Memory loss is one of the most frequent symptoms associated with dementia. Losing the memories of meaningful social activities, such as visits from family, can be confronting not only for the person with dementia, but also for relatives and caretakers. Through an iterative design process involving people with dementia, caretakers and relatives, the RelivRing concept was developed. The RelivRing enables people with dementia to relive the positive experience of visits from relatives. It allows relatives to leave audio messages of their visits, which the person with dementia might have otherwise forgotten. When listening to these messages, the person with dementia can re-experience the positive feeling of the visit. The design is adapted to a person with dementia's cognitive and perceptual abilities following literature research and in-context user studies. With the RelivRing, we aim to maintain and strengthen existing social relations between people with dementia and their relatives.


At least 30 transgressive-regressive cycles of deposition are recognized from the upper Desmoinesian East Mountain Shale to the mid-Virgilian Wayland Shale in north-central Texas. Maximum regressive deposits are typically paleosol mudstones and fluvial sand- stones; maximum transgressive deposits are typically widespread, ammonoid-bearing, conodont-rich, dark phosphatic shales in more major cycles, and persistent fossiliferous shales or limestones overlying terrestrial deposits in more minor cycles. Delta complexes dominate the regressive sequences of many cycles.

Using biostratigraphic criteria of first, last, sole, or acme occurrence of ammonoid, conodont, and fusulinid taxa, we correlate 17 cycles in the Texas sequence directly with 17 glacial-eustatic cycles of similar magnitude in the northern midcontinent. This correlation suggests that glacial eustacy was the basic control over the cyclic sequence in Texas, that tectonic masking of the eustatic signal by nearby orogenic movement in Texas was negligible, and that delta shifting, though conspicuous, was only a secondary control over the cyclicity there. Minor cycles recognized between the correlated cycles also match well enough between Texas and the midcontinent to further discount potential tectonic or deltaic masking of glacial-eustatic cyclicity. This strengthens the likelihood of correlating glacial-eustatic events across larger parts of North America, and perhaps with other parts of the world.


The decocto of Baccharis trimera (Less.) D.C., Compositae, ("carqueja") was submitted to international standard tests to verify its in vitro antimicrobian activity. The minimal inhibitory and minimal bacterial concentrations of the decocto in several dilutions were determined through the serial dilution method in the multiple tube system. The results suggest the possibility of its use as disinfectant and antisseptic in certain problem-situations in animal production, related to the studied transmitted agents.


"Few would dispute that we are living at a time of high anxiety and uncertainty in which many of us will experience a crisis of identity at some point or another. At the same time, news media provide us with a daily catalogue of disasters from around the globe to remind us that we inhabit a world of crisis, insecurity and hazard. Anxiety in a Risk Society looks at the problem of contemporary anxiety from a sociological perspective and highlights its significance for the ways we make sense of risk and uncertainty. It argues that the relationship between anxiety and risk hinges on the nature of anxiety. Iain Wilkinson believes that there is much for sociologists to learn from those who have made the condition of anxiety the focus of their life's work. By making anxiety the focus of sociological inquiry, a critical vantage point can be gained from which to attempt an answer to the question: Are we more anxious because we are more risk conscious?"


The MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) Project is one of a new generation of modem astronomy endeavours that generates huge volumes of data. These have enormous scientific data mining potential. However, it is common for astronomers to deal with millions and even billions of records. The challenge of how to manage these large data sets is an important case for researchers. A good database management system is vital for the research. With the modem observation equipments used, MOA suffers from the growing volume of the data and a database management solution is needed. This study analyzed the modem technology for database and enterprise application. After analysing the data mining requirements of MOA, a prototype data management 'system based on MVC pattern was developed. Furthermore, the application supports sharing MOA findings and scientific data on the Internet. It was tested on a 7GB subset of achieved MOA data set. After testing, it was found that the application could query data in an efficient time and support data mining.


A novel protein complex facilitates lipid droplet autophagy. The autophagic digestion of lipid droplets (LDs) through lipophagy is an essential process by which most cells catabolize lipids as an energy source. However, the cellular machinery used for the envelopment of LDs during autophagy is poorly understood. We report a novel function for a small Rab guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) in the recruitment of adaptors required for the engulfment of LDs by the growing autophagosome. In hepatocytes stimulated to undergo autophagy, Rab10 activity is amplified significantly, concomitant with its increased recruitment to nascent autophagic membranes at the LD surface. Disruption of Rab10 function by small interfering RNA knockdown or expression of a GTPase-defective variant leads to LD accumulation. Finally, Rab10 activation during autophagy is essential for LC3 recruitment to the autophagosome and stimulates its increased association with the adaptor protein EHBP1 (EH domain binding protein 1) and the membrane-deforming adenosine triphosphatase EHD2 (EH domain containing 2) that, together, are essential in driving the activated "engulfment" of LDs during lipophagy in hepatocytes.


ABSTRACT The basal layer of the epidermis contains stem cells and transit amplifying cells that rapidly proliferate and differentiate further into the upper layers of the epidermis. A number of molecules have been identified as regulators of this process, including p63 (also known as tumor protein 63) and Notch1. However, little is known about the mechanisms that regulate the transitions from stem cell to proliferating or differentiating transit amplifying cell. Here, we demonstrate that epiprofin (Epfn, also known as Sp6) plays crucial distinct roles in these transition stages as a cell cycle regulator and a transcription factor. Epfn knockout mice have a thickened epidermis, in which p63-expressing basal cells form multiple layers owing to the accumulation of premature transit amplifying cells with reduced proliferation and a reduction in the number of differentiating keratinocytes expressing Notch1. We found that low levels of Epfn expression increased the proliferation of human immortalized keratinocyte (HaCaT) cells by increasing EGF responsiveness and superphosphorylation of Rb. By contrast, high levels of Epfn expression promoted cell cycle exit and differentiation, by reducing E2F transactivation and inducing Notch1 expression. Our findings identify multiple novel functions of Epfn in epidermal development.


The experimental material consisted of semi-finished products of high-grade, medium-carbon constructional steel with: manganese, chromium, nickel, molybdenum and boron. The experimental material consisted of steel products obtained in three metallurgical processes: electric and desulfurized (E), electric and desulfurized with argon-refined (EA) and oxygen converter with vacuum degassed of steel (KP). The production process involved two melting technologies: in a 140-ton basic arc furnace with desulphurisation and argon refining variants, and in a 100-ton oxygen converter. Billet samples were collected to analyze: relative volume of impurities, microstructure and fatigue tests. The samples were quenched and austenitized at a temperature of 880 o C for 30 minutes. They were then cooled in water and tempered by holding the sections at a temperature of 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600 o C for 120 minutes and air-cooled. Fatigue tests were performed with the use of a rotary bending machine at a frequency of 6000 cpm. The results were statistical processed and presented in graphic form. This paper discusses the results of microstructural analyses, the distribution of the relative volume of impurities in different size ranges, the fatigue strength characteristics of different production processes, the average number of sampledamaging cycles and the average values of the fatigue strength coefficient for various heat processing options.


In this paper, we describe how people negotiate and communicate with healthcare professionals (HCPs) about information they have found online for the purposes of making health decisions. Drawing on 55 interviews with people using the Internet as part of their health decision-making we show how online information can be successfully integrated into decision-making leading to decision satisfaction and perceived positive outcomes. We describe what successful integration looks like as well as detail the ways in which integration of information can be disguised during negotiations with HCPs. Finally, we document what happens when integration fails, potentially valuable information resources are lost or the patient decides to bypass the HCP altogether. By exploring successful and unsuccessful integration examples we make three suggestions about how integration of online health information into HCP discussions around decision-making could be improved via (1) improved digital curation tools (2) providing communication scaffolding for the doctor-patient consultation and (3) harnessing the power of collective resources.


This experimental study deals with the perception of regionally coloured accents of English in Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States. The 3 standards were chosen after a preliminary survey had taken place where students showed a higher knowledge of the culture of these 3 different groups over the Australasian variety [1]. 14 different recordings were selected from the International Dialects of English Archives and played to students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the University level. In pursuit of this goal, a questionnaire was devised on-line s o that a mixed groups of students could express their opinion on a three-layer approach towards the perception of the audio files: personality identification and preference, perceived linguistic  divergence, and geographic identifiability. The study is done in the context of EFL in Spain.


Establishing and implementing rules that would teach young people to become active citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after World War I into lived social spaces. This article analyses how principals of borderland secondary schools negotiated transformation in Polish Upper Silesia with the help of Arnold Van Gennep's notion that a shift in social statuses possessed a spatiality and temporality of its own. The article asks whether and how school principals were called on to offer elite training that would make Polish Upper Silesia more cohesive with the rest of Poland in terms of the social origins of pupils and the content of the history curriculum. In addition, it examines the extent to which borderland school principals accepted, refuted, or helped to shape that responsibility. The social origins of pupils are detected through a quantitative analysis of recruitment figures and the profiles of pupils' parents. This analysis is combined with an exploration of how school principals provided a meaningful explanation of the recent past (World War I and the Silesian Uprisings). The article demonstrates that while school principals were historical actors with some room to make their own decisions when a liminal space was created, changed, and abolished, it was ultimately a priest operating in their shadows who possessed more possibilities to become a master of ceremonies leading elite education through its rites of passage.


