We demonstrate that co-training (Blum&Mitchell, 1998) can improve the performance of prompt-based learning by using unlabeled data. While prompting has emerged as a promising paradigm for few-shot and zero-shot learning, it is often brittle and requires much larger models compared to the standard supervised setup. We find that co-training makes it possible to improve the original prompt model and at the same time learn a smaller, downstream task-specific model. In the case where we only have partial access to a prompt model (e.g., output probabilities from GPT-3 (Brown et al., 2020)) we learn a calibration model over the prompt outputs. When we have full access to the prompt model's gradients but full finetuning remains prohibitively expensive (e.g., T0 (Sanh et al., 2021)), we learn a set of soft prompt continuous vectors to iteratively update the prompt model. We find that models trained in this manner can significantly improve performance on challenging datasets where there is currently a large gap between prompt-based learning and fully-supervised models.


Graphene can be used as a platform for tunable absorbers for its tunability of conductivity. In this paper, we proposed an "uneven dielectric slab structure" for the terahertz (THz) tunable absorber based on graphene. The absorber consists of graphene-dielectric stacks and an electric conductor layer, which is easy to fabricate in the manufacturing technique. Fine tuning of the absorption resonances can be conveniently achieved by adjusting the bias voltage. Both narrowband and broadband tunable absorbers made of this structure are demonstrated without using a patterned graphene. In addition, this type of graphene-based absorber exhibits stable resonances with a wide range angles of obliquely incident electromagnetic waves.


Despite extensive research during the last few decades, the etiology of schizophrenia remains unclear. Evidence of both genetic and environmental influences in the developmental profile of schizophrenia has grown, and due to the complexity of this disorder, a polygenic aspect has been associated with this neuropsychiatric pathology. Unfortunately, no diagnostic strategies based on biological measurement or genetic testing is currently available for schizophrenia. Gene-expression profiling and recent protein studies have shown a decrease in the expression of ubiquitin pathway proteins in the prefrontal cortex of schizophrenia patients. We have examined single nucleotide polymorphisms (or SNPs) within three genes from the ubiquitin protein system: the ubiquitin conjugating enzyme E2D1 (UBE2D1) gene, the E3 SUMO-protein ligase protein inhibitor of activated STAT 2 (PIAS2) gene, and the E3 ubiquitin ligase F-box and leucine-rich repeat protein 21 (FBXL21) gene, in a Caucasian case-control population for schizophrenia. After Bonferroni correction for multiple testing was applied, no significant associations were reported for any of the tested SNPs. Additional genetic analyses will be necessary to fully explore the role of these three genes in schizophrenia. Regarding the rising interest in ubiquitin-related proteins as a therapeutic target in other pathologies such as cancer, further research into the role of ubiquitin pathways in schizophrenia seems topical and timely.


The high level of inequality in South Africa has added fuel to the debate surrounding the extent to which an African middle class has emerged in South Africa in the past 20 years. This paper analyses changes in income inequality and the composition of the middle class over a 15 year period using data from the 1993 PSLSD and NIDS Waves 1 and 2. The high level of inequality in South Africa makes defining the middle class difficult. In this study we use income decile groups four to seven to define the middle class, groups eight and nine to define the upper class and decile ten describes the top income group.


Cinema mostly taught viewers how to understand cinema, constantly thematizing its addresses to and relationship to its audience: the broadcast monologue of cinema speaking to, not with, viewers. And comic cinema, perhaps consciously and perhaps knowingly, provided a self-reflexive critique of this auto-technological or auto-medial training, allowing audiences to glimpse the many ways they were being conditioned, shaped and articulated in the newly advanced mechanical era by this quintessential example of art form become industry. Comic cinema then returns us self-reflexively and through its own medium and medial relations to the kinds of questions about the construction of human perception and consciousness (or aesthetics). Comedy and Cultural Critique in American Film adds to the conversation of film comedy in three primary and interrelated ways. One is that the book argues for the centrality of comedy in film as a means for staging (or attempting) cultural criticism. Another focuses on the cultural formations emergent from cinema itself, that is the powerful and sustained shifts in visual culture emergent in the 20th century that cinema helped generate, foster, and question. As a result, comedic film often addresses technology (industrial, mechanical, visual, digital, military, etc.) and techne generally that constitute the grounds of possibility for cinema itself that fall into its purview of self-reflexive cultural criticism. The ways in which cinema further amplifies concerns that reach back to antiquity about mimesis and its simultaneous capacity for imitation and production form part of this self-reflexive or self-staging interaction with its technology and various techne. Cinema, thus, becomes an important site for producing and critiquing visual technology within US and global cultural politics, examining the status of the mechanically-produced and reproduced moving image, and the thematizing of its own power. In so doing, cinema simultaneously represents itself as a unique medium that is also part of a larger trajectory of visual and audiovisual technologies that have contributed not only to cinema's formation but also created media environment in which it must function. The final way this work adds to the current discussions about cinema comes through the role of critical theory outside the usual bounds of Bergson or Freud for addressing comic film, though they will be considered too. Other theorists brought into play include Baudrillard, Eco, Bakhtin, Virilio, Derrida, Kittler, Hutcheon, and Elsaesser to name a few. This larger theoretical canvas provides scope for a strategic placement of comedic cinema in the critical discursive sphere while also examining cinema studies in ways that differ from phenomenological, psychoanalytic or gender-based studies while also acknowledging the import of these theoretical contributions and indeed drawing on them. The book that follows provides both genre analysis as well as cultural-historical contextualization for the areas and arguments detailed above and offers a strategically selective angle on US comedic film: neither a broad overview nor a narrow temporal/cultural focus, but something that mobilizes both simultaneously. Through these three areas of inquiry and the set of interrelated arguments in combination with one another, the book that follows hopes to contribute to the conversations about comedy and film generated by the books listed above.


State v. Mann overturned a jury's conviction of John Mann for assault upon a slave he had hired from a woman named Elizabeth Jones. Historians seeking to understand the case have faced a significant hurdle: the paucity of evidence of the facts surrounding the trial. The record is not silent, however, on John Mann, Elizabeth Jones, or her wounded slave Lydia. Available evidence enables us to reconstruct sufficient facts to support tentative conclusions.Elizabeth Jones was a minor who had inherited Lydia upon the death of her parents. She was being raised in rural Chowan County in the household of her brother-in-law, Josiah Small. Small acted in Elizabeth's interest by keeping Lydia hired out. In 1828 Lydia was hired by John Mann, a widowed and bankrupt sea captain living in Edenton. Little about John Mann would have suggested to a Chowan County judge and jury that he ought to enjoy the powers of a master.Close study of the evidence suggests that Ruffin's reversal would have been seen in Edenton as wrong on the facts. Further study of the law of masters, hirers, and slaves suggests that the reversal was at least questionable on the law. Read in this new light, State v. Mann can be seen to stand on its own as a succinct but powerful treatise in implicit defense of slavery in terms that Ruffin's fellow planters would have readily understood. In justifying the reversal of Mann's conviction, Ruffin successfully enlists the key Burkean themes of conservative southern thought of the day, fatalistic themes emphasizing the surpassing importance of the status quo over any hope of reform. The opinion can be read as part of a broader pattern reflected in the writings of an increasingly defensive slaveholding elite; thematically it foreshadows Thomas Dew's crucially important defense of slavery in his Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832. And yet Ruffin's rhetoric outdid itself. In attempting to silence any criticism of the workings of the system from which its author so clearly benefited, ironically State v. Mann may have hastened slavery's undoing.


Promotion of pro-social behavior in social dilemmas has been subject to an increased interest among social scientists and policy makers due to the relevance of Common Pool Resources (CPR) in long-run human well-being. Although economists know a lot about the effect of incentives on pro-social behavior, we understand very little about how to promote pro-social behavior efficiently. For example, we accept that monetary incentives sometimes are less effective than would be predicted for entirely self-regarding individuals but we are unable to identify the mechanisms by which these crowding effects may occur.This study examines a unique experimental data set of a CPR game with 1095 individuals (79% are CPR users that are closely related to a real resource). Our purpose is twofold. On one hand, it goes ahead on the experimental analysis by accounting for unobserved heterogeneity of individuals' social preferences and group composition of types within each group. On the other hand, it explores the role of heterogeneity of pro-social preferences on achieving the most efficient economic incentive.First, we drop the assumption that all individuals are all self-regarding and develop several models of pure Nash strategies for our CPR game when individuals are motivated by a combination of self interest and preferences for altruism, reciprocity or inequity aversion. Second, we estimate individual heterogeneity by using a random coefficients model approach and classify individual social preferences (according to their behavior in the baseline phase) by assigning a type to every participant. Third, we compare the role of heterogeneity of preferences in social efficiency across incentives and confirm the existence of different effects of incentives on each type; the subsidy is found to be the most socially efficient incentive. Finally, we obtain exogenous determinants of individual type such as level of education, perceptions on the CPR, perceived interest in cooperation among the community, whether the participant does volunteer work and whether the CPR is the household main economic activity of the household; we also obtain endogenous determinants such as the composition of types in the group and their demographic characteristics.


