Buy a product or services is a process and are influenced many factors. ext. customer's satisfaction. The concept of customer satisfaction suggests strong relationship to customer value in a hierarchical model. Starting at the bottom of the hierarchy, customer learn to think about products and performances attribute. When purchasing and using a product, they learn concequence experiences, reflected in value in use and possession value, that is the next level up in the hierarchy. The top level , customer achieve their goals and purposes to attach goal-based satisfaction. Customer value is a customer's perceived preference for and evaluation of those product attributes, attribute performances and consequences arising from use that facilitate (or block) achieving the customer's goals and purposes in use situations.  There are many information in a organization. Customer value is one of this information that is used to marketing decisition making. An organization  need to form the customer's value because that is influence the customer's satisfaction. And the next, customer's satisfaction will influence the buying-decision. Keywords: customer's value, buying-process, attribute based satisfaction, consequences based- satisfaction, goal-based satisfaction.


The purpose of this study is to determine the attitude of an out of control object using a new technology called lidar (Light Ranging and Detection). As the number of spacecraft continues to grow, it is paramount to introduce a new type of autonomous on-orbit satellite inspection and repair involving docking. Traditional space vision technology is based on video systems. This method is limited by the necessity of operating when the target is illuminated by the sunlight or using its own source of illumination. The use of laser imaging technology offers an elegant solution to these challenges. This approach allows the collection of range data, while scanning the lidar field-of-view together with the transmitted laser beam across the required solid angle. A lidar simulator was implemented to generate point clouds of digital 3D models. This thesis describes methods that can be used to detect features such as edges, boundaries, surfaces and corners in the point cloud. From those features it was possible to define a reference frame and associate it to the object. Observing the evolution of this body frame, the changes in orientation can be deduced in the direction cosine matrix form. It was desired to retrieve angular rates in Euler angle form but since the conversion from rotation matrix to Euler is not a bijection, no satisfying results were obtained. The results are therefore expressed in terms of rotation matrix. It was found that depending on the orientation of the spacecraft the accuracy of the results varied. The results indicate that filtering of the direction cosine matrices might yield good data for determining attitude rates.


SCOPE
The objective was to perform an inventory and critical evaluation of folate data in selected European and international databases. The ultimate aim was to establish guidelines for compiling standardized folate databases for international nutritional studies.

METHODS AND RESULTS
An ad hoc questionnaire was prepared to critically compare and evaluate folate data completeness, quantification, terminologies, and documentation of 18 European and international databases, and national fortification regulations. Selected countries participated in the European Prospective Investigation into Nutrition and Cancer project and European Food Information Resource Network (EuroFIR). Folate completeness was generally high. "Total folate" was the most common terminology and microbiological assay was the most frequently reported quantification method. There is a lack of comparability within and between databases due to a lack of value documentation, the use of generic or non-appropriate terminologies, folate value conversions, and/or lack of identification of synthetic folic acid.

CONCLUSION
Full value documentation and the use of EuroFIR component identifiers and/or INFOODS tagnames for total folate ("FOL") and synthetic folic acid ("FOLAC"), with the additional use of individual folates, will increase comparability between databases. For now, the standardized microbiological assay for total folate and HPLC for synthetic folic acid are the recommended quantification methods.


Over 40 percent of the energy consumed globally is used in the industrial sector. In China, this sector consumes an even larger proportion, reaching nearly 70 percent in 1997. A variety of energy efficiency policies and programs have been instituted in both industrialized and developing countries in an effort to improve the energy efficiency of the industrial sector. There are very few comprehensive evaluations of these industrial sector energy efficiency policies; however a number of recent workshops and conferences have included a focus on these policies. Three important meetings were the International Energy Agency's Industrial Energy Efficiency: Policies and Programs Conference in 1994, Industrial Energy Efficiency Policies: Understanding Success and Failure - A Workshop Organized by the International Network for Energy Demand Analysis in the Industrial Sector in 1998, and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's 1999 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Industry. Man y articles from these meetings are included as attachments to this memo. This paper provides a brief description of each of seven categories of individual industrial energy efficiency policies and programs, discuss which industrial sectors or types of equipment they apply to, and provide references for articles and reports that discuss each policy or program in more detail. We begin with mandatory-type policies and move to more voluntary-type policies. We then provide a brief description of four integrated industrial energy efficiency policies and provide references for articles and reports that describe these policies in greater detail.


Instability effects caused by high-energy γ-irradiation are studied in (As2S3)1-x(Sb2S3)xglasses (x=0, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3) using positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy, the results being treated within two-state trapping model in both normal and high-measurement statistics. The observed decrease in positron trapping rate of the glasses tested just after γ-irradiation was explained due to renovation of destroyed covalent chemical bonds. This process was governed by monomolecular single-exponential relaxation kinetics agreed well with corresponding changes in the fundamental optical absorption edge. (© 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


In order to improve the growth of Impatiens and Oleander plants, several experiments were conducted in which chabaziticzeolites were added to cultivation substrates to assess their influence on plant growth and reduction of fertilizer use. The experiment on Impatiens and Oleander involved 4 treatments: control with total fertilization; control with reduced fertilization; substrate with chabazite and total fertilization; substrate with chabazite and reduced fertilization. The results showed an improvement in the growth of Impatiens and oleander plants and a reduction in the use of fertilizers in substrates with added chabazite. Further experiments will be carried out in order to have more data on the growth of the different ornamental and horticultural species, also based on the variation in the percentage of chabazite in the mixture.


Majority voting in board elections has emerged as a dominant theme in recent proxy seasons. Analysis of majority voting is important: first, the impact is controversial yet scant empirical evidence exists. Second, Congress is still considering mandating this practice. Third, there has been a tectonic shift in adoptions of majority voting, from 16% to over 67% of S&P 500 firms in just two years. Fourth, the vast majority of shareholder proposals for majority voting are sponsored by unions with little shareholdings. Proponents argue that majority voting aligns shareholder–director interests. Opponents argue that the practice will be disruptive and could result in the failure of boards to meet exchange and SEC requirements. Others assert that majority voting is a paper tiger, amounting to form over substance, particularly since many adoptions are non-binding. We provide an empirical analysis of the wealth effects, characteristics, and efficacy of majority voting. Our results are consistent with the paper tiger hypothesis.


ABSTRACT This paper investigates how tennis players control stroke-induced vibration. Its aim is to characterise how a tennis player deals with entering vibration waves or how he/she has the ability to finely adjust them. A specific experimental procedure was designed, based on simultaneously collecting sets of kinematic, vibration and electromyographic data during forehand strokes using various commercial rackets and stroke intensities. Using 14 expert players, a wide range of excitations at spectral and temporal levels were investigated. Energetic and spectral descriptors of stroke-induced vibration occurring at the racket handle and at the player's wrist and elbow were computed. Results indicated that vibrational characteristics are strongly governed by grip force and to a lower extent by the racket properties. Grip force management drives the amount of energy, as well as its distribution, into the forearm. Furthermore, hand-grip can be assimilated to an adaptive filter which can significantly modify the spectral parameters propagating into the player's upper limb. A significant outcome is that these spectral characteristics are as much dependent on the player as on the racket. This contribution opens up new perspectives in equipment manufacture by underlining the need to account for player/racket interaction in the design process.


We propose a novel self-supervised method, referred to as Video Cloze Procedure (VCP), to learn rich spatial-temporal representations. VCP first generates "blanks" by withholding video clips and then creates "options" by applying spatio-temporal operations on the withheld clips. Finally, it fills the blanks with "options" and learns representations by predicting the categories of operations applied on the clips. VCP can act as either a proxy task or a target task in self-supervised learning. As a proxy task, it converts rich self-supervised representations into video clip operations (options), which enhances the flexibility and reduces the complexity of representation learning. As a target task, it can assess learned representation models in a uniform and interpretable manner. With VCP, we train spatial-temporal representation models (3D-CNNs) and apply such models on action recognition and video retrieval tasks. Experiments on commonly used benchmarks show that the trained models outperform the state-of-the-art self-supervised models with significant margins.


Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are integral components of grasslands because most plants are associated with interconnected networks of AM hyphae. Mycorrhizae generally facilitate plant uptake of nutrients from the soil. However, mycorrhizal associations are known to vary in their mutualistic function, and there is currently no metric that links AM functioning with fungal colonization of roots. Mycorrhizal structures differ in their physiological and ecological functioning, so changes in AM allocation to intraradical (inside roots) and extraradical (in soil) structures may signal shifts in mycorrhizal function. We hypothesize that the functional equilibrium model applies to AM fungi and that fertilization should reduce allocation to arbuscules, coils, and extraradical hyphae, the fungal structures that are directly involved in nutrient acquisition and transfer to plants. This study compared AM responses to experimental N enrichment at five grasslands distributed across North America. Samples were collected from replicated N-enriched (and some P-enriched) and control plots throughout the growing season for three years. Intraradical AM structures were measured in over 1400 root samples, extraradical hyphal density was measured in over 590 soil samples, and spore biovolume was analyzed in over 400 soil samples. There were significant site × N interactions for spore biovolume, extraradical hyphae, intraradical hyphae, and vesicles. Nitrogen enrichment strongly decreased AM structures at Cedar Creek, the site with the lowest soil N:P, and it increased AM structures at Konza Prairie, the site with the highest soil N:P. As predicted by the functional equilibrium model, in soils with sufficient P, relative allocation to arbuscules, coils, and extraradical hyphae was generally reduced by N enrichment. Allocation to spores and hyphae was most sensitive to fertilization. At the mesic sites, this response was associated with a shift in the relative abundance of Gigasporaceae within AM fungal communities. This study demonstrates that N enrichment impacts mycorrhizal allocation across a wide range of grassland ecosystems. Such changes are important because they suggest an alteration in mycorrhizal functioning that, in turn, may impact plant community composition and ecosystem function.