The rise of the academic doctorate in law (a degree most U.S. scholars have either ignored or deprecated) is an important chapter in the story of law's coming of age as an academic discipline in the first half of the 20th century. Drawing in part on continental European models, the architects of the degree shaped it into a vehicle for training a new class of law teachers, producing research into the nature and functioning of the legal system, and spreading emerging conceptions of law to a broader national audience. Notable among these conceptions were the "sociological jurisprudence" of Harvard's Roscoe Pound and the Legal Realism of Columbia and Yale. This "missionary" function, however, was in tension with the implication of advanced scholarly work inherent in the degree's name, and ultimately helped set the stage for the doctorate's decline after World War II. While today it is much more common for U.S. law teachers to have pursued doctoral study in a discipline other than law, a U.S. doctorate in law is an increasingly attractive credential for foreign-trained lawyers who hope to teach in their home countries. This article is the first installment of a larger study that traces how U.S. legal education borrowed practices from overseas to create the degree, digested and modified them to suit the needs of a rapidly evolving legal system, then redirected the flow of ideas elsewhere. As such, the study is a story of the coming of age of U.S. legal education not just at home, but on a world stage.


Received 26 June 2006 Revised 22 August 2006 Accepted 22 August 2006 All strains of the moderately thermophilic, acidophilic, sulphur-oxidizing bacterium Acidithiobacillus caldus that have been tested contain a set of chromosomal arsenic resistance genes. Highly arsenic-resistant strains isolated from commercial arsenopyrite bio-oxidation tanks contain additional transposon-located (TnAtcArs) arsenic resistance genes. The chromosomal At. caldus ars genes were cloned and found to consist of arsR and arsC genes transcribed in one direction, and arsB in the opposite direction. The arsRC genes were co-transcribed with ORF1, and arsB with ORF5 in both At. caldus and Escherichia coli, although deletion of ORFs 1 and 5 did not appear to affect resistance to arsenate or arsenite in E. coli. ORFs 1 and 5 have not previously been reported as part of the ars operons, and had high amino acid identity to hypothetical proteins from Polaromonas naphthalenivorus (76 %) and Legionella pneumophila (60 %), respectively. Reporter-gene studies showed that the arsenic operon of transposon origin (TnAtcArs) was expressed at a higher level, and was less tightly regulated in E. coli than were the At. caldus ars genes of chromosomal origin. Plasmid pSa-mediated conjugal transfer of TnAtcArs from E. coli to At. caldus strains lacking the transposon was successful, and resulted in greatly increased levels of resistance to arsenite.


You know you're hooked when you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach. Is it a shortness of breath or a flush that comes to your face when you see it in a case at an antique mall, or on someone's arm as you stroll down the aisle shopping at an antiques show? Has someone caught you staring intently at their wrist or lapel and mistaken your focused gaze for some sign of familiarity? If any or all of the above symptoms or scenarios seem familiar to you, it's possible you may have it! Yes, it's all too true, you may indeed be suffering from...BAKELITE FEVER! The Bakelite Collection describes some of the many differing collecting preferences of some of the nation's most prolific appreciators of fine Bakelite jewelry. Men and women, doctors and lawyers, modernists and traditionalists alike have fallen prey to Bakelite fever. Their stories, experiences, lovingly assembled collections will delight every Bakelite collector. The Bakelite Collection showcases these fantastic jewelry arrays in luscious detail, using full color photography. A price guide makes it a truly valuable book for all sufferers of Bakelite Fever.


We investigated whether the mathematics studied in 2 content courses of an elementary teacher preparation program was retained and used by graduates when completing tasks measuring knowledge for teaching mathematics. Using a longitudinal design, we followed 2 cohorts of prospective teachers for 3 to 4 years after graduation. We assessed participants' knowledge by asking them to identify mathematics concepts underlying standard procedures, generate multiple solution strategies, and evaluate students' mathematical work. We administered parallel tasks for 3 mathematics topics studied in the program and one mathematics topic not studied in the program. When significant differences were found, participants always performed better on mathematics topics developed in the program than on the topic not addressed in the program. We discuss implications of these findings for mathematics teacher preparation.


Behavioral studies have shown that humans account for uncertainty in a way that is nearly optimal in the Bayesian sense. Probabilistic models based on Bayes' theorem have been widely used for understanding human cognition, and have been applied to behaviors that range from perception and motor control to higher level reasoning and inference. However, whether the brain actually uses Bayesian reasoning or such reasoning is just an approximate description of human behavior is an open question. In this thesis, I aim to address this question by exploring the neural plausibility of Bayesian inference. I first present a spiking neural model for learning priors (beliefs) from experiences of the natural world. Through this model, I address the question of how humans might be learning the priors needed for the inferences they make in their daily lives. I propose neural mechanisms for continuous learning and updating of priors cognitive processes that are critical for many aspects of higher-level cognition. Next, I propose neural mechanisms for performing Bayesian inference by combining the learned prior with the likelihood that is based on the observed information. Through the process of building these models, I address the issue of representing probability distributions in neural populations by deploying an efficient neural coding scheme. I show how these representations can be used in meaningful ways to learn beliefs (priors) over time and to perform inference using those beliefs. The final model is generalizable to various psychological tasks, and I show that it converges to the near optimal priors with very few training examples. The model is validated using a life span inference task, and the results from the model match human performance on this task better than an ideal Bayesian model due to the use of neuron tuning curves. This provides an initial step towards better understanding how Bayesian computations may be implemented in a biologically plausible neural network. Finally, I discuss the limitations


In the 1950s and 1960s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards and the California Real Estate Association openly opposed fair housing laws, referring to such laws as "forced housing." Studies have noted that a handful of private developers spoke out against these major industry groups and even developed racially inclusive open-occupancy housing tracts. But the historiography has yet to account for the fact that some developers also helped shape fair housing laws behind the scenes. This study shows that major California developers Joseph "Joe" Eichler and his son Edward "Ned" Eichler exerted a great deal of influence on the regulatory environment by working with state and federal officials. This story is not better known because the Eichlers concealed their activism from the general public in an attempt to protect their business.


OBJECTIVE
To examine basal ganglia dysfunction and atrophy in patients with mild to moderate Huntington's disease, with correlation of imaging measures with clinical and neuropsychological measures.

DESIGN
Survey study in patients with Huntington's disease and matched controls, with imaging measures being evaluated by investigators unaware of the diagnosis.

SETTING
Baltimore Huntington's Disease Project, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.

PATIENTS AND OTHER PARTICIPANTS
Subjects included 10 patients with mild to moderate Huntington's disease and nine healthy age-matched control subjects.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Imaging measures included single photon emission computed tomographic regional cerebral blood flow in caudate, putamen, and thalamus, and magnetic resonance imaging measures of caudate and putamen volumes and bicaudate ratios. Patients underwent neurologic and mental status examinations and neuropsychological tests.

RESULTS
The measure with the greatest difference between patients and control subjects was mean putamen volume, reduced 54.3% in patients, with no overlap between groups (P<.001). Of the cerebral blood flow measures, caudate showed the greatest difference (21.5% decrease; P<.001). Quantitative neurologic indexes of disease severity correlated with both putamen measures (P<.03), while Mini-Mental State Examination scores correlated with caudate volume (P<.02). Bicaudate ratio correlated with both clinical measures and was the best index of neurologic deterioration (r=.95; P<.001), while global atrophy (measured by cerebrospinal fluid percentage) was the best correlate of several neuropsychological tests, such as the Trail Making Test (r=93; P<.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Volumetric measurement of putamen best discriminated patients with Huntington's disease from healthy subjects. Measures of caudate atrophy or single photon emission computed tomographic measures performed less well. Neurologic decline correlated best with subcortical atrophy measured by the bicaudate ratio, but neuropsychological performance best corresponded to cerebrospinal fluid percentage, a measure of global atrophy.


OF DISSERTATION A MESSAGE-CENTERED APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING YOUNG WOMEN'S DECISION-MAKING ABOUT HPV VACCINATION The HPV vaccine represents an important step in the primary prevention of cervical cancer, yet uptake rates for the vaccine remain below what is needed to establish "herd immunity" from the virus. While many studies have examined both psychosocial and communication factors affecting HPV vaccination decisions, this study adopts a unique approach to understand the communication environment within which this health decision happens, such as the many and sometimes conflicting messages about vaccine efficacy and safety guiding young women's decisions. Using the message convergence framework, this project identifies how further study of converging and diverging messages in the communication environment in which young women make their vaccination decision can extend research in considering optimal communication strategies to enhance demand for HPV vaccination. In Study 1, 39 unvaccinated women participated in qualitative interviews and were asked questions in order to understand the important elements of the HPV vaccination communication environment that affected their decision (i.e., common sources and content of messages, how they discussed these messages "interacting" and influencing their decision). Study 2 builds on the findings of Study 1 by employing an experimental design to test different message convergence conditions on women's intent to vaccinate (e.g., what happens when a doctor and a family member give conflicting information and recommendations about HPV vaccination?). Three hundred and nine unvaccinated women were randomly assigned to one of nine experimental message conditions and then assessed on behavioral intentions. Support was found for the message convergence framework. This project represents the first formal testing of the message convergence framework and the first time it has been used in the health context. The findings from these studies are discussed in terms of the implications for future cervical cancer research and prevention campaigns, as well as the utility of the message convergence framework for other health communication research topics in which researchers are seeking to better understand and consider the communication environment when designing health behavior interventions.


