(Background)
 Omentin, a novel adipocytokine, is mainly expressed in the visceral rather than subcutaneous adipose tissue. Secretion and plasma concentration of omentin decrease in the obese subjects. We previously demonstrated that omentin is anti-inflammatory in vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs). While vascular remodeling via proliferation, migration and apoptosis of SMCs is also important for hypertension development, it remains to be clarified whether omentin affects those processes.

 (Methods and Results)
 Cultured rat mesenteric arterial SMCs were stimulated with platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-BB (10 ng/ml) in the absence or presence of omentin (300 ng/ml). Omentin pretreatment (2 h) inhibited PDGF (6 h)-induced SMCs migration (30 % inhibition, n=11, P<0.05) as determined by Boyden camber assay. Omentin pretreatment (2 h) inhibited NADPH oxidase -derived O2- generation as determined by dihydroethidium staining and lucigenin assay (30 % inhibition, n=5, P<0.05) as well as phosphorylation of p38 (20 % inhibition, n=19-23, P<0.01) and heat shock protein (HSP) 27 (20 % inhibition, n=14-17, P<0.01) as determined by Western blotting. Omentin pretreatment (2 h) inhibited PDGF (6 h)-induced lamellipodia formation as determined by rhodamine-phalloidin staining. In ex vivo, omentin pretreatment (6 h) also inhibited fetal bovine serum (FBS) (10%)-induced SMCs out-growth from rat isolated mesenteric artery.

 (Conclusion)
 We for the first time demonstrate that omentin prevented SMCs migration by preventing the activation of ROS-dependent p38/HSP27 signals. It is suggested that omentin is anti-hypertensive 'good adipocytokine'.


In the last forty years, the study of social perceptions of crime in general, and the seriousness of criminal offenses in particular, has been of substantial interest to policymakers, courts, and social scientists. As a matter of criminal justice policy, consensus about how severe a crime is can serve as both a legal and societal foundation for certain criminal justice policy decisions, or about the proper punishment for that crime. From a social psychological perspective, studying individual differences in the perceptions of crime can supply valuable information both for basic knowledge about the thinking of individuals who differ on, for instance, gender, race, age, education, or political ideology, and for applied knowledge that can be used in a judicial or legislative arena. Alternatively, a hierarchy of the perceived seriousness of various criminal offenses can give insight into what is valued in a particular culture. The difficulty of defining seriousness, however, has led to substantive and methodological critiques of this literature. The present study is the latest to investigate the dimensional nature of perceptions of crime seriousness or severity, through multidimensional scaling techniques (MDS). MDS is a procedure that helps researchers uncover hidden structures in existing data by graphically plotting respondents' perceptions of perceived similarities (or dissimilarities) among various stimuli. When these stimuli are located on a plot based on such perceptions, underlying dimensions that respondents may have used (consciously or not) can be inferred. In two empirical studies I identify and validate three dimensions underlying perceptions of crime seriousness: amount of harm, infringement or deprivation of autonomy, and recklessness. I discuss implications for psychology, law, and policy.


Following a critical review of the existing quantitative literature on cotton subsidies, a vector autoregression (VAR) is used to model the effects of US subsidies on the world cotton market from 1965 to 2001. Surprisingly, subsidies are found to have only a limited impact on prices despite their effects on production and consumption. The dynamic relationships between quantities, prices, stocks and subsidies are found to be considerably more complex than those suggested by basic theory. Finally, simulation results indicate that even large reductions in US subsidies will not necessarily lead to significantly higher world prices.


There is a need to assess the psychiatric morbidity that appears as a consequence of terrorist attacks. The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) has been used to this end, but its psychometric properties have never been evaluated in a population affected by terrorism. A sample of 891 participants included 162 direct victims of terrorist attacks and 729 relatives of the victims. All participants were evaluated using the 28-item version of the GHQ (GHQ-28). We examined the reliability and external validity of scores on the scale using Cronbach's alpha and Pearson correlation with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), respectively. The factor structure of the scale was analyzed with varimax rotation. Samejima's (1969) graded response model was used to explore the item properties. The GHQ-28 scores showed good reliability and item-scale correlations. The factor analysis identified 3 factors: anxious-somatic symptoms, social dysfunction, and depression symptoms. All factors showed good correlation with the STAI. Before rotation, the first, second, and third factor explained 44.0%, 6.4%, and 5.0% of the variance, respectively. Varimax rotation redistributed the percentages of variance accounted for to 28.4%, 13.8%, and 13.2%, respectively. Items with the highest loadings in the first factor measured anxiety symptoms, whereas items with the highest loadings in the third factor measured suicide ideation. Samejima's model found that high scores in suicide-related items were associated with severe depression. The factor structure of the GHQ-28 found in this study underscores the preeminence of anxiety symptoms among victims of terrorism and their relatives. Item response analysis identified the most difficult and significant items for each factor.


The design of interconnection networks is very popular in computer science. In this paper we introduce a novel problem, the design of oriented networks. The underlying structure of such networks is a directed graph with weights on the arcs, which are the number of paths of the routing that traverse the arc. The cost of a network with a routing is defined as a sum of arc costs that are computed with concave increasing cost function depending on weights over directed arcs. The objective is to find the routing that is optimal in terms of costs. The corresponding minimization problem is approached with a local search type heuristics. New local search neighborhood is defined and analyzed.


markdownabstract'What makes an entrepreneur?' This is an important question for many researchers in the past three decades. Although this is a fundamental question, research usually find incomplete and uncertain answers to this research question. Thus, it is of imperative importance to study novel factors that may explain entrepreneurship better. Therefore, this thesis takes entrepreneurship as a starting point to investigate the associations with two new potential cognitive factors, viz., neurocognitive measures on the one hand and self-reported psychiatric symptoms and individual differences on the other hand.
Chapter 1 introduces how the five chapters fit in the conceptual model this thesis builds upon and discusses its main motivation and contribution.
Chapter 2 and 3 examine the internal consistency and functional significance of important neurocognitive measures. The results provide guidelines for future research and suggest that more research is needed to fully understand what these neurocognitive measures reflect.
Chapter 4 and 5 investigate the association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity (ADHD) symptoms and entrepreneurial choice and orientation. The findings suggest that there is a positive association that is primarily driven by hyperactivity symptoms.
Finally, Chapter 6 studies the association between present and future temporal focus and entrepreneurial orientation in a sample of solo self-employed individuals.
The results suggest that for these individuals a future focus is more important compared to present focus for the entrepreneurial orientation and that a focus on both temporal foci simultaneously comes at the expense of their entrepreneurial orientation. Taken together, this thesis presents initial results associating new potential cognitive factors that may explain entrepreneurship and opens up ample room for research in this direction.


Abstract : This research proposes a method for automatically designing sensors from the specifications of a robot's task, its actions, and its uncertainty in control. The sensors provide precisely the information required by the robot to perform its task, despite uncertainty in sensing and control. The key idea is to generate a strategy for a robot task by using a backchaining planner that assumes perfect sensing while taking careful account of control uncertainty. The resulting plan indirectly specifies a sensor that tells the robot when to execute which action. Although the planner assumes perfect sensing information, the sensor need not actually provide perfect information. Instead, the sensor provides only the information required for the plan to function correctly. This report is a revised version of a proposal currently submitted to NSF.


We present Code Space, a system that contributes touch + air gesture hybrid interactions to support co-located, small group developer meetings by democratizing access, control, and sharing of information across multiple personal devices and public displays. Our system uses a combination of a shared multi-touch screen, mobile touch devices, and Microsoft Kinect sensors. We describe cross-device interactions, which use a combination of in-air pointing for social disclosure of commands, targeting and mode setting, combined with touch for command execution and precise gestures. In a formative study, professional developers were positive about the interaction design, and most felt that pointing with hands or devices and forming hand postures are socially acceptable. Users also felt that the techniques adequately disclosed who was interacting and that existing social protocols would help to dictate most permissions, but also felt that our lightweight permission feature helped presenters manage incoming content.


