The excited-state dynamics of an aniline-triazine electron donor-acceptor dyad with an alkyne spacer has been investigated using a combination of ultrafast broadband mid-IR and visible transient absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies. The transient IR data reveal the occurrence of an efficient alkyne to allene isomerization of the spacer with a time constant increasing from a few hundreds of femtoseconds to a few picoseconds with solvent viscosity. This process is faster than the vibrational cooling of the Franck-Condon excited state, indicative of nonequilibrium dynamics. The transient electronic absorption and fluorescence data evidence that this transformation is accompanied by a charge separation between the donor and the acceptor subunits. The allene character of the spacer implies an orthogonal orientation of the donor and acceptor moieties, similar to that proposed for twisted intramolecular charge-transfer states. Such states are often invoked in the excited-state dynamics of donor-acceptor dyads, but their involvement could never be unambiguously evidenced spectroscopically. The alkyne-allene isomerization involves not only a torsional motion but also a bending of the molecule due to the sp to sp2 rehybridization of one of the alkyne carbon atoms. This twisted and rehybridized intramolecular charge transfer ("TRICT") state decays back to the planar and linear alkyne ground state on a time scale decreasing from a few hundred to ten picoseconds upon going from weakly to highly polar solvents. The different solvent dependencies reveal that the dynamics of the allene buildup are controlled by the structural changes, whereas the decay is limited by the charge recombination step.


What does it mean to be a teenager in an American city at the close of the twentieth century? How do urban surroundings affect the ways in which teens grow up, and what do their stories tell us about human development? In particular, how do the negative images of themselves on television and in the newspaper affect their perspectives about themselves? Psychologists typically have shown little interest in urban youth, preferring instead to generalize about adolescent development from studies of their middle-class, suburban counterparts. In Everyday Courage Niobe Way, a developmental psychologist, looks beyond the stereotypes to reveal how the personal worldviews of inner-city poor and working-class adolescents develop over time. In the process, she challenges much conventional wisdom about inner-city youth and about adolescents more generally. She introduces us to Malcolm, a sensitive and proud young man full of contradictions. We follow him as he makes the honor roll, becomes a teenage father, and falls into depression as his younger sister is dying of cancer. We meet Eva, an intelligent and confident young women full of questions, who grows increasingly alienated from her mother and comes to rely on her best friends for support. We watch her blossom as a ball player and a poet. We share her triumph when she receives a scholarship to the college of her choice. In these 24 adolescents, Way finds a cross-section of youngsters who want to make positive changes in their lives and communities while struggling with concerns about betrayal, trust, racism, violence, and death. Each adolescent wants most of all to "be somebody," to have her or his voice heard.


It is commonly believed that large energy efficiency gaps exist in the energy-using durables markets. We develop a broad analytical framework capturing consumer purchase behavior and suppliers� pricing and innovation decisions to estimate the effect of household electricity price variations on the refrigerator market outcomes. Using UK product-level panel data from 2002 to 2007, we find that the main factor limiting the full effect of rising price signals on curbing energy consumption of refrigerators is not consumer myopia, but changes in relative prices of products in favor of the less efficient models. We also find that manufacturers strongly respond to rising electricity prices by changing their product portfolio. This suggests shifting policy attention towards suppliers� pricing and innovation behaviors would be effective in achieving energy efficiency gains in the durables market.


: Migratory seabirds are exposed to various pollutants throughout their annual cycle. Among them, mercury (Hg) is of particular concern given its large impact on animal health. Recent studies suggest that winter is a critical period for seabirds when contamination by Hg can be higher than at other times of year. However, individuals within and between species can have different migration strategies that could affect their exposure. Here, we combined multi-year individual tracking data and Hg measurements from 6 Arctic seabird species. We investigated whether inter-annual variations in individual winter contamination with Hg was related to seabird fidelity to a wintering site over years. First, our results show that Hg concentrations above the toxicity threshold (i.e. 5 µ g g – 1 dry weight in feathers) were observed in variable proportions according to species (from 2% of northern fulmars to 37% of Brünnich's guillemots). Second, individua ls with high fidelity to a wintering ground had more similar Hg concentrations among years compared to individuals with low fidelity, suggesting an effect of their migratory strategy on Hg contamination. Further, we found that the directional change in wintering areas among years influenced seabird Hg contamination, highlighting an additional effect of seabirds' winter distribution. More specifically, individuals migrating to the northwest direction of a previous wintering ground tended to be more contaminated compared those moving to eastern directions. These results confirm spatial differences in Hg concentration throughout the North Atlantic – Arctic and an east-west gradient increase in Hg concentrations. Verifying this trend will require more large-scale ecotoxicological studies at smaller spatial resolution.


Association rule mining is a computationally expensive task. Despite the huge processing cost, it has gained tremendous popularity due to the usefulness of association rules. Several efficient algorithms can be found in the literature. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state‐of‐the‐art algorithms for association rule mining, specially when the data sets used for rule mining are not static. Addition of new data to a data set may lead to additional rules or to the modification of existing rules. Finding the association rules from the whole data set may lead to significant waste of time if the process has started from the scratch. Several algorithms have been evolved to attend this important issue of the association rule mining problem. This paper analyzes some of them to tackle the incremental association rule mining problem. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


The collection of Linyphiidae of the Plant Protection Research Institute, Pretoria is studied. It contains 21 species, 9 of which are new to science: Ceratinopsis dippenaari, Erigone irrita, Pelecopsis intricata, Pelecopsis janus, Pelecopsis medusoides, Toschia minuta, Typhistes gloriosus, Meioneta natalensis and Metaleptyphantes familiaris. The number of species of Linyphiidae known from South Africa is increased from I I to 29.


University of AthensThe paper pursues two goals. First, it motivates a particular view of the Survive principle. Concretely, it is suggested to interpret the Survive principle as the syntactic instance of a more general push-up mechanism that is responsible for triggering movement induced by type incompatibility on the semantic side. Second, I identify a particular set of properties that the Survive analysis predicts for configurations involving multiple covert movements. These diagnostics, which help to discriminate between survive and Attract based models of dislocation, are argued to be manifest in scope restrictions on double object constructions and inverse linking. The critical factor setting apart the two models consists in the observation that only the Survive principle is able to express ordering restrictions between different types of movements (Case driven movement vs. QR) in a natural way. The resulting analysis also supports the phonological theory of QR.1. IntroductionTraditional historical phonology distinguishes between


The article discusses messianic tension that developed in the Hasidic court of Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira (1871 – 1937), the Munkaczer Rebbe. In his lifetime, Shapira was the leader of radical ultra-Orthodoxy, and he completely rejected modernity, especially modern Jewish politics. Therefore, the Rebbe was one of the greatest opponents to Zionism within Orthodox circles. He also opposed the modernization of Jewish education. The messianic tension that started in the period following the First World War and remained for the rest of his life, included eschatological calculations; sermons of a supernatural nature intended to expedite the End of Days; a visit to the Land of Israel during which Shapira hoped to crown the King Messiah (and which ended in failure and disgrace); and a fierce and public dispute with the Gerrer Rebbe, Avraham Mordechai Alter, which I believe can also be attributed to tension regarding the identification of the messiah. Analyzing messianic tension in the Munkacz Hasidic court can shade light into a wider phenomenon of messianic expectations in Jewish Orthodoxy prior to the Second World War.


Ovarian cancer is the second most common gynaecologic malignancy and the leading cause of death from gynaecologic cancer. Only one fifth of women present with an early stage (stages I or II) of the disease, whereas the remainder have an advanced stage (stages HI or IV) of the disease at the time of diagnosis. Although a significant improvement in response rate has occurred with the advent of platinum or Taxol based chemotherapy, there has not been a marked improvement in survival. These therapies often fail because tumour cells acquire resistance to therapy through mutation: and altered expression of cellular genes. The aim of this project was to investigate a radiation treatment regime that could overcome the clinical problem of radioresistance. Recently, it has been shown in cell survival studies that low doses of radiation (less than 100cGy) induce an initial phase of hypersensitivity (HRS) to radiation in vitro. This HRS is most pronounced in radioresistant cells.
A treatment regime involving 0.5 Gy radiation dose given 4 times with 8 hour intervals between doses, delivered alone and in combination with the chemotherapeutic agent Taxotere was effective in both radiosensitive (BO-!) and radioresistant (SW626) cell lines. This low dose fractionated treatment (LDFRT) was effective in reducing cellular surviving fractions of these cell lines irrespective of the cellularp53 status. The molecular mechanism for LDFRT mediated sensitisation was
investigated through the use of a protein DNA array. It was observed that an estrogen response element (ERE) and one of its target genes, Lipocalin 2, which is known to be involved in the growth and differentiation of cells, were not induced as a result of LDFRT, but induction was observed after treatment with a single dose of 2 Gy radiation. This observation indicates a possible molecular mechanism whereby LDFRT is more effective than single dose radiation in overcoming radioresistance. This project potentially represents a major paradigm shift in radiation delivery, which could significantly impact on future treatment strategies for ovarian and other cancers.