Technology transfer (TT) within construction has emerged as an important business activity across many developing countries across the globe including Ghana. For several years TT from developed countries has been viewed as a key element in addressing the low levels of technological development and know-how in developing countries construction industries. TT according to many writers and researchers involve mostly cross-border initiatives with the main purpose to improve the capacity of the local contractor. This paper therefore, considers TT as a mechanism for improving the capacity of the local contractor in developing countries. In this regard, TT could be viewed in the form of knowledge (soft technology), skills and tools (hard technology) which usually come from developed countries to developing countries through construction project activities. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to assess the influence of foreign contractors in supporting transfer of e-business technology to the Ghanaian construction industry. In view of this, a total number of five (5) semi-structured interviews were conducted as follow: one (1) foreign firm, two (2) expert interviews and two (2) local contractors (collaborators) representing one case study out of a total of three. This research involved an interpretivist approach based on qualitative data in order to have an in-depth understanding of the objective of this paper and have insight into how practitioners perceive the roles of foreign contractors in the transfer of e-business technology to improve performance in the construction industry in Ghana. This paper reports that content analysis shows the important role that foreign contractors play within the context of e-business technology transfer. The results also show that foreign firms undertake TT in an ad hoc manner and this exercise need to be streamlined. They further indicate several arguments on the need to address the identified barriers to enable the industry to harness the full potentials of e-business.


Resuspended floor dust constitutes up to sixty percent of the total particulate matter in indoor air. This fraction may also include virus-laden particles that settle on the floor after being emitted by an infected individual. This research focuses on predicting the concentration of influenza A viruses in resuspended dust, generated by people walking in a room, at various heights above the floor. Using a sonic anemometer, we measured the velocity field from floor to ceiling at 10-cm intervals to estimate the magnitude of turbulence generated by walking. The resulting eddy diffusion coefficients varied between 0.06 m s and 0.20 m s and were maximal at ~0.75-1 m above the floor, approximately the height of the swinging hand. We used these coefficients in an atmospheric transport model to predict virus concentrations as a function of the carrier particle size and height in the room. Results indicate that the concentration of resuspended viruses at 1 m above the floor is about seven times the concentration at 2 m. Thus, shorter people may be exposed to higher concentrations of pathogens in resuspended dust indoors. This study illuminates the possibility that particle resuspension could be a mode of disease transmission. It also emphasizes the importance of considering resuspension of particulate matter when designing ventilation systems and flooring in hospitals and residences.


The use of fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs) for the strengthening and repair of existing concrete structures is a field with tremendous potential. The materials are very durable and, hence, ideally suited for use as external reinforcement. Although extensive work has been carried out investigating the use of FRPs for flexural strengthening, a fairly recent development is the use of posttensioned, nonlaminated, carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) straps as external shear reinforcement for concrete. Experiments were carried out on an unstrengthened control beam and beams strengthened with external CFRP straps. It was found that the ultimate load capacity of the strengthened beams was significantly higher than that of the control specimen. Existing design codes and analysis methods were found to underestimate the ultimate resistance of the control specimen and the strengthened beams. Nevertheless, the modified compression field theory provided insight into possible failure mechanisms and the influence of the strap prestress level on the structural behavior. It is concluded that the use of these novel stressed elements could represent a viable and durable means of strengthening existing concrete infrastructure.


If interjections are absent from the works of mature Soviet structuralists, from the 1920s to the 1950s Soviet linguists tried to include them into formal and systemic language descriptions. However, certain distinctive features of the formal and semantic structure of these words made Soviet pre-structuralists not only call into question their basic methods, but also cause the collapse of some of the principal oppositions forming the basis of the majority of structural approaches to the language, i.e. synchrony and diachrony; statics and dynamics; langue, langage and parole. Analysis of corresponding research shows that these difficulties could be explained by methodological specificities of Soviet linguistics at that time.


This paper presents a monetary DSGE model of the U.S. economy. The model captures the most important production, expenditure, and nominal-contracting decisions underlying economic data while remaining sufficiently small to allow it to provide a clear interpretation of the data. We emphasize the role of model-based analyses as vehicles for storytelling by providing several examples - based around the evolution of natural rates of production and interest - of how our model can provide narratives to explain recent macroeconomic fluctuations. The stories obtained from our model are both similar to and quite different from conventional accounts.


Threadleaf sedge (Carex filifolia Nutt.) is one ofthe most important dryland plants native to the grasslands of the northern Great Plains. Low seed production and poor germination are primary reasons making prairie restorations that include this species a challenge. The principal objective of this research was to investigate the influences of warm and cold pretreatments, moisture regime, and substrate type on germination. The work was conducted in a germination chamber with seeds (achenes) collected at two sites and in two years in western Nebraska. Average germination was relatively low with the common pretreatments of cold-wet alone (39% in 1998 and 17% in 1999) and warm-wet plus coldwet pretreatment (33% in 1998 and 1999). Eight weeks of warm-dry pretreatment produced the greatest average germination (49% in 1998 and 41% in 1999). Warm-dry pretreatment may be a useful tool in preparing threadleaf sedge achenes for planting in prairie restorations.


Geospatial land use databases contain important information with high benefit for several users, especially when they provide a detailed description on parcel level. Due to many changes connected with a high effort of the update process, these large-scale land use maps become outdated quickly. This paper presents a two-step approach for the automatic verification of land use objects of a geospatial database using high-resolution aerial images. In the first step, a precise pixel-based land cover classification using spectral, textural and three-dimensional features is applied. In the second step, an object-based land use classification follows, which is based on features derived from the pixel-based land cover classification as well as geometrical, spectral and textural features. For both steps, the potential of the incorporation of contextual knowledge in the classification process is explored. For this purpose, we use Conditional Random Fields (CRF), which have proven to be a flexible, powerful framework for contextual classification in various applications in remote sensing. The results of the approach are evaluated on an urban test site and the influence of different features and models on the classification accuracy is analysed. It is shown that the use of CRF for the land cover classification yields an improved accuracy and smoother results compared to independent pixel-based approaches. The integration of contextual knowledge also has a remarkable positive effect on the results of the land use classification.


This paper explores the collaboration between the Pentagon and the entertainment industries at the site of the popular interactive format, the war-themed video game. The commercial media industry is heavily invested in the research and development of digital technologies used to create simulations, graphics, and virtual worlds, which are also essential to the networked protocols of military training and weapons systems. In addition, video games such as America's Army have been developed by the United States Armed Forces as recruitment tools. With advances in digital computer-based technologies, warthemed games make increasing claims to realism, authenticity and historical accuracy. Real war footage is frequently inserted into narratives and battlefield sequences. We compare the narratives of the experiences of gamers to narratives of recruits and soldier's experiences of war. Though war themed interactive games are taking simulated battlefields to higher levels of realism, including more intense graphic violence, the thrilling excitement of entertainment replaces the emotional truth of war, a trend with highly negative consequences.


Past research has shown that it is possible to simultaneously achieve the setup efficiencies of traditional cellular manufacturing systems and the routeing flexibility of a job shop by viewing cells not as permanent, physical structures, but as temporary, 'virtual' entities. This research demonstrates that the advantages of virtual manufacturing cells can be obtained over a range of part family configurations. In particular, virtual cellular manufacturing is robust to changes in the number and size of families being processed. Further, the research shows that the benefits can be obtained under setup conditions impartial to a family-oriented part environment.


Lighthouse projects like CompCert, seL4, IronFleet, and DeepSpec have demonstrated that full system verification is feasible by establishing a refinement between an abstract system specification and an executable implementation. Existing approaches however impose severe restrictions on the abstract system specifications due to their limited expressiveness or versatility, or on the executable code due to their use of suboptimal code extraction or inexpressive program logics. We propose a novel methodology that combines the compositional refinement of event-based models of distributed systems with the verification of full-fledged program code using expressive separation logics, which support features of realistic programming languages like heap data structures and concurrency. Our main technical contribution is a formal framework that soundly relates event-based system models to program specifications in separation logics. This enables protocol development tools to soundly interoperate with program verifiers to establish a refinement between the model and the code. We formalized our framework, Igloo, in Isabelle/HOL. We report on three case studies, a leader election protocol, a replication protocol, and a security protocol, for which we refine formal requirements into program specifications that we implement in Java and Python and prove correct using the VeriFast and Nagini tools.


You have read in your earlier lessons that given a point in a plane, it is possible to find two numbers, called its co-ordinates in the plane. Conversely, given any ordered pair (x, y) there corresponds a point in the plane whose co-ordinates are (x, y). Let a rubber ball be dropped vertically in a room The point on the floor, where the ball strikes, can be uniquely determined with reference to axes, taken along the length and breadth of the room. However, when the ball bounces back vertically upward, the position of the ball in space at any moment cannot be determined with reference to two axes considered earlier. At any instant, the position of ball can be uniquely determined if in addition, we also know the height of the ball above the floor. If the height of the ball above the floor is 2.5cm and the position of the point where it strikes the ground is given by (5, 4), one way of describing the position of ball in space is with the help of these three numbers (5, 4, 2.5). Thus, the position of a point (or an article) in space can be uniquely determined with the help of three numbers. In this lesson, we will discuss in details about the co-ordinate system and co-ordinates of a point in space, distance between two points in space, position of a point dividing the join of two points in a given ratio internally/externally and about the projection of a point/line in space.


PURPOSE
To determine the sensitivity of time-of-flight and phase-contrast MR angiography for the detection of intracranial aneurysms.

METHODS
Sixteen patients with 27 intracranial aneurysms previously identified with conventional angiography and 19 control patients were examined with three-dimensional time-of-flight, three-dimensional phase-contrast MR angiography, and standard MR imaging. Subvolumes of the carotid and posterior circulations, source images, and standard MR images were blindly interpreted by three experienced neuroradiologists.