Rhetoric about young people's 'ownership' of future socio-technical change is a familiar part of much educational and political discourse. This does not, however, translate in practice into a meaningful dialogue with young people about the sorts of futures they might wish to see emerge. This paper argues that a number of social and technological developments currently being envisaged by researchers, developers, industry and politicians bring with them a responsibility to rethink the relationship between young people, education and socio-technical futures. It focuses specifically on trends in the areas of personal augmentation, digital working practices and intergenerational spaces and discusses the implications of projected developments in these areas for young people's educational, economic and democratic futures. It argues that schools need to be cognisant of these future possibilities and need to create spaces and practices that enable young people together to understand and explore these issues. The school also is not immune to socio-technical change. The potential growth of online learning communities, the emergence of a body of adults able to participate as informal educators and the development of networked publics, in particular, have the potential to change the relationship between school, young people and society. These changes have the potential either to erode or to radically reinvigorate the capacity of schools to act as public spaces within which young people can be supported to negotiate and explore future socio-technical change.


Purpose: The purpose of this article is to compare the subjective quality of life of the inhabitants of rural and urban areas. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is based on a set of data from the Social Diagnosis 2015. Conditions and quality of life of the Poles project, which is comprehensive and representative in nature, were used. The study was conducted on the example of Poland in the global dimension as a general satisfaction with life and in terms of area concerning various areas of life. The work assessed the quality of life, including the division into rural and urban residents. A significance test for many structure indices was used to achieve the goal. Findings: The results show that most often both the inhabitants of the rural and the urban have assessed their life as quite good or successful and quite happy. It was also found that the percentage of people living in the rural and urban assessing the quality of own life rather negatively is not significantly different. However, the percentage of inhabitants of rural and urban areas declaring satisfaction with global and local quality of life is not the same, i.e., the quality of life assessment in this case depends on the place of residence. Practical Implications: The paper highlights the importance of subjective assessment of the quality of life of rural and urban residents to fully demonstrate how people live and how they assess their lives. Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature by showing that subjective assessment of the quality of life globally and in individual areas of life varies significantly between rural and urban residents.


A synthetic biological sensor was developed to monitor the interaction of plasma with soft, hydrated biological material. It comprises phospholipid vesicles in a hydrated proteinaceous environment comprising 5% (w/v) gelatin. The vesicles contained a self-quenched dye, which was activated by vesicle destruction giving a clear fluorescent switch on. The interaction of bacterial toxins with the sensor was measured in a proof of principle experiment, then the effect of atmospheric plasma jets with the sensor, was studied in order to assess the cytolytic effect of plasma jets in biological systems. When the plasma contacted the gelatin surface perpendicular to the surface, the treatment resulted in the formation of a star-shaped pattern of microchannels that radiated out from the centre of the treatment area within the gelatin matrix, and locally damaged vesicles within the microchannels at a depth of 150 µm below the gelatin surface. Plasma jets applied in parallel to the surface of the matrix resulted in the formation of a single microchannel with damage to the vesicles only evident at the walls of the channel, and a much reduced penetration depth within the gelatin. Our data show that the effects of plasma can be deep in the gelatin material and that the angle of treatment significantly influenced the nature and level of damage to the gelatin and vesicles. Potentially this gelatin model can be used to unravel the roles of different plasma species and the direct effect of whole plasma contact, from those of primary and secondary species—i.e. primary, those emanating directly from the plasma and secondary, those species created in the 'target' tissue. This type of insight could be useful in the future development of safe and effective plasma medical technologies.


The first low carbohydrate diets for diabetes, which were introduced in the 18th century, were not high fat diets so much as high protein diets. By the late nineteenth century a consensus had begun to appear in European studies that a higher fat and lower protein intake was more tolerable. Frederick Allen confirmed this in animal studies, but the diet he introduced into clinical practice in 1914 restricted fat, protein, and total calories, becoming in extreme cases a starvation diet with the deadly side effect of "inanition". Interpreting Allen's research in light of the studies in chemical metabolism of Rollin Woodyatt, Louis "Harry" Newburgh, with Phil Marsh, dared to increase fat in the diets of diabetic patients at the University of Michigan Hospital in 1918, with gratifying results which were published in 1920. A dispute followed between Newburgh and Allen's disciple Elliott P Joslin; Woodyatt, Russell M Wilder, Karl Petren and others confirmed Newburgh's results by experimentation and by 1924 Joslin too was reporting the higher fat diet's ability to extend life in diabetics untreated with insulin. However, a dispute between Joslin and Newburgh about the long-term safety of the high fat diet continued long into the insulin era. Because the debate about the effect of the high-fat diet in the tabula rasa of the pre-insulin era only lasted a few years, and rigorous research into the question was largely limited to the state of Michigan, medical history has paid little attention to the fact that the question of what is the "optimum", or default, diet for diabetes, based on physiological principles as well as clinical practice and experiment, was at one time almost settled. This historical review paper summarises the early clinical researches of Newburgh et al. into the effects of the high-fat diet in the treatment of diabetes, with a particular focus on events in Michigan between 1918 and 1930.


Abstract Thousands of animal tracks are preserved in wind-blown cross-strata of the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone at Coyote Buttes on the Arizona-Utah border, USA. Tracks deform thin grainflows that were deposited on the slip faces of large dunes. In cross-section, laminae (pin stripes) are smoothly folded, and are only very rarely broken. There is no sign of a central shaft left open when the trackmaker's foot was withdrawn from the substrate. At the top of each track, folded laminae are truncated by the pin stripe that marks the base of the next (younger) grainflow. Within some trackways, progressively younger tracks move up-section to younger grainflows. The folded, unbroken pin stripes and absence of a distinct shaft fill are inconsistent with a moist-sand (cohesive) substrate. Stratigraphic relationships between tracks and grainflows indicate that, as the animals moved across the slip face, they triggered dry avalanches, and then stepped on the newly deposited grainflows. Although scour by grainflows can remove shallow tracks, the loose packing (high porosity) of grainflows ensures that the feet of larger animals will penetrate well below the level of the next erosive surface. Although dry dune sand previously has been denigrated as a medium for track preservation, this example shows that dry eolian grainflows, due to their loose packing and their position in the zone of flow separation on the dune lee slope, can preserve abundant, clear tracks. A dry-sand origin of the tracks corroborates an earlier interpretation of the grainflows as December–February (dry season) deposits of cross-equatorial winds.


Although women have increased their labour market participation and educational level they still lag behind men in their occupational achievements. An important discussion in the literature as well as in popular media is whether this is due to a gender difference in aspirations. In this study the importance of aspirations for work outcomes is studied in more detail in four empirical chapters using a variety of methods. Results showed that there were gender differences in work and family aspirations that followed traditional gender roles. In general, women thought that family aspirations were more important than men while men thought that career aspirations were more important than women. However, this study showed that women did not lose their ambition when having children. Furthermore, there were also gender differences in how these aspirations related to work outcomes. More specifically, when family aspirations were related to work outcomes, family aspirations were positively related to men's work outcomes but negatively related to women's work outcomes. Moreover, work aspirations seemed to matter more for the work outcomes of women than of men. Thus, similar aspirations did not always lead to similar outcomes for men and women. This dissertation also investigated the direction of the relationship between aspirations and earnings. Results showed that work aspirations affected earnings rather than the only way around, but this relationship was only found for women. For men there was no evidence for a relationship in either direction using longitudinal data. Finally, the importance of the aspirations of the partner were investigated. It was found that the aspirations of the partner could function as a resource or a restriction. Where partners seemed to stimulate each other's aspirations, it also appeared to be the case that the aspirations of the partner could limit or stimulate one's own labour market participation. Together, this dissertation has investigated several aspects of the relationship between aspirations and work outcomes. It contributed to previous research by explicitly including family aspirations when investigating the relationship between aspirations and work outcomes, by investigating the direction of the relationship between aspirations and earnings, and by combining insights from various research fields. This study has implications for policy makers, employers, and employees. For policy makers it is important to realise that the same aspirations for men and women do not always lead to the same outcomes. Women do not lose their career aspirations when they have a child. Hence, employers should give mothers the chance to realize their ambitions. Finally, it is good for women to realize that their work aspirations do have an effect and that if they hold on to their aspiration they may increase the chance of achieving their desired work outcomes.


