INTRODUCTION
Females despairing of restless genital syndrome (ReGS) may request clitoridectomy for treatment of unwanted genital sensations. Aim. The aim of this study was to report persistence of ReGS despite clitoridectomy.

METHODS
Following a clitoridectomy for spontaneous orgasms, a 77-year-old woman was referred to our clinic for persistent unwanted genital sensations and feelings of imminent orgasm. An in-depth interview, routine and hormonal investigations, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain and pelvis were performed. The localizations of genital sensations were investigated by manual examination of the ramus inferior of the pubic bone (RIPB) and by sensory testing of the skin of the genital area with a cotton swab.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The main outcome measures included sensitivity of dorsal nerve of the clitoris in RIPB and MRI-pelvis.

RESULTS
Genital dysesthesias, paresthesias, intolerance (allodynia) for tight clothes, aggravation of symptoms during sitting, restless legs, and overactive bladder were diagnosed. Laboratory assessments, and EEG and MRI of the brain were in agreement with aging, but all results were within the normal range. MRI of the pelvis disclosed varices of the uterus and of the left ovarian vein, and a visible scar in the region of the clitoris. Sensory testing of the genital area showed various points of static mechanical hyperesthesia at the left dermatome of the pudendal nerve. Manual examination of the RIPB also elicited the genital sensations at the left side of the vagina at about the 3 o'clock position.

CONCLUSIONS
This patient fulfilled all clinical criteria of ReGS that is believed to be caused by neuropathy of the left pudendal nerve. Clitoridectomy abolished spontaneous orgasms for a great part but not completely, and it did not diminish the typical dysesthesias, paresthesias, and feelings of imminent orgasms that typically belong to ReGS. Clitoridectomy is no optional treatment of ReGS. There is a need for publications of ReGS in general medical journals.


Chord(s) for Objects is a 2-part installation of sound sculpture by Joshua Horsley and Alexander de Vol. The installation explores the relationship between sound, form, material and space, with resonant fields of homeostatic, tonal feedback sustained between the objects. The chords created through these relationships are subject to further influence and change by the intervention of an audience's physical presence within the sound sculpture. Effectively, through their presence, the audience can influence discrete (pitch, rhythm) and/ or analogue (dynamics, diffusion) aspects of the sound sculptures.

With both wooden and ceramic objects, the installations detail the specific character of material and form through sound, placing the sculptures in dialogue with each other and the greater spatial context.

Chord(s) for Objects presented a number of artistic and acoustic challenges. The intention was to create two, consonant, multi-voice chords within installed environments related to both wooden and ceramic materials and for the chords to be affected by audience presence. These artistic and acoustic challenges were overcome through significant practical research and development. Each of the included objects was selected for its specific tonal content. Over 40 sculptural objects' resonant frequencies were recorded and analysed, with subsequent selection based upon consonant intervals within each installation's chord. Further to this, acoustically, both artworks required a delicacy to enable the changing influence of an audience's presence; the audio engineering of the feedback loops required extensive testing to guarantee both relatively consonant tonality and consistent sound intensity.

Chord(s) for Objects is significant in that it articulates a relationship between sound, form, material and spatial context in a way that is both immersive and impressionable to audience intervention. The work contributes to the fields of sonic art and sculpture, placing the disciplines in an intimate and perceptible dialogue.


We present a model that describes the structure in the responses of different brain areas to a set of stimuli in terms of stimulus categories (clusters of stimuli) and functional units (clusters of voxels). We assume that voxels within a unit respond similarly to all stimuli from the same category, and design a nonparametric hierarchical model to capture inter-subject variability among the units. The model explicitly encodes the relationship between brain activations and fMRI time courses. A variational inference algorithm derived based on the model learns categories, units, and a set of unit-category activation probabilities from data. When applied to data from an fMRI study of object recognition, the method finds meaningful and consistent clusterings of stimuli into categories and voxels into units.


A method of measuring three-dimensional spatial wave size is proposed and statistical distributions of the size characteristics are derived in explicit integral forms for Gaussian sea surfaces. New definitions of wave characteristics such as the crest-height, the length, the size and the wave front location are provided in fully dimensional context. The joint statistical distributions of these wave characteristics are derived using the Rices formulas for expected numbers of local maximum and distance from a local maximum to a level crossing countour. Review of the Rice's method to study crossing distributions is given.


LixMn1 − yCoyO2
compounds were synthesised by a low temperature route involving ion exchange
from sodium precursors. Neutron diffraction confirmed that the structures
are layered (space group Rm). Materials
synthesised from the precursors by ion exchange using LiBr in ethanol at 80 °C
possess vacancies on the transition metal sites which pin residual Na+
ions. Such transition metal vacancies and Na+ ions are not
observed on refluxing at 160 °C in hexanol. We show that lithium
intercalation accompanies the ion exchange process. The presence of Na+
in the Li+ layered materials induces disorder perpendicular
to the layers and this has been modelled. The performance of the materials
depends on the ion exchange conditions. The y = 0.025
compound obtained in ethanol exhibits a particularly high capacity to cycle
lithium. The initial discharge capacity is 200 mA h g−1
with a fade rate of only 0.08% per charge/discharge cycle on extended
cycling. This performance is delivered despite conversion to a spinel-like
phase during cycling and is markedly superior to the cycling ability of directly
prepared spinels over a similar composition range.


Developing antimicrobial drugs keeping their potency, resistance to classes of microorganism are the major concern for the scientists in the area of medicinal chemistry. The diphenyl(piperidin-4-yl)methanol derivatives 1a-n and 2a-i were evaluated for antimicrobial activity. The results are encouraging, Compounds 1b and 1g are the most potent among the sulfonamide series whereas compound 2h is the most potent among urea series.


Several domains of contrasted extensional deformation have been identified in the southern Afar triangle (East Africa) from fault patterns analyzed with panchromatic stereoscopic SPOT (Systeme Probatoire d9Observation de la Terre) images. Stretching directions and statistical orientation and offset variations of faults fit with the Danakii "crank-arm" model of Sichler: A 10° sinistral rotation of the Danakil block explains the fault geometry and dextral block rotation in the southern part of the Afar triangle, as well as the oblique extension in the Tadjoura Gulf. Analogue modeling supports this interpretation.


Recent trends in the area of pharmaceutical products research and development appear to be directed more towards new drug delivery systems such as oro-dispersible films, as well as new physical forms of existing drugs such as co-crystals. Adapting technologies from other fields for developing such systems can be beneficial. Thermal inkjet printing (TIJP), a technique commonly encountered in office printers, has found applications in different areas due to its advantageous properties. The aim of this work was to utilise this technique to develop oral films for personalised dosing and to investigate its potential as a rapid and inexpensive method to prepare pharmaceutical co-crystals. Two unmodified Hewlett-Packard printers were used where the ink cartridges were modified to accommodate polymeric and aqueous drug solutions. Films were successfully prepared by printing multiple layers of hydroxyl-propyl-methylcellulose solutions onto transparency films, which disintegrated faster than those prepared by solvent casting (SC). Further, the amount deposited of a model drug (salbutamol sulphate, SS) varied linearly with the feed solution concentration. This led to the preparation of oral films using edible starch paper. Good agreement between the printed and theoretical dose was achieved with single print passes. Multiple print passes resulted in a significant loss, which was predictable and the dose variation was within the BP limits for SS tablets. Polymeric films were then used as substrates to prepare oral films of clonidine. Comparison with films prepared by solvent casting in terms of their physical stability, mechanical and drug release properties was also conducted. Films prepared by TIJP were more flexible and had better dose uniformity than films prepared by SC. Nonetheless, drug release from both films was similar. Finally, the technique was investigated to prepare pharmaceutical co-crystals. This was successfully achieved by printing solutions of co-crystal formers at specific stoichiometric ratios. In conclusion, this work demonstrates the suitability of TIJP as a method to prepare oral films extemporaneously for personalised dosing as well as pharmaceutical co-crystals.


The U.S. National Science Foundation supported Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS) project includes extensive development of data storage and delivery tools and standards including WaterML (a language for sharing hydrologic data sets via web services), and HIS Server (a software tool set for delivering WaterML from a server). These and other CUASHI HIS tools have been under development and deployment for several years and together present a relatively complete software "stack", to support the consistent storage and delivery of hydrologic and other environmental observation data. This paper describes the development of a new HIS software tool called "HIS Desktop" and the development of an online open source software development community to update and maintain the software. HIS Desktop was envisioned as a local (i.e. not server-based) client side software tool that ultimately will run on multiple operating systems and will provide a highly usable level of access to HIS Services. The software will provide several capabilities including data query, map-based visualization, data download, local data maintenance, editing, graphing, data export to selected model-specific data formats, linkage with integrated modeling systems such as OpenMI, and ultimately upload to the HIS server from the local desktop software. As the software is presently in the early stages of development, this paper focuses on design approach and paradigm and is presented to encourage participation in the open development community. Indeed, recognizing the value of community based code development as a means of ensuring end-user adoption, this project has adopted an "iterative" or "spiral" software development approach where 1) the general project requirements and hard boundary conditions are specified at the outset; 2) an initial brief functionality requirements list is developed; 3) the initial limited system is produced primarily by the core funded developer team, but with voluntary external programmer support as it becomes available; 4) testing and bug fixes by the developer team; 5) deployment of an installation package for end-users; 6) collection of bug notices and feature requests from end-users; 7) identification of specific bugs and features to be addressed in a new release; 8) addition of these features by the developer team, etc. This development approach is the most common approach used by open source projects because of its flexible and dynamic nature. This model is well suited to a community project where it is difficult (and often not useful) to fully-specify the functionality set required for a software release (i.e. as in the "waterfall" development approach), but rather it is desirable to maintain an open structure that can easily be extended through the development of third party plug-ins to support as-yet unknown functions and capabilities, as well as a clear policy on how code is moved into the core system, and how external developers are included in the developer team.


