Background: Cadmium is a toxic heavy metal and environmental pollutant; general population exposure is through occupation, diet, and smoking. Cadmium is associated with lower bone mineral density (BMD) and higher risk of fractures in women. This association is not fully known in men. Objective: Given the toxicity and global dispersion of cadmium, we explored its association with BMD in U.S. men and women. Methods: Data from 914 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2013-2014 was utilized. Multivariable regression analysis was used to determine the independent association between cadmium exposure and BMD controlling for age, body mass index, smoking status, income, and menopausal status × gender. The Šidák method was used to adjust p-values for multiple comparisons between levels of each categorical variable. Results: In adjusted analysis a small, negative association between cadmium exposure and BMD was observed. This association was not significant overall (p = 0.908) nor in males (p = 0.618) or females (p = 0.942). Overall, age (p < .001), body mass index (p < .001), income (p = .001), race (p < .001) and menopausal status × gender (p < .001) were significantly associated with bone mineral density. Unplanned analysis controlling for creatinine did not yield a significant association between cadmium and BMD. Conclusion: In the U.S. population, cadmium is not significantly associated with BMD. As mean urinary Cadmium level has been declining in U.S. population over 1999-2014; the decreasing levels of environmental cadmium exposure may have a role in non-significant association with BMD.


We present the analysis and design of reflecting cells capable of dynamically and independently control the reflection phase of each component of a dual-polarized impinging wave. Such capability is of significant interest for the future implementation of dual-polarized and polarization-flexible reflectarrays with scanning capabilities. The presented cells are controlled by varactor diodes and operate in lower X-band (8 GHz). Simulated and measurement results demonstrate good performances in terms of phase range, losses and bandwidth. For example, a range of 300° is achieved under normal incidence at 8 GHz with maximum and average reflection loss of 3.3 dB and 1.4 dB, respectively.


Purpose 18F-FDG PET/CT is widely used to evaluate indeterminate pulmonary nodules (IPNs). False positive results occur, especially from active granulomatous nodules. A PET-based imaging agent with superior specificity to 18F-FDG for IPNs, is badly needed, especially in areas of endemic granulomatous nodules. Somatostatin receptors (SSTR) are expressed in many malignant cells including small cell and non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs). 68Ga-DOTATATE, a positron emitter labeled somatostatin analog, combined with PET/CT imaging, may improve the diagnosis of IPNs over 18F-FDG by reducing false positives. Our study purpose was to test this hypothesis in our region with high endemic granulomatous IPNs. Methods We prospectively performed 68Ga-DOTATATE PET/CT and 18F-FDG PET/CT scans in the same 30 patients with newly diagnosed, treatment-naïve lung cancer (N = 14) or IPNs (N = 15) and one metastatic nodule. 68Ga-DOTATATE SUVmax levels at or above 1.5 were considered likely malignant. We analyzed the scan results, correlating with ultimate diagnosis via biopsy or 2-year chest CT follow-up. We also correlated 68Ga-DOTATATE uptake with immunohistochemical (IHC) staining for SSTR subtype 2A (SSTR2A) in pathological specimens. Results We analyzed 31 lesions in 30 individuals, with 14 (45%) being non-neuroendocrine lung cancers and 1 (3%) being metastatic disease. McNemar's result comparing the two radiopharmaceuticals (p = 0.65) indicates that their accuracy of diagnosis in this indication are equivalent. 68Ga-DOTATATE was more specific (94% compared to 81%) and less sensitive 73% compared to 93%) than 18F-FDG. 68Ga-DOTATATE uptake correlated with SSTR2A expression in tumor stroma determined by immunohistochemical (IHC) staining in 5 of 9 (55%) NSCLCs. Conclusion 68Ga-DOTATATE and 18F-FDG PET/CT had equivalent accuracy in the diagnosis of non-neuroendocrine lung cancer and 68Ga-DOTATATE was more specific than 18F-FDG for the diagnosis of IPNs. IHC staining for SSTR2A receptor expression correlated with tumor stroma but not tumor cells.


This study generally investigates the language learning strategy (LLS) used by UHB 1412
students. The study also attempts to identify the language learning strategy used by good and poor
learners of English. The Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) was
administered to hundred and four first year students with few modifications done in the questionnaires.
The aspects that were examined entails the six language learning strategies classified by Oxford (1990) as
cognitive strategies, memory strategies, compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective
strategies and social strategies. The data were then analysed using the Statistical Package for The Social
Science (SPSS) version 12.00. The findings shows that the students attempted to use more metacognitive
strategy and social strategy in their learning. In addition, the favoured language learning strategies used
by good and poor learners were also identified. This study aims to equip students with the learning
strategies they need in order to succeed in the learning of a second language. It is also hoped that the
study could help both the language practitioners and experts in the field to consider the use of the six
language learning strategies in achieving the goals of learning.

Keywords: language learning strategy (LLS)


Purge flow is bled from the upstream compressor and supplied to the under-platform region to prevent hot main gas path ingress that damages vulnerable under-platform hardware components. A majority of turbine rim seal research has sought to identify methods of improving sealing technologies and understanding the physical mechanisms that drive ingress. While these studies directly support the design and analysis of advanced rim seal geometries and purge flow systems, the studies are limited in their applicability to real-time monitoring required for condition-based operation and maintenance. As operational hours increase for in-service engines, this lack of rim seal performance feedback results in progressive degradation of sealing effectiveness, thereby leading to reduced hardware life.
 To address this need for rim seal performance monitoring, the present study utilizes measurements from a one-stage turbine research facility operating with true-scale engine hardware at engine-relevant conditions. Time-resolved pressure measurements collected from the rim seal region are regressed with sealing effectiveness through the use of common machine learning techniques to provide real-time feedback of sealing effectiveness. Two modelling approaches are presented that use a single sensor to predict sealing effectiveness accurately over a range of two turbine operating conditions. Results show that an initial purely data-driven model can be further improved using domain knowledge of relevant turbine operations, which yields sealing effectiveness predictions within three percent of measured values.


Argumentation is a key activity of lawyers. Therefore in law school teaching argumentation is essential. Information technology can provide useful support in argumentation courses. New opportunities come from a recent topic of research in the field AI Law, viz. computer-mediated legal argument e.g., Gordon, Lodder, Loui. The starting point for the research on computer- mediated legal argument is that a computer system can support lawyers by mediating the process in which they draft and generate arguments the system can administer and supervise the argument process by keeping track of the reasons adduced and the conclusions drawn, and by checking whether the users of the system obey the pertaining rules of argument, e.g., those related to the division of burden of proof. Computer-mediated legal argument poses a new problem how should an argument be presented to the users of the mediating system Especially with regards to recently developed logical tools e.g., Hage, Prakken, Sartor, Verheij, there is little experience with argument presentation. There is a natural division of approaches to argument presentation in two classes the verbal and the visual approaches. In the verbal approach, the argument is mainly presented in a verbal style, for instance in the form of a text or a written-out dialog. In the visual approach, the argument is mainly presented in a visual style, for instance in the form of a tree of sentences. In the paper, we reconstruct elements of a Dutch Supreme Court case on tort law March 20, 1992 and its sequel at the Court of Justice of The Hague September 15, 1994 in two prototypical systems for the mediation of legal argument. The first system takes the verbal approach; the second system takes the visual approach. We discuss the opportunities of the two approaches for teaching legal argument. Our conclusion is that neither approach is fully satisfactory for teaching legal argument if it is taken to its extreme, but that a hybrid combination of verbal and visual elements should be striven for. Proceedings of the BILETA- conference - March 27-28, 1998,Dublin, Ireland.


Twitter provides a new and important tool for political actors. In the 2010 midterm elections, the vast majority of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and virtually all candidates for U.S. Senate and governorships used Twitter to reach out to potential supporters, direct them to particular pieces of information, request campaign contributions from them, and mobilize their political action. Despite the level of activity, we have little understanding of what the political Twitterverse looks like in terms of communication and discourse. This project seeks to remedy that lack of understanding by mapping candidates and their followers according to their use of hashtags (keywords) and user mentions (direct mentioning of other Twitter users). We have a unique data set constructed from tweets of most of the candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, all the candidates for the Senate and governorships, and a random sample of their followers. From this we utilize multidimensional scaling to construct a visual map based on hashtag and user mention usage. We find that our data have both local and global interpretations that reflect both political leaning and strategies of communication. This study provides insight into innovation in new media usage in political behavior in particular and a bounded topic space in general.