Ultrasound imaging is a technique widely used in medicine to visualize organs and other body structures, capturing their position, size, morphology and any pathological lesions. Its use is unfortunately limited to specialized centers with trained personnel, and it would be beneficial to expand its applicability to environments like on-the-sheld emergency response and family physician cabinets. This requires the development of new ultrasound platforms that must be faster, lower-power, easier to use, safe and reliable. One of the major challenges to be met is to dynamically manage a myriad of different imaging options and configuration parameters, which impact image quality and computation cost at the same time. Focusing on this challenge, in this paper we first give an overview of ultrasound imaging techniques and of their possible configuration and parametrization options. We then discuss the impact of these options on computation cost and image quality, showing outcomes from a prototype Matlab ultrasound imaging pipeline.


A significant barrier to enforcing sovereign debt obligations in U.S. court has been finding and attaching non-immune assets of the foreign sovereign debtor. In June 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court issued decisions in litigation between Argentina and hedge fund NML Capital that will significantly benefit creditors in the enforcement process. In one decision, the Court affirmed an order to compel banks to provide information as to how Argentina moves its monetary assets around the world, finding that the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) does not limit a court's power to order post-judgment discovery. In the other decision, the Court denied certiorari to review an injunction prohibiting Argentina from making payments to holders of its restructured debt unless and until it pays NML Capital, and threatening to hold liable third parties that aid and abet Argentina in processing such payments. The NML decisions follow protracted, previously unsuccessful efforts by hedge funds holding defaulted Argentine debt to enforce New York judgments against Argentina. This paper argues that the discovery and injunction orders at issue in NML contravene the FSIA due to their extraterritorial reach. The FSIA should be read to prohibit these orders for several reasons. The Court has interpreted the FSIA to be the exclusive basis for jurisdiction against a foreign state in U.S. court. Additionally, the historical context in which the statute was adopted supports a narrow reading of exceptions to execution immunity under the FSIA. Finally, the presumption against extraterritoriality calls for a restrained interpretive approach. The Supreme Court's interpretation of the FSIA in NML Capital adopts an acontextual reading of the FSIA's language to reach an unreasonable result.


Antibiotic sensitivity and the effect of temperature on microbial growth are two standard laboratory activities found in most microbial laboratory manuals. We have found a novel way to combine the two activities to demonstrate how temperature can influence antibiotic sensitivity using a standard incubator in instructional laboratory settings. This activity reinforces the important concepts of microbial growth and temperature along with Kirby-Bauer antibiotic susceptibility testing. We found that Pseudomonas fluorescens can be manipulated to become more sensitive to several antibiotics by simply increasing growth temperature and exposing the organism to various antibiotics. No additional equipment is required beyond a standard incubator. Pseudomonas fluorescens is an excellent choice for this activity since it is a safe alternative to Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a biosafety level 2 agent. Pseudomonads are important to explore in the microbiology laboratory since Pseudomonas aeruginosa poses a serious issue in health care settings, as this organism is known to be a multi-drug-resistant pathogen (6). More importantly, P. fluorescens is a good alternative in the laboratory to P. aeruginosa since it is also pigmented (5) and a possible reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes (4). In addition, it grows best at room temperatures and can easily be thermally stressed by placing in a standard 35ºC to 37ºC incubator


Tobacco use continues to be the leading preventable cause of mortality and morbidity in North America and Quitlines are one of the primary cessation resources available to assist tobacco users with quitting. Implementation of best practices is important to the success of quitlines, but unfortunately, it is a complex and elusive process often difficult to achieve. This study aims to better understand the implementation process by using qualitative methods to examine an evaluation practice in-depth and to elucidate the complex factors influencing its implementation and institutionalization in the North American Quitline network. Nineteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with decision-makers in the Quitline network. The interview data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach, guided by a systems change framework. The findings suggest that a broad range of factors influenced implementation of the evaluation practice at different levels of the system. These factors included system norms, system resources and operations (i.e., policies), five key relationships (e.g., between the funder and service provider), and power placement in the system. Characteristics of the evaluation practice itself also influenced implementation and interacted with other factors in the system. This study demonstrates the complexity of implementing and institutionalizing evaluation in an inter-organizational network. It also demonstrates the value of using qualitative data to study implementation phenomena. The findings can be used to improve efforts to institutionalize evaluation in the Quitline network and inform future implementation research studies.


TO THE EDITOR: We read with great interest the article entitled "Reports of 'Satisfactory Relief' by IBS Patients Receiving Usual Medical Care Are Confounded by Baseline Symptom Severity and Do Not Accurately Reflect Symptom improvement," by Whitehead et al. (1), and the accompanying editorial by Schoenfeld and Talley (2). We agree with the conclusions reached by Schoenfeld and Talley that binary end points are useful end points in IBS trials. In addition to the shortcomings in Whitehead et al. (1) described by Schoenfeld and Talley (2), we would like to correct several factual and interpretational errors.


In this work, a novel robust fault detection algorithm is investigated for stochastic distribution systems with multiple uncertainties, where the output is characterised by its measured output probability density function. By constructing an auxiliary augmented stochastic descriptor system, the original stochastic distribution system is transferred into a descriptor system subjected to model uncertainties, where a proportional and derivative descriptor estimator is developed to solve the fault detection problem. The system input and the output probability density function are used in the design of this estimator. Furthermore, the derivative gain of the estimator is chosen to attenuate the output uncertainties, and the free parameters embedded inside the proportional gain are selected to generate an optimally robust residual signal for fault detection so as to achieve a situation where this residual signal is sensitive to system faults while insensitive to model uncertainties, input disturbances and output noises. A numerical example is given, and the simulation result shows satisfactory detection performance.


Several factors explain why press reporting of legal affairs results in defamation suits. Legal matters and proceedings often involve serious charges bearing great potential for defamatory harm if false. Moreover, the risk of error is frequently significant since reporters must often decipher technical legal terminology and restate complex results of legal proceedings under the pressure of a deadline. Another possibility is that many of the plaintiffs in these defamation suits are not hesitant to go into court to assert their rights, since many are already deeply involved in litigation and others, such as lawyers and judges, are quite accustomed to it. Finally, it is likely that as with much other defamation litigation, many plaintiffs in these cases have motives for filing suit beyond the prospect of recovery of damages to reputation. Such motives may include promoting political ends, striking back at the press, or trying to influence the underlying legal proceeding. These cases cut across all of the legal issues raised in media defamation litigation in general. Often the treatment of a particular legal issue raised in a media defamation case is not peculiar. Frequently, however, unique twists to or common themes connecting these cases arise. One may study and analyze these cases by focusing on several different themes or issues that are presented. This Article will focus on two specific themes that may bear a relationship to each other. The first theme is the treatment, as a matter of constitutional law, of the participants in legal matters and proceedings as public figures or officials and the treatment of such matters and proceedings as public controversies or matters of public concern. The resolution of these issues is generally of great significance in the individual case since it will determine whether the strict actual malice standard of fault or some lower standard such as negligence is applicable. The way that courts tend to decide these issues in this type of case is of more general interest in that it involves an important first amendment issue-the degree to which the law favors uninhibited reporting of legal matters and proceedings. The second theme focuses on the degree of accuracy that the press is legally expected to achieve in covering legal matters and proceedings. This is a theme that cuts across several specific legal issues raised in defamation litigation, including whether the statements are defamatory, whether they are true or false, whether they are fact or protected opinion, whether they are a privileged fair and accurate report of an official or judicial proceeding, and whether the reporter is at fault if the statements are false and defamatory. As with the public figure issue, the degree of accuracy to which the law holds the press will often prove to be determinative of the outcome of a particular case. The general manner in which the courts deal with the accuracy of media usage of legal terminology and descriptions of legal matters, proceedings, and participants will also have a major effect on press coverage of the legal world as well as a participant's right to sue successfully for harm caused to reputation by defamatory falsehood.


