mechanisms have been identified experimentally by analysing the damage process in-situ with a camera and by studying fracture surfaces using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The acoustic emission technique was used to support the microscopic analysis. The work has investigated the tensile properties and failure mechanisms of three knitted fabric reinforced composite laminates reinforced with a Milano weft knitted glass fabric. The three composites were (i) a single layer of fabric reinforcing epoxy resin, (ii) a single knitted fabric layer sandwiched between 0° glass fibre unidirectional plies (again with the glass reinforcing epoxy resin), and (iii) the same knitted glass fabric but this time used as the reinforcement in commercially produced high fibre volume fraction composites (using the RTM technique). The variation of mechanical properties with angle (from wale to course) has been measured for the single layer of the fabric reinforcing epoxy resin by orientating the wale direction of the fabric at different angles. Mechanical properties have been measured for each angular orientation and comparisons were made between them, especially with regard to the planes of final failure. The single layer composites failed as soon as the first damage was initiated. Hence, to investigate damage accumulation, a novel technique was employed to manufacture a sandwich laminate, which consisted in placing a single knitted fabric layer between 0° glass fibre unidirectional plies. The success of this method is that the accumulation of damage in the knitted architecture was allowed to be studied and some characteristics of crack initiation and crack propagation could be related to the fabric geometry and structure. Experiments on these model transparent materials have been complemented by tests on two types of commercial knitted fabric composite manufactured by the RTM process. Characterization of these materials under tensile loading has been carried out for monotonic and cyclic loading and the results have been compared with those found for the single layer and the sandwich model material. Various failure mechanisms such as cracking at loop cross-over points, resin matrix cracking, fibre bundle debonding and tensile fracture of fibre bundles in failed specimens were observed. The behaviour of the commercial RTM specimens has been discussed in the light of the results obtained from the model single layer and sandwich specimens.


The paper provides descriptive analyses of the EU New Member States agriculture over the period from 2000 to 2011. In 2004 and 2007, twelve New Member States (NMS) joined the European Union, which has offered several possibilities and challenges to the newcomers. The aim of the paper is to discuss development of agriculture in the EU New Member States. We evaluate the status of this sector as well as identify factors lying behind the NMS performances. The EU accession has had an overall positive impact on the NMS agriculture, although the NMS capitalised their possibilities in a different manner, due to initial conditions and pre- and post-accession policies.


Smart City (SC) emerged during the end of last century as a reference concept for shaping the city of the future. The literature review shows how SC originates from a debate questioning about the future of cities in a world continuously object of pressures: resource scarcity, economic crisis, lack of social identity, besides continuous input from technologies. The progressive permeating of innovative devices, simplifying people life or enabling them in networking and knowledge, led to relevant modification of the built environment. The word "smart" refers therefore not only to the ICT component of city but it also refers to the need of facing an increasing complexity involving all sectors of cities. The extend of approaches, applications, testing and theories coming along with the SC topic oblige the research to critically and extensively study those elements, broadening the analysis to additional experiences, and going toward the definition of SC for coming to a wider definition of Green City as an integrated, sustainable, resilient and smart urban regeneration approach. The research studies these approaches deepening the relation between Architecture Technology and Urban Planning, with a specific insight into a step-by-step project approach and a KPIs performance assessment. The main original output of the research is the proposition of the Green City Circle: a model for addressing the regeneration of districts into existing urban contexts. The thesis is Climate KIC labelled (European Institute of Technology).


The study of the coronary vessel structure is crucial to the diagnosis of atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular diseases, which together account for about 35% of all deaths in the United States per year. Vessel Segmentation from CTA data is challenging because of non-uniform image intensity along the vessel, and the branching and thinning geometry of the vessel tree. We present a novel method for vessel extraction that models the vasculature as a tubular tree and individual vessels as 3D tubes. We create an initial tube from a few seed points within the vessel tree, and then evolve this initial tube using a variational energy optimization approach to capture the vessel while automatically detecting branches in the vessel tree. A significant advantage of our proposed framework is that the center-line of the blood vessel tree, which is useful in defining cross sectional area of the vessel and evaluating stenoses, is detected automatically as the tubular tree evolves. Existing approaches on the other hand need an explicit step for skeletonization of the vessel volume after segmentation. Another benefit is that the parent-child relationships between branches are also automatically obtained, which is useful in fly-through visualization as well as clinical reporting.


How do synthetic biological systems and artificial neural networks compete in their performance in a game environment? Reinforcement learning has undergone significant advances, however remains behind biological neural intelligence in terms of sample efficiency. Yet most biological systems are significantly more complicated than most algorithms. Here we compare the inherent intelligence of in vitro biological neuronal networks to state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning algorithms in the arcade game 'pong'. We employed DishBrain, a system that embodies in vitro neural networks with in silico computation using a high-density multielectrode array. We compared the learning curve and the performance of these biological systems against time-matched learning from DQN, A2C, and PPO algorithms. Agents were implemented in a reward-based environment of the 'Pong' game. Key learning characteristics of the deep reinforcement learning agents were tested with those of the biological neuronal cultures in the same game environment. We find that even these very simple biological cultures typically outperform deep reinforcement learning systems in terms of various game performance characteristics, such as the average rally length implying a higher sample efficiency. Furthermore, the human cell cultures proved to have the overall highest relative improvement in the average number of hits in a rally when comparing the initial 5 minutes and the last 15 minutes of each designed gameplay session.