Acute overnutrition in healthy men caused rapid weight gain and insulin resistance, as well as oxidative stress. The irresistible effects of overfeeding Obesity is very common in the United States and worldwide, and it is associated with a host of health problems collectively known as the metabolic syndrome. Insulin resistance is a key component of this syndrome, but the mechanism by which obesity promotes insulin resistance is not yet fully understood. Boden et al. studied a group of six healthy men who were subjected to overnutrition for 1 week while performing no physical activity. In that time, the men gained an average of 3.5 kg and showed signs of insulin resistance as well as oxidative stress. This process was associated with inactivation of GLUT4, a major insulin-facilitated glucose transporter, suggesting a potential approach for the development of future therapeutic agents. Obesity-linked insulin resistance greatly increases the risk for type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, together known as the metabolic or insulin resistance syndrome. How obesity promotes insulin resistance remains incompletely understood. Plasma concentrations of free fatty acids and proinflammatory cytokines, endoplasmic reticulum ( ER) stress, and oxidative stress are all elevated in obesity and have been shown to induce insulin resistance. However, they may be late events that only develop after chronic excessive nutrient intake. The nature of the initial event that produces insulin resistance at the beginning of excess caloric intake and weight gain remains unknown. We show that feeding healthy men with ~6000 kcal/day of the common U.S. diet [~50% carbohydrate (CHO), ~ 35% fat, and ~15% protein] for 1 week produced a rapid weight gain of 3.5 kg and the rapid onset (after 2 to 3 days) of systemic and adipose tissue insulin resistance and oxidative stress but no inflammatory or ER stress. In adipose tissue, the oxidative stress resulted in extensive oxidation and carbonylation of numerous proteins, including carbonylation of GLUT4 near the glucose transport channel, which likely resulted in loss of GLUT4 activity. These results suggest that the initial event caused by overnutrition may be oxidative stress, which produces insulin resistance, at least in part, via carbonylation and oxidation-induced inactivation of GLUT4.


abstract:This article explores how the category "Chinese art" was articulated and consolidated in the early twentieth century by focusing on Stephen Bushell's Chinese Art, the first book in English defined in terms of this category. Bushell's monograph highlights the intercultural character of the category, which was transformed in its content and cultural significance, when ostensibly the same authentic knowledge, articulated in verbal and visual representations, was moved from China to Europe and back again. The article starts by examining how Bushell's insider knowledge of Chinese art was transformed to fit the institutional setting of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It then explores how the authoritative knowledge of Chinese art communicated in Bushell's book was appropriated in China by the journal Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 (Journal of National Essence) in the context of attempts to revive national culture. Both cases involved hitherto unnoticed repetitions of text and images. By analyzing the mechanism informing these repetitions, this article reveals the entangled history behind the distinctive articulations of "Chinese art" in Britain and in China. Moreover, the analysis shows how the same elements, whether words or pictures, acquired a substantially different significance as they moved between cultures. This is exemplified by the formulation of the newly emergent classifying category Zhongguo meishupin 中國美術品 ("Chinese art objects") in Guocui xuebao.


Myeloid leukocytes are thought to regulate their susceptibility to apoptosis upon migration to a site of inflammation. However, factors that determine survival have not been well characterized in these cells. We have examined the expression of murine A1, an antiapoptotic Bcl-2 relative found in activated myeloid cells, during the course of an acute inflammatory response. Intraperitoneal infection of mice with the virulent RH strain of Toxoplasma gondii led to a 5- to 10-fold increase in A1 mRNA levels in peritoneal cells after several days. Bcl-2 expression was unchanged. The increase in A1 expression depended on the dose of the organism and coincided with a sharp increase in peritoneal cellularity. A1 protein levels were also increased as determined by Western blot analysis and immunohistochemical studies. All neutrophils and approximately half of the macrophages in the inflammatory exudate contained high levels of A1 in cytoplasm. A1 expression did not correlate with intracellular parasitization. Peripheral blood neutrophils from normal mice strongly expressed A1 protein, whereas normal monocytes showed only weak staining. Bax mRNA was induced in parallel with A1 in macrophages. Exudate macrophages and granulocytes that were apoptotic by TUNEL staining occasionally appeared to display A1 throughout the cell nucleus. These studies identify A1 as a potential regulator of apoptosis during acute inflammation.


Roflumilast is a selective phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor which has been licensed in the European Union since 2010 and in Switzerland since November 2011 as an add-on treatment for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in GOLD (Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease) stages 3 and 4 (FEV(1) <50% predicted after bronchodilatation) and frequent exacerbations despite correctly-dosed therapy with a long-acting bronchodilator. Roflumilast is designed to target both the systemic and pulmonary inflammation associated with COPD. In this review roflumilast's chemistry, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, clinical efficacy, safety and tolerability and the current ongoing clinical trials involving roflumilast are outlined. Information has been sourced from the Swiss and US product information monographs, peer-reviewed published literature (identified from a PubMed MEDLINE search 1966 - March 2012 using the term "roflumilast"), the COPD GOLD international guidelines for the management of COPD (Revised 2011) and an independent analysis of phase 3 clinical trial data by FDA staff physicians. Clinical efficacy in terms of a modest gain in FEV(1)% and a reduction in exacerbation rate has been demonstrated in phase 3 clinical trials and roflumilast has been recently incorporated into international treatment guidelines. However data examining roflumilast as add-on therapy to long-acting bronchodilators and ICS (standard therapy) is currently awaited and phase 4 post-marketing studies are required to determine the incidence and severity of adverse events and the long-term beneficial effects of roflumilast as a maintenance therapy for COPD in every-day clinical practice.


For many years, American legislatures have been steadily attaching a wide range of legal consequences to convictions—and sometimes even just charges—for crimes that are classified as "violent." These consequences affect many key aspects of the criminal process, including pretrial detention, eligibility for pretrial diversion, sentencing, eligibility for parole and other opportunities for release from incarceration, and the length and intensity of supervision in the community. The consequences can also affect a person's legal status and rights long after the sentence for the underlying offense has been served. A conviction for a violent crime can result in registration requirements, lifetime disqualification from employment in certain fields, and a loss of parental rights, among many other "collateral consequences." While a criminal conviction of any sort relegates a person to a kind of second-class citizenship in the United States, a conviction for a violent crime increasingly seems even more momentous—pushing the person into a veritable third-class citizenship. This Article provides the first systematic treatment of the legal consequences that result from a violence charge or conviction. The Article surveys the statutory law of all fifty states, including the diverse and sometimes surprisingly broad definitions of what counts as a violent crime. While the Article's aims are primarily empirical, concerns are raised along the way regarding the fairness and utility of the growing length and severity of sentences imposed on "violent" offenders and of the increasingly daunting barriers to their reintegration into society.


Background: Food-based interventions can reduce the prevalence of undernutrition and improve household food security, but nutritious and accessible foods may be underutilized. In Ecuador, eggs are inexpensive and widely available, but while they are a valuable source of essential nutrients for infants and young children, medical advice and community-based information have limited their inclusion in infants' diets. Objective: A qualitative component was conducted to understand local perceptions, knowledge, and practices to complement a randomized control trial that studied the effect of introducing eggs on nutritional status and growth in infants from 6 to 9 months in rural communities in the highland province of Cotopaxi, Ecuador. Methods: The qualitative inquiry consisted of key informant interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and structured observations in order to understand perceptions, knowledge, and practices related to household egg consumption and to the introduction of eggs in infants' diets. Results: The two principal findings were that: (i) eggs are an available and culturally acceptable food source although they are not always a part of the diet; and (ii) perceptions and practices related to household consumption and the introduction of eggs into the diet of infants are shaped by local knowledge and practices, which are shaped by biomedical information and advice provided by public health professionals. Conclusion: Through an effective food-based intervention that includes qualitative research and a social marketing component, the behaviors of mothers and other caregivers can be modified, enabling children to realize the nutritional advantages of early introduction of eggs into their diet.


The market structure can be described by concentration ratios based on the oligopoly theory or the structure - conduct - performance paradigm. Measures of concentration and also competition are essential for banks conduction in the banking industry. Several researchers have proved concentration level to be major determinants of banking system efficiency. Theoretical characteristics of market concentration measures are illustrated with empirical evidence. The market structure of the Albanian Banking Sector has changed dramatically in recent years. On 1990s, our country has experienced deregulation, foreign bank penetration, and an accelerated process of consolidation and competition in the banking sector. Particularly, the working paper examines the nature and the extent of changes in market concentration of Albanian banking sector. It focused primarily on a descriptive and dynamic analysis of change in the concentration indices in banking sector from year to year. Also it examines how the inherited structure of the banking system affects the way of the distribution of market shares amongst the different banks that comprise on the banking sector.


Two strategies of case marking in natural languages are discussed. These are defined as two violable constraints whose effects are shown to converge in the case of differential object marking but diverge in the case of differential subject marking. The discourse prominence of the case-bearing arguments is shown to be of utmost importance for case-marking and voice alternations. The analysis of the case-marking patterns that are found crosslinguistically is couched in a bidirectional Optimality Theory analysis.


ABSTRACT Background Gut microbiota profiles are closely related to cardiovascular diseases through mechanisms that include the reported deleterious effects of metabolites, such as trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), which have been studied as diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Moderate red wine (RW) consumption is reportedly cardioprotective, possibly by affecting the gut microbiota. Objectives To investigate the effects of RW consumption on the gut microbiota, plasma TMAO, and the plasma metabolome in men with documented coronary artery disease (CAD) using a multiomics assessment in a crossover trial. Methods We conducted a randomized, crossover, controlled trial involving 42 men (average age, 60 y) with documented CAD comparing 3-wk RW consumption (250 mL/d, 5 d/wk) with an equal period of alcohol abstention, both preceded by a 2-wk washout period. The gut microbiota was analyzed via 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. Plasma TMAO was evaluated by LC-MS/MS. The plasma metabolome of 20 randomly selected participants was evaluated by ultra-high-performance LC-MS/MS. The effect of RW consumption was assessed by individual comparisons using paired tests during the abstention and RW periods. Results Plasma TMAO did not differ between RW intervention and alcohol abstention, and TMAO concentrations showed low intraindividual concordance over time, with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.049 during the control period. After RW consumption, there was significant remodeling of the gut microbiota, with a difference in β diversity and predominance of Parasutterella, Ruminococcaceae, several Bacteroides species, and Prevotella. Plasma metabolomic analysis revealed significant changes in metabolites after RW consumption, consistent with improved redox homeostasis. Conclusions Modulation of the gut microbiota may contribute to the putative cardiovascular benefits of moderate RW consumption. The low intraindividual concordance of TMAO presents challenges regarding its role as a cardiovascular risk biomarker at the individual level. This study was registered at clinical trials.gov as NCT03232099.


