In this paper, the effects of autapse (a kind of synapse formed between the axon or soma of a neuron and its own dendrites) on the weak signal detection capacity of a Hodgkin-Huxley (H-H) neuron are investigated. In the study, we consider that the H-H neuron has an inhibitory autapse modeled as a chemical synapse. The subthreshold sine wave is injected to the H-H neuron as a weak signal. Obtained results indicate that inhibitory autapse prominently increases the weak signal detection capacity of a H-H neuron when the proper autaptic time delay and autaptic conductance values are choosen.


In this study, a novel asymmetric synthesis of all-carbon quaternary stereogenic centres is developed by the connection of three prochiral or achiral components—conjugated enones, organometallic compounds and vinyl esters—at the C-1 position of the enones. This method involves three sequential steps: 1,2-nucleophilic addition of an organometallic compound to the enone, lipase-catalysed dynamic kinetic resolution (DKR) of the tert-allylic alcohol and the Ireland–Claisen rearrangement of the optically active allyl ester thus generated. This method features the effective use of acyl moieties installed by DKR for achieving high atom economy. The application of this method to the protective-group-free asymmetric total synthesis of (−)-crinane, a core structure of a class of natural alkaloids, has demonstrated that it can alter a known synthetic pathway of a racemate into an asymmetric synthesis of an optically pure molecule while reducing the total transformation steps and increasing the overall yield. With these advantages, this method is practical and attractive as a new environmentally benign protocol.


Reproducibility has been a significant challenge in deep reinforcement learning and robotics research. Open-source frameworks and standardized benchmarks can serve an integral role in rigorous evaluation and reproducible research. We introduce SURREAL, an open-source scalable framework that supports stateof-the-art distributed reinforcement learning algorithms. We design a principled distributed learning formulation that accommodates both on-policy and off-policy learning. We demonstrate that SURREAL algorithms outperform existing opensource implementations in both agent performance and learning efficiency. We also introduce SURREAL Robotics Suite, an accessible set of benchmarking tasks in physical simulation for reproducible robot manipulation research. We provide extensive evaluations of SURREAL algorithms and establish strong baseline results.


Purpose The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is the largest marine oil spill in US history. Few studies have evaluated the potential health effects of this spill on the Gulf Coast community. The Women and Their Children's Health (WaTCH) study is a prospective cohort designed to investigate the midterm to long-term physical, mental and behavioural health effects of exposure to the oil spill. Participants Women were recruited by telephone from pre-existing lists of individuals and households using an address-based sampling frame between 2012 and 2014. Baseline interviews obtained information on oil spill exposure, demographics, physical and mental health, and health behaviours. Women were also asked to provide a household roster, from which a child between 10 and 17 years was randomly selected and recruited into a child substudy. Telephone respondents were invited to participate in a home visit in which blood samples, anthropometrics and neighbourhood characteristics were measured. A follow-up interview was completed between 2014 and 2016. Findings to date 2852 women completed the baseline interview, 1231 of whom participated in the home visit, and 628 children participated in the child's health substudy. The follow-up interview successfully reinterviewed 2030 women and 454 children. Future plans WaTCH continues to conduct follow-up surveys, with a third wave of interviews planned in 2017. Also, we are looking to enhance the collection of spatially related environmental data to facilitate assessment of health risks in the study population. In addition, opportunities to participate in behavioural interventions for subsets of the cohort have been initiated. There are ongoing studies that examine the relationship between genetic and immunological markers with mental health.


Customer retention as part of customer relationship management (CRM) is increasingly important in today's dynamics competitive environment, as customer retention cost is lower than acquisition cost. In CRM, it is beneficial for a firm to estimate expected customer lifetime value (CLV) at the individual level rather than taking an average profit from all customers. This helps a firm to determine its future efforts for remarketing its customers in a more accurate manner. The Markov Chains Model (MCM) as a probabilistic model is appropriate for modeling customer relationships, and estimating CLV. Based on the theory of the Markov Chains Model (MCM) for CRM, we build up a repurchasing model for modeling the customer retention situation in CRM using a system dynamics approach, which results in the probability outcomes for estimating CLV in MCM afterwards. The aim of this paper is to introduce the modeling of the repurchasing Markov Chains model, and use its simulation results to calculate CLV for better CRM solutions.


This paper describes a simplified procedure to obtain the uncertainties when converting a set of network parameters to another form. The method is based on a general matrix trans- formation technique. The technique relies on a transformation matrix that describes the relation between two network parameter definitions and two matrix equations. This paper extends the technique with two new matrix equations to also transform the uncertainties in the network parameters by relying on the same transformation matrix. The proposed method is exemplified by the conversion of S-parameter measurements with uncertainty (of a 30-dB attenuator) to G21 with uncertainty. The proposed method for uncertainty conversion is also compared with an analytic expression for S-parameter to G21 conversion.


Determining the distance to the open cluster M29 (NGC 6913) has proven difficult, with distances determined by various authors differing by a factor of two or more. To solve this problem, we have initiated a new photometric investigation of the cluster in the Vilnius seven-color photometric system, supplementing it with available data in the BV and JHKs photometric systems and spectra of the nine brightest stars of spectral classes O and B. Photometric spectral classes and luminosities of 260 stars in a 15′ × 15′ area down to V = 19 mag are used to investigate the interstellar extinction run with distance and to estimate the distance of the Great Cygnus Rift, ∼ 800 pc. The interstellar reddening law in the optical and near-infrared regions is found to be close to normal, with the ratio of extinction to color excess RBV = 2.87. The extinction AV of cluster members is between 2.5 and 3.8 mag, with a mean value of 2.97 mag, or EB − V = 1.03. The average distance of eight stars of spectral types O9–B2 is 1.54 ± 0.15 kpc. Two stars from the seven brightest stars are field stars: HDE 229238 is a background B0.5 supergiant and HD 194378 is a foreground F star. In the intrinsic color–magnitude diagram, seven fainter stars of spectral classes B3–B8 are identified as possible members of the cluster. The 15 selected members of the cluster of spectral classes O9–B8 plotted on the log L/L☉ versus log Teff diagram, together with the isochrones from the Padova database, give the age of the cluster as 5 ± 1 Myr.


The debate about the rise of civil society in Mexico suggests that the processes of political and economic liberalization are multiple and uneven and, thus, have different and contradictory effects on different social groups. This study takes such arguments into account and examines the nature of collective identities and social networks that are more likely to be mobilized in the rising civil society. Who, with what types of social networks and identities, are the active actors in this rising civil society in Mexico? This study also attempts to identify the central actors who take an active part in multi-sector coalitions. As such a broad coalition often leaves profound effects on politics and society, it is vital to ask which actors are likely to take an important step toward multi-sector coalition making. Using a catalog of 1797 protest campaigns collected from three Mexican newspapers between 1964 and 2000, event frequency analysis is employed to find active actors and social network analysis – blockmodel method and degree centrality measure – is applied to uncover central actors. The analyses reveal that while workers, peasants, or students continue to be very active, the centrality of these actors in contentious networks and coalitions has not increased. New central actors in the rising civil society turn out to be civic associations and NGOs formed around single issues, such as environment, retirement, and human rights. When a multi-sector coalition occurs in contemporary Mexico, NGOs and civic associations are likely to play a crucial role in it.


The design of specialized processing array architectures, capable of executing any given arbitrary algorithm, is proposed. An approach is adopted in which the algorithm is first represented in the form of a dataflow graph and then mapped onto the specialized processor array. The processors in this array execute the operations included in the corresponding nodes (or subsets of nodes) of the dataflow graph, while regular interconnections of these elements serve as edges of the graph. To speed up the execution, the proposed array allows the generation of computation fronts and their cancellation at a later time, depending on the arriving data operands; thus it is called a data-driven array. The structure of the basic cell and its programming are examined. Some design details are presented for two selected blocks, the instruction memory and the flag array. A scheme for mapping a dataflow graph (program) onto a hexagonally connected array is described and analyzed. Two distinct performance measures-mapping efficiency and array utilization-and some performance results are discussed.<<ETX>>


Keyphrase boundary classification (KBC) is the task of detecting keyphrases in scientific articles and labelling them with respect to predefined types. Although important in practice, this task is so far underexplored, partly due to the lack of labelled data. To overcome this, we explore several auxiliary tasks, including semantic super-sense tagging and identification of multi-word expressions, and cast the task as a multi-task learning problem with deep recurrent neural networks. Our multi-task models perform significantly better than previous state of the art approaches on two scientific KBC datasets, particularly for long keyphrases.