Evaluating the relation between evidence and theory should be a central activity for science learners. Evaluation comprises both hypothetico-deductive analysis, where theory precedes evidence, and inductive synthesis, where theory emerges from evidence. There is mounting evidence that induction is an especially good way to help learners grasp the deep structure (i.e., underlying principles) of phenomena. However, compared to the clear falsification logic of hypothetico-deductive analysis, a major challenge for induction is structuring the process to be systematic and effective. To address this challenge, we draw on Sir Francis Bacon's original treatise on inductive science. In a pair of experiments, college students used a computer simulation to learn about Faraday's law. In the inductive conditions, students sought a general explanation for several cases organized according to Bacon's tenets. In contrast, other students used a more hypothetico-deductive approach of sequentially testing (and revising) their hypotheses using the simulation. The inductive activity led to superior learning of a target principle measured by in-task explanations and posttests of near transfer and mathematical understanding. The results provide two important pieces of information. The first is that inductive activities organized by Bacon's tenets help students find the deep structure of empirical phenomena. The second is that, without an inductive "push," students tend to treat instances separately and fail to search for their underlying commonalities. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 58–83, 2015


This section features: (I) reactions of readers to articles and reviews published in the Journal and the replies of authors to whom the comments are addressed (if forthcoming) and (2) viewpoints and opinions expressed in the form of a report, commentary, or interview on issues or topics of current interest.


Title of dissertation: RADIO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN HETEROGENEOUS CELLULAR NETWORKS Doohyun Sung, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor John S. Baras Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets) have been considered as one of enabling technologies not only to increase the cell coverage and capacity, but to improve the user experience. In this dissertation, we address two research challenges in HetNets: one is the cross-tier interference problem where cell range expansion (CRE) is applied for user offloading in cell association so that pico mobile stations located in expanded range (ER-PMSs), which are connected to macrocells unless CRE is enabled, are severely interfered. The other is the load-aware cell association which tries to overcome the drawback of the received signal strength-based cell association including CRE, i.e., the degradation of network performance by user load imbalance. In the first part, we present the frequency-domain transmit power reduction scheme for the cross-tier interference mitigation. Inspired by the fact that a macrocell accommodates more users than its underlaid picocells, we focus on minimizing the macrocell's performance degradation while improving the throughput of ERPMSs by the transmit power reduction. Due to the discreteness of frequency resource block scheduling, we also propose a greedy-based heuristic algorithm to solve the binary integer programming problem. In the following part, we present a different approach for the cross-tier interference mitigation, which is the time-domain transmit power nulling scheme utilizing the almost blank subframes (ABSs) in 3GPP standards. We turn our attention to a network-wide performance enhancement through configuring a certain number of ABSs while improving the performance of ER-PMSs as in the first part. A new scheduling policy for pico mobile stations is proposed and the optimal ER-PMS scheduling onto ABSs/non-ABSs is solved by decomposing the problem into multiple independent problems for pico base stations. In the last part, we study the load-aware cell association problem. Due to the combinatorial nature of the cell association problem and the cross-tier interference between macrocells and picocells, we propose an online heuristic algorithm where the cell association and the number of ABSs for cross-tier interference mitigation are jointly optimized. Through approximation of the required condition for load balancing and ABS control from the network-wide utility point of view, the proposed online algorithm not only requires simple feedback messages, but also be applicable to any state of cell association/ABSs in HetNets. RADIO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN HETEROGENEOUS CELLULAR NETWORKS


Bio: Professor Grama's research interests span the areas of parallel and distributed computing architectures, algorithms, and applications. His work on distributed infrastructure deals with development of software support for dynamic clustered and multiclustered environments. More recent work has focused on resource location and allocation mechanisms in peer-to-peer networks. His research on applications has focused on particle dynamics methods, their applications to dense linear system solvers, and fast algorithms for data compression and analysis. Professor Grama has authored several papers and co-authored a text book Introduction to Parallel Computing: Design and Analysis of Algorithms with Vipin Kumar, Anshul Gupta, and George Karypis. He is a member of American Association for Advancement of Sciences and Sigma Xi. Abstract: The move towards exascale computing platforms (capable of 10^18 floating point operations) poses tremendous challenges, while presenting opportunities for foundational advances in a variety of application domains. In this talk, I will describe various technical issues that must be overcome to realize the potential of exascale computing platforms. It is widely believed that hardware underlying these platforms will have upwards of 10^7 computing cores, is likely to integrate SIMD (GPU)/FPGA coprocessors, have high latency interconnects (w.r.t. CPU clock), and is unlikely to have significantly higher RAM/core than today's HPC platforms. Issues of energy efficiency (watts/GFLOP) and fault tolerance/relience (MTBF at high component count) are prime. This is in addition to more traditional challenges associated with memory/ storage bandwidth and capacity, latency tolerance, and concurrency at the extreme, which are all exacerbated by orders of magnitude. Exascale computing algorithms may differ significantly from serial counterparts in being sub-optimal in terms of operation counts, but be tolerant to high latencies and relaxed synchronization. Proving stability and performance of these algorithms at scale is likely to emerge as an issue. Implementations of these algorithms on heterogeneous platforms will require a hierarchical design paradigm-leveraging intra-node and inter-node concurrency through potentially different programming models. Finally, the success of these platforms will be determined by the new science and applications it enables. I will conclude with a brief discussion of various consortia and organizations focused on exascale computing related activities.


The ongoing shortage of pharmaceutical drugs critically threatens public health. With increasing industry consolidation, operational disruptions at a firm can lead to a nationwide shortage of life-saving drugs. In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandated all manufacturers to report any manufacturing interruption that can potentially cause shortages. The goal of the mandate was to mitigate drug shortages by enhancing operational transparency in the pharmaceutical industry. Subsequently, other countries such as Canada have also begun mandating reporting of interruptions to alleviate drug shortages. We leverage the policy changes in the United States and Canada to understand the impact of mandated reporting induced operational transparency on alleviating the extent of drug shortages. Using the data on time-to-recovery for individual drug-shortage incident and annual-days-of-shortage for each drug, we find that the new policy alleviates drug shortages, but its effectiveness is contingent upon the prevailing level of competition in the product category. Although the intervention is not as impactful under a monopoly, the mandate is most effective under a duopoly, and its impact wanes as competition intensifies. In the absence of the mandate-induced transparency, competition does not necessarily alleviate shortages, but with the regulation, competition can relieve drug shortages. Our results potentially offer healthcare providers and policymakers the impetus to alleviate drug shortages by mandating interruption reporting and improving operational transparency. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management.


Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a fixture on the agendas of corporate boards in much the same way as environmental issues did a decade or so ago. To what extent social responsibilities should be made legally enforceable remains a matter of some fierce debate. There are already many laws in Australia that bind corporations in respect of such social issues as occupational health and safety, labour standards, privacy, non-discrimination and environmental protection. But should there be more specific human rights coverage, especially in respect of off-shore corporate activities in developing countries where there are well-documented examples of corporate abuse - or corporate complicity in host-state abuses - of rights to life, protection from physical harm, trade union membership, labour standards and workplace conditions, and others? The United Nation's Draft Human Rights Norms for Corporations seeks to impose obligations on states to ensure that corporations within their jurisdiction (including extra-territorial) abide by certain minimum human rights standards. Many (but not all) corporations are opposed to the idea and modus operandi of the Norms, as are many (but not all) governments, including Australia's. In response to these concerns, the United Nations Secretary-General has appointed a Special Representative to review the Norms, which review is currently underway. This article analyses the debate over the Norms, focusing on the various reasons advanced by both sides, their legal implications, and the likely future of the Norms within the context of the developing notion of CSR, internationally and in Australia.


We report on the experimental results of simple auctions with (i) a median-bid pricing rule and (ii) nonbinding bids (winning bids can be withdrawn)--the two central pillars of the competitive bidding program designed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Comparisons between the performance of the CMS auction and the performance of the excluded-bid auction reveal the problematic nature of the CMS auction. The CMS auction fails to generate competitive prices of goods and fails to satisfy demand. In all proposed efficiency measures, we find the excluded-bid auction significantly outperforms the CMS auction. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.


The return of Hong Kong to China in July 1997 has the potential to benefit China's rapidly expanding economy. China's handling of the transition will have enormous implications for her international standing. This is the first study to analyse the serious problems and real opportunities that the return of the colony poses to China's international status. Examining the relationships between Greater China, Hong Kong and the West, Hong Kong: China's Challenge explores the challenges that Chinese policy makers face up to 1997 and beyond: the clash of political cultures; handling problematic negotiations; dealing with conflicting economic interests. The book concludes by suggesting that a laissez faire approach to the lucrative Hong Kong markets will ensure that China harnesses the full political and economic benefits of sovereignty over the colony.


Abstract Facies tracts, sediment types, stacking patterns, and diagenetic histories of Holocene sabkhas of Qatar provide compelling analogues for the interpretation of ancient, carbonate-evaporite sequences of the Arabian Plate. The use of modern analogues to aid in the interpretation of geological and engineering data is well established in the petroleum industry. Comparison of sabkhas from different physiographic regions of Qatar that formed during the latest Holocene cycle of sea level rises reveals new insights into the characterization of ancient rocks. These observations provide the basis for a revision of the definition of facies tracts described in the geological literature as sabkhas. This study reports on a country-wide study of the sedimentation history of coastal areas, based on extensive field mapping, geotechnical studies, age dating and geochemistry. Data is integrated in ArcGIS, a relational database. The results are equally valuable in conservation, environmental and geotechnical studies and archaeological research and teaching. Coastal areas of Qatar are marked by extremely low relief, with the result that high-frequency oscillations in sea level create offsets in facies tracts. Age dating reveals that inland sabkhas are relicts of a high stand in sea level approximately 4000-6000 years ago. These areas are presently subaerially exposed and eroding. Extensive pedogenic modification of marine sediments (burrowing, infiltration, micrite precipitation) creates characteristic textures. Groundwater modification includes extensive precipitation of CaSO4, halite,lime micrite, and dolomite. The variability observed in Qatar sabkhas alters the way in which a common modern analogue is applied to the interpretation of subsurface data. These observations warrant revision of the definition of a sabkha. We propose that sabkhas are normal, coastal sediments, modified by near-surface groundwater saturated in CaSO4. A sabkha is a diagenetic overprint, not a depositional system. This proposed model helps aid in recognition of ancient sabkhas.