Source and information evaluation is identified as being a critical element of the analytical process and production of intelligence products. However there is concern that in reality evaluation is being carried out in a cursory fashion involving limited intellectual rigour. Poor evaluation is also thought to be a causal factor in the failure of intelligence. This study examined the process of information and source evaluation as understood and practiced by, six West Australian Police Force, (WAPOL) intelligence analysts. Data was gathered by use of a focus group with that data being compared against the current literature. It was discovered that formal training in evaluation methods was limited. The significance of evaluation was however clearly understood and the lack of sufficient training was recognised as a limitation to analysis. The study however identified that this group of analysts did practice evaluation through a process of ongoing information contextualisation.


Upon T cell receptor (TCR) engagement, Lck (a member of the Src family of protein tyrosine kinases) phosphorylates immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motifs (ITAMs) contained within the cytoplasmic domains of the chains of the CD3 complex. Subsequently, Zap70 (a member of the Syk family of kinases) is recruited by binding of its Src homology 2 (SH2) domains to the phosphorylated ITAM sites. Activated Zap70 propagates signal transduction through the phosphorylation of downstream targets, including the adaptor molecules LAT and SLP-76. These adaptors facilitate phospholipase C-γ1 (PLCγ1) activation, resulting in the cleavage of phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2] to inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) and diacylglycerol (DAG). The known signaling pathways that lead to T cell activation upon TCR engagement rely on IP3 and DAG second messengers. IP3 triggers calcium mobilization, which leads to activation of the transcription factor nuclear factor of activated T cells (NF-AT). DAG activates Ras guanine nucleotide-releasing protein (RasGRP) and protein kinase C θ (PKCθ), which in turn lead to activation of the Ras-mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathways, respectively. CD45 and Csk have been identified as key proximal regulators of T cell signal transduction by modulating phosphorylation and, hence, enzymatic activity of the Src family kinases. The Connections Maps Pathway emphasizes the signaling events that lead to changes in gene expression in response to T cell activation. Science Viewpoint A. L. Singer, G. A. Koretzky, Control of T cell function by positive and negative regulators. Science 296, 1639-1640 (2002). [Abstract] [Full Text]


CONTEXT
Low levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are associated with high risk of mortality, and improvements in fitness are associated with reduced mortality risk. However, a poor understanding of the physical activity-fitness dose response relation remains.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the effect of 50%, 100%, and 150% of the NIH Consensus Development Panel recommended physical activity dose on fitness in women.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Randomized controlled trial of 464 sedentary, postmenopausal overweight or obese women whose body mass index ranged from 25.0 to 43.0 and whose systolic blood pressure ranged from 120.0 to 159.9 mm Hg. Enrollment took place between April 2001 and June 2005 in the Dallas, Tex, area.

INTERVENTION
Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups: 102 to the nonexercise control group and 155 to the 4-kcal/kg, 104 to the 8-kcal/kg, and 103 to the 12-kcal/kg per week energy-expenditure groups for the 6-month intervention period. Target training intensity was the heart rate associated with 50% of each woman's peak Vo2.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
The primary outcome was aerobic fitness assessed on a cycle ergometer and quantified as peak absolute oxygen consumption (Vo2abs, L/min).

RESULTS
The mean (SD) baseline Vo2abs values were 1.30 (0.25) L/min. The mean (SD) minutes of exercising per week were 72.2 (12.3) for the 4-kcal/kg, 135.8 (19.5) for the 8-kcal/kg, and 191.7 (33.7) for the 12-kcal/kg per week exercise groups. After adjustment for age, race/ethnicity, weight, and peak heart rate, the exercise groups increased their Vo2abs compared with the control group by 4.2% in the 4-kcal/kg, 6.0% in the 8-kcal/kg, and 8.2% in the 12-kcal/kg per week groups (P<.001 for each vs control; P for trend <.001). There was no treatment x subgroup interaction for age, body mass index, weight, baseline Vo2abs, race/ethnicity, or baseline hormone therapy use. There were no significant changes in systolic or diastolic blood pressure values from baseline to 6 months in any of the exercise groups vs the control group.

CONCLUSION
In this study, previously sedentary, overweight or obese postmenopausal women experienced a graded dose-response change in fitness across levels of exercise training.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00011193.


Abstract Mesophotic coral reefs are largely unexplored nearshore habitats. We present illustrations of both sexes of a new copepod species of the family Longipediidae Sars, 1903 collected via scuba-diving with tri-mix rebreathers from mesophotic coral reefs in Puerto Rico as an example of the rich fauna encountered in these habitats. The new species, Longipedia gonzalezi, displays a conservative morphology that characterizes the genus by having a robust body, first pedigers fused to the cephalosome, P4 exp-2 with only 1 medial seta, number of enp-1 medial setae of P1–P4 = 1:1:1:1, number of enp-2 medial setae of P1–P4 = 1:1:2:1, and caudal rami of cylindrical shape about twice as long as wide. The new species belongs to the helgolandica species-group and is morphologically similar to L. helgolandica and L. americana. Species distinction within the genus Longipedia based on morphological characters is challenging because of the conservative morphology of the genus, so we provide the first DNA sequences (28S gene) for future comparisons within the genus. The phylogenetic position of the Polyarthra (a taxon consisting of the families Longipediidae and Canuellidae, whose affinities with Harpacticoida have been questioned) is discussed within Copepoda and other Crustacea. The 28S DNA analysis confirms that Polyarthra are very closely related and are included in the strongly supported Copepoda clade. Polyarthra were not found within the Harpacticoida, which, therefore, remained not as a monophyletic, but as a paraphyletic taxon. Therefore, our 28S data indicate that the claim by Dahms and previous authors for the exclusion of Polyarthra from the Harpacticoida may be valid, and warrants further investigation. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:51728F35-A981-4E4A-BEE2-701ABCDBC123


The 2010 Darfield and 2011 Christchurch Earthquakes triggered extensive liquefaction-induced lateral spreading proximate to streams and rivers in the Christchurch area, causing significant damage to structures and lifelines. A case study in central Christchurch is presented and compares field observations with predicted displacements from the widely adopted empirical model of Youd et al. (2002). Cone penetration testing (CPT), with measured soil gradation indices (fines content and median grain size) on typical fluvial deposits along the Avon River were used to determine the required geotechnical parameters for the model input. The method presented attempts to enable the adoption of the extensive post-quake CPT test records in place of the lower quality and less available Standard Penetration Test (SPT) data required by the original Youd model. The results indicate some agreement between the Youd model predictions and the field observations, while the majority of computed displacements error on the side of over-prediction by more than a factor of two. A sensitivity analysis was performed with respect to the uncertainties used as model input, illustrating the model's high sensitivity to the input parameters, with median grain size and fines content among the most influential, and suggesting that the use of CPT data to quantify these parameters may lead to variable results.


Since Perlmutter (1971) the complementizer-gap effect has received much attention in linguistic research. This article investigates the solution presented in Van Valin (2005) which states that the phenomenon should be explained in pragmatic rather than syntactic terms. Using data from Swedish and several other languages I will argue that such a solution is unlikely to be correct, and that the English and Swedish facts are better explained by referring to available syntactic constructions. My conclusion is that in a cross-linguistic perspective restrictions on subject extraction must be regarded as a very heterogeneous phenomenon, and in order to explain the empirical data I will suggest a number of competing motivations related to the Accessibility Hierarchy, argument linking and syntactic templates.


The Shaping an Engineering Career Series of e-books describes the challenges that practitioners, academics and their managers, in the engineering and related disciplines, face in building their careers. This series will document the personal history of selected engineers and describe their journeys in transitioning from entry-level employees to either technology professionals or managers. The purpose of this series is to identify the different circumstances that technology professionals have encountered in building their careers, and it will provide some guidance to others about what is required to build a successful career in technology, or related disciplines.


Smart wearable devices become more and more prevalent in the age of the Internet of Things. While people wear them as fitness trackers or full-fledged smartphones, they also come in unique versions as smartwatches for children. These watches allow parents to track the location of their children in real-time and offer a communication channel between parent and child. In this paper, we analyzed six smartwatches for children and the corresponding backend platforms and applications for security and privacy concerns. We structure our analysis in distinct attacker scenarios and collect and describe related literature outside academic publications. Using a cellular network Man-in-the-Middle setup, reverse engineering, and dynamic analysis, we found several severe security issues, allowing for sensitive data disclosure, complete watch takeover, and illegal remote monitoring functionality.


The body is a site of impassioned, fraught and complex debate in the West today. In one political moment, left-wingers, academics and feminists have defended powerful men accused of sex crimes, positioned topless pictures in the tabloids as empowering, and opposed them for sexualizing breasts and undermining their 'natural' function. At the same time they have been criticized by extreme-right groups for ignoring honour killings and other 'culture-based' forms of violence against women. How can we make sense of this varied terrain?

In this important and challenging new book, Alison Phipps constructs a political sociology of women's bodies around key debates: sexual violence, gender and Islam, sex work and motherhood. Her analysis uncovers dubious rhetorics and paradoxical allegiances, and contextualizes these within the powerful coalition of neoliberal and neoconservative frameworks. She explores how 'feminism' can be caricatured and vilified at both ends of the political spectrum, arguing that Western feminisms are now faced with complex problems of positioning in a world where gender often comes second to other political priorities.

