Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) is one of the important modified cellulose that widely used as additives in industries. CMC possesses advantageous properties especially their solubility in water, immiscibility in oil and organic solvent which made it acts as multifunction agent. Therefore, they function as stabilizer, thickener, binder and suspension agent in industries such as food and pharmaceutical. Hence, analysis on CMC production process has been studied by researchers in order to enhance the efficiency of the process to achieve specific properties of CMC needed. Most of the analysis were done using One-Factor-At-Time (OFAT) method, which is time consuming and potentially lead to misinterpretation of results due to lack of information on interaction effects likely to occur in chemical reaction. Therefore, statistical and mathematical technique by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is employed in this research to overcome the limitations especially interactions effects of CMC reaction conditions. Here, the CMC production was carried out by modifying cotton cellulose to CMC through Williamson etherification reaction. The reaction is efficient, inexpensive and easy to handle. Reaction process were studied with respect to Degree of substitution (OS) and reaction efficiency (RE) by varying the reaction conditions; volume ratio of ethanol to isoprophyl alcohol, reaction temperature, reaction time, concentration of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium monochloroacetate (SMCA). Production process carried out was approved through chemical structure identification using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), substituent distribution measurement using proton nuclear magnetic resonance, rheological behavior measurement using rotational viscometer. The result of analysis from RSM is comparable with OFAT in term of effect of single factor. Importance of interaction effects on responses were visualized through interaction plots from RSM. The interaction effect of reaction temperature with SMCA and NaOH concentrations are the most Significant. Reaction temperature higher than 50OC is required for optimum reaction to occur. RSM regression model on CMC production process suggested a few optimum solutions for maximum OS and RE. RSM model was validated through experiments carried out and the responses are near to the predicted value. The highest OS and RE that obtained with production conducted under investigated conditions are 0.993 and 63.59% respectively. The respective conditions are reaction temperature at 66.060C, reaction time at 172.20min, SMCA concentration at 13.90g, NaOH concentration at 19.35%w/v and solvent ratio at 0.87v/v.


This study evaluates the physical and mechanical properties of bintangor (Callophyllum
sp) laminated veneer lumber (LVL) under cyclic boil-dry (CBD) treatment. The
properties studied were thickness swelling (TS), linear expansion (LE), water absorption
(WA), delamination, bending shear and static bending (moduli of elasticity and rupture).
LVLs of 1220 x 2440 mm in size were manufactured on a commercial LVL production
line. The thicknesses of the veneers were set at 3.1 and 4.1 mm, producing 17- and 13-ply
LVL panels respectively. A total of two hundred and sixty four large specimens were
prepared for static bending (50 x 90 x 1000 mm) and bending shear (40 x 50 x 300 mm).
To determine the effect of sample size, seventy two small static bending specimens (12.5 x 50 x 305 mm) were cut from the 13-ply LVL. The small and large static bending
specimens were tested according to American Society for Testing and Materials D 143
and AS/NZ 4063:1992 Timber – Stress-graded – in-grade strength and stiffness
evaluation respectively. Bending shear was determined according to AS/NZ 4357. In all
cases, the CBD treatment procedure was conducted by taking consideration the size
factor so that each specimen would experience similar degree of heating regime. The
analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that the TS, delamination, stiffness (MOE) and
strength (MOR) were significantly influenced by the specimen size, veneer thickness and
number of CBD cycle while bending shear were significantly influenced by the number
of CBD cycle and veneer thickness. The most severely degraded were specimens that
have been treated for 10 cycles. LVL produced from thinner veneers (3.1 mm) as in 17-ply LVL, was apparently more stable where acceptably low TS, WA, LE and percent
delamination were recorded resulting in low reductions in stiffness, strength and shear
after CBD treatment. There was a negative relationship between delamination and
bending shear after CBD treatment where 17-ply LVL showed a curvilinear trend whilst
13-ply LVL showed a linear relationship. The study also found inspite having the same degree of heating regime, larger specimens experienced much more severe strength
degradation which mainly caused by shear failure at the center (middle layers) of the
LVL panel. The shorter span used for the large specimens (1: 10) was observed to be
responsible for the shearing effect that subsequently reduced the MOE and MOR values
in this study. The outdoor aging revealed that MOE of smaller specimens was badly
degraded (40%) compared to the large specimens (22%) after six months of outdoor
aging. Large and small specimens produced from 13-ply LVL (thicker veneers)
experienced more strength reduction under 6 months outdoor aging (28%) compared to
10 cycles of CBD treatment (24%). MOE and MOR after any one of 2, 5 or 10 cycles of
CBD treatment showed good correlation with MOE and MOR after 3 and 6 months of outdoor aging.


Mitigating or slowing an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) has been the focus of international efforts, most apparent with the development of the Kyoto Protocol. Sequestration of carbon (C) in agricultural soils is being advocated as a method to assist in meeting the demands of an international C credit system. The conversion of conventionally tilled agricultural lands to no till is widely accepted as having a large-scale sequestration potential. In this study, C flux measurements over a no-till corn/soybean agricultural ecosystem over 6 years were coupled with estimates of C release associated with agricultural practices to assess the net biome productivity (NBP) of this no-till ecosystem. Estimates of NBP were also calculated for the conventionally tilled corn/soybean ecosystem assuming net ecosystem exchange is C neutral. These measurements were scaled to the US as a whole to determine the sequestration potential of corn/soybean ecosystems, under current practices where 10% of agricultural land devoted to this ecosystem is no-tilled and under a hypothetical scenario where 100% of the land is not tilled. The estimates of this analysis show that current corn/soybean agriculture in the US releases ∼7.2 Tg C annually, with no-till sequestering ∼2.2 Tg and conventional-till releasing ∼9.4 Tg. The complete conversion of land area to no till might result in 21.7 Tg C sequestered annually, representing a net C flux difference of ∼29 Tg C. These results demonstrate that large-scale conversion to no-till practices, at least for the corn/soybean ecosystem, could potentially offset ca. 2% of annual US carbon emissions.


The muscle relaxant dantrolene sodium acts directly and specifically on skeletal muscle, unlike other pharmacological agents which affect the central nervous system or act at the nueromuscular junction. Dantrolene sodium markedly suppresses the release of calcium previously sequestered by skeletal, but not cardiac, muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum. No effect in the total amount of calcium accumulated was found. In situ, the drug may reduce the amount of calcium necessary for muscle contraction.


Most network embedding algorithms consist in measuring co-occur-rences of nodes via random walks then learning the embeddings using Skip-Gram with Negative Sampling. While it has proven to be a relevant choice, there are alternatives, such as GloVe, which has not been investigated yet for network embedding. Even though SGNS better handles non co-occurrence than GloVe, it has a worse time-complexity. In this paper, we propose a matrix factorization approach for network embedding, inspired by GloVe, that better handles non co-occurrence with a competitive time-complexity. We also show how to extend this model to deal with networks where nodes are documents, by simultaneously learning word, node and document representations. Quantitative evaluations show that our model achieves state-of-the-art performance, while not being so sensitive to the choice of hyper-parameters. Qualitatively speaking, we show how our model helps exploring a network of documents by generating complementary network-oriented and content-oriented keywords.


We consider the problem of nonnegative submodular maximization in the online setting. At time step t, an algorithm selects a set St ∈ C ⊆ 2 where C is a feasible family of sets. An adversary then reveals a submodular function ft. The goal is to design an efficient algorithm for minimizing the expected approximate regret. In this work, we give a general approach for improving regret bounds in online submodular maximization by exploiting "first-order" regret bounds for online linear optimization. • For monotone submodular maximization subject to a matroid, we give an efficient algorithm which achieves a (1− c/e− ε)-regret of O( √ kT ln(n/k)) where n is the size of the ground set, k is the rank of the matroid, ε > 0 is a constant, and c is the average curvature. Even without assuming any curvature (i.e., taking c = 1), this regret bound improves on previous results of Streeter et al. (2009) and Golovin et al. (2014). • For nonmonotone, unconstrained submodular functions, we give an algorithm with 1/2-regret O( √ nT ), improving on the results of Roughgarden and Wang (2018). Our approach is based on Blackwell approachability; in particular, we give a novel first-order regret bound for the Blackwell instances that arise in this setting.


Bradykinin (BK) plays a critical role in intervening relaxation in vascular smooth muscle through distinctive mechanisms. The current project is designed to study the role of PKA, calcium-dependent potassium (BKca, IKca,andSKca) channels, voltage-dependent potassium channel (Kv) and inward rectifier potassium channel (Kir) in BK interceded response and to determine functionally the mechanisms underlying BK mediated relaxation, utilizing standard tissue bath protocols. The results of the current work showed that BK inducing vasorelaxation is mediated by PKA which activate eNOS (endothelial nitric oxide synthase) followed by a subsequent release of nitric oxide (NO) from endothelial cells since the protein kinase inhibitor (H-89) significantly reduced Emax and pIC50. Similarly, in rings pre-incubated with L-NAME (3×10-4M) significantly inhibited vasorelaxation induced by BK. Furthermore, both Kca and Kv played an interesting role in vasorelaxation mediated by BK (1×10-6 to 3×10-3 M) in phenylephrine (PE) precontracted aortic rings, pre-incubated with tetraethylammonium (TEA) which reduced Emax with a slight reduction of pIC50 as compared to the control. Also, aortic rings pre-incubated with IK(Ca) blocker (clotrimazole) markedly reduced Emax but with a tendency of pIC50 elevation. In the present study, voltage-dependent potassium channels blocker (4-AP) significantly reduced the relaxant effects of BK and reduced Emax with altering pIC50 values significantly. On the other hand, BaCl2 tends to enhance the relaxation induced by BK and significantly elevated Emax. Collectively, our findings indicate that BK-induced relaxation is dependent on the activation of PKA to release NO from endothelium which through a cascade of a signaling pathway, in turn, activate both IK(Ca) and Kv in rat artic vascular tissue.