A ferrito-pearlitic steel, elaborated by foundry with a cylindrical shape has been mechanically studied in compression and hardness in a first part of the present work. In this second part the equivalent samples were tested in corrosion in a sulphuric acid solution by varying both the initial deformation rate and the cutting orientation with respect to the sample axis. Stern-Geary linear polarizations were successively run during half an hour of immersion with recording of open circuit potential and polarization resistance, while cyclic polarizations were performed between the cathodic domain and the anodic solventÂ's wall. No systematic differences were noted on the cyclic polarization curves between the values, obtained for the different deformation rates and orientations, of the various parameters describing the corrosion state changes (active i'® passive and passive i'® active), although that some tendencies were seen. In contrast the linear polarization runs showed that the Rp value more clearly depends on both the hardening amount and the surface orientation. It was notably found again that the polarization resistance decreases, and the deduced corrosion rate increases, when the plastic relative deformation is higher, and also, by combining the present results with previous ones, that there is possibly a continuity of evolution of the parallel/perpendicular Rp order from the negative deformations in compression to the positive deformations in traction.


This paper examines the representation of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath in Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, the book of bones (2006). It aims in particular to explore the different ways in which the narrative devices of structure and perspective are used to convey trauma to the reader, thus enabling them to bear witness to it. This paper argues that these narrative devices are used to provide partial insight into the trauma of the genocide and/or to produce empathy or distance between readers and the victims, perpetrators and survivors of the genocide. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the novel advances the human dimension of the genocide. This will shift both victims and perpetrators out of the domain of statistics and evoke emotional engagement from readers. The paper argues for the importance of narrative in bearing witness to trauma, particularly due to its unique ability to forge an emotional connection between reader and character.


A one-dimensional model that is able to store the stratigraphy emplaced by a prograding delta is validated against experimental results. The laboratory experiment describes the migration of a Gilbert delta on a sloping basement into standing water, i.e., a condition in which the stratigraphy emplaced by the delta front is entirely stored in the deposit. The migration of the delta front and the deposition on the delta top are modeled with total and grain-size-based mass conservation models. The vertical sorting on the delta front is modeled with a lee-face-sorting model as a function of the grain size distribution of the sediment deposited at the brinkpoint, i.e., at the downstream end of the delta top. Notwithstanding the errors associated with the grain-size-specific bedload transport formulation, the comparison between numerical and experimental results shows that the model is able to reasonably describe the progradation of the delta front, the frictional resistances on the delta top, and the overall grain size distribution of the delta top and delta front deposits. Further validation of the model in the case of variable base level is currently in progress to allow for future studies, at field and laboratory scale, on how the delta stratigraphy is affected by different changes of relative base level.


Managing certain by-products of the nuclear fuel cycle, such as the radioactive isotopes of caesium: 134Cs, 135Cs and 137Cs is challenging due to their environmental mobility and radioactivity. While a great many materials can isolate Cs+ ions from neutral or basic aqueous solutions via ion exchange, few of these, with the exception of ammonium phosphomolybdate (AMP), function effectively in acidic media. The use of AMP, and its porous composite in polyacrylonitrile (PAN) for management of Cs radioisotopes in various nuclear wastes have been known for decades and are well studied, yet the effects of radiation on the physiochemical properties of such composites have only received limited attention to date. In a previous publication, we demonstrated that a 100 kGy gamma irradiation dose has negligible effect on the ion exchange performance of AMP and AMP–PAN with respect to capacity or kinetics under the Cs+ concentrations and acidity found in spent nuclear fuel (SNF) recycling. As a continuation of this prior study, in this publication we explore the effects of gamma irradiation on the physiochemical properties of AMP and AMP–PAN using a range of characterisation methods. The effects of the same gamma dose on the oxidation state of Mo in AMP and AMP–PAN, the thermal degradation of both AMP and AMP–PAN, combined with a first study into the high-temperature degradation AMP, are reported. The implications of irradiation, its possible mechanism, the conditions present in SNF recycling, and for the end-of-life disposal or recycling of these materials are also discussed.


In Pakistan, the main aim of teaching mathematics as a compulsory subject at school level is to prepare such students who may survive in information and technological society. By applying mathematics students can check the reality of the things by themselves and gain confidence for future. With the changing scenario, teaching with traditional methods is losing its credibility. New innovations are empowering teaching methods and are producing better results. For the present study, two classes of grade 8 students were selected and named: experimental group and control group. Experimental group was taught through connecting the present situation with the previous knowledge in mathematics, while control group was taught with traditional method. Pretest-posttest method was used. Results were analyzed by applying z-test. On the pretest both the groups were equal in performance. After pre test, experimental group was taught by the researcher while control group was taught by the equally qualified teacher. The experiment duration was eight weeks and on post-test it was found that the experimental group performs better as compared to control group.


In their desperate quest for conception, thousands of infertile couples from around the world travel to the global in vitro fertilization (IVF) hub of Dubai. In Cosmopolitan Conceptions Marcia C. Inhorn highlights the stories of 220 "reprotravelers" from fifty countries who sought treatment at a "cosmopolitan" IVF clinic in Dubai. These couples cannot find safe, affordable, legal, and effective IVF services in their home countries, and their stories offer a window into the world of infertility—a world that is replete with pain, fear, danger, frustration, and financial burden. These hardships dispel any notion that traveling for IVF treatment is reproductive tourism. The magnitude of reprotravel to Dubai, Inhorn contends, reflects the failure of countries to meet their citizens' reproductive needs, which suggests the necessity of creating new forms of activism that advocate for developing alternate pathways to parenthood, reducing preventable forms of infertility, supporting the infertile, and making safe and low-cost IVF available worldwide.


The active layer is the most dynamic and sensitive subsurface component of the permafrost environment. The thickness of the active layer is expected to increase in a warmer climate. It has been widely documented that both the annual air temperature and permafrost temperatures are increasing. However, in many cases it does not appear to be true that the thickness of the active layer has increased substantially over the past decade. Part of this situation can be explained by short observational records and natural variability. Recorded air temperature observations exist for over 100 years, while active-layer thickness observations have only been recorded continuously over the past 15-20 years. After a few years of observations it was realized that another process was possibly masking the process of deeper active layer thaw. A new protocol strategy for measuring active-layer thickness was initiated by several research groups in northern Alaska. It quickly became clear that there was subsidence (thaw settlement) in the active layer and that this occurs in response to thawing of ice-rich soils at the base of the active layer or uppermost permafrost. The relevant questions of interest are: what is the typical annual amount of subsidence that can be expected, how long can this process of subsidence be sustained and what is the significance of this process? Increased active-layer thickness has hydrologic implications, as it increases subsurface storage and will both prolong drainage and freezing in the fall. If subsidence occurs during the thawing process, excess water is released for runoff and evapotranspiration. Long-term effects could involve changes in soil moisture, vegetation, and geomorphic processes. In low-lying coastal areas, the rate of subsidence could hypothetically eclipse sea level rise; and these areas could become inundated sooner than expected and become more susceptible to storm surges. All of this depends upon the distribution, horizontally and vertically, of the ice-rich layer at the base of the active layer or at the permafrost table. Presently, we have only a qualitative understanding of the distribution of this ice-rich layer and a handful of studies that report on the magnitude of subsidence at some specific locations. For this reason, the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) program, beginning in 2004, has made subsidence measurements a priority. At the transition from the Brooks Range to the northern foothills in Alaska, Overduin and Kane (2006) monitored subsidence in the area of some frost boils between 2 and 5 cm/yr over a three year study period. The CALM programs pilot subsidence studies were also made in northern Alaska. Initial results, reported by Streletskiy et al. (2008), showed that subsidence averaging 12 and 13 cm occurred in 1 ha areas of the coastal plain and Brooks Range foothills, respectively, over a five year period between 2001 and 2006. If this magnitude of subsidence is sustained (given an appropriate climatic trend and ice-rich ground) over a few decades, it will significantly impact how the region looks and behaves.