This book provides a welcome investigation into Western politics around women's bodies, and will be particularly useful to scholars and upper-level students of sociology, political science, gender studies and cultural studies, as well as to anyone interested in how bodies become politicized.


Despite the significant recent progress in deep generative models, the underlying structure of their latent spaces is still poorly understood, thereby making the task of performing semantically meaningful latent traversals an open research challenge. Most prior work has aimed to solve this challenge by modeling latent structures linearly, and finding corresponding linear directions which result in `disentangled' generations. In this work, we instead propose to model latent structures with a learned dynamic potential landscape, thereby performing latent traversals as the flow of samples down the landscape's gradient. Inspired by physics, optimal transport, and neuroscience, these potential landscapes are learned as physically realistic partial differential equations, thereby allowing them to flexibly vary over both space and time. To achieve disentanglement, multiple potentials are learned simultaneously, and are constrained by a classifier to be distinct and semantically self-consistent. Experimentally, we demonstrate that our method achieves both more qualitatively and quantitatively disentangled trajectories than state-of-the-art baselines. Further, we demonstrate that our method can be integrated as a regularization term during training, thereby acting as an inductive bias towards the learning of structured representations, ultimately improving model likelihood on similarly structured data.


Moose ( Alces alces ) may be among one of the most susceptible big game species to climate change. Development of long-term circumpolar databases of this species' densities and distributions, combined with biological, ecological, and management-related metrics, can help guide research and future international management strategies. We emulated methodology previously used to summarize North American moose population and harvest densities for Eurasian countries with free-ranging moose populations. From these data, we created a GIS layer that summarized the circumpolar distribution and density of moose. The following summary analysis of these data indicates that moose have both expanded and contracted along their southern range boundary in recent decades – with losses along the southern range in eastern Asia, particularly China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. In contrast, we documented distributional gains along the western and southwestern range in Europe (Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia). In total, 21 countries have free-ranging moose populations; 8 with sustainable populations and hunting seasons, 5 with sustainable populations but no hunting season, and 8 with vagrant individuals occasionally sighted. A region of high-density moose populations spans from the Scandinavian and Baltic countries into the Russian oblasts of Perm and Sverdlovsk. Distributions ca. 2010 indicated that moose occupied an area of about 16,712,600 km 2 in Eurasia. Primary range (management units with ≥0.11 moose per km 2 ) composed only 18% of the occupied range while supporting more than 66% of the estimated 1.2 million moose in Eurasia. Additionally, 47% (149,860) of the moose harvested were taken on 10% (1,722,660 km 2 ) of the range. The 2010 circumpolar moose population was estimated to be more than 2.2 million and occupied a range of 26,205,000 km 2 . Time-series analyses can offer a simple and cost-effective approach to monitor the status of moose populations across large geographical regions and might be particularly insightful given the current and predicted future influences of climate change on moose. Other analyses might address population dynamics, habitat, environmental constraints, and harvest management, among other issues. We encourage jurisdictions to cooperate strategically in implementing and coordinating GIS analyses to monitor, assess, and manage moose populations around the world. We believe these maps can serve as a useful tool for educating the public and policy makers about the importance of habitat and land use practices with respect to maintaining sustainable populations of moose and other species that are dependent upon boreal, temperate broadleaf, and mixed forests.


WSNs have a wide variety of applications, and their usability for remote monitoring of various parameters of interest is growing dramatically. Conventional applications mostly involved a single WSN for collecting raw parameters with limited aggregation on the node side, whereby more sophisticated data mining was implemented by the end-users. Recent applications however, often require more intelligent functions, in which nodes are expected to implement logical decision-makings on the aggregated data. Implementing such functions often involves more processing, and wider interactions amongst network peers, hence resulting in higher energy consumption and shorter node lifetime. Sensomax is an agent-based WSN middleware, which facilitates seamless integration of mathematical functions in large-scale wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we will investigate game theoretic and auction-based techniques in order to optimise task distribution and energy consumption in WSNs.


The article discusses Brazil's recent certification as free of Chagas disease transmission by Triatoma infestans, analyzing the various meanings ascribed to this position. Resulting mainly from measures by both the Chagas Disease Control Program (PCDCh) established in Brazil in 1975 and the Southern Cone Initiative launched in 1991, this certification has been interpreted in ways that lead to confusion between the elimination of Chagas disease transmission by T. infestans and eradication of the disease. The present status of vector transmission control in Brazil is discussed, with emphasis on the Northeast, in most States of which T. infestans is not the main species involved in transmission. The article highlights the need to broaden the discussion of the readings and consequences involved in the present control achievements in light of possible harm from misinterpretations that might jeopardize further efforts to control the disease.


The existence of spatial inequalities is not a novelty in Switzerland. The cleavage between wealthy cities and poor rural and mountainous places is centuries-old being a cornerstone of present Swiss cooperative federalism. Yet, as a consequence of metropolitanization, this urban-rural pattern of political, social and economic divergences has been supplemented during the last century by a complex pattern of city-suburb disparities. As the proportions of people and activities in urban areas increase, metropolitan inequalities become a new challenge for the democratic Welfare State.Applying the protocol of the third phase of the International Metropolitan Observatory (IMO) we will develop our argument in three sections. First we will assess spatial disparities within and across Swiss metropolitan areas. Second we will establish regional regimes and patterns of local capacities to address social inequalities. Finally we will examine the distribution of local government expenditures and distinct public policy profiles. In all three sections data will be used that has not yet been available.In order to explain disparities in local revenues and expenditures we will rely on socio-structural, political and institutional variables. Hence, besides spatial concentrations of disadvantaged and privileged groups, political preferences as well as metropolitan regimes as regards taxation, fiscal equalization and communal autonomy are assumed to affect spatial inequalities.Our findings reveal that the interaction between taxation and fiscal equalisation conditions spatial inequalities with respect to local governance capacities and that despite the highly decentralised character of the Swiss political system, socio-economic and institutional determinants leave not much room for political voluntarism.


Consumer-grade game engines such as Multimedia Fusion and RPG Maker have dramatically extended the reach of digital games as a medium. They have also spawned online communities, where conventions and canons of using these tools have evolved. These partly stem from the functional constraints of the game engines themselves and are institutionalized through manuals, examples, tutorials, and games made with them. However, some members of game engine communities actively seek to challenge these conventions by experimenting with the engines and finding ingenious ways to put them to unexpected uses. Such experiments can be regarded as a form of metacommentary on the engines' capabilities and limitations. While arguably impractical and inefficient, they enrich the scope of what can be done with the engine and can contribute to its further development.


Many problems in extremal graph theory correspond to questions involving homomorphisms into a fixed image graph. Recently, there has been interest in maximizing the number of homomorphisms from graphs with a fixed number of vertices and edges into small image graphs. For the image graph $H_\text{ind}$, the graph on two adjacent vertices, one of which is looped, each homomorphism from $G$ to $H_\text{ind}$ corresponds to an independent set in $G$. It follows from the Kruskal-Katona theorem that the number of homomorphisms to $H_\text{ind}$ is maximized by the lex graph, whose edges form an initial segment of the lex order.
A loop-threshold graph is a graph built recursively from a single vertex, which may be looped or unlooped, by successively adding either a looped dominating vertex or an unlooped isolated vertex at each stage. Thus, the graph $H_\text{ind}$ is a loop-threshold graph. We survey known results for maximizing the number of homomorphisms into small loop-threshold image graphs. The only extremal homomorphism problem with a loop-threshold image graph on at most three vertices not yet solved is $H_\text{ind}\cup E_1$, where extremal graphs are the union of a lex graph and an empty graph. The only question that remains is the size of the lex component of the extremal graph. While we cannot give an exact answer for every number of vertices and edges, we establish the significance of and give bounds on $\ell(m)$, the number of vertices in the lex component of the extremal graph with $m$ edges and at least $m+1$ vertices.


While long-standing diabetes (DM) modestly increases the risk of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PC), there is growing evidence that PC frequently causes DM. Up to 85% of PC patients have DM or hyperglycemia, which frequently manifests in the 2 to 3 years preceding the diagnosis of cancer. Conversely, subjects with new-onset DM have a high probability (5-8 folds higher than the population) of being diagnosed with PC within 1-3 years of DM onset. Resection of the PC leads to amelioration of DM. Type 2 DM occurs due to beta cell failure following decades of obesity-associated insulin resistance. As in type 2 DM, beta cell dysfunction and peripheral insulin resistance are seen in PC-induced DM (PC-DM). However, in contrast to type 2 DM, onset and progression of glucose intolerance in PC-DM occur in the face of ongoing, often profound, weight loss. The weight loss precedes the development of DM in PC and occurs months before the onset of cancer cachexia. Studies show that PC is associated with profound insulin resistance that resolves following PC resection. However, the very high frequency of DM suggests that there is associated beta cell dysfunction. There are many hypotheses for how PC might cause DM: a) Is PC-DM simply type 2 DM? Canonical risk factors for DM (age, BMI and family history of DM) are also risk factors for PCDM. However, the fact that new-onset DM and hyperglycemia occur in 85% of PC suggest a PC-specific stressor that profoundly and consistently decompensates glucose homeostasis. b) Could PCDM be a consequence of profound cachexia seen in PC? Cachexia is associated with insulin resistance which could potentially decompensate glues homeostasis, especially in the elderly. This is unlikely to explain PCDM as. c) Could obstruction of the pancreatic duct and consequent pancreatic atrophy cause PCDM? PC is frequently associated with obstructive pancreatitis and distal atrophy. However, onset of DM occurs at a time when CT does not even show a mass. Additionally, insulin levels would be expected to be low in patients with DM due to destruction of islet mass. Insulin levels are relatively high in PCDM, reflecting insulin resistance. d) The most likely explanation for the frequent occurrence of DM in PC is that it is a paraneoplastic phenomenon caused by tumor secreted products. Apart from the clinical and epidemiological evidence noted above, this notion is supported by laboratory data that supernatant from PC cell lines inhibit insulin secretion. Although much remains to be learned, new insights on the pathogenesis of these metabolic alterations in PC have recently emerged. Adrenomedullin, which is over-expressed in PC, was identified as a potential mediator of beta-cell dysfunction in PCDM. Adrenomedullin is a pluripotent hormone with homology semblance to amylin. In the pancreas, its receptors are found on beta cells and its expression is seen specifically in the F cells of the islets. Inhibition of insulin secretion in beta cells induced by supernatant from PC cell lines was replicated by external addition of adrenomedullin and abrogated by its genetic knockdown. Similar effects were seen in orthotopic and subcutaneous in vivo tumor models using adrenomedullin expressing PC cell lines. Further, plasma adrenomedullin levels were higher in PC compared to controls and even higher levels were seen in PCDM. Overexpression of adrenomedullin was seen in surgically resected specimens of PC. These data strongly support the notion that adrenomedullin mediates beta cell dysfunction. The cause of insulin resistance and PCDM-associated weight loss remains unclear, though these appear to be paraneoplastic phenomena as well. PC is associated with a unique mechanism of DM. The onset of DM occurs between 6 months and 365 months before PC diagnosis in 20-25% of patients. At this time patients are otherwise asymptomatic. This suggests that new-onset DM could be biomarker of asymptomatic PC. However, the strategy to use new-onset DM as a marker of asymptomatic PC will succeed only if PC-DM can be distinguished from the more common type2 DM. Identifying the mediators of PC-DM could lead to discovery of novel biomarkers of PC.


