The effect of simultaneous alignment of polyethylene (PE) lamellae and graphene nanoplatelets (GnP) on the thermal conductivity (k) of PE-GnP composites is investigated. Measurements reveal a large increase of 1100% in k of the aligned PE-GnP composite using 10 wt% GnPs relative to unoriented pure PE. The rate of increase of k with applied strain for the pure PE-GnP composite with 10 wt% GnP is found to be almost a factor of two higher than the pure PE sample, pointing to the beneficial effect of GnP alignment on k enhancement. Aligned GnPs are further found to be 3 times as effective in enhancing k as in the randomly oriented configuration. Enhancement in k is correlated with the alignment of PE lamellae and GnPs through wide-angle X-ray scattering and polarized Raman spectroscopy. At the maximum applied strain of 400% and using 10 wt% GnPs, a composite k of 5.9 W mK-1 is achieved. These results demonstrate the great potential of simultaneous alignment effects in achieving high k polymer composites.


Uamashtakan. Tekuatepeliu. Manishtikaushipu. Uashaupishkau. Manikuakanishtiku. I am a river of names. Like countless waterways around the world, I have been given a single official denomination—Manicouagan—by the State through the colonial renaming of land. Though the word Manicouagan derives from the original language of my People, the Pessamiulnuat (Innus of Pessamit), it carries a very small piece of my whole history and speaks with a monolithic voice. As an ancestral route connecting families to their hunting territories, each of my swirls and back eddies has something to say, witnesses to a longstanding and ongoing narrative. Going back to the meanings, practices, stories, and values that some of my People's denominations still bear, I wish to make myself heard differently from the voices that are both theirs and mine.


The Politics of the Anthropocene is a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of how human institutions, practices, and principles need to be re-thought in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system and its life-support capacities. However, the world remains stuck with practices and modes of thinking that were developed in the Holocene – the epoch of around 12,000 years of unusual stability in the Earth system, toward the end of which modern institutions such as states and capitalist markets arose. These institutions persist despite their potentially catastrophic failure to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, foremost among them a rapidly changing climate and accelerating biodiversity loss. The pathological trajectories of these institutions need to be disrupted by advancing ecological reflexivity: the capacity of structures, systems, and sets of ideas to question their own core commitments, and if necessary change themselves, while listening and responding effectively to signals from the Earth system. This book envisages a world in which humans are no longer estranged from the Earth system but engage with it in a more productive relationship. We can still pursue democracy, social justice, and sustainability – but not as before. In future, all politics should be first and foremost a politics of the Anthropocene. The arguments are developed in the context of issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and global efforts to address sustainability.


Recently, auto-bidding technique has become an essential tool to increase the revenue of advertisers. Facing the complex and ever-changing bidding environments in the real-world advertising system (RAS), state-of-the-art auto-bidding policies usually leverage reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms to generate real-time bids on behalf of the advertisers. Due to safety concerns, it was believed that the RL training process can only be carried out in an offline virtual advertising system (VAS) that is built based on the historical data generated in the RAS. In this paper, we argue that there exists significant gaps between the VAS and RAS, making the RL training process suffer from the problem of inconsistency between online and offline (IBOO). Firstly, we formally define the IBOO and systematically analyze its causes and influences. Then, to avoid the IBOO, we propose a sustainable online RL (SORL) framework that trains the auto-bidding policy by directly interacting with the RAS, instead of learning in the VAS. Specifically, based on our proof of the Lipschitz smooth property of the Q function, we design a safe and efficient online exploration (SER) policy for continuously collecting data from the RAS. Meanwhile, we derive the theoretical lower bound on the safety of the SER policy. We also develop a variance-suppressed conservative Q-learning (V-CQL) method to effectively and stably learn the auto-bidding policy with the collected data. Finally, extensive simulated and real-world experiments validate the superiority of our approach over the state-of-the-art auto-bidding algorithm.


Information about the quality of producers or products has strategic value and affects economic decisions. But what happens in markets with informational gaps because quality is difficult to observe directly and objective criteria to make quality judgments are lacking? Quality that is indiscernible or indeterminate or latent means to a large extent that it remains unknown to all parties involved in the transaction or even thereafter. Signals – e.g., reviews, awards, prestigious affiliations, past sales – may act as observable persuaders and reduce uncertainty caused by informational imperfections. At the same time, signals may shape future perceptions buyers and intermediaries have about those producers, and this may lead to a competitive advantage for a select few. Effectively, even seemingly inconsequential rewards or benefits gained by being the subject of a signal may grant some producers access to opportunities not given to others. Such preferential treatment could lead to superior performance that could start self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms, which could result in persistent performance for some producers compared to the rest. In the empirical setting of the primary market for contemporary visual art, the career trajectories of 1,590 visual artists from two prestigious art institutions in the Netherlands are studied. A multi-dimensional approach is taken in analyzing quantitative characteristics of signals and qualitative attributes of sources conveying those signals, and examining these effects on not only different categories of buyers and intermediaries but also in the context of the particular career phase of the producers. The empirical results show strong self-reinforcing processes governing competitive dynamics, offering a fine-grained understanding of a source of inequality in the distribution of success in this market where quality differentials among competing producers are imperfectly observable, information about their underlying quality is imperfect and/or incomplete and objective measures for evaluation are lacking.


Conventional banks are vulnerable to non-performing loans, because the credit is the main source income of a bank. Credit risk may still occur, even though the bank's management has made efforts based credit rating 5C. The purpose of this study was to determine how much influence the variable CAR, LAR, NIM, and ROE against Non-Performing Loans (NPL) in the banking companies listed on BEI. The sampling technique used is purposive sampling with criteria: (1) a conventional commercial bank listed on the BEI 2009-2013 period, (2) the bank that issued the annual financial statements in a row in the period from 2009 to 2013, and (3) bank which has a data completeness NPL, CAR, LAR, NIM, and ROE in the period 2009-2013. Data obtained from the annual report of each bank in 2009-2013. There are a total sample of 29 banks. The analysis technique used is multiple linear regression and hypothesis testing using t-statistic to test the partial regression coefficient and F-statistic to test the effect simultaneously with a significance level of 0.05. Before being tested by multiple linear regression, first performed classical assumption of normality test data. The results showed that there were no deviations from the classical assumption test. This indicates that the available data is normal or eligible to be used as a multiple linear regression model. From the analysis, CAR and ROE have significant negative effect on the NPL and LAR have not significant negative effect on the NPL, while variable NIM have significant positive effect on the NPL.


A woman finds a man on a beach. He is very cold, his clothes are wet, and he cannot speak. The woman phones for help, and an ambulance comes and takes the man to hospital. In hospital they ask the man questions, but he does not answer. He still cannot speak - or does not want to speak. Who is he, this strange man from the sea? What is his name? Where did he come from? And why do they call him the Piano Man?


Chinese companies have become major technology producers, with the largest share of their output exported. This paper examines the development of solar PV and wind energy technology component (WETC) exports from China and the competitive position of the country`s renewable energy industry. We also describe the government's renewable energy policy and its success in renewable electricity generation as well as increasing renewable energy innovation and foreign knowledge accumulation, which may drive export performance. We aim at empirically identifying determinants of Chinese solar PV and WETC exports. We estimate an augmented gravity trade model using maximum likelihood estimation. Besides controlling for standard variables derived from the gravity literature, we consider additional explanatory factors by accounting for market, policy and innovation effects steaming from both importing countries and China. We use a panel dataset representing annual bilateral trade flows of 43 countries from the developed and developing world that imported solar PV and WETCs from China between 1996 and 2008. The analysis shows that while the national market remained small for solar PV, the industry successfully entered foreign markets. The export performance of firms producing WETC increased but remained relatively small while the country developed a large home market. Empirical results indicate that high income countries, with a large renewable energy market and demand side policy support scheme, in terms of incentive tariffs, are increasingly importing solar PV components from China. We show that trade costs have a negative impact on exports of solar PV components but not WETC. Additionally, we find a positive impact of research and development (R&D) appropriation growth, especially from provincial governments in China, but no evidence that bilateral knowledge transfer and indigenous innovation affect exports.


The artistic map of Europe contains different degrees of detail and resolution. Italy, France, and Spain are presented in fine grain, but the Balkan peninsula is little more than a vague outline. England, Germany, and Scandinavia have many features filled in, but to the east of Germany things are blurred. Until recently, cities like Sofia, Odessa, Skopje, and Belgrade had next to no definition. Further to the East, Moscow comes into focus, but this is no compensation for the Baltics, sentenced for the last half-century to blank space.In the West, virtually every move of the artist, the art market, and the art public is documented. But in Eastern Europe, no such system of documentation or communication exists. Instead, we encounter systems that are not only inaccessible to the West, but incongruous from one country to the next. Beside the official art histories there is often a whole series of stories and legends about "unofficial," unapproved art and artists. East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe is an ambitious attempt to reconstruct the missing histories of contemporary art in Eastern Europe from an East European and artistic perspective. It is perhaps the widest ranging art documentation project ever undertaken by the East on the East, involving a large network of artists, scholars, curators and critics coordinated by the IRWIN group over several years.The editors invited eminent art critics, curators, and artists to present up to ten crucial art projects produced in their respective countries over the past 50 years. The choice of the particular artworks (many of them reproduced in color), artists, and events, as well as their presentation, was left exclusively to the individual selectors. In addition, the editors asked experts from both East and West to provide longer texts offering cross-cultural perspectives on the art of both regions.Afterall Books are distributed by The MIT Press.