Digital government has been seen as a strategy to improve public services, foster engagement with citizens, and modernize government agencies. Regardless of the recognition of this important role in government transformation, there is no consistent evidence in terms of the determinants and results of digital government strategies. More specifically, there is no clarity about what leads to successful digital government initiatives. Stage-based maturity models have been used to better understand the current situation of digital government in terms of results. They are also seen as useful in helping to understand the resources and capabilities of government agencies and how they contribute to successful digital government projects. However, existing maturity models have been criticised due to their lack of theory, oversimplification of reality, and linear thinking. In an attempt to overcome some of these shortcomings, this paper proposes what we call an enabler-based digital government maturity model. Our proposed model not only argues for a multidimensional view, but also suggests how to think about specific mechanisms of impact. By specifying the mechanisms of influence, our proposal starts a necessary conversation about maturity models and the potential complementarity of stage-based and enabler-based approaches.


Finite amount of data spectrum sensing effects are addressed in decentralized dynamic spectrum allocation (DSA) that exploits adaptive antenna array interference mitigation (IM) diversity at the receiver. The system is based on spectrally efficient filter bank multi-carrier (FBMC) PHY and consists of base stations (BSs) that use a "good neighbor" rule-regulated strategy to optimize uplink frequency allocation to their subscriber stations (SSs) to achieve the least impact of IM on the useful signal. A spectrum sensing protocol is proposed and DSA efficiency is studied by means of semi-analytical Markov chain approach for low-dimension networks and statistical simulations for higher-dimension spectrum sharing systems.


In the last decade, the world has witnessed rapid increasing applications of wireless networks. However, with the fixed spectrum allocation policy that has been used since the beginning of the spectrum regulation to assign different spectrum bands to different wireless applications, it has been observed that most of the allocated spectrum bands are underutilized. Therefore, if these bands can be opportunistically used by new emerging wireless networks, the spectrum scarcity can be resolved. Cognitive Radio (CR) is a revolutionary and promising technology that can identify and then exploit the spectrum opportunities. In Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), the spectrum can be utilized by two kinds of users: Primary Users (PUs) having exclusive licenses to use certain spectrum bands for specific wireless applications, and Secondary Users (SUs) having no spectrum licenses but seeking for any spectrum opportunities. The SUs can make use of the licensed unused spectrum if they do not make any harmful interference to the PUs. However, the variation of the spectrum availability over the time and locations, due to the coexistence with the PUs, and the spread of the spectrum opportunities over wide spectrum bands create a unique trait of the CRNs. This key trait poses great challenges in different aspects of the radio resource management in CRNs such as the spectrum sensing, spectrum access, admission control, channel allocation, Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning, etc. In this thesis, we study the resource management of both single-hop and multihop CRNs. Since most of the new challenges in CRNs can be tackled by designing an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) framework, where the solutions of these challenges can be integrated for efficient resource management, we firstly propose a novel MAC framework that integrates a kind of cooperative spectrum sensing method at the physical layer into a cooperative MAC protocol considering the requirements of both the SUs and PUs. For spectrum identification, a iii computationally simple but efficient sensing algorithm is developed, based on an innovative deterministic sensing policy, to assist each sensing user for identifying the optimum number of channels to sense and the optimum sensing duration. We then develop an admission control scheme and channel allocation policy that can be integrated in the proposed MAC framework to regulate the number of sensing users and number of access users; therefore, the spectrum identification and exploitation can be efficiently balanced. Moreover, we propose a QoS-based spectrum allocation framework that jointly considers the QoS provisioning for heterogeneous secondary Real-Time (RT) and Non-Real Time (NRT) users with the spectrum sensing, spectrum access decision, and call admission control. We analyze the proposed QoS-based spectrum allocation framework and find the optimum numbers of the RT and NRT users that the network can support. Finally, we introduce an innovative user clustering scheme to efficiently manage the spectrum identification and exploitation in multi-hop ad hoc CRNs. We group the SUs into clusters based on their geographical locations and occurring times and use spread spectrum techniques to facilitate using one frequency for the Common Control Channels (CCCs) of the whole secondary network and to reduce the co-channel interference between adjacent clusters by assigning different spreading codes for different clusters. The research results presented in this thesis contribute to realize the concept of the CRNs by developing a practical MAC framework, spectrum sensing, spectrum allocation, user admission control, and QoS provisioning for efficient resource management in these promising networks.


Abstract This paper explores how high school graduate men and women vary in their behavioral responses to beginning labor market entry during a recession. In contrast with previous related literature that found a substantial negative wage impact but minimal employment impact in samples of highly educated men, the empirical evidence presented here suggests a different outcome for the less well educated, and between the sexes. Women, but not men, who graduate high school in an adverse labor market are less likely to be in the workforce for the next four years, but longer-term effects are minimal. Further, while men increase their enrollment as a short-run response to weak labor demand, women do not; instead, they appear temporarily to substitute into home production. Women's wages are less affected than men's, and both groups' wages are less affected than the college graduates previously studied.