The overall topic of this book is internationalization. It is hard to deny that organizations are increasingly internationalizing in order to remain competitive, to access growth markets and resources and to reduce operating costs. Understanding international business has become imperative for academic researchers, business managers and policy makers but also for students as they prepare themselves to enter an increasingly complex business environment. The subject of International Business can be viewed from many angles and general interest in the subject, as educators, researchers and business professionals, has grown exponentially. A simple Google Scholar search on the keywords "international business" delivers nearly 1 million articles and, as a teacher, I can choose from 258 "international business" textbooks. It is, therefore, necessary in this introductory chapter to provide some background on the subject and to adequately describe the scope and context of the international business that we focused on in the series of studies that follows.


This paper examines Social Security benefit claiming behavior in the US using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to implement a duration model. It focuses essentially on the rushing/delaying behavior of the unemployed and investigates whether older unemployed individuals lacking liquidity use Social Security benefits as a safety net in order to finance consumption during an unemployment episode. In this way, Social Security might be thought as a form of unemployment insurance allowing people to maintain their standard of living during their job search. The purpose of this paper is hence to find empirical evidence about the potential insurance function of Social Security benefits, which would provide support for integrating Unemployment Insurance with Retirement Insurance even before eligibility for Social Security (SS) benefits. I find that being unemployed and in the left tail of the income distribution strongly predicts early claiming without retiring, meaning that although people claim their Social Security benefits, these unemployed individuals want to stay within the labor force, and could use these benefits in their costful job search process.


This paper is the final document written to gather the impressions and conclusions which we
have come to during the development of this master thesis.
In this research project you will find the description of a new kind of artificial neural network,
Heterogeneous Neural Network 2 (HNN2), which can be seen as a general abstraction of the
Radial Basis Function network. The model of neuron used is an improved version of the one
presented by Belanche [1] and the neural network is initialized using a clustering algorithm,
Leader2, developed at [2].
We will explain the way we have followed to get this artificial neural network that works allways
with understandable information, uses the concept of similarity and allows users to improve the
algorithm results taking advantage of expert information.
The basic Heterogeneous Neural Network (HNN) is also known as Similarity Neural Network
(SNN), by the importance of the similarity measures inside this method. The basic idea is that
a combination of similarity functions, comparing variables independently, is more capable of
catching better the singularity of an heterogeneous data set than other methods which require
previous data transformation. Each variable has its own characteristics, which is information that
can be used by the expert that knows it to choose its most suitable similarity function, taking
advantage of all the information he has. If this is done for each variable, we will be working
probably with a similarity measure that understands better the data. Missing values are also a
relevant characteristic of heterogeneous data, so we have to learn to deal with them. All these
ideas are applied to HNN and Leader2, joint to several improvements performed to the neural
network, like regularization or Alternate Optimization, in order to fit better the data but avoiding
overfitting. This is why we have called it Heterogeneous Neural Network 2 (HNN2).
This document is divided in several chapters. Initially, we will give an in-depth description
of the problem which we want to solve. In the second chapter, State of the art, you will get a
wide perspective of how was the field in which this project has been developed before we started.
Then, there is a description of the used methodology, where you can find the main decisions and
the development itself, followed by the explanation of the experimental settings done to test the
HNN2. Their results are commented and evaluated in the next chapter, and next some conclusions
are inferred. Finally, you will find the references used in the research and several annexes with
additional relevant information.
But in first term, before starting the description of the problem and in the way of making the
reading easier, it is necessary to provide you some vocabulary to know exactly the meaning we
have given to several key words. Next, in the same terms, you will find the most used symbols
with their description.


In keeping with its bestselling previous editions, Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, Fifth Edition by John Anderson, offers the most readable, interesting, and up-to-date overview of aerodynamics to be found in any text.

The classic organization of the text has been preserved, as is its successful pedagogical features: chapter roadmaps, preview boxes, design boxes and summary section. Although fundamentals do not usually change over time, applications do and so various detailed content is modernized, and existing figures are replaced with modern data and illustrations. Historical topics, carefully developed examples, numerous illustrations, and a wide selection of chapter problems are found throughout the text to motivate and challenge students of aerodynamics.


The origin of life is believed to have progressed through an RNA World, in which RNA acted as both genetic material and functional molecules. Understanding early evolution requires systematic knowledge of the relationship between RNA sequence and functional activity. In particular, knowing the structure of the fitness landscape of RNA is critical in estimating the probability of the emergence of functional sequences and the role of historical accident during evolution. Much theoretical work has been devoted to fitness landscapes, but experimental maps have been relatively limited. We use in vitro selection on a pool of short RNA sequences that nearly saturates sequence space to reconstruct the form of a comprehensive fitness landscape. We also study mutations during non-enzymatic polymerization to understand how early RNA replicators would 'move' in sequence space.


The appropriate timing of developmental transitions is critical for adapting many crops to their local climatic conditions. Therefore, understanding the genetic basis of different aspects of phenology could be useful in highlighting mechanisms underpinning adaptation, with implications in breeding for climate change. For bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), the transition from vegetative to reproductive growth, the start and rate of leaf senescence and the relative timing of different stages of flowering and grain filling all contribute to plant performance. In this study we screened under Smart house conditions a large, multi-founder "NIAB elite MAGIC" wheat population, to evaluate the genetic elements that influence the timing of developmental stages in European elite varieties. This panel of recombinant inbred lines was derived from eight parents that are or recently have been grown commercially in the UK and Northern Europe. We undertook a detailed temporal phenotypic analysis under Smart house conditions of the population and its parents, to try to identify known or novel Quantitative Trait Loci associated with variation in the timing of key phenological stages in senescence. This analysis resulted in the detection of QTL interactions with novel traits such the time between "half of ear emergence above flag leaf ligule" and the onset of senescence at the flag leaf as well as traits associated with plant morphology such as stem height. In addition, strong correlations between several traits and the onset of senescence of the flag leaf were identified. This work establishes the value of systematically phenotyping genetically unstructured populations to reveal the genetic architecture underlying morphological variation in commercial wheat.


Abstract Studies show that globalisation creates political potentials that can transform electoral competition in Western societies. The specific process of how these potentials become effective is not completely understood. It is argued in the article that attention-grabbing events can trigger the transformation of electoral competition as they force actors to take clear positions and thereby allow citizens to align their partisan preferences and policy attitudes. The article analyses the case of German parties' reaction to the arrival of large numbers of refugees at Europe's borders in 2015/16. Using panel data that bracket this event, it is shown how German citizens responded to party behaviour by changing partisan preferences on the basis of prior immigration attitudes. The so-called refugee crisis may thus have been a critical juncture transforming party competition in Germany. As such, the crisis represents a striking example of how events may focus attention on a new policy dimension and catalyse the evolution of new cleavages.


Disease and death caused by bacterial infections are global health problems. Effective bacterial strategies are required to promote survival and proliferation within a human host, and it is important to explore how this adaption occurs. However, the detection and quantification of bacterial virulence factors in complex biological samples are technically demanding challenges. These can be addressed by combining targeted affinity enrichment of antibodies with the sensitivity of liquid chromatography-selected reaction monitoring mass spectrometry (LC-SRM MS). However, many virulence factors have evolved properties that make specific detection by conventional antibodies difficult. We here present an antibody format that is particularly well suited for detection and analysis of immunoglobulin G (IgG)-binding virulence factors. As proof of concept, we have generated single chain fragment variable (scFv) antibodies that specifically target the IgG-binding surface proteins M1 and H of Streptococcus pyogenes. The binding ability of the developed scFv is demonstrated against both recombinant soluble protein M1 and H as well as the intact surface proteins on a wild-type S. pyogenes strain. Additionally, the capacity of the developed scFv antibodies to enrich their target proteins from both simple and complex backgrounds, thereby allowing for detection and quantification with LC-SRM MS, was demonstrated. We have established a workflow that allows for affinity enrichment of bacterial virulence factors.


The SHOPS project funded a 16-month study conducted by the Monitor Group as reported in Promise and Progress: Market-based Solutions to Poverty in Africa. The study identified mhealth (mobile applications for health) business models enabling enterprises to successfully engage with the poor in Africa primarily in Ghana Kenya Senegal South Africa and Tanzania. This primer aims to (1) highlight key practices that will assist m-enabled enterprises in reaching commercial viability in the near term and (2) assist funders interested in business model principles that enable sustainable impact. Presenting four case studies on m-enabled solutions and 10 lessons for consumer-facing and systems-oriented mhealth projects the primer shows that inclusive businesses in all sectors are still in their infancy and that much can be learned about how they work why many struggle and why only a few succeed.