This paper examines similarities between attitudes towards European redistribution and attitudes towards national redistribution. It maps out possible reasons for expected similarities between the two spatial levels in the degree redistribution is supported and also the underlying mechanisms that foster support rates. To examine the underlying mechanisms, the paper employs a structural equation modelling approach. Despite vastly different institutional settings, findings indicate that the degree of support for redistribution at the national and at the European level are comparable. And we can also identify a similar structure in mechanisms fostering support rates at the European level compared to the one at the national level. Moreover, the strength of these mechanisms is also comparable at the respective spatial level. The results have important consequences for our understanding of transnational mechanisms. They suggest that social entities transcending national borders possess features comparable to national social entities (i.e., nation states). Overall, this potentially suggests that national conflict lines have the capacity to be carried over into the transnational space (e.g., the European social space).


Title of dissertation: Comparative Ecological Modeling for Long-term Solution of Excess Nitrogen Loading to Surface Waters and Related Chronic and Systemic Human-Environment Problems Daniel A. Fiscus, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Robert E. Ulanowicz, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, and Professor J. Edward Gates, Appalachian Laboratory, co-advisors. Concurrent environmental problems including 1) excess CO2 emissions and climate change, 2) excess nitrogen export and eutrophication of surface waters, and 3) dependence on non-renewable fossil fuel energy supplies can be considered interdependent symptoms of a single systemic "humans in the environment disorder". This dissertation presents results from three integrated research projects to frame and solve this general human-environmental problem. As an interdisciplinary whole, the projects help define and characterize organizing principles for future human-environment systems without major carbon (C), nitrogen (N), energy and related problems. Forests and other non-human ecosystems provide model systems, as these communities selfsustain for 10,000 years and longer. Comparative studies of soils, C and N emissions, and food web networks provide transferable principles to guide local action for sustainability. Soils in long-term forest land-use stored more C and organic matter than soils in longterm agricultural use. These results recommend permaculture, agroforestry and perennial agriculture to provide food and other human needs while building soil and enhancing soil fertility. Audits of the Appalachian Laboratory in Frostburg, MD, showed this environmental science facility causes emissions of 70 times more C and 60 times more N than local forests can absorb. The Lab also is 99% dependent on non-renewable energy sources. This study provides data necessary to alter operations toward environmental sustainability. Comparisons of the U.S. beef supply network showed unusually high network ascendency (a whole-system efficiency measure), higher dependency on a few compartments and lower network connectance than four non-human food webs. Results support efforts to increase U.S. food supply reliability via local agriculture and diversified food network pathways. Overall, the research identifies a systemic cultural cause of the human-environment crisis in subordination of environmental value, quality and capacity to values in economic, social, scientific and other arenas. Elevation of environmental value to equal standing with other human values thus promises a solution to the global ecological crisis. Realization of such a cultural paradigm shift likely requires revisions to fundamental scientific definitions, theories and understanding of life, evolution and ecology, all of which now operate with a predominantly organismal model of life that likewise de-emphasizes the environment. Comparative Ecological Modeling for Long-term Solution of Excess Nitrogen Loading to Surface Waters and Related Chronic and Systemic Human-Environment Problems by Daniel A. Fiscus Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Committee Professor J. Edward Gates, Co-Chair Professor Robert E. Ulanowicz, Co-Chair Professor Brian D. Fath Professor Patrick Kangas Professor Linda M. Lyon © Copyright by Daniel A. Fiscus 2007


Lippia alba (Mill.) N.E.Br. is an aromatic and medicinal shrub native to the American continent. Despite its potential as a source of essential oil for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries, few selection and genetic improvement studies have been carried out. The aim of this study was to provide genetic information on this species for breeding programs, showing its selection potential, by investigating clonal half-sib progenies. The following characteristics were evaluated per plant: leaf dry mass (LDM), total dry mass (TDM), leaf yield (LY), essential oil yield (EOY) and oil production (OP). Estimates were made for the several genetic parameters including absolute genetic gain at 30% selection intensity, correlations and relative contribution of additive and environmental effects to phenotypic correlation. Two experimental trials on 30 progenies were conducted: one in Campinas, state of Sao Paulo (SP), Brazil, with two harvests of the aerial part, and one in Monte Alegre do Sul, SP, Brazil, with only one harvest. The trials were conducted in a randomized block design consisting of subplots with three replications, each plot (progeny) consisting of 8 to 15 clonally-replicated plants with subplot harvesting. Variations were detected between progenies and harvests, as well as progeny/harvest interactions in the split plot experiment. High heritability and genetic gains were obtained at both sites for LDM, TDM and OP. The lowest variations among progenies were obtained for LY and EOY, highlighting selection problems. Negative additive genetic correlations were obtained for EOY × LDM, EOY × TDM, LY × TDM and LY × LDM. Selection for LDM resulted in increased oil production per plant (OP), even where there was a negative correlation between LDM × EOY.


This thesis deals with secondary interactions in asymmetric catalysis and their impact on the outcome of catalytic reactions. The first part revolves around the metal-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation reaction and how interactions within the catalyst affect the stereochemistry. An OH–Pd hydrogen bond in Pd(0)–π-olefin complexes of hydroxy-containing oxazoline ligands was identified by density functional theory computations and helped to rationalize the contrasting results obtained employing hydroxy- and methoxy-containing ligands in the catalytic reaction. This type of hydrogen bond was further studied in phenanthroline metal complexes. As expected for a hydrogen bond, the strength of the bond was found to increase with increased electron density at the metal and with increased acidity of the hydroxy protons. The second part deals with the use of hydroxy- and methoxy-containing phosphinooxazoline ligands in the rhodium- and iridium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrosilylation reaction. The enantioselectivities obtained were profoundly enhanced upon the addition of silver salts. This phenomenon was explained by an oxygen–metal coordination in the catalytic complexes, which was confirmed by NMR studies of an iridium complex. Interestingly, the rhodium and iridium catalysts nearly serve as pseudo-enantiomers giving products with different absolute configurations. The final part deals with ditopic pyridinobisoxazoline ligands and the application of their metal complexes in asymmetric cyanation reactions. Upon complexation, these ligands provide catalysts with both Lewis acidic and Lewis basic sites, capable of activating both the substrate and the cyanation reagent. Lanthanide and aluminum complexes of these ligands were found to catalyze the addition of the fairly unreactive cyanation reagents ethyl cyanoformate and acetyl cyanide to benzaldehyde, whereas complexes of ligands lacking the Lewis basic coordination sites failed to do so.