This document specifies the Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) extensions necessary to support link state routing for any protocols running directly over Layer-2. While supporting this concept involves several pieces, this document only describes extensions to IS-IS. Furthermore, the Type, Length, Value pairs (TLVs) described in this document are generic Layer-2 additions, and specific ones as needed are defined in the IS-IS technology-specific extensions. We leave it to the systems using these IS-IS extensions to explain how the information carried in IS-IS is used. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at


Summary

Testing restoration methods is essential for the development of restoration ecology as a science. It is also important to monitor a range of taxa, not just plants which have been the traditional focus of restoration ecology. Here, we compare the effects on ground flora and leaf-miners, of two restoration practices used when restoring conifer plantations.
Two methods of restoration were investigated: clearfelling of plantations and the gradual thinning of conifers over time. Unrestored plantations and native broadleaved woodlands were also surveyed, these representing the starting point of restoration and the reference community, respectively. The study sites consist of two forest types (acidic Quercus woodland and mesotrophic Fraxinus woodland) enabling us to compare the two restoration methods in different habitat types. We use a well-replicated, large-scale study system consisting of 32 woodland plots, each 2 ha in size.
There were 179 plant species identified in the plots. Clearfelled plots had greater overall ground flora species richness than other management regimes (thinned, unrestored plantation and native woodland), but the richness of woodland plant species did not differ between clearfelled, thinned, native woodland and unrestored plantation plots.
More than 10 000 leaf-miners comprising 122 species were collected. Increased plant species richness was associated with increased leaf-miner species richness under all management regimes except clearfelled plots.
Forest type did not affect the response to restoration method; that is, there was no interaction between management regime and forest type for any of the variables measured.
Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that both the clearfelling and gradual thinning approaches to plantation restoration maintain woodland ground flora species. Either method can be used without detriment to woodland ground flora species richness. However, these methods differed in their effects on the leaf-miner–plant species richness relationship. If increasing invertebrate herbivore species richness is a concern, the gradual thinning approach is more appropriate.


Deep neural networks have recently shown impressive classification performance on a diverse set of visual tasks. When deployed in real-world (noise-prone) environments, it is equally important that these classifiers satisfy robustness guarantees: small perturbations applied to the samples should not yield significant losses to the performance of the predictor. The goal of this paper is to discuss the robustness of deep networks to a diverse set of perturbations that may affect the samples in practice, including adversarial perturbations, random noise, and geometric transformations. Our paper further discusses the recent works that build on the robustness analysis to provide geometric insights on the classifier's decision surface, which help in developing a better understanding of deep nets. The overview finally presents recent solutions that attempt to increase the robustness of deep networks. We hope that this review paper will contribute shedding light on the open research challenges in the robustness of deep networks, and will stir interest in the analysis of their fundamental properties.


This research describes the implementation of a strategic institutional project at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in the area of eLearning, and the qualitative evaluation of this project's model as an approach for blended (e)Learning institutional change. The project was entitled, "3C: A strategic approach to enabling, integrating and enhancing blended (e)Learning within an institutional framework", and the model used was three concurrent foci of collaboration, community and context (3C's). This study used a qualitative practitioner / researcher case study approach to evaluate the 3C model, utilizing data drawn from interviews conducted at the completion of the project with a group of 16 eLearning Advocates (eLAs). The interviews with the eLAs were chosen to be the focus of this research as they had the most consistent and lived experience of the 3C model (as implemented via the project deliverables across 2 years). The key research question being: "What are the qualitatively different ways the eLearning Advocates perceive the 3C model as an approach for blended (e)Learning institutional change"? These differences in perception identified as a lens through which to evaluate the 3C model.

The eLA interviews provided situational vignettes through which the practitioner / researcher explored the rich sources of data and feedback on the 3C model. These vignettes were categorized within a narrative around three factors related to blended (e)Learning institutional change. These factors were: considerations of broad structural aspects (Renovation), feedback on specific aspects of the 3C project (Revolution) and the unexpected factors that had not been considered as part of the project (Revelation). The examination of these contributed to a greater and more nuanced understanding of the 3C model as a model for institutional blended (e)Learning change and identified 11 recommendations for further consideration. It is envisaged that the outcomes of this research are useful to intuitions considering implementing similar strategic initiatives in the area of blended (e)Learning and has assisted the researcher in refining his own practice.


The goal of the work was to study the effect of the cannabinoid receptor agonist WIN55,212-2 and the cannabinoid type 1 receptor antagonist AM251 on electrophysiological changes in the hippocampus and the medial septal region (MS) induced by the intracerebral administration of excitotoxin kainic acid. Kainate injected into the right brain ventricle provoked persistent seizures (status epilepticus, SE) in all rats. A morphological analysis of the right hippocampus performed one month after the SE revealed the death of neurons, which was most pronounced in the hilus of the dentate gyrus and in the CA3a field of the dorsal hippocampus. In brain slices taken one month after the SE, the spontaneous activity of MS neurons and population EPSP (pEPSP) in the CA1 field of the hippocampus evoked by the stimulation of Shaffer collaterals (SC) was recorded; the changes in the activity were compared with the activity in slices of healthy animals injected with normal saline ("control slices"). It was found that the activity in MS slices from the brain of animals injected with kainic acid ("kainate slices") was almost twice higher than in the control. After the application of WIN55,212-2, the frequency of discharges in the control did not change, whereas in kainate slices, the level of neuronal activity decreased to the control value. The application of AM251 led to an increase in the frequency of discharges in the control and its decrease in kainate slices. The registration of pEPSPs in the hippocampal slices revealed a twofold increase in the responses to SC stimulation in kainate slices compared with those in the control, i.e., an abrupt increase in neuronal excitability. A tendency for a decrease in excitability after the application of WIN55,212-2 and, conversely, for its increase by the action of AM251 was noted in evoked responses in the hippocampal kainate slices. Our results allow to assume the protective impact of cannabinoid agonist WIN55,212-2 on neuronal activity in the medial septum and hippocampus that disturbed by neurotoxic kainate influence.


The adaptive resonance theory (ART) suggests a solution to the stability-plasticity dilemma facing designers of learning systems, namely how to design a learning system that will remain plastic, or adaptive, in response to significant events and yet remain stable in response to irrelevant events. ART architectures are discussed that are neural networks that self-organize stable recognition codes in real time in response to arbitrary sequences of input patterns. Within such an ART architecture, the process of adaptive pattern recognition is a special case of the more general cognitive process of hypothesis discovery, testing, search, classification, and learning. This property opens up the possibility of applying ART systems to more general problems of adaptively processing large abstract information sources and databases. The main computational properties of these ART architectures are outlined and contrasted with those of alternative learning and recognition systems.<<ETX>>


This volume provides us with the first detailed view of the functioning of the Middle Elamite Empire outside Susiana. The excavation encompassed a segment of a larger building that must have served as a focus for the servants of the Elamite state in Anshan. Even though the function of the excavated area changed over time-from monumental building (level IV), to ceramic production area (level IIIB), to domestic structure (level IIIA)-the strong cultural ties to the lowlands continued until level IIIA was abandoned. Malyan Excavation Reports, II


Impulsivity is the fundamental aspect of human behavior that has been reflected in principal theories of personality in concepts of traits and sub-traits and considered as a different structure in every person. The aim of this study was to predict the attitude toward infidelity based on impulsivity and personality traits. The research method was correlational. The study population consisted of all those who had referred to family courts, counseling centers and welfare organization of Babolsar city whom 150 participants were selected. Participants responded to NEO personality inventory, attitudes toward infidelity scale, and dickman impulsivity inventory. The results showed that the attitude toward infidelity was correlated negatively with agreeableness, while it was correlated positively with conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, and neuroticism. Results also showed that there was a significant positive correlation between attitude toward infidelity and impulsivity. It was also found that personality traits were significant predictors of attitude toward infidelity and the obtained model gave 0.52 of the variance. The results of this study demonstrated the importance of personality traits for counselors and psychotherapists to evaluate these factors and do all their efforts in order to identify the influencing factors and obstacles.


Introduction: School aged called as intelectual time in industrial development stage. Industrial development stage is important in human development stages. The purpose of this tudy was to know the effect of school aged therapeutic group therapy to mental development. Method: The design was quasi experimental pre-post test with control group. One hundred and sixteen children at 9–11 years old were used as sample of this study that divided to 38 children on first intervention group (childparents), 36 children on second intervention group (child-teacher) and 40 children on control group. Result: Result of the study showed that cognitive, psychomotor and industrial development ability had increased significantly after therapeutic group therapy was given (p-value < 0.005) in intervention group. Discussion: The study was recomended in child-parents and child-teacher to increase mental development in school aged children.


Percolation rates are estimated using vertical temperature profiles from sequentially deeper vadose environments, progressing from sediments beneath stream channels, to expansive basin-fill materials, and finally to deep fractured bedrock underlying mountainous terrain. Beneath stream channels, vertical temperature profiles vary over time in response to downward heat transport, which is generally controlled by conductive heat transport during dry periods, or by advective transport during channel infiltration. During periods of stream-channel infiltration, two relatively simple approaches are possible: a heat-pulse technique, or a heat and liquid-water transport simulation code. Focused percolation rates beneath stream channels are examined for perennial, seasonal, and ephemeral channels in central New Mexico, with estimated percolation rates ranging from 100 to 2100 mm d−1. Deep within basin-fill and underlying mountainous terrain, vertical temperature gradients are dominated by the local geothermal gradient, which creates a profile with decreasing temperatures toward the surface. If simplifying assumptions are employed regarding stratigraphy and vapor fluxes, an analytical solution to the heat transport problem can be used to generate temperature profiles at specified percolation rates for comparison to the observed geothermal gradient. Comparisons to an observed temperature profile in the basin-fill sediments beneath Frenchman Flat, Nevada, yielded water fluxes near zero, with absolute values <10 mm yr−1. For the deep vadose environment beneath Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the complexities of stratigraphy and vapor movement are incorporated into a more elaborate heat and water transport model to compare simulated and observed temperature profiles for a pair of deep boreholes. Best matches resulted in a percolation rate near zero for one borehole and 11 mm yr−1 for the second borehole.