Summary
Data are presented illustrating the influence of various experimental conditions on the lung shift of mature Schistosoma mansoni in mice following intraperitoneal therapy with tartar emetic.
A positive correlation occurred between the age of the infection and the degree of the lung shift following treatment. No lung shift was observed in infections that were 6 weeks' old when treatment was initiated, whereas pronounced lung shifts occurred in infections from 12 to 30 weeks' old following dose levels of tartar emetic comparable to or less than those employed in the treatment of 6-week-old infections.
The principle of advanced hyperplasia of the liver, which may give rise to an increase in the size or number of vascular shunts between the portal and systemic circulatory systems, is proposed as at least a partial explanation for the occurrence of lung shifts in "old" treated infections as compared with "young" treated infections. Among other possible contributory factors are the degrees of intensity of the infections, strain-specific responses (the parasite, the host, or both), and the degree or rapidity of action of the therapeutic agent employed.


We present observational studies of extra-galactic radio jets in M87, 3C273, and 3C345. Observations of the M87 jet were made at 15 GHz with 0.12" resolution. All of the knots are clearly resolved both along and across the jet. Most of the knots are found to be smooth in appearance with no evidence of shocklike discontinuities. The brightest knot and the innermost knot are exceptions to this. The brightest knot (knot A) seems consistent with a shock caused by unsteady flow in the jet. Models for this feature are discussed. Combining our data with X-ray data suggests that the jet is neither freely expanding, thermally confined, nor ram pressure confined. The jet may, however, be magnetically confined. We present 10.7 GHz VLBI observations of 3C273 with high north-south resolution. A strong, non-monotonic curvature is found in the jet at projected radii ≤ 5 pc. It is unlikely that this curvature can be caused by precession. Measurements of the core size show that bulk relativistic motion in the core is not required for consistency with the observed x-ray flux. For 3C345 we present a systematic analysis of VLBI observations at 2.3, 5.0, 10.7, 22.2, and 89 GHz. Epochs are from 1979.25 through 1984.11. A newly ejected superluminal component (C4) is observed to accelerate, change position angle, undergo a large flux outburst, and have a flat spectrum. Older components C2 and C3 have different speeds, different position angles, and show little or no acceleration. The spectrum of C3 steepens as its flux decays. There are spectral index gradients such that both C4 and C3 are farther from the "core" at higher frequencies. The moving components define an opening angle of ~27° and also show direct evidence for expansion. The counter-jet to jet flux ratio is extremely small, -0.007±0.007. These data for 3C345 are interpreted in terms of simple models involving spherical components or shocks in a relativistic jet. All of the emission regions show evidence for bulk relativistic motion with δ > 3. The particle energies and pressures dominate those of the magnetic fields, unless δ ≥ 20. If the emission regions consist of an electron-proton plasma, then the density of thermal electrons is much less than the density of relativistic electrons. The fluxes decay with time much more rapidly than the synchrotron half-life, but much more slowly than predicted by adiabatic expansion. An attractive model for the observed kinematics identifies the emitting regions as shocks in an apparently broad and curved jet; a curvature of ≥ 3° and γ ≥ 10 is required.


Whether you are newly arrived in Egypt and need to know the words for 'bread' and 'apartment,' or a long-term resident who suddenly needs to know how to ask for a picture frame or complain of a sore throat, this dictionary is for you. Fully revised and expanded, the third edition of this unique and invaluable dictionary presents 6,500 words commonly needed by foreigners speaking Arabic in Egypt. Arabic words are written in a clear and consistent transcription system, plurals are given for all nouns, plurals and feminine forms are provided for all adjectives, and past tenses are given for all verbs. The dictionary also provides stress rules and basic charts of verb endings, negation of verbs, form and use of numbers, pronominal suffixes, and comparatives and superlatives.


ABSTRACT This article examines the Punjabi Canadian Legacy Project (PCLP), a partnership project between the Royal British Columbia Museum and the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, as a case study of heritage from below. The project is based on community action research and practices, joining forces of memory, research, and community institutions, organisations, and groups. Considering 'heritagisation' as a process of heritage building, and drawing on their experience as practitioners on this project, the authors argue for the need to consider the vast diversities within and among communities, and the need to work on 'heritagisation' through ongoing dialogic engagement. Through a myriad of continuous dialogues and inherent challenges, the process and progress of the PCLP is shaped by this dialogic engagement. As an ongoing project, the PCLP demonstrates how a network extended to diverse participants with shared goals can emerge through the organically developed heritagisation process encouraged by the partners' collaborative efforts in an experimental model for community work by memory and research institutions.


Sea lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) are a significant source of monetary losses on salmon farms. Sea lice exhibit temperature-dependent development rates and salinity-dependent mortality, but to date no deterministic models have incorporated these seasonally varying factors. To understand how environmental variation and life history characteristics affect sea lice abundance, we derive a delay differential equation model and parameterize the model with environmental data from British Columbia and southern Newfoundland. We calculate the lifetime reproductive output for female sea lice maturing to adulthood at different times of the year and find differences in the timing of peak reproduction between the two regions. Using a sensitivity analysis, we find that sea lice abundance is more sensitive to variation in mean annual water temperature and mean annual salinity than to variation in life history parameters. Our results suggest that effective sea lice management requires consideration of site-specific temperature and salinity patterns and, in particular, that the optimal timing of production cycles and sea lice treatments might vary between regions.


The need for a managed transition away from fossil fuel production raises the question of whether and how countries are addressing this need in their national communications to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A previous 2019 analysis of the first round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and long-term, low-emissions development strategies (LT-LEDS) found that few countries discussed how they would address fossil fuel production as part of their climate mitigation activities. Here, we examine new and updated NDCs and LT-LEDS, finding a growing number of NDCs and LT-LEDS that address fossil fuel production as part of mitigation. For the first time, several countries incorporate policies and/ or pathways for a managed decline of fossil fuel production. In contrast, many others foresee continued or expanded fossil fuel production, with no mention of efforts to prepare for a transition. Opportunities remain for countries to make better use of NDCs and LT-LEDS to align fossil fuel production with the Paris Agreement, including by more comprehensively reflecting on the equity implications of their plans, as well as addressing how countries plan to diversify their economies, ensure a just transition for workers, and cooperate internationally on a managed wind-down of fossil fuel supply. As COP26 approaches, this window of opportunity is still open, but it is rapidly closing.


Background Human regulatory T cells (Treg) offer an attractive adjunctive therapy to reduce current reliance on lifelong, nonspecific immunosuppression after transplantation. Here, we evaluated the ability of ex vivo expanded human Treg to prevent the rejection of islets of Langerhans in a humanized mouse model and examined the mechanisms involved. Methods We engrafted human pancreatic islets of Langerhans into the renal subcapsular space of immunodeficient BALB/c.rag2−/−.c&ggr;−/− mice, previously rendered diabetic via injection of the &bgr;-cell toxin streptozocin. After the establishment of stable euglycemia, mice were reconstituted with allogeneic human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and the resultant alloreactive response studied. Ex vivo expanded CD25highCD4+ human Treg, which expressed FoxP3, CTLA-4, and CD62L and remained CD127low, were then cotransferred together with human PBMC and islet allografts and monitored for evidence of rejection. Results Human islets transplanted into diabetic immunodeficient mice reversed diabetes but were rejected rapidly after the mice were reconstituted with allogeneic human PBMC. Cotransfer of purified, ex vivo expanded human Treg prolonged islet allograft survival resulting in the accumulation of Treg in the peripheral lymphoid tissue and suppression of proliferation and interferon-&ggr; production by T cells. In vitro, Treg suppressed activation of signal transducers and activators of transcription and inhibited the effector differentiation of responder T cells. Conclusions Ex vivo expanded Treg retain regulatory activity in vivo, can protect a human islet allograft from rejection by suppressing signal transducers and activators of transcription activation and inhibiting T-cell differentiation, and have clinical potential as an adjunctive cellular therapy.


The stories of Yasunari Kawabata evoke an unmistakably Japanese atmosphere in their delicacy, understatement, and lyrical description. Like his later works, First Snow on Fuji is concerned with forms of presence and absence, with being, with memory and loss of memory, with not-knowing. Kawabata lets us slide into the lives of people who have been shattered by war, loss, and longing. These stories are beautiful and melancholy, filled with Kawabatas unerring vision of human psychology. First Snow on Fuji was originally published in Japan in 1958, ten years before Kawabata received the Nobel Prize. Kawabata selected the stories for this collection himself, and the result is a stunning assembly of disparate moods and genres. This new edition is the first to be published in English.


Complex and interesting electromagnetic behavior can be found in spaces with non-flat topology. When considering the properties of an electromagnetic medium under an arbitrary coordinate transformation an alternative interpretation presents itself. The transformed material property tensors may be interpreted as a different set of material properties in a flat, Cartesian space. We describe the calculation of these material properties for coordinate transformations that describe spaces with spherical or cylindrical holes in them. The resulting material properties can then implement invisibility cloaks in flat space. We also describe a method for performing geometric ray tracing in these materials which are both inhomogeneous and anisotropic in their electric permittivity and magnetic permeability.