Tikhonov regularization is one of the most commonly used methods for the regularization of ill-posed problems. In the setting of finite element solutions of elliptic partial differential control problems, Tikhonov regularization amounts to adding suitably weighted least squares terms of the control variable, or derivatives thereof, to the Lagrangian determining the optimality system. In this note we show that the stabilization methods for discretely ill-posed problems developed in the setting of convection-dominated convection–diffusion problems, can be highly suitable for stabilizing optimal control problems, and that Tikhonov regularization will lead to less accurate discrete solutions. We consider some inverse problems for Poisson's equation as an illustration and derive new error estimates both for the reconstruction of the solution from the measured data and reconstruction of the source term from the measured data. These estimates include both the effect of the discretization error and error in the measurements.


During the routine dissection of anatomy in an adult male cadaver at the department of anatomy, Manipal University, Manipal, higher division of popliteal artery was observed on the right side. This artery divided proximal to upper border of popliteus muscle into anterior and posterior tibial arteries. Inferomedial genicular artery which is usually a branch of popliteal artery was found to be arising from anterior tibial artery. However arterial branching pattern and point of bifurcation of popliteal artery on the left side were usual. The knowledge of these variations will be useful for angiography or various surgical approaches during knee joint surgery.


To understand how food stamps affect food spending, nonexperimental research typically requires some source of independent variation in food stamp benefits. Three promising sources are examined: (a) variation in household size, (b) variation in deductions from gross income, and (c) receipt of minimum or maximum food stamp benefits. Based on results of a linear regression model with nationally representative data, 90% of the total variation in food stamp benefits is explained by gross cash income, and household size variables alone. This finding raises concern about popular regression approaches to studying the Food Stamp Program.


The first step in the development of an expert system is the extraction and characterization of the knowledge and skills of an expert. This step is widely regarded as the major bottleneck in the system development process. To assist knowledge engineers and others who might be interested in the development of an expert system, I offer (1) a working classification of methods for extracting an expert's knowledge, (2) some ideas about the types of data that the methods yield, and (3) a set of criteria by which the methods can be compared relative to the needs of the system developer. The discussion highlights certain issues, including the contrast between the empirical approach taken by experimental psychologists and the formalism-oriented approach that is generally taken by cognitive scientists.


Tetrameric ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) mediate excitatory neurotransmission in the mammalian central nervous system and are involved in learning, memory formation, and pathological processes. Based on structural and sequence similarities of the ligand-binding and channel domains of iGluR subunits to bacterial binding proteins and potassium channels, iGluRs are thought to have originally arisen from their fusion. Here we report the functional coupling of the bacterial ectoine binding protein EhuB to the channel pore-forming transmembrane domains of the bacterial GluR0 receptor by stabilization of dimeric binding domains. Insertion of a disulfide bridge in the dimer interface abolished desensitization of the channel current analogous to mammalian iGluRs. These results demonstrate the functional compatibility of bacterial binding proteins to the gate of the channel pore of an iGluR. Moreover, our results highlight the modular structure and crucial role of binding domain dimerization in the functional evolution of iGluRs.


Boundary trade‐offs are common among ecological, life‐history, behavioural and other traits. Depending on the traits studied, distances of data points to boundary trade‐offs can indicate ecological or life‐history strategies, or behavioural performance. Quantile regression tests the statistical significance of boundary trade‐offs, but it is unknown whether it provides meaningful benchmarks for evaluating distances to the true trade‐offs shaping the data. This is especially relevant when traits limit each other mutually, rather than one independent trait limiting another dependent trait. I used empirical and simulated data to evaluate how quantile regression assesses distance to boundary trade‐offs. First, I reanalysed empirical datasets showing upper‐bound trade‐offs between acoustic traits, which is a field where distances to trade‐offs are often used to infer behavioural performance. Second, I simulated data under different assumptions of how boundaries influence density distributions, to test the accuracy of assessing distance to the true trade‐offs generating the data. Quantile regression assessed distance to upper‐bound trade‐offs incongruently in most empirical datasets, strongly influenced by arbitrary decisions on which trait to use as dependent. Simulated data showed that a double quantile regression approach — the consensus of two reciprocal quantile regressions — accurately and robustly assesses distance to the true trade‐offs generating the data. The method was robust to low sample sizes and to different assumptions on how boundary trade‐offs influence the density distribution of data. Double quantile regression can assess distances to the boundary trade‐offs observed in various branches of ecology, from functional and behavioural ecology, to population and macro‐ecology.


Purpose – The aim of this paper is to contribute to understanding the nature of specialist and generalist human capital by exploring the ways in which knowledge workers view their experience of working in specialist and generalist roles in pharmaceutical firms in Ireland and the UK. Design/methodology/approach – The findings are based on interviews with 55 knowledge workers employed in a range of scientific, technical and managerial positions in four Irish and two UK firms located in the pharmaceutical sector. Interviews were also conducted with nine human resource/training and development managers within these six firms. Findings – The findings suggest that the categorisation of human capital as either specialist or generalist is too rigid and does not take account of the fact that individuals may themselves choose to shape their careers by investing in a range of education, training and development opportunities that will enable them to move between specialist and generalist roles. Originality/value – The paper unpacks the concepts of specialist and generalist human capital from an employee perspective and challenges the sharp distinction that is made between specialist and generalist human capital.


The phenomenon of vortex shedding behind a hydrofoil is an important issue from both scientific and technical point of view. The resulting fluctuating forces may lead to excessive vibrations and premature cracks in the hydraulic machines. According to previous studies, it is well known that an oblique trailing edge, also called "Donaldson cut", reduces the vibration in comparison with a blunt trailing edge; however the physics of the problem is still poorly understood. The purpose of the present work is the experimental investigation of vortex shedding dynamics in the wake of oblique and blunt trailing edge NACA0009 hydrofoils. Experiments are performed at zero incidence angle and high Reynolds numbers, ReL =5 10 5 - 2.9 10 6. The wake velocity profile is measured by two-component Laser Doppler Velocimetry. Cavitation occurrence in the core of the vortices is used as a mean of wake visualization with the help of a high speed camera. We have found that vortex induced vibration is significantly reduced for oblique trailing edge hydrofoil in comparison with the truncated one, which is in agreement with former reports. A disorganization of the Karman vortex street in the near wake is believed to be the reason of this vibration reduction. The high speed movies clearly show that the alternate shedding of the vortices turns into almost simultaneous shedding at the hydrofoil trailing edge. As a result, the upper and lower vortices pair with a significant thickening of the lower vortex core and a reduction of its strength. Consequently, the fluctuating lift, which is the cause of the structural vibration, is also reduced by the oblique truncation. We believe that this result stands for a basis to better optimize the trailing edge of turbine blades in order to further decrease the flow induced vibration.


The objective of the study was to assess the growth contributing characters of biofield treated bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) and okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) seeds. The seeds of both crops were divided into two groups, one was kept aside and denoted as untreated, while the other group was subjected biofield energy treatment. The variabilities in growth contributing parameters were studied and compared with their control. Further the level of glutathione (GSH) in okra leaves, along with DNA fingerprinting in bottle gourd were analyzed using RAPD method. After germination, the plants of bottle gourd were reported to be strong and erect with better canopy as compared with the control. The vegetative growth of okra plants after biofield energy treatment was found to be stout with small canopy, strong steam, and more fruits per nodes, that contributed high yield as compared with the control. However, endogenous level of GSH in the leaves of okra was increased by 47.65% as compared to the untreated group, which may suggest an improved immunity of okra crops. Besides, the DNA fingerprinting data, showed polymorphism (42%) between treated and untreated samples of bottle gourd. The overall results suggest that the biofield energy treatment on bottle gourd and okra seeds, results an improved overall growth of plant and yield, which may enhance flowering and fruiting per plant. Study results conclude that the biofield energy treatment could be an alternate method to improve the crop yield in agricultural science.


Papillomaviruses appear to be species-specific pathogens, and it was suggested that each animal species might harbour its own set of papillomaviruses. However, all approaches addressing the underlying evolutionary phenomena still suffer from very limited data about animal papillomaviruses. In case of the horse for example, only three equine papillomaviruses (EcPVs) have been identified. To further address the situation in this host, suspected papillomavirus-associated lesions were tested for EcPV DNA. Four novel EcPV types were detected and their genomes entirely cloned and sequenced. They display the characteristic organization, with early (E) and late (L) regions harbouring the seven classical open reading frames divided by non-coding regions. They were named EcPVs 4, 5, 6 and 7, according to their dissimilarity to other papillomaviruses. Most L1 nucleotide identities were shared with EcPV2 in case of EcPV4 (62 %) and EcPV5 (60 %) or with EcPV3 in case of EcPV6 (70 %) and EcPV7 (71 %). Thus, EcPVs 4 and 5 may establish novel species within the genus Dyoiota, while EcPVs 6 and 7 might fit into the genus Dyorho and belong to the same species as EcPV3. They were found in genital plaques (EcPV4), aural plaques (EcPV5, EcPV6) or penile masses (EcPV7). Interestingly, PCR analysis revealed the DNA of EcPV2 and EcPV4 as well as of EcPV3 and EcPV6 together in the same tissue samples, respectively. In conclusion, the DNA of four novel EcPV types was identified and cloned. They cluster with the known types and support broad genetic EcPV diversity in at least two of the known clades. Furthermore, PCR assays also provide evidence for EcPV co-infections in horses.