In this study, the elements of competitiveness of the EU beef sector are assessed using the value chain approach. Consequently, the impact of the external factors represented by domestic policy and foreign trade policy is discussed, with the aim of deriving recommendations for policy makers. It is shown that investing in collaborative supply chains can improve the disadvantaged position of beef producers, which have the least power in the supply chain. Furthermore, the domains of science and innovation provide several opportunities that could be further explored, namely improving the logistics of the supply chain and developing more tailored quality systems. The main threats stem from potential free trade agreements, climate change and the internal competition between other agricultural crops. Better targeting of the CAP and environmental aspects are suggested to maintain the competitiveness of European beef producers.


This article introduces new software, the games package, for estimating strategic statistical models in R. In these models, the probability distribution over outcomes corresponds to the equilibrium of an underlying game form. We review such models and provide derivations for one example, including discussion of alternative motivations for the stochastic component of the models. We introduce the basic functionality of the games package, such as how to estimate players' utilities for outcomes as a function of covariates. The package implements maximum likelihood estimation for the most commonly used models of strategic choice, including three extensive form games and an ultimatum bargaining model. The software also includes functions for bootstrapping, plotting fitted values with their confidence intervals, performing non-nested model comparisons, and checking global convergence failures. We use the new software to replicate Leblang's (2003) analysis of speculative currency attacks.


PCI-SS is a Web-based protein secondary structure prediction service that makes use of novel dynamic nonlinear system identification techniques. When used to combine multiple prediction systems, PCI-SS exhibits state-of-the-art prediction accuracy while reducing confusion of helix and strand structures, a particularly detrimental class of error, by up to 25%. Unlike other available secondary structure prediction methods, PCI-SS provides both human-readable and machine-readable Web interfaces. In addition to a dynamic PHP-generated Web interface for humans, a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) interface is added to permit invocation of the PCI-SS service remotely. This facilitates incorporation of PCI-SS into systems biology analysis pipelines that require protein secondary structure information, and greatly simplifies high-throughput analyses. WSDL is used to precisely define the SOAP interface. XML is used to represent the input protein sequence data and also to encode the resulting structure prediction in a machine-readable format. To our knowledge, this represents the only publicly available SOAP-interface for a protein secondary structure prediction service.


The UK construction industry has a relatively high level of fatal and non-fatal accident rate, which creates the need for improving its safety performance (HSE, 2006). However, the safety performance of the UK is no worse than that of other leading advanced economies, and it may be inferred that improving safety performance is a problem that is shared wider than the UK. While progressive efforts have been directed at improving safety in construction, the level of performance appears to stagnated over the last decade HSE, 2006). The levelling in safety performance would suggest that improving safety further beyond current attainment calls for a radical look at how safety is addressed by construction. Such a radical look would not only cover the planning, implementation, and management of safety in construction, but also give attention to aspects beyond the traditional practices of safety management. Because the incident research was limited this paper focused on the effort of safety management needs to shift from managing and monitoring accidents to managing and monitoring incidents. This will call for a greater understanding of incident causation in construction, and also to divert attention from monitor and manage for accident to monitor and manage for the incident, which mean the incident investigation has two main parts managing (before the incident happened based on analysis the causes of incident to reduce it and reduce accident events which also improve the safety) and monitoring (after incident happened as part of control and management to improve safety in construction) and to develop a system for analysis and then documented on the form of a report and finally deal with the perpetrators of the violation of safety regulations, in order not to repeat it.


This thesis questions the priority that has been afforded to sight in academic analyses of modernity at the expense of the other senses. This has not only had the effect of producing poor knowledge of the multi-sensory understandings of life, but it is also a theory that has been developed by focusing on the experience of white, elite males. As increasingly shown by anthropologists and sensory historians, when this model is transposed onto other segments of the population, this produces inadequate and partial understandings of life. Nowhere is this truer than in studies of nineteenth-century consumerism, which have primarily characterised the female shopping experience as orientated around new visual spectacles. This thesis aims to rebalance this sensory bias and analyses how the sense of touch was used by female shoppers. Drawing on the theories of Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology throughout, it is claimed that the use of any sense must be understood in the wider context of an individual's life, and the sensory habits that are formed through this. For understanding shopping, this means first attending to the primary female activities within the home, namely needlework, and how these affected the development of the sensorium. Following on from this, the study analyses how those habits of touch were used when shopping. This involved assessments of fabric quality, the marketing of 'hygienic' clothing on the basis of its relationship to the skin and the ways in which women related to the new spaces of the department stores through their bodies. In addition to showing the importance of touch for shopping, focusing on tactility brings other issues to light. Understanding tactile habits allows for a reevaluation of the public-private division. Rather than shopping representing a break from the home, habits of touch allowed the two environments to be strongly interlinked, each influencing the other. This raises important questions about how we conceptualise female experiences of modernity and progress.


The biliary metabolites of isotretinoin were examined after iv administration of 4-20-mg/kg doses to vitamin A-normal bile duct-cannulated rats. Analysis of bile by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography showed that injection of isotretinoin is followed by a rapid excretion of metabolites in bile. Isotretinoin glucuronide was identified as the major metabolite in bile. A specific high performance liquid chromatography method based on the assay of generated isotretinoin in beta-glucuronidase-treated bile was developed for the determination of isotretinoin glucuronide in bile samples. The excretion rate of isotretinoin glucuronide increased rapidly to reach a maximum 55 min after dosing and then declined exponentially. After 330 min of collection, biliary excretion of isotretinoin glucuronide was almost complete, and the metabolite accounted for 34.8-37.9% of the dose. These results indicate that conjugation with glucuronic acid represents a major pathway for the metabolism of pharmacological doses of isotretinoin. The maximum excretion rate of isotretinoin glucuronide in bile increased in a linear manner with the dose of isotretinoin, and no delay was observed after the larger doses. These data suggest that glucuronidation and biliary excretion are not saturated at high pharmacological doses of isotretinoin.


Aim: This study attempted to assess knowledge and awareness about Leishmaniasis disease in Quetta city, Pakistan. Materials and Methods: This was a questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey where 387 study respondents were targeted using the non-probability convenience sampling method for data collection. SPSS v 22.0 was applied for data analysis and P≤0.05 was considered statically significant. The Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were performed to discover the relationship among variables. Results: Most respondents were from the age group 18-27 years 269 (69.5%) majority of whom were female 244 (64.0%). Most of the respondents had improved knowledge (73.6%), about the word Leishmaniasis, 50.6% of respondents were aware of the signs and symptoms, 54.8% of respondents were aware of the diagnosis, 64.3% of respondents had improved knowledge about treatment, 62.5% of the study population were aware of prevention and 40.8% of study respondents knew about the vaccination for leishmaniasis. Conclusion: This study exposed an overall better knowledge and awareness among the public about leishmaniasis disease and its causative agents, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and vaccination.


The United States must make a fundamental choice in its economic policy in the next few months, a choice that will shape the US economy for years to come. Pundits and policymakers are divided over how to address what is widely referred to as the "fiscal cliff," a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that will further weaken the domestic economy. Will the United States continue its current, misguided, policy of implementing European-style austerity measures, and the economic contraction that is the inevitable consequence of such policies? Or will it turn aside from the fiscal cliff, using a combination of its sovereign currency system and Keynesian fiscal policy to strengthen aggregate demand? Our analysis presents a model of what we call the "fiscal trap"—a self-imposed spiral of economic contraction resulting from a fundamental misunderstanding of the role and function of fiscal policy in times of economic weakness. Within this framework, we begin our analysis with the disastrous results of austerity policies in the European Union (EU) and the UK. Our account of these policies and their results is meant as a cautionary tale for the United States, not as a model.


The knowledge of creativity, what it is, and how one applies it, is a valuable tool that all post-secondary students should be taught. Understanding and managing creativity is one of the most significant competitive advantages of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and students. With the current fast-paced changes in our lives and workplace today, creativity is becoming as necessary a tool as any life skill. The knowledge and skill of creativity should be taught as a core competency in post-secondary institutions. Most students have had minimal if any training in deliberate creativity. In many cases, it may have in fact been just the opposite. In my institution I am engaging in practices that position myself as a creativity expert. To springboard to greater knowledge and understanding of creativity as a core competency, I have developed a training workshop focused on the basics of creativity as part of a professional development series that included aspects of student interviews I conducted. This is one aspect of my larger goal of continuing to engage my cohorts at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in creative thinking practices with each other and their students to raise the creative consciousness of my institution.


The following contribution explores the debt and credit economy developed in William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848). Thackeray's novel offers a satirical panorama of a society obsessed with wealth and status. Seeing through the vanities of others, the protagonist Rebecca Sharp appropriates and subversively performs their social and economic system. It is thanks to her smart social performance that she gains both social and financial credit – without ever repaying her debts. The credulousness of her creditors can be read as an effect of what Jochen Hörisch ("Geld") calls the "autopoiesis" of money, that is the idea that money is covered by the belief in money. Rebecca can be seen to embody this monetary autopoiesis since she succeeds in making her creditors (falsely) believe that she actually possesses sufficient assets to secure her debts. Thackeray's text uses the figure of the equally sharp and dazzling social climber in order to expose a snobbish society that is duped by her self-fashioning because of its very own obsession with money and status and is thus made to pay for its vanities. Rebecca, on the other hand, not only remains unrepentant but – unusual for a female literary character of the period – gets away unpunished.