When the Supreme Court decided Jones v. Wolf it required courts to use secular criteria to decide church property disputes, yet there remains considerable uncertainty about the permissible latitude of those secular principles. This stems from the Court's attempt to honor three principles that are in tension with one another: 1) autonomous church governance, which the Court sees as an aspect of the free exercise of religion, 2) the need to prevent civil courts from deciding issues of religious doctrine, an aspect of the ban on governmental establishments of religion, and 3) preservation of state autonomy to decide how best to accommodate these twin goals, an aspect of federalism. There are three principal problems with this tripartite objective. First, sometimes they conflict with each other. Second, and worse, this framework fails to take into account adequately the interest of individuals united in local congregations of religious believers freely to exercise their religious beliefs. Finally, embedded in this framework is a generally unrecognized potential violation of the establishment clause: the provision by states of special advantages to hierarchical churches that allow them unilaterally to impose trusts for their benefit upon property held by local congregations. This article seeks to expose these problems and present an approach that better protects the interest in religious freedom of local congregants while still preserving autonomy of church governance and limiting civil courts to adjudication of secular issues. When hierarchical churches divide into factions the principles of religious freedom embedded in the religion clauses compel civil courts to recognize the religious beliefs of a majority of the local congregation in deciding which faction of the divided church is entitled to the use of the local congregational property, absent some clear and wholly secular indication that the local congregation has given control of its property to the general church. The cost of this approach is a slight reduction in the discretion of states to specify decision rules for church property disputes, and a somewhat more controversial reduction in the degree of deference that civil courts should pay to internal church governance rules when churches divide into factions as a result of religious schism. When the Supreme Court decided Watson v. Jones in the late nineteenth century and adopted deference to internal church governance as a standard for resolution of church property disputes, the religion clauses did not apply to the states. While the Court couched its reliance upon internal governance as an implication flowing from the ideals of religious freedom, it did not have to examine that premise critically. When in Jones v. Wolf the Court perpetuated this principle as an option for resolution of church property disputes it may have thought that deference to internal governance rules of hierarchical churches promotes religious freedom. Sometimes it does, but not always. Civil judicial interference with a hierarchical church's control of its clergy is the paradigmatic case of impermissible interference with the free exercise of religion. By contrast, permitting a hierarchical church unilaterally to impose trusts in its favor upon property held for the benefit of local congregations either creates an establishment clause violation (if secular charitable entities are denied this state-created benefit or if there is no plausible secular purpose for this benefit) or cuts deeply into the practical reality of how individual believers gathered in local communities manifest their religious conduct. This problem is exacerbated when a hierarchical church divides amid doctrinal disagreement. At that point, courts should apply a rule of local option, permitting each congregation to decide for itself which branch of the divided church will have its fealty and its property. Only by applying such a rule can a proper balance be struck between the splintered autonomy interest of a hierarchical church and the interest in religious associational freedom of local congregations and their individual members. The reflexive reliance of courts upon internal governance rules to decide property issues amid schism has obscured the interests in religious freedom that are at stake. Adoption of the local congregational option principle leaves hierarchical churches with many avenues to secure congregational property for the benefit of the general church. First, they can avoid rupture by finding sufficient common ground in their religious doctrine to accommodate their body of believers. Second, they can insist that local congregations explicitly place their property in trust for the benefit of the general church as the price of continued affiliation with the general church. What they cannot do is create such trusts by the ipse dixit of the hierarchical church.


Wheat kernel breakage is a critical factor in the flour milling process, and is affected by kernel density. Kernel density measurement is not routinely performed, and depends on the measurement technique used and the moisture content of the grains. This study compared currently available wet and dry methods based on gas displacement and liquid displacement (using water, water-ethanol mixtures and xylene) to determine the density of Hereward (hard) and Consort (soft) wheat kernels of different sizes and moisture contents. A gas pycnometer was used to measure the average density of a sample of wheat kernels, while a double cup system was used to measure individual kernel density by weighing kernels in air and immersed in liquid. The hard wheat variety, Hereward, had kernels of slightly higher average density, with a narrower distribution, than the soft variety, Consort. Kernel density was independent of kernel size, while increasing moisture content decreased the measured kernel density. The dry technique using the gas pycnometer gave the highest kernel densities, followed by xylene immersion, with water immersion giving the lowest density values, lower than the dry technique by 6.2% for Hereward and 9.9% for Consort. This was attributed to the effect of surface tension effectively increasing the kernel volume measured by the wet method. Further investigations with water-ethanol mixtures of varying surface tension supported this. The current trend in cereal quality testing is to measure distributions of single kernel physico-chemical parameters. The wet method allowed the measurement of the distribution of single kernel densities, but with poor accuracy due to surface tension; what is needed is a dry single kernel density method.


Introduction: Despite the importance of a thorough clinical evaluation, ultrasonography has emerged as the mainstay of imaging of the scrotum and its contents. Differentiation of testicular lesions and that of adjacent scrotum and content is usually difficult clinically. Scrotal ultrasound (SUSS) is highly sensitive in the detection of intrascrotal abnormalities and in differentiating testicular from paratesticular lesions. SUSS accurately determines the location and nature of palpable lesions and reveals nonpalpable scrotal masses. The aim of this study is to report the various indications for SUSS in this setting and to describe the sonographic findings in these patients. Materials and Methods: A retrospective and descriptive study carried out to evaluate scrotal ultrasound scans performed on 442 patients referred for various clinical indications from the clinics and units of the University College Hospital, to the Radiology department of the same hospital which serves as referral center in Ibadan, and the South-Western Nigeria; over a 10 year period from January 2006 to December 2015, a tertiary health Institution. Results: The mean age of the study population was 36.13 years ± standard deviation 15.88 years. Most of the patients (57.1%) were within the age group of 30 and 49 years. The leading clinical indication for ultrasound referral was infertility/infertility related issues in 56.1% of the total patients. Testicular masses were clinically detected and required SUSS for confirmation in 4.5% of the study population. On USS, the average testicular volume in adults with normal study was 16.38 cm3 and 15.99 cm3 on the right and left side, respectively. The most common USS findings were varicocele (29.4%), this was bilateral in more than half of the cases. Hydrocele was the second most common finding in 18.78% and often bilateral. Testicular masses were seen in 11.1% and were cystic in nature in more than half of the study population. Conclusion: Infertility/infertility related diagnosis were the most frequent indications for testicular ultrasound in adults in our environment. We recommend SUSS as a routine investigation in suspected scrotal/testicular pathologies.