A traditional re-identification pipeline consists of a detection and re-identification step, i.e. a person detector is run on an input image to get a cutout which is then sent to a separate re-identification system. In this work we combine detection and re-identification into one single pass neural network. We propose an architecture that can do re-identification simultaneously with detection and classification. The effect of our modification has only a negligible impact on detection accuracy, and adds the calculation of re-identification vectors at virtually no cost.The resulting re-identification vector is strong enough to be used in speed sensitive applications which can benefit from an additional re-identification vector in addition to detection. We demonstrate this by using it as detection and re-identification input for a real-time person tracker. Moreover, unlike traditional detection + re-id pipelines our single-pass network's computational cost is not dependent on the number of people in the image.


This report details conditions under which the Functional Convolution Model described in \citet{AHG13} can be identified from Ordinary Least Squares estimates without either dimension reduction or smoothing penalties. We demonstrate that if the covariate functions are not spanned by the space of solutions to linear differential equations, the functional coefficients in the model are uniquely determined in the Sobolev space of functions with absolutely continuous second derivatives.


The surgical treatment presented here involves technical innovations, making it a less-aggressive procedure. The goal is to demonstrate a different way of executing a suspension of the skin in the medial third of the face. The procedure is performed with semi-circular Stocchero needles with the passage of a 2-0 nylon thread through the subcutaneous plane at the anterior edge of the parotid gland and fixation to the temporal fascia. A total of 49 patients were operated on using this method with good aesthetic results. One patient required a pre-auricular incision to accommodate the skin. This method is safe, simple, does not require hospital inpatient admission, avoids a pre-auricular scar, and provides satisfactory results.


By using primer extension analysis, we located the transcription start point of the acetoacetate decarboxylase (adc) gene of Clostridium acetobutylicum 90 nucleotides upstream from the initiation codon with A as the first transcribed nucleotide. From this site the promoter structure TTTACT(18 bp)TATAAT was identified; it shows high homology to the consensus sequences of gram-positive bacteria and Escherichia coli. Northern blot experiments revealed a length of 850 bases for the transcript of the adc gene. It thus represents a monocistronic operon. Transcription of adc was induced by conditions necessary for the onset of solvent formation. Induction occurred long before the respective fermentation product (acetone) could be detected in the medium. Transcription of the operon containing the genes for acetoacetyl coenzyme A:acetate/butyrate:coenzyme A transferase (designated ctf) downstream of the adc gene but divergently transcribed is also induced by conditions necessary for the onset of solvent formation. The length of the respective RNA transcript, 4.1 kb, indicates additional coding capacity, since the genes for the two subunits of the coenzyme A transferase cover only approximately 1.5 kb. No distinct transcripts for the other open reading frames of the adc gene region, ORF1 and ORF2, could be detected. Computer analysis indicated that ORF1, which showed significant similarity to the alpha-amylase gene of Bacillus subtilis (U. Gerischer and P. Dürre, J. Bacteriol. 172:6907-6918, 1990), probably is indeed a coding region. ORF2, however, does not seem to have a coding function.


The 1920s has been called the Golden Age of American Sport; the decade produced some of the most respected, honored, and cherished sports heroes that Americans have ever seen. As veteran sports reporters Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein noted in 1948, "Never before, nor since, have so many transcendent performers arisen contemporaneously in almost every field of competitive athletics as graced the 1920s" (xi). The 1920s major sports' heroes became athletic fountainheads: George Herman "Babe" Ruth in baseball, William "Jack" Dempsey in boxing, Harold "Red" Grange in football, William T. "Big Bill" Tilden in tennis, and Robert T. "Bobby" Jones in golf. Like today, the 1920s public celebrated and revered their athletic heroes because of their performances on the field of play. Babe Ruth's brute power that produced towering home runs and extraordinary records established him as baseball's greatest player. Red Grange's athleticism-quickness and ability to change directions-created dramatic touchdowns that made the "Galloping Ghost of the Gridiron" one of football's most dangerous players. By defeating Jess Willard, the "Pottowatomie Giant," in three rounds in 1919, Jack Dempsey captured the public's imagination; mauling characterized Dempsey's fighting style. These sports heroes achieved instant success and adulation among the American public; as a result, the public enthusiastically identified with and embraced the sports heroes; having been "expelled from their Horatio Alger dream," Americans preferred that their heroes be average; Leo Lowenthal noted that the average American liked "to see his heroes as a lot of guys who like or dislike highballs, cigarettes, tomato juice, golf, and social gatherings-just like himself" (3). Knowing that the athletes' popularity would make them attractive to moviegoers, Hollywood created cinematic and financial opportunities for the heroes. Jack Dempsey earned $50,000 plus fifty percent gross for his fifteen-part serial entitled Daredevil Jack (1919). The Manassa Mauler's fists, whose brutality was popularized in the boxing ring, were employed to rescue the heroine and/or her property in every episode. In 1920, Babe Ruth appeared in Headin' Home, the story about a likeable iceman who, in his spare time, uses a hatchet to create a baseball bat from a sizeable piece of wood. Of course, the Babe's character is attracted to a blonde, wins the World Series with his homemade bat, and returns home to his mother and his sister. Since Headin' Home was a silent film, Ruth did not need to memorize lines; even though the film was a box-office bomb, Ruth earned $50,000. Like his fellow athletes, Red Grange's cinematic debut, One Minute to Play (1926), did not demand acting skill. As the title suggests, Grange, drawing from his athleticism established on the gridiron, portrays a halfback who, in the last few seconds, wins the game by scoring a touchdown. Although Bobby Jones enjoyed success on his field of play and remains one of golf's most celebrated athletes, he did not perform in Hollywood features, as did Dempsey, Ruth, and Grange. Instead, based upon careful consideration of what he knew best and what he really cared about, he agreed to appear in golf instructional reels. Jones recognized the film's unique properties would benefit his talents and his cinematic goals: "The talking picture, with its combination of visual presentation and demonstration, with the possibility of detailed explanation, appeals to me as the ideal vehicle for an undertaking of this nature" (Golf Is My Game 173). Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, Jr., the second son of Robert P. "Big Bob" and Clara Merrick Jones, was born on March 17, 1902. Although Bobby's older brother William died of digestive problems after three months, Bobby suffered from the same disorder. His parents decided to have no more children and to focus their love on Bobby; legend has it that Big Bob carried his son around on a pillow to protect him. …


In recent years, multiple independent neuroscience investigations have implicated critical roles for the rostral temporal lobe in auditory and visual perception, language, and semantic memory. Although arising in the context of different cognitive functions, most of these suggest that there is a gradual convergence of sensory information in the temporal lobe that culminates in modality- and perceptually invariant representations at the most rostral aspect. Currently, however, too little is known regarding connectivity within the human temporal lobe to be sure of exactly how and where convergence occurs; existing hypotheses are primarily derived on the basis of cross-species generalizations from invasive nonhuman primate studies, the validity of which is unclear, especially where language function is concerned. In this study, we map the connectivity of the human rostral temporal lobe in vivo for the first time using diffusion-weighted imaging probabilistic tractography. The results indicate that convergence of sensory information in the temporal lobe is in fact a graded process that occurs along both its longitudinal and lateral axes and culminates in the most rostral limits. We highlight the consistency of our results with those of prior functional neuroimaging, computational modeling, and patient studies. By going beyond simple fasciculus reconstruction, we systematically explored the connectivity of specific temporal lobe areas to frontal and parietal language regions. In contrast to the graded within-temporal lobe connectivity, this intertemporal connectivity was found to dissociate across caudal, mid, and rostral subregions. Furthermore, we identified a basal rostral temporal region with very limited connectivity to areas outside the temporal lobe, which aligns with recent evidence that this subregion underpins the extraction of modality- and context-invariant semantic representations.


Over the past thirty years urban populations have skyrocketed to historic proportions. Scholars have stated that urbanization leads to daunting challenges to urban housing, sanitation, education, and transportation needs. Furthermore, governments, both local and national, must respond with a plan to provide city dwellers with needed jobs while also protecting them from crime. While many scholars have examined the plight of those who migrate to cities, this paper will focus on the effects of urbanization on the state as a whole. This study focuses on four relatively politically stable countries - Ghana, South Africa, Bolivia, and India. It empirically compares the four countries' urban population growth from 1975-2005 to various development statistics from the three overarching development categories - Social, Political and Economic - over the same period. It is important not to marginalize the plight of the urban poor throughout the third world; however, this paper concludes that urbanization benefits the country as a whole and that the negative effects of urbanization are merely growing pains that will pass.


The number of users of the world wide web is constantly increasing. However, this also increases the risks. There is the possibility that other users illegally gain access to a users' account of social networks, web shops or other web services. Previous work use graph-based methods to identify hijacked or compromised accounts. Most often posts are used in social networks to detect fraudulences. However, not every compromised account is used to spread propaganda information or phishing attacks. Therefore, we restrict ourselves to the clickstreams from the accounts. In order to identify compromised accounts by means of clickstreams, we will also consider a temporal aspect, since the preferences of a user change over time. We choose a hybrid approach consisting of methods from subsymbolic and symbolic AI to detect fraudulences in clickstreams. We will also take into account the experience of domain experts. Our approach can also be used to identify not only compromised accounts but also shared accounts on instance streaming sites.