In the advent of Post Modernism Architecture in Malaysia, the Traditional Malay
Architecture is being forgotten and regarded as out-of-date and irrelevant. Not only
the forms, but the true essence of the building functions and design principles which
adapts to its climate and providing thermal comfort is no more being implemented
intensively in designing buildings. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to
investigate what are the potential and restriction of implementing the climatic design
principles element into Modern Built Form in general. The research was also intended
to find out what are the elements of Climatic Design Principles of Traditional Malay
Architecture therefore to further make clear of which element is the most potential and
which element is the less potential in the implementation. Through the findings,
researcher was enabled to make suggestions and recommendations on addressing the
restrictions and highlighting on the potentials.
Building case study and structured interview was used as the method for research.
Building case study was conducted on two buildings which are different in typology
but both are not from the Traditional Malay Architecture era to examine on how the
Climatic Design Principles of Traditional Malay Architecture is being implemented.
The structured interviews were carried out among experienced personnel in the built
environment (mostly with architecture background) to find out the positive and
negative responds towards the implementation of Climatic Design Principles of
Traditional Malay Architecture and their reasons for not doing so. The interviewees'
recommendations were also obtained from the interview which structured the
solutions.
It was discovered that as hard as it may seems, that the implementation of Climatic
Design Principles of Traditional Malay Architecture in Modern Built Form is not that
difficult. The implementation also found out to provide more convenience for a long
term and sustainable architecture since the environmental friendly and energy
efficiency is an important agenda in the built environment.


The overall aim of this research is to provide qualitative data which may help explain the health disadvantage found in quantitative studies among many generations of Irish people in Britain. It examines the ways in which social factors linked to recognised health risks relate to Catholic versus Protestant identity and Irish versus Scottish origin. Using data from 72 qualitative interviews, with people in different religious/ethnic, gender, class and age groups, the analysis focuses on three key areas of social life: employment, communal life and family life. The impact of structural and cultural factors on health and identity, and the ways in which structure and culture are mutually and dynamically constitutive are examined.

The evidence points to the health relevance of structural factors (direct and indirect discrimination, and hidden and institutional sectarianism), which are dependent upon externally identifying a cultural difference, Catholic upbringing. These effects on health are theorised to be both via class position and psychosocial pathways, and directly connected to how Catholic identity is maintained and constructed. Over time, since both discrimination and Catholic religious practice are assessed as waning, it may be postulated that past discrimination, while undoubtedly a factor in relation to current ill health, may lose its explanatory force for future ill health. On the other hand, the positive health benefits to be gained by Catholics through being religious are also likely to wane, as a defined religious culture among Catholics becomes less prevalent.

The continued perception of the diffuse experience of anti-Catholic bigotry in social life appears to influence health negatively. It seems that it is in the experience of uncertainty and exclusion, that health may be compromised, a particular issue for men's health, and particularly for middle class 'younger' Catholic men who challenge exclusions and boundaries. Thus class is important, as is the 'classing' or religious identity. Also, while women may escape past identities, for men this option is not possible. Irish Catholic identity, even as the Irish component is often not explicitly referred to, but rather submerged, may link to health positively and negatively in a number of ways, and links also to an every-changing culture which affects and is affected by wider structures, ideologies and past history. Irish Catholic identity is highly contextualised and differently experienced by gender, class and cohort.


How objects are assigned to components in a distributed system can have a significant impact on performance and resource usage. Social Hash is a framework for producing, serving, and maintaining assignments of objects to components so as to optimize the operations of large social networks, such as Facebook's Social Graph. The framework uses a two-level scheme to decouple compute-intensive optimization from relatively low-overhead dynamic adaptation. The optimization at the first level occurs on a slow timescale, and in our applications is based on graph partitioning in order to leverage the structure of the social network. The dynamic adaptation at the second level takes place frequently to adapt to changes in access patterns and infrastructure, with the goal of balancing component loads.

We demonstrate the effectiveness of Social Hash with two real applications. The first assigns HTTP requests to individual compute clusters with the goal of minimizing the (memory-based) cache miss rate; Social Hash decreased the cache miss rate of production workloads by 25%. The second application assigns data records to storage subsystems with the goal of minimizing the number of storage subsystems that need to be accessed on multiget fetch requests; Social Hash cut the average response time in half on production workloads for one of the storage systems at Facebook.


OBJECTIVE: Asparagus adscendens Roxb. (Liliaceae), a traditional herbal medicine, has been used as an aphrodisiac and brain tonic in Asian countries. The aim of the present study is to investigate the antidepressant-like effect of standardized hydroethanolic extract of A. adscendens root and its possible mechanisms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Mice administered with vehicle, imipramine (15 mg/kg/day; i.p.), and A. adscendens extract (AAE) (25, 50, and 100 mg/kg/day; i.p.) for 14 days were subjected to behavioral tests including forced swimming test (FST), tail suspension test (TST), and open-field test (OFT) on the 14th day. In order to explore the underlying mechanism behind an antidepressant effect of AAE, the brain monoamine levels, oxidative stress parameters, and serum corticosterone levels were monitored. RESULTS: Our results indicated that pretreatment of AAE (25, 50, and 100 mg/kg) for 14 days statistically significantly (P < 0.01) demonstrated antidepressant-like effect as evidenced by reduced immobility time in both FST (105, 78.6, and 53.6 s) and TST (97.6, 73.5, and 54.67 s), with no significant change in spontaneous locomotor activities as observed in OFT. Further, the behavioral improvement was supported by the statistically significantly (P < 0.05) enhanced levels of monoamines and reduced corticosterone level along with amelioration of oxidative stress in AAE-treated animals as compared to vehicle control group. Conclusion: Our findings clearly demonstrated the antidepressant-like effect of AAE, which might have been mediated through the modulation of monoaminergic system and by regulating hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis with amelioration of oxidative stress.


There's a talent war on, and people are the greatest asset. They are at the heart of corporate strategy, and every manager knows that people management is too important to leave to HR. Likewise, HR managers know that if they can't show how their department contributes to corporate strategy and success, their function can easily be outsourced.
The need for complete mastery of people management skills has never been greater. Written by a world-class line up of business school thinkers (from INSEAD and Wharton, among others) and business practitioners, Mastering People Management provides managers with the ideas and techniques to unleash the true value of their greatest asset.
This is the single-source guide to becoming a master of people management.


Patterns in the community structure of darkling beetle (9 Eleodes spp., Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) assemblages in the shortgrass steppe of north central Colorado were monitored by live pitfall trapping for 4 summers. There were significant correlations among weather (temperature and precipitation), species richness, and number of indi- viduals per species captured; effects from weather conditions also displayed 1-month and 1-yr delayed effects. Population densities of 2 eleodid species were monitored by mark-recapture methods. Densities of these species varied relatively little among years and sites, although density was correlated with temperature and precipitation. Abiotic influences on both density and richness differed between 2 macrohabitat types (shortgrass upland, shrub floodplain). The 4 largest species were most abundant in the floodplain, whereas the smallest species was most common in the upland. Affinities with cactus and shrub microhabitats (and an avoidance of bare soil) were evident, although a preference for shaded micro- habitats was not detected. These results do not conform well to previous explanations of why darkling beetle assem- blages are spatially and temporally heterogeneous, which primarily focused on predation and thermoregulation. Therefore, an alternative mechanism concerning scale-dependent uses of heterogeneity and mobility is proposed to account for eleodid community patterns.


TensorFlow is a machine learning system that operates at large scale and in heterogeneous environments. Its computational model is based on dataflow graphs with mutable state. Graph nodes may be mapped to different machines in a cluster, and within each machine to CPUs, GPUs, and other devices. TensorFlow supports a variety of applications, but it particularly targets training and inference with deep neural networks. It serves as a platform for research and for deploying machine learning systems across many areas, such as speech recognition, computer vision, robotics, information retrieval, and natural language processing. In this talk, we describe TensorFlow and outline some of its applications. We also discuss the question of what TensorFlow and deep learning may have to do with functional programming. Although TensorFlow is not purely functional, many of its uses are concerned with optimizing functions (during training), then with applying those functions (during inference). These functions are defined as compositions of simple primitives (as is common in functional programming), with internal data representations that are learned rather than manually designed. TensorFlow is joint work with many other people in the Google Brain team and elsewhere. More information is available at tensorflow.org.