Roller-compacted concrete (RCC) is a durable, economical, low-maintenance material for low-speed, heavy-duty paving applications, including industrial and multimodal pavements. However, it is difficult to prepare laboratory specimens to represent field performance, because RCC is very dry and requires considerable compactive effort to achieve field densities. The gyratory compactor, commonly used to prepare hot-mix asphalt specimens, may be used in preparing specimens for laboratory testing. Materials and mix designs from two industrial paving projects were used to prepare specimens for comparison. Field results indicated that the gyratory compactor produced specimens with mechanical properties consistent with those achieved in the field. Specimens had high strength and consistent density, with low variability. The gyratory compactor may be used to replace other methods presently used for preparing RCC specimens such as the modified Vebe apparatus, the vibrating table, and the vibrating hammer. These methods have limitations that may be overcome with the gyratory compactor because of its consistency and its compatibility with field results. The effects of density and specimen aspect ratio on compressive and splitting tensile strength were investigated. The number of gyrations applied to the specimen may be used to duplicate the desired field density. For the industrial pavements investigated, approximately 60 gyrations accurately replicated field conditions.


Freedom of religion and the manifestation of religious belief can clash with working life in a number of ways, including time away from work for religious observance, conflicts over religious clothing and jewellery in an employer's dress code or a request for a variation of duties based on a particular religious belief. Guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (2013) following Eweida and others v. UK [2013] 57 EHRR 8 seems to suggest that employers in Great Britain should consider the 'reasonable accommodation' of religion in the workplace and, in particular, how an individual chooses to manifest that religious belief. Subsequently, there has been much debate about whether this is a better way of dealing with religious discrimination cases than the current complex legal framework of direct and indirect discrimination in the Equality Act 2010. Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 already allows for reasonable adjustments to be made to working practices and the physical working environment for disabled employees. Should this duty be expanded to include religion and what would be the consequences and impact of such an accommodation or adjustment on the employment relationship?


The thesis deals with a research programme in which the cutting performance of a new generation of ceramic cutting tool material is evaluated using the turning process. In part one, the performance of commercial Kyon 2000 sialon ceramic inserts is studied when machining a hardened alloy steel under a wide range of cutting conditions. The aim is to formulate a pattern of machining behaviour in which tool wear is related to a theoretical interpretation of the temperatures and stresses generated by the chip-tool interaction. The work involves a correlation of wear measurement and metallographic examination of the wear area with the measurable cutting data. Four main tool failure modes are recognised: (a) flank and crater wear (b) grooving wear (c) deformation wear and (d) brittle failure Results indicate catastrophic edge breakdown under certain conditions. Accordingly in part two, the edge geometry is modified to give a double rake tool; a negative/positive combination. The results are reported for a range of workpiece materials under orthogonal cutting conditions. Significant improvements in the cutting performance are achieved. The improvements are explained by a study of process parameters; cutting forces, chip thickness ratio, chip contact length, temperature distribution, stress distribution and chip formation. In part three, improvements in tool performance are shown to arise when the edge chamfer on a single rake tool is modified. Under optimum edge chamfer conditions a substantial increase in tool life is obtained compared with the commercial cutting geometry.


Frontal systems in the Southern Ocean are known for their enhanced biological activity, with some tantalising suggestions that this enhancement may be intermittent. We have used frequent satellite ocean colour observations to investigate the Subtropical Convergence south of Africa. We demonstrate that the biological enhancement takes place as episodic chlorophyll bloom events with limited spatial and temporal scales. Most of the events appear in austral spring‐summer. Two typical lifetimes, 8–24 and 40–60 days, emerge unambiguously during these seasons. A similar analysis has been carried out on modelled chlorophyll fields to investigate the physical‐biogeochemical causes for such events. Strong and swift stratification, alleviating the light limitation on growth of phytoplankton, causes the appearance of a bloom. A mixed layer depth expansion subsequently leads to a rapid disappearance of the simulated event. Phytoplankton horizontal transport, either zonal or meridional, also plays a key role on the lifetime of the bloom events.


Title of Document: BLUE CRAB FARMING ON MARYLAND'S EASTERN SHORE Author: Justin M Donnelly Degree: Masters of Architecture, 2009 Directed By: Assistant Professor Michael A Ambrose, Chair Biologists speculate that a combination of pollution and overharvesting might soon lead to the extinction of the blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay. This project investigates inland crab farming as a means by which to resurrect the region's dwindling blue crab industry and alleviate pressure on rapidly declining wild fisheries. Although the project transplants the blue crab onto land, it minimizes the impact to the plants and animals displaced. In short, the project asks us to rethink how we fish and how we farm and how they relate. The architectural proposal seeks to establish the general parameters of a heretofore untried blue crab farming operation and to apply these rules to a specific farm project in Dorchester County, Maryland. The final product consists of a series of greenhoused raceways, constructed wetlands, working meadows, a laboratory for rearing crab eggs to juvenile development, a picking/processing facility, restaurant, and modest educational facilities. BLUE CRAB FARMING ON MARYLAND'S EASTERN SHORE


This work is aimed at clarifying the changes on optical spectra of Cr(3+) impurities due to either a host lattice variation or a hydrostatic pressure, which can hardly be understood by means of the usual Tanabe-Sugano (TS) approach assuming that the Racah parameter, B, grows when covalency decreases. For achieving this goal, the optical properties of Cr(3+)-doped LiBaF(3) and KMgF(3) model systems have been explored by means of high level ab initio calculations on CrF(6)(3-) units subject to the electric field, E(R)(r), created by the rest of the lattice ions. These calculations, which reproduce available experimental data, indicate that the energy, E((2)E), of the (2)E(t(2g)(3)) → (4)A(2)(t(2g)(3)) emission transition is nearly independent of the host lattice. By contrast, the energy difference corresponding to (4)A(2)(t(2g)(3)) → (4)T(1)(t(2g)(2)e(g)(1)) and (4)A(2)(t(2g)(3)) → (4)T(2)(t(2g)(2)e(g)(1)) excitations, Δ((4)T(1); (4)T(2)), is shown to increase on passing from the normal to the inverted perovskite host lattice despite the increase in covalency, a fact which cannot be accounted for through the usual TS model. Similarly, when the Cr(3+)-F(-) distance, R, is reduced both Δ((4)T(1); (4)T(2)) and the covalency are found to increase. By analyzing the limitations of the usual model, we found surprising results that are shown to arise from the deformation of both 3d(Cr) and ligand orbitals in the antibonding e(g) orbital, which has a σ character and is more extended than the π t(2g) orbital. By contrast, because of the higher stiffness of the t(2g) orbital, the dependence of E((2)E) with R basically follows the corresponding variation of covalency in that level. Bearing in mind the similarities of the optical properties displayed by Cr(3+) impurities in oxides and fluorides, the present results can be useful for understanding experimental data on Cr(3+)-based gemstones where the local symmetry is lower than cubic.


Anti-refugee violence often accompanies refugee migration, but the factors that fuel or mitigate that violence remain poorly understood, including the common policy response in such settings of humanitarian aid. Existing theory and policy debates predict that aid to refugees exacerbates anti-refugee violence by increasing hosts' resentment toward refugees. In contrast, however, aid may reduce violence in ways such as increasing host communities' well-being through more demand for local goods and services and refugees sharing aid. We test for the sign and mechanisms of this relationship. Evidence from original survey data and a regression discontinuity design suggests that cash transfers to Syrian refugees in Lebanon did not increase anti-refugee violence, and if anything they reduced violence. Exploring why aid does not increase hostility, we find evidence that aid allows recipients to indirectly compensate locals through higher demand for local goods and services, directly benefit locals by offering help and sharing aid, and reduce contact with potential aggressors.


It has been suggested that geochemical processes related to sea-ice growth and melt might be important for the polar carbon cycle via the so called sea-ice carbon pump (SICP). The SICP affects the air-sea CO2 exchange by influencing the composition of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TA) in the surface ocean. Here we quantify the strength of the SICP-induced air-sea CO2 flux using the global three-dimensional ocean-sea-ice-biogeochemical model MPIOM/HAMOCC. Simulations prescribing the range of observed DIC and TA concentrations in the sea ice were performed under two idealized climate scenarios for the present-day and the future oceanic and sea-ice state, both forced with a fixed atmospheric CO2 concentration. Model results indicate that the SICP-induced air-sea CO2 uptake increases with higher ratios of TA:DIC prescribed in the sea ice relative to the basic oceanic TA:DIC ratios. Independent of the modeled scenario, the simulated strength of the SICP is larger in the Antarctic than in the Arctic, because of more efficient export of brine-associated DIC from the Antarctic mixed layer. On an annual basis, we generally find an enhanced SICP-induced oceanic CO2 uptake in regions with net sea-ice melt, and enhanced SICP-induced oceanic CO2 out-gassing in regions with net sea-ice growth. These general regional patterns are modified further by the blockage of air-sea gas exchange through sea-ice coverage. Integrated over the sea-ice zones of both hemispheres, the SICP-induced oceanic CO2 uptake ranges from 2 to 14 Tg C yr−1, which is up to 7% of the simulated net CO2 uptake in polar regions, but far less than 1% of the current global oceanic CO2 uptake. Hence, while we find that the SICP plays a minor role in the modern global carbon cycle, it is of importance for the regional carbon cycle at high latitudes.