Legislation introduced last week by Republicans in Iowa and Missouri would eliminate tenure for professors at public colleges and universities. In Missouri, a bill ( H.B. 266) would cease offers of tenure for new hires. A similar proposal ( Senate file 41) in Iowa would end tenure for every professor, even those who already have it. Tenure offers job security and academic freedom to college faculty, but it has been under attack in recent years. In Wisconsin, chemistry professors have been among many vocal opponents of changes that have damaged tenure there. Some professors at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and other campuses have left, saying that their tenure protections were under attack. Proponents of tenure say it allows universities to hire professors—especially in the sciences—who would earn more in the private sector. It also affords professors the right to pursue whatever research they want, even if it is politically


The first section of this research summary documents the importance of an effective, collaborative school culture. The next section defines the concept of organizational/school culture and the final section provides a description of methods to measure or assess school culture. An understanding of the research associated with these three sections is important as a school leadership team, a school improvement team, and/or a school faculty embarks on the tasks of organizational growth.


Sales and use taxes, which are levied by forty-five states, have long been an important source of revenue for state and local governments. The rigid structure of these long-standing taxes, however, has been strained by the rapid evolution of the online economy. As a result, the Multistate Tax Commission ("MTC") devised a plan, the Streamlined State Sales Tax Project ("STP"), to recapture some of the revenue that state and local governments might otherwise lose as consumer purchases migrate from local retailers to online sellers. This plan, approved reciprocally by the states, but not by Congress, was designed by state legislators to comply with legal guidelines articulated by the Supreme Court. This Comment argues, however, that if a foreign merchant challenges these laws, the STP would be declared unconstitutional based on a modern understanding of the Commerce Clause and a structural, federalist reasoning. Part I discusses the evolution of sales and use taxes and their importance to state and local governments. Part II discusses the rising tension between the structure of sales and use taxes and the structure of the American economy. Part II also documents the STP—the states' recent response to this tension—and explains the STP's legal underpinnings. Part III analyzes the potential legal challenges the STP would face from a foreign merchant and concludes that while it is likely constitutional on due process grounds, the STP is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause based on stare decisis and federalist reasoning.


This paper is a contrastive analysis of phonetic characteristics of Thai and Vietnamese tones using phonetic characteristics based on methodologies from the analyses of Arthur (1962), Hoàng Thị Châu (2009), Đoàn Thiện Thuật (2016) and Nguyễn Thị Hai (2017). This analysis finds that, aside from the difference of quantity of toneme, there are additional differences including fundamental frequency, length, tone shape, pitch, and voice quality. Tho in the Thai tonal system does not occur in the Vietnamese tonal system. Conversely, hỏi, ngã and nặng in the Vietnamese tonal system do not occur in the Thai tonal system.


The corrosion resistance of two standard austenitic stainless steels (AISI 304 and 321 SS) has been investigated in non-aqueous methanolic solution containing lithium chloride. The effect of chloride concentration on the general corrosion behaviour of the steels has been investigated using open circuit potential (OCP), potentiostatic polarization and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) techniques. Both the steels have undergone active corrosion. The rate of corrosion is found to depend directly on the concentration of chloride ion in methanol similar to the aqueous solutions. The polarization measurements reveal that the corrosion resistance of the Ti-alloyed 321 SS is superior as compared to the 304 SS due to the presence of titanium in it. AISI 321 SS suffer from pitting corrosion whereas grain boundary attack is apparent in 304 SS.


Spatio-temporal graphs are important structures to describe urban sensory data, e.g., traffic speed and air quality. Predicting over spatio-temporal graphs enables many essential applications in intelligent cities, such as traffic management and environment analysis. Recently, many deep learning models have been proposed for spatio-temporal graph prediction and achieved significant results. However, designing neural networks requires rich domain knowledge and expert efforts. To this end, we study automated neural architecture search for spatio-temporal graphs with the application to urban traffic prediction, which meets two challenges: 1) how to define search space for capturing complex spatio-temporal correlations; and 2) how to learn network weight parameters related to the corresponding attributed graph of a spatio-temporal graph. To tackle these challenges, we propose a novel framework, entitled AutoSTG, for automated spatio-temporal graph prediction. In our AutoSTG, spatial graph convolution and temporal convolution operations are adopted in our search space to capture complex spatio-temporal correlations. Besides, we employ the meta learning technique to learn the adjacency matrices of spatial graph convolution layers and kernels of temporal convolution layers from the meta knowledge of the attributed graph. And specifically, such meta knowledge is learned by a graph meta knowledge learner that iteratively aggregates knowledge on the attributed graph. Finally, extensive experiments were conducted on two real-world benchmark datasets to demonstrate that AutoSTG can find effective network architectures and achieve state-of-the-art results. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study neural architecture search for spatio-temporal graphs.


The isosurface stuffing algorithm fills an isosurface with a uniformly sized tetrahedral mesh whose dihedral angles are bounded between 10.7° and 164.8°, or (with a change in parameters) between 8.9° and 158.8°. The algorithm is whip fast, numerically robust, and easy to implement because, like Marching Cubes, it generates tetrahedra from a small set of precomputed stencils. A variant of the algorithm creates a mesh with internal grading: on the boundary, where high resolution is generally desired, the elements are fine and uniformly sized, and in the interior they may be coarser and vary in size. This combination of features makes isosurface stuffing a powerful tool for dynamic fluid simulation, large-deformation mechanics, and applications that require interactive remeshing or use objects defined by smooth implicit surfaces. It is the first algorithm that rigorously guarantees the suitability of tetrahedra for finite element methods in domains whose shapes are substantially more challenging than boxes. Our angle bounds are guaranteed by a computer-assisted proof. If the isosurface is a smooth 2-manifold with bounded curvature, and the tetrahedra are sufficiently small, then the boundary of the mesh is guaranteed to be a geometrically and topologically accurate approximation of the isosurface.


The natural mordenite was treated hydrothermally with NaOH solutions, either with or without fusion with NaOH powder as pretreatment. Zeolite Na-P and analcime were identified as the reacted products, depending on the reaction conditions. The zeolites were identified by X-raydiffraction, and their cation exchange capacity (CEC) was determined. Zeolite Na-P has higher CEC (338 meq/100g) contrasted with the mordenite (181 meq/100g). Further more, the uptakes of NH4+ onto the zeolites have also been investigated. The Na-P has faster exchange rate, higher exchange amounts and better regeneration ability. The ammonium removal efficiency for the Na-P is above 90% at the ammonium initial concentrations less than 150 mg NH4+/g. It seemed that Na-P was fit for the further treatment of waters polluted with ammonium.


Recently, latent factor model (LFM) has been drawing much attention in recommender systems due to its good performance and scalability. However, existing LFMs predict missing values in a user-item rating matrix only based on the known ones, and thus the sparsity of the rating matrix always limits their performance. Meanwhile, semi-supervised learning (SSL) provides an effective way to alleviate the label (i.e., rating) sparsity problem by performing label propagation, which is mainly based on the smoothness insight on affinity graphs. However, graph-based SSL suffers serious scalability and graph unreliable problems when directly being applied to do recommendation. In this article, we propose a novel probabilistic chain graph model (CGM) to marry SSL with LFM. The proposed CGM is a combination of Bayesian network and Markov random field. The Bayesian network is used to model the rating generation and regression procedures, and the Markov random field is used to model the confidence-aware smoothness constraint between the generated ratings. Experimental results show that our proposed CGM significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches in terms of four evaluation metrics, and with a larger performance margin when data sparsity increases.


Patient-centred care is becoming more important in healthcare. The success of patient-centred care can be assessed by exploring the patient experience through a patient journey map. As the number of outpatient surgeries is increasing, it is important to reveal the specific characteristics of this type of surgery. The perioperative patient experience is considered very important for outpatient surgery, because all perioperative activities are condensed in one day. To investigate this experience, we performed a case study of hand and wrist surgery. Six teams of two industrial design engineering students interviewed 40 patients in total in two private and two public hospitals in the Netherlands. All teams created a patient journey map, describing the patient experience. These maps were analysed by the authors to identify common themes among the six journeys. Four time-independent themes and four time-dependent themes were identified. Insecurity, reassurance by staff, loneliness, and lack of information were associated with the whole patient experience. Before surgery, lack of control was the most prominent experience. During surgery, acceptance and curiosity were present. After surgery, relief was the dominant experience. No significant differences between the public and private hospitals were discovered. Several suggestions are given on how to facilitate positive experiences and how to resolve negative experiences in outpatient surgery. These include suggestions for hospital policy and design interventions.


Modern HPC systems are growing in complexity, as they move towards deeper memory hierarchies and increasing use of computational heterogeneity via GPUs or other accelerators. When developing applications for these platforms, programmers are faced with two bad choices. On one hand, they can explicitly manage all machine resources, writing programs decorated with low level primitives from multiple APIs (e.g. Hybrid MPI / OpenMP applications). Though seemingly necessary for efficient execution, it is an inherently non-scalable way to write software. Without a separation of concerns, only small programs written by expert developers actually achieve this efficiency. Furthermore, the implementations are rigid, difficult to extend, and not portable. Alternatively, users can adopt higher level programming environments to abstract away these concerns. Extensibility and portability, however, often come at the cost of lost performance. The mapping of a user's application onto the system now occurs without the contextual information that was immediately available in the more coupled approach. In this paper, we describe a framework for the transfer of high level, application semantic knowledge into lower levels of the software stack at an appropriate level of abstraction. Using the STAPL library, we demonstrate how this information guides important decisions in the runtime system (STAPL-RTS), such as multi-protocol communication coordination and request aggregation. Through examples, we show how generic programming idioms already known to C++ programmers are used to annotate calls and increase performance.


