Since the 2001 envisioning of the Semantic Web (SW), the main research focus in SW reasoning has been on the soundness and completeness of reasoners. While these reasoners assume the veracity of input data, the reality is that the Web of data is inherently noisy. Although there has been recent work on noise-tolerant reasoning, it has focused on type inference rather than full RDFS reasoning. Even though RDFS closure generation can be seen as a Knowledge Graph (KG) completion problem, the problem setting is different— making KG embedding techniques that were designed for link prediction not suitable for RDFS reasoning. This paper documents a novel approach that extends noisetolerance in the SW to full RDFS reasoning. Our embedding technique— that is tailored for RDFS reasoning— consists of layering RDF graphs and encoding them in the form of 3D adjacency matrices where each layer layout forms a graph word. Each input graph and its entailments are then represented as sequences of graph words, and RDFS inference can be formulated as translation of these graph words sequences, achieved through neural machine translation. Our evaluation on LUBM1 synthetic dataset shows 97% validation accuracy and 87.76% on a subset of DBpedia while demonstrating a noise-tolerance unavailable with rule-based reasoners.


Organic materials suitable for application in electronics (e.g., thin film transistors and) and optoelectronics (e.g., light emitting diodes) have received increasing attention during the past years. Such new compounds are not designed to replace the existing technology where speed and stability under extreme conditions are vital. These compounds could be potentially used for applications that require short-term use and large- scale manufacture. Of great interest as novel materials are substituted pnetacenediquinones for optoelectronics applications, substituted pentacenes for thin film transistors and indenofluorene derivatives for applications in light-emitting diodes. Pentacenediquinones are compounds that contain five aromatic rings in a row and two quinoid moieties in their structure. Pentacenediquinones can be easily reduced electrochemically to the corresponding semiquinone (radical anion). The semiquinone displays absorbance in the near-infrared (NIR) region, between 1300 and 1500 nm.1'2 By introduction of various substituents on the two "outside" aromatic rings (figure 1), the semiquinones of substituted pentacenediquinones offer a possibility to fine tune the MR activity in the three telecom windows: 1550, 1310 and 880 nm.


The roles of daf-6 and cell-cell interactions in sensory organ morphogenesis Elliot A. Perens, PhD. The Rockefeller University 2006 The development of multicellular organs depends on the regulation of cell shape, position, and orientation. The genetic regulation of these morphogenetic processes is poorly understood. As a model for organ morphogenesis, I studied the development of the Caenorhabditis elegans amphid sensory organ. Sensory organs in diverse species are often composed of neuronal sensory endings accommodated in a lumen formed by ensheathing epithelia or glia. The generation of this structure may require cell-autonomous factors that control lumen formation, as well as cell non-autonomous factors that coordinate the morphogenesis of the lumen with the resident neuronal processes. Understanding these processes would provide insight into lumen formation, glia morphogenesis, and cell-cell interactions during development, especially neuronal regulation of glia morphogenesis. In this thesis, I identify and characterize genes required for lumen formation in the amphid sensory organ. First, the gene daf-6 is required cell autonomously during amphid lumen formation. daf-6 encodes a Patched-related protein that is a member of a previously uncharacterized sub-family of sterolsensing domain containing proteins. Interestingly, daf-6 is expressed and required in several tubular structures, such as the excretory system and vulva. Thus, a similar genetic pathway is required for the formation of different lumens. Secondly, I conducted a forward genetic screen and identified and characterized mutations that suppress the lumen formation defects in daf-6 mutants. Finally, by examining mutants defective in sensory neuron process formation, I showed that amphid lumen shape is determined by its resident sensory endings.


Journalists have traditionally played a crucial role in building public pressure on government officials to uphold their legal obligations under the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. But over the past twenty years there has been radical change in the media landscape: foreign bureaus have been shuttered, young freelance journalists have taken over some of the work traditionally done by experienced foreign correspondents, and, more recently, the advent of social media has enabled people in conflict-affected areas to tell their own stories to the world. This essay assesses the impact of these changes on atrocity prevention across the different stages of the policy process. It concludes that the new media landscape is comparatively poorly equipped to raise an early warning alarm in a way that will spur preventive action, but that it is well-positioned to sustain attention to ongoing atrocities. Unfortunately, such later stages of a crisis generally provide the most limited policy options for civilian protection.


Background Whether insulin enhances or represses tumor cell proliferation remains debating and inconclusive although epidemiological data indicated insulin use raises a risk of cancer incidence in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). Methodology/Principle Findings We cultured rat pituitary adenoma cells in a high-glucose medium to simulate hyperglycemia occurring in DM patients. Upon incubation with or without insulin, repressed tumor cell proliferation and downregulated tumor marker expression occur accompanying with mitigated oxidative stress and compromised apoptosis. Mechanistically, insulin resistance-abrogated glucose uptake was suggested to create an intracellular low-glucose milieu, leading to cellular starvation resembling calorie restriction (CR). While downregulation of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) occurring in CR was validated, oncogene downregulation and tumor suppressor gene upregulation seen in CR was also replicated by NOS2 knockdown. Conclusions/Significance Cellular starvation can exert CR-like anti-tumor effects regardless of insulin presence or absence.


Background Turning or cutting on a planted foot may be an important inciting event for lower limb injury, particularly when shoe-surface traction is high. We systematically reviewed the relationship between shoe-surface interaction and lower-extremity injury in football sports. Methods A systematic literature search of four databases was conducted up to November 2014. Prospective studies investigating the relationship between rotational traction and injury rate were included. Two researchers independently extracted outcome data and assessed the quality of included studies using a modified Downs and Black index. Effect sizes (OR+95% CIs) were calculated using RevMan software. Where possible, data were pooled using the fixed effect model. Results Three prospective studies were included (4972 male athletes). The methodological quality was generally good with studies meeting 68–89% of the assessment criteria. All studies categorised athletes into low (lowest mean value 15 nm) or high traction groups (highest mean value 74 nm) based on standardised preseason testing. In all cases, injury reporting was undertaken prospectively over approximately three seasons, with verification from a medical practitioner. Injury data focused on: all lower limb injuries, ankle/knee injuries or ACL injury only. There was a clear relationship between rotational traction and injury and the direction and magnitude of effect sizes were consistent across studies. The pooled data from the three studies (OR=2.73, 95% CI 2.13 to 3.15; χ2=3.19, df=2, p=0.21; I2=36.5%) suggest that the odds of injury are approximately 2.5 times higher when higher levels of rotational traction are present at the shoe-surface interface. Summary and conclusions Higher levels of rotational traction influence lower limb injury risk in American Football athletes. We conclude that this warrants considerable attention from clinicians and others interested in injury prevention across all football codes.


After giving an overview of the state of migration policy in developing countries with special reference to Pakistan this paper essentially revisits the issue of policy and its effect on rural to urban migration under an extended family theoretical framework. This specific approach is motivated by empirical literature on migration in the context of developing countries which suggests the emergence of spatially separated but economically linked rural and urban households - expanded or extended families. The extended family in this paper consists of two households, the rural-origin and its urban-migrant offshoot. The migrant after leaving the countryside joins relatives in the city who through the assumption of income sharing within households sustain the migrant in case of unemployment. The economic tie linking the two households is remittances flowing from the migrants to the family members left behind. All decisions, migration and remittance, are based on altruism rather then self-interest. Thus in the model both migration and remittances are endogenously determined. This extended family framework is then employed to analyze the effect of the standard policy prescriptions, i.e., urban employment subsidy and a rural income subsidy on migration and urban employment. Also, the welfare effect of a subsidy transfer from urban to rural sector is analyzed. The results, especially in the case of the rural subsidy provision, are qualitatively different from those in the standard Harris-Todaro type literature on migration suggesting the sensitivity of predicted policy effects on the type of methodology employed.


Results from the IGPA Early Investments Initiative's Preschool-Aged Classroom Video Project were presented by UIC Honors College capstone projects by UIC undergraduate students Nicole Szydlowski, Yasmine Toledo, and D'Andre Walker. IGPA Faculty Member Rachel Gordon is the PI of the initiative and the students' capstone advisor. The students presented their findings at the UIC Undergraduate Research Forum on April 13, 2018.The student projects center around the three core themes and innovations of the broader initiative, which collected full day streams of video for an entire week in eight preschool-aged classrooms and every Friday for over a dozen weeks in a ninth classroom. Combining a panoramic and a close-up camera to approximate what coders would see when sitting in the classroom, the design allowed the team to examine critical issues about variation in ratings across coders, time, and context. A team of a dozen faculty and students rated over 420 15-minute video clips using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), Pre-K allowing for examination of inter-rater reliability, within- and between-day fluctuations, and differential interpretations of the same coding instructions and classroom activities. Aligning with these themes, the students' projects offer preliminary evidence that:* Coders generally maintained the inter-rater reliability level targeted by the CLASS developers, 80% "within-one" agreement (e.g., a score of 3, 4, or 5 agreeing with a 4 on a 7-point scale). Yet, reliability fluctuated more on certain dimensions (e.g., productivity) and exact agreement (e.g., a 4 agreeing with a 4) was considerably lower. (Nicole Szydlowski) * Contributing to the challenge of exact agreement, raters differently interpreted subjective words on the CLASS Emotional Support dimension (e.g., ample, appropriate, considerable). Ratings of words by students fluent in Spanish and interviews with researchers who used the CLASS in a Spanish-speaking country revealed such varying interpretations are exacerbated cross-culturally, including with phrases like "falls through the cracks" or "good effort" (Yasmine Toledo).* CLASS scores fluctuated throughout each day, including on the Regard for Student Perspectives dimension, calling into question standard reliance on scores that average across 15-minute cycles. These fluctuations were predictably associated with classroom activities, with teachers' regard for student perspectives being higher during one-on-one center time than during large group or transition time (D'Andre Walker).These results importantly contribute to increasing concerns about the suitability of the CLASS Pre-K and other observational measures of classroom quality for high-stakes monitoring and accountability purposes, such as contributing to publicly-disseminated star or medal ratings that have reputational and financial consequences (e.g., Illinois' Excelerate Quality Rating and Improvement System) and encourage continued efforts to improve existing and develop new measures. One effort currently underway, for instance, is the EMOTERS project, a $1.4 million effort funded by the Institute of Education Sciences in which members of the IGPA Early Investments Project team (and collaborators from George Mason University) are using the project's video pilot data and state-of-the-art statistical models as they develop a new measure of teachers' supports for children's emotional development.The students' Honors College capstone projects benefited from the entire project team, including PI: Rachel A. Gordon; Co-PIs: Catherine Main, Kathleen Sheridan, and Katherine Zinsser; core coders: Beltran, Winnie Kwong, Tito Ponce, Nicole Szydlowski, Yasmine Toledo, and D'Andre Walker; and principal project coordinators: Julia Bates, Claire Christensen, and Samantha de Souza. Collection of video in the nine classrooms and its coding was funded by the Institute of Government and Public Affairs.