Self-help plays a nearly unnoticed but increasingly important role in free speech jurisprudence. Under both the compelling interest and least restrictive means prongs of strict scrutiny, courts have determined the constitutionality of content-based restrictions on speech by comparing the efficacy of state action to that of alternative, self-help remedies. Courts and commentators, however, have yet to explore and justify how self-help does and should influence First Amendment law. Thanks largely to the obscuring effect of the captive audience doctrine, courts have invoked self-help in compelling interest inquiries in a consistent, but only implicit, manner. In contrast, although the Supreme Court has encouraged lower courts to consider self-help remedies as part of that inquiry, the Court itself has given similar consideration only very recently. The present paper thus analyzes the extant case law to reveal how self-help has powerfully affected free speech strict scrutiny jurisprudence. The paper moreover justifies self-help's role as consistent with a fundamental principle of governance: political entities should undertake only those projects that they can accomplish more effectively than can private ones. Evaluations of the relative efficacy of political and private means will change with the relevant facts, of course. As a general matter, however, technological advances giving private parties increasingly refined means of manipulating information should lead courts to reduce the permissible scope of state action. Just as we upgrade computer software to benefit from progressively better hardware, in other words, we should upgrade First Amendment jurisprudence to benefit from progressively better self-help.


This paper presents an empirical method for mapping speech input to shallow semantic representation. Semantic parsing is realized through a bottom-up type parsing paradigm where the operators are based on semantic concepts, obtained from a lexicon. A statistically trained model specializes the parser, by guiding the runtime beam-like search of possible parses. The semantic representation is a logical form equivalent to a Discourse Representation Structure (DRS). Each output of the parser is given a probability according to how similar, given a contextual word similarity measure, the parsing process for the input was to those collected during the training phase. Contextual information during parsing allows for better coverage of large domains. The non syntactic but very semantic nature of the parser would make it very tolerant to noisy (recognized) speech input. Shallow parsing using First-Order Logic (FOL) allows for fast but meaningful enough processing of the input, which makes the parser well suited for real-time Spoken Dialogs Systems (SDS).


Death and the Idea of Mexico is the first social, cultural, and political history of death in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of the death sign from sixteenth-century holocaust to contemporary Mexican-American identity politics, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz's innovative study marks a turning point in understanding Mexico's rich and unique use of death imagery. Unlike contemporary Europeans and Americans, whose denial of death permeates their cultures, the Mexican people display and cultivate a jovial familiarity with death. This intimacy with death has become the cornerstone of Mexico's national identity.Death and Idea of Mexico focuses on the dialectical relationship between dying, killing, and the administration of death, and the very formation of the colonial state, of a rich and variegated popular culture, and of the Mexican nation itself. The elevation of Mexican intimacy with death to the center of national identity is but a moment within that history -- within a history in which the key institutions of society are built around the claims of the fallen.Based on a stunning range of sources -- from missionary testimonies to newspaper cartoons, from masterpieces of artistic vanguards to accounts of public executions and political assassinations -- Death and the Idea of Mexico moves beyond the limited methodology of traditional historiographies of death to probe the depths of a people and a country whose fearless acquaintance with death shapes the very terms of its social compact.


Our research group at Caltech develops and employs optogenetics, tissue clearing, and viral vectors to gain new insights on circuits underlying locomotion, reward, and sleep. We showed how bidirectional manipulation of mesopontine cholinergic cell bodies exerted opposing effects on locomotor behavior and reinforcement learning and how these effects were separable via limiting photo stimulation to PPN cholinergic terminals in the ventral substantia nigra pars compacta or to the ventral tegmental area, respectively (Xiao et al, Neuron, 2016). In most recent work (Cho et al, Neuron, 2017), the group has delineated novel arousal‐promoting dopaminergic circuits that might be at the root of sleep disturbances common to numerous neuropsychiatric disorders. Genetically encoded tools that can be used to visualize, monitor, and modulate mammalian neurons are revolutionizing neuroscience. However, use of genetic tools in non‐transgenic animals is often hindered by the lack of vectors capable of safe, efficient, and specific delivery to the desired cellular targets. To begin to address these challenges, we have developed an in vivo Cre‐based selection platform (CREATE) for identifying adeno‐associated viruses (AAVs) that more efficiently transduce genetically defined cell populations (Deverman et al, Nature Biotech, 2016). As a first test of the CREATE platform, we selected for viruses that transduced the brain after intravascular delivery and found a novel vector, AAV‐PHP.B, that transduces most neuronal types and glia across the brain. We also demonstrate how whole‐body tissue clearing can facilitate transduction maps of systemically delivered genes (Yang et al, Cell, 2014; Treweek et al, Nature Protocols, 2016) and how non‐invasive delivery vectors can be used to achieve dense to sparse labeling to enable morphology tracing in both the central and peripheral nervous systems (Chan et al, Nature Neurosci, 2017). Since CNS disorders are notoriously challenging due to the restrictive nature of the blood brain barrier, the recombinant vectors engineered to overcome this barrier can enable potential future use of exciting advances in gene editing via the CRISPR‐Cas, RNA interference and gene replacement strategies to restore diseased CNS circuits. In addition to control of neuronal activity we need feedback on how exactly the tissue is responding to modulation. We have worked on two related topics: optical voltage sensors and imaging of single molecule RNA in cleared tissue. We used directed evolution of opsins to make them better at reporting action potentials (Flytzanis et al, Nature Comm, 2014). Changes in RNA transcripts can also report on activity history of brain circuits. Preserving spatial relationships while accessing the transcriptome of selected cells is a crucial feature for advancing many biological areas, from developmental biology to neuroscience. Collaborators and us recently reported on methods for multi‐color, multi‐RNA, imaging in deep tissues. By using single‐molecule hybridization chain reaction (smHCR), PACT tissue hydrogel embedding and clearing and light‐sheet microscopy we detected single‐molecule mRNAs in ~mm‐thick brain tissue samples (Shah et al, Development, 2016) and by rRNA labeling we mapped the identity and growth rate of pathogens in clinical samples (DePas et al, mBio, 2016). Together these technologies can enable high content anatomical and functional mapping to define changes that affect cell function and health body‐wide.


Recently, interest has increased in the hyperbolic family of integrable Richardson-Gaudin (RG) models. It was pointed out that a particular linear combination of the integrals of motion of the hyperbolic RG model leads to a Hamiltonian that describes $p$-wave pairing in a two-dimensional system. Such an interaction is found to be present in fermionic superfluids (${}^{3}\text{He}$), ultracold atomic gases, and $p$-wave superconductivity. Furthermore the phase diagram is intriguing, with the presence of the Moore-Read and Read-Green lines. At the Read-Green line a rare third-order quantum phase transition occurs. The present paper makes a connection between collective bosonic states and the exact solutions of the ${p}_{x}+i{p}_{y}$ pairing Hamiltonian. This makes it possible to investigate the effects of the Pauli principle on the energy spectrum, by gradually reintroducing the Pauli principle. It also introduces an efficient and stable numerical method to probe all the eigenstates of this class of Hamiltonians. We extend the phase diagram to repulsive interactions, an area that was not previously explored due to the lack of a proper mean-field solution in this region. We found a connection between the point in the phase diagram where the ground state connects to the bosonic state with the highest collectivity, and the Moore-Read line where all the Richardson-Gaudin (RG) variables collapse to zero. In contrast with the reduced BCS case, the overlap between the ground state and the highest collective state at the Moore-Read line is not the largest. In fact it shows a minimum when most other bosonic states show a maximum of the overlap. We found remnants of the Read-Green line for finite systems, by investigating the total spectrum. A symmetry was found between the Hamiltonian with and without single-particle part. When the interaction was repulsive we found four different classes of trajectories of the RG variables.


Synbiotic application shows better results compared to the single use of probiotics or prebiotics. SKT-b bacteria have been shown to act as probiotics for aquatic animals, as well as sweet potatoes that are known to act as prebiotics. This study aims to examine the synbiotic potential of SKT-b probiotic bacteria and oligosaccharide extract from sweet potato in improving the growth performance of vaname shrimp. Shrimp were treated with synbiotic feed with different prebiotic concentrations of 1% (Pro + Pre 1%), 2% (Pro + Pre 2%) and 3% (Pro + Pre 3%). The treated food was given to shrimp (weight ± 1.9 g) for 30 days. Oligosaccharides extracted from sweet potato can act as a prebiotic which increases the bacterial population in vaname shrimp's intestine. The application of synbiotics can improve the growth performance of vaname shrimp including the addition of body weight, feed efficiency, digestive enzyme activity, protein retention and body fat of shrimp. The treatment of Pro + Pre 2% and Pro + Pre 3% shows better growth performance of vaname shrimp.