Allogeneic BM transplantation from an HLA-identical sibling donor leads to long-term survival in the majority of patients (>80%). Therefore, survival is no longer the sole concern and attention has to be paid to decreasing the incidence and severity of long-term complications. For patients without a sibling donor, transplantation from a well-matched unrelated donor can be considered after failure of a previous course of immunosuppressive therapy. After transplantation from an HLA-identical sibling donor or from an unrelated one, the use of peripheral blood stem cells must be strongly discouraged because they have been systematically associated with an increased incidence of chronic GVHD compared with the use of BM as a stem cell source, leading to an unacceptably higher risk of treatment-related mortality in this setting. For as yet unknown reasons, the age limit after which transplantation results are less satisfactory remains 40 years of age.


A recent rise in suspected horse poisonings has brought new attention to creeping indigo (Indigofera spicata), a toxic plant which has reportedly been in Florida for as long as 90 years. This new 5-page fact sheet covers plant description, signs of creeping indigo toxicity, and roles of creeping indigo's toxins, as well as treatment and management. Written by Robert MacKay, Ed Jennings, Brent Sellers, Jason Ferrell, and Amanda House, and published by the UF Department of Agronomy, August 2015.
SS-AGR-395/AG399: Creeping Indigo, A Poisonous Plant of Concern in Florida Pastures (ufl.edu)


We present a new approach to clustering, based on the physical properties of an inhomogeneous ferromagnet. No assumption is made regarding the underlying distribution of the data. We assign a Potts spin to each data point and introduce an interaction between neighboring points, whose strength is a decreasing function of the distance between the neighbors. This magnetic system exhibits three phases. At very low temperatures, it is completely ordered; all spins are aligned. At very high temperatures, the system does not exhibit any ordering, and in an intermediate regime, clusters of relatively strongly coupled spins become ordered, whereas different clusters remain uncorrelated. This intermediate phase is identified by a jump in the order parameters. The spin-spin correlation function is used to partition the spins and the corresponding data points into clusters. We demonstrate on three synthetic and three real data sets how the method works. Detailed comparison to the performance of other techniques clearly indicates the relative success of our method.


In the period immediately following World War I, two very different groups dominated the architectural scene in the Netherlands. One of these, De Stijl, was rationally oriented and contributed directly to the development of functionalism. The other, the Amsterdam School, was more overtly emotional and intuitive in its approach. It had less influence, but it produced some of the most original and daring designs of any of the European avant-garde movements in the halcyon days of modernism.Not only is this book the first in English to consider the formal and stylistic aspects of the Amsterdam School's work, it is also the first to relate the drawings and projects to the deeply-rooted social vision of the group, which sought to transform the world through architecture. Essays by distinguished architectural historians Maristella Caciato, Karin Gaillard, Helen Searing, Petra Timmer, and Wim de Wit examine the social, political, and economic circumstances to which members of the school responded.Led by the talented Michel de Klerk; the school's architects sought to embody their highest ideals in three-dimensional forms-to sculpt their vari-colored brick and stone buildings in such a way that they spoke to their inhabitants on a personal, sensual level. The book's illustrations of "Eigen Haard" and other public housing projects reveal the formal strategies that were devised to endow workers' housing with a sense of dignity and the efforts made to avoid the potential for dreary facades and barracks-like interiors of workers' environments that were to come.All the major projects are documented, from renderings of furniture and interiors to completed buildings. Both realized and unrealized designs by de Klerk, Piet Kramer, Margaret Kropholler, Johan van der Mey, Frits Staal, Hendrik Wijdeveld, and G. F. la Croix are also shown, many for the first time in book form.


This Exegesis considers my artistic adaption and response to the neurological condition that I suffer from, called Focal Dystonia. The Exegesis develops a series of evolving visualizing techniques that incorporate very specific personal symbols that consequently appear as my sculptures, paintings and drawings. The examination of my practice is divided into three modes of response. Firstly, I discuss the emotional role that mourning plays after the arrival of a mid-career disability; its relationship to myself as the Drawer and how this in turn aligns itself with certain emerging symbols. Secondly, I utilize the spectral image of the classical ruin to introduce the notion of my 'body as ruin' and how this aligns with the separated stones and sticks of its structure. Finally, the notion of a Foundation is investigated in relation to the rebuilding of the ruin using the aforementioned stones and sticks. This final section also investigates the charged idea of negative, functional space that originates in the writings of the Tao Teh Ching. I am primarily concerned with the adaption of my art to the evolving structures that are demanded of me within the constraints of Focal Dystonia. Therefore I am very much the central character from which the formal symbols of healing within my practice arise. Within this exegesis I am attempting to create and explain visual and visualizing structures that assist in healing myself of this condition.


The purpose of this review is to identify and propose solutions for the conceptual and methodological problems that arise in attempting to establish a relationship between a prior waking stimulus and subsequent dream content. There have been a number of approaches used to determine whether there is a link between waking experience and dream content. The results have been equivocal and have demonstrated problems associated with sample size, collection methods, content scales, conceptual differences (e.g. figurative and explanatory metaphor) and a preponderance of retrospective interpretation and non-experimental studies. The type of stimulus, particularly in terms of emotional arousal and personal meaningfulness, seems to be an important consideration for experimental research. These findings align with research into waking memory and the impact of emotion. Not surprisingly then, dream research looking at the content of dreams following traumatic events has proven to be valuable in studying relationships between waking experience and dream imagery. The continuity hypothesis (Domhoff, 2003) might predict literal incorporation of events in dreams but figurative metaphor may also be manifested in dream content. Bokert (1967) has provided a guide to assessing imagery associated with the waking stimulus, through a wide variety of associative measures. Hartmann (2001) has conceptualized and measured dream imagery as explanatory metaphor with the pictorial metaphor representing the emotional activation. However the figurative aspects of metaphor within dreams have remained elusive to researchers. Common dream themes have been described as examples of primary metaphor and may offer another approach to studying metaphor in dream content. Future research
into dream imagery might adopt an experimental paradigm for studying the impact of an emotionally arousing waking stimulus, using a range of literal, associative and thematic measures based on the elaboration of the stimulus for the assessment of the dream imagery. This approach could assist with addressing both the conceptual and methodological limitations in previous research.


The footwear industry, over the last years, has placed significant effort in improving energy and material efficiency, but in comparison little effort has been directed at the recovery and recycling of shoes at the end of their functional life. In reality, most worn and discarded (end-of-life) shoes are disposed of in landfills. Producer responsibility issues and forthcoming legislation as well as increasing environmental consumer demands are expected to challenge the way the global footwear industry deals with its end-of-life waste. This paper presents an investigation into the steps required to consider the end-of-life implication of shoes and promote post-consumer recycling practices in the footwear industry. The paper describes the design and specification of a decision-making model to identify the most appropriate reuse, recovery and recycling option for post-consumer shoes. Such a tool in addition to supporting design and material selection processes could also provide benchmark information for the selection of a best end-of-life practice for a selected range of shoe types. The paper concludes by providing a case study for shoe waste management to demonstrate the practicality of this decision-making model.


This is a general research guide for the undergraduate and graduate courses in OSU's Civil Engineering programs. You'll find suggestions for locating books, articles, topical overviews, research tools, and factual information.


In this study, we combined the Cambodian socioeconomic survey for 1997 and the country's population census of 1998 to produce poverty measures at the commune-level in Cambodia using the small-area estimation technique developed by Elbers, Lanjouw and Lanjouw. While there are a number of communes for which the standard errors associated with the estimates are too high, we found that they are on average small enough to be useful. We illustrate the application of poverty maps with reference to education programmes.


Stafne bone defects are asymptomatic lingual bone depressions of the lower jaw, frequently caused by soft tissue inclusion. The common variant of this entity affects the third molar region, below mandibular canal, and is mostly diagnosed incidentally during routine radiographic examination. The uncommon anterior variant is relatively rare and located in the premolar region of the mandible. Sublingual salivary glands are thought to be responsible for the development of this variant. The aim of this report was to describe a case of Stafne bone defect in the anterior region of mandible and a case in posterior mandible, with emphasis on clinical and radiographic findings. Dental clinicians should be aware of this entity, aiming to avoid unnecessary biopsies. In most cases, clinical and radiographic follow-up is the recommended conduct.


In China, a large number of small and medium-sized food enterprises (food SMEs) rarely adopt the hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) system, which results in a low product quality. Some local governments have encouraged food SMEs to implement HACCP systems through financial subsidies, but because of an incomplete understanding of the willingness to pay (WTP) for implementing HACCP systems in food SMEs, relevant policies have not enhanced the adoption rate of HACCP systems. Based on our questionnaire survey data of 132 food SMEs in China's Henan, Guangdong, and Zhejiang provinces, this study estimates Chinese food SMEs' WTP for implementing HACCP systems by a double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method (CVM). According to the estimated results, the WTP for implementing HACCP systems under the log-logistic model is approximately 115,714 Chinese RMB (113,149 Chinese RMB for the log-normal model).


This work reports on an investigation into the synthesis, control, and
stabilisation of iron oxide nanoparticles for biomedical applications using
magnetic hyperthermia. A new understanding of the factors effecting
nanoparticle growth in a coprecipitation methodology has been determined. This
thesis challenges the highly cited Ostwald Ripening as the primary mechanism
for nanoparticulate growth, and instead argues that in certain conditions, such as
increasing reaction temperature, a coalescence mechanism could be favoured by
the system. Whereas in a system with a slower rate of addition of the reducing
agent, Ostwald ripening is the favoured mechanism.
The iron oxide nanoparticles made in the study were stabilised and
functionalised for the purpose of stability in physiological environments using
either carboxylic acid or phosphonate functionalised ligands. It was shown that
phosphonate ligands form a stronger attachment to the nanoparticle surface and
promote increased stability in aqueous solutions, however, this affected the
magnetic properties of the particles and made them less efficient heaters when
exposed to an alternating magnetic fields. Tiopronin coated iron oxide
nanoparticles were a far superior heater, being over four times more effective
than the best commercially available product. Due to its strong response,
experiments into the antimicrobial properties of tiopronin coated iron oxide
nanoparticles were undertaken, specifically on Staphylococcus aureus, to our
knowledge this is the first time magnetic hyperthermia has been used for such an
application. At concentrations of 50 mg/ml the sample was capable of complete
bacterial kills following exposure to the in-house magnetic hyperthermia MACH
system. Aging and oxidation over a period of a month did decrease the
performance of the particles to kill bacteria using MACH heating, however they
were still shown to be effective in killing Staphylococcus aureus.