SUMMARY

The energy, nitrogen and vitamin nutrition of 36 strains of Rhizobium japonicum were investigated. Most of the strains utilized gluconate, glycerol, arabinose, glucose, mannose, mannitol, sorbitol, galactose and maltose. Pyruvate, succinate, ribose, ribitol, xylose, fructose and lactose were of limited use whereas acetate, propionate, lactate, malate, citrate and sucrose were uniformly inadequate as carbon or energy sources. All strains grew well with vitamin-free casein hydrolysate, and 6 could utilize ammonia as sole nitrogen source. Glutamate was utilized by 33 strains, histidine by 26, aspartate by 20 and proline by 26 strains. Other amino acids were not utilized by most strains. The organisms grew independently of any vitamins except biotin. Three of the strains were stimulated and growth of 4 was inhibited by biotin.


In recent years, diversified corporations have increasingly turned to tracking stocks to uncouple high-growth businesses, especially Internet-related operations, from more static business entities. Tracking stock is a unique type of common stock that represents an interest in the financial performance of particular business groups within a diversified parent corporation. However, the tracked business groups are not independent of the parent corporation, and the parent's board of directors still governs the affairs of each business group. This creates unique conflicts for directors who must please multiple groups of stockholders whose interests are not always consistent. Delaware courts have not announced a clear standard for dealing with directorial duties in the tracking-stock context. The three existing legal standards of corporate governance-the traditional fiduciary analysis, a contractual approach, and an entire-fairness evaluation-are individually inadequate when applied to the unique directorial conflicts arising in corporations with tracking stock. This Comment argues that Delaware courts should apply different standards of review to directorial decisions involving tracked business groups depending upon the nature of the transaction. Where the directorial decision involves primarily contractual arrangements, such as the repurchase of stock or the payment of dividends, courts should not grant tracking stockholders fiduciary protections. If the decision involves the allocation of corporate opportunity or resources, courts should apply the fiduciary principles of care and loyalty, ensuring that directors do not have a material self-interest in the transaction. Finally, if the directorial decision involves inter-group dealings, courts should require directors to demonstrate the entire fairness of the transaction regardless of whether the board was interested in the transaction. After a decade of dormancy, tracking stock' has seen a revival in recent years and has recaptured the eye of Wall Street.2 Companies such as Sprint; Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette; Disney; Ziff-Davis; and Circuit City have all recently issued tracking stocks Over a dozen major corporations, including AT&T, Staples, The New York Times, J.C. 1. Tracking stock, also known as "lettered" or "targeted" stock, is defined as stock tied to the financial performance of a particular segment of a corporation's business. See Adam Lashinski, Will the Boom in Tracking Stocks Derail Investors?, Fortune, Jan. 10, 2000, at 210-12. 2. Tracking stock is not a new phenomenon. The first tracking stocks were issued in the mid1980s by General Motors to track its former Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft subsidiaries. See Jeffrey J. Hass, Directorial Fiduciary Duties in a Tracking Stock Equity Structure: The Needfora Duty ofFairness, 94 Mich. L. Rev. 2089, 2089 n.2 (1996). 3. See Susan Scherreik, Tread Carefully When You Buy Tracking Stocks, Bus. Wk., Mar. 6, 2000, at 182.


The traditional teaching methods of the Learning Management Systems (or LMS) are rigid in nature and impose limitations on the teaching process. By having a closed pattern, these tools end up hurting the student, for preventing it from interacting with anyone who shares the same interests as him. As a result, the concepts of community, relationship and interaction between users are required to overcome these limitations. This paper proposes the development of an architecture for creating a social software that enables the use of online social networks automatically created for students through their mobile devices. Besides, this architecture has been created based on web services, what makes it possible the integration with MLEA (Mobile Learning Environment Adapter), an application that allows students to access Moodle through their mobile devices.


The world's bestselling guide to negotiation. Getting to Yes has been in print for over thirty years, and in that time has helped millions of people secure win-win agreements both at work and in their private lives. Including principles such as: Don't bargain over positions Separate the people from the problem and Insist on objective criteria Getting to Yes simplifies the whole negotation process, offering a highly effective framework that will ensure success.


In Things and Places, Zenon Pylyshyn argues that the process of incrementally constructing perceptual representations, solving the binding problem (determining which properties go together), and, more generally, grounding perceptual representations in experience arise from the nonconceptual capacity to pick out and keep track of a small number of sensory individuals. He proposes a mechanism in early vision that allows us to select a limited number of sensory objects, to reidentify each of them under certain conditions as the same individual seen before, and to keep track of their enduring individuality despite radical changes in their properties -- all without the machinery of concepts, identity, and tenses. This mechanism, which he calls FINSTs (for "Fingers of Instantiation"), is responsible for our capacity to individuate and track several independently moving sensory objects -- an ability that we exercise every waking minute, and one that can be understood as fundamental to the way we see and understand the world and to our sense of space. Pylyshyn examines certain empirical phenomena of early vision in light of the FINST mechanism, including tracking and attentional selection. He argues provocatively that the initial selection of perceptual individuals is our primary nonconceptual contact with the perceptual world (a contact that does not depend on prior encoding of any properties of the thing selected) and then draws upon a wide range of empirical data to support a radical externalist theory of spatial representation that grows out of his indexing theory.