There are large gaps in reading skills by family income among school-aged children in the United States. Correlational evidence suggests that reading skills are strongly related to the amount of reading students do outside of school. Experimental evidence testing whether this relationship is causal is lacking. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of a summer reading program called Project READS, which induces students to read more during the summer by mailing ten books to them, one per week. Simple intent-to-treat estimates show that the program increased reading during the summer, and show significant effects on reading comprehension test scores in the fall for third grade girls but not for third grade boys or second graders of either gender. Analyses that take advantage of within-classroom random assignment and cross-classroom variation in treatment effects show evidence that reading more books generates increases in reading comprehension skills, particularly when students read carefully enough to be able to answer basic questions about the books they read, and particularly for girls.


The treatment of duodenal perforations has scarce options and it is very difficult with an high failure rate. The aim of this work is to describe a new surgical technique that was used to treat ten patients suffering from duodenal perforation. The procedure based on the concept to enforce the duodenal suture with remodeling material allowing to the inflamed and oedematous tissues to heal without to be cut by the repairing stitches themselves, is performed with biological prosthesis patches. 90% of patients treated with this innovative technique experienced a complete healing of the duodenal perforation. This unique surgical technique not only proved to be safe, but it also solved the 90% of duodenal perforations in patients at risk to die.


Mighty Male Microbes Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to an individual's susceptibility to autoimmune disease, but the specific environmental influences are not well characterized. Markle et al. (p. 1084, published online 17 January; see the Perspective by Flak et al.) explored how microbial factors, in particular the gut microbiota, influence susceptibility to type 1 diabetes in mice. In the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of type 1 diabetes, female mice are significantly more susceptible to disease than males; however, this difference was not apparent under germ-free conditions. Transfer of cecal contents from male NOD mice to female NOD mice prior to disease onset protected against pancreatic islet inflammation, autoantibody production, and the development of diabetes and was associated with increased testosterone in female mice. Blocking androgen receptor activity abrogated protection. Thus, the microbiota may be able to regulate sex hormones and influence an individual's susceptibility to autoimmunity. In mice, the gut microbiota influences levels of sex hormones and the development of autoimmune disease. [Also see Perspective by Flak et al.] Microbial exposures and sex hormones exert potent effects on autoimmune diseases, many of which are more prevalent in women. We demonstrate that early-life microbial exposures determine sex hormone levels and modify progression to autoimmunity in the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of type 1 diabetes (T1D). Colonization by commensal microbes elevated serum testosterone and protected NOD males from T1D. Transfer of gut microbiota from adult males to immature females altered the recipient's microbiota, resulting in elevated testosterone and metabolomic changes, reduced islet inflammation and autoantibody production, and robust T1D protection. These effects were dependent on androgen receptor activity. Thus, the commensal microbial community alters sex hormone levels and regulates autoimmune disease fate in individuals with high genetic risk.


This paper considers the agenda for UK trade negotiations over the post-Brexit period. There are several groups of countries that will need to be dealt with and we consider the priorities among them. Negotiations with the WTO and the EU are the most important and the most pressing in time, and should be pursued simultaneously. On the former, the UK must try quickly to establish its independent WTO status, which will be greatly facilitated by minimising the changes it proposes to its tariffs schedules. On the EU the UK needs to consider the choices between remaining in the customs union, creating an FTA with the EU and maintaining the 'regulatory union' that is the European Economic Area (EEA). Only when relations with the EU and WTO are clear will it be feasible to negotiate trade deals of various sorts with other countries, ranging from those with which we already have deals via the EU to those that currently trade with us on 'WTO rules'. All of this takes time and we argue that it may be worth pursuing transitional arrangements to extend certain current trading arrangements a few years beyond Brexit in order to make time for serious negotiations.


: Raman spectroscopy probes the chemical composition of biological samples with sub-micron resolution, rendering it a powerful tool in the diagnosis of several diseases and the study unstained biological samples. However, the weak Raman signal leads to long acquisition times, unsuited to study dynamical processes or large samples. Quantitative phase microscopy can speed up the diagnosis, provide complementary data, and potentially link the Raman fingerprint of the sample with corresponding refractive indices. Here we demonstrate a 4 π microscope that records both the Raman and quantitative phase information from the same sample spot.


This study presents a constraint-based analysis of Jordanian Arabic phonotactics within the Optimality Theory framework. The corpus providing the database for the study is restricted to Karak Arabic, a variety spoken in the Karak Governorate in the middle part of Jordan. Historically and geographically, Karak Arabic belongs to Levantine Arabic varieties spoken in what was known as Greater Syria. The variety under analysis distinguishes itself from most other Arabic or even Jordanian varieties in several features. Chief among them are the opacity in word final non-geminate complex codas, the adherence of complex codas to the Sonority Sequencing Principle, and the presence of a rarely found ultra-heavy syllable. In spite of the shared approach, this paper, to a great extent, deviates from other studies conducted on some Levantine dialects (Adra, 1999; Abuabbas, 2003, to name but two) in some core arguments and analytical procedures, which are, consequently, reflected in the type and ranking of the universal constraints even when handling similar data. The paper presents a thorough analysis of and answers to three major debatable issues: (i) assignment of unlicensed segments to semisyllables, (ii) representation of geminates, and (iii) reduction of unlicensed segments in ultra-heavy syllables by morphology.


Process after birth, humans will grow and flourish. According to time and rhythm of its own development that will bring power and own nature and capabilities will be developed by the environment grows. The result of the development of life that eventually becomes a development that unique and complex. Actually between the human and the other one has a phase a similar development, which must be passed as far as normal human beings life, where man sooner or later people will be age further, that the mark with changes in physical and psychological changes. Advanced age is a period of decline in both the individual circumstances physical and mental impairment, where old age is a natural process that is not
can be determined by humans, but is a provision of God Yang Maha Esa. In Indonesia, according to the census in 1980, the population is 147.3 million people. Of that number there are 16.3 million people (11%) people aged 50 years and over, and approximately 6.3 million people (4.3%) people aged 60 years or older. It is estimated that in 2000 the number of elderly increases to 9.99% of the total population (22,277,700 inhabitants) with age expectations live 65-70 years. Projected by 2020 the number reached 29 million soul. This amount is almost equal to the population in one of the provinces Indonesia, for example, eastern Java at the moment. The number of elderly people is enough high background with a variety of life would be problem and penanganannyapun very diverse, because the elderly have the type Different personality: type wise, independent type, the type is not satisfied, type resignation (Nugroho, 1995:1). Adjustment by Hurlock (1999:248) Pointing at play the role of individual success to their relationship with another person or family and show the attitude and behavior pleasant. A successful adjustment refers to the condition mentally stable in the sense of able to solve the problem realistically. Adjustment is very important to be implemented because as social beings with individual can not let go environment where they are, then the individual is always in his life establish good relations with its environment primarily adjustment on elderly who often face the problem of aging such adjustment in dealing with the death of a spouse and how to shape relationship with the people around. The failure of adjustment can cause confusion, anxiety, fear in some people that can lead to the emergence of emotional upheaval, conflicts, tension and frustration, which will eventually withdraw, feel alienated and marginalized, and feel no terbutuhkan. With good self-adjustment will provide more satisfaction big for one's life and also to carry out the functions psychic activity of all kinds, one is faced problems arising from relationships with others, but the facts show that not all elderly people can adapt well despite they are in middle socioeconomic status. Social and economic conditions in the elderly is an important factor which can provide specific experiences to someone. Economic conditions of deprivation provide a specific pattern such as a person becomes sakitsakitan due to mental distress and lack of nutrition, so that affect the biological and mental health.
Losing a loved one as a husband, is an issue which often occurs in a woman, death or divorce is ditinggalnya the cause of a wife by the husband. When the elderly left behind dead partner feels confused elderly, how they will face the next life after death left her partner, because people who had been accompanying was dead. Where they are always exchanging thoughts in dealing with problems in life, but everything will change everything and think of themselves without any accompanying side, especially the problems of financial security, living allowances, so that further age was not financially independent at 65. Everything that a previously discussed issue both but now there is no place to negotiate, exchange thoughts in the face of various problems that arise in everyday life because it has been left dead pairs so that the elderly feel lonely with this situation the elderly should be able to adjust to these circumstances. Based on initial observations will be undertaken by the researchers, the information widowed age feel very lost, especially if elderly It was away from her children, the elderly will feel nothing attention again. Meanwhile, the elderly who still live with their children would feel uncomfortable in doing things, fear desires are not in accordance with his children. Elderly who are unable to adapt to circumstances The elderly feel lonely, where elderly people feel excluded, rejected, abandoned, worthless, and felt alienated in a common life with community and family. So that the elderly do not feel their social relationships satisfying that eventually led to the elderly has decreased both physical and psychological health. If the loneliness that will drag on causing prolonged stress which eventually will cause depression. Fear and worry are also a threat and challenge facing people who entered the elderly especially bereavement spouse. Fear of illness and death, fear of lack of money and gradually losing a friend. Fear of loneliness and fear out of life social. All of this is the fear and suffering hidden in in the hearts and minds of people before the day many parents. So it's not guaranteed the elderly with high socioeconomic status can be happy. Being old is a natural process and happens to everyone. The problem is how to recognize and prepare for facing old age, another problem is how individuals looked at old age itself, in the sense of increasingly positive and negative can positive thinking people will increasingly accept aging. But the "accept" it does not mean we surrender or accept what is meant is how
how we adjust to the age, doing reasonably fit with physical and psychic abilities of old age. For the elderly should be able to adjust and this is task is the development of conformance with physical decline and health, adjustment to retirement and reduced income (Income) families, adjustment yourself with the death of a spouse, forming relationships with people's age, form the physical setting satisfactory and social adjust flexibly (Hurlock 1999:10) From exposure to the above adjustment is very influential on the pattern human behavior, because of the problems associated with aging. Given the problems faced by elderly people in particular the elderly are widowed, sooner or later most of elderly people need to prepare and be able to adapt well, but the reality is still a lot of the elderly who have not able to carry it out. For that we try to conduct research on "Self Adjustment of Elderly Women in Socio-Economic Status Medium for the death of her husband. "