SUMMARY

While purchasing and supplier involvement in new product development has been studied, little research has been conducted into purchasing and supplier involvement in production process development/ improvement. Two hundred seventy-one senior managers responded to a mail questionnaire regarding purchasing and supplier involvement in process development/improvement in anufacturing, service, not-for-profit, and government organizations. Factor scores of the research variables were analyzed using t-tests to assess the effects of process as a source of competitive advantage, purchasing involvement, and supplier involvement on process development/improvement practice and strategy. Contingency table analysis with the chi-square statistic was used to assess the effects of industry category. It was found that processes contribute to competitive advantage, purchasing plays a major role in process development/improvement, and that purchasing and supplier involvement contributes to process development/improvement in all industry categories. These contributions are greatest in manufacturing. The implications of this research to purchasing professionals, researchers, and academicians are discussed.


Weak hip muscle strength and excessive hip motion during running have been suggested as potential risk factors for developing patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) in females, but not males. There is conflicting evidence on the relationship between hip strength and hip kinematics, which may be partly due to sex differences in the relationship between these parameters. Hip, pelvis, and trunk kinematics were collected while 60 healthy, habitual runners (23 females, 37 males) ran overground, and isometric hip abduction and external rotation strengths were measured bilaterally. Pearson correlation coefficients quantified sex-specific correlations between hip strength and kinematics, and unpaired t tests assessed sex differences in hip strength and kinematics. Hip abduction strength was moderately and inversely correlated to hip adduction excursion in females, and pelvic internal rotation excursion in males. Hip external rotation strength was moderately and inversely correlated to trunk flexion excursion in females. Finally, females displayed less hip external rotation strength and greater excursion at the hip and trunk during running compared to males. Despite the significant correlations, the relatively low r2 values suggest that additional factors outside of strength contribute to a substantial portion of the variance in trunk, pelvis, and hip kinematics.


The failure of most efforts undertaken to restore natural high-diversity tropical forests, like the Atlantic Forest, has resulted in a very intense round of discussions on the science and best-practice of ecological restoration in the state of Sao Paulo, southeastern Brazil. This culminated in the participatory elaboration of a state resolution concerning technical and orientation aspects for restoration activities, which has been reviewed and updated periodically in workshops that bring together more than 200 professionals. The aim of this resolution was to maximize the establishment of biologically viable forests, with plant richness consistent with the reference ecosystem, to ensure the persistence of restored forests and protect native biodiversity. The contributions of this resolution for the improvement and stimulation of restoration actions are evident today. Between 2003 and 2008, when the resolution was heavily discussed, seedling production of native shrubs and trees in the state increased from 13,000,000 (55 nurseries) to 33,000,000 (114 nurseries) per year, and average number of plant species produced in nurseries also increased from 30 to over 80, reflecting the increase of restoration actions. In our view, the existing legal instrument has served well as a mechanism to accompany environmental public policy aimed at protection of the collective interests of society. In particular, it guides and orients the bulk of investments in ecological restoration and enhances the prospects for maximizing the societal benefits that can and should be obtained from restoration activities, including the persistence of biodiversity in human-modified tropical landscapes.


Introduction Time and again the importance of human capital management in the service industries has been stressed upon and the attrition of employees has catched the fancy of researchers from decades. Keeping attrition at bay is a daunting task for most of the service industries and software industry in particular, where high quality knowledge workers are crucial for sustainable business operations and profitability. The Indian software industry is making great strides internationally because of its knowledge workers. Knowledge and expertise in different domains form the key factors in the software industry and the success of any software company depends on how efficiently it manages these assets. Being an employee centric industry, employee retention and eventually the retention of knowledge directly influences the growth trajectory of the company. A plethora of studies conducted in the past have thrown light on different issues and concerns related to attrition. Extant literature underpins the importance of understanding reasons of attrition to device strategies for controlling attrition in organizations. Voluntary attrition of employees, which is persistent across the industry has now become an important concern to address, for maintaining a consistently performing workforce in the hostile marketplace. Post recession with improved economic conditions business growth has renewed, and these knowledge professionals are back in demand. The scales are tipped in their favor again and exalted competition is further increasing tug-of-war for talent on board. Outsourcing avenues and the astounding FDI are providing a new level of opportunities to these software professionals in India as well as in foreign countries. The snag of this increased competition is rising attrition rate which presents the company with unique challenge of sustaining client confidence especially where employees develop relationships with clients which is a common feature in software companies. When employees are not satisfied with their job they start exploring options in the market with a turnover intention and turnover intentions are strongly positively correlated with voluntary turnover (Chafetz et al., 2009). However satisfying a diverse set of employees is often a Herculean task for most of the software companies across the globe. High attrition can be symptomatic of inefficient management policies; as attrition does reflect the hiring policies, retention strategies, training and development initiatives, work culture and many other factors of an organization. Over and above these, there are various factors influencing attrition and often these factors are not equally significant for employees with different levels of experience. Taking the view that antecedent of attrition varies with varying levels of experience; this study has been conducted to understand the perspective of these techies for voluntarily leaving their job. Review of Related Literature The astronomical growth rate in the industry is an important reason responsible for rising attrition rates among the knowledge workers who are not loyal to the company but to their value system (Sadri et al., 2006). Because of high attrition rate, Indian software industry is not able to progress beyond providing low-end software coding, development and maintenance services (Arora et al., 2001). This is a tenacious concern for most of the organizations (Joseph et al., 2007) as the exodus of desirable employees is generally considered detrimental to the growth of an organization; both in terms of replacement costs and work disruption (Hallman, 1997). There also exist negative relationship between employee attrition rate and sales especially in service industries and there can be a cycle of failure of services due to the connection between high attrition and the quality of services being offered and thus replacing exiting employees is costly as well as destructive to the service delivery (Noe, Hollenbeck et al. …


The site is in the rolling hills of the midlands of Kerala, a state on the south western coast of India. The chosen site is in a small rural village of Chellakkappady which only has a population of around 1500 people. The main purpose of the Palliative and Dialysis community centre is to improve and aid medical access to the ageing population of Kerala especially around the rural midlands of Central Kerala.

The programme has been researched and developed with help from a small group of doctors who serve the local populace and doctors from the Indian Association of Palliative Care. The focus of the programme is to create a working community health clinic and palliative care centre, where one may choose to receive palliative care or even spend the last days of their life.
The building is designed to best suit the local climate characterized by heavy monsoonal rain and harsh intervening sunlight. It draws design inspiration from the vernacular architecture of the region, the local building culture and the works of pioneering monsoon modernists such as Geoffrey Bawa and Laurie Baker


Over the past fifteen years, the DRC has been engaged in a vast process of state reconstruction and reform, with significant support provided by donors. Partly due to an inimical political context, though, until 2012 donor-sponsored attempts at civil service reform and retirement remained limited and proved largely inconclusive. Since then, a series of encouraging steps have been taken with regards to administrative reform: the launching of the key reform of bancarisation in 2011, a revised civil service reform strategy supported by the World Bank in 2013. This paper provides an overview of the politics of HR management and payroll reform in the DRC, in order to situate the dynamics behind current civil service and payroll reform initiatives. The political economy of wage payment has already been substantially altered by bancarisation, and payroll and HR management can be considered as the administrative and technical 'infrastructure' on which payment of remunerations rest. While bancarisation has been presented as a resounding success, HR and payroll management is mired in considerable opacity and malpractice. Why do certain policies in the DR Congo work, and others fail? What are the wider political dynamics, but also the sectoral specificities, which drive such reforms? And what impact do donors have on these policies? The paper should be read as an introductory literature review on these aspects, providing a tentative sketch of how political settlement analysis and organisational ethnography can be used to make sense of these questions.


We examined the effect of quizzing on students' ability to apply lecture content to clinical examples on an in-class exam. Fifty-six occupational therapy students in a graduate-level course completed three online modules that included lectures, slide presentations, demonstrations, and video clips. Throughout each module, students were given "Learning Moments," in which they were asked a question (Question condition); were asked to read a statement confirming the content presented (Study condition); or were not asked to do anything (Not Asked condition). The Question condition resulted in better exam performance than the combined Study and Not Asked conditions (p < .01), whereas performance on Study and Not Asked questions did not differ (p = .67). Students performed better on material on which they had been previously quizzed (i.e., testing effect). Quizzing may be a good strategy to prepare students for clinical practice.