I. INTRODUCTION The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) was established as a division of the World Bank in 1966 as a neutral forum for the direct adjudication of investmentrelated disputes between foreign nationals and host-country1 sovereigns.2 For centuries, the framework for resolution of international investment disputes left investors to rely on their home country governments for enforcement of the investors' claims against a foreign government.3 In part, the establishment of ICSID represented an attempt to "depoliticize" investment disputes by empowering investors to pursue directly their claims against the governments that hosted (and then took) foreign investments.4 After a slow start, ICSID has grown increasingly prominent in the last decade, in large part due to a symbiotic relationship with rapidly proliferating bilateral investment treaties (BITs).5 Today, ICSID is the leading forum for the adjudication of disputes between private international investors and the sovereigns that play host to their investments,6 and the number of claims filed annually at ICSID has increased dramatically in the last two decades.7 As ICSID continues to gain prominence as a forum for resolving investor-state disputes, an increased focus on the institution itself is warranted, including an assessment of the efficacy, neutrality, and consistency of ICSID arbitral tribunals.8 This Article takes a step in that direction by providing an empirical analysis of ICSID decisions on jurisdiction. To date, ICSID-related literature has been written primarily for a practitioner authence;9 most of the relevant academic literature addresses ICSID and its jurisprudence only tangentially.10 Within the small subset of academic literature that does focus directly on ICSID as an institution, scholars have expressed concern for the consistency of substantive decision-making by ICSID tribunals' ' and asked whether an appellate body is needed, both questions which could benefit from the development of a comprehensive empirical study of ICSID.12 Few such studies have been conducted in the realm of international arbitration,13 although notable examples exist in the field of commercial arbitration. And, after 40 years, there is still no comprehensive empirical assessment of ICSID - the premiere arbitral forum for the resolution of investor-state disputes.14 This Article serves as a first step toward the development of a comprehensive empirical literature addressing the settlement of investor-state disputes through ICSID arbitration. It does so by exploring the correlation of several legal and non-legal factors with the outcome of jurisdictional challenges at ICSID. The factors explored in this study include: (i) the legal basis for establishing the host country's consent to jurisdiction; (ii) the quality of the hostcountry government's domestic institutions; and (iii) relative wealth differences between the host country and the investor home country. The results and findings presented herein are based on our original database which includes every publicly available decision on jurisdiction by ICSID tribunals.15 Our analyses led to a number of findings, and we consider three, in particular, to be the most provocative. First, our data reveal that ICSID tribunals have rarely declined to hear the claims submitted to them on jurisdictional challenges. Arbitrators seldom turn away investors seeking resolution of their claims before ICSID, although investors may be approaching the end of the era of nearabsolute acceptance of jurisdiction. Second, investors who carefully negotiated host-country consent to ICSID jurisdiction on their own initiative - rather than rely on host-country consent manifested in an investment treaty independently negotiated by their government hurt their claims' ability to withstand objections for lack of jurisdiction. Third, our analyses showed that investors from the richest countries have experienced the greatest success in securing ICSID jurisdiction for the resolution of their claims. …


Status of this Memo This RFC specifies an IAB standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB Official Protocol Standards" for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. 1. Abstract This memo defines a portion of the Management Information Base (MIB) for use with network management protocols in TCP/IP based internets. In particular it defines objects for the management of character stream devices. The Internet-standard Network Management Framework consists of three components. They are: RFC 1155 which defines the SMI, the mechanisms used for describing and naming objects for the purpose of management. RFC 1212 defines a more concise description mechanism, which is wholly consistent with the SMI. RFC 1156 which defines MIB-I, the core set of managed objects for the Internet suite of protocols. RFC 1213, defines MIB-II, an evolution of MIB-I based on implementation experience and new operational requirements. RFC 1157 which defines the SNMP, the protocol used for network access to managed objects. The Framework permits new objects to be defined for the purpose of experimentation and evaluation. 3. Objects Managed objects are accessed via a virtual information store, termed the Management Information Base or MIB. Objects in the MIB are Character MIB Working Group [Page 1]


Abstract Surveying financial literacy among college students, we find that women generally have less knowledge about personal finance topics. Gender differences remain statistically significant after controlling for other factors such as participants' majors, class rank, work experience, and age. We do find, however, that education and experience can have a significant impact on the financial literacy of both men and women. We observe that women generally have less enthusiasm for, lower confidence in, and less willingness to learn about personal finance topics than men do. College women (men) rate English and humanity (Mathematics and science) courses more important. We argue that the study paves the way for future research and has important policy implications given the women tend to outlive men. © 2002 Academy of Financial Services. All rights reserved. JEL classification: J16 Keywords: Personal financial literacy; Gender differences 1. Introduction Prior studies have found that Americans have little knowledge about personal finance and consequently have managed their finances poorly. One of the acute problems found in these studies is that women know less about financial management than men (Harris/Scholastic Research, 1993; Volpe et al.,1996; Goldsmith & Goldsmith, 1997a, b; Chen & Volpe, 1998). In comparison to men, women share a larger burden of raising families, start to work later and earn less during their careers, live longer, have inadequate pension or survivors' benefits, and face more challenges in financial management (Alcon, 1999; Anthes & Most, 2000; Timmermann, 2000). Recent studies have also found that women are less risk seeking than men (Bajtelsmit & Bernasek, 1996; Powell and Ansic, 1997; Bajtelsmit et al.,1999). Risk averse behavior of women in their retirement planning will likely result in significantly lower pension wealth than men. This issue of women and their money management has been widely discussed in the media (Martinez, 1994; Genasci, 1995; Lewin, 1995; Pasher 1996). Recently, Hira and Mugenda (2000) reported that women are more likely to be dissatisfied with their finances than men. A woman's concerns about her personal finances are more likely to affect her work performance. While previous studies suggest that in general women know less about personal finance than men, they have provided limited evidence of the areas of personal finance where women's knowledge is inadequate (Volpe et al., 1996; Chen & Volpe, 1998). Danes and Hira (1987) found that males know more about insurance and personal loans, but know less about overall financial management than females. Their findings suggest that men may know more in certain areas of personal finance than women and less in other areas. Furthermore, there is little research on how general education, income, and other factors will affect people's financial literacy (Alcon, 1999). Finally, even if there are real gender differences in financial literacy, we need to analyze why women are less financially literate than men. These important issues have not been thoroughly investigated and warrant further research. One of the weaknesses of the prior studies is that most of them use a convenience sample from a single university (Danes & Hira, 1987; Volpe et al., 1996; Goldsmith & Goldsmith, 1997a, b). Using a large sample from multiple colleges and universities in various states in the U.S., this study seeks to answer the following questions: Are there differences in financial literacy between men and women? In what areas are the differences, if they exist, most evident? What are the factors that affect men and women's financial literacy? Why are there gender differences in knowledge of personal finance? Since one's knowledge is closely tied with the individual's education, we focus our analysis on people's interest in personal finance issues, sources of personal finance education, and their college education. …


Second-order optimization methods such as natural gradient descent have the potential to speed up training of neural networks by correcting for the curvature of the loss function. Unfortunately, the exact natural gradient is impractical to compute for large models, and most approximations either require an expensive iterative procedure or make crude approximations to the curvature. We present Kronecker Factors for Convolution (KFC), a tractable approximation to the Fisher matrix for convolutional networks based on a structured probabilistic model for the distribution over backpropagated derivatives. Similarly to the recently proposed Kronecker-Factored Approximate Curvature (K-FAC), each block of the approximate Fisher matrix decomposes as the Kronecker product of small matrices, allowing for efficient inversion. KFC captures important curvature information while still yielding comparably efficient updates to stochastic gradient descent (SGD). We show that the updates are invariant to commonly used reparameterizations, such as centering of the activations. In our experiments, approximate natural gradient descent with KFC was able to train convolutional networks several times faster than carefully tuned SGD. Furthermore, it was able to train the networks in 10-20 times fewer iterations than SGD, suggesting its potential applicability in a distributed setting.


Optical fibers for transmission have become a commodity in current optical communication. Special functions have been adopted and built in optical fiber structures for sensing and imaging applications as well as optical communications in recent years. In this talk, a hollow optical fiber, composed of single central air hole, one ring core, and silica cladding, will be reviewed in terms of its versatile applications in communication, sensing, and laser beam-shaping.


INTRODUCTION
Tension pneumothorax (TPX) is the third most common cause of preventable death in trauma. Needle decompression at the fifth intercostal space at anterior axillary line (5th ICS AAL) is recommended by Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) with an 83-mm needle catheter unit (NCU). We sought to determine the risk of cardiac injury at this site.

METHODS
Institutional data sets from two trauma centers were queried for 200 patients with CT chest. Inclusion criteria include body mass index of =30 and age 18-40 years. Measurements were taken at 2nd ICS mid clavicular line (MCL), 5th ICS AAL and distance from the skin to pericardium at 5th ICS AAL. Groups were compared using Mann-Whitney U and chi-squared tests.

RESULTS
The median age was 27 years with median BMI of 23.8 kg/m2. The cohort was 69.5% male. Mean chest wall thickness at 2nd ICS MCL was 38-mm (interquartile range (IQR) 32-45). At 5th ICS AAL, the median chest wall thickness was 30-mm (IQR 21-40) and the distance from skin to pericardium was 66-mm (IQR 54-79).

CONCLUSION
The distance from skin to pericardium for 75% of patients falls within the length of the recommended needle catheter unit (83-mm). The current TCCC recommendation to "hub" the 83mm needle catheter unit has potential risk of cardiac injury.