Quantum theory, complexity theory, and ecosystems theory, along with anthropogenic climate change and ecosystem collapses are confronting humanity with insights that will crucially inform the re-design of products, processes, services and institutions in order to catalyse the transition towards a sustainable human civilization. In a fundamentally interconnected and unpredictable world, where local actions have global consequences, the intentionality behind science and design needs to shift from aiming to increase prediction, control and manipulation of nature as a resource, to a transdisciplinary cooperation in the process of learning how to participate appropriately and sustainably in Nature. A participatory conception of nature–culture relationships acknowledges the dependence of humanity on healthy ecosystems and a healthy biosphere. It implies the need for a salutogenic design approach that increases human, societal and ecological health synergistically. In order to create sustainable designs that are sensitive to the unique social, cultural and ecological conditions of a particular place and facilitate the emergence of health as a system-wide and scale linking property, designers will have to move from a detached perspective of culture as apart from nature and learning about nature, to a more holistic and participatory perspective of culture as a part of Nature and learning from Nature. This paper suggests that bionics and biomimicry represent two distinct approaches to 'design and nature' based on different conceptions of the relationship between nature and culture. An effective transition towards sustainability, mediated by design, will have to be informed by a holistic and participatory conception of nature and culture within a fundamentally interconnected and unpredictable complex dynamic system.


ABSTRACT This essay proposes a reorientation in postcolonial studies that takes account of the transcultural realities of the viral twenty-first century. This reorientation entails close attention to actual performances, their specific medial embeddedness, and their entanglement in concrete formal or informal material conditions. It suggests that rather than a focus on print and writing favoured by theories in the wake of the linguistic turn, performed lyrics and sounds may be better suited to guide the conceptual work. Accordingly, the essay chooses a classic of early twentieth-century digital music – M.I.A.'s 2003/2005 single "Galang" – as its guiding example. It ultimately leads up to a reflection on what Ravi Sundaram coined as "pirate modernity," which challenges us to rethink notions of artistic authorship and authority, hegemony and subversion, culture and theory in the postcolonial world of today.


Forest tenure reform has opened economic and livelihood opportunities for community forestry management through the devolution of management rights under broader decentralisation reforms. However, the transfer of rights and associated power to forest communities is usually partial. The view of property as composed of 'bundles of rights' allows for the disaggregation of rights transferred from government to local people. In practice, it is common that rights held by natural resource stakeholders encompass only part of the rights bundle. This partial transfer of rights shapes community forestry institutions and the manner in which they function. When communities and state agencies share responsibilities and benefits of forest management, they collaborate within co-management systems. Co-management systems are attractive to governments because they open avenues for local participation in resource governance and more equitable benefit-sharing while maintaining some level of state control. However, co-management systems can place a greater burden on community level actors without providing the corresponding benefits. As a result, co-management can fail to meet expectations. In response, the promotion of community forestry may require greater emphasis on adjusting forest regulatory frameworks, institutions, and agencies, to allow more freedom by community-level actors in developing forest management systems.


The development of biomarkers of susceptibility or sensitivity towards ionising radiation is important for the identification of individuals who may be at increased risk for the development of cancer after occupational, environmental or medical exposures. In this study we investigated the inter- and intra-individual variation of the MN assay and the G2 assay in irradiated lymphocytes to assess their suitability as biomarkers of susceptibility. For this, the G2 assay and the MN assay were performed on blood samples of 15 healthy individuals. For the MN assay Go lymphocytes were exposed to 3.5 Gy Co γ-rays either at high dose-rate (HDR) or low dose-rate (LDR). For the G2 assay lymphocytes were irradiated with a dose of 0.4 Gy Co γ-rays in G2 phase of the cell cycle. Two individuals were assayed nine times each in nine different experiments over a time period of one year. All samples were analysed by two scorers and no significant differences between them were observed using a paired t-test. The repeat experiments on blood samples of the same donor revealed that the inter-experimental/intra-individual coefficients of variation were not significantly different from the inter-individual coefficients of variation in both G2 and MN assay. As the intra-individual variability determines the assay reproducibility this would indicate that the assays are not able to detect real, reproducible differences in radiation sensitivity between normal individuals in the population. The repeat experiments further revealed that for some healthy donors a high value, defined as sensitive taking the 90 percentile as cut-off point to define sensitivity, is obtained only at one time point while the values obtained at the other time points were within the normal range (non-sensitive). Based on this one time point the individual would have been regarded as sensitive. Furthermore a donor identified as radiosensitive with the G2 assay in our initial experiments turned out to be normal when the assay was repeated. To conclude, our results show that a chromosomal aberration assay based on one blood sample may lead to erroneous conclusions with respect to the individual radiosensitivity of workers.


The article discusses and assesses the theoretical and conceptual approaches to diaspora research presented in this special section. By pursuing multiple forms of comparison, these contributions highlight several weak points inherent in the diaspora concept as it stands and demonstrate potentials for possible elaborations. Specific consideration then is given to the more detailed discussion of questions of power; the dynamics of processes of identification; and the relevance of specific positions inside wider ethnic hierarchies, sociospatial distribution patterns and demographic issues, and, finally, kinship ties and the reproduction of diasporic communities. The argument concludes with the main point that prevailing theoretical approaches in diaspora studies are not sufficient to analyze the communities in question. Instead, those approaches have to be combined with additional input from sociocultural anthropology's theorizing.


Dental cavity is the major problem among adults and children. Early detection of cavity helps to recover the natural functionalities of the tooth. Radiographic examination is used to identify the caries at the earliest stage. Radiographic image collected from the different source may contain noise. Noise should be reduced before doing the further process. Dental tooth has the different layers. They are dental bone, root, pulp, dentin and enamel. Dentist find difficult to identify the caries and its existence in the tooth layers. Segmentation is the technique used in the image processing to extract the region of interest. Layer wise segmentation helps the dentist to detect the caries and also help them to plan the treatment stage by stage. In this paper bite viewing radiography image is taken for segment the images in layer wise. Anisotropic diffusion filter is used as preprocessing technique to filter the noise presence in the image. Contrast enhancement technique is used to improve the quality of the image. Texture information is collected from the image to identify the pixel variation. Canny edge detection is used to detect the edges before segmenting the image in layer wise. Intensity range for the different layers of tooth is observed and the layer wise segmented results are obtained.


This paper presents new analytical equations, parametrized with respect to the number of converter phases, for multiphase isolated dc–dc topologies. This paper describes five multiphase isolated converter models, as well as their level of accuracy. Based on these new parametric models, a thorough comparative among various common high-power converter topologies is carried out, highlighting the best topology regarding efficiency, cost, and power density. The analytical results are firstly compared and verified using PLECS simulation software, and validated finally by experimental measurements with a 10-kW/20-kHz/500-V configurable laboratory prototype. Due to the low computation cost and accuracy, the developed analytical models provide important insights for optimization-based design methodologies. Furthermore, this paper highlights, depending on the targeted application and objectives, the benefits of each analyzed converter configuration.


Reversals of the geomagnetic field In the geological past are recorded globally in the natural remanent magnetization (NRM) of igneous and sedimentary rock sequences. The accurate and rei iable reconstruction of this record is the basis of magnetostratigraphy. The magnetostratigraphy of Late Miocene sediments at several locations in the Mediterranean area Is the main subject of this study.


Hybrid propulsion generally combines a liquid oxidizer with a solid fuel. Compared to solid or bi- liquid engines, this type of propulsion offers advantages in terms of cost and flexibility. For several years, ONERA has been providing expertise in this area, both in experimental and numerical simulations. Various hybrid rocket motors have been designed and tested on ground, including under low ambient pressure conditions and in flight. The Propulsion Laboratory unit of the DMAE uses fully instrumented engine breadboards in order to optimize the oxidizer/fuel pair, as well as the injection system and the combustion efficiency. In addition, 0D and 1D codes for engine design are
actively being developed. More recently, studies have been undertaken as part of the LEOP future satellite platforms, with the development of an innovative new combustion chamber.