RESULTS
Detection of an aneurysm by a given sequence was defined as at least two of the three blinded readers identifying the aneurysm. The sensitivities of the sequences based on all 27 aneurysms were: transaxial T1, 25.9%; T2, 48.1%; PC, 44.4%; and TF, 55.6%. Two of 3 aneurysms detected with T2 but not MR angiography had adjacent blood products. Five millimeters appeared to be a critical size; the sensitivities for aneurysms greater than or equal to 5 mm were: T1, 37.5%; T2, 62.5%; PC, 75%; and TF, 87.5%.

CONCLUSIONS
Three-dimensional time-of-flight MR with 512 x 256 matrix is more sensitive than three-dimensional phase-contrast or standard MR imaging for detection of aneurysms. Retrospectively, aneurysms 3 mm or larger can be identified with MR angiography; however, prospectively, 5 mm is the critical size for detection.


Abstract. Photolysis of water-soluble components inside cloud droplets by ultraviolet/visible radiation may play an important role in atmospheric chemistry. Two earlier studies have suggested that the actinic flux and hence the photolysis frequency within spherical droplets is enhanced relative to that in the surrounding air, but have given different values for this enhancement. Here, we reconcile these discrepancies by noting slight errors in both studies that, when corrected, lead to consistent results. Madronich (1987) examined the geometric (large droplet) limit and concluded that refraction leads to an enhancement factor, averaged over all incident directions, of 1.56. However, the physically relevant quantity is the enhancement of the average actinic flux (rather than the average enhancement factor) which we show here to be 1.26 in the geometric limit. Ruggaber et al. (1997) used Mie theory to derive energy density enhancements slightly larger than 2 for typical droplet sizes, and applied these directly to the calculation of photolysis rates. However, the physically relevant quantity is the actinic flux (rather than the energy density) which is obtained by dividing the energy density by the refractive index of water, 1.33. Thus, the Mie-predicted enhancement for typical cloud droplet sizes is in the range 1.5, only coincidentally in agreement with the value originally given by Madronich. We also investigated the influence of resonances in the actinic flux enhancement. These narrow spikes which are resolved only by very high resolution calculations are orders of magnitude higher than the intermediate values but contribute only little to the actinic flux enhancement when averaged over droplet size distributions. Finally, a table is provided which may be used to obtain the actinic flux enhancement for the photolysis of any dissolved species.


Purpose: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is an epithelial malignancy with a remarkable racial and geographic distribution. Previous cytogenetic studies have shown nasopharyngeal carcinoma to be characterized by gross genomic aberrations. However, identification of susceptible gene loci in advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma has been poorly discussed. Experimental Design: A genome-wide survey of gene copy number changes was initiated with two nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell lines by array-based comparative genomic hybridization analysis. These alterations were confirmed by a parallel analysis with the data from the gene expression microarray and were validated by quantitative PCR. Clinical association of the defined target genes was analyzed by fluorescence in situ hybridization on 48 metastatic tumors. Results: A high percentage of genes were consistently altered in dosage and expression levels with gain on 3q26.2-q26.32 and losses on 3p12.3-p14.2 and 9p21.3-p23. Six candidate genes, GPR160 (3q26.2-q27), SKIL (3q26), ADAMTS9 (3p14.2-p14.3), LRIG1 (3p14), MPDZ (9p22-p24), and ADFP (9p22.1) were validated by quantitative PCR. Fluorescence in situ hybridization studies revealed amplification of GPR160 (in 25% of cases) and SKIL (33%); and deletion of ADAMTS9 (30%), LRIG1 (35%), MPDZ (15%), and ADFP (15%). Clinical association analyses indicated a poor survival rate with genetic alterations at the defined 3p deletion (P = 0.0012) and the 3q amplification regions (P = 0.0114). Conclusion: The combined microarray technologies suggested novel candidate oncogenes, amplification of GPR160 and SKIL at 3q26.2-q26.32, and deletion of tumor suppressor genes ADAMTS9 and LRIG1 at 3p12.3-p14.2. Altered expression of these genes may be responsible for malignant progression and could be used as potential markers for nasopharyngeal carcinoma. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(10):2709–16)


This thesis aims to analyze how Swedish media construct news about the murder cases within ethnic and/or religious minorities in the Swedish society which are declared to be "honor killings". The intention is to examine how ideas about concepts such as gender, culture, religion and violence might influence such constructions through different shapes of media bias. The main argument presented in the thesis is that media has an important role in shaping opinion among the public and therefore has a responsibility to be aware of the message that is communicated as well as of how that message might be received. In order to analyze the Swedish news paper media a discourse analysis and an analysis of headlines has been conducted on the three largest daily newspapers with in Sweden, all with different regional and ideological profiles. The main goal with analyzing headlines was to understand when and why the "honor" aspect of a crime was emphasized in news articles. The main goal for the content analysis was to make visible patterns of framing in the news reporting on cases of "honor killings". One of the findings of the thesis was that xenophobic and Eurocentric language is existing but rare. However the results showed a tendency in the Swedish newspaper media to sensationalize the "honor crime". Such search for sensation might add negative attention to already vulnerable minority groups in the Swedish society. Keywords: Newspaper media, "Honor killing", Women's rights, Framing.


Competitive branding between Bahrain, Qatar and UAE has occurred on different levels of investment through the medium of the Gulf State Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). This has happened across a number of sectors: oil and gas, finance, real estate, automotive and entertainment, but Vision 2030 for the three states gives a sense of duplicating strategies. As they aim to diversify their economies and create jobs, they have also duplicated efforts, perhaps leading to a misallocation of resources. Does the Gulf really need three or four financial hubs? If it does, then theoretically – ceteris paribus – for all of them to function and thrive, there should be a high level of specialisation to avoid cannibalisation. In order to accumulate assets for future generations of their citizens the Gulf State SWFs need to coordinate efforts.


Background and purpose: NO/prostanoid independent, EDHF-mediated hyperpolarization and dilation in rat middle cerebral arteries is mediated solely by endothelial cell IKCa. However, when the NO-pathway is also active, both SKCa and IKCa contribute to EDHF responses. As the SKCa component can be inhibited by stimulation of thromboxane A2 (TxA2) TP receptors and NO has the potential ability to inhibit thromboxane synthesis, we investigated whether TxA2 might explain loss of functional input from SKCa during NOS inhibition in cerebral arteries. Experimental approach: Rat middle cerebral arteries were mounted in a wire myograph. Endothelium-dependent responses to the PAR2 agonist, SLIGRL were assessed as simultaneous changes in smooth muscle membrane potential and tension. Key results: Responses were obtained in the presence of L-NAME as appropriate. Inhibition of TP receptors with either ICI 192,605 or SQ 29,548, did not affect EDHF mediated hyperpolarization and relaxation, but in their presence neither TRAM-34 nor apamin (to block IKCa and SKCa respectively) individually affected the EDHF response. However, in combination they virtually abolished it. Similar effects were obtained in the presence of the thromboxane synthase inhibitor, furegrelate, which additionally revealed an iberiotoxin-sensitive residual EDHF hyperpolarization and relaxation in the combined presence of TRAM-34 and apamin. Conclusions and implications: In the rat middle cerebral artery, inhibition of NOS leads to a loss of the SKCa component of EDHF responses. Either antagonism of TP receptors or block of thromboxane synthase restores an input through SKCa. These data indicate that NO normally enables SKCa activity in rat middle cerebral arteries. British Journal of Pharmacology (2007) 151, 441–449; doi:10.1038/sj.bjp.0707240; published online 10 April 2007


Communal and Exchange Relationships in Marriage and Their Effects on Ambulatory Blood Pressure in Caucasians and Foreign-born Mexican Americans Bryan Jensen Department of Psychology Master of Science Research shows Mexican Americans typically have better cardiovascular health than European Americans, despite being relatively economically disadvantaged. Given research indicating the importance of relationship quality on one's health, the present study examined whether certain relationship orientations (e.g. communal or exchange) were more prevalent in different ethnic groups and if these orientations could help explain this Hispanic Paradox. 582 adults were recruited from the community. Participants were primarily European American (40%) and foreign-born Mexican Americans (55%). A cross-sectional designed was used where participants wore 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) monitors and completed self-report measures of relationship satisfaction and relationship orientation. Results indicated that, contrary to predictions, European Americans tended to have more of a communal relationship orientation compared to foreign-born Mexican Americans. As expected however, communal orientation was predictive of higher relationship satisfaction, β = .29, SE = .07, p < .001, 95% CI [.15, .43], and while higher relationship satisfaction predicted lower systolic blood pressure, R 2 = .02, β = -.16, SE = .07, p < .05, 95% CI [-.31, -.01], when ethnicity was added into the model this relationship was eliminated and foreign-born Mexican Americans had higher ABP compared to European Americans, β = 4.72, SE = 2.25, p < .05, 95% CI [.29, 9.14]. While there were these important differences, communal and exchange orientations had minimal direct or indirect effects on ABP. Even though communal and exchange relationship orientation don't seem to give us any more information to unravel the Hispanic Paradox, there are important ethnic differences in how we engage in marriage relationships and future research may consider other approaches to examine the health effects of these differences.