In plants, various physiological processes are regulated by extracellular calcium (Ca2+o). For instance, Ca2+o triggers increases and oscillations in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) of guard cells and thereby promotes stomatal closure. However, the mechanisms whereby plants sense and respond to changes in Ca2+o remain unclear. Han et al. used a functional screening approach, in which Arabidopsis cDNA was expressed in human embryonic kidney (HEK 293) cells, and the intracellular response to changes in Ca2+o was monitored with the Ca2+ indicator Fura-2, to clone a protein that mediated Ca2+o-induced [Ca2+]i increase (CICI). The protein, which the authors named CAS, was predicted to have a single transmembrane domain with an extracellular N terminus that did not resemble any functional domains known. The authors used a combination of 45Ca blotting of purified N and C termini, equilibrium dialysis, and time-course analysis of CAS activation and deactivation to determine that the N terminus showed low-affinity, high-capacity Ca2+ binding. Northern analysis indicated that CAS was mostly localized in shoots, and experiments with gene reporters, as well as immunolocalization, indicated that it was localized in the plasma membrane of guard cells. Reducing CAS expression with antisense disrupted CICI signaling in guard cells and inhibited bolting (rapid upward growth at the initiation of seed production) in response to Ca2+ deficiency. Thus, CAS appears to represent a novel Ca2+o sensor with physiological functions relevant to stomata closure and plant development. S. Han, R. Tang, L. K. Anderson, T. E. Woerner, Z.-M. Pei, A cell surface receptor mediates extracellular Ca2+ sensing in guard cells. Nature 425, 196-200 (2003). [Online Journal]


PREFACE
The object of my analysis of Hyperprism, Octand.re and Intgrales is to
explain the mechanics of the construction of Varse's works and., thereby,
reveal his concept of music, in general, and the consequent treatment of
the various parameters of music, in particular. These analyses have been
written in a way that assumes almost constant reference to a score. In
the text I refer the reader to bar numbers in the music for ease of the
accurate pin-pointing of specific events. In the score of Intgrales
bar numbers can be easily calculated because the rehearsal figures occur
at ten-bar intervals; starting with figure D] which is bar 11, therefore, figure j] is bar 21 etc.
When discussing the length of sections within a work I sometimes refer
to the number of beats and at other times the length of a section is
described in seconds. The reason for this is that when the portion of
music being discussed is governed by a Bingle tempo indication the length
can accurately be described in number of beats, but when changes of tempo
are involved a time value is necessary in order to be able to effectively
compare the length of one section with another.
Note-groups describe all the chromatic tones used in between, and including,
the named outer notes in ascending order, i.e. the note-group B-F consists
of the tones B, C, C, D, D, E, F.
In order to simplify matters, brass and woodwind instruments are collectively described as "wind" instruments and wide intervals, such as


This study presents an econometric analysis of the effects of a government price support program on price dynamics and price volatility. Price support programs, a common feature of agricultural policy, provide a lower-bound censoring of the distribution of market prices. An econometric model of market prices is developed using a dynamic Tobit specification under time-varying volatility. The model is applied to the U.S. non-fat dry milk market. It is used to investigate the impact of market liberalization on price dynamics and price volatility in the presence of private and public stocks. The econometric results show how the price support program and stocks (both private and public) affect expected price volatility.


In this work we discuss possible physical origins of non-trivial exponents in the athermal rheology of soft materials at low but finite driving rates. A key ingredient in our scenario is the presence of a self-consistent mechanical noise that stems from the spatial superposition of long-range elastic responses to localized plastically deforming regions. We study analytically a mean-field model, in which this mechanical noise is accounted for by a stress diffusion term coupled to the plastic activity. Within this description we show how a dependence of the shear modulus and/or the local relaxation time on the shear rate introduces corrections to the usual mean-field prediction, concerning the Herschel-Bulkley-type rheological response of exponent 1/2. This feature of the mean-field picture is then shown to be robust with respect to structural disorder and partial relaxation of the local stress. We test this prediction numerically on a mesoscopic lattice model that implements explicitly the long-range elastic response to localized shear transformations, and we conclude on how our scenario might be tested in rheological experiments.


The marked heterogeneity between individuals diagnosed as experiencing schizophrenia has troubled nosologists since the very coining of the term. Catalysed by Crows (1980) hypothesis of independent positive, and negative syndromes, which led to substantial breakthroughs in our comprehension of schizophrenia, the last two decades have seen a resurgence of interest in the characterisation of symptom dimensions to resolve the issue of heterogeneity. A three dimensional model, comprising 'psychotic', 'negative', 'disorganised' syndromes has received considerable research attention and has been proposed for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Similarly, a five-dimensional model, adding syndromes of 'affective disturbance'and 'excitement', has also attracted an increasing profile of literature. Mounting evidence suggests, however, that these models do not adequately reflect the diversity of symptoms seen among those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and that they may emerge as an artefact of lossy factor-analytic techniques applied to measurement models biased or inadequate in their coverage of symptoms. To overcome such limitations, in the present study one hundred in- and out- patients diagnosed with schizophrenia were assessed for completed a battery of neuropsychological tests tapping five aspects of attention, and smooth pursuit eye tracking was also recorded. Using cluster analyses to examine correlations between symptoms, eleven groups of symptoms were identified: 'hostility', 'conceptual disorganisation', 'bizarre behaviour', 'grandiosity', 'auditory hallucinations', 'loss of boundary delusions', 'paranoia', 'anxious intropunitiveness', 'cognitive dysfunction', 'negative signs' and 'social dysfunctions'. All groupings were internally consistent, largely independent of others, and supported by other symptom models proposed in the literature. Several of the symptom groupings were validated by demonstration of independent relationships with neuropsychological variables or aspects of eye movements, and the more complex symptom model was equivalent or superior in the prediction of neuropsychological performance than the three- and five- factor symptom models.

Implicit in dimensional approaches to conceptualising schizophrenia is the notion that the identified groupings may reflect the functioning of distinct brain systems. This thesis has demonstrated that the 'syndromes' defined by the three- and five- dimensional models of schizophrenia are actually heterogeneous groupings of poorly correlated symptoms. This, in turn, obscures the relationships between symptoms and underlying pathology. Dimensional approaches to psychopathology hold great promise for unravelling the nature of psychosis. However, the existing facile descriptions may actively constrain the potential for research progress. The rigorously developed description of symptomatology presented here represents a compact and useful representation of the spectrum of symptoms experienced in schizophrenia, and has demonstrated an advantage over existing conceptions that demands implementation and vigorous research attention.


Falling transportation costs and rapid technological progress in recent decades have precipitated an explosion of cross-border flows in goods, services, investments, and ideas led by multinational firms. Extensive research has sought to understand the geographic patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI). This chapter reviews existing theories and evidence specifically addressing questions including: How is FDI distributed across space? Why does the law of gravity apply? How do the costs of transporting goods, tasks, and technologies influence firms' decisions to separate tasks geographically and locate relative to one another? We discuss a variety of theoretical mechanisms through which transport cost and other geographic friction influence FDI and present the key empirical studies and findings.


With cloud storage services, it is commonplace for data to be not only stored in the cloud, but also shared across multiple users. However, public auditing for such shared data— while preserving identity privacy — remains to be an open challenge. In our project, we propose the first privacypreserving mechanism that allows public auditing on shared data stored in the cloud. In particular, we exploit ring signatures to compute the verification information needed to audit the integrity of shared data. Our mechanism, the identity of the signer on each block in shared data is kept private from a third party auditor (TPA), who is still able to verify the integrity of shared data without retrieving the entire file. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed mechanism when auditing shared data. Keywords-PublicAuditing, Privacy Preservation, Homomorphic Authenticators


We proposed an optical model for phosphor-converted white LEDs (pc-WLEDs) that utilized Ce:YAG doped glasses as novel phosphor-converted materials. In this model, precise simulation of the chromatic performance of the glass-based pc-WLEDs was conducted. Between optical simulation and experimental measurement, the color difference $\Delta E$ was 1.2%. Meanwhile, the difference of correlated color temperature limited from 1 wt% to 5 wt% phosphor concentration between the simulation and measurement was 184 K. Such a model for glass phosphors will be helpful to design high-power glass-based pc-WLEDs.


Molecular nanomagnets possess interesting quantum properties that make them potential candidates for qubits in quantum information processing. Heterometallic antiferromagnetic wheels specifically have been shown to have a coherence time long enough to permit quantum computing operations. The field of molecular spintronics deals with the integration of molecular nanomagnets into nanoelectronic devices for the purpose of probing and manipulating these quantum properties. In order for a nanomagnet to be incorporated into such a device it needs to be both magnetically and structurally stable when in contact with nanoelectronic components, and its coupling to the environment needs to be controlled. The first part of this thesis deals with the synthesis and characterization of a derivative of a member of the Cr7Ni family of heterometallic antiferromagnetic wheels. The synthetic process involved introducing long alkyl chains into the organic shell of the nanomagnet in order that it may interact with carbon-based nanoelectronic devices in a non-destructive capacity. The molecule was characterized in order to confirm the results of the synthesis, to gain a greater understanding of how its magnetic properties can be modelled, and to fingerprint the system in order to acquire data that will help determine whether its properties remain intact when attached to a graphene surface. The second part of this thesis concerns a series of experiments conducted toward developing a process for determining the viability of the synthesized nanomagnet as the molecular component in spintronics devices. To begin to determine the molecule's magnetic and structural stability when deposited on a graphene surface the first step is to realize clean graphene substrates that are suitably pristine such that a nanometre sized particle can be detected. Graphene flakes were fabricated using the mechanical exfoliation technique and a procedure was developed for cleaning the resulting flakes of residues. The next step of this research will consist of conducting systematic studies to quantify the binding affinity of the nanomagnet species to both graphene and to pristine carbon nanotubes, and to determine whether the system retains its structural and magnetic properties when attached to graphitic surfaces. The work described here lays the foundation for the novel use of Cr7Ni-eth and other functionalized magnetic molecules in spin-based nanoelectronic devices.