In Spanish locative constructions, a different form of the copula is selected in relation to the semantic properties of the grammatical subject: sentences that locate objects require estar while those that locate events require ser (both translated in English as 'to be'). In an ERP study, we examined whether second language (L2) speakers of Spanish are sensitive to the selectional restrictions that the different types of subjects impose on the choice of the two copulas. Twenty-four native speakers of Spanish and two groups of L2 Spanish speakers (24 beginners and 18 advanced speakers) were recruited to investigate the processing of 'object/event + estar/ser' permutations. Participants provided grammaticality judgments on correct (object + estar; event + ser) and incorrect (object + ser; event + estar) sentences while their brain activity was recorded. In line with previous studies (Leone-Fernández, Molinaro, Carreiras, & Barber, 2012; Sera, Gathje, & Pintado, 1999), the results of the grammaticality judgment for the native speakers showed that participants correctly accepted object + estar and event + ser constructions. In addition, while 'object + ser' constructions were considered grossly ungrammatical, 'event + estar' combinations were perceived as unacceptable to a lesser degree. For these same participants, ERP recording time-locked to the onset of the critical word 'en' showed a larger P600 for the ser predicates when the subject was an object than when it was an event (*La silla es en la cocina vs. La fiesta es en la cocina). This P600 effect is consistent with syntactic repair of the defining predicate when it does not fit with the adequate semantic properties of the subject. For estar predicates (La silla está en la cocina vs. *La fiesta está en la cocina), the findings showed a central-frontal negativity between 500-700 ms. Grammaticality judgment data for the L2 speakers of Spanish showed that beginners were significantly less accurate than native speakers in all conditions, while the advanced speakers only differed from the natives in the event+ser and event+estar conditions. For the ERPs, the beginning learners did not show any effects in the time-windows under analysis. The advanced speakers showed a pattern similar to that of native speakers: (1) a P600 response to 'object + ser' violation more central and frontally distributed, and (2) a central-frontal negativity between 500-700 ms for 'event + estar' violation. Findings for the advanced speakers suggest that behavioral methods commonly used to assess grammatical knowledge in the L2 may be underestimating what L2 speakers have actually learned.


Based on Human Rights Watch investigations at twenty-six Arab and Jewish schools and on nationwide statistics compiled by the Israeli government. Nearly one-quarter of Israel's 1.6 million schoolchildren are Palestinian Arab citizens and are educated in schools run by the Israeli government, but operated separately from those of the Jewish majority. "Government-run Arab schools are a world apart from government-run Jewish schools," said Zama Coursen-Neff, counsel to the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "In virtually every respect, Palestinian Arab children get an education inferior to that of Jewish children, and their relatively poor performance in school reflects this." Palestinian Arab children drop out of school at three times the rate of Jewish children and are less likely to pass the national matriculation exams for a high school diploma. Only a handful make it to university. Among Palestinian Arabs, the Bedouin from the Negev Desert fare the worst in every respect. "Discrimination is cumulative, and at each level, more Palestinian Arab children are winnowed out," Coursen-Neff said. The report found striking differences in virtually every aspect of the education system. The Education Ministry does not allocate as much money per head for Palestinian Arab children as it does for Jewish children. Their classes are 20 percent larger on average. They get far fewer enrichment and remedial programs - even though they need them more - in part because the Ministry uses a different scale to assess need for Jewish children. Their school buildings are in worse condition, and many communities lack kindergartens for three and four-year-olds. Palestinian Arab schoolchildren do not have the same access to counseling and vocational programs. One of the largest gaps is in special education, where disabled Palestinian Arab children get less funding and fewer services, have limited access to special schools, and lack appropriate curricula. Arabic is an official language and the language of instruction in Israel's Arab schools. Nevertheless, the government devotes inadequate resources toward developing Arabic curricula in general, and Palestinian Arab teachers have far fewer textbooks and teaching materials at their disposal than their Jewish counterparts. Some of the content, especially the mandatory study of Jewish religious texts, alienates students and teachers alike. "The government has admitted that it spends more per Jewish child, but it hasn't changed its policies," said Coursen-Neff. "The children who need the most - Palestinian Arab and, especially, Negev Bedouin - are getting the least." Last fall the government promised extra money for Arab education. Human Rights Watch called on the Israeli government to immediately end discrimination: The Ministry of Education should adopt a written policy of equality that explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender. The ministry should immediately begin distributing all funding and programs to schools on a non-discriminatory basis and allocate additional funding to close the gaps between Jewish and Arab education. The Knesset should amend the education laws to prohibit discrimination by the national government. The government should measurably improve Palestinian Arab citizens' participation in all aspects of decision-making about education policies and resources.


The main mechanism of market economy – competition – has forced organizations to search factors influencing advertising effectiveness. Relying on the maxim "unseen – unsold", the visual impression of advertising becomes crucially important. First visual impressions do often influence midand longterm human behavior and are influenced by factors such as context or visual complexity. The aim of this research is to determine the effect of visual layout complexity of advertising on consumers' attentional resources engaged in processing an advertisement as well as evaluation and classification time of the advertisement regarding different levels of visual layout complexity. To reach the aim of the article, P300 event-related brain potential is recorded and analyzed. In the context of visual complexity of advertising, recording and analysis of P300 component reveal whether high visual advertising complexity leads to more attentional resources engaged in processing an advertisement as well as whether advertisement with high visual complexity is evaluated and classified slower. Moreover, questionnaire research is provided for the participants in order to assess the differences in attitudes towards the brands advertised with different layout complexity levels. As a research results, the effect of visual advertising complexity on cognitive processes such as attention allocation and its influence on the attitude toward the object is revealed and the managerial implications for creating effective advertising are provided.


This chapter explores how research on speech act performance can inform language teaching for workplace communication. It argues for an approach to instruction that draws on empirical evidence from a range of perspectives so that non-native speakers can understand patterns of language use, how these relate to cultural values and how individuals actually draw on them in context. Using directives and disagreements as examples, it is argued that while quantitative interlanguage and cross-cultural speech act research studies give valuable insight into how acts are performed in routine situations, speech act studies broadly conceived are needed to provide learners with insight into the rich repertoire of devices and strategies native speakers have at their disposal and how these might be used to negotiate identities at work.


The relationship between democracy and globalisation has been the focus of substantial policy and academic debate. Some argue that democracy and globalisation go hand in hand suggesting that unrestricted international transactions leads to increased political accountability and transparency. And, politically free societies are likely to have minimal restrictions on the mobility of goods and services across national borders. Others argue that the causal relationship should be reversed: democracies are more likely to have closed markets and vice versa. We examine these relationships between political democracy and trade and financial globalisation over the period 1870-2000 and treat both democracy and globalisation as both cause and effect. Our empirical strategy uses instrumental variables and estimates relationships using the Generalised Method of Moments framework. Our general findings support the hypothesis of a positive two-way relationship between democracy and globalisation.


In 2008 Ireland enacted legislation to define and prosecute human trafficking. The overriding emphasis of the Human Trafficking (Criminal Law) Act is on trafficking as a crime against the state, with provisions to protect victims only vaguely articulated in a separate piece of legislation. The Irish approach thus remains far removed from the victim-centred human-rights-based approach advocated by local lobbyists and international reports, which argue for a shift away from pinpointing movement and coercion as integral to trafficking and focusing instead on exploitation as its essence. The rationale for this was that, while people's movement might initially be deemed to be 'smuggling', their eventual exploitation could constitute 'trafficking'. As this paper will show on the basis of current empirical research into trafficking for forced labour in Ireland, we would concur that exploitation should be understood as the essence of trafficking. Few cases 'tick all the boxes' of a rigid definition of trafficking, yet the exploitation of migrant workers is rife. Ironically the long-awaited enshrining of the crime of human trafficking in Irish law may have the undesirable consequence of drawing a line between the 'deserving' and the 'undeserving' exploited, thereby denying justice to many who migrate for work and find their rights and dignity violated in the process.


The importance of communication development can help people or parties involved in the development to stay on its tracks and create independence. The aim of this study consists of 1) Analyzing the relationship credibility of Women and Men Head of the Neighbourhood Community 2) Analyzing the relationship between the meeting intensity of the Women and Men Head of the Neighbourhood Community 3) To analyze the relationship of transformational leadership. The unit of analysis in this study comprises of 38 Women and Men Head of the Neighbourhood Community. The location was chosen deliberately, namely the District Dramaga. Parung and Ciomas. The sampling technique used was sensus and quota sampling by Spearman correlation using different tests to see the differences between Women and Men Head of the Neigbourhood Community. Women Head of the Neighbourhood Community shows significant relationships in the credibility, the intensity of the meeting, and transformational leadership. Head of the Neighbourhood Community Men related real on transformational leadership. It said that women and men do not differ regarding the actual transformational leadership related to the level of participation. It happens because when meeting citizens given the opportunity to provide opinions, advice, ideas and information, and if the activities carried out concerning the interests of the shared environment and a sense of solidarity among citizens. Keywords:Communication Development, Rural Development, Neigbourhood Community, Transformational Leadership, Participation


Managers spend much of their time communicating and use an ever-larger range of communication
tools for the purpose. Empirical studies have shown that while ICT tools extend communication
opportunities, they do not replace other means of communication. Instead, managers use a set of
communication tools in which traditional media coexist alongside ICT tools.
In addition, studying the use of just one medium fails to give us a full picture of managerial
communication. To gain a better understanding, we need to examine how a range of different means of communication are used. To this end, we conducted a case study in a car manufacturing company with data mainly collected through interviews with 36 managers. Our analysis of the data showed that managers use a set of communication tools that form superposed layers, each new ICT being layered over the existing media. Far from being the result of individual-level rational use, this layering process is socially constructed by the different users depending on their context. Our study identified three forms of layering, namely "subject to constraint", "planned and emergent", or "chosen". We argue that these differences in the layering process can help explain disparities in the outcomes of ICT adoption between organisations.