Unsupervised disentanglement has been shown to be theoretically impossible without inductive biases on the models and the data. As an alternative approach, recent methods rely on limited supervision to disentangle the factors of variation and allow their identifiability. While annotating the true generative factors is only required for a limited number of observations, we argue that it is infeasible to enumerate all the factors of variation that describe a real-world image distribution. To this end, we propose a method for disentangling a set of factors which are only partially labeled, as well as separating the complementary set of residual factors that are never explicitly specified. Our success in this challenging setting, demonstrated on synthetic benchmarks, gives rise to leveraging off-the-shelf image descriptors to partially annotate a subset of attributes in real image domains (e.g. of human faces) with minimal manual effort. Specifically, we use a recent language-image embedding model (CLIP) to annotate a set of attributes of interest in a zero-shot manner and demonstrate state-of-the-art disentangled image manipulation results.


A variety of sequence features at the levels of DNA, RNA, and protein affect the process of translation and may thus be under selection to increase the efficiency of that process. To ask whether they are and in what ways they might act, I first examine what the sequence-based mechanisms of elongation rate determination are. I show that positive charges in newly-translated peptides are the primary sequence-encoded elements modulating elongation rates, probably via their interaction with the negatively charged ribosomal exit tunnel. Contrary to common expectations, I do not find that codon usage has a significant effect on the velocity of ribosomes under normal in vivo conditions, while mRNA structure has only a marginal effect. That codons do not significantly slow ribosomes compared to the magnitude of the charge effect is seemingly at odds with a large body of literature which purports to show that they in fact do. Reviewing the literature, however, I suggest that these apparently at-odds findings can be reconciled by considering the supply (available tRNA) and demand (transcriptomic codon usage plus translation initiation rates). Taking supply and demand into account reveals that if codons do slow ribosomes, they are likely to do so significantly only under highly non-equilibrium, experimental conditions. That codons may not greatly differ in their translation speeds one to the next under normal in vivo conditions calls into question theories of selection on codon usage bias to modulate translational efficiency in a local, along-transcript fashion, for example the suggestion that codon usage is selected for at the 5' end of transcripts as a kind of speed ramp to modulate ribosomal traffic just after translation initiation. That codons have similar translation speeds is still, however, consistent with a theory that codon usage is under general selection and even speed selection to increase the global translational efficiency of cells by limiting the number of bound ribosomes on mRNAs. Returning to the matter of positive charges, I ask whether they, instead of codons, might cause the suggested translational-ramping effect, as positive charges tend to be overloaded at the N-termini of proteins across various domains and taxa. I find however that their distribution at the starts of proteins is better explained by a biochemical, structural null rather than the gene regulatory hypothesis of the ramp: the use of positive charges at N-termini can be completely explained in terms of the needs of a subset of proteins to correctly orientate themselves in membranes. I end with an example of how selection for translational efficiency can act not just on the process of translation but on the finished protein product, showing that the need to manufacture metabolically cheap proteins contributes to the anomalous AT skews observed in the Firmicutes.


Technological advances and improved operational efficiency have made unconventional resources around the globe far more lucrative for producers. The challenge in recovering hydrocarbons from unconventional resources is low permeability, making it essential that a cost-efficient fracture-stimulation treatment program be performed. However, while the wells being completed are economical, are operators truly capitalizing on their full potential? The process of fracturing unconventional reservoirs has remained virtually unchanged in recent years. Stimulation treatments are pumped at high rates through multiple perforation clusters over a large interval and isolated using mechanical plugs. This poses several problems: Uncertainty of the number of fractures created. Uncertainty of proppant placement into fractures. Costly and time-consuming recovery from screenouts. Pumping plugs results in overflushing the near-wellbore. Treatment changes cannot be seen at the perforations until a casing volume is pumped. Increased cost, footprint, personnel, and hydraulic-horsepower (HHP) requirements. This paper presents a high-rate coiled tubing (CT) fracturing technique that enables customized fracture treatments to help maximize stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) by manipulating flow rate and proppant concentration at the perforations in response to reservoir pressure. Therefore, every gallon of fluid and every pound of proppant can be used to effectively stimulate the formation. Recovery from screenouts is fast because of having coil in-hole, but the functionality of the process enables screenouts to be avoided all together. At the end of the treatment, the well is simply cleaned out, and the entire operation is completed with only one trip in hole and with no plugs to be drilled out. These benefits combined can maximize return on investment for the operator. This paper includes a side-by-side comparison of this technique with a conventional fracturing treatment, weighing risk, stimulation effectiveness, operational efficiencies, and cost savings.


In this work we present a method to perform a complete audiovisual source separation without need of previous information. This method is based on the assumption that sounds are caused by moving structures. Thus, an efficient representation of audio and video sequences allows to build relationships between synchronous structures on both modalities. A robust clustering algorithm groups video structures exhibiting strong correlations with the audio so that sources are counted and located in the image. Using such information and exploiting audio-video correlation, the audio sources activity is determined. Next, spectral Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) are learnt in time slots with only one source active so that it is possible to separate them in case of an audio mixture. Audio source separation performances are rigorously evaluated, clearly showing that the proposed algorithm performs efficiently and robustly.


OBJECTIVES: To study and report the attitudes of patients and general practitioners (GPs) concerning the obligation of doctors to act for the good of their patients, and to provide a practical account of beneficence in general practice. DESIGN: Semi-structured interviews administered to GPs and patients. SETTING AND SAMPLE: Participants randomly recruited from an age and gender stratified list of GPs in a geographically defined region of South Australia. The sample comprised twenty-one general practitioners and seventeen patients recruited by participating GPs. RESULTS: In practice, acting for the good of the patient not only accommodates the views of patients and GPs on expertise and knowing best, but also responds to the particular details of the clinical situation. Patients had a complex understanding of the expertise necessary for medical practice, describing a contextual domain in which they were expert, and which complemented the scientific expertise of their GPs. General practitioners identified multiple sources for their expertise, of which experience was the most significant. The role of the GP included responding to individual patients and particular clinical problems and ranged from the assumption of responsibility through to the proffering of medical advice. CONCLUSION: This study found that GPs acting for the good of their patients covered a variety of GP actions and patient preferences. Beneficence was not justified by presumed patient vulnerability or the inability of patients to understand medical problems, but furthered through a recognition of the different areas of expertise contributed by both parties to the consultation.


Adhesion to extracellular ligands through integrins regulates cell shape, migration, growth, and survival. How integrins transmit signals in the outside-to-in direction remains unknown. Whereas in resting integrins the α and β subunit transmembrane domains are associated, ligand binding promotes dissociation and separation of these domains. Here we address whether such separation is required for outside-in signaling. By introduction of an intersubunit disulfide bond, we generated mutant integrin αIIbβ3 with blocked transmembrane separation that binds ligand, mediates adhesion, adopts an extended conformation after ligand binding, and forms antibody-induced macroclusters on the cell surface similarly to wild type. However, the mutant integrin exhibits a profound defect in adhesion-induced outside-in signaling as measured by cell spreading, actin stress-fiber and focal adhesion formation, and focal adhesion kinase activation. This defect was rescued by reduction of the disulfide bond. Our results demonstrate that the separation of transmembrane domains is required for integrin outside-in signal transduction.


This article is on Cimbrian German, an old enclave dialect in Upper Italy surrounded by Italo-Romance dialects. Next to clear traces of German clausal syntax, it shows Romance characteristics, which could be due to borrowing from the surrounding Italo-Romance majority dialects. Pertinent literature to date has assumed that the mix of structural properties of German and Italian are indeed due to the century-long isolation of the German island dialects and their relationship to the majority Italo-Romance dialects. The position presented in this paper focuses on the exclusive orality of Cimbrian and the specific structural changes oral-only variants are subject to as opposed to written, standard vernaculars. More generally, the methodological tenet is pursued that single changes subject to ambiguous interpretation need to be disambiguated by careful alignment with the major set of properties - i.e. a minority structures that are commonly found in Italo-Romance dialects may receive interpretations that are typical of oral-only German. The methodological null-hypothesis, then, is that change occurs under the narrowest accompanying structural conditions accessible within one and the same language rather than by borrowing from the social majority language.


This article compares two prominent managerial models – those of Snowden and Weick – that use narrative as a sensemaking response to complexity. After presenting an overview to their approach to narrative and complexity, we then analyze their stylistic differences as a precursor to identifying eight features of the more substantial likeness of their models. In the conclusion we distill the essential features of narrative and complexity that their concepts entail and show that individual behavior, interpersonal communication, participation, and management by exception are their hallmarks.