Through a symptomatic reading of Freud's corpus, from his letters to Fliess through the case of Little Hans to Moses and Montheism, this book demonstrates how circumcision-the fetishized signifier of Jewish difference and source of knowledge about Jewish identity-is central to Freud's construction of psychoanalysis.Jay Geller depicts Freud as an ordinary Viennese Jew making extraordinary attempts to mitigate the trauma of everyday antisemitism. He situates Freud at the nexus of antisemitic, misogynistic, colonialist, and homophobic discourses, both scientific and popular. These held in place the double bind of post-Emancipation and pre-Shoah Viennese Jewish life: the demand for complete assimilation into the dominant culture, accompanied by the assumption that Jews were constitutionally incapable of eliminating their difference. Incarnate in the figure of the circumcised (male) Jew, this difference haunted the Central European cultural imaginationand helped create, maintain, and confirm Central European identities and hierarchies.Exploring overlapping layers of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race in identity construction, theories of trauma, fetishism, and writing, Geller looks at Freud's representations of the Jewish body-especially circumcised penises and their displacements onto noses. He shows how Freud reinscribed the virile masculine norm and the at once hypervirile and effeminate Jewish other into the discourse of psychoanalysis.


Unemployment insurance is almost universally recognized as one of a government's best tools for fighting recessions, as well as an important source of relief for working-class families suffering temporary hardship. Unfortunately, as commentators and Congress have recognized, the U.S. system of financing its unemployment insurance program is seriously dysfunctional. Reform proposals, however, do not fully diagnose the causes of current failures. In particular, other commentators neglect the role of fiscal myopia in state officials' failures to save for future UI needs. For instance, reformers mostly propose offering rewards or penalties that will take effect only far in the future. These incentives have only small effects on myopic officials.
Building on work in behavioral economics by myself and others, I propose a set of new reforms that address the roles that both myopia and federalism have played in crippling the UI regime. For example, I suggest that state governments can be induced to "Save More Tomorrow," and that states should be obliged to opt out of federal default rules for when workers will be eligible for benefits. In addition, I show that any reform — such as all of those now on offer — based on the amount states currently have saved for future contingencies will likely only cause future cuts to UI, and propose alternative metrics to avoid this perverse result.


ABSTRACT Earthworms are an important component of southern African invertebrate diversity, due both to their influential roles in soil ecosystems, and the relatively large number of species. As of 2010, there were 282 indigenous earthworm species (most endemic) known to South Africa belonging to three families: Microchaetidae, Tritogeniidae and Acanthodrilidae. In addition, 44 introduced species from six families had been recorded. However, earthworms are rarely included in environmental monitoring or conservation programmes—partly because sampling and species identification are difficult and many sampling methods are destructive and/or toxic. In this paper we review the earthworm sampling techniques most commonly used by screening data from a digitised literature collection on South African earthworms and on-line global searches. By examining a case study sampling of three vegetation types, this paper highlights taxonomic challenges and the effort required to properly curate specimens. The study provides recommendations for future sampling and highlights some key priorities for future work on the group. From the literature review in early 2012, it is clear that collection techniques are often insufficiently recorded in published work. A total of 10 938 publications from the period 1950 to 2012 were found from the literature search and digitised collection and from these only 32 papers recorded the sampling methodology (mainly hand sorting) for South African research, pointing to the need to adopt standard sampling and reporting protocols. We also tested two of the most popular methodologies in the field. Sampling was conducted in January and February 2012 at four sites, with 24 plots at each site (12 digging and 12 using mustard extraction). A total of 2 094 earthworms collected could be assigned a species name, with introduced species predominating at both disturbed and natural sites. It took a team of three to five people digging and hand collecting all earthworm specimens encountered in a plot of 50 cm × 50 cm × 20 cm deep around 45 to 60 minutes. However, much more time was spent curating and identifying samples. While we recommend following the ISO (ISO11268-3, ISO23611-1) protocol for collecting introduced taxa, to get a complete inventory of South African earthworms a range of sampling techniques will be required; in particular, a large 1 m × 1 m × 20 cm plot is required for many large bodied native taxa, and the collection of giant earthworms will require different approaches. The identification of specimens requires skills that are scarce in the country and so there is an urgent need for training and funding for fundamental work on earthworm taxonomy. An atlasing project could serve as a focal point for future research. In providing some general recommendations based on the long and fruitful history of research on earthworms in South Africa, we are optimistic that a better understanding of the group will help us to both improve our usage of natural resources and provide insights into this vitally important edaphic group.


A sandstone from the ca. 3400 Ma Strelley Pool Formation of Western Australia contains pristine micron-sized pyrite intimately associated with organic material coating framework quartz grains. A synsedimentary to early diagenetic origin for this pyrite is indicated by its occurrence in black, bedded sandstone at the base of the formation, and in reworked black clasts higher up in the formation. High-resolution multiple sulfur isotope analysis (32S, 33S, 34S) using secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS and large-radius ion microprobe) reveals δ34SVCDT (Vienna Canyon Diablo troilite) values between ∼–12‰ and +6‰, and Δ33S values between –1.65‰ and +1.43‰, from pyrite grains within a single thin section. A large spread of δ34S values over only 5–10 μm, together with the spatial association of pyrite with carbon and nitrogen, indicates biological processing of sulfur. The presence of both +Δ33S and –Δ33S signals overprinted by significant mass-dependent δ34S fractionation in this pyrite population indicates for the first time that both microbial sulfate reduction of aqueous sulfate (–Δ33S) and microbial disproportionation of elemental sulfur (+Δ33S) were co-occurring in an open-marine, sedimentary hosted ecosystem in the Paleoarchean.


This paper will deal very briefly with a few matters which by reason of their practical importance and also because of the very nature of customary union, often come up for judicial consideration in the event of the dissolution of the union. Although the dissolution of the union in South Africa outside Natal can be effected extra-judicially, the question of the restoration or forfeiture of dowry cattle is usually resolved by means of a court action.


We present graphical and analytical methods to determine the extensional or contractional separation of a faulted planar marker using commonly measured field data: fault attitude, slip direction, and bedding or other marker-plane attitude. This determination is easily accomplished for horizontal markers. Faults with normal components of slip extend the markers and indicate extensional tectonics; those with reverse components are contractional. Although the methods quantify this simple relation for horizontal markers, they are most useful in rocks with planar fabrics of steep dip where marker separation cannot be uniquely determined from map or outcrop patterns alone and where faults with normal components of dip slip can contract markers and those with reverse components can extend them. The methods rely on two parameters: (1) the angle between normals to the marker and fault planes and (2) the angle between the slip direction and intersection of the marker and fault. This second parameter measures the obliquity of slip relative to the directions of maximum extensional or contractional separation of the marker, and for a horizontal marker, it is equivalent to the rake of the slip direction. The graphical method requires stereographic projections routinely used for faulting data; the analytical method is programmable on a calculator.


This paper presents findings from ongoing empirical research into the experiences of undergraduates who make documentary films about 'familial others'. In the course of their curriculum, such creative practice takes students out of the formal setting of university and into 'home territory' where the frame of documentary filmmaking can provide for unexpected encounters. Documentary filmmaking in this context can be seen as acting to bridge university and home and to offer multiple sites of learning and positionality for student filmmakers that may go unrecognised. This unintentional outcome of filmmaking is one which is not surprising given that the camera has been claimed as a 'psychoanalytic stimulant which lets people do things they wouldn't otherwise do' (Rouch 1979: 57). Drawing on qualitative interview data, this paper illustrates how different conceptions of identity and voice arose for a student in the course of her filmmaking. In the context of Higher Education, the paper argues for a broader conception of learning, one which takes account of the multiple and hybrid spaces in which filmmaking practices occur.


This paper develops and implements an analytical framework for estimating the optimal levels and welfare effects of alcohol taxes and drunk-driver penalties, accounting for externalities and how policies interact with the broader fiscal system. We find that the fiscal component of the optimal alcohol tax exceeds the externality-correcting component under many parameter scenarios and assumptions about revenue recycling; overall, the optimal tax is anything from three to more than ten times the current tax. For more incremental reforms, however, welfare gains from stiffer drunk-driver fines and non-pecuniary penalties are larger, even though they involve implementation costs, possible first-order deadweight losses, and fiscal considerations play a minor role. In contrast to current practice, fiscal considerations warrant relatively heavier taxation of beer and relatively lighter taxation of spirits.


A labeling of a graph is a mapping that carries some set of graph elements(vertices, edges or both) into numbers (usually positive integers). An edge-magic total labeling of a graph with p vertices and q edges is a one-to-one mapping that takes the vertices and edges onto the integers 1; 2; : : : ; p + q, so that the sums of the label on the edges and the labels of their end vertices are always the same, thus they are independent any particular edge. Such a labeling is called super if the p smallest possible labels appear at the vertices. In 1970 Kotzig and Rosa [33] introduced the concept of edge-magic de ciency of a graph G, denoted by (G), which is the minimum nonnegative integer n such that G[nK1 is edge-magic total. Motivated by Kotzig and Rosa's concept of edge-magic de ciency, Figueroa-Centeno, Ichishima and Muntaner-Batle [17] de ned a similar concept for super edge-magic total labelings. The super edge-magic de ciency of a graph G, which is denoted by s(G), is the minimum nonnegative integer n such that G [ nK1 has a super edge-magic total labeling or it is equal to 1 if there exists no such n.
The thesis is devoted to study of super edge-magic de ciency of forests.We present new results on the super edge-magic de ciencies of forests including union of paths, stars, comb, banana trees and subdivisions of K1;3. In the thesis we also deal with the super edge-magic de ciencies of forests formed by a disjoint union of stars.


Lake Pedder is the home of a number of relictual organisms. One of those, a new species of freshwater sponge of the genus Radiospongilla,
is described herein. Radiospongilla pedderensis sp. nov. occurs throughout most of the lake and often is found in very large numbers in
many bays. Radiospongilla is widely distributed in tropical and sub-tropical regions of all continents. The pneumatic layer of the gemmule
contains numerous abnormal gemmoscleres a condition probably caused by the chemistry of the lake. The morphology and dimensions
of the megascleres, gemmoscleres and aberrant gemmoscleres, as well as the location, structure and size of gemmules, are provided for R.
pedderensis. The sponge is a bright green colour due to intracellular zoochlorellae. Their presence in local members of Radiospongilla has
been the subject of considerable speculation but herein they are illustrated for the first time in an Australian species.