Firing Off a Jewish Canon: The Modern Jewish Canon; A Journey Through Language and CultureRuth Wisse has written a very important -- and long overdue -- book on great novels of Jewish literature, focusing on Jewish works of the last century. It is particularly timely because the National Yiddish Book Center recently invited a panel of judges to create a list of the 100 greatest books of Jewish literataure from the Enlightenment to the present, expected to be announced later this year. Wisse's book will undoubtedly make an important contribution to that endeavor.The book is important, Wisse tells us, because teaching Jewish civilization is important "for its own sake and as a counterpoint to antisemitism, and...learning about the Jews is more important for the future of humankind than learning about their [the Jews'] extinction." I think there is something at least as urgent today that needs to be added as a great virtue of this book: It will strengthen Jewish culture and Jewish identity among many who are unaware of Jewish contributions to world literature.The benefits of the political, social, and economic freedom enjoyed by Jews in the last two centuries have inevitably produced acculturation and assimilation, including vast defections from Judaism -- both as a religious and a national or ethnic identity, identities that are worth preserving. Moreover, the problem has become significantly and increasingly acute even in Israel, where post-Zionist ideology is moving toward a conception of Israeli identity and the Israeli polity as embracing a secular democratic state that has no necessary connection to a concept of Jewish civilization and Jewish culture.This problem, of course, is associated with an important and unique aspect of Judaism, which has been from its inception, both conceptually and practically, a religion and a polity or ethnic political community. So much so, that even Spinoza understood that Jewish ritual was an important part of a Jewish political identity. Unfortunately, he concluded -- with a prescient, if flawed, analysis -- that, in the diaspora, the rituals of Judaism were dispensable, without explaining how a Jewish return to a homeland and nationhood could be achieved if Judaism became just a Unitarian-style religion of universal moral values and behavior over a prolonged period in the diaspora.Ruth Wisse now reminds her Jewish audience -- which, I believe, is the primary audience for this book -- that Judaism, as a civilization, has produced, in addition to its many contributions to economics, law, philosophy, music, and poetry, to name just some of the important aspects of Jewish civilization during the past 2000 years, a body of literature in its principal modern form, the novel, that ranks with the literature of other nations for its artistry and its message of life, of struggle and survival, and sometimes, of individual and national redemption in history.For those who have lived without knowledge of this aspect of Jewish civilization, which, in fact, is almost as long as the history of the novel itself -- or longer, if we consider the novels and other fictional works produced during the Inquisition's reign -- Wisse sets before us a notable and representative sampling of great Jewish novels of the last century that is worthy of respect, of study, of appreciation, and of understanding. In this regard, she has made the beginning of a vital contribution to stemming the tide of continuing defections from Jewish identity, insofar as they are caused by an almost total ignorance of all of the vibrant aspects of Jewish civilization since the loss of Jewish nationhood 2000 years ago and the completion of the Talmud 1500 years ago. That void in Jewish self-knowledge easily becomes a void in Jewish self-respect and, ultimately in Jewish identity and the benefits of its preservation.In addition to noting this crucial objective of this book, there is the related question of the causes of this problem and the importance of Wisse's book, and similar efforts that will surely flow from it, in correcting or ameliorating those causes. …


In the cleaning operations of heat exchange surfaces in dairy processing plants, the effect of heating/run time (HT) and aging on the fouling/cleaning of heat exchangers is not well understood. Longer heating time of the same deposit is expected to result in the formation of stronger and perhaps more cleaning resistant deposit. In this study, the phenomenon of heating and aging on the formation and cleaning of dairy fouling is investigated using the heat induced whey protein gels (HIWPG) produced in laboratory. The processes were also investigated with the whey protein deposits formed in pilot-scale plant trails. The HIWPGs were produced in tubular capsules for various heating (or run) times (60, 120, 240, 1440 and 2880 min respectively) and then dissolved in aqueous sodium hydroxide (0.5 wt %). The heating process here would have been of 'pure' aging. The dissolution rate was calculated based on the previously established UV Spectrophotometer analysis. The structure and texture of the gels were analysed using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and texture analyser. In the pilot-scale plant study, whey protein fouling layers were generated by recirculating whey protein solution (6 wt %) for various heating periods (30, 60, and 90 min respectively). The deposit layers were then removed by recirculating aqueous sodium hydroxide (0.5 wt %) and the cleaning efficiency was monitored in the form of the recovery of heat transfer coefficient while both fluid electric conductivity and turbidity were recorded as indications of cleaning completion. It was found that increasing the HIWPG heating time significantly increased the gel hardness and dissolution time, implicating the difficulty in cleaning. Similarly to these results on gels, increasing the pilot-scale plant heating/run time increased the extent of fouling. The fouling layer formed next to the metal surface experienced the longest period of aging and the slope of the heat transfer coefficient increase seen at the final cleaning stage is related to this aging effect. The rate of cleaning for deposits formed initially on the metal surface is lower indicating a 'pure' aging effect of the deposit near surface.


Experiments were initiated to evaluate chemical disease management tools for Alternaria fruit rot on navel orange and Coniophora brown wood rot on lemon trees, examine the possible effect of branch diameter on development of Coniophora wood rot on lemon trees and continue evaluations of relative resistance of rootstocks to root rot and stem canker development when inoculated with P. citrophthora and P. parasitica. Rovral or Kocide did not significantly reduce the amount ofAlternaria fruit rot on navel orange trees occurring in late summer and early autumn when applied during the preceding winter or spring months. Of several chemical treatments tested, only Nectec paste inhibited the development of Coniophora brown wood rot on inoculated lemon branches. The size of wood decay columns on branches 10 mm (0.5 inch) in diameter were significantly smaller than those developing on branches 50 -70 mm (2.0 -2.75 inches) in diameter. In extensive trials evaluating root rot caused by Phytophthora citrophthora and P. parasitica, some relatively tolerant rootstocks were found among the group of new potential rootstocks as well as currently used rootstocks such as rough lemon, C. macrophylla and Troyer citrange. C. volkameriana was relatively tolerant to the development of root rot by P. citrophthora but demonstrated variable tolerance to P. parasitica. Comprehensive evaluation of stem canker development on citrus rootstocks inoculated with P. citrophthora or P. parasitica revealed that rough lemon is usually highly susceptible to both pathogens, while C. volkameriana was at times less susceptible (more tolerant) than rough lemon to both pathogens. Some of the new potential rootstocks were highly tolerant or resistant to infection of stem tissue by P. citrophthora or P. parasitica.


In this theoretically rich exploration of ethnic and religious tensions, Janet McIntosh demonstrates how the relationship between two ethnic groups in the bustling Kenyan town of Malindi is reflected in and shaped by the different ways the two groups relate to Islam. While Swahili and Giriama peoples are historically interdependent, today Giriama find themselves literally and metaphorically on the margins, peering in at a Swahili life of greater social and economic privilege. Giriama are frustrated to find their ethnic identity disparaged and their versions of Islam sometimes rejected by Swahili.

The Edge of Islam explores themes as wide-ranging as spirit possession, divination, healing rituals, madness, symbolic pollution, ideologies of money, linguistic code-switching, and syncretism and its alternatives. McIntosh shows how the differing versions of Islam practiced by Swahili and Giriama, and their differing understandings of personhood, have figured in the growing divisions between the two groups. Her ethnographic analysis helps to explain why Giriama view Islam, a supposedly universal religion, as belonging more deeply to certain ethnic groups than to others; why Giriama use Islam in their rituals despite the fact that so many do not consider the religion their own; and how Giriama appropriations of Islam subtly reinforce a distance between the religion and themselves. The Edge of Islam advances understanding of ethnic essentialism, religious plurality, spirit possession, local conceptions of personhood, and the many meanings of "Islam" across cultures.


Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) is an industrial crop and has great importance for humans and economy. For the production of large amounts of flaxseed oil, the oil industry needs flax genotypes which have higher oil content.
Analysis of five different flax genotypes, produced in the Strumica region, Republic of Macedonia, in 2014 and 2015 is made, with regard to the oil content in the flax seed. The experiment consisted of five variants in three repetitions, divided by the method of randomized block system. During the vegetation, standard farming practices for field flax production were used. Analysis of the fat content in flaxseed was made in the Laboratory for plant and environmental protection, at the Faculty of Agriculture, "Goce Delcev" University – Stip (No. LT – 028, Standard: MKCEN ISO/IEC 17025:2006). The fat content of the flaxseed was analyzed by Soxhlet method. The results were statistically processed by the method of analysis of variance, and the differences were tested by LSD – test.
The fat content in flaxseed of the tested genotypes ranged from 18.9% to 33.8%. All flax genotypes had higher percentage of fat content in the seed compared to standard Velusina, regardless the year of examination. So, Duferin genotype (27.7%) have 7.7% more fat content than the standard; Belan genotype (30.8%) – 10.8% more, Viking genotype (26.2%) – 6.2% more and Belinka genotype (30.9%) – 10.9% more. The difference of the fat content in the flaxseed is due to the variety specificity. The genotypes Belinka (30.9%) and Belan (30.8%) are characterized by the highest average fat content in the seed, regardless the year of production. Belinka, Belan and Duferin are perspective genotypes for the oil industry, as they have higher fat content in the seed than the other analyzed genotypes.

Key words: Flax, Seed, Content, Genotype, Percent, Oil.


In the late 1960s, Harold Brookfield and Doreen Hart were 'startled' by the order of mag- nitude differences in incomes from village cash cropping in different parts of Papua New Guinea (PNG). This paper traces these differences, back into a pre-colonial past and forward to the present and concludes, as Brookfield did in the 1960s, that severe environmental constraints, rather than mar- ket forces, are the primary cause of the pattern of spatial inequalities observable in PNG. Brookfield noted the existence of an 'acute dilemma' in 1960s development funding: should funds be invested where the returns will be highest, or where the need is greatest. This dilemma is as acute today as it was then. However, in the meantime, people from poor places are moving to better-off places, seeking access to markets for their produce and health and education services for their families.


Ten years ago, the hegemonic idea was that language was a kind of independent module within the mind, a sort of "print-out" of whatever cognitive activity was taking place, but without any influence whatsoever in that activity. While this view is still held, evidence amassed in the last 10 years suggests another view of their inter-relationships, even though exactly which one is not clear yet, in part because of the lack of a unified view, and in part because of the inertia of the previous position, in part because all this evidence must be considered together. An increasing number of researchers are paying attention to the issues involved as the human language specificity may provide a clue to understand what makes humans "smart," to account for the singularities of human cognition. This book provides a comprehensive review of the multiple developments that have taken place in the last 10 years on the question of the relationships between language and thought and integrates them into a coherent framework. It will be relevant for anyone working in the sciences of languages. It synthesizes recent research. It provides an integrated view of cognitive architecture. It explains the relationships between language and thought.