Accurate detection and quantification of vegetation dynamics and drivers of observed climatic and anthropogenic change in space and time is fundamental for our understanding of the atmosphere–biosphere interactions at local and global scales. This case study examined the coupled spatial patterns of vegetation dynamics and climatic variabilities during the past three decades in the Upper Heihe River Basin (UHRB), a complex multiple use watershed in arid northwestern China. We apply empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis to isolate and identify the spatial patterns of satellite-derived leaf area index (LAI) and their close relationship with the variability of an aridity index (AI = Precipitation/Potential Evapotranspiration). Results show that UHRB has become increasingly warm and wet during the past three decades. In general, the rise of air temperature and precipitation had a positive impact on mean LAI at the annual scale. At the monthly scale, LAI variations had a lagged response to climate. Two major coupled spatial change patterns explained 29% and 41% of the LAI dynamics during 1983–2000 and 2001–2010, respectively. The strongest connections between climate and LAI were found in the southwest part of the basin prior to 2000, but they shifted towards the north central area afterwards, suggesting that the sensitivity of LAI to climate varied over time, and that human disturbances might play an important role in altering LAI patterns. At the basin level, the positive effects of regional climate warming and precipitation increase as well as local ecological restoration efforts overwhelmed the negative effects of overgrazing. The study results offer insights about the coupled effects of climatic variability and grazing on ecosystem structure and functions at a watershed scale. Findings from this study are useful for land managers and policy makers to make better decisions in response to climate change in the study region.


To understand selenium (Se) circulation in the biosphere, the metabolism of organic Se, in particular, Se metabolites, in animals and plants should be elucidated. In this study, garlic, Allium sativum, a well-known Se accumulator with high Se metabolic ability, was hydroponically cultivated and then exposed to trimethylselenonium ion (TMSe), a urinary metabolite. Thereafter, the Se concentration in several parts of garlic, such as roots, bulbs, and leaves, was determined. To reveal the metabolic pathway of TMSe, the Se species in A. sativum were investigated by speciation using HPLC hyphenated with an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (LC-ICP-MS). Se was mostly accumulated in the roots. TMSe was detected in the extract of each plant part. However, the amount of Se incorporated from the medium was not completely recovered in the garlic, suggesting that a part of TMSe was metabolized into volatile Se. Consequently, we conclude that the majority of TMSe incorporated into garlic is accumulated as is, the rest is partially desmethylated to form a volatile Se compound, such as a dimethylated Se compound.


Abstract Fish living in the extreme conditions of the Tatra Mountain lakes were evaluated from a biological point of view as well as an important biomarker of long-range transported pollutants. In Veľke Hincovo pleso and in Morskie Oko, specimens of brown trout (Salmo trutta) of extraordinarily advanced age were found (ages of 18+ and 17+ years, respectively). The capture of a 17+ year-old brown trout in Morskie Oko (2400 g, 540 mm) indicated the presence of the so-called ferox life strategy. The growth of brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) was faster than the growth of brown trout in the younger year classes, and while the growth of brook trout stopped after the age of 5+, the growth of brown trout continued. Concentrations of long-range transported pollutants (HCHs, HCB, DDTs, PCBs, PBDEs, and trace metals) in the Tatra Mountain fish were mostly associated with fish age, body weight and length, type of fish tissue, and lake altitude. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in fish muscle were dominated by PCBs 138, 153, 180, and p,p'-DDE. Conversely, PBDEs concentrations ranged at substantially lower levels compared to other POPs. Altitude correlated significantly with concentrations of a-HCH, HCB, p,p'-DDT, p,p'-DDE, and with PCBs 28 and 52. The highest contents of trace metals were found in kidney and liver samples, with higher concentrations in Veľke Hincovo pleso than in Morskie Oko. The overall highest trace metal concentration levels were found for Fe, Cu, and Zn. In comparison with other European mountain lakes, the Tatra Mountain lakes are among the more contaminated.


In this essay, I introduce the figure of the "neoliberal subject of value" to explore the affective ambiguities of what Tiziana Terranova has termed "free labor," or the voluntary, unwaged, and exploited activities that generate the digital data, content, and connections central to informational capitalism. If, as Terranova argues, free labor is characterized by exhaustion—due to the lack of means by which this labor can sustain itself—why are millions of people still sustaining a commitment to such pervasive modes of unremunerated work? To formulate an answer to this question, I first turn to the neoliberal theory of human capital, which offers a more fruitful avenue for the analysis of digitally mediated "living labor" than the Autonomist Marxist theory that inspired Terranova's analysis, by elucidating how a logic based on competition, entrepreneurialism, and speculation has transformed how work is understood and valued. Second, I discuss the central role of commensuration within capitalist value production, arguing that human capital functions as a "commensurating machine" that allows neoliberal governmentality to permeate areas of life previously impervious to market rationality. Third, I show how such practices of market commensuration depend on a range of evaluative devices that create environments of equivalence and hierarchical difference, explicating how these devices have come to play an increasingly important role in contemporary digital culture. I then discuss a case study of Klout, a digital device that commensurates variegated social data into a score that ranks users according to their "influence," which has become an important, if contentious, measure of human capital in information economies. Finally, I return to the neoliberal subject of value and her affective ambiguities, which index both the aspirations and exhaustion of competitive value-generating sociality.


British attitudes towards homosexuality have changed with astonishing rapidity over recent decades. Society has managed to assimilate these shifts with relative ease. The Christian churches, however, as repositories of tradition and defenders of inherited values, have been finding it increasingly difficult to adjust to the new environment. The Church of England is internally divided in the face of an external crisis: the Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledges that the global Anglican Communion could split over the issue, and the church faces similar pressures domestically. These events raise important questions about how religious institutions come to terms with modernity. The rapidity of social change, the decline in deference to authority, the increase in tolerance of anything that seems a private matter, and the sense that sexuality is fundamental to the free expression of personal identity, all make it difficult for a church to declare that sexual orientation might disqualify one from ministry or even membership. This paper analyses empirical evidence covering two decades from the British Social Attitudes and British Household Panel surveys. It is apparent that no real consensus yet exists on basic issues of sexual morality. Society as a whole is highly polarised over the question of whether same-sex unions are wrong, with significant and increasing divisions between young and old, women and men, and religious and non-religious. Far from being better placed than others to avoid disputes, Christian churches suffer from compounded problems. The attitudes of lay Christians are starkly and increasingly polarised along the dimensions of ideology and religious practice. This gulf presents a particular problem for churches with both liberal and evangelical wings, notably the Church of England.


Building on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the tweets posted during the anniversary weeks between the years 2014 and 2021, this empirical study examines digital memory practices in the face of populist communication challenges on Twitter for the Gezi protests, which marked a critical milestone in the political history of Turkey. Based on existing literature on digital memory practices, empirical data, and contextual considerations, we proposed a typology of digital memory practices on how the Gezi was remembered on Twitter. We identified five types of memory practices: representational and symbolic practices; commemorating martyrs; legitimizing and resisting fake memories; bridging memories and public agendas; and keeping up and mobilizing practices. This study also shows how populist communication tactics extend to the realm of memorialization, wherein activists challenge them in their digital memory practices by refuting false accusations, resisting fake memories, and subverting misrepresentations.


Bio-nanocomposites form a unique class of a research area that integrates biology, chemistry, materials science, engineering and nanotechnology to present an interdisciplinary approach for solving of problems. In todayÂ's world, bio-nanocomposites are becoming increasingly prevalent due to the extraordinary properties that they possess. Scientists learn to select suitable matrices (e.g. aliphatic polyesters, polypeptides and proteins, polysaccharides, and polynucleic acids) and fillers (e.g. nanotubes, nanofibers, clay nanoparticles, hydroxyapetite and metal nanoparticles) and alter their chemistry and structure to suit the target field. This paper provides the most recent research made in the field of bio-nanocomposites as applied to biomedical fields including drug-delivery, biosensors, cancer diagnosis, and tissue engineering. Emerging trends in bio-technological and biomedical nanocomposites are highlighted and potential new fields of applications are examined.


The Jammi area consists of Archaean mafic volcanic rock and tonalitic gneiss, which were intruded by the Devonian Sokli carbonatite, causing large-scale and intense fenitization of the country rocks. The rocks are albite-fenites, crosscutting late carbonatite veins, with the mineral assemblages of calcite-dolomite-aegirine-albite-apatite-phlogopite. Geochemical analyses indicate that the total content of rare earth elements (REE) in the carbonatite veins is 0.11–1.83%, including 0.11–1.81% LREE and 0.002–0.041% HREE. Seven rare earth minerals have been analysed in detail from the area, including Sr-apatite, monazite, ancylite (Ce), bastnäsite (Ce), strontianite, baryte and brabanite. The Jammi carbonatite and fenite samples display similar REE patterns, with highest enrichment of LREE, and steep slopes towards the HREEs. The REE distribution in the whole-rock data is controlled by carbonates and apatite. REE-rich accessory phases such as monazite and ancylite (Ce) influence the REE pattern only when present in large amounts. Mineralogical and chemical evidence demonstrates that hydrothermal processes were responsible for the REE mineralization. During late-stage processes, apatite and carbonate minerals were replaced by various assemblages of REE–Sr–Ba minerals. Apatite could be a potential source for REE as a by-product of phosphate production in the Sokli area.