A SOCIAL ETHICAL ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC STRATEGIES TO ALLEVIATE WORLD HUNGER David Pfrimmer Throughout their history, human societies have been faced with many issues. In this study, the focus will be upon the issue of hunger in less developed countries that has presently reached a critical stage that threatens human existence. Church and world leaders have all voiced concern over this issue but to date no generally effective policies have been developed that would enable the almost 600 million people who are hungry at present to enjoy a basic level of nutritional food consumption. In this study, we will provide one framework by which an accurate diagnosis can be made of the problem that will result in appropriate prescriptions for policy to overcome this dilemma. The three existing economic strategies, which are observed as the Neo-Malthusian, Green Revolution, and New Economic Order policies, will be analysed in the light of a concept of human fulfillment that recognizes the three essential human needs for identity, growth and transcendence. From a Christian perception of life, the Kingdom of God provides the subsoil from which human fulfillment arises. Where the three essential needs of human existence (identity, growth, and transcendence) are each addressed in such a way that fosters a balanced level of development among them, then human fulfillment occurs. Insofar as human fulfillment is promoted, the Kingdom of God is enhanced within history. This study will show that presently the essential human needs of identity and growth are being addressed by Neo-Malthusian and Green Revolution policies. However, the need for transcendence is not currently receiving the necessary attention as evidenced by the growing level of alienation among people of the less developed countries. To the extent the Neo-Malthusian and Green Revolution policies are pursued with the same popularity, they will in fact serve only to increase the need for transcendence and further increase the level of alienation. Therefore, in the name of human fulfillment, economic policies of the New Economic Order type which focus on the alleviation of alienation should now receive greater support by decision makers within and outside the Church.


Abstract This study is intended to characterize the ovarian development and hemolymph vertebrate-type steroids concentration during the reproductive cycle of the freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii. A five-stage classification based on the external observation of the ovary's size and color as seen through the tegument was used. The results showed the existence of a direct correspondence between the ovarian stages and the gonadosomatic index, the oöcyte diameter, and the characteristics of ovarian histology. In each stage total bleeding of the prawns was conducted and the hemolymph concentrations of 17β-estradiol (E2), testosterone (T) and 17α-hydroxyprogesterone (17-OHP; conjugated and unconjugated) were determined by solid-phase radioimmunoassay (RIA). High levels of unconjugated 17-OHP, relatively constant concentrations of unconjugated T, and null concentration of unconjugated E2 were found throughout the five stages considered. Nonetheless, low levels of E2 were determined in all stages, in conjugated (glucoronide) form. The highest levels were obtained in stage II and III (18.14 ± 14.52 pg/ml hemolymph) and progressively declined in the other stages (7.53 ± 6.76 pg/ml hemolymph). These results point out the possible involvement of vertebrate-type steroids in the endocrine regulation of the Macrobrachium rosenbergii's ovarian cycle. To our knowledge this is the first study concerning the vertebrate-like steroid levels throughout the ovarian cycle and is a step needed to characterize the hemolymph profile of these steroids in order to elucidate the possible role in the regulation of the reproductive crustacean cycle.


Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and nonreceptor tyrosine kinase c-Src, whose combined overexpression occurs in some breast cancers, cooperate to promote transformed characteristics when overexpressed in fibroblasts. Their synergistic interaction, which depends on c-Src phosphorylation of EGFR tyrosine 845 (pY845), is independent of EGFR kinase activity and of its activation of the mitogen-associated protein kinase signaling pathway. Boerner et al. screened a phage display library with a peptide corresponding to the region of EGFR that contains pY845 and identified cytochrome c oxidase subunit II (CoxII) as a binding partner. In mouse fibroblasts overexpressing EGFR and c-Src and in a breast cancer cell line that overexpresses both EGFR and c-Src, CoxII coimmunoprecipitated with EGFR. Coimmunoprecipitation, which was enhanced by EGF treatment, did not occur with overexpression of a catalytically inactive c-Src mutant or when Y845 was replaced by phenylalanine (Y845F-EGFR). The authors used confocal microscopy and biochemical fractionation to show that EGF stimulated translocation of EGFR to the mitochondria. Mutational analysis indicated that this translocation depended on EGFR kinase activity but not on Y845 phosphorylation. Confocal microscopy indicated that EGFR and CoxII colocalized in mitochondria and EGFR and CoxII coimmunoprecipitated from a mitochondrial fraction of a breast cancer cell line that overexpresses EGFR and c-Src (MDA-MB-231). When Y845F-EGFR was expressed in MDA-MB-231, cells became more sensitive to apoptosis in response to serum withdrawal, and the ability of EGF to protect cells from apoptosis induced by treatment with the antineoplastic drug adriamycin was attenuated. Thus, the authors suggest that the ability of EGFR to translocate to mitochondria and to bind to CoxII may contribute to the synergistic effects of c-Src and EGFR on oncogenesis. J. L. Boerner, M. L. Demory, C. Silva, S. J. Parsons, Phosphorylation of Y845 on the epidermal growth factor receptor mediates binding to the mitochondrial protein cytochrome oxidase subunit II. Mol. Cell. Biol. 24, 7059-7071 (2004). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The Internet is one of the fastest growing areas of infrastructure development in the union of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf commonly referred to as Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is clear that the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) worldwide has helped to quicken communication and facilitate the exchange of information. The number of Internet users and Internet-enabled technological devices is increasing exponentially, including an estimated 40 million Internet users within the area of the GCC that continues to grow. It considers the fastest growing and most economically competitive region in the world. This growth is largely fuelled by oil although the region is also becoming an increasingly popular destination for local and international tourists. This trend is set to continue with upcoming global events such as the Abu Dhabi and Bahrain Grand Prix, the Expo 2020 in Dubai and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022.As the Internet grows and reaches most aspects of society, staying up-to-date with effective security measures and ensuring online safety remains a challenge. For example, modern cars are effectively computers, and many of which are connected to the Internet. These computing devices embedded in everyday life bring about new risks. In addition, the cybercrime landscape has evolved considerably over the past decade becoming more sophisticated with an increasing diversification of organizational forms of criminal actors. Failure to understand the impact of cybercrime and the threats pose to economy, national security, and the critical infrastructure; will leave GCC states vulnerable to all cyber-attacks and easy targets. There is now evidence of malicious actors that work alone, within cohesive group structures and as larger ephemeral online communities. In addition, vectors used to perpetrate cyber crime are constantly evolving due in part to innovative tactics of criminals which continues to evolve. Attacks typically occur unbeknown to the victims and through processes that guarantee anonymity to malicious actors. For example, many cyber-attacks are propagated through networks of compromised computers and intermediary systems masking the identity, which in certain cases make it difficult to identify the source and intention of cybercrime. The countries of the GCC share culture, and political, geographic and socio-economic interests. As "communities of shared fate", all Internet-connected nations are at the mercy of online threats. Yet, mechanisms to respond to such activity have been reactive at best with a deficiency of crime prevention efforts. A major block to the effective control of cyber crime is its transnational characteristic. Cyber attacks occur across borders, and perpetrators and their victims are rarely located in the same jurisdiction. Cyber criminals have also taken advantage of safe haven countries - states that lack Internet crime-related legislation and the capability to enforce them. In 2014, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 10 High Level Event in Geneva, co-organised by ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP, highlighted the significant risks posed by insufficient responses to cyber security. As connectivity develops cyber security must be recognised as a major threat for the Middle East.One approach to curtail malicious activities has been through international frameworks. For example, the Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime, known as the Budapest Convention, is an international treaty that provides a comprehensive international approach to cybercrime investigation and law. The Convention formalises mutual legal assistance arrangements between jurisdictions and primarily includes European states, as well as a number of non-European states such as the USA, Japan, Australia and Canada. However, as of March 2015, no countries among the GCC have joined the Convention. Also there is no treaty or cooperation between the GCC states on cybercrime.Among the six GCC countries, Qatar and Oman are the only two to have developed technical, organisational and legal measures to address cybercrime (Table 1). Other countries are working on these measures but still lack capacity to address cyber issues. The following four main recommendations offer some avenues to increase cyber security capacity in the GCC: 1 - Create a national (and regional) cyber awareness initiative 2 - Establish a centralised mechanism to share information, assets and expertise with GCC states and abroad3 - Establish technical standards to combat cyber crime through a national (and regional) framework4 - Engage in international police and judicial cooperation, for example, by signing the Budapest Convention.