Chloride-induced corrosion of reinforcing steel is widely accepted as the primary cause of premature deterioration in concrete bridge decks (Brown, M.C., 2002). Since linear cracking in concrete cover can potentially accelerate chloride ingress to the depth of the reinforcing steel, there is reason to believe that severity of deck cracking can significantly influence the time to first repair and/or rehabilitation of the bridge deck. Surface width, orientation, and length of cracks in 38 Virginia bridge decks were investigated in order to characterize the general distribution of deck cracking in the commonwealth of Virginia. Crack data was correlated to structural/material design parameters and environmental exposure conditions in order to determine significant predictor-response relationships. The majority of surveyed bridge decks were divided into four classifications of deck type based on superstructure type and construction era, either 1968-1971 or 1984-1991. Surveyed bridge decks that did not fit into any of the four classifications were used to form more generalized subsets. These larger subsets were used to determine if significant influence factors could be translated to broader classifications of bridge decks. Transverse beam spacing, annual average daily truck traffic (AADTT), resistivity of the deck concrete, chloride exposure, and the percentage of concrete clear cover depths less than or equal to 38mm (1.5in) were all determined to have a significant correlation with linear deck cracking.


It is essential to provide enough cooling in electronic components to avoid overheating and to increase the performance of the system. Improvement of the overall heat transfer performance, augmentations via fin patterns and various orientations are often employed. Among the fin configurations being implemented practically, rectangular fin is regarded as one of the most effective heat transfer augmentation methods for periodic vortex shedding and providing boundary layer restarting. The main objective of this experimental study is to evaluate and compare the rate of forced convection heat transfer enhancement of rectangular fin with fins at different angles (0– 90°)with respect to different range of Re and heat fluxes. The variables for this study of forced convection are orientations of fins with various angles, heat fluxes and Re. The heat transfer coefficient increases with the rise of air velocity for all the configurations. The increase in the heat transfer coefficient was achieved at the angle of orientation 30° for inline and 0° for staggered arrangement. 0° fin staggered arrangement shows about 17% enhanced heat transfer coefficient as compared to 30° inline fin arrangement. For rectangular plate fin heat sinks it has been observed that there is boundary layer growth in forced convection, which decreases the heat transfer rate. To overcome this problem, some rectangular fins are attached to the plate fin. By doing so an average heat transfer coefficient of the rectangular plate fin heat sink was increased under the condition of varying fin angle and its arrangement, and the profit factor of the former is about 18% higher as compared to the other arrangements. Up till now all the researchers have analyzed the PFHS and rectangular PFHS for horizontal orientation but this project aims to find the heat transfer enhancement of PFHS for its vertical orientation fig.(1)(2) with rectangular plates at different range of heat fluxes, different fin angles, fin arrangements and Reynolds's numbers (Re).


The purpose of this research was to determine the influence of material properties on the impact response of a laminate, whereby specimens were fabricated and cured under a vacuum and high temperature using three types of pre-impregnated (prepreg), carbon fibers, namely unidirectional fiber, plain weave woven fiber, and non-crimp fiber (NCF). Each carbon fiber panel, usually known for its low-impact properties, of 16 plies underwent impact testing using a low-velocity impactor and visual damage inspection by C-scan in order to measure the damage area and depth, before and after impact testing. These panels were treated with UV exposure and moisture conditioning for 20 days each. Water contact angles were taken into consideration to determine the hydrophobicity and hydrophillicity of the respective prepreg materials. Experimental results and damage analysis showed that UV exposure and moisture conditioning showcased the variation in impact response and behavior, such as load-carrying capacity, absorbed energy, and impact energy of the carbon fiber panels. This study illustrates that non-crimp carbon fiber laminates were far more superior relative to load capacity than woven and unidirectional laminates, with the NCF-AS laminate exhibiting the highest load capacity of 17,244 lb/in (pre-UV) with only 0.89% decrease after UV exposure. This same laminate also had a 1.54% decrease in sustaining impact and 31.4% increase in wettability of the panel. Moreover, the study shows how symmetric and asymmetric stacking sequences affect the impact behavior of non-crimp fiber laminates. These results may be useful for expanding the capacity of carbon fiber, lowering costs, and growing new markets, thus turning carbon fiber into a viable commercial product.© 2014 ASME


Our study investigates how gender inequalities in job opportunities evolved during communist and post-communist times in former state-socialist countries. Theoretical arguments (mainly based on studies referring to Western countries) led to the expectation of a surge in gender inequalities in these countries after the collapse of communism. Empirically, we explore the gender gap in job authority upon labour market entry by using life-history data from Russia, Estonia, and East Germany, with West Germany serving as a control case. The selection of countries was motivated primarily by the availability of rich life-history data, covering four decades of (post-) state socialism but also by divergences in institutional set-ups in the course of transition from state socialism to a liberalised market economy. Our findings yield four major results. First, accounting for education and the branch of economy, women were not disadvantaged during Soviet times; instead, we have even found evidence of a slight female advantage in Estonia and East Germany. Thus, our findings mirror the communist regime's effectiveness in equalising women's and men's opportunities at work. Second, in the pre-collapse decade, the advantage of women in terms of job authority decreased in East Germany and Estonia, whereas in Russia, women fell behind men. Third, with the Soviet Union collapse, a remarkable female disadvantage emerged in all formerly state socialist countries under scrutiny. In addition, we observe a growing gender gap in West Germany in the same period. The latter result strengthens the conclusion that times of economic liberalisation may go hand-in-hand with increasing gender inequalities.


The Internet has radically transformed the way we live our lives. The net changes in consumer surplus and economic activity, however, are difficult to measure because some online activities, such as obtaining news, are new ways of doing old activities while new activities, like social media, have an opportunity cost in terms of activities crowded out. This paper uses data from the American Time Use Survey from 2003 - 2011 to estimate the crowdout effects of leisure time spent online. That data show that time spent online and the share of the population engaged in online activities has been increasing steadily. I find that, on the margin, each minute of online leisure time is correlated with 0.29 fewer minutes on all other types of leisure, with about half of that coming from time spent watching TV and video, 0.05 minutes from (offline) socializing, 0.04 minutes from relaxing and thinking, and the balance from time spent at parties, attending cultural events, and listening to the radio. Each minute of online leisure is also correlated with 0.27 fewer minutes working, 0.12 fewer minutes sleeping, 0.10 fewer minutes in travel time, 0.07 fewer minutes in household activities, and 0.06 fewer minutes in educational activities.


Introduction: Hypercholesterolemia is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Several studies have shown that some lactobacillus strains can reduce cholesterol. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of Lactobacillus fermentum isolated from the traditional yogurt on body weight and lipid trends in rats fed with a high-fat diet. Materials & methods: Forty male rats (200±20 gr) were randomly divided into four groups. Rats in the first group received normal diet (N), the second group consumed normal diet with fermented milk containing L. fermentum (N-L), the third group received a high-fat diet to induce hypercholesterolemia (HF), and the fourth group were fed in a high-fat diet with fermented milk containing L. fermentum (HF-L). After 8 weeks, body weights and lipid metabolisms were measured. Findings: In the rats fed with a high-fat diet of fermented milk containing L. fermentum (HF-L), serum total cholesterol, LDL-C, and triglycerides levels were significantly lower than that of the group fed with a high-fat diet without probiotic supplementation (HF), whereas the serum HDL-C level significantly increased (p 0.05). However, mean levels of serum cholesterol, LDL-C, triglycerides, and HDL-C were not markedly different among the N groups (N, N-L). Also, the gain in body weight of the HF group was significantly heavier than that of the HF-L group (p 0.01). Discussion & conclusions: This study suggests that consumption of milk fermented by L. fermentum improves serum lipid trends in rats by lowering serum total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL-C levels, as well as by increasing HDL-C level. It also plays a role in the prevention of obesity induced by a high-fat diet.


A scenario analysis in regard to the risk of chronic exposure of consumers to residues through the consumption of contaminated honey and beeswax was conducted. Twenty-two plant protection products and veterinary substances of which residues have already been detected in beeswax in Europe were selected. The potential chronic exposure was assessed by applying a worst-case scenario based on the addition of a "maximum" daily intake through the consumption of honey and beeswax to the theoretical maximum daily intake through other foodstuffs. For each residue, the total exposure was finally compared to the acceptable daily intake. It is concluded that the food consumption of honey and beeswax contaminated with these residues considered separately does not compromise the consumer's health, provided proposed action limits are met. In regard to residues of flumethrin in honey and in beeswax, "zero tolerance" should be applied.


Factor analysis aims to determine latent factors, or traits, which summarize a given data set. Inter-battery factor analysis extends this notion to multiple views of the data. In this paper we show how a nonlinear, nonparametric version of these models can be recovered through the Gaussian process latent variable model. This gives us a flexible formalism for multi-view learning where the latent variables can be used both for exploratory purposes and for learning representations that enable efficient inference for ambiguous estimation tasks. Learning is performed in a Bayesian manner through the formulation of a variational compression scheme which gives a rigorous lower bound on the log likelihood. Our Bayesian framework provides strong regularization during training, allowing the structure of the latent space to be determined efficiently and automatically. We demonstrate this by producing the first (to our knowledge) published results of learning from dozens of views, even when data is scarce. We further show experimental results on several different types of multi-view data sets and for different kinds of tasks, including exploratory data analysis, generation, ambiguity modelling through latent priors and classification.