Insufficient liquidity can trigger fire sales and wreak havoc on a financial system. To address these challenges, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) and other central banks have long had the authority to provide financial institutions liquidity when market-based sources run dry. Yet, liquidity injections sometimes fail to quell market dysfunction. When liquidity shortages persist, they are often symptoms of deeper problems plaguing the financial system. This Essay shows that continually pumping new liquidity into a financial system in the midst of a persistent liquidity shortage may increase the fragility of the system and, on its own, is unlikely to resolve the deeper problems causing those liquidity shortages to persist. This Essay suggests that when facing persistent liquidity shortages, the Fed should instead use the leverage it enjoys by virtue of controlling access to liquidity to improve its understanding of the ailments causing the market dysfunction to persist and to help address those underlying issues. When liquidity shortages persist, they will often indicate that market participants lack critical information about risk exposures or that they are concerned financial institutions or other entities lack sufficient capital in light of the risks to which they are exposed. Providing credible information and working with other policymakers to ensure the overall financial system is sufficiently capitalized are thus among the issues that the Fed should prioritize when facing persistent liquidity shortages. This Essay thus provides a new paradigm for how the Fed can utilize its lender-of-last-resort authority to prevent a nascent financial crisis from erupting into one that inflicts significant harm on the real economy.The heart of this Essay brings these dynamics to life through a close examination of the Fed's actions during the early stages of the 2007--2009 financial crisis (the Crisis). Using transcripts from Fed meetings and other primary materials, the Essay reconstructs the first thirteen months of the Crisis. The analysis reveals more than a year during which Fed officials could have taken an array of actions that may have reduced the size of the Great Recession and the amount of credit risk and moral hazard stemming from the government's subsequent interventions. The analysis also demonstrates specific ways that the Fed's lender-of-last-resort authority could serve as the type of responsive and dynamic regulatory tool that the Fed requires when seeking to restore stability during the early phases of a panic.


The study of nonverbal vocalizations, such as sighs, grunts, and monosyllabic sounds, has largely revolved around the social and affective implications of these sounds within typical speech. However, for individuals who do not use any traditional speech, including those with nonor minimally verbal (nv/mv) autism, these vocalizations contain important, individual-specific affective and communicative information. This paper outlines the methodology, analysis, and technology to investigate the production, perception, and meaning of nonverbal vocalizations from nv/mv individuals in natural environments. We are developing novel signal processing and machine learning methods that will help enable augmentative communication technology, and we are producing a nonverbal vocalization dataset for public release. We hope this work will expand the scientific understanding of these exceptional individuals' language development and the field of communication more generally.


Introduction: Bromhexine is a potential therapeutic option in COVID-19, but no data from a randomized clinical trial has been available. The present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of bromhexine in intensive care unit (ICU) admission, mechanical ventilation, and mortality in patients with COVID-19. Methods: An open-label randomized clinical trial study was performed in Tabriz, North-West of Iran. They were randomized to either the treatment with the bromhexine group or the control group, in a 1:1 ratio with 39 patients in each arm. Standard therapy was used in both groups and those patients in the treatment group received oral bromhexine 8 mg three times a day additionally. The primary outcome was a decrease in the rate of ICU admissions, intubation/mechanical ventilation, and mortality. Results: A total of 78 patients with similar demographic and disease characteristics were enrolled. There was a significant reduction in ICU admissions (2 out of 39 vs. 11 out of 39, P = 0.006), intubation (1 out of 39 vs. 9 out of 39, P = 0.007) and death (0 vs. 5, P = 0.027) in the bromhexine treated group compared to the standard group. No patients were withdrawn from the study because of adverse effects. Conclusion: The early administration of oral bromhexine reduces the ICU transfer, intubation, and the mortality rate in patients with COVID-19. This affordable medication can easily be administered everywhere with a huge positive impact(s) on public health and the world economy. Altogether, the verification of our results on a larger scale and different medical centers is strongly recommended. Trial Registration: IRCT202003117046797N4; https://irct.ir/trial/46969.


Zircon from a microgranular enclave in the ca. 315 Ma postcollisional Karkonosze pluton (Western Sudetes, northeastern Bohemian Massif) is characterized by unusual morphologies and reequilibration textures. Blocky, clustered, and skeletal Th-U–rich zircon grains are internally corroded along discrete boundary zones, and subsequently replaced by porous microgranular aggregates of zircon and various other minerals, including thorite. The boundary zones have textures and compositions characteristic of diffusion-controlled chemical reaction fronts, including enrichment in Ca, Ba, and light rare earth elements, whereas microgranular domains are typical of zircon replacement and regrowth by coupled dissolution and precipitation. Initial zircon crystallization occurred with the mingling of mafic magma into a cooler granitic melt, whereas zircon modification is attributed to the reaction of late magmatic fluids from the host granite with the enclave. Precise dating of reequilibrated zircon as 304 ± 2 Ma indicates that fluid activity, which is also responsible for scheelite mineralization, postdates the emplacement of the main part of the pluton by several millions of years.


The research study reported in this thesis explores Chinese postgraduate students' academic reading practices in Lancaster University (UK) from a combined New Literacy Studies (NLS) and Activity Theory (AT) perspective. It attempted to investigate the academic reading practices that the students in question undertook while writing their assignments, with a view to revealing some of the interacting historical, social, cultural, and institutional factors that were seen as influential in shaping the nature of their current reading practices. The data were gathered mainly through ethnographic interviewing, observations of lecture sessions, and document collection in the academic year 2004/05. The findings indicate that the students' individual characteristics, their prior educational experiences under the Chinese education system, and the current contexts of their masters' programmes jointly affected their reading practices and experiences. In particular, the students' self-perception and long-established attitudes towards learning and reading remained fundamentally similar during their studies in the UK and played essential parts in shaping their reading practices. Also, in the context of their current studies, the clarity and explicitness of tutors' requirements, tutor-student communications, the availability of tutor support, the differences in the academic conventions between China and the UK, and so on, were additional important influences in this matter. The thesis also discusses the pedagogical implications for EAP and subject-area teaching, with an attempt to indicate how more beneficial and rewarding academic reading experiences for Chinese students might be achieved in the UK higher education context. It likewise demonstrates and discusses the advantages of using a combined NLS and AT framework for throwing new light on academic reading in an L2 context.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of obese models vs normal weight models on fashion brands' attractiveness.

Design/methodology/approach
An experiment was carried out in which 1,225 university students in Sweden and Brazil rated the attractiveness of a fashion brand worn by a normal weight model and an obese model.

Findings
The overall effect of obese models' effect on fashion brand attractiveness was insignificant. Furthermore, neither culture nor the consumer's own weight had a significant effect. There was, however, a significant effect of the participant's own gender; women rate fashion brands worn by obese models significantly higher on attractiveness than they did fashion brands worn by normal weight models. Men displayed the inverse response.

Research limitations/implications
The effect of the model's ethnicity was beyond the scope of the experiment, and the brand attractiveness scale captured only one aspect of brand character, leaving other potential brand effects for future studies.

Practical implications
Companies can use obese models with no overall brand attractiveness penalty across markets and for marketing to women of all sizes. Given men's negative reactions, such models might however be unsuitable for the male-to-female gift market.

Social implications
The results support the use of obese models, which can lead to greater representation of larger women in the media, and consequently, reduced fat stigma.

Originality/value
The study validates the theory of user imagery, and it extends the theory by examining how different target consumers react to user imagery traits and thus provides evidence for gender bias toward obese models.


"Up until the 14th of August 1919, despite the number of military fronts connected with the civil war, for us in Kozlov, everything was more or less calm, at least, as calm as it gets behind the front lines." These words introduce a brief set of reminiscences, published in the local Communist Party newspaper, Our Truth (Nasha Pravda), in the town of Kozlov, located in the central Russian province of Tambov. The occasion was the tenth anniversary of one of the most brutal episodes of the Russian civil war to take place in the province, namely "Mamantov's Raid," in which a force of Don Cossack cavalry, active in the anti-Bolshevik struggle in the south of Russia, advanced deep into Soviet territory, disrupting vital Red Army supply and communications links with the front line.


Since the rise of modern nation-states, borders have played the important role to order society because they have the power to define territories, not only on the ground, but also on the level of the imaginary by shaping national identities and perceptions of the world. Borders can be intended not as places, rather as processes, as socially constructed and shifting structures of practices and discourses that produce norms of difference and exclusion. Within this context, arts, and particularly performing arts, can play a role in challenging these forms of representation, overturning the spectacle of the border into collective performances. Drawing upon these conceptual premises, the article presents the empirical insights related to Tania Bruguera's 'Referendum'. Referendum was intended both as a performance and as a form of political activism, inviting people to vote on the following question: "Borders kill. Should we abolish borders?". After analysing the collaborative procedure that led to the final results of the performance, we reflect upon the role of arts as pedagogical and political tool capable of changing the existing imagery on borders - and specifically on the Mediterranean Sea - and human mobility, stimulating new forms of debate and responsabilization in terms of co-citizenship.