We are told the Web is different from previous mass communication technologies because its technical affordances have created an informational "Wild West" (Reevell (2007)). We are also told, that by overestimating their 'savvy', we have abandoned many young people to the risks of this frontier beyond regulation (Hargittai, 2010) (boyd, 2014) (Livingstone, 2007). Young people are therefore said to be vulnerable to untruths circulating on the Web such as health misinformation (Levin-Zamir, Lemish, & Gofin, 2011) (Hargittai & Young, 2012) and conspiracy theories (Millar, 2012). The advertised remedy for these problem populations of digitally illiterate youths is a programme of re-education. I begin by examining these claims to show the way we have constructed and investigated this problem has shaped our claims about young people online. I argue, in our drive to locate problem populations, we have reduced young people's relationship with the Web to a series of reductive summative judgments that blame the Web or young people for their lack of digital information literacy. If we accept the current orthodoxy and then blame the Web we offer a technological determinist explanation of reality: technology produces misinformed populations. If we locate the problem solely with young people, as many researchers do, we evoke a legacy of bio-physiological conceptions of youth's deficiencies. Our social explanations often attribute young people's deficiencies to their parent's occupation (the typical proxy in this research domain for socio-economic status) or their ethnicity; but these reduce young people to unreflective victims of structural inequality. I begin by conceptually distancing my research from positivistic methods such as tests and questionnaires that often confirm young people's relatively powerless position in society (Morrow & Richards, 1996); particularly when these methods result in binary judgments such as 'unskilled' or 'skilled'. I then conceive of young people's status as a social construct that affects their sense of self while they behave as active agents negotiating their position in society. Similarly, I reconceptualise hitherto fixed categories of information, misinformation, and disinformation as dynamic and socially-produced. I then position this unstable form of information within Foucauldian descriptions of the relationship between informational truths and the production of power in our society. I operationalise these new concepts of youth and information in this domain by using Mason's (2011) facet methodology and mixed qualitative and digital ethnographic techniques. This combination of concepts (of youth, information, and power) and my research methods, allowed me to investigate the multidirectional and situational environmental and social influences (including my research methods) on youth's engagements with information on the Web. My findings show that we cannot effectively isolate and implicate the Web, young people, or their socio-economic status as explanations of why and how young people use the Web for information. In analysing the data I began by looking for a conceptual framework that would account for the entanglements of technology, people, and society. This study identifies and analyses how young people's web practices are defined by "the possibilities and impossibilities" (Bourdieu 1984, p100) that exist within young people's educational fields and beyond. Although learning new skills is always important, the social context in which these skills are acquired and used is crucial. The social environment influences which skills are naturalised, incentivised, and rewarded. This thesis focuses on this space where, buffeted by the various vested interests who are concerned about how the Web is being utilised; young people are exercising their agency and using the Web in ways that suit their purposes. My research has found young people are not free to use the Web as they please nor do they always consciously or critically reflect on their own practices, yet they do describe complex patterns of usage that help them explore their sense of self as well as society's norms and values. My data shows young people's Web usage emerges from the tensions between: how they want to use the Web; how they have learnt to use it; how they have been taught to use it; how they have been allowed to use it; and how these tensions are played-out in context of their contingent social reality. In short, this thesis aims to repatriate young people's web practices from the sterile, positivist methods space of questionnaires and tests of digital literacy to social contexts of everyday life. Constructions of young people in relation to technology have important consequences. We no longer think young people know what they are doing so we are now looking for evidence to substantiate our intervention strategies. These findings suggest we need to rethink, again, what we mean in our narratives of justification when are describing young people's digital deficits and digital inequality otherwise these interventions could be ineffective or indeed counterproductive.


In this study, PM2.5 mass readings by a portable light scattering monitor (Dust Trak) were compared to those obtained using a collocated beta gauge monitor (E-BAM) at various ambient relative humidities. The mass readings of two automatic particle monitors were also compared with those of a manual sampler. The inlet heater of the beta gauge was actuated or switched off to determine whether ambient relative humidity has an effect on the beta gauge readings. This work demonstrated that PM2.5 readings of the light scattering monitor were higher than those of the beta gauge monitor, regardless of whether the inlet heater was turned on or off. In addition, the mean PM2.5 readings of the light scattering monitor were also higher than those of the manual sampler. Results indicated that the relative humidity affected PM2.5 reading of the light scattering monitor and PM2.5 reading increased as the relative humidity rose. In contrast, when the inlet heater of the beta gauge was switched on, the mean PM2.5 mass reading of beta gauge monitor was close to that of the manual sampler, and it was lower than that of the light scattering monitor. The inlet heater appeared to avoid the relative humidity effect on PM2.5 mass readings of the beta gauge monitor.


Neil Kodesh, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. 264 pp. In 1996, when I was accepted for the Ph.D. program in cultural anthropology at Uppsala University, my intention was to go to the northwestern shores of Lake Victoria and the Kampala area in central Uganda, to study the complex interplay between the cultural and political leadership as it played out in the famous Buganda kingdom. I eventually ended up in war-torn northern Uganda instead, but back in 1996, as I was trying to figure out a more specific research agenda, I found myself scanning the secondhand bookshops of Uppsala, in search for anything that I could find on Uganda. Among other books, I came across a torn first-edition copy of James Frederick Cunningham's Uganda and its Peoples (1905). It cost me some twelve US dollars. This coffee-table-kind-of-book covers most of the then British protectorate, although it focuses, as has been the historical and academic bias ever since, on central Uganda and the indigenous kingdoms under British rule. The so-called tribes of Uganda and their racial characteristics are listed in pseudo-anthropological chapters that turn sketchier the more geographically peripheral to the capital Kampala they are. In a parallel development, the more geopolitically peripheral, the more primitive the people described are alleged to be. So when John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant famously crossed the Nile on their journey from Buganda to Khartoum, the Australian journalist Alan Moorehead (1960:68) proposes in The White Nile, one of his acclaimed books, " the tribes grew increasingly more primitive; they were back in a region of naked, painted men who carried bows and arrows and who knew nothing of the arts and crafts of Buganda." As I embarked on the reading of Kodesh's book, I was given the opportunity to return to Cunningham's old text. For the dust jacket to Beyond the Royal Gaze, Kodesh borrows a spellbinding photo from Cunningham's book, which turns out to be a beautiful and very smart illustration of his project to reanalyze the historiography of the precolonial Buganda kingdom. His ambition is to investigate healing and the creativity of power, to be able to understand clanship as an organizing tool for community building and collective health. More particularly, Kodesh wants to recognize "the importance of historical visions that lie outside official, courtly histories" (5). Indeed there is a long-lasting bias in the scholarship on what we today call Uganda, where the norm and starting point in the analysis is the royalist and courtly imagination of the politically centralized Buganda kingdom, in Kodesh's terms encapsulated as a "triumphant narrative of centralization and modernization" (5). This scholarly imagination-built on indigenous Ganda mythology, as well as colonial and racist imaginations such as the infamous Hamitic hypothesis-was integral to the creation of the Uganda protectorate. According to the Hamitic hypothesis, anything that resembled civilization in Africa must have been the result of ancient influence from Egypt, and in the prolongation, from Europe. The Buganda kingdom was an example of this. As Kodesh shows, the writing of the history of Buganda was a joint project that brought together in strange unity European missionaries, colonial administrators-cum-ethnographers, and indigenous Ganda intellectuals. The more of a periphery to this project, like the Acholi of northern Uganda where I have worked, the more primitive people were concluded to be. Pioneer colonial administrators of northern Uganda have described the effort to include the Acholi into the protectorate of Uganda as greatly discouraging, because the Acholi seemed to have nothing compared with the political sophistication of the Baganda. In leaving Kampala (and thus Buganda) for the provinces, to their frustration the administrators found themselves dealing with people who seemed to have nothing that answered to the civilization they had encountered in Buganda. …


Twenty years ago India was still generally thought of as an archetypal developing country, home to the largest number of poor people of any country in the world, and beset by problems of low economic growth, casteism and violent religious conflict. Now India is being feted as an economic power-house which might well become the second largest economy in the world before the middle of this century. Its democratic traditions, moreover, remain broadly intact.

How and why has this historic transformation come about? And what are its implications for the people of India, for Indian society and politics? These are the big questions addressed in this book by three scholars who have lived and researched in different parts of India during the period of this great transformation.

Each of the 13 chapters seeks to answer a particular question: When and why did India take off? How did a weak state promote audacious reform? Is government in India becoming more responsive (and to whom)? Does India have a civil society? Does caste still matter? Why is India threatened by a Maoist insurgency? In addressing these and other pressing questions, the authors take full account of vibrant new scholarship that has emerged over the past decade or so, both from Indian writers and India specialists, and from social scientists who have studied India in a comparative context.

India Today is a comprehensive and compelling text for students of South Asia, political economy, development and comparative politics as well as anyone interested in the future of the world's largest democracy.


Empirical research has confirmed that the harms of child maltreatment can affect almost every area of an individual's functioning and can reverberate across relationships, generations, and communities. Most recently, investigators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control have called for policymakers to prioritize prevention and amelioration of child maltreatment in a manner consistent with its approach to other major public health problems. This Article — an outgrowth of a panel on Relationships with Caregivers and Children's Neurobiological Development, which took place at a recent symposium, Law and Policy of the Developing Brain, co-sponsored by the University of California's Hastings College of the Law and Stanford Law School — addresses some of the potential policy applications of research on the neurobiology of attachment, maltreatment, and trauma, with particular attention to the government's articulated mission of safeguarding children's welfare. Part I of this Article considers the state's relationship with children and families, and the law's recognition of the centrality of children's primary caregivers — typically their parents — to children's well-being. Part II critiques certain aspects of our legal system's predominant response to child maltreatment. Part III reviews recent research on the effects of child maltreatment, with special attention to developmental neurobiological findings. Part IV discusses some implications of these findings for child protection policy and sets forth recommendations that are consistent with the empirical research and responsive to the critiques set forth in Part II.


Alveolar soft part sarcoma (ASPS) was first described by Christopherson et al. ASPS is a slow-growing and rare soft tissue tumor that usually occurs in young adults; patients are most often diagnosed between the ages of 15-35 years. ASPS are mainly located on the lower extremities, but can also be found on the arms, chest, and retroperitoneal areas. In children, ASPS are often found around the head and neck, especially on the tongue and orbita. ASPS is more common in women than in men, and the metastasis incidence ranges between 21% and 65% at the time of diagnosis. ASPS most commonly metastasize to the lungs, but also frequently metastasize to the bones and brain. In adults, ASPS is quite rare around head and neck. This study aimed to review the general approach to an adult patient with ASPS located in the nasal cavity.