Science education needs valid, authentic, and efficient assessments. Many typical science assessments primarily measure recall of isolated information. This paper reports on the validation of assessments that measure knowledge integration ability among middle school and high school students. The assessments were administered to 18,729 students in five states. Rasch analyses of the assessments demonstrated satisfactory item fit, item difficulty, test reliability, and person reliability. The study showed that, when appropriately designed, knowledge integration assessments can be balanced between validity and reliability, authenticity and generalizability, and instructional sensitivity and technical quality. Results also showed that, when paired with multiple-choice items and scored with an effective scoring rubric, constructed-response items can achieve high reliabilities. Analyses showed that English language learner status and computer use significantly impacted students' science knowledge integration abilities. Students who took the assessment online, which matched the format of content delivery, performed significantly better than students who took the paper-and-pencil version. Implications and future directions of research are noted, including refining curriculum materials to meet the needs of diverse students and expanding the range of topics measured by knowledge integration assessments. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 1079–1107, 2011


The heaviest known Fermion particle—the top quark—was discovered at Fermilab in the first run of the Tevatron in 1995. However, besides its mere existence one needs to study its properties precisely in order to verify or falsify the predictions of the Standard Model. With the top quark's extremely high mass and short lifetime such measurements probe yet unexplored regions of the theory and bring us closer to solving the open fundamental questions of our universe of elementary particles such as why three families of quarks and leptons exist and why their masses differ so dramatically. To perform these measurements hundreds of millions of recorded proton-antiproton collisions must be reconstructed and filtered to extract the few top quarks produced. Simulated background and signal events with full detector response need to be generated and reconstructed to validate and understand the results. Since the start of the second run of the Tevatron the DO collaboration has brought Grid computing to its aid for the production of simulated events. Data processing on the Grid has recently been added and thereby enabled us to effectively triple the amount of data available with the highest quality reconstruction methods. We will present recent top quark results DO obtained from these improved data and explain how they benefited from the availability of computing resources on the Grid.


Although hidden, the implicit market impact costs of factor investing may substantially erode a strategy's expected excess returns. The rebalancing data of a suite of large and long-standing factor-investing indexes are used in this study to model these market impact costs. A framework to assess the costs of rebalancing activities is introduced. These costs are then attributed to characteristics that intuitively describe the strategies' demands on liquidity, such as rate of turnover and the concentration of turnover. A number of popular factor-investing implementations are identified, and the authors discuss how their index construction methods, when thoughtfully designed, can reduce market impact costs.


Introduction: Self-medication (SM) and purchase of over-the-counter medication have been in practice in medical fields. Dental students have the knowledge of pharmacological drugs and they have a higher chance than the population to indulge in SM. Aim: The aim of the study was to evaluate the practice, awareness, and attitude of undergraduate dental students toward SM and its relation with gender and to assess whether this practice differs among students of different years of study. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using simple random sampling among undergraduate dental students in a private dental college in Riyadh. A self-designed online questionnaire was used to collect data, which was validated and used for the research Results and Discussion: A total of 465 students (31% males and 69% females) responded to the survey. 60% of the students agreed to practice SM and it was significantly (P < 0.05) higher in females than males. With each successive year of study, there was significant decrease (P < 0.05) in the practice of SM and significant increase (P = 0.000) in the level of awareness toward SM. Body aches (57%) and mouth ulcers (35%) were the most common indications to practice SM regarding general and oral health, respectively. Most commonly used medicines were analgesics. Previous experience to treat the same illness was the most common reason for practicing SM, and the primary source of medicine was the medicine present at home. Conclusion: More than half of the respondents practiced SM for minor illnesses, and it was higher among females and students of preparatory years. There was less awareness among dental students relating to survey items such as importance of completing the course of medicine and adverse drug reactions. This study highlights the need to develop awareness and interventions to assess this health problem among dental undergraduates.


This review presents a summary of most current beliefs about the origins of granitic magmas, together with calculations of some important properties of granitic melts and magmas. Turning attention to magma ascent mechanisms, diapirism and dyking represent two competing end-member models. The differences in processes and products between the two are fundamental, and the implications of the differences are profound for the evolution of the continental crust. The weight of evidence favours dyke ascent for the majority of granitic magmas, and modelling shows that dyke ascent is both rapid and thermally effcient. Furthermore, the structural and petrological features expected in crust through which granitic diapirs have passed have not been discovered in nature. Granites in the upper crust commonly have forms and structures indicating that diapirism could not have been the emplacement mechanism. In contrast, granitic dykes are common, suggesting that it is reasonable to consider the ascent of granitic magmas through fracture systems. Many granitic batholiths are tabular and some have been fed by large dykes. The rate-limit in granitic plutonism is not magma ascent, but either the rate of melting and segregation (near the magma source) or the rate of deformation (at the emplacement site)


The morphology and morphometry of displaced amacrine cells (DACs) have been investigated in dog retina with the aim of finding out differences in relation to their distance from the optic papilla and to their location within the nasal and temporal retina. The study was performed by using the Boycott and Peichl's silver impregnation method in wholemount retina (12) while the morphometry of the cell body and of the dendritic field was carried out by Leitz ASM 68K image analyser. No morphological difference was found between nasal and temporal cells although a variability, sometimes significative, in their morphometry was observed. Moreover, the morphological features of the DACs remained constant even by varying their distance from the optic papilla.


This study examined differences between primary and intermediate teachers concerning teacher behaviors, teacher communications, grouping, control, and materials. 6 primary classrooms (grades 1 and 2) and 5 intermediate classrooms (grades 4 and 5) were each observed for 4 45-minute periods. In addition, observers, teachers, and 5 students from each classroom responded to 2 vignettes depicting classroom situations and 1 vignette asking respondents to describe a lesson on nutrition. Responses were coded for teacher behaviors, goals, and instructional methods. Analyses of observational data showed that in comparison with teachers in intermediate grades, primary teachers used significantly more sanctions, procedural communications, and total teacher communications. Primary teachers also used a greater proportion of small-group instruction and manipulative materials than did intermediate teachers. Analysis of subjects' responses to vignettes clarified these findings and added further detail.


The prevalence of conjugate margin terminology and studies in the scientific literature is testimony to the contribution that this concept and approach has made to the study of passive margins, and more broadly extensional tectonics. However, when applied to the complex rift, transform, and spreading system of the southern North Atlantic (i.e., the passive margins of Newfoundland, Labrador, Ireland, Iberia, and southern Greenland), it becomes obvious that at these passive continental margin settings, additional geologic phenomena complicate this convenient description. These aspects include (1) the preservation of relatively undeformed continental fragments, (2) formation of transform systems and oblique rifts, (3) triple junctions (with rift and spreading axes), (4) multiple failed rift axes, (5) postbreakup processes such as magmatism, (6) localized subduction, and (7) ambiguity in identification of oceanic isochrons. Comparison of two different published reconstructions of the region indicates the ambiguity in conducting conjugate margin studies. This demonstrates the need for a more pragmatic approach to the study of continental passive margin settings where a greater emphasis is placed on the inclusion of these possibly complicating features in palinspastic reconstructions, plate tectonics, and evolutionary models.


In his essay "Understanding Music," Roger Scruton has argued for a nonreductionist approach to aesthetics, emphasizing the contextually rich language and grammar that structure discourse about various forms of art. This accords with Wittgenstein's series of "reminders" about the importance of finding philosophical footholds in ordinary language. However refined artistic taste and aesthetic judgment may become, their fundamental source is in ordinary discourse about what surprises, pleases, and moves us. In what follows I will try to amplify these remarks and map the outlines of a conceptual investigation of the grammar of musical understanding. I will be less interested in an account of how we hear music than in an examination of the idea that we hear music.


Molecular absorption of chemical species in flames has been observed by some workers. These works have been done from a spectroscopic or analytical point of view. So far, molecular absorption of alkali halides in the flames has received extensive attention, because their absorption in the uv region causes a significant background absorption interference for atomic absorption analysis of many atoms. As for alkaline earth compounds, molecular absorption of CaOH and SrO in the visible region has been investigated in the air-acetylene flame, and also is considered to cause background absorption interference in the analysis of Ba, Li, Na, and Cr. However, no study on flame absorption spectra of alkaline earth compounds except for MgCl has been reported in the uv region.


The paper concerns a wireless sensor network (WSN) hosting multiple applications. The applications vary in terms of their resource requirements such as the number of sensors required by the applications and the location of the required sensors relative to a sink node. The requests for the various applications need to be scheduled in a manner so as to reduce the overall mean response time to the users of the applications. In this research, simulation experiments demonstrate that system performance is greatly improved by using knowledge of system and application characteristics in scheduling multiple applications in a WSN as compared to scheduling based on knowledge free First Come First Served algorithm.


A definition is given of expectancy of events projected into the future by a complex temporal sequence. The definition can be decomposed into basic expectancy components projected by each time interval implicit in the sequence. A preliminary formulation of these basic curves is proposed and the (de)composition method is stated in a formalized, mathematical way. The resulting expectancy of complex temporal pat-terns can be used to model such diverse topics as categorical rhythm perception, clock and meter inducement, rhythmicity, and the similarity of temporal sequences. Besides expectancy projected into the future, the proposed measure can be projected back into the past as well, generating reinforcement of past events by new data. The consistency of the pre-dictions of the theory with some findings in categorical rhythm per-ception is shown.