The cytokine transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) regulates cell growth and differentiation by controlling gene expression. This receptor-to-nucleus signaling pathway is facilitated by a family of Smad proteins that moves from the cytoplasm into the nucleus to affect transcription. Kim et al. report that a nuclear protein called Smad interacting protein 1 (SNIP1) suppresses TGF-β signaling by binding to Smad4, an essential mediator of TGF-β signaling responses. This interaction requires the amino terminus of SNIP1, which also harbors a nuclear localization signal. Binding to SNIP1 competes with Smad4 association with the transcriptional coactivator CBP/p300. The authors propose that TGF-β signaling is thus inhibited when Smad4 is sequestered by SNIP1. Kim, R.H., Wang, D., Tsang, M., Martin, J., Huff, C., de Caestecker, M.P., Parks, W.P., Meng, X., Lechleider, R.J., Wang, T., and Roberts, A.B. (2000) A novel Smad nuclear interacting protein, SNIP1, suppresses p300-dependent TGF-β signal transduction. Genes Dev. 14: 1605-1616. [Abstract] [Full Text]


Abstract American Girl markets dolls and books toward girls. Their original product line, which features historical characters, mobilizes history to teach moral lessons. This paper breaks down these morals to search for hegemony, a discourse that marginalizes minority readers. In this quest to uncover hegemony, the paper deals with issues of narrative perspective and socialization. Regarding narrative perspective, the paper asks, "Whom do these books deem normal in America? Whom do these books deem other in America?" Regarding socialization issues, this paper asks, "What value and behaviors do these books condone as part of acceptable American Girlhood? What values and behaviors are deemed totally aberrant and unacceptable?" In establishing normative perspectives and trajectories, the books raise issues about race, socioeconomic class, gender roles, religious identities, and nationalism. Given this particular line of questioning, this paper falls under the contemporary historical pursuit to problematize the very idea of historical accuracy, to uncover excluded voices from the traditional canon. The paper concludes that American Girl use history to perpetuate hegemony over young women in the United States.


"They sniffed and they snuffled, they bustled around, and they saw WHAT was making the terrible sound." Scarface Claw, the biggest cat in the neighbourhood, is out exploring when he gets stuck up a tree. His yowling is terrible - so terrible that it draws Hairy Maclary and all his friends from Donaldson's Dairy to investigate.


The 2008 financial crisis brought increased scrutiny to the ways in which the directors of the world's major financial institutions handle their duties and how they impact investors, shareholders and consumers. In this comprehensive Handbook, leading scholars from around the world explore the nature of the relationship between a company and its directors, assessing issues such as how duties are discharged, what liabilities may arise and whose interests directors should consider before embarking on commercial ventures. The book begins with chapters that explore the range of company law developments in several common law countries, with further chapters examining the law in several civil law jurisdictions. The book then looks beyond company law to issues such as the role of directors in fostering corporate social responsibility and directors' duties to consumers. The final chapters consider directors' duties in times of financial turmoil. A comprehensive and ground-breaking book of original scholarly research, the Handbook will be a valuable contribution to the libraries of company law scholars and students, as well as to business people with a professional interest in the topic.


There is a constant dissent between exclusivist public reason liberals and their inclusivist religious critics concerning the question whether religious arguments can figure into the public justification of state action.
Firstly, I claim that the stability of this dissent is best explained as a conflict between an exclusivist third-personal account of public justification which demands restraint, and an inclusivist first-personal account which rejects restraint.
Secondly, I argue that both conceptions are deficient because they cannot accommodate the valid intuitions of their opponents. They either imply a violation of the integrity of religious citizens or they give room for cases where a religious majority can impose a political norm on a minority without having given this minority a reason to comply with the norm.
Finally, I defend an inclusivist model of public reason liberalism which relies on a second-personal conception of public justification. I claim that this model breaks the impasse in favor of inclusivism because religious arguments can play a role in public justification, but they can never justify state action on their own in a plural society. Thus, the problematic cases that motivate exclusivism are excluded without having introduced a principle of restraint which violates the religious integrity of citizens.


Despite recent interest in studying information system habits, our understanding of how these habits develop and operate in an organizational context is still limited. Within organizations, IS habits may develop over long periods of time and are typically embedded within larger, frequently practiced, higher-level work routines or task sequences. When new systems are introduced for the purpose of at least partially replacing incumbent systems, existing IS habits embedded in these routines may inhibit adoption and use of the new systems. Therefore, understanding how work-related IS habits form, how they enable and inhibit behavior, and how they can be disrupted or encouraged requires that we examine them within the context of organizational and individual level work routines. The current study integrates psychology and organizational behavior literature on cognitive scripts and work routines to examine IS habits as they occur embedded within larger, more complex task sequences. The objective of the paper is to contribute to the IS habit literature by (1) situating IS habits within the context of their associated work routines and task sequences, and (2) providing a theoretical understanding of how incumbent system habits can be disrupted, and how development of new system habits can be encouraged, within this context. We draw from extant research in psychology, organizational behavior, and consumer behavior to offer propositions about context-focused organizational interventions to break, or otherwise discourage, the continued performance of incumbent system habits and to encourage the development of new system habits. Specifically, our theoretical development includes script disruption techniques, training-in-context, and performance goal suspension as organizational interventions that disrupt incumbent system habits. We further theorize how stabilizing contextual variables associated with modified work routines can facilitate the development of new system habits. The paper concludes by discussing the importance of combining intervention strategies to successfully disrupt incumbent system habits and encourage development of new system habits and thus facilitate adoption of new systems.


The project, commissioned by Ort, Birmingham, explores geriatric vampirism. Austerity measures have indebted the young and the old through the privatisation of education and health. These age groups have been thrown into a relationship of mutual dependency and conflicting interests.

As well as a new film, the exhibition featured six videos that have been outsourced using the services of sellers on the website Fiverr, 'a place for people to share things they're willing to do for $5'. Interrogating the means of production and the meaning of work under post-Fordism, the Suck the Living Labour extends Marx's metaphor, comparing Capital to a vampiric force that thirsts for infinite surplus.


An important topic addressed by the wireless sensor networks community over the last several years is the in-net work data aggregation. It is significant as well as a challenging issue to provide reliable data aggregation scheme while preserving data privacy. However, in WSNs, achieving ideal data accuracy is complicated due to collision, heavy network traffic, processing delays and/or several attacks. The problem of gathering accurate integrated data will be further intensified if the environment is adverse. Hence how to attain data privacy and perfect data accuracy are two major challenges for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks. To address this problem, we propose in this paper a new privacy preserving data aggregation scheme. We present REBIVE (REliaBle prIVate data aggregation scheme). In REBIVE the data accuracy maintenance and data privacy protection mechanisms work cooperatively. Different from past research, our proposed solution have the following features: providing privacy preservation technique for individual sensor data and aggregated sensor data; maintaining perfect data accuracy for realistic environments; being highly efficient; and being robust to popular attacks launched in WSNs.


Inter-domain traffic engineering is an important aspect of network operation both technically and economically. Traffic engineering the outbound direction is less problematic as routers under the control of the network operator are responsible for the way traffic leaves the network. The inbound direction is considerably harder as the way traffic enters a network is based on routing decisions in other networks. There are very few mechanisms available today that facilitate inter-domain inbound traffic engineering, such as prefix deaggregation, AS path prepending and systems based on BGP communities. These mechanisms have severe drawbacks such as an increase of the size of global routing table or providing only coarse-grained control. In this paper we propose and evaluate an alternative mechanism that does not increase the size of the global routing table, is easy to configure through a simple numeric value and provides a finer-grained control compared to existing mechanisms that also do not add additional prefixes to the global routing table.


This research explores the content of group supervision sessions for Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSAs) to further understand 'what is really going on'. There has recently been a re-emergence of interest in group supervision and Educational Psychologists are increasingly involved in this work (Dunsmuir, Lang and Leadbetter, 2015, p.9). There is currently a paucity of research in the UK that has directly explored the content of group supervision sessions; research to date has tended to survey supervisory practice or focus on eliciting the views of participants about supervision through the use of questionnaires and focus groups. This research addresses this gap and begins a process of exploration into what really happens within group supervision sessions. Within the local authority in which this research was carried out, group supervision is regularly provided to ELSAs by Educational Psychologists (EPs). The core aims are to support ELSAs with their professional development and to ensure that they practice safely and appropriately. This research involved the recording and subsequent transcription of three group supervision sessions. Themes within the data were then identified using an inductive approach to thematic analysis. This allowed for a rich and complex picture to emerge allowing an insight into what was actually happening within the group supervision sessions. Eleven main themes and forty-six sub-themes were identified whilst exploring the contributions of both the ELSAs and the EPs. The identified themes were found to be consistent with Hawkins and Shohet's (2012) functions of supervision which is a commonly used framework for supervision within educational psychology in the UK (Dunsmuir et al., 2015, p.9). The findings were then considered in the light of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) along with an approach to support this process – ORID (Marsick and Maltbia, 2009) and a psychodynamic understanding about group processes (Bion, 1961). The research suggested that within the group supervision sessions ELSAs were exploring their skills, knowledge and understanding of the casework in which they were involved along with experiencing a degree of emotional support. It was also evident that both the ELSAs and the EPs were exercising an element of 'quality control' within their work. The research also highlighted the need for a greater attention to group processes, particularly those of an unconscious nature, in order to develop the supervision that ELSAs receive. It is suggested that a psychodynamic perspective may be helpful in achieving this goal.


Chloride flux, a surrogate for heat flow, was determined for the four rivers draining Yellowstone National Park (the Park) for the water years (October 1 through September 30) 1983 through 2003, with the exception of 1995 and 1996. The chloride emitted by the geothermal system underlying Yellowstone Park is designated "thermal chloride," and it constitutes 94 percent of the total chloride exiting the Park. The remainder of the chloride is contributed by rainfall, rock weathering, and a minor amount due to human impact. Of this 94 percent, the Fall, Madison, Snake, and Yellowstone Rivers have been determined to discharge 93 percent of the chloride leaving the Park; the remaining 7 percent exits along the west boundary into the Henrys Fork River. The chloride flux for each river varied seasonally and annually, and we postulate that it depended primarily on the flow of hot springs. This flow, in turn, depended on the height of the local water table, which increased during spring runoff and varied annually in synchronism with changes in precipitation. The sum of the annual chloride fluxes for the four rivers varies as much as 20 percent year-to-year. This sum, when corrected for the climatic factors, shows a decline of 10 percent during the past 20 years. A lengthening in the period between eruptions of Old Faithful Geyser has also been observed. We believe that these changes may be related to deflation of the Yellowstone caldera documented by changes in ground levels surrounding Yellowstone Lake.