Post-modern society is viewed nowadays as a technologized society, where the great solutions to human problems can be solved by the progress of technology in economics from classical industry to communications. In the last years, nanotechnology is called to play an important part in the global food production, food security and food safety in the sense that the use of nanoscale micronutrients conduced to suppressing crop disease and the relationship between nutritional status and plant diseases is investigated. Nanomaterials are capable to penetrate into cells of herbs; they can carry DNA and other chemical compounds in the cells extending the possibility in plant biotechnology to target special gene manipulation. It is important to note that the concentration, plant organ or tissue, exposure rate, elemental form, plant species, and exposure dosage (chronic/acute) affect the plant response and in particular the distinct stress response. The complex process of utilization nanoparticles in agriculture has to be monitored to a level that avoids further environmental contamination. The present and future use of nanoparticles as micronutrients is affected by different risks related to nanotoxicity of micronutrients, a problem to be solved by an appropriate and safe circuit of nanoparticles in soil, water, plants and at last in human organism.


Abstract New U–Pb sensitive high-mass resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP) data from detrital zircons within the Orlica–Śnieżnik Dome provide new insights into the stratigraphic and palaeogeographic position of assumed relict Precambrian basement preserved in the Variscan collisional orogen of the West Sudetes, SW Poland. Hitherto, the Młynowiec Formation and the Stronie Formation within the Orlica–Śnieżnik Dome were assumed to represent two metavolcano-sedimentary successions of Proterozoic and early Palaeozoic age, respectively. However, when previous U–Pb data and mapping data from the Orlica–Śnieżnik Dome are combined with the new detrital zircon isotopic ages both from paragneisses within the Młynowiec Formation and from light-coloured quartzites and mica schists within the Stronie Formation, the result strongly suggests that the protoliths of these two formations actually form a continuous succession. This continuous succession is herein designated the Młynowiec–Stronie Group. The rocks of this group were deposited during middle Cambrian–early Ordovician times (c. 520–470 Ma), presumably at the northern edge of West Gondwana after the 10–20 Ma period of tectonic quiescence that followed the terminal stage of the Cadomian collisions. Monotonous Młynowiec metagreywackes form the lower part of the succession, and the lithologically diverse schistose Stronie Formation forms its upper part. The change from greywacke (Młynowiec) to volcano-sedimentary (Stronie) facies coincided with the onset of rather short-lived volcanic activity which climaxed around 505–495 Ma and which supplied the volcanogenic components to the Stronie Formation. No 'Cadomian unconformity' has been observed in the region. Xenocrystic zircons from the Młynowiec–Stronie Group retain records of Archaean (3.0–2.3 Ga), Palaeoproterozoic (2.1–1.8 Ga) and Neoproterozoic to early Cambrian (660–530 Ma) zircon-forming events. These zircon ages, together with the lack of 1.7–1.2 Ga zircon ages, suggest that the source areas for the metasedimentary rocks may have been the West Africa craton, which therefore differs from the Amazonian affinity of the adjacent Brunovistulia Terrane. Nevertheless, two zircons, c. 1.0 and 1.1 Ga old, respectively, indicate that the Młynowiec–Stronie Group sedimentary basin must have still been within the delivery reach of detritus ultimately derived from the Grenvillian-age belt(s). The detrital components of the supracrustal formations of the Orlica–Śnieżnik Dome were mainly derived from Neoproterozoic zircon-bearing crystalline rocks that were accreted to, and included in, the Cadomian basement in several intrusive pulses that culminated at 660–640 Ma, 620 Ma and 570–530 Ma.


Taking Roman Jakobson's functions of language as a starting point, this paper develops a multimodal application of Jakobson's linguistic theory in order to describe the communicative functions of the trailer for the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962). The trailer as the main advertising instrument within film marketing seems especially apt for this aim, given both its modal complexity and clear functional purpose of selling the film. Yet, contrary to the assumption of the conative function being most central in a trailer, a closer analysis on the micro level of the different visual, auditory and filmic modes a trailer offers shows that the expressive and referential functions are more elaborate and, thus, predominant. Other functions, such as the phatic, poetic and metalingual/metamodal functions stay in the background, still being central in that they provide the viewer an aesthetic and exciting viewing event and therefore a possible reason for wanting to watch the advertised film itself.


He says that they haven't heard from them in a while and were happy to hear that they were doing well. Mary was expecting $100 from her uncle Same Wallace's estate. He is sorry that the estate is going to the courts to be settled. He has had a cold for the past three weeks and hopes he is almost over it. He mentions that all of the relatives are well and there have been five deaths in the city. He mentions that the roads aren't good and they have started plowing oats. J. Knox Smith has consumption. He says the wheat looks well considering the problems they had in the fall. They have had hay, corn, oats, and bran delivered to the county for home demands. He has irish potatoes from Ireland and Scotland on sale. He asks that they write soon and sends his regards.


The (S)-2-amino-3-(3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole) propionic acid (AMPA) receptor discriminates between agonists in terms of binding and channel gating; AMPA is a high-affinity full agonist, whereas kainate is a low-affinity partial agonist. Although there is extensive literature on the functional characterization of partial agonist activity in ion channels, structure-based mechanisms are scarce. Here we investigate the role of Leu-650, a binding cleft residue conserved among AMPA receptors, in maintaining agonist specificity and regulating agonist binding and channel gating by using physiological, x-ray crystallographic, and biochemical techniques. Changing Leu-650 to Thr yields a receptor that responds more potently and efficaciously to kainate and less potently and efficaciously to AMPA relative to the WT receptor. Crystal structures of the Leu-650 to Thr mutant reveal an increase in domain closure in the kainate-bound state and a partially closed and a fully closed conformation in the AMPA-bound form. Our results indicate that agonists can induce a range of conformations in the GluR2 ligand-binding core and that domain closure is directly correlated to channel activation. The partially closed, AMPA-bound conformation of the L650T mutant likely captures the structure of an agonist-bound, inactive state of the receptor. Together with previously solved structures, we have determined a mechanism of agonist binding and subsequent conformational rearrangements.


Background: CD48, CD150 and CD244.2 are the signaling lymphocytic activation molecules (SLAM) of hematopoietic population expressed on the T cells, B cells, monocytes, macrophages and play an important role in adaptive immune response. Aim: The present study aims at evaluating the individual circulating levels of these SLAM markers in response to electron beam radiation and the protective effects of Carica papaya (L.) and DADS intervention. Methods and Material: The mice were fed orally with 100mg/kg body weight of papaya leaf extract and 10mg/kg body weight of DADS. The extract and DADS were administered to individual groups for 5 consecutive days with respective control groups and exposed to 6Gy of electrons radiation. Results: The present study indicated significant rise in the CD244.2 levels in irradiation control and a near normal levels in groups with C.papaya and DADS intervention. A significant decrease in the CD48 expression of granulocytes is seen in radiation control group on comparison to the normal control group. A significant rise is seen in the CD48 expression of granulocytes with DADS treatment prior irradiation when compared to DADS control. A significant increase in the granulocyte CD150 expression with DADS treatment prior irradiation group is seen when compared to the DADS control group. In DADS treatment prior irradiation compared to radiation control the CD244.2 expression in granulocytes is significantly lowered. Conclusion: Study suggests a potential increase in the percentage of CD244.2 + lymphocytes in response to electron beam radiation and a comparative decrease in the percentage of CD244.2 + lymphocytes in C.papaya leaf extract and DADS intervention. Key words: SLAM markers, Immune suppression, Hematopoietic progenitors, CD48, CD150, CD244.2, NK cell, Cytotoxicity.


The assessment of the regenerative capacity of the heart has been compromised by the lack of surface signatures to characterize cardiomyocytes. Here, combined multiparametric surface marker analysis with single cell transcriptional profiling and in vivo transplantation, identify the main fetal cardiac populations and their progenitors. We found that cardiomyocytes at different stages of differentiation co-exist during development. We identified a population of immature HSA/CD24+ cardiomyocytes that persists throughout life and that, unlike other cardiomyocyte subsets, actively proliferates up to one week of age and engraft cardiac tissue upon transplantation. In adult heart HSA/CD24+ cardiomyocytes appear as mononucleated cells that cycle and increase in frequency after infarction. Our work identified cell surface signatures that allow the prospective isolation of cardiomyocytes at any developmental stage and the detection of adult cardiomyocytes poised for activation in response to ischemic stimuli. This work opens new perspectives in the understanding and treatment of heart pathologies.


As gatekeepers to the criminal justice system, prosecutors are its most powerful officials. Prosecutors' considerable discretion - about whom to charge and for which crimes - affects the lives and fate of thousands of criminal suspects, and the safety and security of all citizens. Yet, in South Africa, no dedicated oversight and accountability mechanism scrutinises the activities of the country's prosecutors. Constructive oversight can assist the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to enhance both its performance and public confidence in its work. The paper reviews a number of prosecutorial accountability mechanisms drawing on real-world examples. These mechanisms are assessed and their applicability to the South African context is critically explored.