In the present study, a novel, wearable textile based microfluidic device was developed that provides a non-invasive, rapid, semi-quantitative detection of the lactate level in simulated sweat solution. The potential application was envisioned to be a biosensor that can monitor an athlete's physical status during exercise. A photolithography technique was used for the fabrication of hydrophilic micro channels and reservoirs surrounded by hydrophobic barriers made from SU-8 negative photoresist. The reservoirs were functionalized by co-immobilization of lactate oxidase (LOX) and horseradish peroxidase (POX) enzymes. LOX uses L-(+)-Lactic acid as substrate and produces H2O2 which is a POX substrate. Then, POX oxidases H2O2 in the presence of 2,2′-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS) and results in color formation. The studies showed that excess amount of analyte presence resulted in analyte inhibition. It was also shown that analyte pH and temperature were effective on the color formation. For effective results, analyte pH and temperature should be ≥5℃ and 25–30℃, respectively. Lower pH and higher temperature values resulted in a decrease in the enzyme activity. The textile based biosensor system could make a semi-quantitative visual detection to differentiate between the normal (<5 mM) and high (≥5 mM) lactate level: while a high lactate level led to a denser purple color formation, normal levels led to a light purple formation and a green color started to be observed.


Eutrophic lakes are major contributors to global aquatic methane emissions. Methanotrophy, performed by methane oxidizing bacteria, results in the production of biomass, fermentation products and/or CO2, making methane‐derived carbon available to non‐methanotrophic organisms. Methanotrophs can co‐occur with methylotrophs which are expected to consume methane‐derived carbon. However, it is unknown if this interaction requires cell‐to‐cell contact, whether physicochemical factors affect this interaction, and what role this interaction may play in ecosystems and biogeochemical cycling in lakes. Here, we performed incubations of an enrichment culture obtained from a eutrophic lake with 13C‐labeled methane, revealing the transfer of methane‐derived carbon from the methanotroph Methylobacter sp. to a methylotroph of the genus Methylotenera. These microorganisms occurred both in mixed clusters and as single cells, indicating that their interaction does not require physical cell contact. In addition, the carbon transfer between the partners is dependent on the presence of nitrate, which is potentially used by Methylotenera sp. and in turn may affect the methane oxidation rate of Methylobacter sp. This interaction, and its dependence on nitrate, may have important implications for the carbon cycle in eutrophic lakes worldwide.


Abstract Most women feel confident taking the modern combined oestrogen-progestogen oral contraceptive pill (COCPs) but myths about these drugs still persist. Most non-contraceptive health benefits of COCPs are not widely appreciated, in spite of much evidence. Controversy still exists over the association between COCP use and breast cancer. Although slightly more breast cancers are detected in current COCP users they are less advanced in stage and less aggressive in behaviour. This article discusses the non-contraceptive benefits and uses of hormonal contraception.


As hard as we might try, Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography proves difficult
to peg: is the eponymous character a man or a woman? Is she thirty or three hundred
years old? And in terms of style, is the work a biography, a love letter, or a novel? Is it
possible to determine where its fiction stops and its non-fiction starts? Furthermore, it is
even desirable to draw this kind of distinct border around the text? Instead of trying to
find yet another way to categorize Orlando and Orlando, this essay uses reader-response
theory to examine Woolf's writing style as one that walks a middle ground between
polarizing and assuring, and the confusing tension wrought therein that makes Orlando a
functionally radical text. For as discomfiting as the reading of Orlando might be, the work
was Woolf's biggest commercial success to date: some 8,000 copies of the book sold
within the first six months. This thesis offers a map of how the text creates a location
wherein challenges to the urge to draw boundaries is acceptable – even enticing – rather
than off-putting. Woolf's use of strategically-placed, sophisticated rhetorical techniques
help readers scale the text's sex and gender nomadism as they move toward a space of
acceptance and knowability.


Conventional disk drive motors supported on ball bearings (BBs) cause nonrepeatable runout (NRRO) due to the surface imperfections on balls and raceways. NRRO is a source of track misregistration between head and disk that inhibits high track density in a hard disk drive. Fluid dynamic bearings with herringbone grooves either on the rotating or stationary surfaces are a suitable replacement for conventional ball bearings. Herringbone grooved bearings have considerably lower noise level than ball bearings and have better stability compared to plain journal bearings at concentric operating position. However, herringbone-grooved patterns are difficult to manufacture because groove depth is of the order of bearing clearance. The major limitation of the BBs is the direct contact between the rotating and stationary parts and also lack of damping effects. This present work attempts to overcome these drawbacks in BBs by eliminating the metal-to-metal contact using a layer of fluid film, and a theoretical analysis of stability characteristics of a floating BB is presented. Results indicate that there is an improvement in the stability of floating BB rotor systems with increase in outer to inner film clearance ratio (β) from 0.7 to 1.3, and with decrease in ratio of outer race radius to inner race radius (δ) from 3.0 to 1.2.


Chemokines are a family of low-molecular weight proteins that mediate their effects through binding with chemokine receptors (a group of seven trans-membrane spanning G-protein coupled receptors). Chemokines are well known for their role in leukocyte trafficking, although they also mediate a range of other physiological functions including cell proliferation, growth and differentiation. Chemokines are integral to the development and functioning of the immune system and are implicated in the pathogenesis of a wide range of diseases including autoimmune disorders, HIV infection and malignancies.

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) is a malignancy of the lymphoid system, which can affect any tissues in the body but has a predilection for the secondary lymphoid organs and the bone marrow. NHL represents a heterogeneous group of disorders with variations in presentation and prognosis. Whilst there have been improvements in overall survival in the last few decades following developments in treatment there is still a significant mortality associated with NHL as well as significant morbidity associated with the treatments required to control the disease or affect a cure.

There is increasing evidence that chemokines and their receptors play a role in the pathogenesis of NHL with increased chemokine receptor expression seen in certain subtypes. Chemokines have also been shown to influence prognosis in particular NHL subtypes. This thesis describes studies to examine the relationship between constitutive chemokine receptor expression and NHL subtype with subsequent correlation between chemokine receptor expression and outcome. Results from studies on clinical samples obtained from patients with a range of B-cell NHL subtypes revealed significant differences in chemokine receptor expression between subtypes. Predominantly these differences were noted with the receptors CCR4 and CCR7. CCR4 has previously been examined in relation to T-cell lymphomas and high CCR4 expression has been associated with an adverse prognosis in adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma. However, systematic examination of CCR4 in B-cell NHL has not been done before. In this study CCR4 expression was seen in samples of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), MALT lymphoma and Burkitt's lymphoma. Furthermore high CCR4 expression was associated with a significantly improved survival in patients with DLBCL. CCR7 expression was significantly higher in cases of MCL and chronic lymphocytic lymphoma/small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL/SLL), this however did not equate to differences in outcome. The high expression of CCR7 in MCL and CLL/SLL does however make this receptor an ideal target for the development of targeted therapies.

Further studies in this thesis describe strategies used to target the chemokine system with cytotoxic agents. CCR7 was chosen for targeting experiments due to its restricted expression (naive T-cells, memory T-cells, dendritic cells and subsets of B-cells) in normal tissues, the fact that it controls homing of leukocytes to lymph nodes, and that is the second most commonly reported chemokine receptor detected in cancers. The first approach for targeting the chemokine system used radio-labelled chemokines to induce cytotoxicity in cells expressing the cognate receptor. Unfortunately, the results from this were not conclusive and further studies are required to explore this approach.

The second approach described in this thesis entailed the potential use of oncolytic adenoviral gene therapy. This approach requires the redirection of adenoviral tropism from the coxsackie and adenovirus receptor (CAR) and through CCR7. This was successfully achieved in cell lines engineered to express and those endogenously expressing CCR7 by 'shrouding' the virus in CCL19. However, background infection was high and this led to the engineering of an adenoviral vector incorporating a peptide within the viral knob protein to allow for more efficient 'shrouding' of the virus and thus more efficient redirection of the virus. However, final experiments with this vector were not performed due to time constraints.

The final part of this thesis relates to the characterisation of EL4 cells (a murine T-cell lymphoma cell line) for use as a potential in-vivo mouse model for targeting experiments. Following injection into the flank of C57/BL6 with these cells, measurable tumours develop. It was demonstrated that this cell line expressed CCR7, and finally after a number of modifications, it was shown that adenoviral tropism could be redirected through chemokine receptors on the surface of these cells.

In summary the results in this thesis shows for the first time that CCR4 is expressed across a number of B-cell NHL subtypes and that this is associated with outcome in DLBCL. Results also demonstrate that therapeutic targeting of CCR7 is a reasonable therapeutic approach in NHL. In addition, redirection of oncolytic adenoviral vectors through chemokine receptors provides a potential strategy for obtaining this targeted therapy. Finally, EL4 cells have the potential to be used as an in-vivo mouse model for CCR7 targeted therapies.


here is a pedagogic chasm between monomodal literacy practices of the past, still dominating most children's school experience, and the multimodal, dynamic publishing practices that children increasingly routinely engage in with new media and online spaces. This paper will utilise the findings of three case studies, drawing from them the implications each has for developing a pedagogy that best reflects new kinds of practices within digital and multimodal literacies. Using the knowledge gleaned from each of the case studies, this paper will begin to explore what is required for a meaningful transformative pedagogy of digital literacies: a pedagogy which offers students opportunities to use learning to become active citizens beyond the classroom and into their future lives.