All viruses infecting ticks (with one possible exception) are arboviruses; their life cycle depends on infection and replication in both tick and vertebrate host cells. Little is known of arbovirus-tick cell interactions even though tick-borne viruses spend most of their existence in ticks. A distinct selection pressure on tick-borne viruses is the intracellular process of bloodmeal digestion in ticks (contrasting with insects) This may explain the pronounced differences in surface structure of tick-borne and insect-borne orbiviruses. Some indications of molecular interactions can be extrapolated from vertebrate cells, such as utilisation of aggresome pathways. Although many (if not all) tick-borne viruses exploit the immunomodulatory effects of tick saliva on the vertebrate host, there is no evidence they interact directly with saliva molecules. However, the most fundamental question to address is the benign infection of arboviruses in tick cells compared with their cytopathic effect in vertebrate cells. As the tick proteome is unravelled, its interaction with the viral proteome should help explain the interactions between ticks and the many important viruses they transmit.


How should multilateral trade policy be designed in a world in which countries differ in terms of market access and technology, and firms with market power differ in terms of productivity? We answer this question in a model of monopolistic competition in which variable markups increasing in firm size are a key source of misallocation across firms and countries. We use `disadvantaged' to refer to countries with smaller market size, worse state of technology (in terms of higher innovation and production costs), and worse geography (in terms of more remoteness from other countries). We show that, in a global welfare perspective, optimal multilateral trade policy should: promote the sales of low cost firms to all countries, but especially to disadvantaged ones; trim the sales of high cost firms to all countries, but especially to disadvantaged ones; reduce firm entry in all countries, but especially in disadvantaged ones. This would not only restore efficiency but also reduce welfare inequality between advantaged and disadvantaged countries if their differences in market size, state of technology and geography are large enough.


Building dialog agents that can converse naturally with humans is a challenging yet intriguing problem of artificial intelligence. In open-domain human-computer conversation, where the conversational agent is expected to respond to human responses in an interesting and engaging way, commonsense knowledge has to be integrated into the model effectively. In this paper, we investigate the impact of providing commonsense knowledge about the concepts covered in the dialog. Our model represents the first attempt to integrating a large commonsense knowledge base into end-to-end conversational models. In the retrieval-based scenario, we propose the Tri-LSTM model to jointly take into account message and commonsense for selecting an appropriate response. Our experiments suggest that the knowledge-augmented models are superior to their knowledge-free counterparts in automatic evaluation.


The construction containing the so-called "lonesome numeral classifier" would be a challenge for syntactic theory because of the absence of a verb which is expected for a case-marked argument. Properties of the construction have been unclear between two competing approaches, a VP analysis which favors the structural presence of a missing verb and a np analysis which claims only the semantic representation of it. In an attempt to solve the inherent difficulties associated with the previous claims, the present study integrates a discourse representation structure into semantic and structural representation, and proposes a proper linking for these structures. The proposed three-way representation captures the critical properties of the construction, rooted in the structurally absent, semantically present, and discourse-driven "missing" verb.


Background. The basidiomycete Rhodosporidium diobovatum is an oleaginous yeast capable of carotenoid synthesis. Scientific research on this yeast indicates that it can be a promising industrial producer of this pigment. The yeast is capable of assimilating numerous carbon substrates and it can grow under various, often extreme, environmental conditions. Wild strains can be isolated from soil, the depths of the sea and the surface of plants. They can grow both in the dark and in the presence of light. The aim of this study was to determine the capability of the Rh. diobovatum IMB Y-5023 yeast strain to produce and accumulate carotenoids when cultured on media with different carbohydrate concentration and composition and with low monosaccharide levels. The yeast was cultured at different illuminances. This research is of great theoretical and practical importance, because it may enable the use of various organic by-products from the agri-food industry as substrates for culturing Rh. diobovatum and for microbial production of carotenoids. This research also provides an opportunity to reduce the costs of the microbiological process by choosing optimal illuminance of the culture. Material and methods. Rhodosporidium diobovatum IMB Y-5023 was cultured on three test media: CM (carrot medium), BYP (wheat bran extract), and the YM medium with higher concentration of malt extract as the main source of oligosaccharides and with maltotriose added. Cultures were carried out at 22°C for 5 days at illuminance ranging from 0 to 5,000 lx. The carbohydrate composition of the media was determined before and after the culturing of Rh. diobovatum IMB Y-5023 by means of UHPLC coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (MS). The following parameters were also measured after culturing: biomass yield (DCW – dry cell weight, g/l), the concentration of carotenoids in the yeast biomass (mg/g DCW), the biomass yield coefficient (YX/S) Ielchishcheva, Iu., Stachowiak, B., Szwengiel, A., Bozhkov, A. (2017). Carbohydrate components of culture media as determinants of the Rhodosporidium diobovatum IMB Y-5023 yeast metabolism. Nauka Przyr. Technol., 11, 3, 291–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.17306/J.NPT.00210 292 and the carotenoid yield coefficient (YC/S). The samples were compared by means of cluster analysis (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA), which were used to visualise the relationships between the study variables and the samples. Results. The Rh. diobovatum IMB Y-5023 yeast strain grew and produced carotenoids on all the media. It assimilated the DP3 and DP4 oligosaccharides contained in the media. Regardless of the illuminance during culturing, the consumption of sugars in the test media remained at 90% or more. However, the concentration and type of carbohydrates in the test medium affected the course of their metabolism. Regardless of the illuminance, the highest concentration of pigments in the cells and the lowest yield of biomass were noted with YM. The initial concentration of sugars in that medium was three–four times greater than in the other test media, and their type was considerably diversified. The data clustering (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the BYP and CM media (with similar initial sugar concentrations of 11–15 g/l) had similar influence on the yeast metabolism, whereas the measured variables were completely different in the cultures with the YM medium. Conclusions. The Rh. diobovatum IMB Y-5023 yeast strain is a promising industrial producer of carotenoids. It can effectively assimilate both monosaccharides and DP3 and DP4 oligosaccharides. It does not require illumination to grow and produce pigments effectively, especially when it is grown on media that have high sugar concentrations and are rich in oligosaccharides. The cost of industrial carotenoid production with Rh. diobovatum IMB Y-5023 can be reduced by using inexpensive by-products from the agri-food sector as a culture medium, and by eliminating the illumination of cultures.


This article considers an important failure of bargaining that, inexplicably, receives little serious attention in scholarly journals: the decades-long inability of Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a treaty to end their conflict and govern their relationship. We use interdisciplinary negotiation theory as a construct for understanding this failure and deriving the principles that should underlie any United States attempt to mediate the process and help create a new legal regime for the Middle East. Our approach to examining the Israeli-Palestinian impasse leads us to the following conclusions: The failure of the parties to date to reach an agreement based on the land-for-peace framework can be attributed to some combination of three common roadblocks to negotiation success: (a) the absence of a bargaining zone, such that no single set of agreement terms would be preferable to continued impasse for both parties; (b) internal division within one or both principal parties, such that an agent or a minority faction with the ability to block an agreement undermines a result that would benefit the party as a whole; and (c) mutual hard bargaining, such that both sides refuse to accept an agreement that would be preferable to impasse and instead hold out for an even more desirable agreement. Because the parties' rhetoric can be consistent with any of these explanations, only an omniscient observer could know for sure which of these three roadblocks (or combination thereof) are actually the but - for cause of the ongoing impasse. Consequently, any U.S.-sponsored peace initiative would be most likely to succeed in bringing peace to the Middle East if it were to include a conscious plan to overcome each of these roadblocks. We propose that such a plan should begin with the United States presenting a non-negotiable set of terms to the two disputing parties that they can either take or leave but not bargain over, maximize the chance that the parties will accept those terms by both including side payments to the parties as part of the proposed deal and simultaneously threatening to withhold political and economic support if the deal is rejected, and take specific steps to work with the disputants and allies to limit the power of Palestinians and Israelis who are opposed to an agreement to stand in its way.