Nikolai Gogol's short fiction, collected here as "The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories", deeply influenced later Russian literature with powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty bureaucracy and base corruption. This "Penguin Classics" edition is translated with notes by Ronald Wilks, and an introduction by Robert A. Maguire. This volume includes a selection of Gogol's most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. A hilarious and biting political satire, "The Government Inspector" has been popular since its first performance and was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest Russian play ever written. The stories gathered here, meanwhile, range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers. They include "Diary of a Madman", an amusing but disturbing exploration of insanity; "Nevsky Prospect", a depiction of an artist infatuated with a prostitute; and "The Overcoat", a moving consideration of poverty. Edited and translated by Ronald Wilks, this new collection of Gogol's shorter writings skilfully captures the savage wit of the original works. Robert Maguire's introduction considers recurrent themes and explores Gogol's influence on realism. This edition also includes detailed notes, a publishing history for each story and a chronology. Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) was born in the Ukraine. His experience of St Petersburg life informed a savagely satirical play, "The Government Inspector", and a series of brilliant short stories including "Nevsky Prospekt" and "Diary of a Madman". For over a decade, Gogol laboured on his comic epic "Dead Souls" - before renouncing literature and burning parts of the manuscript shortly before he died. If you enjoyed "The Diary of a Madman", you might like Anton Chekhov's "The Steppe and Other Stories", also available in "Penguin Classics". "Everything he started to imagine transformed itself and began to wriggle with life". (A.S. Byatt, author of "Possession").


This brief investigates the robust model predictive control (MPC) for train regulation in underground railway transportation. By considering the uncertain passenger arrival flow, a constrained state-space model for the train traffic of a metro loop line is developed. The goal of this brief is to design a state feedback control law at each decision step to optimize a metro system cost function subject to safety constraints on the control input. Based on Lyapunov function theory, the problem of optimizing an upper bound on the system cost function subject to input constraints is reduced to a convex optimization problem involving linear matrix inequalities. Moreover, for the inevitable disturbances leading to the delays, the robust MPC strategy of train regulation is designed for a metro loop line such that it ensures the minimization of an upper bound on metro system cost function, and meanwhile guarantees a disturbance attenuation level with respect to the disturbances. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.


In the decade since Napster, file-sharing has undermined the protection that copyright affords recorded music, reducing recorded music sales. What matters for consumers, however, is not sellers' revenue but the surplus they derive from new music. The legal monopoly created by copyright is justified by its encouragement of the creation of new works, but there is little evidence on this relationship. The file-sharing era can be viewed as a large-scale experiment allowing us to check whether events since Napster have stemmed the flow of new works. We assemble a novel dataset on the number of high quality works released annually, since 1960, derived from retrospective critical assessments of music such best-of-the-decade lists. This allows a comparison of the quantity of new albums since Napster to 1) its pre-Napster level, 2) pre-Napster trends, and 3) a possible control, the volume of new songs since the iTunes Music Store's revitalization of the single. We find no evidence that changes since Napster have affected the quantity of new recorded music or artists coming to market. We reconcile stable quantities in the face of decreased demand with reduced costs of bringing works to market and a growing role of independent labels.


This work examines the impact that economic growth can have on biodiversity and on the ecological dynamics that would naturally emerge in the absence of human activity. The loss of biodiversity may induce policy-makers to implement defensive actions that prevent single species from extinction. These defensive actions, however, may deeply alter the natural dynamics of interaction between species, leading to an ecological equilibrium that is completely different from the one that would exist in the absence of human intervention. This suggests that there might exist a conflict between preserving biodiversity (through stabilization of the ecological system) and preserving the intrinsic features of the ecological dynamics. To investigate this issue more deeply, we analyze the impact that different objective functions and defensive technologies can have on the natural ecological dynamics, and show that human action can modify the stability of the ecological fixed points. From the simple analytical formulations adopted in the paper, it emerges that it is possible to stabilize the ecological fixed point and consequently to avoid the extinction of a species, even in the absence of defensive expenditures specifically finalized at the protection of that species. The stabilizing. effect of human intervention, however, turns out to be enhanced when specific defensive expenditures are implemented. Finally, numerical simulations suggest that human activity can have an even deeper impact on the ecological dynamics, substantially modifying not only the stability of the fixed points, but also their number.


In Britain, the NHS spends millions of pounds a year compensating patients injured during medical treatment. Compensation is paid if the patient can demonstrate that treatment was supplied negligently. However, concern over the cost, effectiveness and administrative efficiency of this approach has led jurisdictions like Sweden, New Zealand and some US states to alter the basis for compensation, and the Department of Health has now published proposals for reform in England. We assess the current approach in England and provide costings for some key alternatives to have featured in the latest policy debate. We draw lessons for reform from international experience.


Constraints add to the semantics to UML models in the form of statements which are expected to hold for the model to be considered correct, i.e., to satisfy system requirements. Constraints are considered in the UML metamodel as adornments attached to model elements, and languages like OCL allow for different statements to be expressed. Despite several CASE-like tools are currently supporting UML diagram and constraint definition, as far as we know none of them provides support for verification and maintainance of constraint consistency. Having this kind of facility helps users in the design of UML models, specially when these models are complex and the impact of model evolution is difficult to trace. This work studies how constraint consistency may be compromised when model elements are introduced or modified during system development. Focus is over use case diagrams, which suffice to highlight a number of important issues related with consistency maintenance. We introduce procedures for verifying and maintaining constraint consistency, and illustrate them using a simple constraint specification language. Our goal is to make a first step in the development of tools for automatic verification and mantainance of model semantics.


Background: Polyamines are important in cell growth and wound repair, but have also been implicated in inflammation‐induced carcinogenesis. Polyamine metabolism includes back‐conversion of spermine to spermidine by the enzyme spermine oxidase (SMO), which produces hydrogen peroxide that causes oxidative stress. In ulcerative colitis (UC), levels of spermine are decreased compared to spermidine. Therefore, we sought to determine if SMO is involved in UC. Methods: Colon biopsies and clinical information from subjects undergoing colonoscopy for evaluation of UC or colorectal cancer screening were utilized from 16 normal controls and 53 UC cases. Histopathologic disease severity was graded and the Mayo Disease Activity Index (DAI) and endoscopy subscore assessed. SMO mRNA expression was measured in frozen biopsies by TaqMan‐based real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Formalin‐fixed tissues were used for SMO immunohistochemistry. Results: There was a 3.1‐fold upregulation of SMO mRNA levels in UC patients compared to controls (P = 0.044), and a 3.7‐fold increase in involved left colon versus paired uninvolved right colon (P < 0.001). With worsening histologic injury in UC there was a progressive increase in SMO staining of mononuclear inflammatory cells. There was a similar increase in SMO staining with worsening endoscopic disease severity and strong correlation with the DAI (r = 0.653, P < 0.001). Inflammatory cell SMO staining was increased in involved left colon versus uninvolved right colon. Conclusions: SMO expression is upregulated in UC tissues, deriving from increased levels in mononuclear inflammatory cells. Dysregulated polyamine homeostasis may contribute to chronic UC by altering immune responses and increasing oxidative stress. (Inflamm Bowel Dis 2010)


The performance of adversarial dialogue generation models relies on the quality of the reward signal produced by the discriminator. The reward signal from a poor discriminator can be very sparse and unstable, which may lead the generator to fall into a local optimum or to produce nonsense replies. To alleviate the first problem, we first extend a recently proposed adversarial dialogue generation method to an adversarial imitation learning solution. Then, in the framework of adversarial inverse reinforcement learning, we propose a new reward model for dialogue generation that can provide a more accurate and precise reward signal for generator training. We evaluate the performance of the resulting model with automatic metrics and human evaluations in two annotation settings. Our experimental results demonstrate that our model can generate more high-quality responses and achieve higher overall performance than the state-of-the-art.


In this paper the role of present day Academies of Sciences and Humanities is discussed. In spite of substantial differences in structure, task and scope between Academies, two important common objectives have united Academies throughout history: the furthering of top level scientific and scholarly research and the promotion of independence and freedom of science. It is shown how these objectives are pursued by Academies through their functioning as a platform for communication, through the promotion and sponsoring of research, and through their science and science policy advisory role. Further attention is paid to the unique contribution of the European association of national academies, All European Academies (ALLEA), to the promotion of science in Europe.


Evincing the importance of preparing the engineering students for successful professional communication in formal meetings in a company in English, this paper enlarges upon the necessity of a series of communication tasks, methodological approaches and e-learning for addressing the students' learning needs and for accomplishing our teaching objectives. We argue that English language courses and seminars in a technical university should meet the students' learning needs in terms of effective communication and socializing skills for promising careers in our 21st century companies or multinationals. Teaching the students how to act and communicate in a formal meeting in a company or in a formal academic meeting, how to agree and to disagree with their interlocutors' views in a tactful, respectful manner, what communication strategies to use to convince their interlocutors of the importance of their proposals and encouraging the students to resort to e-learning represent key issues for preparing the students for promising careers in a company or in a multinational in our 21st century society. This paper will enlarge upon: 1) e-learning as a necessary condition for successful performance in formal meetings in a future career in a company; 2) the importance of communication activities, such as simulated meetings and videoconferences, for developing the students' formal speaking skills and self-confidence; 3) the engineering students' perspective on the role of e-learning in developing their communication competence in the English language courses for their future successful performance in formal meetings at work and 4) the necessary methodology. The most complex form of socializing and the most competitive and stimulating work environment for making decisions and solving problems in a company or in the real world, meetings for various purposes test the participants' communication and behavioural competence, their open-mindedness and flexibility, urging them to prepare their roles for having their objectives successfully accomplished. With a view to preparing the engineering students for professional communication in a future work environment in a company in our multicultural society, the English language courses and seminars in a technical university should approach the concept of meetings from a theoretical perspective, presenting the various manners of communication across different cultures, as well as from a practical perspective, taking meetings for interactive classroom activities meant to motivate the students to develop their English language competence, their manners of communication and behaviour, their ability to be flexible and tolerant. The blended learning approach will be presented as a necessary condition for meeting the students' learning needs and for accomplishing our teaching objectives.