We have, for the first time, stimulated and detected both the A- and E-symmetry Raman lines in alpha-quartz using ultrafast Impulsive Stimulated Raman Scattering. Using a heterodyne detection scheme along with a Transient Grating set-up, we match the prediction of stimulated Raman theory. Experimentally-determined lineshapes will be presented and discussed.


In applied work in macroeconomics and finance, nonoptimal infinite horizon economies are often studied in which the state space is unbounded. Important examples of such economies are single sector growth models with production externalities, valued fiat money, monopolistic competition, and/or distortionary government taxation. Although sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of Markovian equilibrium are well known for the compact state space case, no similar sufficient conditions exist for unbounded growth. This paper provides such a set of sufficient conditions, and also presents a computational algorithm that will prove asymptotically consistent when computing Markovian equilibrium.


"Higher Gossip" presents John Updike's last collection of essays, poems and short stories. 'Gossip of a higher sort' was how the incomparable John Updike described the art of the review. Here then is the last collection of his best, most dazzling gossip. Influential reviews of Toni Morrison, John le Carre and Ann Patchett and expert critique on exhibitions of El Greco, Van Gogh and Schiele are included alongside previously uncollected short stories, poems and essays on his 'pet topics'. Following earlier prose collections "More Matter" and "Due Considerations", Updike began compiling "Higher Gossip" shortly before his death in 2009. Displaying his characteristic humour and insight on subjects as varied as ageing, golf, dinosaurs, make-up and his own fiction, the delightful "Higher Gossip" bookends a legacy of over fifty celebrated titles. Praise for "Higher Gossip": "All illuminating cross-section of his whole career. It will be required reading for Updike's many fans, but it also serves as an excellent pick'n'mix introduction to his omnivorous intellectual range". ("Daily Telegraph"). "Measured, erudite, and humorous writings". ("Boston Globe"). "Updike was that rare creature: an all-around man of letters, a literary decathlete who brought to his criticism an insider's understanding of craft and technique; a first-class appreciator of talent ...an ebullient observer [with] a contagious, boyish sense of wonder". (Michiko Kakutani, "New York Times"). John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. His novels, stories, and nonfiction collections have won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009. Christopher Carduff, the editor of this volume, is a member of the staff of The Library of America.


A 3D operational hydrodynamic model, developed at the Institute of Oceanography, University of Gdansk, was used to forecast extreme hydrographic events in the Oder Estuary. The model was based on the coastal ocean circulation model known as the Princeton Ocean Model (POM); it was adapted to Baltic conditions and to a 48-h numerical meteorological forecast. Wind-driven water backup in the Oder mouth necessitated working out a simplified operational model of river discharge, based on water budget in a stream channel. The model generates 60-h forecasts of water levels, currents, water temperature and salinity in the estuary. As the model adequately approximates hydrographic variability in the estuary, it can be regarded as a reliable tool for storm surges forecasting and for the assessment of Oder water spread in the Baltic. The forecast is rapidly accessed on its designated website, thereby providing assistance in decision-making by emergency situation centres and bodies that are responsible for navigation safety, port operation and environmental and flood protection of coastal areas. It is intended to fine-tune the model so that a better fit between the observed and computed data is obtained.


A report by a watchdog group has concluded that prescribed medicines are "one of the most significant perils to human health resulting from human activity." The group based their conclusion on their analysis of the US Food and Drug Administration's database of serious adverse events.

The report was published on 31 May in QuarterWatch, a publication of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a non-profit organisation dedicated to "medication error prevention and safe medication use" based in Horsham, Pennsylvania.1 It calculated that in 2011 prescription drugs were associated with two to four million people in the US experiencing "serious, disabling, or fatal injuries," including 128 000 deaths.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 48% of the …


Background: Non-motor symptoms (NMS) of various anatomical origins are seen in early stage idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD). Objective: To analyse when and how NMS are linked together at this stage of the disease. Methods: Prospective study recruiting 64 IPD patients with ≤3 years of disease duration and 71 age-matched healthy controls (HC). NMS were clustered in 7 non-motor domains (NMD): general cognition, executive function, visuospatial function, autonomic function, olfaction, mood, and sleep. Correlation coefficients ≥|0.3| were considered as significant. Bootstrapped correlation coefficients between the scores were generated in both groups. Fourteen IPD patients and 19 HC were available for a follow-up study two years later. Results: The mean age of both groups was similar. 58% of IPD patients and 37% of HC were male (p = 0.01). At baseline IPD patients performed less well than HC on all NMD (p value between 0.0001 and 0.02). Out of 91 possible correlations between NMD, 21 were significant in IPD patients and 14 in HC at the level of ≥|0.3|. The mean correlation level was higher in IPD patients than in HC, as evidenced by the higher box plot of correlation coefficients. Visuospatial scores at baseline were predictive of the motor deterioration at the follow-up exam. Conclusion: At early IPD stage various NMS are linked together, although not connected by anatomical networks. Such a clinical NMD connectome suggests almost synchronous disease initiation at different sites as also supported by fMRI findings. Alternatively, there may be compensation-driven interconnectivity of NMD.


Improvements to a fast and accurate transmittance-calculation procedure, Optical Path TRANsmittance (OPTRAN), are described. The previous version computed a transmittance ratio for an absorbing layer. It required special attention to the interpolation methodology. The new approach reported here computes the absorption coefficient for an absorbing layer. This modified approach is not only simpler but also runs in one twentieth the time of the original OPTRAN approach with the same accuracy.


The transition from secondary to higher education (HE) requires a change of cultural mindset (cf. Darlaston-Jones et al., 2003; Leki, 2006). It is widely accepted that the academic performance and motivation of first year students to stay in HE depend, among others, on how well they integrate into the university environment (Brinkworth et al., 2009). Academic integration or acculturation takes different forms.
The premise of this article is that students have to learn to engage with academic discourse, i.e., they must acquire the community's communicative currency, defined as different kinds of language used to reflect the community's current norms, practices, values and expectations (cf., among others, Duff, 2010; Gee, 1998, 2000; Hyland, 2009). As reflective and responsible practitioners we therefore need to outline a critical agenda for academic acculturation by reviewing the debate on the nature of literacy and, particularly, by discussing similarities and differences in epistemology and approaches to literacy. Such an agenda will have to recognise insights gained from, in particular, the New Literacy Studies (Street, 1998, 2004) and the Academic Literacies movement (Lea & Street, 1998; Lillis & Scott, 2007), but it will also become enriched by a linguistic perspective (Biber, 2006; Blanton, 1994; Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Halliday, 1978, 1985, 1993, 1996, 2002; Hyland, 2009). In developing a template for the agenda we accordingly acknowledge the theoretical defensibility and the feasibility of different approaches to academic acculturation.


The physically based Modular Inversion & Processing System (MIP) is used in a processing chain for inland water constituent retrieval from MERIS level 1B full resolution data. Reformatting, data import, water/land masking, atmospheric correction and water constituent retrieval are fully automized, in order to allow the efficient analysis of large data quantities in a time series of water quality in Swiss Lakes. To account for the temporal variation of atmosphere and water properties, a set of input parameters is optimized specifically for Lake Constance. The algorithm's sensitivity to its input parameters is studied, allowing the derivation of a first guess parameterization. Results of successfully processed data are presented and reasons for processing errors are discussed.


Abstract Data on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in zoonotic and indicator bacteria from humans, animals and food are collected annually by the EU Member States (MSs), jointly analysed by the EFSA and the ECDC and reported in a yearly EU Summary Report. The annual monitoring of AMR in animals and food within the EU is targeted at selected animal species corresponding to the reporting year. The 2020 monitoring specifically focussed on poultry and their derived carcases/meat, while the monitoring performed in 2019 specifically focused on fattening pigs and calves under 1 year of age, as well as their derived carcases/meat. Monitoring and reporting of AMR in 2019–2020 included data regarding Salmonella, Campylobacter and indicator E. coli isolates, as well as data obtained from the specific monitoring of presumptive ESBL‐/AmpC‐/carbapenemase‐producing E. coli isolates. Additionally, some MSs reported voluntary data on the occurrence of methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus in animals and food, with some countries also providing data on antimicrobial susceptibility. This report provides an overview of the main findings of the 2019–2020 harmonised AMR monitoring in the main food‐producing animal populations monitored, in carcase/meat samples and in humans. Where available, monitoring data obtained from pigs, calves, broilers, laying hens and turkeys, as well as from carcase/meat samples and humans were combined and compared at the EU level, with particular emphasis on multidrug resistance, complete susceptibility and combined resistance patterns to critically important antimicrobials, as well as Salmonella and E. coli isolates possessing ESBL‐/AmpC‐/carbapenemase phenotypes. The key outcome indicators for AMR in food‐producing animals, such as complete susceptibility to the harmonised panel of antimicrobials in E. coli and the prevalence of ESBL‐/AmpC‐producing E. coli have been specifically analysed over the period 2014–2020.