In this work, three applications aimed at studying or exploiting various aspects of entanglement are considered. In the first project, the entanglement between two atoms inside a multimode resonator is investigated in the presence of retardation. Retardation is associated with the finite time required by a photon to propagate between atoms and cavity boundaries. It is found that retardation affects the atomic populations as well as the entanglement dynamics to a large degree. The second project is a study of entangled states of light to obtain an enhanced resolution. We have simulated optical centroid measurements for spatial resolution enhancement with various types of non-classical input states. By numerically simulating the measurement scheme, we optimize the detection parameters for an experimental implementation and also study the multiphoton absorption required for quantum lithography. The third project uses the scattered light from a resonantly driven correlated system to obtain information about the system. Techniques have been proposed using which in certain detection directions, n-atom correlations can be directly accessed in an experiment via light scattering with a significant count rate. Moreover, such detection of correlations is not limited to a particular spatial geometry but can be utilized for generalized geometries, too.


Garra rufa is one of the most popular therapeutic and commercially important fish in ichthyotherapy. Otolith and scale morphology provide new and useful information for fish identification and classification. Left-right asteriscus and lapillus otoliths from juvenile and adult doctor fish, and the scales from 6 different regions of the juvenile and adult fish body have been examined in Kangal Balıklı Çermik thermal spring (Sivas, Turkey). The otolith and scale morphological characters such as type, size, shape, mesial surface, lateral surface, antirostrum and rostrum shapes, focus position, circuli appearance, radii type and posterior and anterior margin shapes were distinguishable features for the juvenile and adult G. rufa samples. Three different otolith shapes were observed such as squared and discoidal otolith shapes for asteriscus pairs and oval to elliptic otolith shapes for lapillus pairs in the juvenile and adult doctor fish. Seven different scale shapes were described from six different body regions of the G. rufa in the current study. The graphical illustration of wavelets was used for both asteriscus and lapillus pairs of the fish to discover otolith variabilities. This is one of the first otolith and scale morphology studies for the juvenile and adult doctor fish. All these otolith and scale characters and their morphologies could be used for best alternative tools to identification, classification, phylogenetic relationships among the different freshwater and marine fish species, genera, populations or stocks.


Climate change is expected to significantly affect the world's fjords by increasing storm intensity and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). GLOFs are characterized as a sudden release of glacial trapped waters into a fjord, yet how they modify fjord circulation and zooplankton migration patterns is not well understood. This study aims to investigate long-term physical and biological patterns in fjords and how they are modified by GLOFs by characterizing intra-annual variation in fjord hydrodynamics and biology. The study area is Martinez Channel in Chilean Patagonia located below the Northern Patagonia Ice Field. To accomplish this goal, circulation patterns and temporal and spatial variations of zooplankton will be analyzed in the presence of a GLOF and under normal conditions. The data collected include horizontal current velocities measured throughout the water column with a moored (~80 m depth), upward facing, acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) which sampled hourly in 1 m vertical bins. Salinity, temperature, wind, and river discharge data were also analyzed to complement the velocity measurements. Results showed that the baroclinic annular mode (BAM), a proxy for storminess in the Southern Hemisphere, significantly influenced the fjord every ~20-30 days. The BAM induced mixing which caused pycnocline depressions that interacted with the diel vertical migration of zooplankton. The strong winds associated with the BAM were also enough to retain floodwaters from the GLOF in early February. This study proves that external events such as the BAM and GLOFs affect fjord physics and biology and should be considered in future studies.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the concept of individualized care for people with major depressive disorder, understand the drugs currently available, and review the implications of switching drug therapy solely for cost reasons.