Background: Increased oxidative stress is a widely accepted contributor to the development and progression of diabetes mellitus (DM). A lot of work is being done to unravel the mechanisms linking oxidative stress with diabetes and its complications. Objective: The objective was to investigate the relationship between blood glucose levels, glycated haemoglobin and three markers of oxidative stress in DM: catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione transferase (GST). Methods: Subjects were consecutive patients with Type 2 DM receiving treatment and apparently healthy controls. Fasting blood glucose, HbA1c, CAT, SOD and GST were assayed in the diabetic subjects and controls using standard procedures. Information on the presence of neuropathy and nephropathy was obtained from case notes, whereas screening for retinopathy was carried out at the Ophthalmology Unit of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for Windows, version 17. Results: A total of 115 subjects comprising 65 diabetics and 50 controls were studied. Mean fasting blood glucose, CAT, SOD and GST activities in test and control subjects were 9.12 (0.48) and 4.78 (0.63) mmol/L, 48.20 (2.69) and 63.22 (1.83) units/mg, 53.22 (2.44) and 62.55 (2.68) units/mg and 1.35 (0.09) and 3.47 (0.11) units/mg, respectively. Statistically significant differences were observed when levels of fasting blood sugar, CAT, SOD and GST were compared between diabetic and non-diabetic subjects. Diabetic subjects with one or more microvascular complications were found with significantly higher HbA1c levels than those without apparent complication. There was significant negative correlation between fasting blood glucose and all three antioxidant enzymes. Conclusion: The results of the present study suggested that fasting blood sugar modulated levels of antioxidant enzymes while protein glycation plays a role in the development of microvascular complications.


To the Editor: In their report on the Solitaire with the Intention for Thrombectomy as Primary Endovascular Treatment (SWIFT PRIME) trial, Saver et al. (June 11 issue)1 provide additional evidence on the effectiveness of endovascular therapy for acute ischemic stroke.2-5 In phase 3 stroke trials, the functional outcome on the modified Rankin scale is typically regarded as an important and valid measure. In the SWIFT PRIME trial, the effect of treatment on this functional outcome was impressively large. However, the blinding of this partly subjective assessment is crucial to minimizing bias. In this study, patients and their proxies were aware of the treatment they received, and the blind may easily have been broken. In the Multicenter Randomized Clinical Trial of Endovascular Treatment for Acute Ischemic Stroke in the Netherlands (MR CLEAN),5 we created masked structured reports, which were assessed by an independent committee. In the SWIFT PRIME trial, local investigators were responsible for the assessment of outcomes, even if they were not otherwise involved with the trial. This factor may have influenced the score on the modified Rankin scale. In this otherwise very well conducted trial, the treatment effect on secondary outcomes pointed in the desired direction, which corroborates the observed effect on the primary outcome. Nevertheless, we have to remain aware that any outcome assessment that is not properly blinded, particularly in stroke trials, may lead to an overestimation of the treatment effect. Olvert A. Berkhemer, M.D.


Local structural measurements have been performed on hexagonal HoMnO{sub 3} in order to ascertain the specific changes in bond distances, which accompany magnetic ordering transitions. The transition from the paramagnetic to the antiferromagnetic (noncollinear) phase near -70 K is dominated by changes in the a-b plane Mn-Mn bond distances. The spin rotation transition near -40 K involves both Mn-Mn and nearest-neighbor Ho-Mn interactions while the low-temperature transition below 10 K involves all interactions, Mn-Mn, Ho-Mn (nearest and next nearest), and Ho-Ho correlations. These changes in bond distances reveal strong spin-lattice coupling. The similarity in magnitude of the change in J(Mn-Mn) and J(Ho-Mn) enhances the system frustration. The structural changes are interpreted in terms of a model of competing spin order and local structural distortions. Density-functional calculations are used to estimate the energies associated with ionic displacements. The calculations also reveal asymmetric polarization of the charge density of Ho, O3, and O4 sites along the c axis in the ferroelectric phase. This polarization facilitates coupling between Ho atoms on neighboring planes normal to the c axis.


Organic electronics are an integral area of research because organic semiconductors can be lightweight, flexible, and biodegradable with low-cost production methods such as ink-jet or roll-to-roll printing. These inexpensive mass production techniques require solution deposition of the organic material. While single crystal organic semiconductors have been shown to exhibit carrier mobilities comparable to the silicon currently used in photovoltaics, during solution deposition of common organic semiconducting materials the resultant thin-film is often polycrystalline. Device performance and electrical properties of organic thin-film transistors are highly dependent on crystal structure and molecular packing. In polycrystalline thin-films, boundary regions between crystal grains can affect the overall performance of devices, as crystal structure and packing may differ from that of the surrounding crystal regions. These boundary regions may also serve as defect sites, allowing environmental factors, such as oxygen content and humidity, to alter local charge transport through devices. We utilize Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM) to characterize how grain boundaries alter local conductivity and device performance as a function of doping in 2,8-difluoro-5,11-triethysilylethynyl anthradithiophene (diF TESADT) thin-film transistor surfaces. Device voltage drops at grain boundaries are characterized as a function of both atmospheric dopants and transition time between dopants.


Ontologies are an important big-data analytics tool. Historically code lists were created by domain experts and mapped between different coding systems. Ontologies allow us to develop better representations of clinical concepts, data and facilitate better data extracts from routine clinical data. It also makes the process of case identification and key outcome measures transparent. We describe a process we have operationalised in our research. We use ontologies to resolve the semantics of complex health care data. The use of the method is demonstrated through a pregnancy case identification method. Pregnancy data are recorded in different coding systems and stored in different general practice systems; and pregnancy has its own complexities in that not all pregnancies proceed to term, they have different lengths and involve multiple providers of health care.


This paper offers a survey of movement sonification studies conducted over the last four years at the Institute of Movement Science. Our research focuses on studying the effects of online sonification on sporting performance and movement in golf and cycling. Given the different goals and motor control skills required to be successful, our experiences have provided us with significant insight when considering experimental design and analysis. Skill level and the complexity and ease of repeating motor tasks are major factors when developing sonification strategies and studying its effects. Decisions regarding which movement parameters and the presentation of sonification are equally important depending on study goals. The following outlines our perspectives and methodologies when developing and studying sonification and its effect on sports performance and movement.


Description: With a foreword by Yakov Rekhter "Here at last is a single, all encompassing resource where the myriad applications sharpen into a comprehensible text that first explains the whys and whats of each application before going on to the technical detail of the hows." —Kireeti Kompella, CTO Junos, Juniper Networks The authoritative guide to MPLS, now in its Third edition, fully updated with brand new material! MPLS is now considered the networking technology for carrying all types of network traffic, including voice telephony, real-time video, and data traffic. In MPLS-Enabled Applications, Third Edition, the authors methodically show how MPLS holds the key to network convergence by allowing operators to offer more services over a single physical infrastructure. The Third Edition contains more than 170 illustrations, new chapters, and more coverage, guiding the reader from the basics of the technology, though all its major VPN applications. MPLS Enabled-Applications contains up-to-date coverage of:-The current status and future potential of all major MPLS applications, including L2VPN, L3VPN, pseudowires and VPLS.-A new chapter with up to date coverage of the MPLS transport profile, MPLS-TP.-MPLS in access networks and Seamless MPLS, the new architecture for extending MPLS into the access, discussed in depth for both the unicast and the multicast case.-Extensive coverage of multicast support in L3VPNs (mVPNs), explaining and comparing both the PIM/GRE and the next generation BGP/MPLS solutions, and including a new chapter on advanced topics in next generation multicast VPNs.-A new chapter on advanced protection techniques, including detailed discussion of 50 ms end-to-end service restoration.-Comprehensive coverage of the base technology, as well as the latest IETF drafts, including topics such as pseudowire redundancy, VPLS multihoming, IRB and P2MP pseudowires. MPLS-Enabled Applications will provide those involved in the design and deployment of MPLS systems, as well as those researching the area of MPLS networks, with a thoroughly modern view of how MPLS is transforming the networking world. "Essential new material for those trying to understand the next steps in MPLS." —Adrian Farrel, IETF Routing Area Director "MPLS-Enabled Applications takes a unique and creative approach in explaining MPLS concepts and how they are applied in practice to meet the needs of Enterprise and Service Provider networks. I consistently recommend this book to colleagues in the engineering, education and business community."