Should chronically disruptive students be allowed to remain in public schools? Should nonagenarians receive costly medical care at taxpayer expense? Who should be first in line for kidney transplants --the relatively healthy or the severely ill? In Targeting in Social Programs , Peter H. Schuck and Richard J. Zeckhauser provide a rigorous framework for analyzing these and other difficult choices. Many government policies seek to help unfortunate, often low-income individuals --in other words, "bad draws" These efforts are frequently undermined by poor targeting, however. In particular, when two groups of bad draws --"bad bets" and "bad apples" --are included in social welfare programs, bad policies are likely to result. Many politicians and policymakers prefer to sweep this problem under the rug. But the costs of this silence are high. Allocating resources to bad bets and bad apples does more than waste money --it also makes it harder to achieve substantive goals, such as the creation of safe and effective schools. And perhaps most important, it erodes support for public programs on which many good bets and good apples rely. By training a spotlight on these issues, Schuck and Zeckhauser take a first step toward much-needed reforms. They dissect the challenges involved in defining bad bets and bad apples and discuss the safeguards that any classification process must provide. They also examine three areas where bad apples and bad bets loom large --public schools, public housing, and medical care --and propose policy changes that could reduce the problems these two groups pose. This provocative book does not offer easy answers, but it raises questions that no one with an interest in policy effectiveness can afford to ignore. By turns incisive and probing, Bad Draws will generate vigorous debate.


Carnivorous fungi identify prey by intercepting pheromone communication. Carnivorous fungi may sound like something out of a science fiction horror movie, but their existence is science fact. In the presence of nematodes, nematophagous fungi consume the worms, either internally as parasites or by creating traps to immobilize their prey and devouring the worms from the outside. A previously unknown substance secreted from nematodes induces some nematophagous fungi to form traps. Hsueh et al. identified ascarosides as the molecular trigger for trap formation. Ascarosides are a large family of related small molecules that are secreted from nematodes and act as pheromones that modulate development and behavior. When cultured in low-nutrient medium in the presence of nematodes, the fungus Arthrobotrys oligospora formed traps of adhesive hyphae. Trap formation did not occur in nutrient-rich conditions, consistent with previous reports of the fungi only adopting a carnivorous diet when nitrogen-starved. Of the 10 ascaroside compounds tested, about half induced trap formation when applied to nutrient-limited A. oligospora at concentrations typical of those observed in nematode populations. The effect of ascarosides on trap building was tested in seven additional species of nematophagous fungi, three of which are closely related to A. oligospora and form similar traps. The other four are distantly related to A. oligospora and form morphologically distinct traps. Purified ascarosides induced trap formation only in those species closely related to A. oligospora, with a different combination of ascarosides inducing maximal trap formation in each species, suggesting that fungal species may be tuned to detect prey species that emit a distinct pheromone profile. How the fungi detect the pheromones and translate these signals into a morphogenetic program remains unknown, but it is nonetheless interesting that microorganisms can eavesdrop on intraspecies communication to identify and trap prey. Y.-P. Hsueh, P. Mahanti, F. C. Schroeder, P. W. Sternberg, Nematode-trapping fungi eavesdrop on nematode pheromones. Curr. Biol. 23, 83–86 (2013). [PubMed]


Despite the high prevalence of traumatic experiences and attachment disruptions among clients in child congregate care treatment settings, until recently there has been little formal training on trauma for staff serving this population. Staff trauma training is one important intervention for agencies aiming to implement trauma-informed care (TIC), a term describing an international trend in mental health care whereby treatment approaches and cultures recognize the pervasive impact of trauma and aim to ameliorate, rather than exacerbate, the effects of trauma. The current study examines the impact of the curriculum-based Risking Connection (RC) trauma training on the knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors of 261 staff trainees in 12 trainee groups at five child congregate care agencies. RC is one of several models used nationally and internationally as a pathway toward TIC culture change in human service organizations including residential treatment. For a subset of agencies, measures were collected at four different time points. Results showed an increase in knowledge about the core concepts of the RC training consistently across groups, an increase in beliefs favorable to TIC over time, and an increase in self-reported staff behavior favorable to TIC in the milieu. In addition, these findings suggest that the train-the-trainer (TTT) model of dissemination central to RC is effective at increasing beliefs favorable to TIC. Differences in posttraining changes between three agencies are qualitatively investigated and discussed as examples of the importance of organization-level factors in successful implementation of agency-wide interventions like RC. Implications for implementing RC and trauma-informed agency change are discussed.


Abstract Objective: To identify if multimorbidity and burden are associated with a greater likelihood of frailty in elderly caregivers of other elderly persons within the family context. Method: 148 elderly caregivers caring for other elderly persons [M=69.7 (±7.0) years old] were recruited using a criterion of convenience in public and private health services in the city of Campinas and surrounding areas. Information was gathered about socio-demographic context, context of care, physical health, care burden using the Zarit Burden Scale, and frailty, measured by subjective evaluation. Four groups of vulnerability were created based on the presence or absence of multimorbidities and high or low burden, in order to verify which group was most strongly associated with frailty. Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, measurements of association and multivariate hierarchical logistic regression. Results: The prevalence of multimorbidity was 55.4%. The Zarit Burden Scale presented a median of 23 out of a total of 88 points. Of the sample, 35.1% were frail, 46.0% intermediate, and 18.9% robust. Elderly caregivers with multimorbidity and high burden had a greater probability of frailty (OR=3.6; CI 1.55-8.36), followed by those with multimorbidity and low burden (OR=2.8; CI 1.13-6.79). Conclusion: The sensation of burden among caregivers was reduced; those with double vulnerability were most prevalent among the four groups and had the greatest association with the occurrence of frailty; multimorbidity was associated with frailty. If combined with perceived burden, however, the odds ratios of the elderly caregivers being frail increased.


Based on the proposed experimental method, the current spreading length of GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was measured and analyzed for practical device design. In this study, Thompson's and Guo's models, which are categorized according to vertical series resistance (in particular, p-type contact resistance), were used to extract device parameters. It was shown that the measured current spreading length strongly depends on the injected current density. For LEDs fabricated with low-resistance p-type contacts, this behavior could be explained in terms of the accelerated current crowding with higher current densities occurring as a result of the reduced voltage drop across the junction, which is in good agreement with Thompson's relation. However, for LEDs fabricated with high-resistance p-contacts, unlike Guo's prediction, the measured current spreading length also showed a strong dependence on the injected current density. This was attributed to thermal heating at the p-contact, resulting in the reduction of the voltage drop across the p-contact and so junction voltage, which is also in agreement with Thompson's model. Based on the measured parameters and the design rule, efficient p-type reflectors, namely, hybrid reflectors were designed. Compared with conventional ones, LEDs fabricated with the hybrid reflectors exhibited better output power at a reasonable forward voltage, indicating that the proposed method is effective in understanding the actual current spreading and hence the practical design of high-efficiency LEDs.


The explosion in data volumes, processing power, and Artificial Intelligence, known as the "digital revolution", has driven our world to a dangerous point. One thing is increasingly clear: We are at a crossroads. We need to make decisions. We must re-invent our future.After the automation of factories and the creation of self-driving cars, the automation of society is next. But there are two kinds of automation: a centralized top-down control of the world, and a distributed control approach supporting local self-organization. Using the power of today's information systems, governments and companies like Google seem to engage in the first approach. Will they even try to build a "digital God" who knows everything and controls what we do? In fact, governments would spend billions to predict the future of our world and control its path.Given that, every year, we produce as much data as in the entire history of humankind, can we now create a better world? The abundance of data certainly makes it possible to establish an entirely new paradigm for running our societies. Could we even build a data-driven "crystal ball" to predict the future and, given that knowledge implies power, also something like a "magic wand" to optimally rule the world? Will the digital revolution empower a "wise king" or "benevolent dictator", maybe by means of Artificial Intelligence? In fact, we are much closer to this than you might think. But do we really need large-scale surveillance to understand and manage the increasingly complex systems we have created? Or are we running into a totalitarian nightmare?What alternatives to master our complex world do we have? What about the principles of the "invisible hand" and the "wisdom of the crowd", which posit that independent decisions made by many people will produce optimal societal outcomes? In the past, these principles have often failed. So, can bottom-up self-organization really work and if so, what does it take? Could technology make it work? Relying on the "Internet of Things" and complexity science, can self-organization now enable a more efficient, more innovative, more successful, more resilient, smarter and happier society?Let us explore this now, because this would open the door to a brighter version of the digital society, based on informational self-determination, human dignity, freedom of decision-making, democratic principles, participation, and collective intelligence. It's time to take the future in our hands!