The objective of this study was to investigate knowledge about, opinions on and attitudes toward and finally readiness to accept genetically modified organisms (GMO) among Slovenian teachers. On average, they have higher levels of knowledge in classical genetics, and poor levels of knowledge about modern issues in biotechnology, and their attitudes toward GMOs are not extreme. They make decisions based on the acceptability of a particular GMO and not on GMOs in general, following two patterns: genetic modifications (GM) microorganisms and plants are more acceptable than animals, and GMOs are more acceptable if they can not be used directly for consumption and produce something recognized as useful. The relationship among knowledge of, attitudes towards and readiness to accept GMO showed that there is no correlation between knowledge and attitudes, only a weak correlation between knowledge and acceptance, and a solid correlation between attitudes and readiness to accept GMO. The practical implication of our findings is that acceptance of GMOs will not be changed by providing new technical or scientific information to teachers but by changing attitudes. The appropriate strategies and actions for improving university courses in biotechnology and the implication for classroom science activities and future research are discussed.


All of the pre-Parlophone recordings have been tracked! During a period of several years, Sweden's Hans Olof Gottfridsson has mapped out this legendary period of The Beatles' early career. Now, for the first time ever, all of the recordings are presented, from when John and Paul met at the Woolton Garden Fete in 1957 to the last Star-Club recordings in Hamburg during December 1962!The book contains a complete in-depth review of all the German, English, Swedish, French and American releases of songs, which were recorded during this period. All of the singles, EPs and LPs are shown. Every release has been priced as a rarity and collector's item in the price guide section. Finally, it is now made clear which of the Tony Sheridan releases the Beatles actually took part in and played. Even acetates, tapes and sound films are included! (PREMIUM PUBLISHING, 1997) "A remarkable new book rewrites the story of the Beatles rise to fame.", Record Collector, November 1997, (UK)."the first definitive look at the Beatles' recording activities before 'Please, Please Me' ", Goldmine, December 5, 1997, (US)."Who'd thought that such book would have emanated from Sweden?", Mojo, January 1998, (UK). * In 1997 it was appointed second best book of the year by Record Collector (UK).


Ingenium AS is developing a new concept for transporting and installing fixed wind turbines, mainly jacket structures. As a part of the installation the jacket is lowered down to the seabed from a free hanging configuration, supported by a hydraulic frame. This operation is analyzed by use of the computer program Orcaflex, where the structure is modeled as rigid. Two critical scenarios are identified. In Scenario 1a the jacket is 10 m above seabed. Here, the jacket may collide with the support frame if the motions are sufficiently large. In Scenario 2a, the jacket is 3 m above seabed, and large motions may cause troubles under installation. Both these Scenarios are modeled and investigated by running response analyses in Orcaflex. The effect of applying a passive heave compensation system is also investigated. Damping characteristics for the system are provided by Ingenium. By these damping characteristics, the heave compensation system is implemented in the Orcaflex models. Contact between the support frame and the jacket legs may occur if the jacket motions are sufficiently large. The effect of applying a bumper system to reduce the stress in the jacket legs is investigated. This is done by attaching a bumper to the support frame in Scenario 1a, and use different materials with different contact stiffness for the bumper analysis. All scenarios are run with different environmental conditions. A matrix which defines the different cases for each scenario with respect to load parameters is established. Modal analyses with different line length are performed to see what effect the line length has on the natural frequency of the system.


Domestically and abroad, America is known as the richest country in the world. It is hard not to be impressed by the standard of living in the nation's most affluent suburban and urban neighborhoods. Yet, scattered amid stretches that abound in wealth, the country is home to neighborhoods rife with violence, poverty, segregation, and decay. Within these blighted urban landscapes, however, there is at least one notable example of plenty: churches. They do not always appear as traditional houses of worship, but often emerge from the retrofitted shells of former storefronts, garages, factories, warehouses, domestic dwellings, and public institutions. Regardless of the facade, churches populate America's poorest neighborhoods. Bringing together more than 300 stunning color photographs and a series of candid interviews with pastors, church officials, and congregation members, this extraordinary book explores the conditions, beliefs, and practices that shape the churches and the lives of the nation's urban poor. Over a period of thirty years, sociologist and photographer Camilo Jose Vergara repeatedly visited these places of worship and the eclectic mix of buildings that house them. In twenty-one cities located in ten states across the country, photographic sequences coupled with insightful narrative show how ordinary structures assume, modify, and shed a religious character, how traditional churches - if they fail to adapt to new congregations - are demolished, and how new churches are designed and built from the ground up. Vergara pays special attention to the objects, texts, and imagery that religious leaders make use of to create environments that inspire devotion. Pastors of developing congregations often arrive as crusaders, with missions that cannot be served by traditional religious iconography, and with budgets that force them to use inexpensive materials. In some cases, pastors bring objects of worship from their home towns in places such as Mexico, Puerto Rico, Africa, and the West Indies. Despite the idiosyncratic features and folk decoration that distinguish ghetto churches from one another, however, Vergara shows that, for the most part, they are driven by similar religious agendas. They tend to preach about resilience, avoid involving themselves in national and international events, and consider their truths to be absolute and eternal. A powerful, poignant, and visually arresting portrait, "How the Other Half Worships" stands as a stark witness to how churches are being rebuilt in the dilapidated streets of America's cities and how religion is being reinvented by the nation's poor.


The impetus for this thesis has grown from the challenges facing day-to-day design studio education and the recognition that the formal/informal division of educational space impacts upon student learning and engagement in higher education today. As a consequence of the changing conditions imposed by economics, politics, and technology, specialist design studio facilities are being reconfigured into studio-based classroom learning spaces (often generically termed as 'studio'). It is, I believe, worth assessing how these recontextualised learning spaces impact upon students' senses.

This investigation did not set out to prove or test a pre-determined hypothesis from the onset of the study. Instead, the purpose of this research study was to systematically examine the relationship between sensory affect and learning in the changing landscape of contemporary Communication Design education. However, as the study progressed, sensory affect moved from being the central emphasis of the study to being the conduit through which to investigate aspects of learning experience within the two case studies in different shared domains. To understand the component parts of studio learning, sensory affect was effectively employed via the range of practice-led methods.

The data was gathered via the systematic examination of two case studies: an art school in the UK and a college of art contained within a parent university in Australia. Real-life formal and informal learning spaces provided the naturalistic settings in which to conduct the research with two groups of Communication Design students. The participants worked within studio and studio-based classroom environments using an inductive Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach involving Participatory Design (PD) tools and techniques. Participants responded to their everyday learning experiences through detailed and reflective narrative accounts via a series of participatory group workshops and individual visual, sensory and sound ethnographic research methods.

Overall, the findings showed that the participants could either be disturbed or supported by sensory affect in their experiences of learning spaces. The Case Study 1 participants in the UK responded that their friendly, informal, day-to-day social interactions with peers and staff in their situated studio community, are integral to their collective and individual learning and practice. The Case Study 2 participants created their own offline and online community outside of the boundaries of their studio-based classroom learning spaces, mainly in cafes, at home and via social media. The findings evidenced the importance of multi-sensory research methods in drawing out relationships between place, lived experience, and community.