This policy brief examines the steps needed to improve women's participation in peacekeeping, highlights the problems inherent in commonly cited arguments for increasing women peacekeepers and proposes key recommendations. In recent years some UN member states have attempted to increase the number of women in peacekeeping operations (PKOs) (including introducing all-female units) as part of an effort to mainstream gender in UN institutions, but also to challenge and transform the predominantly masculine PKO culture. However, these efforts are largely isolated and ad hoc. While all these efforts aim at increasing the number of women participants in PKOs, achieving gender balance does not automatically translate into gender equality or gender mainstreaming. To increase the meaningful participation of women in PKOs, women need to be integrated into senior, decision-making and leadership posts; all-female contingents should be trained and deployed in, and integrated into mixed-gender environments; and deploy women who are ready to substantively change the PKO environment. Numerical targets, women's "feminine qualities" and quick fixes for addressing sexual violence in PKOs aside, policymakers should deploy women to assist in gender mainstreaming in PKOs and in changing local women's lives.


From the Publisher:
"Visual QuickStart Guides" are rapidly becoming the easiest, clearest and most sought-after titles for learning complex new Internet technologies. Even a quick glance at web design sites for the non-programmer (like C|net's Content Builder) shows that designers, graphic artists and content-creators want to use Java. The web is filled with content creators who have used a pre-built Java app., and probably not been 100% satisfied with the results. With just enough Java to get going doing something useful, a strict focus on visual Java (meaning using Java to make interface elements for web pages), and a quality guarantee that the Java in this book will work in most - if not all - web browsers, Java for the World Wide Web:Visual QuickStart Guide is sure to be an indispensable guide to the decade's most important new programming language for the web scripter.


Preparation of CdSe Quantum Dot Sensitized Solar Cells Based on Improved Successive Ionic Layer Absorption and Reaction Method
Particles of metals or other materials in nanometre size are called as nanoparticles (NPs). Of ten endophytic fungi screened, seven endophytic fungi namely Alternaria alternata, Botryodiplodia sp., Pestalotia sp., Fusarium sp., Aspergillus sp. Aschersonia sp. and Phomopsis sp. were able to synthesize silver nanoparticles. Silver metal nanopartites were synthesised successfully by both mycelium as well as cell filtrate of Pestalotia sp., which was initially observed by spectrometric analysis. TEM pictures revealed the synthesis of angular shape of silver nanoparticles like trigonal, pentagonal, hexagonal, few of cuboids and some were of spherical in shape too. Most of nanoparticles (76%) were found below the size of 40 nm. FTIR spectra peaks showed the presence of -NH, CO, C=C and C-H containing organic metabolites which might play a role in stabilizing the nanoparticles. Silver nanoparticles solution (0.5 mM) inhibited the growth significantly than control against all pathogenic bacteria tested. Mycosynthesized AgNPs were most active against Aeromonas hydrophila @2 μg/ml IC50 followed by Staphylococcus aureus (6 μg/ml), Escherichia coli (8μg/ml), Morganella morganii (24 μg/ml), Salmonella typhi (42 μg/ml), Enterococcus faecalis (40 μg/ml) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (50 μg/ml) respectively. Silver nanoparticles had also shown antioxidant activity with DPPH free radical scavenging with inhibitory concentration (IC50) at 47 μg /ml. To combat with new emerging pathogenic bacteria that threat our society by causing dreadful diseases, we require the development of effective therapeutics. Thus, eco-friendly synthesised antimicrobial and antioxidant silver nanoparticles allow us to suitably employing their application in nanoparticles mediated drug delivery and therapy of diseases.


The problem of securing data present on USB memories and SD cards has not been adequately addressed in the cryptography literature. While the formal notion of a tweakable enciphering scheme (TES) is well accepted as the proper primitive for secure data storage, the real challenge is to design a low cost TES which can perform at the data rates of the targeted memory devices. In this work, we provide the first answer to this problem. Our solution, called STES, combines a stream cipher with a XOR universal hash function. The security of STES is rigorously analyzed in the usual manner of provable security approach. By carefully defining appropriate variants of the multi-linear hash function and the pseudo-dot product based hash function we obtain controllable trade-offs between area and throughput. We combine the hash function with the recent hardware oriented stream ciphers, namely Mickey, Grain and Trivium. Our implementations are targeted towards two low cost FPGAs-Xilinx Spartan 3 and Lattice ICE40. Simulation results demonstrate that the speeds of encryption/decryption match the data rates of different USB and SD memories. We believe that our work opens up the possibility of actually putting FPGAs within controllers of such memories to perform low-level in-place encryption.


In our interconnected world, self-interest and social-interest are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. If current negative trajectories remain, including growing climate destabilization, biodiversity loss, and economic inequality, an impending future of ecological collapse and societal destabilization will make "personal success" virtually meaningless. Yet our broken social system incentivizes behavior that will only make our problems worse. If true human rights progress is to be achieved today, it is time we dig deeper—rethinking the very foundation of our social system.

In this engaging, important work, Peter Joseph, founder of the world's largest grassroots social movement—The Zeitgeist Movement—draws from economics, history, philosophy, and modern public-health research to present a bold case for rethinking activism in the 21st century.

Arguing against the long-standing narrative of universal scarcity and other pervasive myths that defend the current state of affairs, The New Human Rights Movement illuminates the structural causes of poverty, social oppression, and the ongoing degradation of public health, and ultimately presents the case for an updated economic approach. Joseph explores the potential of this grand shift and how we can design our way to a world where the human family has become truly sustainable.

The New Human Rights Movement reveals the critical importance of a unified activism working to overcome the inherent injustice of our system. This book warns against what is in store if we continue to ignore the flaws of our socioeconomic approach, while also revealing the bright and expansive future possible if we succeed.

Will you join the movement?


Excerpt] This report presents the findings of a research project exploring the involvement of new partners – in particular, the social partners, civil society and people in vulnerable situations – in social innovation. For the purposes of the research, 'social innovation' is defined as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously resolve societal challenges, meet social needs and create new social relationships among the groups concerned. Social innovation can involve such aspects as new participation in decision-making, services affecting the social situation of specific target groups (provided commercially or not) and changes in social care systems. It is part of cultural development and societal change. The research was carried out at EU level – focusing especially on the role of the European Social Fund (ESF) in social innovation – and in six Member States: Austria, Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Sweden. It examined the innovation and social partnership culture in each country, and analysed to what extent nationallevel policies have been triggered by EU policy. The research also includes three case studies carried out in Ireland, Slovenia and Sweden, presenting initiatives that the social partners, or those in vulnerable situations, have been involved in designing and implementing. The objective of this study is to inform, with an evidence-based approach, the policy debate on social innovation, and contribute to a better understanding of effective and sustainable processes. The study also aims to explore how social innovation can be most effectively supported in different phases: from initiation, through consistent delivery of good quality services, to identification of good practice.


One cannot deny that the outcomes of historical research are to some extent a reflection of the researcher's perceptions of historical events. When one deals with a topic such as "the role of women in antiquity," which gained eminence in feminist literature in the 1970s, this is all the more true. Thus, although the sources and the interpretation of sources of ancient history, the position of the researcher and cultural specifics are, as a rule, no longer questioned in conventional research of law in antiquity, these warrant a renewed scrutiny when the position of women comes under investigation. Customary parameters of ancient history are not only defined with regard to time or period, but are also geographically and culturally defined. In mainstream western scholarship, antiquity is treated within the geographical confines of the Mediterranean Sea and the territories connected to it by historically effective political and cultural relations. However, a perusal of the literature on women in antiquity shows that research is predominantly centred on ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt.


Federal welfare reform legislation permits considerable variation in welfare-related provisions from state to state. These may be characterized in terms of duration and distribution of basic support, contingencies that are designed to facilitate the transition from welfare to work, and contingencies that are designed to punish failures to comply with work requirements. These varying provisions are the independent variables in a massive, unplanned nationwide experiment on the effects of contingencies at a societal level; the data, which are gradually becoming available, may tell us something about the relative effectiveness of different sorts of contingencies at this level.


The purpose of the present paper was to examine three generations of research on technology-mediated learning carried on by the present investigator's research group. The first generation focused on examining computer-supported collaborative learning from the cognitive perspective. The main focus was to examine to what extent knowledge-seeking inquiry elicited conceptual change. Problems of transferring inquiry learning culture from one country to another pushed us to examine social practices and other participatory aspects of learning that had been invisible to cognitive researchers. The second-generation research focused on analyzing patterns of participation in computer-supported collaborative learning. The emerging third generation research aims at overcoming the dichotomy between the cognitive (knowledge acquisition) perspective and socio-cultural (participation) perspective by means of long-standing and deliberate efforts of knowledge-creation, involving what is called objects of activity. Theoretical and methodological implications of the generations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


Altered waters impacted by serpentinization of Coast Range Ophiolite (CRO) ultramafic units have been reacting with trapped Cretaceous seawaters, meteoric waters, and other surface derived waters since tectonic emplacement of this ophiolite. In 2011, groundwater monitoring wells of various depths were established near Lower Lake, CA, USA in the McLaughlin Natural Reserve, administered by the University of California-Davis, in order to understand ongoing low temperature alterations and biogeochemical interactions taking place. Wells were installed at two sites in the Reserve. There are three Quarry Valley area wells (QV1-1 [23m depth], QV1-2 [14.9m], QV1-3 [34.6m]) and five Core Shed area wells (CSW1-1 [19.5m], CSW1-2 [19.2m], CSW1-3 [23.2m], CSW1-4 [8.8m], CSW1-5 [27.4m]). Water samples were collected from all installed wells, as well as from an older well drilled near the historic core shed (Old Core Shed Well, or OCSW [82m]), and an upper (TC1) and lower (TC2) site sampling a nearby groundwater-fed alkaline seep, at Temptation Creek. Key environmental parameters (temperature, pH, conductivity, oxidation-reduction potential, and dissolved oxygen) were collected in the field using YSI-556 multiprobe meter, and total concentrations for major cations (Ca, Na, Mg, K) were analyzed using Thermo Scientific iCAP 7400 Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometry, and anions (F, Cl, SO4 , NO3 ) on Dionex Modular DX 500 Ion Chromatography. Principal component analysis was conducted to determine key factors and processes controlling water chemistries at CRO. Geochemist's Workbench software was used to model the low temperature alteration of a serpentinization-influenced model water volume passing through serpentinite over a period of 100 million years. Modeling provided insight into the changing pH, Eh, evolving water chemistries, stepwise mineral assemblages, appearance of marker minerals at geochemical transitions in the system, and supported evidence of pervasive impacts of low temperature, oxidative weathering of serpentinites. This work supports the case of incremental dilution and transformation of a deeply sourced Ca-OH Type II water in this environment, and constrains reaction status of present day CRO waters and those of similar sites, in terms of the progress of serpentinite weathering reactions. Further, the study informs our understanding of serpentinization-related geological environments present on other celestial bodies (e.g., Mars, Europa, Enceladus) in our Solar System and beyond.