During the last decade we have witnessed a rapid growth of Web 2.0 technologies and especially the so-called online social media. Many people, from every age group but especially teenagers, participate in online communities, making new friends and exhibiting themselves and their interests in a huge international audience. It is extremely important for educational practitioners and researchers to successfully incorporate the dynamics of web 2.0 and social media in their practices. This is especially true for the teachers of K-12 education. The main aim of this study is to examine the factors that may affect teachers' behavioral intention to use social media in their classes. Very little is known from teachers' perspective and empirical work isvery limited, especially from Southern European countries. This research was setup in order to develop and test a seven-factor model to explain the Greek teachers' behavioral intention to use social media in their classes. Findings reveal that Experience, Perceived Usefulness and Trialability have a significant impact while Subjective Norms and Perceived Ease of Use have a more weak impact on teacher's behavioral intention.


As national reform documents and movements in the United States, such as Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), push K-12 educators to begin to include engineering and integration of the STEM disciplines, there is a need to create curricula that meet a multitude of different standards. Additionally, there is a need to engage a more diverse population of students to pursue STEM careers. The 6 th grade curriculum presented here focuses on an example of a teacher-created integrated STEM curriculum that combines girl-friendly instructional strategies (Haussler et al., 1998; Newbill & Cennamo, 2008) with an integrated STEM framework (Moore et al., 2014). An engineering design challenge that asks students to create a prototype of a watercraft used by the National Guard to rescue people during floods engages students in learning various physics concepts (forces, buoyancy, volume, and maximum capacity). In this article, we describe the lessons of the unit with respect to the frameworks, as well as key areas that particularly impacted 6 th grade girls and boys.


Text describes action on various war fronts: Russia, Italy, Air offensive, Southwest Pacific, China-Burma, Submarines, Greenland.

Maps: Eastern Front, Advance toward Rome, Southwest Pacific.

Photographs: Moving into Lae, New Guinea; Jap bases in the South and Southwest Pacific; Rocket glider used against Allied ships during the invasion of Italy; Germans trying to hold up the advance of the Allied Fifth Army on the Naples-Benevento Road fastened these aerial bombs to notched trees; Italian bombs unloaded from a rail car at an airfield captured in Italy.

Back: U.S. Army ribbons representing decorations and awards. Includes a large color illustration of the Medal of Honor.


This article examines the legal status of the corporation in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations have political free speech rights equivalent to natural persons. In Citizens United, Justice Kennedy wrote that corporations were disadvantaged persons because the government had intruded upon their freedom of speech. The Citizens United majority portrays a misleading image of corporations. It is true most corporations are owned by small groups of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size and revenues. But what the Citizens United majority conveniently ignores is one particular attribute which has existed for at least one hundred years — that exceptionally large corporations, controlled by a handful of individuals, have amassed great quantities of wealth and power which dwarf the resources of the individual electorate, as well as the corporations' own minority shareholders, ultimately diluting individuals' political voice. We conclude that with its newly acquired constitutional rights, the corporation is perhaps now ready to dominate not just commerce, but the political system as well.


People from across the African continent continue to make their way to South Africa to escape violence and poverty in their own countries. South Africa is also seen as a beacon of stability and economic growth on the continent. There has been growing concern that the illegal influx of foreigners in search of a better life, and the failure by the South African Government to control its porous borders, have led to a high degree of animosity and resentment, directed at foreigners. International law and South African law affirm that South Africa is a constitutional state that subscribes to the principle of legality, an incident of the rule of law. It is against this backdrop that The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) handed down a landmark ruling in Rahim v The Minister of Home Affairs ((965/2013) [2015] ZASCA 92 (29 May 2015)), where the Court awarded damages to illegal immigrants who were illegally held by the Department of Home Affairs, following a failure by the Department to designate a proper holding facility for non-citizens in South Africa. One of the implications of this judgment is that the Department will have to conduct a proper determination of holding facilities so as not to be liable for claims such as the one in the present case.


Abstract We present an extensive breakdown of the auction design space that captures the essential similarities and differences of many auction mechanisms in a format more descriptive and useful than simple taxonomies. This parametrization serves as an organizational framework in which to classify work within the field and uncovers parameter combinations corresponding to novel mechanisms. The structured characterization of auction rules can be exploited for the modular design of configurable auction servers. It also facilitates the communication of auction rules to software agents, enabling the automation of flexible market-based negotiation. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C70, D44.


Based on a cognitive notion of neo-additive capacities reflecting likelihood insensitivity with respect to survival chances, we construct a Choquet Bayesian learning model over the life-cycle that generates a motivational notion of neo-additive survival beliefs expressing ambiguity attitudes. We embed these neo-additive survival beliefs as decision weights in a Choquet expected utility life-cycle consumption model and calibrate it with data on subjective survival beliefs from the Health and Retirement Study. Our quantitative analysis shows that agents with calibrated neo-additive survival beliefs (i) save less than originally planned, (ii) exhibit undersaving at younger ages, and (iii) hold larger amounts of assets in old age than their rational expectations counterparts who correctly assess their survival chances. Our neo-additive life-cycle model can therefore simultaneously accommodate three important empirical findings on household saving behavior.


This paper shares the authors' experience regarding the Forces Frozen workshop developed in MIT's Building Technology Program, within the Department of Architecture. This one-week outdoor workshop invites students to physically explore the world of structural ice shells. Ice shells are primarily created by a procedure that takes advantage of the symmetrical behavior of tension and compression, with the following steps: (1) hanging fabric sheets into the desired inverted shape, (2) spraying the fabric with water, and (3) flip the shell upside-down once they become rigid with ice. Because the initial dry fabric was stable in tension under self weight, the flipped geometry remains stable as well, but in compression. The workshop has been found to be an efficient and effective way to teach architecture and engineering students the statics and dynamics of shells in a stimulating and joyful environment.


Suppose that advanced civilizations, separated by a cosmological distance and time, wish to maximize their access to cosmic resources by rapidly expanding into the universe. What sort of boundary forms between their expanding domains, and how does the presence of one limit the ambitions of another? We describe a general case for any expansion speed, separation distance, and time. We then specialize to the main question of interest. How are the future prospects for a young and ambitious civilization altered if they can observe the presence of another at a cosmological distance? We treat cases involving the observation of one or two expanding domains. In the single-observation case, we find that almost any plausible detection will be limiting to some extent. Also, practical technological limits to expansion speed (well below the speed of light) play an interesting role. If a domain is visible at the time one embarks on expansion, there exists an optimum value for the "practical speed limit," and if the speed limit is much higher than optimal, one's future will be severely limited. In the case of two visible domains, it is possible to be "trapped" by them if the practical speed limit is high enough and their angular separation in the sky is large enough, i.e. one's expansion in any direction will terminate at a boundary with the two visible civilizations.


This study investigates the value of techniques of neutralization in understanding how people involved in marginal to widely deviant behaviors perform identity work. Based on 33 in-depth interviews with older adult gamblers, we show how techniques of neutralization are used to align personal and social identities. We describe the techniques of neutralizations our participants use along a continuum of gambling involvement, showing how techniques differ in variety and content and are contingent on larger narratives about appropriate behaviors, identities, and selves operating in contemporary society. Our research helps to refine sociologists' understandings of relationships between levels of involvement in deviant behaviors and identity work.


A regional climate model, NIES/CCSR RAMS, was used with the ECMWF objective analysis data as boundary conditions to reproduce the precipitation pattern over East Asia in June, including that accompanying the Baiu front. In the control experiment, the simulated precipitation pattern was unrealistic, mainly in two respects: precipitation over the Baiu front was too weak, and strong precipitation was found over the North Pacific subtropical high at around 20°N. According to the ECMWF data, strong potential instability is maintained over the subtropical high, under which condition, the cumulus parameterization used in the model predicts strong precipitation to stabilize the atmosphere. Because the lower free atmosphere is very dry over the subtropical high, it is conjectured that the development of deep cumulus convection is suppressed by this dry air in the real atmosphere. When the cumulus parameterization was modified to include this assumption, the intensity of precipitation over the Baiu front as well as the unrealistic precipitation pattern over the subtropical high was clearly ameliorated. The intensification of precipitation over the Baiu front is considered to be due to the increased water vapor transport to the Baiu front, and the decreased stability with respect to the moist convection around the Baiu front. In semi-prognostic experiments with CCSR/NIES AGCM, this modification was found to be also effective in many other parts of the globe. Because problems in precipitation distribution similar to that discussed in the present study are found in many other climate models, the modification of cumulus parameterization suggested here could also be effective in those models.


The soybean aphid, Aphis glycines Matsumura, has become established as a serious pest of soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr., since it was first found in North America in 2000 and has caused millions of dollars in economic losses. While the application of chemical insecticides is the only means to control the soybean aphid at present, genetic resistance to the aphid was recently discovered in soybean. A single dominant gene named Rag1 that controls resistance to the soybean aphid was found in the cultivar Dowling. Another cultivar found to have strong antibiosis-type resistance to the soybean aphid was Jackson. The primary objective of this study was to determine the inheritance of resistance to the soybean aphid in Jackson. Segregation of resistance was analyzed in F2 and among F2–derived F3 (F2:3) families produced from crosses between Jackson and the susceptible soybean cultivar Loda. Segregation of F2 plants was 247 resistant to 97 susceptible and fit a 3:1 genetic ratio (P 5 0.17). Segregation among F2:3 families was not clear because a number of susceptible F2 plants did not produce a sufficient amount of seed for progeny testing. Ignoring the susceptible class, the segregation of F2:3 families fit a 1:2 (all resistant/segregating) ratio. These results indicated that a single dominant gene controlled resistance in Jackson. There is no known genetic relationship between Jackson and Dowling. The genetic relationship between Rag1 in Dowling and the gene in Jackson is unknown.