This research investigation travels a substantial distance towards a form of reconciliation and understanding of contemporary Communication Design learning spaces to support student engagement. As articulated throughout this thesis, this is largely a methodological investigation, which employs sensory affect as a lens to investigate the relationship between learning and practice, community, institutional management, the role of the studio, the pedagogical approach and lastly, when meaning making of sensory affect. The suggestion is that when employing the proposed transferable framework – the Methods Process Model (MPM) (or elements thereof) – then the student's individual and collective relationship with learning is supported in relation to each of these areas. This is especially pertinent as technological concerns cross-cut and impact upon studio education today. The factors that might disrupt studio learning need to be brought forward into a students' consciousness using this framework, guided by educators, researchers and institutions. Being mindful of these issues might mean that students and educators can implement strategies to work better within studio. Therefore, the main contribution to knowledge of this thesis, and grounded in the findings, is the support of students as they explore and engage with contemporary Communication Design studio learning, and how they reflectively examine the range of behaviours and reactions that can be drawn out from their lived experiences, through embodied thinking.


Efficiency gains is a potential strategy to expand Kenyas fiscal space for health. We explored health sector stakeholders understanding of efficiency and their perceptions of the factors that influence the efficiency of county health systems in Kenya. We collected data during a stakeholder engagement workshop. Workshop participants included health sector stakeholders from the national ministry of health and 10 (out 47) county health departments, and non-state actors in Kenya. We divided stakeholders into three groups and carried out facilitated group discussions followed by whole group feedback and discussion session. A total of 25 health sector stakeholders participated. We analysed data using a thematic approach. Health sector stakeholders indicated the need for the outputs and outcomes of a health system to be aligned to community health needs. They felt that both hardware aspects of the system (such as the financial resources, infrastructure, human resources for health) and software aspects of the system (such as health sector policies, public finance management systems, actor relationships) should be considered as inputs in the analysis of county health system efficiency. They also felt that while traditional indicators of health system performance such as intervention coverage or outcomes for infectious diseases, and reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health (RMNCH) are still relevant, emerging epidemiological trends characterized by an increase in the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) should also be considered. The stakeholders identified public finance management, human resources for health, political interests, corruption, management capacity, and poor coordination as factors that influence the efficiency of county health systems. An in-depth examination of the factors that influence the efficiency of county health systems could illuminate potential policy levers for generating efficiency gains. Mixed methods approaches could facilitate the study of both hardware and software factors that are considered inputs, outputs or factors that influence health system efficiency.


In this paper, we present a gold standard corpus for Albanian part-of-speech tagging and perform evaluation experiments with different statistical taggers. The corpus consists of more than 31,000 tokens and has been manually annotated with a medium-sized tagset that can adequately represent the syntagmatic aspects of the language. We provide mappings from the full tagset to both the original Google Universal Part-of-Speech Tags and the variant used in the Universal Dependencies project. We perform experiments with different taggers on the full tagset as well as on the coarser tagsets and achieve accuracies of up to 95.10%.


ABSTRACT Community health workers (CHWs) can help to redress the shortages of health human resources needed to scale up antiretroviral treatment (ART). However, the selection of CHWs could influence the effectiveness of a CHW programme. The purpose of this observational study was to assess whether sociodemographic characteristics and geographic proximity to patients of volunteer CHWs were predictors of clinical outcomes in a community-based ART (CBART) programme in Kabarole, Uganda. Data from CHW surveys for 41 CHWs and clinic charts for 185 patients in the CBART programme were analysed using multivariable logistic and Cox regression models. Time to travel to patients was the only statistically significant characteristic of CHWs associated with ART outcomes. Patients whose CHWs had to travel one or more hours had a 71% lower odds of virologic suppression (adjusted OR = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.13–0.65, p = .002) and a 4.52 times higher mortality hazard rate (adjusted HR = 4.52, 95% CI = 1.20–17.09, p = .026) compared to patients whose CHWs had to travel less than one hour. The findings show that the sociodemographic characteristics of CHWs were not as important as the geographic distance they had to travel to patients.


The purpose of the paper is to verify whether the version of neighbourhoods created from the lowest geographical level improve a predictive accuracy of hedonic model in comparison with those based on upper geographical levels. Methodology/approach n The paper proposes a method for defining neighbourhoods from Thiessen polygons created around the points of apartments. These polygons occupy the whole analysed area and are used as the spatial units for clustering. The clustering technique is based on contiguity of polygons and fuzzy equality of the principal components of their attributes. Clustering is started at different geographical levels: municipalities, smaller traffic analysis zones, and apartmentsi Thiessen polygons. The ordinary least squares (OLS) and spatial error techniques are applied in hedonic price models with different versions of neighbourhoods. Originality/value n Neighbourhoods can be defined using the Thiessen polygons of individual observations. This very ibottom upi approach can minimise dependency from existing political, administrative and other boundaries. The clustering technique is based on fuzzy equality and does not need the a priori determination of a number of clusters, while contiguity and hierarchical nature of neighbourhoods are considered. Findings n With OLS regression, the superiority of Thiessen polygons is evident in both in-sample analysis and ex-sample prediction. When we control for spatial effect with a spatial error technique, the clusters of Thiessen polygons do not always provide the best outcome, and their superiority is contested by the highest geographical level of municipalities.


Radiation treatment consists of a chain of events influenced by the quality of machine operation, beam data commissioning, machine calibration, patient specific data, simulation, treatment planning, imaging and treatment delivery. There is always a chance that the clinical medical physicist may make or fail to detect an error in one of the events that may impact on the patient's treatment. In the clinical scenario, errors may be systematic and, without peer review, may have a low detectability because they are not part of routine QA procedures. During treatment, there might be errors on machine that needs attention. External reviews of some of the treatment delivery components by independent reviewers, like IROC, can detect errors, but may not be timely. The goal of this session is to help junior clinical physicists identify potential errors as well as the approach of quality assurance to perform a root cause analysis to find and eliminate an error and to continually monitor for errors. A compilation of potential errors will be presented by examples of the thought process required to spot the error and determine the root cause. Examples may include unusual machine operation, erratic electrometer reading, consistent lower electron output, variation in photon output, body parts inadvertently left in beam, unusual treatment plan, poor normalization, hot spots etc. Awareness of the possibility and detection of error in any link of the treatment process chain will help improve the safe and accurate delivery of radiation to patients. Four experts will discuss how to identify errors in four areas of clinical treatment. D. Followill, NIH grant CA 180803.


OBJECTIVE: To investigate the characteristics of tricycle-related injuries in children presenting to US emergency departments (EDs). METHODS: Data regarding tricycle injuries in children younger than 18 years of age were obtained from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System for calendar years 2012 and 2013. Data included body regions injured, ED disposition, and demographics. RESULTS: There were an estimated 9340 tricycle-related injuries treated in US EDs from 2012 to 2013. The average age was 3 years. Children 2 years of age had the highest frequency of injuries. Boys accounted for 63.6% of all injuries. Children 1 to 2 years of age represented 51.9% of all injuries. Lacerations were the most common type of injury. Internal organ damage was the most common type of injury in 3- and 5-year-olds. Contusions were the most common type of injury in 1- and 7-year-olds. The head was the most commonly injured region of the body and the most common region to endure internal damage. The elbows were the most commonly fractured body part. The upper extremity was more frequently fractured than the lower extremity. Approximately 2.4% of all injured children were admitted to the hospital. CONCLUSIONS: The upper extremity of children, particularly the elbow, was more frequently fractured than the lower extremity. The head was the most common body part to endure internal damage. By elucidating the characteristics of tricycle-related injuries, preventive measures can be implemented to decrease the incidence of tricycle-related injuries and ED visits.