Today, global land use is affected by a variety of factors, including urbanization and the growing interconnectedness of economies and markets. This book examines the challenges and opportunities we face in achieving sustainable land use in the twenty-first century. While land resources remain finite, the global population is projected to reach ten billion by the end of the century, bringing issues of ethics and fairness to center stage. Who should decide how land is used? Where does competition for land occur, and why? Moreover, accelerating globalization, increasing demand for animal protein in our diets, the need for new sources of energy, and the global scarcity of land have led to a decoupling of land use and local control, which raises issues of governance. The contributors, from a range of disciplines and countries, present new analytical perspectives and tools for understanding key issues in global land use. The chapters consider such topics as food production and land use; case studies of urbanization and agriculture in Brazil and China; telecoupling and connections to distant places; emerging institutions of land-use governance; public and private regulation of land use; uniquely urban issues of land use; and future steps to sustainability. ContributorsGraeme Auld, Anthony J. Bebbington, Tor A. Benjaminsen, Hilda Blanco, Christopher G. Boone, Saturnino M. Borras, Jr., Wang Chunyu, Ruth DeFries, Xiangzheng Deng, Hallie Eakin, Jennifer C. Franco, Bradford S. Gentry, Peter J. Gregory, Dagmar Haase, Helmut Haberl, Vanessa Hull, Carol A. Hunsberger, John S. I. Ingram, Elena G. Irwin, Anne-Marie Izac, Suzi Kerr, Jennifer Koch, Tobias Kuemmerle, Eric F. Lambin, Yingzhi Lin, Jianguo Liu, Shuaib Lwasa, Peter J. Marcotullio, Matias E. Margulis, Cheikh Mbow, Ole Mertz, Peter Messerli, Patrick Meyfroidt, Emilio Moran, Harini Nagendra, Stephan Pauleit, Steward T. A. Pickett, Tobias Plieninger, Charles L. Redman, Anette Reenberg, Ximena Rueda, Heike Schroeder, Karen C. Seto, Thomas Sikor, Simon R. Swaffield, Billie Lee Turner II, Caroline Upton, Birka Wicke, Makoto Yokohari, Karl Zimmerer


Abstract. The late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions may have been the first extinctions directly related to human activity, but in North America the close temporal proximity of human arrival and the Younger Dryas climate event has hindered efforts to identify the ultimate extinction cause. Previous work evaluating the roles of climate change and human activity in the North American megafaunal extinction has been stymied by a reliance on geographic binning, yielding contradictory results among researchers. We used a fine-scale geospatial approach in combination with 95 megafaunal last-appearance and 75 human first-appearance radiocarbon dates to evaluate the North American megafaunal extinction. We used kriging to create interpolated first- and last-appearance surfaces from calibrated radiocarbon dates in combination with their geographic autocorrelation. We found substantial evidence for overlap between megafaunal and human populations in many but not all areas, in some cases exceeding 3000 years of predicted overlap. We also found that overlap was highly regional: megafauna had last appearances in Alaska before humans first appeared, but did not have last appearances in the Great Lakes region until several thousand years after the first recorded human appearances. Overlap in the Great Lakes region exceeds uncertainty in radiocarbon measurements ormethodological uncertainty and would be even greater with sampling-derived confidence intervals. The kriged maps of last megafaunal occurrence are consistent with climate as a primary driver in some areas, but we cannot eliminate human influence from all regions. The late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction was highly variable in timing and duration of human overlap across the continent, and future analyses should take these regional trends into account.


A Rota-Baxter Leibniz algebra is a Leibniz algebra
$(\mathfrak{g},[~,~]_{\mathfrak{g}})$ equipped with a Rota-Baxter operator $T :
\mathfrak{g} \rightarrow \mathfrak{g}$. We define representation and dual
representation of Rota-Baxter Leibniz algebras. Next, we define a cohomology
theory of Rota-Baxter Leibniz algebras. We also study the infinitesimal and
formal deformation theory of Rota-Baxter Leibniz algebras and show that our
cohomology is deformation cohomology. Moreover, We define an abelian extension
of Rota-Baxter Leibniz algebras and show that equivalence classes of such
extensions are related to the cohomology groups.


Objective: To determine the frequency of internet use in patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to get information about their disease and to examine whether there are demographic differences between internet users and nonusers. Secondary aims were to delineate the information sources patients prefer and whether they consider their knowledge about their disease( s) as sufficient. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire was sequentially administered to the patients who attended the Cumhuriyet University, Faculty of Medicine, Allergic Diseases and Chest Diseases Outpatient Clinics by face-to-face interviews between October 2004-February 2005. A total of 213 patients completed the questionnaire, among which 102 (47.9%) had asthma, 111 (52.1%) had COPD. Results: Among the 213 patients, 4 (3.6%) patients with COPD and 31 (30.4%) patients with asthma had a computer at home, and 57 (55.9%) patients with asthma and none of the patients with COPD had internet access. Among the 213 patients, 12 (11.8%) asthmatic patients and 1 (0.9%) patient with COPD had used the internet to get information about their own health. Doctors were the main sources of information about disease (182 patients, 81.0%). Conclusion: It's necessary to draw attention of our patient's with COPD about the necessity of getting information about their diseases. It's necessary to draw attention of our patient's with asthma about using the internet for education about their diseases.


Turbulent fluctuations are important in dispersion problems where short timescale peak values can be critical. These situations include: a) releases of toxic, flammable or odourous substances where high short time scale impacts may be dangerous or cause a nuisance; b) estimating concentrations for regulatory purposes for comparison with limits based on a short timescale, such as the UK 15-minute or WHO 10-minute levels for SO2; c) assessing the uncertainties in dispersion model predictions and aiding model comparison with measured data. The ADMS 3 dispersion model includes a module to calculate turbulent fluctuations which is based on a "two particle dispersion" concept but has much in common with Gifford's meandering plume model. It has been used in critical applications where odour and exceedences of a regulatory value were the issues. In this paper, the fluctuations model is described and each of the three applications is illustrated.


Egg densities were monitored in the dry sediment of four desert rock pool populations of the fairy shrimp Branchipodopsis wolfi over different years/seasons. Egg densities varied according to pool and season/year between about 1,000 and 220,000 eggs per m 2 . This converts to population sizes of between about 200 and 500,000 viable diapausing eggs per pool. Egg densities are within the range of 10 3 to 105 eggs per m 2 usually measured for other zooplankton species with egg banks. Egg densities were associated but not significantly correlated with chances for successful recruitment in each of the pools as estimated from direct observations of pool hydrocycles and from pool morphometry. Egg bank densities were also not significantly linked with maturation rate and average brood size of the respective populations. Egg densities fluctuate in a partially asynchronosus way among the pools suggesting that factors other than chances for recruitment are also important in controlling egg bank dynamics. The large variance (CV ≥80 %) in egg densities over the seasons in unvegetated pools with loose and sparse sediment in comparison with vegetated pools (CV<40%) with compact sediment holding the eggs, is suggestive of the overriding importance of stochastic passive dispersal by wind or overflows. Earlier reproduction and larger average broods in the short-lived pools also weaken a positive correlation between habitat suitability and egg bank density. The relatively high egg densities of B. wolfi egg banks illustrate the effectiveness of the reproductive and hatching characteristics of this species to successfully persist in this extreme type of temporary habitat. This is the first study on egg bank dynamics in large branchiopods.


The recent development of tunable far-infrared lasers and other high-resolution spectroscopic probes of weakly bound clusters is having a significant impact on our understanding of intermolecular forces and on the complex quantum tunneling dynamics that occur in hydrogen-bonded systems. Far-infrared studies of a variety of interactions are discussed, including several prototypical water-hydrophobe complexes, the water trimer, and the ammonia dimer. Particular attention is paid to the inversion of spectroscopic data to yield detailed intermolecular potential energy surfaces. Investigations of nonpairwise additivity are also described.