Museums face steady demand for images of artworks from their collections, and they typically provide a service of making and delivering high-resolution images of art. The images are often intellectually essential for scholarly study and teaching, and they are sometimes economically valuable for production of the coffee mugs and note cards sold in museum shops and elsewhere. Though the law is unclear regarding copyright protection afforded to such images, many museum policies and licenses encumber the use of art images with contractual terms and license restrictions often aimed at raising revenue or protecting the integrity of the art. This article explores the extent to which museums have strained the limits of copyright claims and indeed have restructured concepts of ownership and control in ways that curtail the availability and use of art images far beyond anything that may be grounded in the law. This article examines the relevant copyright law applicable to the making and use of reproductions of art images, and it identifies the challenging pressures that museums face as they strive to make policies in the context of law but that also serve the multiple competing interests coming to bear on officials and decision makers inside museums. The article analyzes selected policies from major museums and provides an original construct of forms of "overreaching" that often appear in written standards offered by museums for the use of images. The analysis of policies also demonstrates that museums have choices in the shaping of institutional policies, and that breaking away from familiar policy terms can sometimes better serve institutional and public interests.


Permission-based access control enables users to manage and control their sensitive data for third-party applications. In an ideal scenario, third-party application includes enough details to illustrate the usage of such data, while the reality is that many descriptions of third-party applications are vague about their security or privacy activities. As a result, users are left with insufficient details when granting sensitive data to these applications. Prior works, such as WHYPER and AutoCog, have addressed the aforementioned problem via a so-called permission correlation system. Such a system correlates thirdparty applications' description with their requested permissions and determines an application as overprivileged, if a mismatch between the requested permission and the description is found. However, although prior works are successful on their own platforms, such as Android eco-system, they are not directly applicable to new platforms, such as Chrome extensions and IFTTT, without extensive data labeling and parameter tuning. In this paper, we design, implement, and evaluate a novel system, called TKPERM, which transfers knowledges of permission correlation systems across platforms. Our key idea is that these varied platforms with different use cases—like smartphones, IoTs, and desktop browsers—are all user-facing and thus allow the knowledges to be transferrable across platforms. Particularly, we adopt a greedy selection algorithm that picks the best source domains to transfer to the target permission on a new platform. TKPERM achieves 90.02% overall F1 score after transfer, which is 12.62% higher than the one of a model trained directly on the target domain without transfer. Particularly, TKPERM has 91.83% F1 score on IFTTT, 89.13% F1 score on Chrome-Extension, and 89.1% F1 score on SmartThings. TKPERM also successfully identified many real-world overprivileged applications, such as a gaming hub requesting location permissions without legitimate use.


In this paper, we revisit the problem of smoothed online learning, in which the online learner suffers both a hitting cost and a switching cost, and target two performance metrics: competitive ratio and dynamic regret with switching cost. To bound the competitive ratio, we assume the hitting cost is known to the learner in each round, and investigate the simple idea of balancing the two costs by an optimization problem. Surprisingly, we find that minimizing the hitting cost alone is $\max(1, \frac{2}{\alpha})$-competitive for $\alpha$-polyhedral functions and $1 + \frac{4}{\lambda}$-competitive for $\lambda$-quadratic growth functions, both of which improve state-of-the-art results significantly. Moreover, when the hitting cost is both convex and $\lambda$-quadratic growth, we reduce the competitive ratio to $1 + \frac{2}{\sqrt{\lambda}}$ by minimizing the weighted sum of the hitting cost and the switching cost. To bound the dynamic regret with switching cost, we follow the standard setting of online convex optimization, in which the hitting cost is convex but hidden from the learner before making predictions. We modify Ader, an existing algorithm designed for dynamic regret, slightly to take into account the switching cost when measuring the performance. The proposed algorithm, named as Smoothed Ader, attains an optimal $O(\sqrt{T(1+P_T)})$ bound for dynamic regret with switching cost, where $P_T$ is the path-length of the comparator sequence. Furthermore, if the hitting cost is accessible in the beginning of each round, we obtain a similar guarantee without the bounded gradient condition, and establish an $\Omega(\sqrt{T(1+P_T)})$ lower bound to confirm the optimality.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the epidemiological status of leprosy in children living in a metropolitan area.

METHODS
There were studied 474 leprosy cases detected in children under 15 living in the metropolitan area of the city of Manaus, Northern Brazil, between 1998 and 2005. The endemic profile and quality of care services were assessed based on data from the Notifiable Diseases Information System using epidemiological and operational indicators of the National Leprosy Elimination Program.

RESULTS
Of all leprosy cases detected in the period studied, 10.4% were found in children under 15. The detection rates in this age group remained at hyperendemic levels between 1998 and 2003, and decreased from 2004 onwards but keeping on very high endemic levels. The most common clinical form was tuberculoid followed by dimorphous. Paucibacillary forms were seen in 70.7% of the cases. The level of disability at the time of diagnosis was assessed in 94.7% of patients and 2.9% of them had physical disabilities. Most children (99.4%) were treated with the multiple drug regimen recommended by the World Health Organization.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite its decrease, detection rate of leprosy in children in the city of Manaus remains at a very high endemic level.


Notes on Sontag is a frank, witty, and entertaining reflection on the work, influence, and personality of one of the "foremost interpreters of ...our recent contemporary moment." Adopting Sontag's favorite form, a set of brief essays or notes that circle around a topic from different perspectives, renowned essayist Phillip Lopate considers the achievements and limitations of his tantalizing, daunting subject through what is fundamentally a conversation between two writers. Reactions to Sontag tend to be polarized, but Lopate's account of Sontag's significance to him and to the culture over which she loomed is neither hagiography nor hatchet job. Despite admiring and being inspired by her essays, he admits a persistent ambivalence about Sontag. Lopate also describes the figure she cut in person through a series of wry personal anecdotes of his encounters with her over the years. Setting out from middle-class California to invent herself as a European-style intellectual, Sontag raised the bar of critical discourse and offered up a model of a freethinking, imaginative, and sensual woman. But while crediting her successes, Lopate also looks at how her taste for aphorism and the radical high ground led her into exaggerations that could do violence to her own common sense, and how her ambition to be seen primarily as a novelist made her undervalue her brilliant essays. Honest yet sympathetic, Lopate's engaging evaluation reveals a Sontag who was both an original and very much a person of her time.


The UK government has quietly disbanded its expert advisory group on obesity in a move seen by some as a way to silence independent critical voices.

The expert group was set up by the previous Labour government to advise on the evidence that emerged from the "Tackling Obesities: Future Choices" project of Foresight, part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The expert group then went on to support the development and delivery of the "Healthy weight, healthy lives" strategy and public health programmes such as Change4Life, which aimed, with support from the Department of Health for England, to encourage people to lead healthier lives.

Members of the group were unpaid. The closure has happened quietly and with no publicity.

Geof Rayner, a member of the advisory group and honorary research fellow at the Centre for Food Policy at City University, London, told the BMJ that he believes that ministers don't want advisers whose ideas do not fit theirs. He said, "They don't want to hear critical independent advice. They only want advisers who agree with their way of thinking."

Dr Rayner said he believed that the Department of Health had been upset about an article he had written in the BMJ in April that criticised the government's endorsement of "nudge" thinking as a strategy to tackle obesity ( BMJ 2011;342:d2177, doi:10.1136/bmj.d2177). The head to head article, written with a fellow advisory group member, Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, said that "nudge is a smokescreen for, at best, inaction and, …


Gene regulatory networks capture the interactions between genes and other cell substances, resulting from the fundamental biological process of transcription and translation. In some applications, the topology of the regulatory network is not known, and has to be inferred from experimental data. The experimental data consist of expression levels of the genes, which are typically measured as mRNA concentrations in micro-array experiments. In a so called genetic perturbation experiment, small perturbations are applied to equilibrium states and the resulting changes in expression activity are measured. This paper develops novel algorithms that identify a sparse and stable genetic network that explains data obtained from noisy genetic perturbation experiments. Our identication algorithm is based on convex relaxations of the sparsity and stability constraints and can also incorporate a variety of prior knowledge of the network structure. Such knowledge can be either qualitative, specifying positive, negative or no interactions between genes, or quantitative, specifying a range of interaction strengths. Our approach is applied to both synthetic and experimental data, obtained for the SOS pathway in Escherichia coli, and the results show that the stability specication not only ensures consistency with the steady-state assumptions, but also signicantly increases the identication performance. Since the method is based on convex optimization, it can be eciently applied to large scale networks.


The Census and Social Surveys Integrated System (CSSIS) is a complex statistical process exploiting and integrating the information arising from registers and surveys on socio-economic variables. It is designed as a two phases Master Sample (MS) design based on a set of balanced and coordinated sampling surveys. It is planned for supporting the Istat Population Register (PR) in order to increase the amount of provided statistical information and to improve the level of coverage and quality. For an optimal design of the CSSIS for supporting the PR, it is useful to classify the variables included as totally, partially or not replaceable ones. The main scope of the CSSIS is filling the informative gap of the PR for the estimation of target parameters referred to partially replaceable and not replaceable variables on social and economic data. From the first phase sample a set of negatively coordinated samples of households can be selected for the second phase surveys, aimed to provide information on harmonized and specific socio-economic variables currently observed by Labour Force, Living Conditions, EuSilc and Consumer Expenditure surveys.