The concentrations of five esters of p‐hydroxybenzoic acid (parabens) were measured using HPLC‐MS/MS at four serial locations across the human breast from axilla to sternum using human breast tissue collected from 40 mastectomies for primary breast cancer in England between 2005 and 2008. One or more paraben esters were quantifiable in 158/160 (99%) of the tissue samples and in 96/160 (60%) all five esters were measured. Variation was notable with respect to individual paraben esters, location within one breast and similar locations in different breasts. Overall median values in nanograms per gram tissue for the 160 tissue samples were highest for n‐propylparaben [16.8 (range 0–2052.7)] and methylparaben [16.6 (range 0–5102.9)]; levels were lower for n‐butylparaben [5.8 (range 0–95.4)], ethylparaben [3.4 (range 0–499.7)] and isobutylparaben 2.1 (range 0–802.9). The overall median value for total paraben was 85.5 ng g−1 tissue (range 0–5134.5). The source of the paraben cannot be identified, but paraben was measured in the 7/40 patients who reported never having used underarm cosmetics in their lifetime. No correlations were found between paraben concentrations and age of patient (37–91 years), length of breast feeding (0–23 months), tumour location or tumour oestrogen receptor content. In view of the disproportionate incidence of breast cancer in the upper outer quadrant, paraben concentrations were compared across the four regions of the breast: n‐propylparaben was found at significantly higher levels in the axilla than mid (P = 0.004 Wilcoxon matched pairs) or medial (P = 0.021 Wilcoxon matched pairs) regions (P = 0.010 Friedman ANOVA). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Developed at the tail-end of the abstract expressionist movement, colour-field painting is distinguished by pure, unmodulated areas of colour, flat, two-dimensional space, and large, often irregularly shaped canvases. The genre is often associated with American painting, but was actually embraced by an international group of artists. Four of the most exciting of those practitioners are the focus of this penetrating study. Michael Auping sees the work of each of these artists as representing a different stage in the development of abstract painting in the 1950s and 1960s. He comments, "To my mind Rothko draws back the curtains, if you will, on the opening up of this space. Newman emphatically 'declares' an almost totemic space, while Fontana literally slices through the picture's plane with a razor, and Klein, as he pronounced it, leaps into the void." Illustrated with colour images of the artists' seminal works, "Declaring Space" shows how each painter made his own individual mark in a new realm of abstract art.


Can any state become democratic? Can the whole world become democratic? This lecture argues that the answers to both questions are yes, and that neither culture nor history nor poverty are insurmountable obstacles. Indeed, for much of the world that remains trapped in poverty, a growing body of evidence and policy analysis suggests that democratic, accountable, transparent governance is a fundamental condition for sustainable development. There are no preconditions for democracy, other than a willingness on the part of a nation's elite to attempt to govern by democratic means. But that, in itself, will require strong pressure from below, in civil society, and from outside, in the international community, to generate the political will for democratic reform. And sustaining democracy in the context of unfavorable cultural, social, and economic conditions requires institutions to foster effective, accountable governance as well as robust international engagement and support. Democracy can emerge anywhere, but it can only take root if it brings about, however gradually, a more prosperous, just, and decent society.


PURPOSE: As oxaliplatin results in cumulative neurotoxicity, reducing treatment duration without loss of efficacy would benefit patients and healthcare providers. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Four of the six studies in the International Duration Evaluation of Adjuvant Chemotherapy (IDEA) collaboration included patients with high-risk stage II colon and rectal cancers. Patients were treated (clinician and/or patient choice) with either fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin (FOLFOX) or capecitabine and oxaliplatin (CAPOX) and randomly assigned to receive 3- or 6-month treatment. The primary end point is disease-free survival (DFS), and noninferiority of 3-month treatment was defined as a hazard ratio (HR) of < 1.2- v 6-month arm. To detect this with 80% power at a one-sided type one error rate of 0.10, a total of 542 DFS events were required. RESULTS: 3,273 eligible patients were randomly assigned to either 3- or 6-month treatment with 62% receiving CAPOX and 38% FOLFOX. There were 553 DFS events. Five-year DFS was 80.7% and 83.9% for 3-month and 6-month treatment, respectively (HR, 1.17; 80% CI, 1.05 to 1.31; P [for noninferiority] .39). This crossed the noninferiority limit of 1.2. As in the IDEA stage III analysis, the duration effect appeared dependent on the chemotherapy regimen although a test of interaction was negative. HR for CAPOX was 1.02 (80% CI, 0.88 to 1.17), and HR for FOLFOX was 1.41 (80% CI, 1.18 to 1.68). CONCLUSION: Although noninferiority has not been demonstrated in the overall population, the convenience, reduced toxicity, and cost of 3-month adjuvant CAPOX suggest it as a potential option for high-risk stage II colon cancer if oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy is suitable. The relative contribution of the factors used to define high-risk stage II disease needs better understanding.


Acquired aplastic anemia (AA) is the typical bone marrow failure syndrome characterized by an empty bone marrow; an immune-mediated pathophysiology has been demonstrated by experimental works as well as by clinical observations. Immunusuppressive therapy (IST) is a key treatment strategy for aplastic anemia; since 20 years the standard IST for AA patients has been anti-thymocyte globuline (ATG) plus cyclosporine A (CyA), which results in response rates ranging between 50% and 70%, and even higher overall survival. However, primary and secondary failures after IST remain frequent, and to date all attempts aiming to overcome this problem have been unfruitful. Here we review the state of the art of IST for AA in 2010, focusing on possible strategies to improve current treatments. We also discuss very recent data which question the equality of different ATG preparations, leading to a possible reconsideration of the current standards of care for AA patients.


Abstract:The years following the Civil War saw the rise of a nationwide network of independent local weekly labor papers that exchanged news, economic analysis, political ideas, and labor market information. Although its roots may be traced back to the 1820s, the rapid growth of this press in the 1880s was propelled by the working-class upheaval of that decade. It was composed of scores of weekly labor-oriented newspapers and formed a social network within America's new wage-earning class. Among its most influential journalists were John Swinton and Joseph Buchanan, who helped shape the combative labor journalism of the Gilded Age.


A practical, easy-to-understand guide to Balanced Scorecard for busy business leadersThe Balanced Scorecard method is an analysis technique designed to translate an organization's mission and vision statement and overall business strategies into specific, quantifiable goals, and to monitor the organization's performance in achieving these goals. Much less technology driven then other analysis approaches, it analyzes an organization's overall performance in four regards: financial analysis, customer service, productivity and internal analysis, and employee growth and satisfaction. Balanced Scorecard Strategy For Dummies breaks down the basics of Balanced Scorecard in simple language with practical, Dummies-style guidance on getting it done. This book covers all the basics of Balanced Scorecard for busy executives and managers-and does it without the high price tag of most professional level Balanced Scorecard guides.


The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) grants states unprecedented discretion in implementing many of the federal law's requirements concerning the needs of the nation's educationally disadvantaged students. This theoretical paper addresses a void in the policy implementation literature on why ESEA reform efforts have not been more effectively sustained. It synthesizes previous research on ESEA by proposing the use of multiple political science frames to guide new empirical research on ESSA's impacts. These alternative models—ESSA's Legal Framework, Institutional Actors, and Stakeholder Bargaining—can inform the law's national impacts on equity for disadvantaged students and the key conditions affecting differences in state responses to the equity challenge ESSA presents.


Second order Differential Power Analysis (2O-DPA) is a powerful side-channel attack that allows an attacker to bypass the widely used masking countermeasure. To thwart 2O-DPA, higher order masking may be employed but it implies a nonnegligible overhead. In this context, there is a need to know how efficient a 2O-DPA can be, in order to evaluate the resistance of an implementation that uses first order masking and, possibly, some hardware countermeasures. Different methods of mounting a practical 2O-DPA attack have been proposed in the literature. However, it is not yet clear which of these methods is the most efficient. In this paper, we give a formal description of the higher order DPA that are mounted against software implementations. We then introduce a framework in which the attack efficiencies may be compared. The attacks we focus on involve the combining of several leakage signals and the computation of correlation coefficients to discriminate the wrong key hypotheses. In the second part of this paper, we pay particular attention to 2O-DPA that involves the product combining or the absolute difference combining. We study them under the assumption that the device leaks the Hamming weight of the processed data together with an independent Gaussian noise. After showing a way to improve the product combining, we argue that in this model, the product combining is more efficient not only than absolute difference combining, but also than all the other combining techniques proposed in the literature.


This paper examines some of the channels through which some of the anticipated benefits from the 2013-2015 Philippine credit upgrades are expected to flow to poor and low income households. It identifies financial inclusion as an important ingredient in further boosting economic growth and improving its inclusiveness, notably as far as its poverty reduction impact is concerned. Nevertheless, this paper finds evidence that the credit market is still highly segmented, and non-inclusive for the vast majority of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) and low income households in the Philippines. It is also likely that Philippine public sector investments are not yet as strong as could be programmed — leading to possible underinvestment in public goods. And because some key public goods can also disproportionally benefit the poor and low income population, then this also signals a severe disconnect between the credit upgrades and the vast majority of the population that hopes to benefit from them.


A goal in cloud computing is to allocate (and thus pay for) only those cloud resources that are truly needed. To date, cloud practitioners have pursued schedule-based (e.g., time-of-day) and rule-based mechanisms to attempt to automate this matching between computing requirements and computing resources. However, most of these "auto-scaling" mechanisms only support simple resource utilization indicators and do not specifically consider both user performance requirements and budget concerns. In this paper, we present an approach whereby the basic computing elements are virtual machines (VMs) of various sizes/costs, jobs are specified as workflows, users specify performance requirements by assigning (soft) deadlines to jobs, and the goal is to ensure all jobs are finished within their deadlines at minimum financial cost. We accomplish our goal by dynamically allocating/deallocating VMs and scheduling tasks on the most cost-efficient instances. We evaluate our approach in four representative cloud workload patterns and show cost savings from 9.8% to 40.4% compared to other approaches.