Vertebrate extraocular muscles show a highly complex anatomy, which differs in many respects from skeletal muscles. Furthermore, there is a considerable variation among different species with regard to the presence of proprioceptive organs. Whereas muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs are well developed in sheep and pig, neither are found in cat, and only poorly developed muscle spindles are present in human and monkey. In all vertebrates studied so far cuffs of nerve terminals around multiply innervated muscle fibers of the global layer, termed palisade endings (PE) are present at the myotendinous junction.
Palisade endings (PE) are specialized nerve endings unique to extraocular muscles. There is still an ongoing debate on PE function. A proprioceptive function is supported by their ultrastructural morphology, and the location of the majority of their terminals within the muscle tendon. A motor function of PEs is suggested by the expression of different cholinergic markers, and the binding of α-bungarotoxin to at least a small proportion of PE nerve endings. So far the location of the somata giving rise to the PEs is unknown.
After eye muscle injections with different tracers, and the investigation of retrogradely labeled cells after three days of survival, there are two possible options for the location of the cell bodies of PEs: The trigeminal ganglion (TG), where almost all of the sensory afferents of eye muscles come from, or the motor neurons of the abducens (nVI), trochlear (nIV) and oculomotor nucleus (nIII) in the brainstem, where the motor neurons of the extraocular muscles are situated.
In the first part of this thesis the histochemical and morphometric properties of TG cells projecting to the extraocular muscles were studied and related to different nerve fibers and terminals in these muscles, to obtain more information about their function. Retrogradely labeled TG neurons and eye muscle terminals were processed for the presence of substance P (SP), nitric oxide synthase (NOS), calretinin (CR) and cholinacetyltransferase (ChAT). Injections of the tracer were placed into the medial rectus (MR) or the lateral recuts muscle (LR), either in the belly or in the distal, myotendinous part of the muscle. PEs were only labeled by CR or ChAT and none of the other markers that were used. Furthermore, CR positive retrogradely labeled tracer cells in the TG were rarely found (under 1 % of all tracer cells). The results indicate that the possible function of TG afferents could be mainly vasodilatation or nociception whereas the probability of proprioception via PEs is very low. These results point to the fact, that the source of the PE cell body is probably localized in the brainstem. In a second attempt to solve this problem, rhesus monkey received tract-tracer injections (WGA or CT) into the oculomotor nucleus, which contains the motor neurons of the medial, inferior and superior recti and inferior oblique muscles, as well as the trochlear nucleus, which contains the motor neurons of the superior oblique. All extraocular muscles were processed for the combined immunocytochemical detection of the tracer and non-phosphorylated neurofilament for the visualization of the complete muscle innervation. In all muscles (except lateral rectus) numerous anterogradely tracer labeled PEs were found, as well as tracer-filled tendon organs. In addition the en plaque and en grappe motor endings, were also strongly tracer positive. Double immunolabeling revealed that all types of nerve endings including tendon organs were anterogradely labeled, except the thin tyrosine hydroxylase positive autonomic nerve fibers of the sympathetic system. No anterograde labeling was found within the trigeminal ganglia.
These results suggest that the somata of palisade endings are located within the brainstem, in or around the oculomotor nuclei, and confirm several previous studies. In how far the multiple nerve endings of non-twitch muscle fibers and the PEs form an anatomical entity with one parent soma in the periphery of the oculomotor nuclei was studied by morphological and histochemical analysis of the peripheral neurons around the motor nuclei. This data revealed two populations: one group of cholinergic multipolar neurons represent the motor neurons supplying the multiple motor innervation, one group of round calretinin positive cholinergic neurons giving rise to PEs. If the palisade endings do have a sensory function, then their cell body location amongst the non-twitch motor neurons would be an ideal location to control the tension in the non-twitch extraocular muscle fibers, and the data brought together in this thesis points strongly in this direction.
To fully establish this hypothesis more physiological experimental data is required.


The spectroscopic Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7) galaxy sample represents the final set of galaxies observed using the original SDSS target selection criteria. We analyse the clustering of galaxies within this sample, including both the luminous red galaxy and main samples, and also include the 2-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey data. In total, this sample comprises 893 319 galaxies over 9100 deg(2). Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) are observed in power spectra measured for different slices in redshift; this allows us to constrain the distance-redshift relation at multiple epochs. We achieve a distance measure at redshift z = 0.275, of r(s)(z(d))/D-V(0.275) = 0.1390 +/- 0.0037 (2.7 per cent accuracy), where r(s)(z(d)) is the comoving sound horizon at the baryon-drag epoch, D-V(z) equivalent to [(1 + z)(2)D(A)(2)cz/H(z)](1/3), D-A(z) is the angular diameter distance and H(z) is the Hubble parameter. We find an almost independent constraint on the ratio of distances D-V(0.35)/D-V(0.2) = 1.736 +/- 0.065, which is consistent at the 1.1 sigma level with the best-fitting Lambda cold dark matter model obtained when combining our z = 0.275 distance constraint with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 5-year (WMAP5) data. The offset is similar to that found in previous analyses of the SDSS DR5 sample, but the discrepancy is now of lower significance, a change caused by a revised error analysis and a change in the methodology adopted, as well as the addition of more data. Using WMAP5 constraints on Omega(b)h(2) and Omega(c) h(2), and combining our BAO distance measurements with those from the Union supernova sample, places a tight constraint on Omega(m) = 0.286 +/- 0.018 and H-0 = 68.2 +/- 2.2 km s(-1) Mpc(-1) that is robust to allowing Omega(k) not equal 0 and omega not equal -1. This result is independent of the behaviour of dark energy at redshifts greater than those probed by the BAO and supernova measurements. Combining these data sets with the full WMAP5 likelihood constraints provides tight constraints on both Omega(k) = -0.006 +/- 0.008 and omega = -0.97 +/- 0.10 for a constant dark energy equation of state.


Classification of surfaces using millimeter-wave radar commonly considers the use of polarization-based methods for road condition monitoring. When a surface consists of larger structures, one is instead often interested in monitoring the surface topography, which is typically not resolvable by the limited radar bandwidth. To alleviate this problem, we here consider several phase coherent radar measurments conducted during the motion of the radar, in order to capture not only the instantaneous depth measurement, but also the depth variation over time. Analysis of scattering from rough surfaces is highly complex and relies on prior knowledge of surface structure. By constructing a set of features based on a number of radar measurements over time, a machine learning classifier is proposed to distinguish grass target surfaces from asphalt, gravel, soil, and tiled surfaces. Six different classifier structures are evauated and presented in the paper. Using estimated autocovariances and average envelope shapes as features, a small, fully connected, neural network classifier is, using a leave-one-out strategy, shown to allow for accurate determination of the surface type. The proposed classifier can be implemented with limited hardware requirements, making it suitable for autonomous devices, such as, e.g., autonomous lawn mowers.


Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare children's performance on speech recognition and working memory tasks with two noise source configurations: back and side. Method: Children with normal hearing between the ages of 8-10 years of age participated in this study. Working memory and speech recognition in noise were administered in a counterbalanced manner across listening conditions. Results: Speech recognition performance in noise was significantly poorer when presented at 180 than from 90 degrees azimuth. There was no effect of noise source configuration on working memory performance. However, working memory performance in noise, regardless of position, were significantly poorer compared to quiet. No relationship was present between auditory working memory in noise and speech recognition in noise, when noise was presented at 90° azimuth. Conclusion: Children use perceptual cues and cognitive resources based on the difficulty of the task and audibility of the signal, Cognitive resources are largely called upon when listening conditions are more adverse and tasks become complex.


Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent long‐lived greenhouse gas (GHG) and the strongest current emissions of global anthropogenic stratospheric ozone depletion weighted by its ozone depletion potential. In California, N2O is the third largest contributor to the state's anthropogenic GHG emission inventory, though no study has quantified its statewide annual emissions through top‐down inverse modeling. Here we present the first annual (2013–2014) statewide top‐down estimates of anthropogenic N2O emissions. Utilizing continuous N2O observations from six sites across California in a hierarchical Bayesian inversion, we estimate that annual anthropogenic emissions are 1.5–2.5 times (at 95% confidence) the state inventory (41 Gg N2O in 2014). Without mitigation, this estimate represents 4–7% of total GHG emissions assuming that other reported GHG emissions are reasonably correct. This suggests that control of N2O could be an important component in meeting California's emission reduction goals of 40% and 80% below 1990 levels of the total GHG emissions (in CO2 equivalent) by 2030 and 2050, respectively. Our seasonality analysis suggests that emissions are similar across seasons within posterior uncertainties. Future work is needed to provide source attribution for subregions and further characterization of seasonal variability.


This study addressed the question whether daily intake of fish oil during three months had an effect on treatment-resistant epilepsy in children. More than half of the children had no epileptic attacks during the intervention period. The results support a limited number of studies in humans showing that omega-3 LCPUFA may have beneficial effects in epilepsy. Future studies with optimized protocols will be required to confirm the results.


Advances in vaccination include new vaccines and new vaccination practices. This review will focus on the varicella vaccine which, despite its long presence, remains but a candidate for childhood universal vaccination. The rotavirus vaccine, both monovalent and pentavalent, has become part of standard vaccination practice wherever resources permit. The new H1N1 flu vaccination has raised the question of deficient heterosubtypic cross-reactive immunity in children vaccinated with split or subunit vaccines. Finally, routine antipyretic prophylaxis at the time of vaccination will need to be reexamined, since recent data show that paracetamol given with the routine vaccines in the first two years of life significantly reduces the immunogenic response. Â


Fluorescence spectra of acetic acid-water solution excited by ultraviolet (UV) light are studied, and the relationship between fluorescence spectra and molecular association of acetic acid is discussed. The results indicate that when the exciting light wavelength is longer than 246 nm, there are two fluorescence peaks located at 305 and 334 nm, respectively. By measuring the excitation spectra, the optimal wavelengths of the two fluorescence peaks are obtained, which are 258 and 284 nm, respectively. Fluorescence spectra of acetic acid-water solution change with concentrations, which is primarily attributed to changes of molecular association of acetic acid in aqueous solution. Through theoretical analysis, three variations of molecular association have been obtained in acetic acid-water solution, which are the hydrated monomers, the linear dimers, and the water separated dimers. This research can provide references to studies of molecular association of acetic acid-water, especially studies of hydrogen bonds.