Introduction: The pain due to cannulation and needle insertion into blood vessels becomes problematic among patients suffering hemodialysis. Objectives: The present study aimed to assess the pain relieving effects of cooling sprays among patients undergoing hemodialysis. Patients and Methods: Eighty patients aged higher than 18 years who were on chronic hemodialysis were randomly assigned into two groups including the group received cooling spray for relieving pain (n = 40) and the group received stilled water as placebo (n = 40). In the intervention group and in a hemodialysis session, 2 puffs of the Cramer Cold Spray were sprayed 30 seconds before the cannulation. The pain severity was assessed by the visual analogue scale (VAS) method. Results: The mean of pain severity score was not different between the intervention and control group before intervention, however after intervention, the patients in the intervention group experienced milder pain due to cannulation as compared to control group (3.28 ± 1.13 versus 5.30 ± 1.76; P < 0.001). Interviewing with the patients receiving cooling spray showed willingness to the use of spray in 87.5% of cases. The local complication due to the use of cold spray was revealed only in 5% of patients. Conclusion: The use of cooling spray in hemodialysis patients can reduce the pain caused by needle insertion. This method can be routinely used as a non-pharmacological pain relief method to reduce pain in hemodialysis patients


The impact of reprographic on document delivery service in libraries and information centres cannot be deserted. This paper assessed the students' perception and utilization of reprographic services in Federal University of Petroleum Resources Effurun. Library. The study population comprise 2,213 students of the university. The instrument used for data collection was questionnaire. Research questions were answered using frequency, bar chart and percentages for easy interpretation. The major findings of the study revealed that reprographic section was not only affected by lack of spares and consumable materials but also lack of technical know-how, insufficient equipment, funds and lack of air-condition/space among other. The frequent use of this section indicated that a lot need to be done to enhance and expand services of the unit, since some services like book binding, thesis binding, thermal binding, photograph, microfilm/micro reader, xerography and drilling were not done. The study recommends expansion of the unit, more funds and experts should be involved in the unit so as to curb the problems of technical know-how and spares/consumables.


Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 Tat protein plays a key role in the pathogenesis of both HIV-1-associated cognitive-motor disorder and drug abuse. Dopamine (DA) transporter (DAT) function is strikingly altered in patients with HIV-1-associated dementia and a history of chronic drug abuse. This study is the first in vitro evaluation of potential mechanisms underlying the effects of Tat protein on DAT function. Rat striatal synaptosomes were incubated with recombinant Tat1–86 protein, and [3H]DA uptake and the binding of [3H]2β-carbomethoxy-3-β-(4-fluorophenyl)tropane (WIN 35,428) and [3H]1-[2-(diphenylmethoxy)ethyl]-4-(3-phenylpropyl)-piperazine (GBR 12935) were determined. Tat decreased [3H]DA uptake, [3H]WIN 35,428 binding, and [3H]GBR 12935 binding in a time-dependent manner. The potency of Tat for inhibiting [3H]DA uptake (Ki = 1.2 μM) was the same as that for inhibiting [3H]GBR 12935 binding but 3-fold less than that for inhibiting [3H]WIN 35,428 binding. Mutant Tat proteins did not alter [3H]DA uptake. Kinetic analysis of [3H]DA uptake revealed that Tat (1 or 10 μM) decreased the Vmax value and increased the Km value in a dose-dependent manner. The Vmax value, decreased by Tat (1 μM), returned to the control level after washout of Tat, indicating that the inhibitory effect of Tat on DA uptake was reversible. Saturation studies revealed that Tat decreased the Bmax value and increased the Kd value of [3H]WIN 35,428 binding, whereas Tat decreased the Bmax value of [3H]GBR 12935 binding, without a change in the Kd value. These findings provide new insight into understanding the pharmacological mechanisms of Tat-induced dysfunction of the DAT in the dopaminergic system in HIV-infected patients.


Research over the years has shown that in order for any business to survive, the correct product mix must be offered to the market. If the product does not satisfy the needs of the market, its reason for existence can be questioned. This principle applies to all businesses – big or small. The question arises if SMEs adhere to this fact and, if so, how they go about doing this. SMEs over the world make huge contributions to economic growth and job creation and are seen to be a driving force for economic growth and development in any economy. In the highly competitive environment that SMEs operate in, selecting the right merchandise for the right customer is important and, in most instances, its ability to survive or perish. This study aimed to determine if SMEs in South Africa make decisions regarding the product mix and, if so, if they conform to different profiles regarding the decisions that they make. A questionnaire was used to collect the data and was sent to SMEs around South Africa operating in different industries. The results indicated that SMEs in South Africa consider product characteristics, consumer behavior and strategic aspects when making product mix decisions.


The effects of invasive nonnative species on community composition are well documented. However, few studies have determined the mechanisms by which invaders drive these changes. The literature indicates that many nonnative plant species alter light availability differently than natives in a given community, suggesting that shading may be such a mechanism. We compared light quantity (photosynthetically active radiation, PAR) and quality (red: far-red ratio, R:Fr) in riparian reaches heavily invaded by a nonnative tree (Acer platanoides) to that in an uninvaded forest and experimentally tested the effects of our measured differences in PAR and R:Fr on the survival, growth, and biomass allocation of seedlings of the dominant native species and Acer platanoides. Light conditions representative of the understory of Acer platanoides-invaded forest decreased survival of the native maple Acer glabrum by 28%; Amelanchier alnifolia by 32%; Betula occidentalis by 55%; Elymus glaucus by 46%; and Sorbus aucuparia by 52%, relative to seedlings growing in PAR similar to that of native understories. In contrast, Acer platanoides and the native shrub Symphoricarpos albus were not affected by reductions in PAR. Acer platanoides seedlings and saplings are uniquely adapted to shade relative to native species. Acer platanoides was the only species tested that decreased allocation to roots relative to shoots in the invaded forest vs. the native forest light conditions. Therefore it was the only species to demonstrate an adaptive response to the particular light environment associated with Acer platanoides invasion as predicted by optimal partitioning theory. The profound change in light quantity associated with Acer platanoides canopies appears to act as an important driver of native suppression and conspecific success in invaded riparian communities. Further research is necessary to determine whether the effect of nonnative plant-driven changes on light quantity and quality is a widespread mechanism negatively affecting resident species and facilitating invasion by nonnatives.


By the turn of the millennium, it had become painfully apparent that the United States had made some serious misjudgments in its interactions with the natural world. The country's treasured national parks, while remaining immensely popular tourist destinations, were not immune to the damage. Preservation alone would no longer be enough; by this time, repair and restoration were necessary. Can the United States reverse the mistaken policies that severely damaged the crown jewels of its national park system? This thoughtful and hopeful book, in turns analytical and personal, investigates that critical question by focusing on four of America's most-loved public paces. In Repairing Paradise , William Lowry, an eminent expert on U.S. natural resource policy, details and assesses four ambitious efforts to reverse environmental damage in the national parks: The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone Reducing the impact of vehicle traffic in Yosemite Restoring fresh water to the Everglades Removing structural impairments to river flows in the Grand Canyon Repairing Paradise combines authoritative research with extensive personal experience. Lowry has spent time in all four of the parks --observing conditions, talking to the most informed decisionmakers, and taking photos. He deftly combines his field research with solid public policy analysis to paint an instructive portrait of the mission to restore the natural health and glory of some of the world's most wondrous places.


Democracies with sharp violence and public insecurity have proliferated in recent decades, with many also featuring extreme economic inequality. These conditions have not been explicitly considered in comparative research on journalists' work environments, an omission that may obscure important realities of contemporary journalism. We address this gap through analysis of journalist surveys in 62 countries. We confirm the existence of insecure democracies as an empirical phenomenon and begin to unravel their meaning for journalists. We find democracies with uneven democratic performance tend to have more journalist assassinations, which is the most extreme form of influence on work, and that levels of democratic performance, violence, public insecurity and economic inequality significantly shape how journalists perceive various influences in their work environment. Case studies of insecure democracies in Africa and Latin America address why these conditions sometimes (but not always) lead to journalist assassinations and other anti-press violence. They suggest anti-press violence is higher when sub-national state actors intensify criminal violence and when insecurity is geographically and topically proximate to journalists. How journalists' perceive influences on work are therefore more complex and multidimensional than previous research has suggested. The study concludes by identifying areas for improvement in data collection.


Since 2009, in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's ethnic war, certain contingents of Sinhala Buddhists have lodged attacks against religious minorities, whom they censure for committing violence against animals in accordance with the dictates of their gods. Considering these interventions against sacrifice in spaces of shared Hindu and Buddhist religiosity, this article examines the economies of derogation, violence, and scapegoating in post-war Sri Lanka. Within Sinhala Buddhism, sacrifice is considered bio-morally impure yet politically efficacious, whereas meritorious Buddhist discipleship is sacrificial only in aspirational, bloodless terms. Nevertheless, both practices fall within the spectrum of Sinhala Buddhist religious life. Majoritarian imperatives concerning postwar blood impinge upon marginal sites of shared religiosity—spaces where the blood of animals is spilled and, ironically, where political potency can be substantively shored up. The article examines the siting of sacrifice and the purifying majoritarian interventions against it, as Buddhists strive to assert sovereignty over religious others.


Deviations from Lambert's cosine law for the light emitted by W, Mo, and Ta. The deviations for all three metals is very much of the same order. The brightness in each instance increases from the normal value at normal emergence gradually with increase in emergence angle to about 75° by about 20 per cent. From there on the brightness decreases rapidly to zero at grazing emergence. Straight filaments of circular cross-section have average brightnesses viewed normal to their axes which are about 3 per cent greater than the normal brightnesses (W 2.8 per cent, Mo 3.6 per cent, Ta 2.7 per cent). The average brightness of a filament, considering all directions, is about 5 per cent greater than the normal brightness (W 4.4 per cent, Mo 6.2 per cent, Ta 4.3 per cent).Polarization of light emitted by W, Mo, and Ta. The light emitted by these materials starting with zero polarization for normal emergence increases with the angle of emergence, at first slowly, to about 95 per cent at grazing emergence. The polarizations of the light from straight filaments of circular cross-section viewed normal to their axes amount to about 20 per cent (W 19.3 per cent, Mo 20.8 per cent, Ta 18.5 per cent).Change in optical constants of tungsten with temperature. Values obtained have depended on the variations of the emissivity and the reflectivity for the two polarized components. At room temperature 3.86 and.81 were obtained for n and k, at 1900°K 3.85 and.89 were obtained. This difference checks well with observed values of emissivity for normal emergence.