Realist scholars have long debated the question of how much power states need to feel secure. Offensive realists claim that states should constantly seek to increase their power. Defensive realists argue that accumulating too much power can be self-defeating. Proponents of hegemonic stability theory contend that the accumulation of capabilities in one state can exert a stabilizing effect on the system. The three schools describe different points along the power continuum. When a state is weak, accumulating power increases its security. This is approximately the situation described by offensive realists. A state that continues to accumulate capabilities will eventually trigger a balancing reaction that puts its security at risk. This scenario accords with defensive realist assumptions. Finally, when the state becomes too powerful to balance, its opponents bandwagon with it, and the state's security begins to increase again. This is the situation described by hegemonic stability theory. These three stages delineate a modified parabolic relationship between power and security. As a state moves along the power continuum, its security increases up to a point, then decreases, and finally increases again. This modified parabolic relationship allows scholars to synthesize previous realist theories into a single framework.


We conducted magnetotelluric prospecting in the Taichung area to investigate subsurface resistivity structures of the Chelungpu fault and the resistivity of rock formations. The results indicate that the Chelungpu fault is a complex fault system consisting of two major fault zones, several fracture zones, and back thrust. The two major fault zones, the basal and the Chi-Chi fault zone are about 800 m apart on the ground and converge to a narrow band at a depth of 3000 m. The fault zones are not smooth, composed of ramps and platforms with an average eastward dipping angle of 35° - 37° within the depth of 3000 m. In the shallower region, the basal fault zone has developed along the boundary of the Toukoshan Formation (resistivity: 200 - 400 Ω−m) at the footwall and the Neogene formations on the hanging wall, where the Cholan Formation, the Chinshiu Shale, and the Kueichulai Formation have respective resistivity mainly in the ranges: 40 - 100, 8 - 60, and 50 - 150 Ω−m. While the Chi-Chi fault zone has developed along the weak layers of the Cholan Formation where resistivity is lower than the unsheared block. At the TCDP site, the use of MT soundings, prior to TCDP drilling, predicted the position of the Chi-Chi fault zone to be at a depth between 1100 m and 1250 m. Drilling subsequently confirmed this result, indicating MT sounding to be a reliable approach in revealing subsurface structures.


As oil and gas development increases in western states, states are responding at different speeds to protect human health and the environment. Colorado and Wyoming are recognized as having taken relatively early action to regulate air pollution emissions from oil and gas development, with Wyoming adopting its first sector-specific requirements in 1999. In contrast, New Mexico and Utah have been relatively slow to act. Furthermore, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not adopt emissions standards for most oil and gas production activities until 2012, when it relied on Colorado and Wyoming as proving grounds for control technology. The regulatory history in these four western states shows that concern about ozone nonattainment was an important driver for control requirements in Colorado and Wyoming. These two states also have a history of relatively stringent pre-construction permitting requirements for small sources. In some areas, National Environmental Policy Act requirements for cumulative impact assessment drove adoption of tighter controls to mitigate impacts of growth. Moving forward, federal emissions standards will even out control requirements for new sources across the western states. However, control efforts that go beyond the 2012 federal standards will likely be needed in ozone nonattainment areas in western Wyoming, northeastern Utah, Colorado's Front Range, and in Indian Country. Further efforts will also be needed to address greenhouse gas emissions including methane.


Artificial Neural Networks are functionally equivalent to special-purpose computers. Their inter-neuronal connection weights represent the learnt Neural Program that instructs the networks on how to compute the data. However, without storing Neural Programs, they are restricted to only one, overwriting learnt programs when trained on new data. Here we design Neurocoder, a new class of general-purpose neural networks in which the neural network "codes" itself in a data-responsive way by composing relevant programs from a set of shareable, modular programs stored in external memory. This time, a Neural Program is efficiently treated as data in memory. Integrat-ing Neurocoder into current neural architectures, we demonstrate new capacity to learn modular programs, reuse simple programs to build complex ones, handle pattern shifts and remember old programs as new ones are learnt, and show substantial performance improvement in solving object recognition, playing video games and continual learning tasks.


This highly interesting book studies the cultural context of modernisation of middle-class Muslim women in late 19th and 20th century Bengal. Its frames of reference are the Bengal 'Awakening', the Reform Movements Brahmo/Hindu and Muslim and the Women's Question as articulated in material and ideological terms throughout the period. Tracing the emergence of the modern Muslim gentlewomen, the bhadramahila, starting in 1876 when Nawab Faizunnesa Chaudhurani published her first book and ending with the foundation in 1939 of The Lady Brabourne College, the book gives an excellent analysis of the rise of a Muslim woman's public sphere and broadens our knowledge of Bengali social history in the colonial period.... Download ebook, read file pdf The World of Muslim Women in Colonial Bengal, 1876-1939


Proximal interphalangeal joint (PIPj) flexion contractures are a common clinical problem seen by hand therapists and orthopaedic surgeons after various types of injury to the finger. Conservative treatment is preferable over surgery but a variety of pre-fabricated and custom-made orthoses have been proposed in the literature. The aim of the present paper is to share our 15 year experience in treating PIPj flexion contractures using 2 different custom-fabricated orthoses and the exercise regimen used to preserve maximal PIPj passive and active extension obtained through the orthotic intervention. Synthetic serial casting and static-progressive splinting are in our opinion the best choices to treat even the most resilient PIPj flexion contractures as they both offer maximal Total-End-Range-Time (TERT) and minimize functional impediment of the hand while they are in use. Either approach offers advantages and set-backs that need to be discussed with the patient once his or her functional demands and ADL/leisure limitations have been identified.


Proteomics aspires to elucidate the functions of all proteins. Protein microarrays provide an important step by enabling high-throughput studies of displayed proteins. However, many functional assays of proteins include untethered intermediates or products, which could frustrate the use of planar arrays at very high densities because of diffusion to neighboring features. The nucleic acid programmable protein array (NAPPA) is a robust in situ synthesis method for producing functional proteins just-in-time, which includes steps with diffusible intermediates. We determined that diffusion of expressed proteins led to cross-binding at neighboring spots at very high densities with reduced interspot spacing. To address this limitation, we have developed an innovative platform using photolithographically etched discrete silicon nanowells and used NAPPA as a test case. This arrested protein diffusion and cross-binding. We present confined high density protein expression and display, as well as functional protein-protein interactions, in 8000 nanowell arrays. This is the highest density of individual proteins in nanovessels demonstrated on a single slide. We further present proof of principle results on ultrahigh density protein arrays capable of up to 24000 nanowells on a single slide.


Executive Summary We are seeing a shift in the investment paradigm from return-based to risk-based portfolio allocation. In asset allocation, the equal risk contribution (ERC) approach gains rapidly in popularity: portfolio weights are dynamically set such that the asset classes contribute equally to the portfolio risk. As such, the portfolio loads automatically less on the more risky asset and, by diversifying across asset classes, portfolio drawdowns are reduced. 2 When the equity subportfolio is allocated based on market capitalization weights, the ERC portfolio allocation tends to by dominated by the bond allocation. While the resulting portfolio has a low risk, it is in today's market regime of low interest rates, also characterized by only moderate expected returns. For this reason, American fund managers have advocated to overlay the ERC portfolio with leverage. Such a leveraged risk-diversified portfolio is commonly referred to as a risk-parity strategy. This white paper explores two leverage-free alternatives to increase tactically the equity allocation and preserve a completely risk-based asset allocation approach, which dynamically adjusts to the changing risk regimes. The first one consists in replacing the market capitalization weighted equity index with a low risk equity index. In fact, in equity world, a low risk objective seems to emerge as the dominant approach in risk-based portfolio allocation. This trend is supported by a whole stream of recent theoretical and empirical research showing that particular features in the return distribution underpin the so-called " low volatility anomaly " that risk optimised portfolios deliver higher risk-adjusted returns than market capitalization weighted indices. The second suggestion to increase the equity allocation is to deviate from an equal risk contribution objective to a 60/40 risk allocation strategy. In contrast to the 60/40 constant mix portfolio, the 60/40 risk allocation portfolio reacts to changes in the relative risk by automatically downweighting the more risky asset and has therefore still a low overall risk. These two modifications increase significantly the weight of the equity portion in the portfolio, while still keeping the total risk of the dynamically rebalanced portfolios at a low level.