Glioblastoma (GBM) has a dismal prognosis. Evidence from preclinical tumor models and human trials indicates the role of GBM-initiating cells (GIC) in GBM drug resistance. Here, we propose a new treatment option with tumor enzyme-activatable, combined therapeutic and diagnostic (theranostic) nanoparticles, which caused specific toxicity against GBM tumor cells and GICs. The theranostic cross-linked iron oxide nanoparticles (CLIO) were conjugated to a highly potent vascular disrupting agent (ICT) and secured with a matrix-metalloproteinase (MMP-14) cleavable peptide. Treatment with CLIO-ICT disrupted tumor vasculature of MMP-14–expressing GBM, induced GIC apoptosis, and significantly impaired tumor growth. In addition, the iron core of CLIO-ICT enabled in vivo drug tracking with MR imaging. Treatment with CLIO-ICT plus temozolomide achieved tumor remission and significantly increased survival of human GBM-bearing mice by more than 2-fold compared with treatment with temozolomide alone. Thus, we present a novel therapeutic strategy with significant impact on survival and great potential for clinical translation. Mol Cancer Ther; 16(9); 1909–21. ©2017 AACR.


The RISCS project is a 4-year EU funded project starting in January 2010 that will assess the
impacts of CO2 storage on ecosystems/near-surface environments. One of the experimental test
facilities will be the ASGARD site at the Nottingham's University campus. Previous research at
ASGARD has investigated the impacts of shallow injection of CO2 on plants as part of the
CO2GeoNet programme. BGS collected botanic data, and Quintessa developed an initial version
of a soil-plant model for the site using Quintessa's general purpose modelling code QPAC. In
preparation for RISCS, Quintessa developed prototype software for BGS to familiarise itself
with the model and understand the model data needs in order to provide information relevant to
discussions on the experimental design at ASGARD during the RISCS project kick off meeting.
The current version of the model has the following capabilities and limitations:
It can represent the fertilisation and toxicity effects of CO2 on plants in terms of plant
biomass and height change
 Experimental data can be used to optimise model fertilisation and toxicity parameters
 It was initially developed to model a single plant species, but has been used to model
two species, with one species assumed to be dominant. This could be further developed
to allow species competition to be modelled in the presence of elevated levels of CO2
effects.
 Currently CO2 transport in the rooting zone is assumed to be primarily by diffusion. In
the RISCS project it may be necessary to extend the model to consider advective
transport. Depending on the purpose of the experiment, the model could include the
movement of CO2 from the injection point to the rooting zone by using the QPAC-CO2
code developed by Quintessa.
Conclusions relevant to the experimental design at ASGARD for RISCS include the following:
 Measurements of key parameters, such as CO2 concentration and flux, will be needed.
Depending on the measurement frequency, this might require automated
instrumentation.
 The variability in the plant species in the grassed plots and the limited area of high CO2
at the surface makes it hard to quantify the relationship between CO2 concentration and
effect on plant species. It is therefore suggested that the plots are planted with one or two
species, such as grass and clover.
 Measurements of plant biomass and CO2 concentration in the rooting zone, the surface
and the canopy are needed for the model calibration.
 The application of herbicides on the plots should depend on what is aimed to be
represented; grazed or uncultivated land might be expected to be herbicide free.
 Vertical barriers might be envisaged to prevent CO2 from migrating to controlled sites,
to have better control of where the CO2 goes and thus facilitate comparisons between
measurements and model calculations. They could help with increasing the surface area
exposed to high CO2 levels, which currently is very small.
 To better understand the effect of CO2 on plants, it is necessary to expose the plants to a
range of CO2 concentration levels. This requires careful consideration of the injection
type and depth and of the size of the plots.
 Different injection types might be envisaged depending on the plant composition; mixed
pasture which contains several plant species would benefit from a uniform CO2
concentration within the plot.


Scientific creativity and innovation represent the beating heart of European growth at a time of rapid technological change. Dr Inventor is built on the vision that technologies have great potential to supplement human ingenuity in science by overcoming the limitations that people suffer in pursuing scientific discovery. It presents an original system that will provide inspiration for scientific creativity by utilising the rich presence of web-based research resources. Dr Inventor will act as a personal research assistant, utilising machine-empowered search and computation to bring researchers extended perspectives for scientific innovation by informing them of a broad spectrum of relevant research concepts and approaches, by assessing the novelty of research ideas, and by offering suggestions of new concepts and workflows with unexpected features for new scientific discovery. Dr Inventor is an attempt to understand the potential of technology in the scientific creative process within current technology limitations. It represents a sound balance between scientific insight into individual scientific creative processes and technical implementation using innovative technologies in information extraction, document summarization, semantics and visual analytics. The outcomes will be integrated into a web-based system that will allow evaluation in a selected research area under real-world settings with carefully designed metrics, benchmarks and baseline for creative performance, leading to tangible measurements on the performance of the technologies in enhancing human creativity and a blueprint for future technologies in computational creativity. Dr Inventor has huge implications for scientific innovation in Europe, as it has the potential to change the way in which scientific research is undertaken. The acceptance of the system by general research communities will open opportunities for many industrial sectors, leading to reinforced leadership of European industry.


### Tissues and minerals

On a quantitative basis, the most important of the calcium phosphates (Table 1⇓) is an apatite closely related to hydroxylapatite (HAP). This is better described as an impure carbonate-containing apatite (CO3Ap) and forms the inorganic component of bones and teeth. Table 1⇓ also includes calcium phosphates (including two pyrophosphates) that occur in pathological mineralizations and those that are used for the repair of mineralized tissues. Unlike the well-controlled process of normal mineralization in bones and teeth (see later), pathological mineralizations are usually poorly controlled with the result that several calcium phosphates may occur together. In addition, their crystallographic orientations are often random.

View this table:

 Table 1.
Occurrence of calcium phosphates.

The solubility isotherms of the calcium phosphates in the system Ca(OH)2-H3PO4-H2O at 37°C are shown in Figure 1⇓. Monetite occurs in the phase diagram, although its occurrence in normal or pathological calcifications has never been confirmed, one contributing reason being that its nucleation and growth is more difficult than brushite under biological conditions, so brushite forms in preference, even though brushite is less stable. β-Ca3(PO4)2 is a high-temperature phase that does not precipitate directly in aqueous systems; however, it is sufficiently stable in water for a solubility product to be determined so that an isotherm can be calculated, which is the origin of the isotherm in Figure 1⇓. However, if the aqueous system contains Mg2+ (1 or 2 mmol/l), the solubility product of "Ca3(PO4)2" is dramatically reduced (more than a thousand-fold) with the result that the structurally related whitlockite can easily precipitate (Hamad and Heughebaert 1986, LeGeros et al. 1989). Fe2+ ions have a similar effect. Whitlockite has superficially the same X-ray diffraction (XRD) …


The dumping of the mining tailings dam from Mariana, Brazil released about 34 million mining tailings in the Doce river basin, containing many toxic metals. The biomasses of banana and rice were used as adsorbents in the removal of Cu (II) and Pb (II) metals from contaminated water. Quantification of metals was performed using NexION 300D PerkinElmer (USA) ICP-MS. The pH effect studies indicated that the adsorption analyzed in the present work did not undergo significant changes with the variation of the pH values, thus for both banana and rice the best adsorption capacity of Cu (II), 34.11 mg g−1 and 34.37 mg g−1, was at pH 5. For Pb (II), the highest adsorption capacity was also at pH 5 with 36.06 mg g−1 for banana and 36.04 mg g−1 for rice. There was a rapid adsorption where, in all cases in the first 30 minutes of adsorption, more than 60% of the metals had already been adsorbed. Finally, tests were carried out using real samples from Doce river contaminated by the metals under study due to the Mariana disaster. The biomasses presented excellent performance in Cu (II) and Pb (II) removal, reaching concentrations close to zero after adsorption process.


The purpose of this investigation was to examine the potential strength, power, and anthropometric contributors to vertical jump performances that are considered specific to volleyball success: the spike jump (SPJ) and counter-movement vertical jump (CMVJ). To assess the relationship among strength, power, and anthropometric variables with CMVJ and SPJ, a correlation and regression analysis was performed. In addition, a comparison of strength, power, and anthropometric differences between the seven best subjects and the seven worst athletes on the CMVJ test and SPJ test was performed. When expressed as body mass relative measures, moderate correlations (0.53-0.65; p ≤ 0.01) were observed between the 1RM measures and both relative CMVJ and relative SPJ. Very strong correlations were observed between relative (absolute height-standing reach height) depth jump performance and relative SPJ (0.85; p ≤ 0.01) and relative CMVJ (0.93; p ≤ 0.01). The single best regression model component for relative CMVJ was the relative depth jump performance, explaining 84% of performance. The single best predictor for relative SPJ was also the relative depth jump performance (72% of performance), with the three-component models of relative depth jump, relative CMVJ, spike jump contribution (percent difference between SPJ and CMVJ), and relative CMVJ, spike jump contribution, and peak force, accounting for 96% and 97%, respectively. The results of this study clearly demonstrate that in an elite population of volleyball players, stretch-shortening cycle performance and the ability to tolerate high stretch loads, as in the depth jump, is critical to performance in the jumps associated with volleyball performance.