Parallel corpora are usually a collection of documents which are translations of each other. To be useful in NLP applications such as word alignment or machine translation, they first have to be aligned at the sentence level. This paper is a user study briefly reviewing several sentence aligners and evaluating them based on the performance achieved by the SMT systems trained on their output. We conducted experiments on two language pairs and showed that using a more advanced sentence alignment algorithm may yield gains of 0.5 to 1 BLEU points.


The aim of the project was to synthesize linear anthrasteroid analogues of testosterone, 19-nortestosterone and estradiol. A total synthesis of (+/-)-7,11-cyclo-8,9-seco-19-nor-testosterone, (+/-)-7,11-cyclo-8,9-secoestradiol and (+/-)-1beta-t-butoxy-9a,11abeta-dimethyl-1,2,3, 3aalpha, 4, 4aalpha, 5,8,9, 9a,10,10alphabeta,11,11a-tetradecahydro-7-cyclopent[b]anthrac-enone was accomplished. The synthesis presented provides a short, direct route to linear anthrasteroid analogues. This compares favourably with the synthesis reported by S. Aoyama and K. Sasaki, which involves complex transformations of steroids.The synthetic route involved the synthesis of the trans-bicyclic hydrindan, (+/-)-1beta-t-butoxy-7abeta-methyl-3aalpha,4,7,7a-tetrahydro-5(6H)-indanone, using the synthetic pathway developed by Z.G. Hajos and D.R. Parrish. This intermediate was regiospecifically annulated to give the novel tricyclic enone, (+/-)-1beta-t-butoxy-9abeta-methyl-l,2,3,3aalpha,4,7,8,8abeta,9,9a-decahydro-6-benz[f]indenone via two different routes. Thestereochemistry of the new ring junction was elucidated by using H n.m.r. spectroscopy and the lanthanide shift reagent Eu(FOD)[3].Further regiospecific annulation of the tricyclic enone gave the novel linear tetracyclic compound, (+/-)-1beta-t-butoxy-lla-methyl-1,2,3,3abeta,4,4abeta,5,8,9,9abeta,10,10abeta,11,11a-tetradecahydro-7-cyclopent[b]anthracenone. The t-butyl group of this compound was removed to give (+/-)-7,11-cyclo-8,9-seco-19-nortestosterone, or the A-ring was aromatized and the t-butyl group cleaved to give (+/-)-7,11-cyclo-8,9-seco estradiol.The synthesis of linear anthrasteroid analogues of testosterone was accomplished by regiospecific methylation of the tricyclic enone to give the novel compound (+/-)-1betat-butoxy-7,9abeta-dimethyl-1,2,3,3a?,4,7,8,8abeta,9,9a-decahydro-6-benz[f]indenone. Regiospecific annulation of this compound gave a mixture of stereoisomers,(+/-)-1beta-t-butoxy-9abeta,11aB-dimethyl-1,2,3,3abeta,4,4a,5,8,9,9a,10,10abeta, 11, 11a-tetradecahydro-7-cyclopent[b]anthracenone and (+/-)-1beta-t-butoxy-9ad, 11abeta-di-methy 1-1,2,3,3aA, 4,4aA, 5,8,9,9a,10,10abeta,11, 11a-tetra-decahydro-7-cyclopent[b]anthracenone.


This paper present measurements performed in the lab where experimental setup of 48 fluorescent lamps powered by high-frequency ballasts. The frequency range of interest is above the traditional harmonic range from 2 kHz up to 150 kHz. In this frequency range the measurements distinguish between two distortions found; recurrent oscillations and remains from the switching at the active power factor correction circuit.


In a 2007 working paper, Alan Blinder assessed the offshorability of hundreds of U.S. occupations and estimated that between 22% and 29% of all U.S. jobs were potentially offshorable. This note reports the results of an exercise in which members of Harvard Business School's MBA Class of 2009 collectively attempted to replicate Blinder's study. Overall, the MBA students' assessments of offshorability matched Blinder's well. Across occupations, the correlation between Blinder's offshorability rating and the students' was 0.60. The students estimated that between 21% and 42% of U.S. jobs are potentially offshorable. Echoing Blinder, the student data suggested a positive correlation between offshorability and education. The student data also revealed a positive or inverted-U relationship between offshorability and wage level, where Blinder found no correlation. While Blinder found a slight wage penalty for the most offshorable jobs, the student data exhibited no evidence of wage depreciation from job contestability due to offshoring.


We present a numerical stable method to accurately solve band structures and the eigenvalues of a multilayer-basis photonic crystal cavity. We derive a set of band-edge equations to determine the band structures rather than use the cosine of the Bloch phase, which is traditionally used but may induce numerical instability. Moreover, two novel formulas are proposed to solve the eigenvalues for the cavity modes. The eigenvalues solved by the method are accurate without including the spurious solutions. Thus, it is not required to eliminate the spurious solutions from the results. Finally, numerical examples of binary and Fibonacci multilayers in each cell are studied to demonstrate that this method has better numerical stability in computing the band structure and cavity modes than traditional methods.


Previous research has shown that women providing family care tend to decrease paid work. We take the opposite perspective and examine how current and previous family care tasks influence women's likelihood to (re-)enter employment or to increase working hours. Family care is defined as caring for an ill, disabled or frail elderly partner, parent, or other family member. Using German Socio-Economic Panel data, we apply Cox shared frailty regression modeling to analyze transitions (1) into paid work and (2) from part-time to full-time work among women aged 25–59. The results indicate that in the German policy context, part-time working women providing extensive family care have a lower propensity to increase working hours. When family care ends, the likelihood that part-time working women change to full-time does not increase. Homemaking women's likelihood of entering the workforce is not influenced by either current or previous family care tasks.


This paper aims to study the role of women in agricultural promotion and its effect on rural development. Research method in this study was based on a survey and the required information was collected through questionnaire from a sample of women especially rural women. The data were analyzed using Logit model. The results showed that women had a major role in farming including producion, conservation, and destructing. The results also showed that women had a great tendency for participating in extension classes to improve their knowledge for sustainable development. Considering the results, it was necessary to provide the life facilities and necessities, awareness women especially rural women with group media and organizing the promotional and educational classes for reaching the sustainable development.


Health insurance coverage in the years prior to retirement is particularly important because it protects the household from the financial risks of uninsurance as well as the health consequences of delaying care while uninsured. While results from the retirement "job lock" literature show that those who would lack coverage after retirement continue to work to maintain benefits, little work has explored the types of health insurance choices made by couples after retirement. It may be difficult for a married man to coordinate continuous coverage for a younger wife whose primary source of coverage has been from the husband, and thus households may pay more for non-group coverage or be exposed to the risks of uninsurance. This paper studies a panel of married couples from the 1992-2004 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to study the types of health insurance decisions households make around the time of retirement. Results indicate that households seem to do well at avoiding uninsurance at the time of retirement, but may make high cost choices in order to insure the wife. Men switch into Medicare or coverage from their wife at retirement if they lose their own coverage, but a large fraction of women take-up privately purchased coverage. In fact, the transition from husband's coverage to privately purchased coverage is twice as large in periods when the husband retires than otherwise. Transitions to uninsurance are lower in periods of retirement than at other times, suggesting that men continue to work if either spouse would lose coverage. Though less risky, insurance purchased in the non-group market is expensive relative to employer-sponsored coverage. Thus, married households may need to increase savings to pay for health insurance that bridges the gap until the wife can claim Medicare at age 65.


Diffusion model-based inverse problem solvers have shown impressive performance, but are limited in speed, mostly as they require reverse diffusion sampling starting from noise. Several recent works have tried to alleviate this problem by building a diffusion process, directly bridging the clean and the corrupted for specific inverse problems. In this paper, we first unify these existing works under the name Direct Diffusion Bridges (DDB), showing that while motivated by different theories, the resulting algorithms only differ in the choice of parameters. Then, we highlight a critical limitation of the current DDB framework, namely that it does not ensure data consistency. To address this problem, we propose a modified inference procedure that imposes data consistency without the need for fine-tuning. We term the resulting method data Consistent DDB (CDDB), which outperforms its inconsistent counterpart in terms of both perception and distortion metrics, thereby effectively pushing the Pareto-frontier toward the optimum. Our proposed method achieves state-of-the-art results on both evaluation criteria, showcasing its superiority over existing methods. Code is available at https://github.com/HJ-harry/CDDB


Understanding the evolutionary origins of segmented body plans in the metazoa has been a long-standing fascination for scientists. Competing hypotheses explaining the presence of distinct segmented taxa range from the suggestion that all segmentation in the metazoa is homologous to the proposal that segmentation arose independently many times, even within an individual clade or species. A major new source of information regarding the extent of homology vs. homoplasy of segmentation in recent years has been an examination of the extent to which molecular mechanisms underlying the segmentation process are conserved, the rationale being that a shared history will be apparent by the presence of common molecular components of a developmental program that give rise to a segmented body plan. There has been substantial progress recently in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the segmentation process in many groups, specifically within the three overtly segmented phyla: Annelida, Arthropoda and Chordata. This review will discuss what we currently know about the segmentation process in each group and how our understanding of the development of segmented structures in distinct taxa have influenced the hypotheses explaining the presence of a segmented body plan in the metazoa.