Many important real-world robotic tasks have high diameter, that is, their solution requires a large number of primitive actions by the robot. For example, they may require navigating to distant locations using primitive motor control commands. In addition, modern robots are endowed with rich, high-dimensional sensory systems, providing measurements of a continuous environment. Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promise as a method for automatic learning of robot behavior, but current methods work best on low-diameter, low-dimensional tasks. Because of this problem, the success of RL on real-world tasks still depends on human analysis of the robot, environment, and task to provide a useful set of perceptual features and an appropriate decomposition of the task into subtasks.
This thesis presents Self-Organizing Distinctive-state Abstraction (SODA) as a solution to this problem. Using SODA a robot with little prior knowledge of its sensorimotor system, environment, and task can automatically reduce the effective diameter of its tasks. First it uses a self-organizing feature map to learn higher level perceptual features while exploring using primitive, local actions. Then, using the learned features as input, it learns a set of high-level actions that carry the robot between perceptually distinctive states in the environment.
Experiments in two robot navigation environments demonstrate that SODA learns useful features and high-level actions, that using these new actions dramatically speeds up learning for high-diameter navigation tasks, and that the method scales to large (building-sized) robot environments. These experiments demonstrate SODAs effectiveness as a generic learning agent for mobile robot navigation, pointing the way toward developmental robots that learn to understand themselves and their environments through experience in the world, reducing the need for human engineering for each new robotic application.


The University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM) has designed and conducted component test/development for a flywheel energy storage system for pulsed loads and mobility load leveling in a tactical vehicle. Performance goals of this machine dictate that the stator windings will see continuous voltages of 6.7 kV and spikes to 10 kV. To manage the thermal loads produced by the intermittent 5 MW output pulses, and continuous 350 kW duty, the generator is cooled by oil at a maximum temperature of 90/spl deg/C. UT-CEM designed and developed a novel insulation system and dual coolant passage arrays for the stator. Design performance was verified in laboratory prototype testing. This paper summarizes design goals, analysis, and mockup testing of the motor-generator stator.


This article examines urban teachers' critiques—their critical talk—as moments of agency, and as potential, but tenuous, avenues for transformation. The article draws on data from a qualitative interpretive study examining the complexities of urban teachers' work. This research begins from a perspective that is attentive to and critical of both (a) the racialized deficit discourse, a predominant framework in urban schools—often taken up by urban teachers—that constructs poor urban youth and youth of color as deficient, as objects in need of control and correction; and (b) neoliberal approaches to education, particularly the market-based, audit culture logics and practices that devalue, discipline, and target teachers as workers. This research examines how urban teachers navigated both deficit and neoliberal logics, and it offers a theoretical framework to understand teachers' critiques to these logics as a kind of agency. Findings suggest that despite urban teachers' being critical of the neoliberal pressures that constrained their work, the deficit discourse constructed urban students themselves as primary constraints for teachers. Deficit discourse was not all-encompassing, and some teachers resisted it, but deficit thinking seemed to intensify in conjunction with neoliberalism, and it cut short the potential of urban teachers' critique.


This dissertation describes an interdisciplinary research project that spans computer-vision, imaging of biological nanoparticles via cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-tem), and bio-informatics / proteomics. This research introduces a new method for reconstructing individual biological particles imaged via cryo-tem with typical accuracies of 88% to 98%. This individual particle reconstruction (IPR) technique is based on a hidden Markov model derived from the underlying biological structure. The processing presented in this dissertation reconstructs each individual particle from a single image, which is in contrast to current approaches that can require tens of thousands of images to create an ensemble representation of a particle class. The presented approach also has an internal intermediate result structure that provides confidence measures and can lead to updates of the model based upon further statistical analysis. As this interdisciplinary research represents a new area of reconstruction processing, this abstract serves as both an executive summary of the research and as an introduction to concepts that may be unfamiliar to practitioners of one (or more) of the disciplines. The main computer-vision focus of this dissertation presents the IPR algorithm, which is a new model-based technique for reconstructing a transparent object from a single image. Model-based 3-D object reconstruction algorithms operating on 2-D projection images require a model that provides the basis for understanding the representation of the imaged object in the scene. Existing cryo-tem reconstruction approaches rely upon averaging of classified images to reduce noise. Improvements in these iterative approaches occur by omitting those images that do not meet the latest reconstruction classification constraints. Another approach uses statistical methods in order to determine a most probable fit to averaged images of a particle class' members. But, again, this processing reconstructs an ensemble representation. The IPR processing presented here uses a higher-order hidden Markov model schema, with levels of states and durations in the states, to define relationships between the image and the candidate reconstruction object in three dimensions without the need for image averaging. IPR processing also allows for a non-iterative solution that grows only linearly in time with reconstruction resolution. Experiments on projection images of simulated transparent objects, with added noise modeled from actual cryo-tem images, allowed for reconstruction of each object from a single image. These reconstructions matched the original voxel space up to 98% when compared on a voxel-by-voxel basis. The imaging modality used for this research is cryo-tem, which is a mainstream method for molecular level analysis in nanotechnology and proteomics. Cryo-tem has achieved this status because flash-vitrification can capture the physical state and phase of unstained target particles in the projection imagery. Transparent imaging modalities (e.g. cryo-tem) can offer more reconstruction options than imaging of opaque objects since both the external shell and the internal particle structure contribute to the overall projection image. The cryo-tem reconstruction problem previously has been solved by various methods that average images. These strategies can utilize up to 50, 000 distinct images of the same type of particle. While these methods provide a detailed ensemble representation for a single particle class, the resulting depiction is not a reconstruction of an individual particle. Besides the desire for reconstruction of individual particles, the cryo-tem imaging technique itself has constraints that drive the selected processing goals of this research. The electron beam used in cryo-tem leads to time-dependent sample damage that escalates as the electron-beam energy is increased to provide higher and higher resolutions of the particles in the image. The presented approach meets the goal of requiring only a single high-resolution image of each particle in order to reconstruct each individual particle. The bio-informatics / proteomics component of this research provides insights into the requirements for models used in the IPR processing. Features of the model arise from the underlying biological structure of the object of interest. These biological structure features include items such as information about the molecular composition, which is obtained by orthogonal and routine analytical techniques. Given their importance to health issues and their basic 3-part composition, low density lipoprotein (LDL) particles were used as the basis family of transparent nanoparticles. The processing approach at the core of this research uses a current biological hypothesis of the details of the LDL macroassembly structure to derive the higher-order HMM schema. A simplified initial approach to modeling the composition of the LDL particles used the three distinct states {phospholipid head groups, lipids/cholesterol, and protein} as well as a fourth state for the buffer solution. These states were used because it is well known that these components exist in quite different electron density and/or localization regimes. After initial trials, the algorithm was further refined by including the duration that each of the multiple parallel Markov chains stayed in each state as each chain traversed through the particle model. IPR processing of model sizes versus target sizes was performed over the expected radius range for LDL particles. These trials resulted in voxel to voxel matching accuracies greater than 88% from a single 2-D image, even with typical cryo-tem image noise added to each target's simulated projection image. More importantly, these reconstructions matched the actual target geometry parameters within a pixel of the actual values. This accuracy implies that a histogram of these parameters (e.g. radius, height, etc.) could be generated to glean a better understanding of the particle structures. It is expected that the results of this research can be used to help produce statistical data for a population of real images of LDL particles. The ultimate goal for this research is that correlations of these LDL sizes and shapes to related known health markers could lead to an improved diagnostic strategy to predict the risk of coronary heart disease / arteriosclerosis. And, while not directly addressed, the innovative method described here could have other uses for analyzing orthographic projection images of transparent objects. These uses range from general proteomic studies and quality assurance for drug delivery nanoparticles to dental x-rays and other medical and manufacturing inspection imaging opportunities.


Objective To determine whether vertebroplasty is more effective than placebo for patients with pain of recent onset (≤6 weeks) or severe pain (score ≥8 on 0-10 numerical rating scale). Design Meta-analysis of combined individual patient level data. Setting Two multicentred randomised controlled trials of vertebroplasty; one based in Australia, the other in the United States. Participants 209 participants (Australian trial n=78, US trial n=131) with at least one radiographically confirmed vertebral compression fracture. 57 (27%) participants had pain of recent onset (vertebroplasty n=25, placebo n=32) and 99 (47%) had severe pain at baseline (vertebroplasty n=50, placebo n=49). Intervention Percutaneous vertebroplasty versus a placebo procedure. Main outcome measure Scores for pain (0-10 scale) and function (modified, 23 item Roland-Morris disability questionnaire) at one month. Results For participants with pain of recent onset, between group differences in mean change scores at one month for pain and disability were 0.1 (95% confidence interval −1.4 to 1.6) and 0.2 (−3.0 to 3.4), respectively. For participants with severe pain at baseline, between group differences for pain and disability scores at one month were 0.3 (−0.8 to 1.5) and 1.4 (−1.2 to 3.9), respectively. At one month those in the vertebroplasty group were more likely to be using opioids. Conclusions Individual patient data meta-analysis from two blinded trials of vertebroplasty, powered for subgroup analyses, failed to show an advantage of vertebroplasty over placebo for participants with recent onset fracture or severe pain. These results do not support the hypothesis that selected subgroups would benefit from vertebroplasty.