This publication describes and analyses the national policies for the internationalisation of higher education in seven European countries (Austria, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the UK), as well as the European Union's higher education policies. The study, which was funded by the European Commission's Research Directorate and coordinated by Marijk van der Wende of the well-known Dutch think tank CHEPS Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies), is the first publication to take an in-depth look into this theme again, after ACA's National Policies for Internationalisation in Europe (1997). The book depicts in detail what its subtitle announces, the shift from the logic of international cooperation to that of competition. This state-of-the-art report, based on the thorough work of many renowned scholar, is a must for every library on internationalisation.


In two experiments we tested the prediction derived from Tversky and Kahneman's (1983) work on the causal conjunction fallacy that the strength of the causal connection between constituent events directly affects the magnitude of the causal conjunction fallacy. We also explored whether any effects of perceived causal strength were due to graded output from heuristic Type 1 reasoning processes or the result of analytic Type 2 reasoning processes. As predicted, Experiment 1 demonstrated that fallacy rates were higher for strongly than for weakly related conjunctions. Weakly related conjunctions in turn attracted higher rates of fallacious responding than did unrelated conjunctions. Experiment 2 showed that a concurrent memory load increased rates of fallacious responding for strongly related but not for weakly related conjunctions. We interpret these results as showing that manipulations of the strength of the perceived causal relationship between the conjuncts result in graded output from heuristic reasoning process and that additional mental resources are required to suppress strong heuristic output.


In our previous study, water-soluble extracts from Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (B. xylophilus), a pine wood nematode, were shown to enhance interleukin (IL)-4 plus lipopolysaccharide-induced polyclonal immunoglobulin (Ig) E production in vitro in mice and to increase serum levels of an antigen-nonspecific IgE in vivo. Here we examined whether the nematode extracts stimulate immunofunctions of murine peritoneal macrophages. In both resident and inflammatory macrophages, Fcγ receptor-mediated phagocytosis was markedly activated by B. xylophilus extracts, while non-specific phagocytosis was not. The enhancement of specific phagocytosis was accompanied by an increase in the formation of IgG-Fcγ receptor rosettes. B. xylophilus extracts also stimulated IL-1β production in both types of macrophages, and enhanced NO production and mRNA expression of inflammatory cytokines in inflammatory macrophages. These results indicate that the extracts of B. xylophilus contain an activating substance(s) for immunofunctions in macrophages, besides an enhancing factor for polyclonal IgE production.


The original goal of the proposed research project was to crystallize a chiral host molecule with a diene-containing quest molecule to produce stereoselective molecules in a solid state reaction. These topochemical reactions occur within a crystalline matrix and impart the stereochemistry of the starting material to the product. Tartaric acid was used as a host because it was inexpensive and had a consistent mode of molecular packing and Muconic acid derivatives were synthesized and used as guest molecules. However, solubility problems prevented any co crystal reactions from taking place. Crystal structures were obtained for the host compounds. The focus of the rest of the project was then turned to a potential guest compound, cinnamylidenemalonic acid.
Cinnamylidenemalonic acid was found to crystallize in three different polymorphic structures each of which underwent photochemical reaction when irradiated with 257.3A of light. Products of photochemical reactions were characterized by proton NMR. Polymorph 1 gave a mixture of products, while polymorphs 2 and 3 formed the same [2+2] dimerization product. Infrared spectroscopy and proton NMR were used to study the solid state photochemistry of the compound in an attempt to find a suitable rate law.


The manual offers guidance on how to set up and maintain a safe office-based anesthesia practice in line with standards of the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, and the American Medical Association. The book covers all procedures commonly performed in an office setting, including cosmetic surgery, dentistry, ophthalmology, obstetrics and gynecology, gastrointestinal endoscopy, and post-bariatric surgery.


How do economists reconcile their expertise with their failures to predict and manage the 2008 financial crisis? This book goes a long way toward an answer by using systems theory to reveal the complex interdependence of factors and forces behind the crisis. In her fully integrated view of the economy, how it works, and how the economic crisis burst, Karen Higgins combines human psychology, cultural values, and belief formation with descriptions of the ways banks and markets succeed and fail. In each chapter she introduces themes from financial crisis literature and brings a systems-theory treatment of them. Her methodology and visual presentations both develop the tools of systems theory and apply these tools to the financial crisis. Not just another volume about the crisis, this book challenges the status quo through its unique multidisciplinary approach. It presents a broad global view of international economic health and international corporate health. It describes how policies, regulations, and trends dating to the 1950s influenced the crisis. It assumes readers possess a general familiarity of economics and finance.


In this paper, the effect of control approaches on improvement of trajectory tracking accuracy of a 3-degree-of-freedom (DOF) planar parallel robot is studied through the experimental evaluation of four controllers: proportional-integral (PI)-type synchronized control, adaptive synchronized (A-S) control, conventional proportional-integral-differential (PID) control and adaptive control. The adaptive control and A-S control are dynamic model-based while the PID and PI-type synchronized control are not. Given the closed-loop kinematic chain mechanism structure, tracking control of the planar parallel robot may be treated as a synchronization control problem; hence, use of the synchronized-type control approaches can substantially improve tracking accuracy of the robot end-effector compared with use of the nonsynchronized-type control approaches. Further, with uncertain dynamic parameters, use of the A-S control, a model-based synchronized control approach, can, thus, improve the tracking performance. Through experiments conducted on an experimental 3-DOF planar parallel robot, the previous claims are demonstrated.


Online education has grown significantly in higher education despite a decline in overall enrollment (Allen & Seaman, 2015; U.S. Census, 2014). Notwithstanding the growing trend of online education, counselor education has been slower than many fields in adopting the online medium for providing professional training for counselors. However, the growing number of counselor education programs offering fully online counselor training indicates that this new approach to formal education is gaining momentum and acceptance within the field. Counselor training is a distinctive form of educational training because it requires a combination of theory knowledge, skill development, advanced cognitive complexity, and personal self-awareness and reflection (Giovannelli, 2003; Ivey, 1994; Nelson & Neufeldt, 1998). The current body of research provides evidence that online counselor training can be effective in facilitating the development of specific student skills (Ilieva & Erguner-Tekinalp, 2012; Nelson, 2014), competencies (Ilieva & Erguner-Tekinalp, 2012; Chapman et al, 2011), and attributes (Perry, 2012). Although this research is helpful in understanding specific aspects of online counselor education, these narrowly-focused examinations have failed to provide evidence of how this growing modality of counselor training is being developed and implemented. This study utilized a theoretical framework of constructivism, which posits that knowledge is constructed through understanding the experiences of those actively involved in a process (Dewey, 1916; Merriam & Bierema, 2013; Narayan, Rodriguez, Araujo, Shaqlaih, & Moss, 2013). In the context of this study, counselor educators served as the entry point for developing a deep understanding of how online counselor training is being developed and implemented, as they experience all aspects of the counselor training process (Senge et al., 2000; Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006). This study utilized a Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997) methodology to explore the experiences of Counselor Educators developing and delivering online counselor training. The CQR method was chosen because it allows individuals immersed in a phenomenon to give in-depth and rich descriptions of their experiences. CQR provides a rigorous examination of these experiences by using the consensus process of the research team to analyze the key themes from the participants' experiences and an external auditor to provide detailed feedback during the data analysis. Findings from the current study revealed two general and seven typical themes across participants' experiences. This suggested that participants' experiences developing and delivering online counselor training were highly individualized. Despite the overall low frequency counts, several categories emerged that suggest there are commonalities among experiences of developing and delivering online counselor training. Three of the most common themes that emerged in this study were institutional support, educator-student connection, and student-fit for the online environment.


Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are key design blocks in state-of-art image, capacitive, and biomedical sensing applications. In these sensing applications, algorithmic ADCs are the preferred choice due to their high resolution and low area advantages. Algorithmic ADCs are based on the same operating principle as that of pipelined ADCs. Unlike pipelined ADCs where the residue is transferred to the next stage, an N-bit algorithmic ADC utilizes the same hardware N-times for each bit of resolution. Due to the cyclic nature of algorithmic ADCs, many of the low power techniques applicable to pipelined ADCs cannot be directly applied to algorithmic ADCs. Consequently, compared to those of pipelined ADCs, the traditional implementations of algorithmic ADCs are power inefficient. This thesis presents two novel energy efficient techniques for algorithmic ADCs. The first technique modifies the capacitors' arrangement of a conventional flip-around configuration and amplifier sharing technique, resulting in a low power and low area design solution. The other technique is based on the unit multiplying-digital-to-analog-converter approach. The proposed approach exploits the power saving advantages of capacitor-shared technique and capacitorscaled technique. It is shown that, compared to conventional techniques, the proposed techniques reduce the power consumption of algorithmic ADCs by more than 85%. To verify the effectiveness of such approaches, two prototype chips, a 10-bit 5 MS/s and a 12-bit 10 MS/s ADCs, are implemented in a 130-nm CMOS process. Detailed design considerations are discussed as well as the simulation and measurement results. According to the simulation results, both designs achieve figures-of-merit of approximately 60 fJ/step, making them some of the most power efficient ADCs to date.