In this letter, we propose a theoretically and computationally simple feature for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image classification, the multilevel local pattern histogram (MLPH). The MLPH describes the size distributions of bright, dark, and homogenous patterns appearing in a moving window at various contrasts; these patterns are the elementary properties of SAR image texture. The MLPH is a very powerful descriptor of SAR images because it captures both local and global structural information. Additionally, it is robust to speckle noise. Experiments on a TerraSAR-X data set demonstrate that MLPH significantly outperforms four other widely used features in SAR image classification.


We propose a novel neural architecture, Transformer-XL, for modeling longerterm dependency. To address the limitation of fixed-length contexts, we introduce a notion of recurrence by reusing the representations from the history. Empirically, we show state-of-the-art (SoTA) results on both word-level and character-level language modeling datasets, including WikiText-103, One Billion Word, Penn Treebank, and enwiki8. Notably, we improve the SoTA results from 1.06 to 0.99 in bpc on enwiki8, from 33.0 to 18.9 in perplexity on WikiText-103, and from 28.0 to 23.5 in perplexity on One Billion Word. Performance improves when the attention length increases during evaluation, and our best model attends to up to 1,600 words and 3,800 characters. To quantify the effective length of dependency, we devise a new metric and show that on WikiText-103 Transformer-XL manages to model dependency that is about 80% longer than recurrent networks and 450% longer than Transformer. Moreover, Transformer-XL is up to 1,800+ times faster than vanilla Transformer during evaluation.


To advance our understanding of how biological and behavioral processes interact to determine risk or resilience, theorists suggest that social developmental models will need to include multiple measurements of stress-related biological processes. Identified in the early 1990s as a surrogate marker of the sympathetic nervous system component of the stress response, salivary-amylase has not been employed to test biosocial models of stress vulnerability in the context of child development until now. In this report, we describe a standard assay that behavioral scientists can use to improve the next generation of studies and specific recommendations about sample collection, preparation, and storage are presented. More importantly, four studies are presented with mother–infant dyads (N= 86), preschoolers (N= 54), children (N = 54), and adolescents (N = 29) to illustrate individual differences in stress-related change in α-amylase levels, that patterns of α-amylase stress reactivity distinctly differ from those measured by salivary cortisol, and associations between individual differences in α-amylase and social relationships, health, negative affectivity, cognitive/academic/behavior problems, and cardiovascular reactivity. We conclude that the integration of measurements of the adrenergic component of the locus ceruleus/autonomic (sympathetic) nervous system, as indexed by salivary α-amylase, into the study of biosocial relationships may extend our understanding of child health and development to new limits.


Large batch size training of Neural Networks has been shown to incur accuracy loss when trained with the current methods. The exact underlying reasons for this are still not completely understood. Here, we study large batch size training through the lens of the Hessian operator and robust optimization. In particular, we perform a Hessian based study to analyze exactly how the landscape of the loss function changes when training with large batch size. We compute the true Hessian spectrum, without approximation, by back-propagating the second derivative. Extensive experiments on multiple networks show that saddle-points are not the cause for generalization gap of large batch size training, and the results consistently show that large batch converges to points with noticeably higher Hessian spectrum. Furthermore, we show that robust training allows one to favor flat areas, as points with large Hessian spectrum show poor robustness to adversarial perturbation. We further study this relationship, and provide empirical and theoretical proof that the inner loop for robust training is a saddle-free optimization problem \textit{almost everywhere}. We present detailed experiments with five different network architectures, including a residual network, tested on MNIST, CIFAR-10, and CIFAR-100 datasets. We have open sourced our method which can be accessed at [1].


Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of perioperative morbidity in South Africa.
Unstable cardiovascular conditions need to be identified preoperatively and further evaluated.
Unstable cardiovascular conditions include unstable coronary syndromes, decompensated cardiac failure, significant arrhythmias and severe valvular heart disease.
Perioperative cardiac morbidity is related to the medical condition and functional capacity of the patient, and the extent of the surgery.
Cardiac clinical risk predictors include a history of ischaemic heart disease, heart failure, stroke, diabetes and renal dysfunction.
Patients undergoing low-risk surgery and patients with good functional capacity are generally good surgical candidates.
One should always first consider the risk versus benefit before deferring an intermediate-risk patient.
Attention to simple perioperative factors such as analgesia, temperature and postoperative oxygen is important.
In high-risk cases anaesthesia must be provided by the most experienced doctor possible within the limitation of the health service.


STUDY OBJECTIVES
Newcomers at high altitude (> 3,000 m) experience periodic breathing, sleep disturbances, and impaired cognitive performance. Whether similar adverse effects occur at lower elevations is uncertain, although numerous lowlanders travel to moderate altitude for professional or recreational activities. We evaluated the hypothesis that nocturnal breathing, sleep, and cognitive performance of lowlanders are impaired at moderate altitude.

DESIGN
Randomized crossover trial.

SETTING
University hospital at 490 m, Swiss mountain villages at 1,630 m and 2,590 m.

PARTICIPANTS
Fifty-one healthy men, median (quartiles) age 24 y (20-28 y), living below 800 m.

INTERVENTIONS
Studies at Zurich (490 m) and during 4 consecutive days at 1,630 m and 2,590 m, respectively, 2 days each. The order of altitude exposure was randomized. Polysomnography, psychomotor vigilance tests (PVT), the number back test, several other tests of cognitive performance, and questionnaires were evaluated.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
The median (quartiles) apnea-hypopnea index at 490 m was 4.6/h (2.3; 7.9), values at 1,630 and 2,590 m, day 1 and 2, respectively, were 7.0/h (4.1; 12.6), 5.4/h (3.5; 10.5), 13.1/h (6.7; 32.1), and 8.0/h (4.4; 23.1); corresponding values of mean nocturnal oxygen saturation were 96% (95; 96), 94% (93; 95), 94% (93; 95), 90% (89; 91), 91% (90; 92), P < 0.05 versus 490 m, all instances. Slow wave sleep on the first night at 2,590 m was 21% (18; 25) versus 24% (20; 27) at 490 m (P < 0.05). Psychomotor vigilance and various other measures of cognitive performance did not change significantly.

CONCLUSIONS
Healthy men acutely exposed during 4 days to hypoxemia at 1,630 m and 2,590 m reveal a considerable amount of periodic breathing and sleep disturbances. However, no significant effects on psychomotor reaction speed or cognitive performance were observed.

CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION
Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT01130948.


Abstract. The Dutch Maeslant Barrier, a movable surge barrier in the mouth of the river Rhine, closes when there is a surge in the North Sea and the water level in the river at Rotterdam exceeds 3 m above mean sea level. An important aspect of the failure probability is that the barrier might get damaged during a closure and that, within the time needed for repair, a second critical storm surge may occur. With an estimated closure frequency of once in 10 years, the question of how often the barrier has to be closed twice within one month arises. Instead of tackling this problem by the application of statistical models on the (short) observational series, we solve the problem by combining the surge model WAQUA/DCSMv5 with the output of all seasonal forecasts of the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) in the period 1981–2015, whose combination cumulates in a pseudo-observational series of more than 6000 years. We show that the Poisson process model leads to wrong results as it neglects the temporal correlations that are present on daily, weekly and monthly timescales. By counting the number of double events over a threshold of 2.5 m and assuming that the number of events is exponentially related to the threshold, it is found that two closures occur on average once in 150 years within a month, and once in 330 years within a week. The large uncertainty in these recurrence intervals of more than a factor of two is caused by the sensitivity of the results to the Gumbel parameters of the observed record, which are used for bias correction. Sea level rise has a significant impact on the recurrence time for both single and double closures. The recurrence time of single closures doubles with every 18 cm mean sea level rise (assuming that other influences remain unchanged) and double closures double with every 10 cm rise. This implies a 3–14 times higher probability of a double closure for a 15–40 cm sea level rise in 2050 (according to the KNMI climate scenarios).


This poster serves as background information to the corresponding lecture. Adsorption isotherms are essential in order to understand the interaction between small molecules such as pharmaceutical compounds and larger biomolecules. An adsorption isotherm describes the relationship of free substance in a solution with adsorbed substance to a surface, at a specific and constant temperature. Adsorption isotherms could be determined using several different method, all method have their pros and cons. In this study we are using two modern but principally different biosensors to determine interactions: quarts micro-balance (QCM) and Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to determine interactions. For a long time adsorption isotherms has been determined solely by the chromatographic community. In this study we will present transformation of adsorption analysis tools from chromatography to biosensors, especially calculation of adsorption energy distribution prior adsorption model fit. We will also discuss how the experiments should be conducted. Guidelines will be given for the experimental setup and for when the chromatographic or a biosensor technique is to be preferred. This is a contribution from the Fundamental Separation Science Group in Karlstad www.separationscience.se


For more than a decade, military thinkers have debated the impact of "information operations" (IO) on armed conflict. Responding to the possibilities (and vulnerabilities) inherent in the interconnectivity of the Internet and other information networks, IO constitutes a new form of warfare. IO uses methods such as computer network attacks or psychological operations to influence, disrupt, corrupt, usurp and defend information systems and the infrastructure they support. As militaries work through what IO can do, however, they must also wrestle with when and how they can employ it - i.e., the question of law's application to IO. Since computer networks and modern information systems constitute new tools (and new targets) for military activities, international law currently regulates them only by analogy, and even then, in a patchwork fashion. Most states and scholars appear content with this situation, denying any need to develop IO-specific rules. This short essay challenges that conventional wisdom. Even as it applies to IO, the existing legal framework suffers from several, near-fatal conditions: uncertainty (i.e., militaries lack a clear picture of how to translate existing rules into the IO environment); complexity (i.e., overlapping legal regimes threaten to overwhelm military commanders seeking to apply IO); and insufficiency (i.e., existing rules fail to address basic challenges of modern conflicts with non-state actors). This situation creates disincentives for militaries to use IO, notwithstanding IO's potential to achieve military and political objectives with less harm than conventional bombs or missiles. To redress these deficiencies, I propose states adopt an international law for information operations, or "ILIO." By adopting an ILIO, states could alleviate the uncertainty and complexity of the status quo, reduce transaction costs for states fighting global terror, and lessen the collateral costs of armed conflict itself.