The fourth edition of the only text to focus on nursing concepts, theory, and practice in rural settings continues to provide comprehensive and evidence-based information to nursing educators, researchers, and policy-makers. The book presents a wealth of new information that expands upon the rural nursing theory base and greatly adds to our understanding of current rural health care issues. It retains seminal chapters that consider theory and practice, client and cultural perspectives, response to illness, and community roles in sustaining good health. Authored by contributors from the United States, Canada, and Australia, the text examines rural health issues from a national and international perspective. The 4th edition presents new chapters on: Border health issues Palliative care Research applications of rural nursing theory Resilience in rural elders Vulnerabilities Health disparities Social disparities in health Use of rural hospitals in nursing education Establishing nursing education following disaster Public health accreditation in rural and frontier counties Oral health Developing the workforce to meet the needs for rural practice, research, and theory development Key Features: Provides a single-source reference on rural nursing concepts, theory, and practice Covers critical issues regarding nursing practice in sparsely populated regions Presents a national and international focus Updates content and includes a wealth of new information Designed for nurse educators and students at the graduate level


Objectives. To review the current literature in order to formulate an evidence-based approach to the problem of preventing stress urinary incontinence (SUI) following prolapse surgery. Design. We reviewed the current English language literature available on PubMed (Medline), as well as current relevant textbooks in print. Results. It appears that a prophylactic anti-incontinence procedure is justified in patients with pre-operative SUI, as well as in those with a positive stress test at reduction. In patients with no pre-operative evidence of occult SUI, management is still controversial. Conclusions. Further research is needed, specifically with regard to standardisation of the stress test, the place of suburethral slings and the role of pelvic floor ultrasound.


This paper constitutes an attempt to show the large diversity of Arab culture and the various stages through which Arab political thought has developed since the reign of Muhammad Ali in Egypt in the early 19th century up to the present. This panorama of the various schools of political thought shows the impact of the constantly changing geopolitical environment on Arab thinkers. It also shows that essentialist attempts to analyze and grasp the 'Arab mind' through a single factor and, namely, through the structure of Muslim theology and laws (sharia) are not successful and lead to impoverishing the richness of both Arab culture and political thought.


We compare single- and double-sided excitation methods of adiabatic surface plasmon polariton (SPP) wave superfocusing for scattering-type metallic near-field scanning optical microscopy (s-NSOM). Using the results of full 3D finite difference time domain analyses, the differences in field enhancement factors are explained and reveal the mode selectivity of a conical NSOM tip for adiabatic SPP superfocusing. Exploiting the mode-symmetric nature of the tip further, we also show that it is possible to selectively confine either the electric or magnetic field at the NSOM tip apex, by simply adjusting the relative phase between the SPP waves in the double-sided excitation approach.


This thesis is concerned with the study by solid-state NMR of the polymers formed by acid anhydride/hydroxyl cross-linking systems. The polymers studied in this thesis are based on a copolymer containing either itaconic or maleic anhydride which cross-Jinks with a polyester tipped with triethanolamine. The mobility of the polyester chains in the cross-linked films is probed by solid-state NMR, and the kinetics of the cure between acid anhydride/hydroxyi systems is discussed. The degradation of the cross-Jinked films is studied by (^13)C solid-state NMR. The films are shown to undergo hydrolysis when subjected to their exposure environment. The theory behind transient nuclear Overhauser effects in the solid state is discussed, and comparisons are made between the theoretical simulations and the experimented data for the cross—linked films. Lastly, a solid-state heteronuclear NOESY experiment is presented for a (^13)C(_2)-enriched acid anhydride/hydroxyl cross-linked film.


Historical studies of black youth activism have until now focused almost exclusively on the activities of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). However, the NAACP youth councils and college chapters predate both of those organizations. They initiated grassroots organizing efforts and nonviolent direct-action tactics as early as the 1930s and, in doing so, made significant contributions to the struggle for racial equality in the United States. This deeply researched book breaks new ground in an important and compelling area of study. Thomas Bynum carefully examines the activism of the NAACP youth and effectively refutes the perception of the NAACP as working strictly through the courts. His research illuminates the many direct-action activities undertaken by the young people of the NAACP -- activities that helped precipitate the breakdown of racial discrimination and segregation in America. Beginning with the formal organization of the NAACP youth movement under Juanita Jackson, the author traces the group's activities from their early anti-lynching demonstrations through their post-World War II "withholding patronage" campaigns to their participation in the sit-in protests of the 1960s. He also explores the evolution of the youth councils and college chapters, including their sometime rocky relationship with the national office, and shows how these groups actually provided a framework for the emergence of youth activism within CORE and SNCC. The author provides a comprehensive account of the generational struggle for racial equality, capturing the successes, failures, and challenges the NAACP youth groups experienced at the national, state, and local levels. He firmly establishes the vital role they played in the history of the civil rights movement in the United States and in the burgeoning tradition of youth activism in the postwar decades.


We intend adding video messaging and conferencing to Multimodal Telemedicine Intecommunicator (MuTI), a previous system that has already been in place in the target environment. This is to allow a semi-synchronous communication to occur over the Internet Protocol. Videoconferencing can be used to communicate synchronously and video messaging in a store and forward fashion can be used to communicate asynchronously. MuTI supports store and forward of still images, voicemail and text. The system also supports real time communication by means of audio. The aim of this research is to learn how to bridge the digital divide by building applications that are useful and relevant to the users we build for. We are developing this application together with the users of the application in an iterative fashion where we build the prototypes and show the users at each cycle. The feedback that we get from the users plays an important role in building a prototype for the next cycle. The software will be instrumented to provide statistics about the system usage. We are also going to get data from the users by using questionnaires and compare this data with the statistics about software usage to see how much the system has been used and which features in the system do the users like. We are using a rural South African context in conducting this research. We hope to bring about guidelines and recommendations on how to develop applications to bridge the digital divide in a developing world context. Index Terms – multi-modal, semi-synchronous, prototypes, digital divide, rural South Africa.


Summary Cells designated by the CellSearch™ assay as circulating endothelial cells (CEC) (CD146+/CD105+/CD45− nuclear cells) are thought to derive from damaged vasculature.As CD105 has been suggested to be expressed by endothelial cells from malignant vasculature particularly, it is currently unknown whether this assay is suitable to determine CECs in non-malignant diseases.Also,more insight is needed whether CECs as detected by this assay predominantly measures CECs or also endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), which originate from the bone marrow and reflect angiogenesis rather than vascular damage. CEC counts were determined in nine patients treated with isolated limb perfusion with tumour necrosis factor (TNF) a and melphalan, and in 10 healthy donors. Given the severe vascular damage caused by venesection and cannulation of the main vessels, we expected a significant increase in CEC counts in case CEC were of vascular rather than of bone marrow origin.Additionally, this finding, as well as the presence of CD105+ CEC in the blood of healthy controls, would confirm that healthy endothelial cells express CD105. Numbers of CD146+/CD105+/CD45− nuclear CEC increased significantly after venesection and cannulation. After administration of TNF, a large fraction of non-intact, possibly apoptotic CEC appeared. This study shows that the Cell-Search™ assay detects CECs originating from damaged vasculature. Furthermore, CD105 expression is found on CEC from damaged normal vasculature rendering further exploration of the value of CEC determined by this assay worthwhile not only in malignant diseases but also in non malignant disorders characterised by vascular damage.


A combined hydride-generation/gas-phase chemiluminescence (HG-GPCL) method for the determination of arsenic(III) and antimony(III) by using a conventional luminometer is proposed. The method was optimized in terms of the type of reaction chamber, the instrumental settings, and the hydride generation and reaction conditions used. It provides a linear response to As(III) and Sb(III) above a concentration of 0.05 and 0.50 mg L−1, respectively, with a relative standard deviation of ∼3% for both species. Arsenic and antimony can thus be determined simultaneously by (1) their differential effect on the signal obtained with an optical filter placed between the reaction chamber and detector, or (2) the difference between the peak height/peak area ratio of the transient signal for their hydrides. Both procedures were applied to the determination of arsenic and antimony in various synthetic aqueous samples with good accuracy and precision. The effect of potential interferences including anionic and hydride-forming inorganic species was investigated.


Significance The goal of this study was to use the Surface Forces Apparatus to examine the effects of slip-stick friction on cartilage surface morphology under different loading and sliding conditions. Different load and speed regimes were represented using friction maps that separated regimes of smooth and stick-slip sliding. The finding of this work is that damage generally occurs within the stick-slip regimes and is not directly related to the friction coefficient. Prolonged exposure of cartilage surfaces to stick-slip sliding resulted in a significant increase of surface roughness, indicative of severe morphological changes (damage) of the cartilage surfaces. Stick-slip friction was observed in articular cartilage under certain loading and sliding conditions and systematically studied. Using the Surface Forces Apparatus, we show that stick-slip friction can induce permanent morphological changes (a change in the roughness indicative of wear/damage) in cartilage surfaces, even under mild loading and sliding conditions. The different load and speed regimes can be represented by friction maps—separating regimes of smooth and stick-slip sliding; damage generally occurs within the stick-slip regimes. Prolonged exposure of cartilage surfaces to stick-slip sliding resulted in a significant increase of surface roughness, indicative of severe morphological changes of the cartilage superficial zone. To further investigate the factors that are conducive to stick-slip and wear, we selectively digested essential components of cartilage: type II collagen, hyaluronic acid (HA), and glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). Compared with the normal cartilage, HA and GAG digestions modified the stick-slip behavior and increased surface roughness (wear) during sliding, whereas collagen digestion decreased the surface roughness. Importantly, friction forces increased up to 2, 10, and 5 times after HA, GAGs, and collagen digestion, respectively. Also, each digestion altered the friction map in different ways. Our results show that (i) wear is not directly related to the friction coefficient but (ii) more directly related to stick-slip sliding, even when present at small amplitudes, and that (iii) the different molecular components of joints work synergistically to prevent wear. Our results also suggest potential noninvasive diagnostic tools for sensing stick-slip in joints.