Traditional data centers (DCs) that are located in distant areas usually lack flexibility and also have long service latency for metro users. On the other hand, the recently introduced and implemented metro-embedded data center (ME-DC) architecture, based on micro-data centers (mDCs), delivers more flexible services with less access latency. Hierarchical software-defined network control is employed to virtualize and holistically coordinate the distributed mDCs and metro network slices into a reconfigurable virtual data center. Such an approach improves the overall resourcemobility and access to the service;however, the impact on the metro network traffic profile induced by user/mDC and inter-mDC connections due to the dispersion of mDCs has not been evaluated. In this paper, we develop a mixed integer linear programmingmodel that optimizes the total DC traffic, taking into consideration the intra-, inter-, and externalDCcommunications. Furthermore,we numerically assess the changes in the metro network traffic induced by ME-DC architecture, considering different types of DCs and their corresponding traffic profile. Simulation shows that the distribution of the mDCs has a beneficial effect, leading to a fourfold reduction in the total traffic load.


The study of an evolutionary process has traditionally considered a population with a homogeneous structure where each pair of individuals is equally likely to interact with one another. Later studies have considered heterogeneous structures implemented using evolutionary graph theory, and other studies have considered group interactions of fixed size. This work builds upon these later studies by implementing a set of evolutionary dynamics that can be used to study more complex evolutionary processes consisting of a population with a heterogeneous structure where individuals interact in groups of varying size.

This research begins by analytically studying simple evolutionary processes using a set of standard evolutionary dynamics. Results are derived that identify the structures for which an evolutionary process is identical to a Moran process, which has a homogeneous population structure, for each of the evolutionary dynamics. These results form a basis for the work that follows by providing a better understanding of evolutionary dynamics.

Before considering more complex evolutionary processes, a class of multiplayer games called social dilemmas are defined for variable group sizes. The two main types of social dilemmas are identified, namely public goods dilemmas and commons dilemmas, and examples of each type of dilemma are given whose characteristics are visually illustrated.

More complex evolutionary processes are then studied based on the framework of Broom-Rychtař that provides the mathematical tools to model group interactions in mobile individuals. First, the evolutionary dynamics that can be used within this framework are developed. The updated version of the framework is then used to demonstrate how it can applied to study various kinds of behaviour in an evolutionary setting.

The first application is the territorial raider model. It considers territorial behaviour where each individual has their own territory that overlaps with those of other individuals. Interactions take place between groups of individuals when they meet in the overlapping parts of their territories. Two kinds of social dilemmas are studied in this model: a multiplayer hawk-dove game and a multiplayer public goods game. It is shown that the temperature, which measures how often an individual is likely to be replaced, plays an important role in determining the success of a given strategy.

A generalized version of the territorial raider model is also considered where subpopulations rather than individuals share the same territory. A multiplayer public goods game is used to study the evolution of cooperation, which is a suboptimal strategy at the individual level but an optimal strategy at the group level. The structure and dynamics are shown to be critical in the evolution of cooperation where an extension of the temperature, called the subpopulation temperature, dictates the relative success of cooperators.

Finally, a model where individual move base upon their previous interactions is considered called the Markov movement model. A multiplayer public goods game is used to study the evolution of cooperation. It is shown that cooperators can benefit by staying with one another provided that there is a movement cost that slows down their competitors, the defectors. In this case, the dynamics play a less critical role in the evolution of cooperation.


Strategies for image visualisation and browsing The exploration of large information spaces has remained a challenging task even though the proliferation of database management systems and the state-of-the art retrieval algorithms is becoming pervasive. Significant research attention in the multimedia domain is focused on finding automatic algorithms for organising digital image collections into meaningful structures and providing high-semantic image indices. On the other hand, utilisation of graphical and interactive methods from information visualisation domain, provide promising direction for creating effcient user-oriented systems for image management. Methods such as exploratory browsing and query, as well as intuitive visual overviews of image collection, can assist the users in finding patterns and developing the understanding of structures and content in complex image data-sets. The focus of the thesis is combining the features of automatic data processing algorithms with information visualisation. The first part of this thesis focuses on the layout method for displaying the collection of images indexed by low-level visual descriptors. The proposed solution generates graphical overview of the data-set as a combination of similarity based visualisation and random layout approach. Second part of the thesis deals with problem of visualisation and exploration for hierarchical organisation of images. Due to the absence of the semantic information, images are considered the only source of high-level information. The content preview and display of hierarchical structure are combined in order to support image retrieval. In addition to this, novel exploration and navigation methods are proposed to enable the user to find the way through database structure and retrieve the content. On the other hand, semantic information is available in cases where automatic or semi-automatic image classifiers are employed. The automatic annotation of image items provides what is referred to as higher-level information. This type of information is a cornerstone of multi-concept visualisation framework which is developed as a third part of this thesis. This solution enables dynamic generation of user-queries by combining semantic concepts, supported by content overview and information filtering. Comparative analysis and user tests, performed for the evaluation of the proposed solutions, focus on the ways information visualisation affects the image content exploration and retrieval; how efficient and comfortable are the users when using different interaction methods and the ways users seek for information through different types of database organisation.


We consider small-cell networks with multiple-antenna transceivers and base stations (BSs) cooperating to jointly design linear precoders to maximize the network energy efficiency, subject to a sum power and per-antenna power constraints at individual BSs, as well as user-specific quality of service (QoS) requirements. Assuming zero-forcing precoding, we formulate the problem of interest as a concave-convex fractional program to which we proposed a centralized optimal solution based on the prevailing Dinkelbach algorithm. To facilitate distributed implementations, we transform the design problem into an equivalent convex program using Charnes-Cooper's transformation. Then, based on the framework of alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM), we develop a decentralized algorithm, which is numerically shown to achieve fast convergence. Since BSs are generally power-hungry, it may be more energy-efficient if some BSs can be shut down, while still satisfying the QoS constraints. Toward this end, we investigate the problem of joint precoder design and BS selection, which is a mixed Boolean nonlinear program, and then provide an optimal solution by customizing the branch-and-bound method. For real-time applications, we propose a greedy algorithm which achieves near-optimal performance in polynomial time. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.


Aim/Purpose: This study seeks to uncover the perceived quality factors of computer-mediated communication in business planning in which communication among teammates is crucial for collaboration.

Background: Computer-mediated communication has made communicating with teammates easier and more affordable than ever. What motivates people to use a particular CMC technology during business planning is a major concern in this research.

Methodology: This study seeks to address the issues by applying the concept of Information Product Quality (IPQ). Based on 21 factors derived from an extensive literature review on Information Product Quality (IPQ), an experimental study was conducted to identify the factors that are perceived as most relevant.

Contribution: The findings in this study will help developers find a more customer-oriented approach to developing CMC technology design, specifically useful in collaborative work, such as business planning.

Findings: This study extracted the three specific quality factors to use CMC technology in business planning: informational, physical, and service.

Future Research: Future research will shed more light on the generality of these findings. Future studies should be extended to other population and contextual situations in the use of CMC.


Using Nanomaterials to Solve Environmental Problems: Advancing the Science and Engineering of Photocatalysis By Jonathon A. Brame Photocatalysis is a process by which materials can transfer light energy into chemical energy in the form of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can then oxidize chemical and biological contaminants in water. Whereas photocatalysis offers the potential to treat many recalcitrant priority pollutants in a cost-effective manner, it has yet to become a viable, widespread treatment option due to implementation barriers that include limitations in treatment efficiency and relatively high costs of some photocatalytic material. This thesis seeks to increase the applicability and understanding of nanomaterial-enhanced photocatalytic oxidation processes to help overcome these barriers. Increased photocatalytic efficiency can be accomplished through informed choice of ROS-producing materials. For example, hydroxyl radicals are shown to be much more susceptible to hindrance by natural organic matter (NOM), phosphate and wastewater treatment plant effluent than O2, which is only slightly inhibited by NOM and not by phosphate or wastewater effluent. Additionally, a novel crystallization mechanism for photocatalytic TiO2 nanotubes enabled photo-production of multiple ROS types. This "cocktail" of reactive oxygen species contributed to increased efficiency. Novel applications for nanotechnology-enhanced photocatalysis were demonstrated at the lab scale. These include (1) photocatalytic pre-treatment of weathered oil from the 2010 Gulf oil spill, which increased soluble organic carbon content (indicative of increased bioavailability) by 60% and enhanced subsequent biodegradation by 37%; and (2) a water disinfection case study in rural Swaziland, which produced a prototype fluidized bed photoreactor capable of removing 99.9% of bacteria and viruses in <60 seconds. These projects show both a variety of applications for photocatalysis, and ways to increase its efficiency and effectiveness. To achieve wide-spread implementation, however, the price of photocatalysis must be reduced. Extensive reuse of treatment materials (>60 cycles), and utilization of less-purified starting materials (>90% cost reduction) highlight possible ways to reduce the cost of nanomaterial photocatalysis. By reducing financial implementation barriers, defining niches where photocatalysis can be superiorly effective, engineering reactor systems that enable real-world testing of this technology, and increasing understanding of photocatalytic inhibition mechanisms, photocatalysis can become a tool to help solve global water challenges.