We conducted a diurnal study of gradients of dimethylsulfide (DMS), dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), and bacterial numbers in a stratified coastal salt pond (Salt Pond, Falmouth, Massachusetts). Microlayer samples were collected with a surface skimmer, a partially submerged rotating glass cylinder that allows the collection of a thin layer of water by adherence to the drum. All sulfur compounds and bacteria increased toward the water surface, with a diurnal signal in DMSP and DMSO. Fractionation of DMSP and DMSO in dissolved (d) and particulate (p) pools revealed that any trend in DMSP was due to the p fraction, and trends in DMSO originated from the d fraction. Photoeffects are important for the distribution of DMSPp and DMSOd. In Salt Pond, the production of DMSP is probably linked to photosynthesis, and photooxidation is of greater importance to the production of DMSO than is biological oxidation.


Mitoferrin-1 (Mfrn1; Slc25a37), a member of the solute carrier family localized in the mitochondrial inner membrane, functions as an essential iron importer for the synthesis of mitochondrial heme and iron–sulfur clusters in erythroblasts. The biochemistry of Mfrn1-mediated iron transport into the mitochondria, however, is poorly understood. Here, we used the strategy of in vivo epitope-tagging affinity purification and mass spectrometry to investigate Mfrn1-mediated mitochondrial iron homeostasis. Abcb10, a mitochondrial inner membrane ATP-binding cassette transporter highly induced during erythroid maturation in hematopoietic tissues, was found as one key protein that physically interacts with Mfrn1 during mouse erythroleukemia (MEL) cell differentiation. Mfrn1 was shown previously to have a longer protein half-life in differentiated MEL cells compared with undifferentiated cells. In this study, Abcb10 was found to enhance the stabilization of Mfrn1 protein in MEL cells and transfected heterologous COS7 cells. In undifferentiated MEL cells, cotransfected Abcb10 specifically interacts with Mfrn1 to enhance its protein stability and promote Mfrn1-dependent mitochondrial iron importation. The structural stabilization of the Mfrn1–Abcb10 complex demonstrates a previously uncharacterized function for Abcb10 in mitochondria. Furthermore, the binding domain of Mfrn1–Abcb10 interaction maps to the N terminus of Mfrn1. These results suggest the tight regulation of mitochondrial iron acquisition and heme synthesis in erythroblasts is mediated by both transcriptional and posttranslational mechanisms, whereby the high level of Mfrn1 is stabilized by oligomeric protein complexes.


The role of information and communication in establishing and defining world order formed the basis of a comprehensive call for the New World Information and Communication Order. Many strategic and regional blocs of nations and economic forums have been formed over time. BRICS has made a relatively new attempt in the coming together of several politically, economically and culturally diverse countries. Their summits reflect their intention to work together. By positioning the media system, this brief article looks at the patterns of evolution since New World Information and Communication Order and the comparable aspects of media in these countries. China and India, apart from their membership in BRICS also have historical ties, issues and concerns. Connectivity, as intended in the Belt and Road Initiative, is in a bilateral sense a matter of diplomacy and negotiation. An attempt has been made to contextualise this issue as well.


Background Worldwide, drowning is the third leading cause of death among children. In Asia it is the first leading cause of death and a major public health threat. The objective of this paper was to develop a drowning prevention program including swimming training, CPR and lifesaving methods for children and to evaluate it. This intervention was provided and evaluated in Thailand where drowning is the first leading cause of death among children. Methods Thailand where drowning is the first leading cause of death among children. The study used observations, quantitative and qualitative methods. In total 20 children in the age of seven to ten, from Nan Province in northern Thailand were participating. Results The result of this intervention is that the children are highly capable to learn swimming, CPR and lifesaving activities within 10 days. Out of 20 participants all have successfully completed the swimming, CPR and lifesaving programs. Conclusions The conclusion of this intervention study can be sum up by both the interventions result, the questionnaires and the independent evaluators is that swimming program as this one is highly needed for saving lives. Support from the local as well as the central authority is also needed. Therefore such swimming program shows the importance of swimming knowledge and water security to prevent drowning in near future.


Indirect noise generated by the acceleration of combustion inhomogeneities is an important aspect in the design of aero-engines because of its impact on the overall noise emitted by an aircraft and the possible contribution to combustion instabilities. In this study, a realistic rich-quench-lean (RQL) combustor is numerically investigated, with the objective of quantitatively analyzing the formation and evolution of flow inhomogeneities and determining the level of indirect combustion noise in the nozzle guide vane (NGV). Both entropy and compositional noise are calculated in this work. A high-fidelity numerical simulation of the combustion chamber, based on the large-eddy simulation (LES) approach with the conditional moment closure (CMC) combustion model, is performed. The contributions of the different air streams to the formation of flow inhomogeneities are pinned down and separated with seven dedicated passive scalars. LES-CMC results are then used to determine the acoustic sources to feed an NGV aeroacoustic model, which outputs the noise generated by entropy and compositional inhomogeneities. Results show that non-negligible fluctuations of temperature and composition reach the combustor's exit. Combustion inhomogeneities originate both from finite-rate chemistry effects and incomplete mixing. In particular, the role of mixing with dilution and liner air flows on the level of combustion inhomogeneities at the combustor's exit is highlighted. The species that most contribute to indirect noise are identified and the transfer functions of a realistic NGV are computed. The noise level indicates that indirect noise generated by temperature fluctuations is larger than the indirect noise generated by compositional inhomogeneities, although the latter is not negligible and is expected to become louder in supersonic nozzles. It is also shown that relatively small fluctuations of the local flame structure can lead to significant variations of the nozzle transfer function, whose gain increases with the Mach number. This highlights the necessity of an on-line solution of the local flame structure, which is performed in this paper by CMC, for an accurate prediction of the level of compositional noise. This study opens new possibilities for the identification, separation, and calculation of the sources of indirect combustion noise in realistic aeronautical gas turbines.


T2, and increasingly multicore x86 systems from Intel and AMD, differentiate themselves from traditional CPU designs by prioritizing high-throughput processing of many parallel operations over the low-latency execution of a single task. GPUs assemble a large collection of fixed-function and software-program-mable processing resources. Impressive statistics, such as ALU (arithmetic logic unit) counts and peak floating-point rates often emerge during discussions of GPU design. Despite the inherently parallel nature of graphics, however, efficiently mapping common rendering algorithms onto GPU resources is extremely challenging. The key to high performance lies in strategies that hardware components and their corresponding software interfaces use to keep GPU processing resources busy. GPU designs go to great lengths to obtain high efficiency and conveniently reduce the difficulty programmers face when programming graphics applications. As a result, GPUs deliver high performance and expose an expressive but simple programming interface. This interface remains largely devoid of explicit parallelism or asyn-chronous execution and has proven to be portable across vendor implementations and generations of GPU designs. At a time when the shift toward throughput-oriented CPU platforms is prompting alarm about the complexity of parallel programming, understanding key ideas behind the success of GPU computing is valuable not only for developers targeting software for GPU execution, but also for informing the design of new architectures and programming systems for other domains. In this article, we dive under the hood of a modern GPU to look at why interactive rendering is challenging and to explore the solutions GPU architects have devised to meet these challenges. the Graphics Pipeline A graphics system generates images that represent views of a virtual scene. This scene is defined by the geometry, As the line between GPUs and CPUs begins to blur, it's important to understand what makes GPUs tick. By kayVon fatahaLian anD mike houston A GAMER WANDERS through a virtual world rendered in near-cinematic detail. Seconds later, the screen fills with a 3D explosion, the result of unseen enemies hiding in physically accurate shadows. Disappointed, the user exits the game and returns to a computer desktop that exhibits the stylish 3D look-and-feel of a modern window manager. Both of these visual experiences require hundreds of gigaflops of computing performance, a demand met by the GPU (graphics processing unit) present in every consumer PC. The modern GPU is a versatile processor that constitutes an extreme but compelling point in the growing space of multicore parallel computing …


The classical predictive models for thermodynamic entities are based on summation techniques. At the time these predictive methods were designed, no or few calorimetric data on zeolites were available. The number of calorimetric measurements (third-law entropy and heat capacities) performed since 1990 on various zeolitic minerals allows a quick verification of all algorithms. It shows that the predicted values display a discrepancy above 4 % relative to the measured values. Recent predictive methods for entropy and for heat capacity also give very high differences between predicted and experimental values. With a limited number of thermodynamic values of zeolites and their dehydrated forms, the entropy and heat capacity predictions have been improved by using the thermodynamic properties of zeolite-like silica polymorphs and of zeolitic water obtained from the difference between the thermodynamic parameters of anhydrous and hydrated zeolites. The improvements introduced in this work reduce the prediction errors to about 2.95 % for entropy and 2.86 % for heat capacities.


Simulations are of particular advantage in research studies where large samples are necessary to achieve statistical power and the information must be collected under uniform conditions in order to aid interpretation. In the study reported below, simulation was achieved through the use of medical photography accompanied by case studies of the same patients. All information was collected on the same day. The purpose of the study was to determine the validity of the three pressure ulcer risk assessment scales most commonly used in clinical nursing practice in the UK. Each clinical nurse assessed the same four patients using three risk assessment scales and a visual analogue scale designed to capture their own clinical judgement. External validity was assessed by a panel of tissue viability experts who provided independent ratings. Data were obtained from 236 clinical nurses, yielding 941 risk assessments. Experience with this approach to data collection suggests that it requires careful planning. This should include measures to ensure that the simulated information is valid and that all data collectors have been adequately trained and are able to motivate the nurses participating in the study. Providing consideration is given to these issues, the use of simulation can help to collect data that would be difficult to obtain by more conventional means. It is also important to recognize that clinical decisions are de-contextualized in simulations because they are reduced to verbal and visual summaries. The decision to use simulations should thus be taken only if this is acknowledged.