SUMMARY
The use of antidepressant drugs and their associated costs has been the subject of many pharmacoeconomic analyses. Each particular type of analysis has strengths and weaknesses, and their value can only be determined by stakeholders, all of whom have different perspectives. The development of new and better drugs to treat depression has had a significant impact on the nation.s rate of suicide. For managed care pharmacists, cost is often a concern, especially for patients who are treatment refractory. Studies have demonstrated that attempts to reduce prescription drug use in mental health settings increase other costs in a magnitude of $17 spent for every $1 saved. Adequate treatment, careful cross-tapering, and cultural concerns are addressed.

CONCLUSION
Pharmacists who practice in managed care must be cognizant of the implications of inadequate treatment of depression, the potential morbidity and mortality that may result from switching antidepressants based on cost alone, and the most appropriate ways to switch from one drug to another.


BACKGROUND
Data on smoking held by general practitioners (GPs) may contribute to clinical care and to an assessment of population health. However, these data are prone to several biases and their validity has not been tested.

AIM
To examine the accuracy of general practice data as an estimate for population prevalence of smoking and to estimate the accuracy of GP data on individuals' smoking habit compared with self-report.

METHODS
A postal questionnaire on smoking habit over the past six years was sent to a random sample of individuals aged 15 to 74 years and registered with five out of seven general practices in one part of Leicester. GP records of those sampled were examined for an entry of smoking status over this period.

RESULTS
Response rate to the postal questionnaire was 1906 out of 2490 (76.5%). Reported smoking prevalence was 35.2%. Of those notes sampled, 1784 out of 2432 (73.4%) had an entry about smoking recorded between 1991 and 1996. Patients recorded as smokers were less likely to respond to the postal questionnaire than non-smokers. Using practice data to ascribe smoking status to non-responders produced an estimated prevalence of 38.6%. Using questionnaire data alone as the 'gold standard', the last practice record collected since 1991 overestimated current smoking prevalence by a factor of 1.22; using questionnaire data supplemented by practice data for non-responders as the 'gold standard' meant that the overestimate was by a factor of 1.11. Data from notes and the questionnaire were available for 1398 individuals and 2188 observations. Levels of agreement were high (kappa = 0.83).

CONCLUSION
GP-held data are valid for individuals but over-estimate smoking prevalence at a population level.


Spondylolysis is a defect in the pars interarticularis of a vertebra with a disruption in the intervertebral segment. Progression of the defect leads to one vertebra slipping over another - which is called spondylolisthesis - which may cause low-back pain. Non-surgical treatment is the initial course of action in most cases of spondylolisthesis. However, few studies have assessed the efficacy of conservative treatment. The purpose of the present study is to review literature on conservative treatment for spondylolysis/listhesis, especially manual therapy, in order to guide practitioners for effective intervention. Results show that both manual therapy and conventional physiotherapy were effective in relieving low-back pain and beneficial for patient's functional outcome. Manual therapy involved spine manipulation, sacroiliac joint manipulation, muscle-energy techniques and stretching affected muscles. Stabilizing lombopelvic exercises, postural muscles strengthening, and hamstring and psoas stretching were also considered important in treating spondylolysis/listhesis. Each case's clinical and radiological features must be individually considered in order to determinate therapeutic strategy. Among non-surgical options, none has proved better than others and all may be included in symptomatic treatment of patients with spondylolysis/listhesis.


The computer's metaphorical desktop, with its onscreen windows and hierarchy of folders, is the only digital work environment most users and designers have ever known. Yet empirical studies show that the traditional desktop design does not provide sufficient support for today's real-life tasks involving collaboration, multitasking, multiple roles, and diverse technologies. In Beyond the Desktop Metaphor, leading researchers and developers consider design approaches for a post-desktop future. The contributors analyze the limitations of the desktop environment--including the built-in conflict between access and display, the difficulties in managing several tasks simultaneously, and the need to coordinate the multiple technologies and information objects (laptops, PDAs, files, URLs, email) that most people use daily--and propose novel design solutions that work toward a more integrated digital work environment. They describe systems that facilitate access to information, including Lifestreams, Haystack, Task Gallery, GroupBar, and Scalable Fabric, and they argue that the organization of work environments should reflect the social context of work. They consider the notion of activity as a conceptual tool for designing integrated systems, and point to the Kimura and Activity-Based Computing systems as examples. Beyond the Desktop Metaphor is the first systematic overview of state-of-the-art research on integrated digital work environments. It provides a glimpse of what the next generation of information technologies for everyday use may look like--and it should inspire design solutions for users' real-world needs.


When different markers are responsive to different aspects of a disease, combination of multiple markers could provide a better screening test for early detection. It is also resonable to assume that the risk of disease changes smoothly as the biomarker values change and the change in risk is monotone with respect to each biomarker. In this paper, we propose a boundary constrained tensor-product B-spline method to estimate the risk of disease by maximizing a penalized likelihood. To choose the optimal amount of smoothing, two scores are proposed which are extensions of the GCV score (O'Sullivan et al. (1986)) and the GACV score (Ziang and Wahba (1996)) to incorporate linear constraints. Simulation studies are carried out to investigate the performance of the proposed estimator and the selection scores. In addidtion, sensitivities and specificities based ona pproximate leave-one-out estimates are proposed to generate more realisitc ROC curves. Data from a pancreatic cancer study is used for illustration.