A genome-wide screening for loss of heterozygosity (LOH), a marker for possible involvement of tumor suppressor genes, was conducted in 53 children with de novo acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). A total of 177 highly polymorphic microsatellite repeat markers were used in locus-specific polymerase chain reactions. This comprehensive allelotyping employed flow-sorted cells from diagnostic samples and whole-genome amplification of DNA from small, highly purified samples. Nineteen regions of allelic loss in 17 patients (32%) were detected on chromosome arms 1q, 3q, 5q, 7q (n = 2), 9q (n = 4), 11p (n = 2), 12p (n = 3), 13q (n = 2), 16q, 19q, and Y. The study revealed a degree of allelic loss underestimated by routine cytogenetic analysis, which failed to detect 9 of these LOH events. There was no evidence of LOH by intragenic markers for p53, Nf1, or CBFA2/AML1. Most lymphocytes lacked the deletions, which were detected only in the leukemic myeloid blast population. Analysis of patients' clinical and biologic characteristics indicated that the presence of LOH was associated with a white blood cell count of 20 x 10(9)/L or higher but was not correlated with a shorter overall survival. The relatively low rate of LOH observed in this study compared with findings in solid tumors and in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia and adult AML suggests that tumor suppressor genes are either infrequently involved in the development of pediatric de novo AML or are inactivated by such means as methylation and point mutations. Additional study is needed to determine whether these regions of LOH harbor tumor suppressor genes and whether specific regions of LOH correlate with clinical characteristics. (Blood. 2001;98:1188-1194)


Abstract Rusa unicolor (Kerr, 1792), or sambar, is the largest Oriental deer. Seven subspecies occur in varied habitats and elevations from India and Sri Lanka throughout southeastern Asia. Body mass and antler length decrease from west to east. R. unicolor is considered ancestral relative to the form of its male-only antlers and social behavior. Populations are vulnerable because of overexploitation for subsistence and markets in meat and antlers. R. unicolor was elevated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources from no status in 2006 to "Vulnerable" in 2008 because of >50% decline in many populations over the past 3 generations. It is well represented in zoos and private collections and is introduced in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States.


Abstract The knowledge of root-knot nematodes behavior in different habitats and especially the knowledge of their reaction to major ecologic factors (humidity, temperature) are important for the assessment of pathogen potential in a specific area, being at the same time an important criterion for understanding the behavior towards host plants. The temperature is the most important factor, not just in the development of the entire biological cycle of root-knot nematodes, but at the same time it also affects their distribution, spread and survival under thermic stress conditions (excessive heat or cold). Alongside with the water and oxygen, the temperature is the triggering factor of hatching and running all stages until the adult stage. The articles aims to determine the survival of juveniles stages for Meloidogyne species, in the absence of host plants, and by exposing second stage juveniles to different temperatures. The juveniles survival and mobility decreases quite much at relative low temperatures (4°C and 10°C). Forward movements, mobility, hatching and lifetime were accentuated at higher temperatures (20°C) for a few weeks, so that after a period to decrease drastically (in 10 and 12 week) for the species considered for the study.


Scratch assays are in-vitro methods for studying cell migration. In these experiments, a scratch is made on a cell monolayer and recolonisation of the scratched region is imaged to quantify cell migration rates. Typically, scratch assays are modelled by reaction diffusion equations depicting cell migration by Fickian diffusion and modelling proliferation by a logistic term. In a recent paper (Jin, W. et al. Bull Math Biol (2017)), the authors observed experimentally that during the early stage of the recolonisation process, there is a disturbance phase where proliferation is not logistic, and this is followed by a growth phase where proliferation appears to be logistic. The authors did not identify the precise mechanism that causes the disturbance phase but showed that ignoring it can lead to incorrect parameter estimates. The aim of this work is to show that a non-linear age-structured population model can account for the two phases of proliferation in scratch assays. The model consists of an age-structured cell cycle model of a cell population, coupled with an ordinary differential equation describing the resource concentration dynamics in the substrate. The model assumes a resource-dependent cell cycle threshold age, above which cells are able to proliferate. By studying the dynamics of the full system in terms of the subpopulations of cells that can proliferate and the ones that can not, we are able to find conditions under which the model captures the two-phase behaviour. Through numerical simulations we are able to show that the resource concentration in the substrate regulates the biphasic dynamics.


Abstract. The spatial detail and updating frequency of land cover data are important factors influencing land surface dynamic monitoring applications in high spatial resolution scale. However, the fragmentized patches and seasonal variable of some land cover types (e. g. small crop field, wetland) make it labor-intensive and difficult in the generation of land cover data. Utilizing the high spatial resolution multi-temporal image data is a possible solution. Unfortunately, the spatial and temporal resolution of available remote sensing data like Landsat or MODIS datasets can hardly satisfy the minimum mapping unit and frequency of current land cover mapping / updating at the same time. The generation of high resolution time series may be a compromise to cover the shortage in land cover updating process. One of popular way is to downscale multi-temporal MODIS data with other high spatial resolution auxiliary data like Landsat. But the usual manner of downscaling pixel based on a window may lead to the underdetermined problem in heterogeneous area, result in the uncertainty of some high spatial resolution pixels. Therefore, the downscaled multi-temporal data can hardly reach high spatial resolution as Landsat data. A spiral based method was introduced to downscale low spatial and high temporal resolution image data to high spatial and high temporal resolution image data. By the way of searching the similar pixels around the adjacent region based on the spiral, the pixel set was made up in the adjacent region pixel by pixel. The underdetermined problem is prevented to a large extent from solving the linear system when adopting the pixel set constructed. With the help of ordinary least squares, the method inverted the endmember values of linear system. The high spatial resolution image was reconstructed on the basis of high spatial resolution class map and the endmember values band by band. Then, the high spatial resolution time series was formed with these high spatial resolution images image by image. Simulated experiment and remote sensing image downscaling experiment were conducted. In simulated experiment, the 30 meters class map dataset Globeland30 was adopted to investigate the effect on avoid the underdetermined problem in downscaling procedure and a comparison between spiral and window was conducted. Further, the MODIS NDVI and Landsat image data was adopted to generate the 30m time series NDVI in remote sensing image downscaling experiment. Simulated experiment results showed that the proposed method had a robust performance in downscaling pixel in heterogeneous region and indicated that it was superior to the traditional window-based methods. The high resolution time series generated may be a benefit to the mapping and updating of land cover data.


Intrinsic evolution has been shown to be capable of exploiting the physical properties of materials to solve problems, however most researchers have chosen to limit themselves to using standard electronic components. However, these components are human designed and intentionally have predictable responses, so they may not be the most suitable physical devices to use when using a stochastic search technique. Indeed allowing computer controlled evolution (CCE) to manipulate novel physical media might allow much greater scope for the discovery of unconventional solutions. Last year the authors demonstrated, for the first time, that CCE could manipulate liquid crystal to perform computational tasks (i.e frequency discrimination, robot control). In this paper, we demonstrate that it is also possible to evolve logic gates in liquid crystal.


Spectral, temporal, and coherence properties of supercontinuum (SC) generation in a microstructure fiber were experimentally studied with low-peak-power femtosecond pump pulses. By a spectral interferometry approach, the degree of mutual (axial) spectral coherence was observed to be low for solitons with a pump wavelength region close to the zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) and was observed to be high for the solitons with a pump wavelength region far from the ZDW. The generation of multiple frequency channels was experimentally demonstrated by dual time-delayed low-peak-power pump pulses near and far from the ZDW for possible application in a wavelength-division-multiplexing network.


This document defines mobility and multihoming extensions to the Host
Identity Protocol (HIP). Specifically, this document defines a general
"LOCATOR" parameter for HIP messages that allows for a HIP host to
notify peers about alternate addresses at which it may be reached.
This document also defines elements of procedure for mobility of a HIP
host -- the process by which a host dynamically changes the primary
locator that it uses to receive packets. While the same LOCATOR
parameter can also be used to support end-host multihoming, detailed
procedures are left for further study. This memo defines an
Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.


Stable isotopes are valuable biogeochemical markers for solving problems faced by society today, such as distinguishing authentic from adulterated foods and beverages or tracing the origins of illicit drugs. Hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in water exhibit distinct continental patterns (isoscapes), which provide useful region-of-origin information. We ourselves reflect the stable isotope ratios of the water we drink and the food we eat: our hair records any isotopic changes to our diets, which can often be related to location. This latter aspect can be of interest to law enforcement in determining the origins and travel histories of unidentified murder victims.


microRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that regulate target gene expression. It is known that miRNA-107 (miR-107) promotes cancer invasion and metastasis. However, the relationship between clinicopathological factors and the prognostic significance of miR-107 for gastric cancer patients remains elusive. In this study, we evaluated the prognostic value of miR-107 using tissue samples from gastric cancer patients. Furthermore, the relationship between miR-107 and the mRNA levels of its target gene DICER1 was examined. The expression levels of miR-107 and DICER1 mRNA in tumor tissues and adjacent normal tissues of 161 gastric cancer patients were examined (TNM stage I, 29 patients; stage II, 31 patients; stage III, 51 patients and stage IV, 50 patients). miR-107 levels were measured by TaqMan microRNA assays, and DICER1 mRNA levels were measured by the TaqMan real-time RT-PCR method. In the analysis by real-time PCR-based miRNA arrays using pooled RNA samples from five gastric cancer patients, expression of miR-107, miR-21, miR-196a, miR-26b, miR-9, miR-142-3p, miR-30b, miR-150, miR-191 and miR-17 was found to be upregulation. The mean expression level of miR-107 was significantly higher in the tumor tissues compared to that of normal tissues. In the comparison of clinicopathological factors, miR-107 expression showed significant association with depth of tumor invasion, lymph node metastasis and stage. In Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis, overall survival rates (OS) and disease-free survival rates (DFS) of patients with high miR-107 expression were significantly worse than those of patients with low miR-107 expression. In the Cox multivariate analysis, it was shown that miR-107 expression in gastric cancer tissues was an independent prognostic factor for OS and DFS. Significant inverse correlations were demonstrated between miR-107 and DICER1 mRNA. Our results indicate that miR-107 may be useful as an effective biomarker for prediction of a poor prognosis in gastric cancer patients.