Anglo-Ethiopian Relations 1869-1906: A Study of British Policy in Ethiopia. By K. V. Ram. New Delhi, India: Concept Publishing Company, 2009. Pp. xv, 262; maps, bibliography, index. Rs 6.50 cloth. The present work examines British foreign policy in Northeast Africa during the era of high imperialism, with a primary focus on Ethiopia. Building upon his previous book, which considered an earlier period, the author's principal argument is that "British policy was motivated and guided by strategic considerations" (p. 245), with economic concerns playing a minimal role. The work thus aims to extend Robinson and Gallagher's influential interpretation of British imperialism to Northeast Africa. Following an introduction that outlines the broad contours of British policy towards Ethiopia, the work proceeds chronologically. The first chapter sets the stage by examining British policy debates in the aftermath of the 1968 Napier Expedition, while the second and third chapters trace the increasing impact of Britain's Egyptian interests on its Ethiopian policy, from its reluctant support of Egypt's invasion in 1872-1876 to the Hewett Treaty of 1884. Chapter 4 examines Britain's informal support for Italian expansion following the occupation of Egypt and the Mahdist revolt in Sudan, while Chapter 5 examines the growing gap between British and Italian aims in the 1890s. Chapter 6 examines Ethiopian-British relations through border negotiations involving Somaliland, Sudan, and British East Africa, while Chapters 7 and 8 describe the intricate imperial politics surrounding the Djibouti railway concession and the Tripartite Treaty of 1906. A conclusion presents the author's main argument. Unfortunately, there are a number of significant problems with this work. One major shortcoming is the author's failure to address the existing literature related to his subject. Diplomacy and the drama of imperial politics in Northeast Africa have been well studied by specialists,1 but the author rarely acknowledges, complicates, or otherwise engages the arguments of even the authoritative works. As a result, it is somewhat unclear what his specialized study adds to our understanding of this period. In addition, and perhaps more significantly, the author does not sufficiently engage the substantial body of scholarship devoted to the dynamics of British imperialism. Although the author clearly aligns himself with Robinson and Gallagher in the conclusion, it is only in Chapters 7 and 8 that the interplay between "the official mind" and economic considerations in the formulation of policy is evident. In addition, the author's analysis in earlier chapters periodically contradicts this later argument (cf. …


Conservation of Tropical Birds has been written by four conservation biologists whose expertise spans all the tropical regions of the world. It is the first book to cover all the major issues in tropical bird conservation. Current problems faced by tropical bird conservationists are summarised and potential solutions outlined based on the results of case studies. Birds are key indicators of ecosystem health, and such a well-studied group of organisms, that they provide an excellent lens through which to examine global conservation problems caused by phenomena such as climate change, declines in ecosystem services, habitat loss, fires, overexploitation, and invasive species. Therefore, the book also provides an engaging synopsis of the general issues in conservation and the problems faced by other wildlife. This book serves as an important resource and companion to all people interested in observing and conserving birds in the tropics and elsewhere.


Fatty acid profiles of total, neutral, and polar lipids in the liver, muscle, and intestine of female individuals of Vimba vimba (L., 1758) were determined by gas chromatography. C16:0, C16:1 n-7, C18:1 n-7, and C18:1 n-9 were the most abundant fatty acids in total and neutral lipids in all tissues investigated. In addition to these acids, C20:4 n-6 (arachidonic acid) and C22:6 n-3 (docosahexaenoic acid) were the other fatty acids having high percentages in the polar lipid fraction of the tissues. The highest and lowest n-3 to n-6 ratios, which are a good indicator of the quality of fish oils, were determined in the muscle (1.68) and liver (0.68) in the polar lipid fraction, respectively. It was determined that the species had low levels of the n-3 forms of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the investigated tissues. For a better understanding of fatty acid metabolism of V. vimba, more detailed studies are required in terms of feeding experiments.


Aconitum heterophyllum Wall. (Ranunculaceae), commonly known as Atish , is an important endangered (IUCN, 1993) temperate medicinal plant (Fig.1) distributed between 2400 and 4500 m amsl in temperate and alpine regions of the Himalaya. Distribution and morphology of this species has been extensively documented by various workers from time to time (Hooker and Thomson, 1872; Collett, 1902; Kirtikar& Basu 1975; Blatter, 1984; Polunin & Stainton, 1984; Prajapati et al. , 2007 and Nautial et al., 2009). However, its floral description especially perianth as described by these workers appears to be incomplete. Its perianth has been described as (i) "Raceme many flowered, helmet shortly beaked……flowers more than 1 inch long, bright blue, greenish blue with purple veins. Helmet half as high as long" (Hooker & Thomson, 1872), (ii) "Flowers 1 in. long, dull green-blue with purple veins; helmet pointed in front, top rounded; lateral sepals as long as the helmet" (Collett, 1902), (iii) "sepals more or less blue or violet, rarely whitish, with dark conspicuous veins, finely pubescent or glabrous; upper sepal almost vavicular obliquely erect, shortly or obscurely beaked, 18-20 mm. high and as long from tip to base, widest (8-9 mm.) above the middle, lateral margin sinous, lateral sepal very oblique and broadly obovate with dark tips, 14-20 mm. long, 12-20 mm broad, not clawed; lower sepals elliptic, obtuse or subacute, 8-10 mm long; nectaries glabrous, extinguisher-shaped; claw erect, 16-18 mm. long, hood short (up to 4 mm.) and very wide, more or less gibbous above, lip very short and broad, obtusely 2-lobed or entire" (Kirtikar & Basu, 1975), (iv) "More than 1 inch long flower, dull green purple or dull green-blue with dark purple veins. Sepals 5, petal like, erect, the upper one (helmet) pointed in front, top rounded; lateral sepals as long as the helmet" (Blatter, 1984), (v) "Flowers 2.5-3 cm, usually in lax spike-like cluster with very variable bracts which are either small linear, small ovate, or large ovate and enclosing the lower part of the flower and fruit. hood rounded, broader than long " (Polunin & Stainton, 1984), (vi) "flowers are 2.5 cm long, helmet shaped, bright, blue or greenish-blue with pale veins" (Prajapati et al., 2007), vii) "Sepals more or less greenish blue with purplish veins, rarely whitish, glabrous, upper sepals almost navicular, obliquely erect and lateral sepals are very oblique and broadly ovate with dark tips" (Nautial et al., 2009). Critical appraisal of these reports reveals that very little has been mentioned about its petals or their modification. This creates confusion especially when comparing it with other species of Aconitum L. Hence a need was felt to study its floral morphology discreetly. Flowers of this species were sourced from Rohtang area of district Kullu (2800 to 3000 m amsl), Himachal Pradesh, India.


Most of the studies based on the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) approach use the industry data to estimate the degree of market power at the national level. Yet, only a few empirical studies presented the results that measure the degree of market power at the regional level and found the existence of market power in the regional markets. While the fact is that there is an extensive evidence for the existence of potential oligopsony market power in the Ukrainian milk processing industry (price cartels and geographic market sharing among milk processing enterprises, interference of the state authorities, higher concentration on regional markets), the estimation results of the market structure model at the national level did not produce any evidence suggesting the exercise of oligopsony power (the estimated parameter of oligopsony power is close to zero and statistically insignificant). The objective of this study is to estimate the degree of oligopsony power in the regional market for raw milk. The estimation results of the market structure model at the regional level indicate the existence of oligopsony power in nine out of the twenty three regions of Ukraine.


The goal of this study was to determine the extent, to which beta radiation modified mechanical properties of surface layer on scale of nano meters. The current trend of replacing varying metal products by plastic products leads to lesser weight, but also a decrease of the tear resistance. This can be countered by exposing the material to electron radiation, which causes a creation of 3D network within the polymer structure. This process is an equivalent to heat treatments of metals. Properties of irradiated polyamide (hardness, modulus, deformation work, creep, etc.) were tested by contemporary indentation method (NHT3). This data was then evaluated by OLIVER & PHARR method. The results have shown that modifying the surface layer of polyamide led to a 50 % increase of mechanical properties.


In a Europe of many lights and shadows, cosmopolitan sociology provides a valid theoretical framework to distinguish one from the other. If cosmopolitan sociology is an attempt to understand how individuals, social groups and institutions deal with the challenges of ever more transnational social processes, then the European issue can be fully inserted within such an approach. From this point of view, following the austerity policies and recent events involving Syrian refugees and the attack by Daesh activists at the heart of Europe, sociology has started to enquire whether a cosmopolitan Europe is still possible. Conversaly, in the history of Europe and in its Constitutional Treaties, traces of cosmopolitanism are to be found almost everywhere. In this context, our study examines the crisis pervading Europe today and highlights the standing back to a certain extent of cosmopolitan sociology. At the same time, it stresses the hope that a change of direction will occur and the opportunity grasped of reflecting more deeply on the founding principles of cosmopolitan Europe.


With recent improvements in wireless sensor network hardware it is logical there should be a concurrent push to develop the sensors that are compatible in terms of price and performance. Wireless sensor networks are made up of a multitude of low power sensing nodes and are typically deployed in a scatter web configuration. A key concept is that the nodes are so low cost and are spread so densely, that the failure of any one node will not be a cause for great concern. The sensed data collected from wireless sensing networks have advantages over other traditional sensing methods. For example, the accuracy of any one particular node is not critical to the system; however, there must be reproducibility in the data from one node relative to the next. Therefore, when data is compared from multiple nodes one can deduce if the signal is increasing or decreasing and, hence, develop a directional sense to the response. This is something that cannot be achieved using traditional single point grab sampling.