The retreats of Antarctica's ice masses during the Plio-Pleistocene were characterized by large-scale environmental changes at the continental margin. Increased melt water got in contact with seawater and build up particular conditions for a huge variety of chemical reactions. The precipitates of these reactions, within the sediment deposits, are reliable tools to reconstruct specific paleoenvironmental changes. Discrete horizons with high dolomite and calcite content (up to ~20 and ~30 % respectively) were detected in the AND-1B core from the ANDRILL McMurdo Sound Project. We measured the split core in the field during the austral summer 2006/2007 with a non-destructive AVAATECH XRF-Core Scanner. On discrete samples chemical analysis were carried out and the mineral composition was examined by X-ray diffraction measurements. At the depth of 162.71, 182.10, 224.59 and 292.15 mbsf these high dolomite values were found within the glacial to interglacial transition zones. Our hypothesis states that calcite and dolomite formation in the transition zones is possible under cold glaciomarine conditions with an increased melt-water runoff and a high amount of dissolved HCO3- in contact with Mg+ and Ca+ rich seawater at the grounding line region or in the sub-ice hydrological system. We also detected horizons containing other carbonates like ankerite (i.e. 143.23, 449.26 mbsf) and low Mg calcite that support this hypothesis. Whether in this environment the dolomite was (I) precipitated in the water column, or (II) in the pore water system where sub-ice freshwater was replaced and overlaid by heavier seawater during glacial to interglacial transitions, is under investigation. Anyhow, most of the dolomite formations in the AND-1B core could be related to shelf ice retreats and (bio?)geochemical processes at or close to the sediment surface.


The morphosyntax of negation in Berber is rich and complex, and appears to be the outcome of multiple processes that have taken place over different time-periods from prehistory to the present day. The most noteworthy issue is the tendency towards a redundant marking of negation, not only by means of discontinuous morphemes (circumfixes) but also through the use of special "negative verb stems" – a feature that is attested in nearly all of the Berber-speaking area, regardless of the type of negative affixes in use. In this paper, I attempt to single out the main processes that have led to the present stage, taking into account the etymologies of prefixal and suffixal negative morphemes, the origin of negative stems and the role of the so-called Jespersen's cycle in the evolution of Berber negation.


Sustained accretion of calcium carbonate (mostly by scleractinian corals) is fundamental for maintaining the structure and function of coral reef ecosystems, but may be greatly constrained by extreme and rapidly changing environmental conditions. Corals in the southern Persian Gulf already experience extreme temperature ranges (34C), chronic hypersalinity (>43 psu) and frequent light limitation (<100 μmol photons m-2 s-1). We compared annual rates of calcification for two of the most common massive coral species in the region (Platygyra daedalea and Cyphastrea microphthalma) along marked gradients in environmental conditions in the southern Persian Gulf and into the Oman Sea. Overall calcification rates were 32% higher in P. daedalea colonies (x = 1.103 g cm-2 y-1, n = 46) than in C. microphthalma (x = 0.835 g cm-2 y-1, n = 37), probably reflecting inter-specific differences in energy allocation and skeletal density. There was also considerable variation in calcification rates among individual colonies from the same locations that was unrelated to depth or photosymbiont type. However, most interestingly, P. daedalea and C. microphthalma exhibited contrasting trends in mean annual calcification rates across locations. For P. daedalea, calcification rates were lowest at Delma, where the minimum temperatures were lowest and salinity was highest, and increased across the southern Persian Gulf with increases in minimum temperatures and decreases in salinity. These data suggest that calcification rates of P. daedalea are most constrained by minimum temperatures, which is consistent with the strong relationship between annual calcification rates and minimum local temperatures recorded across the Indo-Pacific. Conversely, linear extension and calcification of C. microphthalma in the southern Persian Gulf was lowest at Ras Ghanada, where there was lowest light and highest maximum temperatures. These data reveal striking taxonomic differences in the specific environmental constraints on coral calcification, which will further reinforce changes in the structure of coral assemblages with ongoing global climate change.


We present a novel yet simple technique that mitigates the interference caused when multiple structured light depth cameras point at the same part of a scene. The technique is particularly useful for Kinect, where the structured light source is not modulated. Our technique requires only mechanical augmentation of the Kinect, without any need to modify the internal electronics, firmware or associated host software. It is therefore simple to replicate. We show qualitative and quantitative results highlighting the improvements made to interfering Kinect depth signals. The camera frame rate is not compromised, which is a problem in approaches that modulate the structured light source. Our technique is non-destructive and does not impact depth values or geometry. We discuss uses for our technique, in particular within instrumented rooms that require simultaneous use of multiple overlapping fixed Kinect cameras to support whole room interactions.


Paula Lambert is a godsend to cheese lovers everywhere. She so yearned for delicious cheese that she built her own factory, the Mozzarella Company, in Dallas, Texas. "The Cheese Lover's Cookbook and Guide" is her indispensable resource on buying, storing, cooking, and serving cheese, and even making your own cheese at home. In more than 150 recipes, Lambert presents a down-to-earth approach to cooking with many varieties, whether it's Gruyere, Camembert, or just tried-and-true Cheddar. Learn to put the cheeses you love into every meal, from appetizers like a Savory Herbed Cheesecake to such desserts as an Orange-Ricotta Almond Tart. With so many wonderful cheeses available, it can be difficult to choose among them. To help navigate this abundance of riches, "The Cheese Lover's Cookbook and Guide" contains descriptions of a hundred cheeses by taste, texture, country of origin, and type of milk used to make them, as well as suggestions on selecting cheeses and putting together a cheese course when entertaining. Reflecting various influences -- Southern, Mexican, Southwestern, and Italian -- "The Cheese Lover's Cookbook and Guide" is at once international and familiar, and always full of flavor. Because Lambert is a cheesemaker, she is not afraid to experiment in the kitchen, and she shares her delicious results. From the bold and unusual Artichoke, Spinach, and Goat Cheese Spring Rolls to the delicious and traditional Fettuccine ai Quattro Formaggi, cheese is the main focus in each of these artfully creative recipes. She also includes recipes for courageous and unintimidated cooks to make their own Creme Fraiche, Fresh Cream Cheese, Cottage Cheese, Mascarpone, Ricotta, Queso Blanco, and Aged Tomme at home. For home chefs and anyone interested in learning more about the delicious world of cheese, "The Cheese Lover's Cookbook and Guide" is ideal. Every cheese lover will be thrilled with the mouth-watering results.


Background: Doctors in rural and remote areas in eastern Indonesia, particularly North Maluku (northern part of the Moluccas Islands), are burdened with difficulties in their daily practice due to shortage of radiology or laboratory devices and other medical specialties. Travel distance and cost sometimes made referral to a better health facility impossible. They also have limited accessibility to live Continuing Medical Education (CME), due to relatively high travel cost and limited health professionals remaining while they are absent. However, in this challenging situation, they still obliged to deliver the most optimal medical services possible. In some ways, such setting is more challenging than working as a doctor in urban area. Method: This paper derived its data from scientific journal publications, newspaper and also direct interview. Results: Online CME may be a very promising method to empower doctors in rural and remote settings. More awareness to the significance of CME, especially, to rural and remote doctors is needed. Further advocacy and collaboration among stakeholders are needed to support this idea, which is relevant not only to rural and remote doctors in North Maluku, but also in other eastern parts, and perhaps in other remote areas in entire Indonesia. Conclusion: Online CME, as proven by evidence-based findings, will reduce professional isolation and equip them cognitively. This empowerment will ultimately benefit patients and, indirectly, other sectors as well.


[1] Clear-conservative satellite cloud detection algorithms overestimate cloud fraction (CF), the degree to which depends on instrument resolution and the spatial distribution of cloud area, with boundary layer cumulus carrying the largest overestimation. This is because in the standard method of computing CF, partially cloudy pixels contribute in the amount of the pixel's area rather than the true cloud area. Development of analytical and pattern recognition techniques to reduce overestimation has been limited by the lack of coincident long-term, large scale, and high-resolution satellite data sets. Such data sets are now available from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instruments onboard the satellite, Terra. These data sets are used to determine the resolution required to reduce the CF overestimation to ≤0.01 absolute CF using the standard, analytical, and pattern recognition techniques on perfect, clear-conservative cloud masks with future instrument design in mind; investigate the challenges of implementing these techniques on MISR's operational clear-conservative cloud mask; and demonstrate the impact of these techniques on a MISR-derived CF climatology similar to those used to evaluate climate models. Reducing the median CF bias to ≤0.01 requires resolutions of <45 m and ≤80 m for the standard and analytical techniques, respectively, while the pattern recognition technique has no resolution requirement up to a resolution of 1.2 km. When the pattern recognition technique is applied to 10-year, December, low cloud climatologies over the tropical Western Atlantic (10°N–20°N and 50°W–60°W) derived from MISR, the average CF reduces from 0.50 to 0.20. This is a large reduction in cloud fraction, particularly when considering the climate sensitivity to low clouds and the use of satellite derived CF climatologies for evaluation of climate model CF and radiative budgets.