This book examines the phonological behaviour of glides in Russian from the perspective of Optimality Theory (OT). The goal of the study is twofold. First, it addresses descriptive issues in the phonology of Russian which have not been discussed in the generative literature to date. Second, the data are analysed in the OT framework. On the one hand, it is argued that OT offers new insights into the phenomena concerning the phonological properties of the Russian v, which derives from the underlying back glide. On the other hand, the investigation of various processes associated with the occurrence of the front glide j reveals that standard OT cannot produce an adequate analysis of a large body of data. The problem stems from the fact that in most cases, the trigger of the process is not present on the surface. As is well known, opaque generalisations cannot be handled within standard OT, which evaluates output forms using one set of ranked constraints. This study argues that a modified version of OT, Derivational Optimality Theory, can successfully analyse the phenomena under consideration. The first chapter offers an overview of the basic theoretical assumptions and presents descriptive generalisations that are relevant to the ensuing discussion. Chapter two is centred around issues connected with the distribution of high vowels and the corresponding glides in Russian. Specifically, it discovers a generalization that the systematic occurrences of the Cj sequences are conditioned by the presence of an alternating vowel. Chapter three discusses opaque generalisations that result from the interaction of Glide Deletion with other phonological processes, such as Vowel Reduction, Fronting and Retraction. The analysis proposed here strengthens the conclusion from the preceding chapter that OT evaluation must be carried out at different levels. Additionally, this chapter proposes a novel analysis of Vowel Reduction, which assumes that the raising of non-high vowels taking place after palatalised consonants is best analysed as assimilation in height. The final chapter offers an alternative OT analysis of the ambiguous behaviour of the labial continuant v in Russian. It is argued that v is represented as the glide //w// in the underlying representation and that the indeterminate sonorant/obstruent behaviour of v is derived from the interplay of independent constraints.


In regions where water is in short supply, wastewater treatment offers the possibility for the efficient removal of unwanted pollutants and germs so that the water may be used for irrigation. Water scarcity is an old problem in Palestine because of various geographical settings and political turbulence. The problem is compounded by population growth and development. As a result of the increasing demand for water, using alternative options has become a must to meet water needs. The demand for water can be reduced by increasing the efficiency of water use and by making usable sources of water previously considered unusable. One possible supply is 'wastewater'. This project sets out to treat and reclaim wastewater as a supply of irrigation water and thus enhance crop production. The project Research Article British Journal of Applied Science & Technology, 3(3): 536-545, 2013 537 results reveal that wastewater from the Ateel wastewater station potentially can be used for irrigating crops. It offers many social and financial benefits for improving the farmers' sources of revenue. Various parameters were monitored and measured for the Ateel wastewater station and yielded some interesting and promising data.


In most mineral soils, P leaching is rarely viewed as an important environmental issue. However, P accumulation and decreased P sorption capacities in surface horizons of long-term fertilized soils may increase downward P movement. The objective of this study was to measure the concentration and characterize the P forms in drainage waters from nine soil series widely differing in clay content. Twenty-seven sites were sampled in 1994 and 1995 from an intensively cropped area of the province of Quebec, Canada. Drainage waters were characterized for their total P (TP), dissolved reactive P (DRP), dissolved organic P (DOP), and total particulate P (TPP) contents. The Quebec surface water quality standard of 0.03 mg TP L¹ was exceeded in 14 out of 27 sites in 1994 but only in 6 out of 25 sites in 1995. Of the 14 sites exceeding 0.03 mg TP L⁻¹ in 1994, 10 were clayey soils. Under these circumstances, more than 50% of the TP was as TPP whereas DOP forms represented <30%. In 1995, TPP forms accounted for, on average, <50% of TP and DOP accounted for more than 40% of the TP concentrations. This study suggests that flat clayey soils of medium to rich P status may be particularly at risk of exceeding water quality standards in subsurface runoff. Phosphorus losses in particulate form may be important in subsurface runoff from clayey soils when weather conditions favor rapid flow through cracks or macropores. Contribution of the Soils and Crops Research Centre no. 565.


The design and implementation of local drug delivery mechanisms in cardiovascular applications provides a method by which localized action can occur without potentially problematic systemic effects. This has been especially relevant in the case of drug-eluting stents (DESs). It has been previously shown that the degree of chemical polarization can significantly change the degree of transport and the degree of vascular retention of drugs. Understanding how these differences occur in real-time, and nondestructively, can better help guide the design of such pharmaceuticals. Previous work by our laboratory has indicated differences in transport based on location within the coronary tree (Fig. 1) [1].Copyright © 2013 by ASME


The millennial optimism being generated among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the global civil society by the advent of the year 2000, and the United Nations Declaration of a Year and Decade of Education for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World, opens the possibility of a paradigm shift from dominance to mutualism in both interpersonal and interstate relations. Multiple year 2000 peace initiatives by NGOs present them with the challenge of a shift from turfism to collaboration in peacebuilding. Truth commissions offer new opportunities for peace work. Peace movements are learning to apply interactive problem-solving skills as they shift from protest to peace practitioner roles in war-torn areas. The power of the social imagination to envision peaceful futures is critical to all these efforts.


Abstract The ill posedness in a variance–covariance matrix will directly determine the convergence speed and accuracy of integer ambiguities. Unlike GPS or GLONASS, BDS (BeiDou Navigation Satellite System) consists of not only MEO satellites but also GEO and IGSO satellites, both of which are high orbit satellites. The angular velocities of the GEO and IGSO satellites are much smaller compared with MEO satellites. The changes of the geometric structure between satellites and stations of the high orbit satellites GEO/IGSO in BDS are not obvious during short observational spans due to their relatively small angular velocity. This results in stronger correlation of equations between adjacent epochs while calculating ambiguities, leading to serious ill posedness. In this paper the ill posedness of double differential (DD) ambiguity resolution (AR) of the current BDS was analysed. On this basis, some different combinations of GEO, IGSO and MEO satellites of BDS were used in the AR experiments to reveal the characteristics of ill posedness. Moreover, AR experiments of GPS, GLONASS and BDS/GPS/GLONASS fusion were also carried out for comparison with BDS. These experiments indicate that the AR of the current BDS is a more serious ill posed problem, and therefore takes much more time for AR fixing than GPS or GLONASS. The fusion with GPS or GLONASS, however, will solve the ill posed problem effectively and improve the AR much more, achieving fixes even instantaneously.


The dearth of data on quantitative carbon stock measurements in the savanna ecological zones coupled with uncertainties associated with extrapolated biome average values, have resulted in a significant gap in the carbon stock of savanna landscapes. The study aimed to estimate and compare carbon stock density of plant communities in the guinea savanna landscape of Niger State, Nigeria. The research methodology featured field survey inventory, biometric measurements and laboratory analysis. Eight plant communities were inventoried based on eleven parameters of their structure and composition. Carbon stock was measured from six major pools (above ground tree, undergrowth, dead wood, litter, root and soil). Both ANOVA and t-test statistics revealed that there were significant differences in all parameters measured between pairs of plant communities and over the entire study area. The mean carbon stocks of plant communities, in decreasing order, were Savanna woodland (127.30 Mg ha- 1 ), Riparian Forest (116.31 Mg ha- 1 ), Tree Savanna (114.44 Mg ha- 1 ), Scrubland (111.47 Mg ha-1), Grassland (106.72 Mg ha-1), Agroforestry (78.53 Mg ha- 1 ), Old Fallow Land (72.50 Mg ha- 1 ), and Recent Fallow land (66.31 Mg ha- 1 ). The ANOVA indicated significant spatial variability in carbon stock across the landscape (where F(7,37) =160.69, P<0.01). Similarly, the student t–test revealed significant differences in carbon stock between virtually all pairs of plant communities. This study provides more accurate estimations of carbon stock in Guinea savanna ecological area of Niger state, Nigeria. These estimates are useful benchmark against which future estimates can be compared, and sets a baseline for calculating changes in carbon stocks over time; with a view to monitoring carbon sources and sinks in relation to climate change mitigation potential of the Savanna ecological landscapes.


The migration of skilled workers is increasing rapidly in Pacific Island countries including Fiji and the Cook Islands. This paper focuses on teacher migration because of the potentially far-reaching implications of this migration for educational systems and development. The situation in Fiji and the Cook Islands is compared and contrasted. Based on a survey of teachers in selected schools in Fiji and the Cook Islands, the paper examines factors related to intentions to migrate or stay. Findings from the study provide insights on how the government in Fiji and the Cook Islands can retain a competent teaching force. The paper also discusses the vulnerability of the education systems in Pacific Island countries in the light of high rates of international teacher migration.