Microscale cooling to date relies largely on passive on-chip cooling in order to move heat from hot spots to alternate sites. Such passive cooling devices include capillary pump loops (CPL), heat pipes, and thermosiphons. Recent developments for active cooling systems include thermal electric coolers (TECs) for heat removal. This paper focuses on the design of an active microscale closed loop cooling system that uses a Rankine vapor compression cycle cooling system. In this design, a rotary compressor will generate the high pressure required for efficient cooling and will circulate the working fluid to move heat away from chip level hot spots to the ambient. The rotary compressor will leverage technology gained from the Rotary Engine Power System (REPS) program at the UC Berkeley, most specifically the 367 mm3 displacement platform. The advantage of a Wankel (Maillard) compressor is that it provides six compression strokes per revolution rather than a single compression stroke common to other popular compressors such as the rolling piston. The current Wankel compressor design will achieve a theoretical compression ratio of 8:1. The ARCTIC (A Rotary Compressor Thermally Insulated μCooler) system will be a microscale hybrid system consisting of some microfabricated (or MEMS) components including microchannels, in plane MEMS valves, and potentially MEMS temperature, pressure and flow sensors integrated with mesoscale, traditionally machined steel components, including the compressor itself. The system is designed to remove between 25-35 W of heat at 1000 rpm using R-134a but the system is easily scaleable through a speed increase or decrease of the compressor. Further, the current compressor design has a theoretical coefficient of performance (C.O.P.) of approximately 2, a significant improvement over comparable TECs with C.O.P.s of approximately .05-.1. Finally, a thermal circuit analysis determines that the time constant to achieve refrigeration temperature in 12 seconds is possible.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


I assume Harry Lawson has always had the ability to stimulate. Certainly in the Oxford of the early 1950's, he stood almost alone. With the exception of linguistic philosophy and Roman law, the Honour School of Jurisprudence was committed to traditional legal scholarship. For those who cared about the common law and its institutions, and were anxious to see what lay "out there" in related disciplines, or even in what we naively believed to be the real world, the Lawson seminars at Brasenose became a "must." In different ways, through these seminars and his other teaching, Lawson must have inspired generations of undergraduates and graduates to begin asking the difficult questions: to think in an informal way about the law in context, and, in a more formal sense, to explore the boundaries of law and history and law and social sciences. Insofar as I have found myself able to ask questions about these relationships, I lmow I owe a great deal to the Professor of Comparative Law.


The Appalachian Trail is the longest continuous footpath in the world. Its 2,140 miles run through 14 states-from Georgia to Maine-and vastly different natural and social environments, from the solitary splendor of mountain crags to the genial slopes frequented by dayhikers and scout packs. Each year, more than three million visitors enjoy the diverse scenery and cultures of the trail, united by a common appreciation for the outdoors. A lively and evocative introduction to this national treasure, The Appalachian Trail Reader collects stories, poems, and essays that reflect this wilderness trail across both time and geography. Here are the works of both well-known writers and anonymous raconteurs, including Henry David Thoreau, James Dickey, Aldo Leopold, Washington Irving, James MacGregor Burns, Richard Wilbur, and many others, as well as excerpts from the diaries and letters of modern day visitors. Hikers' private journals stand next to scientists' close observations of the natural world, and these readings mingle with poets' evocations of meaningful music heard in the wind, in birdsong, or in the babbling brooks. Here, too, are historians, who remind us of how Appalachian culture developed, and early explorers, reporting the thrill of seeing uncharted territory and wildlife for the first time. Taken as a whole, this patchwork quilt of voices both eloquent and raw offers a surprisingly varied pattern of appreciation for the wilds of the Appalachians. With the addition of maps of the trail and photographs of its majesty, The Appalachian Trail Reader presents a rich introduction to the trail for those planning a trip, and a vivid scrapbook for those who've already visited. Originally conceived as an antidote to the competitive, fast-paced, and increasingly urban civilization that America was becoming, the Appalachian Trail is more than an experience of geology and natural history; indeed, it is a vast open-air cathedral where the emotions and the senses unite. The Appalachian Trail Reader bears out this spirit, offering a heart-felt appreciation of one of our greatest natural resources while it presents an opportunity to escape the stresses of everyday life and revel in the inestimable value of a wilderness experience.


This paper considers the problem of motion planning for a car-like robot (i.e., a mobile robot with a nonholonomic constraint whose turning radius is lower-bounded). We present a fast and exact planner for our mobile robot model, based upon recursive subdivision of a collision-free path generated by a lower-level geometric planner that ignores the motion constraints. The resultant trajectory is optimized to give a path that is of near-minimal length in its homotopy class. Our claims of high speed are supported by experimental results for implementations that assume a robot moving amid polygonal obstacles. The completeness and the complexity of the algorithm are proven using an appropriate metric in the configuration space R/sup 2//spl times/S/sup 1/ of the robot. This metric is defined by using the length of the shortest paths in the absence of obstacles as the distance between two configurations. We prove that the new induced topology and the classical one are the same. Although we concentrate upon the car-like robot, the generalization of these techniques leads to new theoretical issues involving sub-Riemannian geometry and to practical results for nonholonomic motion planning. >


Scientists use high-dimensional measurement assays to detect and prioritize regions of strong signal in a spatially organized domain. Examples include finding methylation enriched genomic regions using microarrays and identifying active cortical areas using brain-imaging. The most common procedure for detecting potential regions is to group together neighboring sites where the signal passed a threshold. However, one needs to account for the selection bias induced by this opportunistic procedure to avoid diminishing effects when generalizing to a population. In this paper, we present a model and a method that permit population inference for these detected regions. In particular, we provide non-asymptotic point and confidence interval estimates for mean effect in the region, which account for the local selection bias and the non-stationary covariance that is typical of these data. Such summaries allow researchers to better compare regions of different sizes and different correlation structures. Inference is provided within a conditional one-parameter exponential family for each region, with truncations that match the constraints of selection. A secondary screening-and-adjustment step allows pruning the set of detected regions, while controlling the false-coverage rate for the set of regions that are reported. We illustrate the benefits of the method by applying it to detected genomic regions with differing DNA-methylation rates across tissue types. Our method is shown to provide superior power compared to non-parametric approaches.


Projections of the sea level contribution from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (GrIS and AIS) rely on atmospheric and oceanic drivers obtained from climate models. The Earth System Models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) generally project greater future warming compared with the previous Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) effort. Here we use four CMIP6 models and a selection of CMIP5 models to force multiple ice sheet models as part of the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6). We find that the projected sea level contribution at 2100 from the ice sheet model ensemble under the CMIP6 scenarios falls within the CMIP5 range for the Antarctic ice sheet but is significantly increased for Greenland. Warmer atmosphere in CMIP6 models results in higher Greenland mass loss due to surface melt. For Antarctica, CMIP6 forcing is similar to CMIP5 and mass gain from increased snowfall counteracts increased loss due to ocean warming.


Mantı, the traditional Turkish food, was subjected to modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) to extend its refrigerated storage time. Beef, which is one of the main raw ingredients in mantı, is a highly perishable product. Therefore, it is essential that the microbiological effects of this product be analysed. The microbiological qualities of each mantı package were assessed by analysing raw mantı samples to determine the number of Lactobacillus spp. they contained, as well as the total anaerobic mesophilic microorganisms, the amounts of Staphylococcus spp., yeast and mould, the coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp. and Clostridium perfringens and the total aerobic psychrophilic microorganisms. Salmonella spp. and C. perfringens were not detected in the raw materials or the packed samples, but the Lactobacillus spp. and total anaerobic mesophilic microorganism counts increased during cold storage. Growth of Enterobacteriaceae species in a modified atmosphere during the period in which the mantı is being stored must also be taken into account. The compositions of the MAP samples lasted for the maximum storage time of 126 days as opposed to 20 days in normal atmospheric packaging. In conclusion, more than 40% carbon dioxide (CO2) with nitrogen (N2) should be used in the mantı process.


Bilabial stops undergoing Surface Palatalization (SP) were analyzed in an EMMA/EPG study. Articulatorily, the point of maximal palatal contact and the labial opening movement were analyzed. The acoustic analysis pertained to stop related timing and the point of the highest F2-value. Results show (i) that SP yields a higher F2 at vowel onset and a lengthened opening gesture and (ii) that morphemeinduced palatalizations are distinguished from word initial ones and sandhi-palatalizations articulatorily and acoustically by a shorter delay of palatal target position with respect to stop production; (iii) no differences are found between 'repalatalized' and plain segments in case of sandhi palatalization.


A transition‐matrix formulation of the field scattered by a three‐dimensional, multilayered, poroelastic obstacle embedded in a poroelastic host is obtained by extending Peterson and Strom formulation for scalar waves [B. Peterson and S. Strom, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 57, 2–13 (1975)]. An exact solution of the vector Biot equations is obtained, obeying all boundary conditions prescribed on all boundaries of the layered obstacle. By numerically implementing the solution for general poroelastic media, scattering with hosts and obstacles made of loss general media is conveniently predicted by choosing material parameters in a limiting sense. Examples are presented to study the scattering dynamics of layered spheres and spherical shells embedded in fluid and poroelastic hosts.