Eighty years after the anti-Semitic racist legislation promulgated by Italian Fascism, this note presents the list of the people affected by the racist measures of 1938 at the University of Rome. As a result of many years of research in public and private archives and into University archival funds, hitherto unpublished names and categories are also included. Except from the students, this list currently represents the most precise picture of the expulsions at the University of Rome at official levels and reports the cases of – hitherto unreported – people who did not form part of official academic rolls. In addition to that, for the first time the list of people affected by the application of the anti-Semitic racist laws on an individual or family level because of the racial status of a parent or spouse is also reported here. This note ends with the brief profiles, for the most part unpublished, of the two people who were subsequently to be killed at Auschwitz, Armando Rignani and Otto Rosenthal.


In this article, a survey of several important equilibrium concepts for decentralized networks is presented. The term decentralized is used here to refer to scenarios where decisions (e.g., choosing a power allocation policy) are taken autonomously by devices interacting with each other (e.g., through mutual interference). The iterative long-term interaction is characterized by stable points of the wireless network called equilibria. The interest in these equilibria stems from the relevance of network stability and the fact that they can be achieved by letting radio devices to repeatedly interact over time. To achieve these equilibria, several learning techniques - the best response dynamics, fictitious play, smoothed fictitious play, reinforcement learning algorithms, and regret matching - are discussed in terms of information requirements and convergence properties. Most of the notions introduced here, for both equilibria and learning schemes, are illustrated by a simple case study, an interference channel with two transmitter-receiver pairs.


Economic evaluation of drugs is used in decision-making on medical care and public policy. Recently, real-world data (RWD) have been used in the analysis. In this study, we discuss the risk and benefits of using RWD for economic evaluation. We conducted a cost-outcome description with RWD from a nationwide registry providing information on hepatitis treatment in Japan and estimated the utility of the analysis. We evaluated the cost-outcome description of peginterferon plus ribavirin (PEG-IFN-α2b+RBV) treatment in hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected patients. Simulations were based on a Markov model. The cohorts were set using data from the registry and we assumed a societal perspective for the calculation of costs. The dose and drug cost were chosen based on the Japanese Guidelines for the Management of Hepatitis C Virus Infection or package inserts. Model details and parameters were as described in previous studies. The simulations were performed for a period of 10 years with no discount rate. We estimated 2.5 million JPY per Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) in 48-week PEG-IFN-α2b+RBV treatment for a period of 10 years. The results of this study are in agreement with previous HCV treatment economic evaluation studies in Japan. We analyzed the statistics of the HCV-infected patients at each disease stage using the data in our registry and calculated the costs. The results of this study more closely reflect a real-world clinical situation compared to the widely used randomized clinical trial method, which estimates clinical trial results and scenarios.


Unlike other books which take a descriptive approach to the subject, the book employees a step-by-step approach to the teaching of how to conduct, write up and present economics research. Conducting good research is critical to any student of economics. Writing good research papers is equally important--yet many students have not been given the proper tools to convey cogently the results of their research. A Beginner's Guide to Economic Research and Presentation is intended to address and redress this need. This book is literally a step-by-step approach to the first-time writing of an undergraduate or MBA level research paper in the field of economics. The primary audience for this book is those students who have conducted research or written a research paper. In particular, Writing Research for Economics addresses would-be researchers in the field of economics. Such an audience might include undergraduate business majors (especially those students majoring or minoring in economics) MBA and graduate students in economics. Most books concerned with research writing are broadly applied. They approach the subject generally, which is to say that they don't lay out a particular path to conducting research. Yet a specific path offering a specific focus to writing research is exactly what is needed for most students. This book provides that focus. Whereas other books provide an overview of how to present research, with only cursory suggestions and tips, A Beginner's Guide to Writing and Presenting Economics Research provides precise details on all aspects of research writing, including how many Power Point slides one should prepare for presentations and how much content should be on each slide. In short, unlike other books, this book provides a specific approach to conducting research, writing a paper, and presenting its material.


Scientific impact—that is the Q Are there quantifiable patterns behind a successful scientific career? Sinatra et al. analyzed the publications of 2887 physicists, as well as data on scientists publishing in a variety of fields. When productivity (which is usually greatest early in the scientist's professional life) is accounted for, the paper with the greatest impact occurs randomly in a scientist's career. However, the process of generating a high-impact paper is not an entirely random one. The authors developed a quantitative model of impact, based on an element of randomness, productivity, and a factor Q that is particular to each scientist and remains constant during the scientist's career. Science, this issue p. 596 Productivity, ability, and luck are incorporated into an algorithm describing a scientist's impact. INTRODUCTION In most areas of human performance, from sport to engineering, the path to a major accomplishment requires a steep learning curve and long practice. Science is not that different: Outstanding discoveries are often preceded by publications of less memorable impact. However, despite the increasing desire to identify early promising scientists, the temporal career patterns that characterize the emergence of scientific excellence remain unknown. RATIONALE How do impact and productivity change over a scientific career? Does impact, arguably the most relevant performance measure, follow predictable patterns? Can we predict the timing of a scientist's outstanding achievement? Can we model, in quantitative and predictive terms, scientific careers? Driven by these questions, here we quantify the evolution of impact and productivity throughout thousands of scientific careers. We do so by reconstructing the publication record of scientists from seven disciplines, associating to each paper its long-term impact on the scientific community, as quantified by citation metrics. RESULTS We find that the highest-impact work in a scientist's career is randomly distributed within her body of work. That is, the highest-impact work can be, with the same probability, anywhere in the sequence of papers published by a scientist—it could be the first publication, could appear mid-career, or could be a scientist's last publication. This random-impact rule holds for scientists in different disciplines, with different career lengths, working in different decades, and publishing solo or with teams and whether credit is assigned uniformly or unevenly among collaborators. The random-impact rule allows us to develop a quantitative model, which systematically untangles the role of productivity and luck in each scientific career. The model assumes that each scientist selects a project with a random potential p and improves on it with a factor Qi, resulting in a publication of impact Qip. The parameter Qi captures the ability of scientist i to take advantage of the available knowledge in a way that enhances (Qi > 1) or diminishes (Qi < 1) the potential impact p of a paper. The model predicts that truly high-impact discoveries require a combination of high Q and luck (p) and that increased productivity alone cannot substantially enhance the chance of a very high impact work. We also show that a scientist's Q, capturing her sustained ability to publish high-impact papers, is independent of her career stage. This is in contrast with all current metrics of excellence, from the total number of citations to the h-index, which increase with time. The Q model provides an analytical expression of these traditional impact metrics and allows us to predict their future time evolution for each individual scientist, being also predictive of independent recognitions, like Nobel prizes. CONCLUSION The random-impact rule and the Q parameter, representing two fundamental characteristics of a scientific career, offer a rigorous quantitative framework to explore the evolution of individual careers and understand the emergence of scientific excellence. Such understanding could help us better gauge scientific performance and offers a path toward nurturing high-impact scientists, potentially informing future policy decisions. Random-impact rule. The publication history of two Nobel laureates, Frank A. Wilczek (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004) and John B. Fenn (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2002), illustrating that the highest-impact work can be, with the same probability, anywhere in the sequence of papers published by a scientist. Each vertical line corresponds to a research paper. The height of each line corresponds to paper impact, quantified with the number of citations the paper received after 10 years. Wilczek won the Nobel Prize for the very first paper he published, whereas Fenn published his Nobel-awarded work late in his career, after he was forcefully retired by Yale. [Image of Frank A. Wilczek is reprinted with permission of STS/Society for Science & the Public. Image of John B. Fenn is available for public domain use on Wikipedia.org.] Despite the frequent use of numerous quantitative indicators to gauge the professional impact of a scientist, little is known about how scientific impact emerges and evolves in time. Here, we quantify the changes in impact and productivity throughout a career in science, finding that impact, as measured by influential publications, is distributed randomly within a scientist's sequence of publications. This random-impact rule allows us to formulate a stochastic model that uncouples the effects of productivity, individual ability, and luck and unveils the existence of universal patterns governing the emergence of scientific success. The model assigns a unique individual parameter Q to each scientist, which is stable during a career, and it accurately predicts the evolution of a scientist's impact, from the h-index to cumulative citations, and independent recognitions, such as prizes.


Climate change and sea level rise are expected to exacerbate existing coastal hazards such as erosion and inundation. As a result many coastal heritage sites around the world are expected to be put at potential risk of damage or destruction. The likely susceptibility of Australia's Indigenous coastal heritage sites to these hazards is widely recognised but the sensitivity has not been quantified or analysed in detail. In order to assess the sensitivity of Indigenous coastal heritage sites, both coastal and estuarine indices of sensitivity and vulnerability were adapted to be used in a heritage context. The study focused on the coastal Illawarra region of southern NSW. Desk based regional models were produced within the ArcGIS program for both Coastal and Estuarine shorelines in the region with underlying landform sensitivity used as a proxy for heritage site sensitivity. The coastal shoreline was assessed using an adaption of a Coastal Sensitivity Index technique, using Slope, Geology, Shoreline Exposure, Geomorphology, Site Distance to Shoreline, Sea Level Rise, Wave Height and Tidal Range to assess heritage site sensitivity to sea level rise. Indigenous heritage sites on the shoreline around Lake Illawarra estuary were assessed using an adaption of modelling designed to investigate biophysical vulnerability to erosion and flooding hazards using estuarine geomorphic units. The relative effectiveness of the desk based modelling approach was also examined by ground-truthing of a number of sites analysed in the coastal site sensitivity index. The results of the coastal analysis highlighted several sites located near beaches in the region that were estimated to have 'Very High' sensitivity to sea level rise and the associated hazards. In the Lake Illawarra estuary heritage sites were estimated to generally have higher sensitivity when located on the coastal barrier. Results of both methods indicated that sites on resilient bedrock landforms were considerably less sensitive than sites on Quaternary sediment. However, ground-truthing at Bass Point suggested in some locations sites may be sensitive to coastal hazards despite being associated with resilient landforms. The study was able to identify Indigenous heritage sites within the coastal Illawarra region that were most sensitive to climatic and sea level rise driven hazards. The ground-truthing of sites identified areas for future research to improve the desk based approach, particularly in regards to including the sensitivity of individual site types to erosion and inundation hazards. Desk based regional modelling was shown to be a useful tool for planning and conservation management, particularly in directing resources to sites of the highest risk, and informing the direction of more in depth studies into the hazards faced by coastal Indigenous heritage sites.