Carbon isotopic studies conducted on the upper Paleocene (Thanetian) and lower Eocene ("Sparnacian"—Ypresian) of the Paris Basin allow us to place the lithostratigraphic succession of the Mont Bernon Group in a spatial and temporal framework. The 13 C (negative) carbon isotope excursion (CIE) associated with the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) in marine sections at the NP9a/b calcareous nannoplankton zonal boundary and also in terrestrial stratigraphies, occurs in the Mortemer Formation, below the Vaugirard Formation. Moreover, a characteristic isotopic signature with stratigraphically successive negative and positive peaks permits a refinement in correlation betweeen the diverse members of the Mont Bernon Group. The strongly positive values (in upper Zone NP9) are found in the Meudon Member (Conglomerat de Meudon). These results imply that: (1) the Meudon Member constitutes the base of the Vaugirard Formation, but not the base of the Sparnacian "Stage"; (2) the mammal fauna of the Meudon Member (=late Biochron NP9) is somewhat younger than that of the basal Wasatchian North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA; which is stratigraphically correlative with, or even slightly older than, mid-Biochron NP9); (3) the base of the Sparnacian "Stage" of the Paris Basin is slightly older than the base of the Wasatchian NALMA and only marginally younger than the Chron C24r/C25n boundary. Moreover, the carbon isotopic signature suggests correlation of the Reading 1 beds/facies of the London Basin with the Mortemer For- mation and Reading 2 beds with the lower part of the Vaugirard Formation of the Paris Basin. With the recognition that the Sparnacian is confined to the ca. 0.85 m.y.-long stratigraphic interval between the CIE at its base and the FAD of Tribrachiatus digitalis at the base of the Ypresian, and that it is inappropriate to lower the base of the Ypresian Stage by about 1m.y., we recommend (re)insertion of the Sparnacian Stage as the basal stage of the Eocene Series.


The concentrations of the methyl halides CH3Cl and CH3Br in Lake Washington and its tributary streams were measured during the period 1994–1998. Strong seasonal variation was observed. In summer, the surface mixed layer in the middle of the lake was found to be generally undersaturated for CH3Cl but consistently supersaturated for CH3Br relative to air‐water gas equilibrium; meanwhile, the deep waters (zmax ‐ 65 m) of the summertime lake were found to be depleted to near zero levels for both compounds. In winter, the methyl halides were observed to be vertically well mixed throughout the water column and strongly undersaturated in both species. A simple mass‐balance box model indicates that the wintertime lake (T = 8°C) is a net sink for atmospheric methyl halides with estimated loss rates of ~2.6–3.2 pM d−1 for CH3Cl (1 pM = 10−12 mol L−1) and 0.09–0.13 pM d−1 for CH3Br, probably because of unspecified microbiological processes. In summer, the mass balance model indicates that there is a net source of CH3Br in the surface mixed layer (0.17–0.25 pM d−1), as required to maintain the observed strong supersaturation. However, the summer surface waters are apparently a sink for CH3Cl, (1.9–2.9 pM d−1), with enhanced biological production compensated by larger combined microbial and chemical sinks terms. In summer, methyl halide concentrations in the deep waters continue to decrease exponentially at the observed wintertime rate, while both production and loss rates in the surface waters are likely much faster than in winter, resulting in much shorter turnover timescales. An order‐of‐magnitude extrapolation of these Lake Washington methyl halide fluxes to a global source/sink from freshwater lakes implies a negligible contribution (<0.05%) with respect to the currently estimated global budgets of these gases.


Background. HLA strongly influences human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) disease progression. A major contributory mechanism is via the particular HLA-presented HIV-1 epitopes that are recognized by CD8+ T-cells. Different populations vary considerably in the HLA alleles expressed. We investigated the HLA-specific impact of the MRKAd5 HIV-1 Gag/Pol/Nef vaccine in a subset of the infected Phambili cohort in whom the disease-susceptible HLA-B*58:02 is highly prevalent. Methods. Viral loads, CD4+ T-cell counts, and enzyme-linked immunospot assay–determined anti-HIV-1 CD8+ T-cell responses for a subset of infected antiretroviral-naive Phambili participants, selected according to sample availability, were analyzed. Results. Among those expressing disease-susceptible HLA-B*58:02, vaccinees had a lower chronic viral set point than placebo recipients (median, 7240 vs 122 500 copies/mL; P = .01), a 0.76 log10 lower longitudinal viremia level (P = .01), and slower progression to a CD4+ T-cell count of <350 cells/mm3 (P = .02). These differences were accompanied by a higher Gag-specific breadth (4.5 vs 1 responses; P = .04) and magnitude (2300 vs 70 spot-forming cells/106 peripheral blood mononuclear cells; P = .06) in vaccinees versus placebo recipients. Conclusions. In addition to the known enhancement of HIV-1 acquisition resulting from the MRKAd5 HIV-1 vaccine, these findings in a nonrandomized subset of enrollees show an HLA-specific vaccine effect on the time to CD4+ T-cell count decline and viremia level after infection and the potential for vaccines to differentially alter disease outcome according to population HLA composition. Clinical Trials Registration. NCT00413725, DOH-27-0207-1539.


Whether youre new to Active Directory (AD) or a savvy system administrator looking to brush up on your skills, Active Directory for Dummies, 2nd Edition will steer you in the right direction! Since its original release, Microsofts implementation of the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) for the Windows Server line of networking software has become one of the most popular directory service products in the world. If you are involved with the design and support of Microsoft directory services and/or solutions, you really need this book! Youll understand the basics of AD and utilize its structures to simplify your life and secure your digital environment. Youll discover how to exert fine-grained control over groups, assets, security, permissions, and policies on a Windows network and efficiently configure, manage, and update the network. Youll find new and updated material on security improvements, significant user interface changes, and updates to the AD scripting engine, password policies, accidental object deletion protection, and more. You will learn how to: Navigate the functions and structures of AD Understand business and technical requirements and determine goals Become familiar with physical components like site links, network services, and site topology Manage and monitor new features, AD replication, and schema management Maintain AD databases Avoid common AD mistakes that can undermine network security Complete with lists of the ten most important points about AD, and ten cool Web resources, and ten troubleshooting tips, Active Directory For Dummies, 2nd Edition is your one-stop guide to setting up, working with, and making the most of Active Directory.


In this work we present a new part-based object detection algorithm with hundreds of parts performing real-time detection. Part-based models are currently state-of-the-art for object detection due to their ability to represent large appearance variations. However, due to their high computational demands such methods are limited to several parts only and are too slow for practical real-time implementation. Our algorithm is an accelerated version of the "Feature Synthesis'' (FS) method[1], which uses multiple object parts for detection and is among state-of-the-art methods on human detection benchmarks, but also suffers from a high computational cost. The proposed Accelerated Feature Synthesis (AFS) uses several strategies for reducing the number of locations searched for each part. The first strategy uses a novel algorithm for approximate nearest neighbor search which we developed, termed "KD-Ferns'', to compare each image location to only a subset of the model parts. Candidate part locations for a specific part are further reduced using spatial inhibition, and using an object-level "coarse-to-fine'' strategy. In our empirical evaluation on pedestrian detection benchmarks, AFS maintains almost fully the accuracy performance of the original FS, while running more than X4 faster than existing part-based methods which use only several parts. AFS is to our best knowledge the first part-based object detection method achieving real-time running performance: nearly 10 frames per-second on 640X480 images on a regular CPU.


Today's social networking services require users to trust the service provider with the confidentiality and integrity of their data. But with their history of data leaks and privacy controversies, these services are not always deserving of this trust. Indeed, a malicious provider could not only violate users' privacy, it could equivocate and show different users divergent views of the system's state. Such misbehavior can lead to numerous harms including surreptitious censorship.

In light of these threats, this paper presents Frientegrity, a framework for social networking applications that can be realized with an untrusted service provider. In Frientegrity, a provider observes only encrypted data and cannot deviate from correct execution without being detected. Prior secure social networking systems have either been decentralized, sacrificing the availability and convenience of a centralized provider, or have focused almost entirely on users' privacy while ignoring the threat of equivocation. On the other hand, existing systems that are robust to equivocation do not scale to the needs social networking applications in which users may have hundreds of friends, and in which users are mainly interested the latest updates, not in the thousands that may have come before.

To address these challenges, we present a novel method for detecting provider equivocation in which clients collaborate to verify correctness. In addition, we introduce an access control mechanism that offers efficient revocation and scales logarithmically with the number of friends. We present a prototype implementation demonstrating that Frientegrity provides latency and throughput that meet the needs of a realistic workload.