Although sociologists have studied for decades the process whereby citizens make emergency decisions in response to disaster warnings, very little attention has been given to understanding the role of ethnicity in this process. Data derived from fatality and injury counts following disasters, though sparse, documents that minority group citizens tend to suffer disproportionately high negative consequences in connection with the impact of disasters. On the basis of this information, it is inferred that differences exist between the emergency decision-making processes of minority and majority citizens. This paper lays the theoretical groundwork for beginning to revise existing conceptual models of warning response behavior to more adequately address the variation associated with minority group status. This goal is accomplished through pursuing three general tasks: (1) examining the process through which personal emergency decisions are made, (2) delineating social factors which impinge upon the outcomes of this decision-making process, and (3) integrating into an existing model of warning response behavior, additional variables which are related to minority status.


In 1822, the British Parliament enacted a landmark statute to punish the abuse of animals, known as Martin's Act, named after Richard Martin, MP, who championed the bill. The Act provided a criminal penalty of up to £5 for the cruel treatment of cattle, a term which included horses, oxen, and sheep. Because the Act was the first national statute aimed at animal cruelty, scholars have naturally focused on its substance, which established an important new norm governing the relationship between humans and other animals. However, the Act would not have been successful without vigorous prosecution, which helped define the contours of permissible treatment of animals. From the beginning, and throughout the nineteenth century, the vast majority of these prosecutions were carried out by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a private charity founded, in part, by Martin himself. Founded just after Martin's Act became law, the Society grew more powerful over the century; during the 1890s, it employed 120 inspectors and brought over 70,000 prosecutions. While private prosecution by the victims of crime was well-established, prosecution by non-victims on behalf of powerless entities was novel and deserves closer scrutiny. This article explores the factors that facilitated this form of enforcement, which ran counter to the general nineteenth century movement toward public prosecution. In addition, by examining the nineteenth century cases involving Society prosecutions, the article outlines the advantages and disadvantages of private enforcement in the animal cruelty context.


A novel stereophonic noise reduction method is proposed. This method is based upon a combination of a subspace approach realized in a sliding window operation and two-channel adaptive signal enhancing. The signal obtained from the signal subspace is used as the input signal to the adaptive signal enhancer for each channel, instead of noise, as in the ordinary adaptive noise canceling scheme. Simulation results based upon real stereophonic speech contaminated by noise components show that the proposed method gives improved enhancement quality in terms of both segmental gain and cepstral distance performance indices in comparison with conventional nonlinear spectral subtraction approaches.


In vector network coding, the source multicasts information by transmitting vectors of length L, while intermediate nodes process and combine their incoming packets by multiplying them with L × L coding matrices that play a similar role as coding coefficients in scalar coding. Vector network coding generalizes scalar coding, and thus offers a wider range of solutions over which to optimize. This paper starts exploring the new possibilities vector network coding can offer along two directions. First, we propose a new randomized algorithm for vector network coding. We compare the performance of our proposed algorithm with the existing randomized algorithms in the literature over a specific class of networks. Second, we explore the use of structured coding matrices for vector network coding. We present deterministic designs that allow to operate using rotation coding matrices and thus result in reduced encoding complexity.


In 2012, CBM's Medical Eye Care Advisory Working Group met in Hyderabad, India to discuss the inclusion of people with disabilities in eye care.

As a result of these discussions, the following recommendations were made:

Involve local disabled people's organisations (DPOs) in planning (page 12).

Appoint a member of staff as the coordinator for disability inclusion in all eye units (this may be a part time role).

Identify barriers to access, both internal and external, noting which are easy and which are difficult to fix. Put in place an action plan to address these.

Consider any additonal needs based on gender and age.

Ensure that eye care services are comprehensive and include health promotion, disease prevention, curative medical and surgical services, and rehabilitation services.

Ensure counselling, links and referrals to rehabilitation and education services are available to people who cannot be helped clinically. Ensure these services also refer patients to eye units.

Staff with the heaviest loads – such as ophthalmologists – need to know that they can (in a caring manner) refer patients to other skilled staff in the unit.

Employ people with disabilities to work in eye clinics.

Ensure physical accessibility as well as large, colour-contrasting signage.

Specifically plan for the provision of services for hearing impaired people.

Include disability-inclusive practices in training curricula.

Provide disability-inclusive training for eye unit staff and raise awareness with other stakeholders. For example, simply training staff to say: 'I can refer you to XYZ, because there isn't anything more I can do for you' versus saying: 'Nothing can be done for you', can make an enormous difference to 'quality of life' or 'whole of life' outcomes and the mental health of patients with long-term visual impairment.

Colin Cook, Babar Qureshi, Harpreet Kapoor, Dominic Misquith, and David Lewis

Improving access for women and girls with disabilities

Nearly all eye health programmes strive to reach the most marginalised people. They also seek to be gender sensitive, ensuring equal access for all people. Women and girls with disabilities (including those with impaired vision) are some of the most marginalised people, as they face the triple discrimination of being female, having an impairment, and being among the poorest.

It is important that eye health programmes consider how they can support women with a disability. Here are some practical tips:

Consult with women with disabilitito identify what is blocking their access to eye care, and to talk about how best to overcome these barriers

Raise awareness among staff and collaborators about the impact of disability on women and girls and work together to address barriers

Appoint a coordinator for disability inclusion, who understands gender sensitive practice (part-time or full-time)

Collect and analyse data by gender, age, and disability, for example by using the Washington Group self-reporting questions.

Employ women with a disability in your programme.

Develop networks and two-way referral between your programme and primary health care, rehabilitation, education, and DPOs.

Ensure that women and girls with disabilities who cannot be assisted through medical intervention are referred to other services, such as education, rehabilitation, livelihood, social inclusion and health services.

With thanks to Joanne Webber, Chelsea Huggett, and CBM partners in India and Cambodia.


Achievements in research programs are seldom what was envisaged at the start. It is still too early to judge the success or failure of the first phases of the UK Electronic Libraries Program (eLib), as several projects are still not completed. Despite this, some lessons learned are becoming apparent. In this article I reflect on a little of what has been learned, and to explore some of the implications. The eLib program has a heavy evaluation component, but the views expressed here are personal, deriving as much from living and working with the projects for the last three years as from any formal evaluations at this stage. From these reflections I look forward briefly to the latest phase of eLib. My aim is to argue for the concept of the hybrid library as a logical follow on from current developments. Institutions should remain an important focus for digital library activities, and users in those institutions require the sort of integration of digital library services which the hybrid library promises.


A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among secondary schools in
Kabartonjo Division of Baringo District, Kenya, between October 2002 and April 2003.
The study aimed at establishing the students' knowledge of the relationship between
Sexually Transmitted Infections and the transmission of IDV. A total of three hundred
and sixty five sampled respondents were interviewed and four Focus Group Discussions
(FGDs) held, in addition to interviews with key informants. Data was analyzed using the
SPSS and figures done using MS-Excel before being transferred to MS-Word. The results
show that more than half of the respondents (55.3%) were males with females
constituting (44.7%).
The knowledge of STI among the respondents was highest on gonorrhoea (99.6%),
syphilis (97.1%) and IDV (84.7%) while poor on Herpes (35.4%), Chlamydia (19.4%),
genital warts (14.5%), trichomoniasis (10.2%), Candidiasis (7.8%) and Hepatitis B were
(6.5%). About 50% of the respondents were aware of clinical symptoms of STI in both
males and females. Only few respondents (14.8%) reported noticing symptoms of STI in
the last 12 months. The results further show that (86.0%) considered STI to be a serious
problem, (39.7%) perceived themselves as being at risk of contracting STI and (39.7%)
reported being at risk of contracting IDV. The respondents who had suffered from STI
had poor health seeking behaviour as only (8.2%) sought professional help from health
workers in clinics or health centre, while (4.7%) visited traditional healers, (5.8%) bought
medicines from shops or pharmacies and (7.7%) asked friends for advice. The low
knowledge of STI (X2 =19.287, df= 3, p= 0.000) accounts for the small percentage of
respondents who reported symptoms of STI and the general poor health seeking
behaviour elicited. There was good knowledge of relationships between common STI and
mv being spread through sexual intercourse (89.3%). Chi-square test shows (X2 =8.766,
df=3, p<0.05), that STI and IDV being spread through sexual intercourse; the presence
of STI and IDV increases the chances of one acquiring IDV (83.6%) X2 =7.600, P< 0.05
did not agree with the working hypothesis. Knowledge of IDV infection prolonging the
duration of STI was not significant (X2 =2.540, df=3, p> 0.05). The study revealed that
knowledge of the relationship between STI and transmission of HIV was not significant
with the level of education (X2 =1.360, df =3, p> 0.05) but only as individuals (X2
=1.360, df= 1, p< 0.05).
The study therefore concludes that there is need to strategize on information, education
and communication targeting adolescents on knowledge of STI as a measure of curbing
the transmission of IDV.


This chapter recasts the analysis of Chapter 3 in a Hotelling framework. It analyzes entry in a spatial model in which firms are heterogeneous in their production costs. The key result is that intensifying competition by lowering transportation costs can augment expected profits and entry, essentially by shifting the market share from high-cost to low-cost firms. It is also shown that increasing the differences in firm costs augments firm profits, entry, and social welfare. Lowering production cost of high-cost firms augments entry if competition is low (i.e., for high transportation costs) but hampers entry if competition is high (i.e., for low transportation costs). When specifically applied to banking, the results of the analysis show that i) deposit insurance may lead to less entry, ii) capital regulation may lead to more entry in banking, and iii) bailout policies may reduce bank profits and entry, even if they come at no additional cost for banks.