The chemical sensor optimised as part of this project is based on the use of two light emitting diodes (LEDs), as both the light source and photodetector. This light sensor, when coupled with a PET slide coated with a pH sensitive colorimetric dye realises a simple gas sensor. Such setups have been successfully used to detect both acetic acid and ammonia. To date the sensors are already low cost due to their operating principle being based on the use of off the shelf LEDs, but flaws include a lack of reproducibility in sensed data. This is partly due to a reliance on poor manufacturing methods. Such inaccuracies have led to the requirement of an expensive individual node by node calibration.

The goal of this work is to improve the system performance through redesign. This will be accomplished by integration of the device into a flowcell platform, and the automation of the sensor creation process. The redesign of the sensor will improve sensor performance and It is hoped that this will increase accuracy in collected data and also increase the reproducibility of the created sensors. This reproducibility increase will be achieved through this careful control of deposited film thickness, and through the utilization of the highly reproducible inkjet printing process. The enhanced reproducibility between sensors opens the potential of calibration free use.


OBJECTIVES
Antibodies targeting post-translationally modified proteins, such as anti-carbamylated protein antibodies (anti-CarP antibodies) are present in the sera of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. These autoantibodies associate with increased risk of RA development and with severity of joint destruction. It is not known which proteins in the RA joint are recognised by anti-CarP antibodies. Therefore, we investigated the presence and identity of carbamylated proteins in the human (inflamed) joint.

METHODS
We obtained synovium, cartilage and synovial fluid from RA joints. Cartilage and synovium were obtained from controls. Samples were processed and used for immunohistochemistry or mass-spectrometric analysis to investigate the presence of carbamylated proteins. Anti-CarP antibody reactivity towards identified carbamylated proteins was tested by ELISA.

RESULTS
Immunohistochemistry showed extensive staining of RA and control synovial tissue. Whole proteome analyses of the joint tissues revealed a large number of carbamylated peptidyllysine residues. We identified many carbamylated proteins in cartilage and were also able to detect carbamylation in synovial tissue and synovial fluid. Carbamylation was not exclusive to the RA joint and was also present in the joints of controls. Anti-CarP antibodies in the sera of RA patients were able to recognise the identified carbamylated proteins.

CONCLUSIONS
We conclude that numerous carbamylated proteins are present in the RA joint. These carbamylated proteins can be recognised by anti-CarP antibodies, substantiating the notion that anti-CarP antibodies may play a role in the pathogenesis of RA.


Abstract. It remains challenging to quantify global cloud properties and uncertainties associated with their impacts on climate change because of our poor understanding of cloud three-dimensional (3-D) structures from observations and unrealistic characterization of 3-D cloud effects in global climate models (GCMs). In this study we find cloud 3-D effects can cause significant error in cloud ice and radiation measurements if it is not taken into account appropriately. One of the cloud 3-D complexities, the slantwise tilt structure, has not received much attention in research and even less has been reported considering a global perspective. A novel approach is presented here to analyze the ice cloud water content (IWC) profiles retrieved from CloudSat and a joint radar–lidar product (DARDAR). By integrating IWC profiles along different tilt angles, we find that upper-troposphere (UT) ice cloud mass between 11 and 17 km is tilted poleward from active convection centers in the tropics [30° S, 30° N]. This systematic tilt in cloud mass structure is expected from the mass conservation principle of the Hadley circulation with the divergent flow of each individual convection/convective system from down below, and its existence is further confirmed from cloud-resolving-scale Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations. Thus, additive effects of tilted cloud structures can introduce 5–20% variability by its nature or produce errors to satellite cloud/hydrometeor ice retrievals if simply converting it from slant to nadir column. A surprising finding is the equatorward tilt in middle tropospheric (5–11 km) ice clouds, which is also evident in high-resolution model simulations but not in coarse-resolution simulations with cumulus parameterization. The observed cloud tilt structures are intrinsic properties of tropical clouds, producing synoptic distributions around the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). These findings imply that current interpretations based on over-simplified cloud vertical structures could lead to considerable cloud measurement errors and have a subsequent impact on understanding cloud radiative, dynamical and hydrological properties.


Three new spontaneous recessive mouse mutations in the leptin receptor gene (Lepr), Lepr, Lepr and Lepr, originated in the CBA/J (CBA), B10.D2-H8(57N)/Sn (B10) and NU/J strains, respectively. Lepr and Lepr were maintained on C57BL/6J (B6), resulting in congenic lines of B6.CBALepr and B6.B10-Lepr. Lepr was also maintained on CBA post F1 generation of a cross between the B6 and the CBA, generating the congenic line CBA.B6CBA-Lepr. Lepr was maintained as a coisogenic strain. The aims of this study were to determine the molecular bases for these new Lepr mutations and to characterize the new mutant stocks, with respect to obesity and diabetes. Mutations were analyzed by Southern blot analysis, reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction and sequencing. Body weights and plasma glucose and insulin levels were measured, and the histology of the pancreas was carried out. Lepr contained one G deletion in exon 4 of Lepr, introducing a frameshift and premature termination. Lepr had a deletion in the extracellular domain of Lepr. Lepr exhibited a large DNA deletion, leading to a complete lack of Lepr. All three mutations led to morbid obesity and diabetes. It is noteworthy that Lepr caused milder hyperglycemia accompanied by higher plasma and pancreatic insulin contents on B6 compared to that on CBA backgrounds. In summary, we discovered three new mutations of Lepr, providing new mouse models for obesity and diabetes. Furthermore, our mutant stocks will be useful in elucidating the effects of the genetic background on the Lepr mutations and in testing the specificity of antibodies to LEPR. J. Nutr. 133: 1265–1271, 2003.


What standards should be met for an intervention to be for "self determination"? Would Kosovo fit under this category? Intervention in secessionist or national liberation struggles is not at all easy to justify. We cannot rule it out: remember that France's intervention in the American War of Independence was crucial to the success of the American colonies against Britain. But we need clear evidence of the support that the national liberation movement commands among the people it is claiming to liberate--and the support has to be material, not just intellectual or emotional. If people are not prepared to give their time and energy to the movement, to put their wealth at its service, to risk even their lives, they cannot expect foreigners to come to their aid. That kind of support is the first condition of any military intervention. The second condition is necessity: that the movement cannot be helped by any form of assistance short of war and that it will certainly be defeated without some external use of force, like the intervention that the French undertook in 1781. And the third condition is the strong likelihood that the intervention will be successful, and that this success will not be achieved at terrible costs to the people being liberated or to any of their neighbors. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It seems to me that it is easier to justify intervention on humanitarian rather than on liberation grounds, and that is the operative justification in the Kosovo case. If the oppression carried out by the rulers reaches massacre and ethnic cleansing, then intervention is not merely right, it is morally required. It is still subject, however, to the second and third conditions that I described a moment ago. When does a political community exist? How long of a struggle does there have to be and when does a prolonged struggle become a humanitarian crisis and the self help test no longer needed? The real question here is: what form does the material support of ordinary people for the liberation movement have to take and how long does it have to be sustained? We might imagine the answer as falling along a continuum. So much support over such a period of time justifies non-military forms of support and intervention: diplomacy, political pressure, propaganda, economic boycotts, or sanctions. More support over a longer time might justify the use of military force. Liberation struggles are sometimes constitutive of community, but a lot of people hold back, trying not to choose sides or just trying to choose the winning side. The judgments we make about the character of the movement and its standing among the people necessarily have to be made in particular cases, and they had better reflect some serious knowledge of the local history and culture. But a humanitarian crisis is, as it were, independent of history and culture. We count the murders or the rapes; we imagine the pain. We will still need people with local knowledge to help us (I do not necessarily mean the United States) decide how to intervene and how to organize the post-war reconstruction. But whether to intervene is a decision determined by the perception of human suffering. In deciding the morality of an intervention, how much should be on just purposes, and how much should be on just consequences, such as how likely a side is to win, or the outcome of the intervention? All the obvious prudential calculations about the costs of intervening, the probability of winning, and the likely aftermath are morally necessary. They are part of the set of factors that determine whether a use of military force is just. It is not only that we want our political leaders to act prudently; they are morally bound to act prudently. It would not have been just, for example, for the United States to risk a nuclear war in Hungary in 1956 notwithstanding the justice of the Hungarian revolution. We were bound not to impose that kind of risk on the people of Hungary or on Europe generally. …


The High Impact Tourism Training (HITT) was a Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme implemented by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV). It targeted informal workers from the tourism sector, notably women and youth, unskilled and semi-skilled workers in seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia: among them, Nepal. Through innovative solutions, the programme aimed to provide vocational training in tourism related activities to workers from the informal sector, women and youths - who usually had limited access to formal education - in order to increase their employability and income. After drawing the contours of the TVET sector and listing the main challenges to education in Nepal, the article shows how the HITT initiative chose to address them. Based on quantitative and qualitative evidence, we show that the strategy of intervention rests principally on two pillars: the introduction of active learning methods, and close collaboration with the private sector at every stage of the process, from the analysis of the sector and needs, to the design of the training, to the implementation. The article further dwells on the potentialities, limits and replicability of the HITT programme in Nepal.