In assessments of the impact of expressway lane closures on traffic flow, current practice generally involves an assumption of the nominal capacity per lane which varies, in some cases significantly, by jurisdiction. Situations have been observed by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) where application of such a simplistic guideline, particularly in the absence of specific consideration of the effects of heavy vehicles in the traffic stream, has led to significant congestion issues and negative public reaction. Preliminary research, conducted on behalf of MTO with respect to overnight lane closures on MTO's 400-series expressways in the GTA, suggests the existence of two operational regimes. The first regime, found where the demand is insufficient to result in queue formation at the lane closure and merging from the closed lanes is orderly, suggests a capacity in the order of 1,750 veh/h/lane, towards the higher end of the range of currently assumed values. The second regime, found where demand is such that a queue has formed, suggests a much lower capacity in the order of 1,100 to 1,300 veh/h/lane, towards the lower end of the range of currently assumed values. This research also looked at the equivalency of heavy vehicles in a work-zone, lane closure context. These results were based on relatively limited data and further data collection and analysis is recommended to verify these preliminary findings.


Master Data Management (MDM) is of increasing importance because it is seen as a promising approach in companies torespond to a number of strategic business requirements, such as complying with an increasing number of regulations,supporting internal and external business process integration, and establishing a 360-degree-view on the customer. As aresult, software vendors such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, and TIBCO are offering MDM application systems. However, the usercommunity feels a significant mismatch between their own strategic requirements and the functionality currently offered bythe software products. As the Information Systems (IS) research community has remained silent so far regarding this researchproblem, the research presented in this paper makes intensive use of knowledge from the practitioners' community in order todesign a framework for strategic business requirements to be met by MDM systems. As an outcome of a design-orientedresearch process, the framework is an artifact which advances the scientific body of knowledge while at the same timeproviding benefit for practitioners. The framework includes seven design principles which are translated into 23requirements. The requirements form a baseline for internal and external communication in companies and for the design ofconcrete MDM systems.


Background/Context Teacher candidates are being educated in a political and economic context that calls the value of their professional preparation into question. What is more, a rising generation of teacher candidates has only experienced education during the Era of Corporate School Reform, meaning, the political aims of public education were systematically neglected during their upbringing due to an intensive focus on high-stakes competitions, consumer preferences, and the privatization of public schools. This essay asks how teacher candidates, raised to value a narrow and reductive form of academic success, can be prepared to attend to their students' flourishing and collectively work towards social justice. Focus of Study Stressing the indispensable role of teacher education, with a focus on the importance of educational foundations courses, we argue that teacher candidates should learn in such courses to nudge students towards a pluralistic opportunity structure, defined by political philosopher Joseph Fishkin, as a structure of opportunity comprised of many less harshly competitive and therefore more accessible paths to diverse forms of flourishing and economic opportunity. Research Design The proposed aim seeks to reconcile the social ambitions of early progressive theorists with the method of reflective equilibrium used by contemporary educational ethicists. It is developed using a case study method. Cases are drawn from the reflections of three academically successful teacher candidates. Each candidate, for distinct reasons, critiques the conception of academic success they were habituated to value during their P–12 schooling and each urges their peers to not reproduce its harms by teaching differently. The argument proceeds by exploring how their critiques are reflected in the value of equality of opportunity and how their advice for teaching differently is continuous with the work of pluralizing the opportunity structure. Conclusion The teacher candidates' critiques of academic success are not simply private reflections, but nascent expressions of a principle of social justice, a new theory of equality of opportunity, that can be realized by attending to the wellbeing of all students, including advantaged students attending independent schools.


Databases, handbooks, and book series related to organic synthesis, including searching for information on specific reactions or more general information about functional groups, protecting groups, and name reactions.


The ecological importance of islet endemics are in the front line of conservation efforts and thus the good knowledge of their biology is required. Podarcis levendis is a lacertid lizard, endemic to two rocky islets in the Cretan Sea, Greece, that was raised to specific level in 2008 and since then no data on its biology are available. Here we present the first ecological information on the species, focusing on population density, tail autotomy and feeding preferences. We recorded regenerated and damaged tails in the field and estimated population density with the transect method. We also dissected museum specimens and analyzed their stomach content. Regenerated tails were common and reached a considerable 71%. The latter finding could be attributed to the intense intraspecific competition due to high population density but also to the seasonal predation pressure by migratory birds. The diet of P. levendis coincides with that of other insular congenerics, including high percentages of plant material.


This thesis explores whether participatory action research (PAR) can be a vehicle for knowledge democracy in mental health by telling the compelling tale of a team of mental health service users formed to conduct a PAR project in adult NHS mental health services. PAR is a methodology that seeks change through action and the collaborative efforts of participants, often people from marginalised groups. The team, self-named PAR Excellence, actively participated in every step of the research process, from the initial identification of the research topic (shared decision making in mental health), literature review, research design, data collection and analysis, to dissemination. The original contribution to knowledge is in two parts: findings on shared decision making and the use of recorded service user experiences in mental health, and findings on the PAR process itself. Through these intertwining efforts, an original analysis of knowledge democracy in the context of adult NHS mental health services in the UK has been reached.
Having chosen shared decision making in mental health, PAR Excellence developed a multi-media library of service user experiences to be used as a shared decision making resource. They explored with NHS mental health staff whether this approach supported shared decision making through qualitative focus groups and interviews. It was concluded that whilst the use of recorded service user experiences as a shared decision making resource was generally welcomed in principle by staff, in practice there was limited utilisation of the resource. However, it was highly valued as an opportunity for staff reflective practice, and when used judiciously, showed the potential for having a profound effect for service users. It was also found that shared decision making is a complex concept that has many different meanings amongst staff, and they work in a system where true shared decision making cannot consistently occur. However, it was discovered that staff found the involvement of service users in the research process gave the project authenticity and credibility over research generated purely by traditional researchers, and were therefore more likely to engage with it. The shared decision making resource also provoked a particularly positive response in staff members who have used mental health services themselves.
Throughout the project, qualitative focus groups were also held with PAR Excellence to explore the participatory process and its outcomes overall. These findings established that the motivations of the team (who were highly critical of mental health services) were rooted in a profound understanding of the power mental health services had over them, dissatisfaction with services, and a deep sense of injustice. This led the team to express a concept of subversive "meddling" in mental health services to address these issues. They found that whilst personal transformation through PAR was achievable, the potential for more general, external transformation was limited due to the enmeshment of the political and economic climate in which mental health services operate.


Shillony: Paper examines how Japan's imperial dynasty dependent on the male line of succession has lasted so long and analyses how it will overcome its present difficulties. An Advisory Panel was created to recommend future policy to the Koizumi cabinet but its report in 2005 was criticized. The impasse over the Panel's report was broken by the birth of a son in September 2006 to Princess Kiko, wife of Prince Akishino Best: Paper explains why the royal relationship with Japan became so important to Britain. During the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-23), relations between the two Courts were cordial. The ending of the alliance did not lead to immediate substantial change. But as political relations deteriorated in the 'thirties, Court diplomacy did not yield important results, though officials continued experimenting.


Forging provides an elegant solution to the problem of producing complicated shapes from heated metal. This study attempts to relate some of the important parameters involved when considering, simple upsetting, closed die forging and extrusion forging. A literature survey showed some of the empirical graphical and statistical methods of load prediction together with analytical methods of estimating load and energy. Investigations of the effects of high strain rate and temperature on the stress-strain properties of materials are also evident. In the present study special equipment including an experimental drop hammer and various die-sets have been designed and manufactured. Instrumentation to measure load/time and displacement/time behaviour, of the deformed metal, has been incorporated and calibrated. A high speed camera was used to record the behaviour mode of test pieces used in the simple upsetting tests. Dynamic and quasi-static material properties for the test materials, lead and aluminium alloy, were measured using the drop hammer and a compression-test machine. Analytically two separate mathematical solutions have been developed: A numerical technique using a lumped-mass model for the analysis of simple upsetting and closed-die forging and, for extrusion forging, an analysis which equates the shear and compression energy requirements to the work done by the forging load. Cylindrical test pieces were used for all the experiments and both dry and lubricated test conditions were investigated. The static and dynamic tests provide data on Load, Energy and the Profile of the deformed billet. In addition for the Extrusion Forging, both single ended and double ended tests were conducted. Material dependency was also examined by a further series of tests on aluminium and copper. Comparison of the experimental and theoretical results was made which shows clearly the effects of friction and high strain rate on load and energy requirements and the deformation mode of the billet. For the axisymmetric shapes considered, it was found that the load, energy requirement and profile could be predicted with reasonable accuracy.