Liquid crystal based biosensors detect physical restructuring of cells via changes in the birefringence property or orientation order of the liquid crystal molecules. The strain induced in the liquid crystal molecules is closely associated with the liquid crystalline phases and Poisson's ratio of the liquid crystals. Cholesteryl ester liquid crystals (CELC) and CELC based lyotropic liquid crystals (LLC) that were regarded as viscoelastic materials are subjected to time-dependent factors (a fluidic environment, incubation time, and temperature). The effects of these factors, qualitatively and quantitatively, were investigated by using cross-polarising microscopy and a uniaxial micro-tensile technique. More lyotropic phases were observed in the liquid crystals as the incubation time in cell culture media was increased. Poisson's ratio of approximately 0.58 and 0.6 were determined for CELC and LLC, respectively, at room (25 oC) and incubation (37 oC) temperatures over a period of 3 days.


The aim of this paper is twofold: first, I aim at understanding how producer cooperatives compete in the factor markets; and second, I analyse how producer cooperatives influence the competitive dynamics of the markets where they compete. With this paper we aim at bringing a strategic perspective of this phenomenon. This paper follows a single case study qualitative analysis. The empirical context is the dairy market of the Azorean island Sao Miguel (in Portugal), more specifically, the milk factor market. This empirical context is adequate for the following reasons: first, because it is possible to isolate the market and its players in a quasi-experimental fashion (because it is a island); second, it presents a stable cooperative tradition; and third, cooperatives compete side-by-side with private firms (the cooperative Union represent 50% of the factor dairy market and the 3 other private firms represent the remaining 50%). The main data sources were local newspaper articles (322 in total) and interviews (31 in total with all market players). The data was coded in different categories, such as players' characteristics, strategic positioning, strategic moves, and context/external shocks. The results reveal that on the factor market side, as buyer, the cooperative presents a "proudly first" positioning. This buyer positioning reflects the effort of the cooperative to always set the higher price and the best conditions on the factor market. This positioning contrasts with other private players that have adopted "Please stay" and "I don't care" positioning. The results have also point out that the increase of the cooperative market share in the factor market, is leading to increased market competition. There is evidence that the cooperative is driving up the total number of strategic moves in the market that were predominantly oriented to price increases. On the theoretical part, some interesting inputs emerged on the concept of buyers strategic positioning. The results also challenge competitive dynamics studies, which defend that when the concentration in the market increases, the competitive activity decreases. Surprisingly, I have observed the opposite effect and I argue that is due to the cooperative influence. Additionally, the paper defends that producer cooperatives are able to drive factor market competition in markets where there are severe asymmetries of power. Such studies can increase our knowledge about the local impact of cooperatives and the circumstances under which cooperatives are an efficient alternative to the public and private sectors.


An interesting target for the intruders is computers, since valuable data are fed into it. The need for impeccable intrusion detection system is growing every day. Hardware based Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) relies upon power, delay and area. The Counting Bloom filter (CBF), improves the power and speed of membership test by maintaining a hazy and compact representation of large set to be searched. Our proposed architecture utilizes an array of Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) along with tri-state buffers. Circuit simulation is shown for 8-bit count per entry. Simulation results show that proposed architecture is 35% hardware efficient compared to Low Power Fast Counting Bloom Filter (L-CBF) and Static Random Access Memory based Counting Bloom Filter (S-CBF). General Terms Network Intrusion Detection System, Static Random Access Memory


Stingless bee Trigona spinipes (Hymenoptera: Apidae) is an important pest of calla lily, Zantedeschia aethiopica (L.) , damaging flowers, especially the spadix. The aim was to identify the most efficient packaging for bagging calla lily inflorescences, aiming to protect against the attack of stingless bee and to maintain postharvest quality. The experiment was carried out in a calla lily plantation cultivated in soil under 50% shading screen. Treatments consisted in bagging calla lily flowers with: 1) brown kraft paper bag, 2) non-woven fabric (NWF) bag; 3) transparent plastic bag, 4) transparent micro-perforated plastic bag and 5) control (without bagging). The experimental design was completely randomized with 25 replicates and one inflorescence per plot. Inflorescences received treatments when they presented definitive color, but still with completely closed spathe. Seven days after bagging, inflorescences were collected and evaluated for damages caused by insects in the field and the postharvest characteristics. Postharvest quality evaluations of inflorescences were performed for 12 days, observing expansion of the spathe in length and width, stem weight and visual quality expressed by the number of days that remained in each class. The bagging of calla lily inflorescences was efficient in the control of stingless bee, regardless of packaging used, because under these conditions, no inflorescence presented damage. In control, 84% of damaged inflorescences were observed. Differences in postharvest characteristics were observed and inflorescences remained for longer periods in the process of spathe opening, which is characterized by the measurement of their length and width, when packed. Among packages, NWF allowed longer spathe length at the 6th day of evaluation, larger width at 7th day of evaluation and less fresh mass loss at the end of the experiment (8%). In control, reduction of spathe measurements from the first day of evaluation and loss of 11% of fresh mass were observed. It was concluded that NWF is an efficient packaging to protect calla lily against the attack of stingless bee without compromising the postharvest quality of inflorescences.


Purpose - Focuses on the Open Access initiatives and describes some of the current open access channels and the areas where India has made significant progress. Also discusses the significance of those trends for information access in developing countries like India including problems and possible solutions. Design/methodology/approach – Analyzes and discusses several successful OA channels mainly in five areas. Highlights on some of the Indian OA journals and OA Archives in detail; secondly few Open Course Wares initiatives, Digital Library Projects, Meta data Harvesting Services have been discussed respectively. Lastly, the role of government; professional bodies and role of some of the open access advocates in our country have been discussed. Findings – OA initiatives and OA channels are growing in India. Some suggestions for the development of OA have been made. Originality/value –Paper will be useful to those who are not aware of the OA to knowledge movement or seek deeper knowledge about the current state of OA in Indian. Suggestions should be useful to the administrators, funding agencies, OA publishers and librarians in both developing and developed countries.


SUMMARY Over 70% of China's timber product imports are supplied by countries in the Asia Pacific region, and China is the dominant forest product market for many of these countries. Unsustainable harvesting practices, illegal logging, and negative impacts on community livelihoods plague many of these supplying countries. The countries may be divided into those still harvesting and exporting timber from natural forests on a large scale and those which have gone past their highest levels of natural forest timber harvesting and are now more aggressively pursuing plantation development and processing. Apart from Russia, China's top Asia Pacific timber suppliers could at best maintain current supply, with natural forest resources being depleted in less than 20 years. Resource limits also constrain expansion and/or long-term continuation of processed product export to China. Greater attention and action on the part of governments, market leaders, and international organizations is needed to address negative impacts, shifting supply to a sustainable, legal, and equitable basis and to determine from where China's long-term supply will come.


This paper offers a short introduction to some of the fundamental results of social choice theory. Topics include Nash implementability, monotonic social choice correspondences, the Muller-Satterthwaite impossibility theorem, anonymous and neutral social choice correspondences, sophisticated solutions of binary agendas, the top cycle of a tournament, the bipartisan set for two-party competition, and median voter theorems. The paper begins with a simple example to illustrate the importance of multiple equilibria in game-theoretic models of political institutions.


Extracellular vesicles (EV) gained considerable interest in recent years as both diagnos‐ tic tools and templates for therapeutic applications. EVs carry a number of cell-specific markers which gave researchers the opportunity of employing them as liquid biopsies causing no discomfort to patients. On the other hand, they are very exciting candidates for drug delivery due to their eobiotic origin, physicochemical and size characteristics. Isolation of EVs is performed by several strategies, having advantages and disatvantages over each other. As such, the method of EV isolation and in particular exosome isola‐ tion determines the quality and purity of obtained vesicles. In this chapter, extracellular vesicle isolation methods are evaluated with regard to their further use. Methods such as ultracentrifugation with different modifications, size exclusion chromatography, ultra ‐ filtration, affinity and precipitation are compared with respect to the yield efficacy and purity of isolates. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of different methods according to the purpose of use are revealed. Recent progress and remaining challenges in the isolation of EVs with regard to diagnosis and treatment is reviewed and discussed. In order to select the most suitable method researchers should clearly define purity, yield, quantity and quality requirements for exosomes, and consider disadvantages of distinct isolation methods. Very promising alternative is the use of microfluidic devices pre-coated with antibodies. This method ensures very fast capturing of specific EV subtypes.