Exploring Customer Service Through Hospital Management Strategies by Delores J. Leonard MBA, University of Phoenix, 2010 BSB/Marketing, University of Phoenix, 2008 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Business Administration Walden University May 2017 Abstract Patient demand for a better quality of healthcare and services has increased as insurance companies have decreased payments to hospitals. The purpose of this qualitative single exploratory case study was to explore hospital managers' strategies to improve customer service. Data were gathered from semistructured interviews with 5 hospital managersPatient demand for a better quality of healthcare and services has increased as insurance companies have decreased payments to hospitals. The purpose of this qualitative single exploratory case study was to explore hospital managers' strategies to improve customer service. Data were gathered from semistructured interviews with 5 hospital managers who implemented customer service strategies in their hospital systems, hospital policy and procedure documents, and qualitative data from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Hospital Compare website. Expectation-confirmation theory served as the conceptual framework that grounded the study. Data were analyzed using methodological triangulation, and 3 themes emerged: the need to improve interpersonal communication, address issues in the hospital environment, and provide employee training. Engaging in interpersonal communication, maintaining a clean and welcoming hospital environment, and providing employee training can help hospital managers increase customer satisfaction by giving internal and external customers a sense of empowerment and self-worth. The findings from the study, regarding the hospital managers' customer service strategies, could apply with other healthcare managers and leaders working to improve customer service within their organizations. Healthcare professionals and leaders, patients, family members, and the community may benefit from the study by gaining knowledge of the successful strategies hospital managers use to obtain quality service. These strategies promote respect, compassion, and a better quality of life, which are essential to social change in hospitals. Exploring Customer Service Through Hospital Management Strategies by Delores J. Leonard MBA, University of Phoenix, 2010 BSB/Marketing, University of Phoenix, 2008 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Business Administration


The purpose of this paper is to address a paradox in e-Government, namely a reputation for failure existing alongside an apparent reality of successful implementation. There are frequent and much publicised stories and statistics about the high rate of failure in e-government projects. Yet at the same time as there seems to be an almost universal adoption of Information and Communications Technologies by governments at all levels, local and national. Our approach is to explore e-Government's origins for an explanation, examining the issue from a historical perspective to see if there are lessons to be learned about the future development and implementation of e-Government.
This study and analysis addresses the similarities and differences between the present situation and what has happened in the past. The aim is to use the perspective of history to comment upon the longer term issues and questions which have an impact upon the success and failure of e-Government projects. The study is focused on developments in the UK, but with some reference to experiences in the US, Canada and Australia. The bulk of the research comes from a library search of government studies and reports, supplemented by informal conversations with participants conducted over the last few years.
We looked at the history of government Information Technology in the UK from its early role automating data processing to the point now where it is arguably an indispensable mechanism at the heart of both the operation of public administration and the relationship between citizens and government. The analysis suggests that the impact and implications of e-Government have evolved beyond improvements to operational efficiency and better service delivery.
The outcomes are a number of observations about the way in which e-Government projects have come to be managed and assessed, together with some core questions to be answered by further research and discussion. Specifically questions are raised about the strategic nature of e-Government and how their value has come to be assessed. We ask whether it is helpful for e-Government to be regarded as a strategic aim as opposed to a strategic enabler, and whether the answer the answer contributes to a mistaken view of e-Government's success.


Temporal variation in the acceptability or suitability of plant genotypes to an herbivore has seldom been considered as a possible constraint limiting the adaptation of herbivores to particular plant genotypes, or the occurrence of a positive correlation between host-plant preference and offspring performance. In this study, we used data spanning 12 yr from the same 20 clones of goldenrod (Solidago altissima) to examine the temporal variation in oviposition preference and offspring performance of a stem-galling fly, Eurosta solidaginis. We found that the stem galler's preference for, or performance on, the different clones was uncorrelated between years of this study. Furthermore, we found that the relative rankings of clones changed by an average of 31% between successive years. We suggest that these consistently high year-to-year fluctuations in preference and performance by E. solidaginis are likely due to environmental factors (e.g., water and nutrient levels, or abundance of interspecific herbivores) that fluctuate over time and are known to differentially affect the acceptability and suitability of clones to herbivores; i.e., genotype x environment interactions. These results are significant because temporal fluctuations in host-plant preference and performance are likely to favor a more generalized diet by herbivorous insects.


Drug prices are in the news. "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli increased the price of Daraprim, a treatment for fatal parasitic infections, by 5000%. Mylan found itself on the hot seat for raising the price of the anaphylaxis-treating EpiPen 15 times in 7 years, resulting in a 400% increase to more than $600. Politicians rail about the harms of high drug prices.What can the next Administration do? A lot. This article shows how — even without directly regulating price — it can use antitrust law to reduce prices by challenging an array of anticompetitive behavior. It can target settlements by which brand drug firms pay generics to delay entering the market. It can go after "product hopping," by which a brand firm switches from one version of a drug to another to forestall generic competition. It can target distribution restrictions that brands have instituted to block generics. And it can challenge other conduct in the industry. In short, antitrust law has a vital role to play. Antitrust is about competition, which lowers prices and increases choice. Consumers in the pharmaceutical industry suffer harms as directly in this setting as anywhere. High drug prices have resulted in patients not being able to take vital medicines or splitting pills in half. To add insult to injury, this anticompetitive behavior typically is not justified based on innovation or patents. The agencies in the next Administration have important tasks ahead of them in targeting conduct in the pharmaceutical industry.


Random matrix theory, both as an application and as a theory, has evolved rapidly over the past fifteen years. Log-Gases and Random Matrices gives a comprehensive account of these developments, emphasizing log-gases as a physical picture and heuristic, as well as covering topics such as beta ensembles and Jack polynomials. Peter Forrester presents an encyclopedic development of log-gases and random matrices viewed as examples of integrable or exactly solvable systems. Forrester develops not only the application and theory of Gaussian and circular ensembles of classical random matrix theory, but also of the Laguerre and Jacobi ensembles, and their beta extensions. Prominence is given to the computation of a multitude of Jacobians; determinantal point processes and orthogonal polynomials of one variable; the Selberg integral, Jack polynomials, and generalized hypergeometric functions; Painleve transcendents; macroscopic electrostatistics and asymptotic formulas; nonintersecting paths and models in statistical mechanics; and applications of random matrix theory. This is the first textbook development of both nonsymmetric and symmetric Jack polynomial theory, as well as the connection between Selberg integral theory and beta ensembles. The author provides hundreds of guided exercises and linked topics, making Log-Gases and Random Matrices an indispensable reference work, as well as a learning resource for all students and researchers in the field.


Indoor air quality is strongly influenced by the presence of radioactive radon (222Rn) gas. Indeed, exposure to high 222Rn concentrations is unequivocally linked to DNA damage, lung cancer, and is a worsening issue in North American residences, having increased over time within newer housing stocks as a function of as yet unclear variables. Indoor air radon concentration can be influenced by a wide range of environmental, structural, and behavioral factors. As some of these factors are quantitative while others are qualitative, no single statistical model can determine indoor radon level precisely, while simultaneously considering all these variables across a complex and highly diverse dataset. The ability of machine learning to simultaneously analyze multiple quantitative and qualitative features makes it suitable to predict radon with a high degree of precision. Using Canadian long-term indoor air radon exposure data, we are using an artificial neural network with random weights and polynomial statistical models in MATLAB to predict radon levels as a function of geospatial and built environmental metrics. Our initial artificial neural network with random weights model run by sigmoid activation tested different combinations of variables and showed the highest prediction accuracy within the reasonable iterations. Here, we present details of these emerging methods and discuss strengths and weaknesses compared to the traditional artificial neural network and statistical methods commonly used to predict indoor air quality in different countries. We propose artificial neural network with random weights as a highly effective method for predicting indoor radon.


As in other cities in Egypt, water demand in the metropolitan area of Alexandria is rapidly increasing over time, as a result of urban expansion, amelioration of living standards and industrial development. As the River Nile is the main source of freshwater supply, concerns arise regarding a potential reduction in Alexandria9s allocation quota, which could affect population growth at the national level, agricultural development plans and water demand increase in the upstream areas. In this context, demand management and diversification of urban water supply are gradually gaining momentum among local authorities. The transition to a new paradigm for urban water management, including closed-loop systems at different levels to meet increasing water demands, has been the focus of a recent research effort, within the framework of the European-Commission-funded SWITCH Integrated Project. One relevant activity, whose results are presented in this study, concerned the development of an urban water balance model for the metropolitan area of Alexandria. The model, which was created using the Aquacycle software package, was further used for the preliminary assessment of decentralised solutions at different spatial scales, in order to evaluate their application potential and effectiveness in reducing freshwater imports to and wastewater outflows from the city.


Analyzing massive-data sets and streams is computationally very challenging. Data sets in systems biology, network analysis and security use network abstraction to construct large-scale graphs. Graph algorithms such as traversal and search are memory-intensive and typically require very little computation, with access patterns that are irregular and fine-grained. The increasing streaming data rates in various domains such as security, mining, and finance leaves algorithm designers with only a handful of clock cycles (with current general purpose computing technology) to process every incoming byte of data in-core at real-time. This along with increasing complexity of mining patterns and other analytics puts further pressure on already high computational requirement. Processing streaming data in finance comes with an additional constraint to process at low latency, that restricts the algorithm to use common techniques such as batching to obtain high throughput.
The primary contributions of this dissertation are the design of novel parallel data analysis algorithms for graph traversal on large-scale graphs, pattern recognition and keyword scanning on massive streaming data, financial market data feed processing and analytics, and data transformation, that capture the machine-independent aspects, to guarantee portability with performance to future processors, with high performance implementations on multicore processors that embed processor-specific optimizations. Our breadth first search graph traversal algorithm demonstrates a capability to process massive graphs with billions of vertices and edges on commodity multicore processors at rates that are competitive with supercomputing results in the recent literature. We also present high performance scalable keyword scanning on streaming data using novel automata compression algorithm, a model of computation based on small software content addressable memories (CAMs) and a unique data layout that forces data re-use and minimizes memory traffic. Using a high-level algorithmic approach to process financial feeds we present a solution that decodes and normalizes option market data at rates an order of magnitude more than the current needs of the market, yet portable and flexible to other feeds in this domain. In this dissertation we discuss in detail algorithm design challenges to process massive-data and present solutions and techniques that we believe can be used and extended to solve future research problems in this domain.