Signal search analysis is a general method to discover and characterize sequence motifs that are positionally correlated with a functional site (e.g. a transcription or translation start site). The method has played an instrumental role in the analysis of eukaryotic promoter elements. The signal search analysis server provides access to four different computer programs as well as to a large number of precompiled functional site collections. The programs offered allow: (i) the identification of non-random sequence regions under evolutionary constraint; (ii) the detection of consensus sequence-based motifs that are over- or under-represented at a particular distance from a functional site; (iii) the analysis of the positional distribution of a consensus sequence- or weight matrix-based sequence motif around a functional site; and (iv) the optimization of a weight matrix description of a locally over-represented sequence motif. These programs can be accessed at: http://www.isrec.isb-sib.ch/ssa/.


Steven Roger Fischer's fascinating book traces the complete story of reading from the time when symbol first became sign through to the electronic texts of the present day. Describing ancient forms of reading and the various modes that were necessary to read different writing systems and scripts, Fischer turns to Asia and the Americas and discusses the forms and developments of completely divergent dimensions of reading. With the Middle Ages in Europe and the Middle East, innovative re-inventions of reading emerged - silent and liturgical reading; the custom of lectors; reading's focus in general education - whereupon printing transformed society's entire attitude to reading. Fischer charts the explosion of the book trade in this era, its increased audience and radically changed subject-matter; describes the emergence of broadsheets, newspapers and public readings; and traces the effect of new font designs on general legibility. Fischer discusses society's dedication to public literacy in the sweeping educational reforms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and notes the appearance of free libraries, gender differences in reading matter, public advertising and the 'forbidden' lists of Church, State and the unemancipated. Finally, he assesses the future, in which it is likely that read communication will soon exceed oral communication through the use of the personal computer and the internet, and looks at 'visual language' and modern theories of how reading is processed in the human brain. Asking how the New Reader can reshape reading's future, he suggests a radical new definition of what reading could be.


Climate change influences the Baltic Sea ecosystem via its effects on oceanography and biogeochemistry. Sea surface temperature has been projected to increase by 2 to 4 °C until 2100 due to global warming; the changes will be more significant in the northern areas and less so in the south. The warming up will also diminish the annual sea ice cover by 57% to 71%, and ice season will be one to three months shorter than in the early 21st century, depending on latitude. A significant decrease in sea surface salinity has been projected because of an increase in rainfall and decrease of saline inflows into the Baltic Sea. The increasing surface flow has, in turn, been projected to increase leaching of nutrients from the soil to the watershed and eventually into the Baltic Sea. Also, acidification of the seawater and sea-level rise have been predicted.
 Increasing seawater temperature speeds up metabolic processes and increases growth rates of many secondary producers. Species associated with sea ice, from salt brine microbes to seals, will suffer. Due to the specific salinity tolerances, species' geographical ranges may shift by tens or hundreds of kilometres with decreasing salinity. A decrease in pH will slow down calcification of bivalve shells, and higher temperatures also alleviate establishment of non-indigenous species originating from more southern sea areas.
 Many uncertainties still remain in predicting the couplings between atmosphere, oceanography and ecosystem. Especially projections of many oceanographic parameters, such as wind speeds and directions, the mean salinity level, and density stratification, are still ambiguous. Also, the effects of simultaneous changes in multiple environmental factors on species with variable preferences to temperature, salinity, and nutrient conditions are difficult to project. There is, however, enough evidence to claim that due to increasing runoff of nutrients from land and warming up of water, primary production and sedimentation of organic matter will increase; this will probably enhance anoxia and release of phosphorus from sediments. Such changes may keep the Baltic Sea in an eutrophicated state for a long time, unless strong measures to decrease nutrient runoff from land are taken.
 Changes in the pelagic and benthic communities are anticipated. Benthic communities will change from marine to relatively more euryhaline communities and will suffer from hypoxic events. The projected temperature increase and salinity decline will contribute to maintain the pelagic ecosystem of the Central Baltic and the Gulf of Finland in a state dominated by cyanobacteria, flagellates, small-sized zooplankton and sprat, instead of diatoms, large marine copepods, herring, and cod.
 Effects vary from area to area, however. In particular the Bothnian Sea, where hypoxia is less common and rivers carry a lot of dissolved organic carbon, primary production will probably not increase as much as in the other basins.
 The coupled oceanography-biogeochemistry ecosystem models have greatly advanced our understanding of the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. Also, studies on climate associated "regime shifts" and cascading effects from top predators to plankton have been fundamental for understanding of the response of the Baltic Sea ecosystem to anthropogenic and climatic stress. In the future, modeling efforts should be focusing on coupling of biogeochemical processes and lower trophic levels to the top predators. Also, fine resolution species distribution models should be developed and combined with 3-D modelling, to describe how the species and communities are responding to climate-induced changes in environmental variables.


BACKGROUND
Preventive health care promotes health and prevents disease or injuries by addressing factors that lead to the onset of a disease, and by detecting latent conditions to reduce or halt their progression. Many risk factors for costly and disabling conditions (such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases) can be prevented, yet healthcare systems do not make the best use of their available resources to support this process. Mobile phone messaging applications, such as Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS), could offer a convenient and cost-effective way to support desirable health behaviours for preventive health care.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effects of mobile phone messaging interventions as a mode of delivery for preventive health care, on health status and health behaviour outcomes.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched: the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, The Cochrane Library 2009, Issue 2), MEDLINE (OvidSP) (January 1993 to June 2009), EMBASE (OvidSP) (January 1993 to June 2009), PsycINFO (OvidSP) (January 1993 to June 2009), CINAHL (EbscoHOST) (January 1993 to June 2009), LILACS (January 1993 to June 2009) and African Health Anthology (January 1993 to June 2009).We also reviewed grey literature (including trial registers) and reference lists of articles.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-randomised controlled trials (QRCTs), controlled before-after (CBA) studies, and interrupted time series (ITS) studies with at least three time points before and after the intervention. We included studies using SMS or MMS as a mode of delivery for any type of preventive health care. We only included studies in which it was possible to assess the effects of mobile phone messaging independent of other technologies or interventions.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently assessed all studies against the inclusion criteria, with any disagreements resolved by a third review author. Study design features, characteristics of target populations, interventions and controls, and results data were extracted by two review authors and confirmed by a third author. Primary outcomes of interest were health status and health behaviour outcomes. We also considered patients' and providers' evaluation of the intervention, perceptions of safety, health service utilisation and costs, and potential harms or adverse effects. Because the included studies were heterogeneous in type of condition addressed, intervention characteristics and outcome measures, we did not consider that it was justified to conduct a meta-analysis to derive an overall effect size for the main outcome categories; instead, we present findings narratively.

MAIN RESULTS
We included four randomised controlled trials involving 1933 participants.For the primary outcome category of health, there was moderate quality evidence from one study that women who received prenatal support via mobile phone messages had significantly higher satisfaction than those who did not receive the messages, both in the antenatal period (mean difference (MD) 1.25, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.78 to 1.72) and perinatal period (MD 1.19, 95% CI 0.37 to 2.01). Their confidence level was also higher (MD 1.12, 95% CI 0.51 to 1.73) and anxiety level was lower (MD -2.15, 95% CI -3.42 to -0.88) than in the control group in the antenatal period. In this study, no further differences were observed between groups in the perinatal period. There was low quality evidence that the mobile phone messaging intervention did not affect pregnancy outcomes (gestational age at birth, infant birth weight, preterm delivery and route of delivery).For the primary outcome category of health behaviour, there was moderate quality evidence from one study that mobile phone message reminders to take vitamin C for preventive reasons resulted in higher adherence (risk ratio (RR) 1.41, 95% CI 1.14 to 1.74). There was high quality evidence from another study that participants receiving mobile phone messaging support had a significantly higher likelihood of quitting smoking than those in a control group at 6 weeks (RR 2.20, 95% CI 1.79 to 2.70) and at 12 weeks follow-up (RR 1.55, 95% CI 1.30 to 1.84). At 26 weeks, there was only a significant difference between groups if, for participants with missing data, the last known value was carried forward. There was very low quality evidence from one study that mobile phone messaging interventions for self-monitoring of healthy behaviours related to childhood weight control did not have a statistically significant effect on physical activity, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages or screen time.For the secondary outcome of acceptability, there was very low quality evidence from one study that user evaluation of the intervention was similar between groups. There was moderate quality evidence from one study of no difference in adverse effects of the intervention, measured as rates of pain in the thumb or finger joints, and car crash rates.None of the studies reported the secondary outcomes of health service utilisation or costs of the intervention.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
We found very limited evidence that in certain cases mobile phone messaging interventions may support preventive health care, to improve health status and health behaviour outcomes. However, because of the low number of participants in three of the included studies, combined with study limitations of risk of bias and lack of demonstrated causality, the evidence for these effects is of low to moderate quality. The evidence is of high quality only for interventions aimed at smoking cessation. Furthermore, there are significant information gaps regarding the long-term effects, risks and limitations of, and user satisfaction with, such interventions.