The aims of this retrospective survey were to determine the epidemiologic distribution of hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotypes and analyze the genotype-related clinical differences among Japanese patients with chronic HBV infection. The 158 surveyed patients with chronic HBV infection lived in Fukuoka and Okinawa were serially tested for serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg). Follow-up was for a period of 10.8 +/- 6.4 years (mean +/- SD). The HBV genotypes were determined in sera by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and detection of HBV DNA in serum was done by the transcription-mediated amplification-hybridization protection assay. Genotypes B and C were found in 58 (36.7%) and 100 (63.3%) of the patients, respectively. Genotype B was predominant in Okinawa (B = 86.9%, C = 13.1%), whereas genotype C was predominant in Fukuoka (B = 5.2%, C = 94.8%). The HBeAg positivity and ALT abnormality rates at the start of the observation period were significantly higher in patients with genotype C (66.0% and 84.0%) than in patients with genotype B (34.5% and 22.4%) (P < 0.05, respectively). The annual rate of spontaneous HBeAg disappearance in patients with genotype B was much higher than in patients with genotype C (8.38% versus 2.34%, respectively). Patients with genotype C who were continuously HBeAg negative from entry had a significantly higher ALT abnormality (58.8%) than those with genotype B (19.2%) (P < 0.05). Interestingly, patients with genotype C who became HBeAg negative after treatment with interferon had a high ALT abnormality (58.8%). All patients with an ALT abnormality were positive for HBV DNA in their serum. These findings indicate that patients with HBV genotype C have more severe liver deterioration because of the delay of HBeAg disappearance and continued HBV replication after HBeAg disappearance.


Bacterial canker of kiwifruit, caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidae (Psa), a disease included in the EPPO A2 List, has been registered in the north of Portugal since 2010. The relationship between the bacterium and cultural practices, namely the application of the biological control agent Bacillus subtilis in kiwifruit orchards in Portugal, is poorly understood. The most damaging phase of the disease occurs in winter and involves damage of the main vine structure and overwintering canes, and also in spring, during pollen spread, thus reducing subsequent yield and fruit quality. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of B. subtilis Serenade Max® on kiwifruit yield and quality in infected orchards of different ages. Two orchards (Actinidia deliciosa 'Hayward') with typical symptoms of Psa were selected for yield and quality assays. Thirty plants were selected from the young orchard (6 years old) and other 30 plants were selected from the old orchard (30 years old), both located in Valença, northwest Portugal. This work showed that the use of B. subtilis as a biological control agent against Psa did not affect overall kiwifruit quality, namely the longitudinal and length diameters of fruit, the total soluble solids content, firmness, pH, titratable acidity and dry matter, but contributed significantly to increased yield in the younger orchard compared with the older orchard.


Multiple lentigines syndrome (MLS) is an autosomal dominant disease which is usually diagnosed clinically by the presence of characteristic features. The molecular genetic testing is an adjuvant diagnostic tool to identify the mutation of particular genes such as PTPN11 genes, RAF1, BRAF or MAP2K1 genes. This syndrome was formerly known as LEOPARD syndrome or Noonan syndrome with multiple lentigines. 'LEOPARD syndrome' is an acronym of characteristic features (Lentigines, Electrocardiographic conduction abnormalities, Ocular hypertelorism, Pulmonary stenosis, Abnormalities of the genitalia, Retardation of growth, and Deafness). There was no previous case report about any glomerulonephropathy in association with MLS. We present a case of a patient with MLS with recurrent nephrotic syndrome who was found to have histologic evidence of 'full house' glomerulopathy.


Seeking and maintaining high editorial standards of scientific manuscripts is an important responsibility. This task can be accomplished only with the advice and input from a large number of colleagues who are invited to review submitted papers. Their critical comments and helpful suggestions have played a major role in making Vadose Zone Journal a success. Members of the VZJ Editorial Board want to express their appreciation to the following individuals who helped review manuscripts in 2020. We extend our apologies and thanks to any reviewer whose name may have been inadvertently omitted from this list.


Sierra Leone has declared a public health state of emergency in a bid to contain the spread of Ebola. Since then, quarantine measures have been imposed, including self-quarantines informed by district and chiefdom bye-laws and government-imposed quarantines. An effective quarantine strategy provides a means of mitigating the spread of Ebola and saving lives, but only when implemented correctly. In November 2014, standard operational procedures (SOPs) on the management of quarantines were released by the National Ebola Response Coordination (NERC), in order to streamline operations across the country. This briefing examines the role of quarantines in response to the Ebola crisis, and provides recommendations to ensure that peoples' rights are met and quarantines can be used as a successful tool to reduce transmission. It is one of a series of Oxfam briefings on the Ebola crisis and response. Read more about Oxfam's response to Ebola .


Abstract We combine data on trade, production, and input use to document changes in the value-added content of trade between 1970 and 2009. The ratio of value-added to gross exports fell by roughly 10 percentage points worldwide. The ratio declined 20 percentage points in manufacturing, but rose in nonmanufacturing sectors. Declines also differ across countries and trade partners: they are larger for fast-growing countries, for nearby trade partners, and among partners that adopt regional trade agreements. Using a multisector structural gravity model with input-output linkages, we show that changes in trade frictions play a dominant role in explaining all these facts.


Differentiable physics is a powerful approach to learning and control problems that involve physical objects and environments. While notable progress has been made, the capabilities of differentiable physics solvers remain limited. We develop a scalable framework for differentiable physics that can support a large number of objects and their interactions. To accommodate objects with arbitrary geometry and topology, we adopt meshes as our representation and leverage the sparsity of contacts for scalable differentiable collision handling. Collisions are resolved in localized regions to minimize the number of optimization variables even when the number of simulated objects is high. We further accelerate implicit differentiation of optimization with nonlinear constraints. Experiments demonstrate that the presented framework requires up to two orders of magnitude less memory and computation in comparison to recent particle-based methods. We further validate the approach on inverse problems and control scenarios, where it outperforms derivative-free and model-free baselines by at least an order of magnitude.


In this paper, an experimental investigation was carried out on the combustion process of a compression ignition (CI) engine running with biodiesel blends under steady state operating conditions. The effects of biodiesel on the combustion process and engine dynamics were analysed for non-intrusive combustion diagnosis based on a four-cylinder, four-stroke, direct injection and turbocharged diesel engine. The signals of vibration, acoustic and in-cylinder pressure were measured simultaneously to find their inter-connection for diagnostic feature extraction. It was found that the sound energy level increases with the increase of engine load and speed, and the sound characteristics are closely correlated with the variation of in-cylinder pressure and combustion process. The continuous wavelet transform (CWT) was employed to analyse the non-stationary nature of engine noise in a higher frequency range. Before the wavelet analysis, time synchronous average (TSA) was used to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the acoustic signal by suppressing the components which are asynchronous. Based on the root mean square (RMS) values of CWT coefficients, the effects of biodiesel fractions and operating conditions (speed and load) on combustion process and engine dynamics were investigated. The result leads to the potential of airborne acoustic measurements and analysis for engine condition monitoring and fuel quality evaluation.


Nowadays, Thailand is turning to aging society with the older population increasing than past. Mostly, older people have mental and physical health problems. Consequently, elderly health care is more important and necessary in the society. Currently, technology has continuously grown especially mobile applications that allow people to get involved with more activities. Applying elderly health care as mobile application service instead of traditional service is a new type of product and new trend in Thailand. This research analyzes the factors have impact attitude toward using and customer satisfaction with health mobile application service. The target population are people who lives in Bangkok Metropolitan, Thailand. The data were collected by applying non-probability sampling as convenience and snowball sampling methods with 406 respondents both online and paper based questionnaire survey. Multiple Linear Regression methodology was used in the research. As a result, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived playfulness, and cognition of compatibility have significant impact on attitude toward using. Moreover, customer satisfaction with health mobile application services were significantly impacted by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and attitude toward using.


ABSTRACT Examination of 14 plant families in the Alpi Marittime Alps Natural Park (Valdieri, Italy) resulted in the collection of 103 larvae of 28 geometrid taxa; these belong to three subfamilies, with Ennominae Duponchel, 1845 being the most representative (13 taxa = 46.4%). The final instar (L5) of two taxa in the tribe Gnophini Pierce, 1914, Gnophos furvata meridionalis Wehrli, 1924 and Charissa pullata ([Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775) is described, including its chaetotaxy. Biological data and observations are provided for all taxa.


The influence of free-stream turbulence on wake dispersion and boundary layer transition processes has been studied in a 1.5-stage axial compressor. An inlet grid was used to produce turbulence characteristics typical of an embedded stage in a multistage machine. The grid turbulence strongly enhanced the dispersion of inlet guide vane (IGV) wakes. This modified the interaction of IGV and rotor wakes, leading to a significant decrease in periodic unsteadiness experienced by the downstream stator. These observations have important implications for the prediction of clocking effects in multistage machines. Boundary layer transition characteristics on the outlet stator were studied with a surface hot-film array. Observations with grid turbulence were compared with those for the natural low turbulence inflow to the machine. The transition behavior under low turbulence inflow conditions with the stator blade element immersed in the dispersed IGV wakes closely resembled the behavior with elevated grid turbulence. It is concluded that with appropriate alignment, the blade element behavior in a 1.5-stage axial machine can reliably indicate the blade element behavior of an embedded row in a multistage machine.