We present a pipeline of algorithms that decomposes a given polygon model into parts such that each part can be 3D printed with high (outer) surface quality. For this we exploit the fact that most 3D printing technologies have an anisotropic resolution and hence the surface smoothness varies significantly with the orientation of the surface. Our pipeline starts by segmenting the input surface into patches such that their normals can be aligned perpendicularly to the printing direction. A 3D Voronoi diagram is computed such that the intersections of the Voronoi cells with the surface approximate these surface patches. The intersections of the Voronoi cells with the input model's volume then provide an initial decomposition. We further present an algorithm to compute an assembly order for the parts and generate connectors between them. A post processing step further optimizes the seams between segments to improve the visual quality. We run our pipeline on a wide range of 3D models and experimentally evaluate the obtained improvements in terms of numerical, visual, and haptic quality.


Aim/Purpose: This paper aimed to examine the impact of knowledge management on firm innovativeness of multinational enterprises (MNEs) via the mediating role of innovative culture in Malaysia.

Background: Inadequate management practices and growing competition among MNEs operating in developing nations, notably in Malaysia, have hindered their organizational success. Although several studies have shown that knowledge management has a substantial impact on MNEs' success, it is not apparent if innovation at the company level has a direct impact on their performance. Thus, there is no definitive evidence between knowledge management with business innovativeness and organizational success.

Methodology: This study adopted a quantitative approach based on a cross-sectional survey and descriptive design to gather the data in a specific period. A convenient sampling approach was used to select 296 respondents from Malaysia-dependent MNEs of different industries. One of the advantages of this study methodology is that the sample targeted many fields. Afterward, SPSS AMOS 24.0 software package analysis was performed to test the hypotheses.

Contribution: The study contributes to knowledge management and firm innovativeness literature through advancing innovative culture as a mediating factor that accounts for the link between these two constructs, especially from an emerging economy perspective. The research findings also offer managerial implications for organizations in their quest to improve firm innovativeness.

Findings: The results support that innovative culture significantly affects MNEs' performance. Innovative culture enhances the capability of MNEs to be innovative that finally leads to the superior performance of firm innovativeness.

Recommendations for Practitioners: According to this research, companies that exhibit an innovative culture, the acquisition of new information, the conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, the application of knowledge, and the safeguarding of knowledge, all have a positive effect on their innovativeness. This means that for organizations to run an innovative MNE in Malaysia, a creative culture must be fostered since the current study has shown how it is seen as a catalyst that facilitates learning, transformation, and implementation of relevant knowledge.

Recommendation for Researchers: Future studies should be carried out in other sectors aside from the manufacturing sector using the same scales used to measure knowledge management. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of knowledge management and firm innovativeness using innovative culture as a mediator should be researched in other developing economies.

Impact on Society: While the main aim of this study was to better understand how and why MNEs operate the way they do, it had an indirect impact on the business and political tactics taken by CEOs and managers working in MNEs in developing countries, as this research has shown.

Future Research: Future research should employ the methodology presented in this study and pursue this in other sectors, such as emerging and developed nations' major businesses, to validate the results and further generalize the conclusions. Other methods should also be incorporated to investigate the other dimensions of MNEs' performance, including market orientation, technology orientation, and entrepreneurial orientation.


Introduction: Controlling dissemination as well as treating patients infected with the new coronavirus are global challenges. Despite the protocols and guidelines generated by the WHO and the leading medical societies that seek to control the pandemic, there are still few reports in the literature that show complications in the perioperative period of patients, initially asymptomatic, infected by COVID-19. This study aims to offer data to plastic surgeons beyond the scope of aesthetic and reconstructive surgeries. Methods: A review article was performed after selecting sixteen articles from PubMed. These were analyzed for their type, statistical relevance, number of participants, complications, and reported outcomes. Results: The mortality rate of patients with COVID-19 undergoing surgical procedures was higher than that estimated in infected patients who did not undergo these procedures. There were also increases in the patient's admission rate to intensive care units and the pulmonary complications rate. The main predictors of mortality were defined, besides the role of chest tomography for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in the perioperative period. Conclusion: It is essential to understand the risk of operating patients during the pandemic, even if asymptomatic. The increased risk of complications and mortality in elective and emergency surgeries requires disseminating adequate information to both doctors and patients. The objective, therefore, is not to define the medical conduct of surgeons, but to allow analysis in the decision-making process. ■ ABSTRACT


A Triangle Generative Adversarial Network ($\Delta$-GAN) is developed for semi-supervised cross-domain joint distribution matching, where the training data consists of samples from each domain, and supervision of domain correspondence is provided by only a few paired samples. $\Delta$-GAN consists of four neural networks, two generators and two discriminators. The generators are designed to learn the two-way conditional distributions between the two domains, while the discriminators implicitly define a ternary discriminative function, which is trained to distinguish real data pairs and two kinds of fake data pairs. The generators and discriminators are trained together using adversarial learning. Under mild assumptions, in theory the joint distributions characterized by the two generators concentrate to the data distribution. In experiments, three different kinds of domain pairs are considered, image-label, image-image and image-attribute pairs. Experiments on semi-supervised image classification, image-to-image translation and attribute-based image generation demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach.


I present altered book making and poetry as a process of imaginative inquiry into arts-based research. Through a personal narrative and a consideration of the literature on arts-based research, I reconstruct the artistic inquiry that traces my learning journey. Current issues in arts-based research are sketched through words and mixed media artwork, including issues of terminology, philosophy, ethics, and purpose in arts-based research practice. The beginnings of a transformation-through-the-arts paradigm, powered by an aesthetic epistemology, are referenced as part of a multimedia learning journey. As a strategy for pedagogical inquiry, the altered book construction and narrative writing served to express some of the transformative learning, beauty, energy, and complexities related to this topic.