Abstract * This paper investigates whether a structural model explaining export performance of small- and medium-sized firms displays stability in a national context different from the one it was developed in. * A comparative study between US and Austrian firms shows that the model developed in a small open economy does not produce satisfying results in a business environment which relies on a large home market. Key Results * Given the differing factors influencing successful business activities abroad, this study calls for a more sensitive and considerate transfer of international marketing and management research results from one cultural context to another. Introduction The last two decades have seen a considerable number of studies which deal with the identification of variables influencing a company's export success. Synoptic views are provided in the works of Bilkey (1978), Cavusgil and Nevin (1981), Miesenbock (1988), Gemunden (1991), Li and Cavusgil (1991), Douglas and Craig (1992) or Leonidou et al. (1998) for example. In particular, Miesenbock's analysis of state-of-the-art export success factor research and Gemunden's metaanalysis give a many-faceted overview of different research objects (e.g., companies, products), different success factors and their operationalization. However, only surprisingly few studies in this research area rely on a crossnational data base. Gemunden (1991) identified a negligible number of research pieces which were based on more than one national sample (e.g., Burton/Schlegelmilch 1987, Dichtl/Koglmayr/Muller 1990, Dichtl et al. 1984, Hirsch 1971, McDougall/Stening 1975, Muller 1991, Rosson/Ford 1982), while Aaby and Slater (1989) listed only three cross-national studies in their literature review. From a methodological perspective, this lack of multi-country studies is highly questionable. Given the fact that the business environment is usually shaped by specific local influences such as physical, economic, political, legal, technological or socio-cultural factors, these local characteristics create a particular background for research conducted in this area and will most likely affect results in a typical way. Thus, findings derived in one national setting need to be carefully scrutinized for their transferability to other countries (Punnett/Ricks 1997, Terpstra/Sarathy 1997). Therefore, it appears highly recommended to re-assess the applicability of research findings that relate to a specific country to other regions as well (Hubbard/Armstrong 1994, Hubbard/Vetter 1996, Sharon/Amir 1988). Reasons for the lack of relevant cross-national studies may be found in the extremely high demands that such work imposes on the researchers involved. As a rule, financial expenses are considerably higher and methodological problems are fundamentally more complex than in an intra-national context (Mayer 1978, Nasif et al. 1991). At the same time, cross-national research offers numerous advantages over conventional one-country studies: as mentioned before, it lends itself particularly well to provide explanations with a wider range, i.e. beyond a single cultural context. Cross-national research may also take variables of the cultural background into account against which managers make their export-centered decisions (Bhagat/McQuaid 1982). As comparative research offers more variety and different degrees of intensity and expressions in behavioral patterns, the underlying conditions for hypothesis testing are more favorable (Kline 1988). Finally, cross-national comparisons assist in revealing differences and detecting and explaining behavioral patterns that do not exist in the researchers' home culture (Brislin/ Lonner/Thorndike 1973, Verma/Mallick 1988). In line with these considerations, the objective of this paper is to investigate the cross-national generalizability of a well-tested explanatory model of export performance (Holzmuller/Kasper 1991, Holzmuller/Stottinger 1996) beyond the geographical region, where it was developed. …


Background:  Contingent claims on underlying assets are typically priced under a framework that assumes,  inter alia , that the log returns of the underlying asset are normally distributed. However, many researchers have shown that this assumption is violated in practice. Such violations include the statistical properties of heavy tails, volatility clustering, leptokurtosis and long memory. This paper considers the pricing of contingent claims when the underlying is assumed to display long memory, an issue that has heretofore not received much attention. Aim:  We address several theoretical and practical issues in option pricing and implied volatility calibration in a fractional Black–Scholes market. We introduce a novel eight-parameter fractional Black–Scholes-inspired (FBSI) model for the implied volatility surface, and consider in depth the issue of calibration. One of the main benefits of such a model is that it allows one to decompose implied volatility into an independent long-memory component – captured by an implied Hurst exponent – and a conditional implied volatility component. Such a decomposition has useful applications in the areas of derivatives trading, risk management, delta hedging and dynamic asset allocation. Setting:  The proposed FBSI volatility model is calibrated to South African equity index options data as well as South African Rand/American Dollar currency options data. However, given the focus on the theoretical development of the model, the results in this paper are applicable across all financial markets. Methods:  The FBSI model essentially combines a deterministic function form of the 1-year implied volatility skew with a separate deterministic function for the implied Hurst exponent, thus allowing one to model both observed implied volatility surfaces as well as decompose them into independent volatility and long-memory components respectively. Calibration of the model makes use of a quasi-explicit weighted least-squares optimisation routine. Results:  It is shown that a fractional Black–Scholes model always admits a non-constant implied volatility term structure when the Hurst exponent is not 0.5, and that 1-year implied volatility is independent of the Hurst exponent and equivalent to fractional volatility. Furthermore, we show that the FBSI model fits the equity index implied volatility data very well but that a more flexible Hurst exponent parameterisation is required to fit accurately the currency implied volatility data. Conclusion:  The FBSI model is an arbitrage-free deterministic volatility model that can accurately model equity index implied volatility. It also provides one with an estimate of the implied Hurst exponent, which could be very useful in derivatives trading and delta hedging.


Maximize your NLP capabilities while creating amazing NLP projects in Python About This BookLearn to implement various NLP tasks in PythonGain insights into the current and budding research topics of NLP This is a comprehensive step-by-step guide to help students and researchers create their own projects based on real-life applications Who This Book Is For This book is for intermediate level developers in NLP with a reasonable knowledge level and understanding of Python. What You Will Learn Implement string matching algorithms and normalization techniques Implement statistical language modeling techniques Get an insight into developing a stemmer, lemmatizer, morphological analyzer, and morphological generator Develop a search engine and implement POS tagging concepts and statistical modeling concepts involving the n gram approachFamiliarize yourself with concepts such as the Treebank construct, CFG construction, the CYK Chart Parsing algorithm, and the Earley Chart Parsing algorithm Develop an NER-based system and understand and apply the concepts of sentiment analysis Understand and implement the concepts of Information Retrieval and text summarizationDevelop a Discourse Analysis System and Anaphora Resolution based systemIn Detail Natural Language Processing is one of the fields of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence that is concerned with human-computer interaction. It provides a seamless interaction between computers and human beings and gives computers the ability to understand human speech with the help of machine learning. This book will give you expertise on how to employ various NLP tasks in Python, giving you an insight into the best practices when designing and building NLP-based applications using Python. It will help you become an expert in no time and assist you in creating your own NLP projects using NLTK. You will sequentially be guided through applying machine learning tools to develop various models. We'll give you clarity on how to create training data and how to implement major NLP applications such as Named Entity Recognition, Question Answering System, Discourse Analysis, Transliteration, Word Sense disambiguation, Information Retrieval, Sentiment Analysis, Text Summarization, and Anaphora Resolution. Style and approach This is an easy-to-follow guide, full of hands-on examples of real-world tasks. Each topic is explained and placed in context, and for the more inquisitive, there are more details of the concepts used.


We consider the problem of planning in a Markov Decision Process (MDP) with a generative model and limited computational budget. Despite the underlying MDP transitions having a graph structure, the popular Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithms such as UCT rely on a tree structure to represent their value estimates. That is, they do not identify together two similar states reached via different trajectories and represented in separate branches of the tree. In this work, we propose a graph-based planning algorithm, which takes into account this state similarity. In our analysis, we provide a regret bound that depends on a novel problem-dependent measure of difficulty, which improves on the original tree-based bound in MDPs where the trajectories overlap, and recovers it otherwise. Then, we show that this methodology can be adapted to existing planning algorithms that deal with stochastic systems. Finally, numerical simulations illustrate the benefits of our approach.


This study was carried out on 80 healthy, four-year-old Holstein dairy cows bred in the Bursa region. Twenty of them were in the dry period and the rest were in the lactation period. Days 48-51, 147-161 and 180+ of the lactation period were considered the first, second and third stages, respectively. Blood samples were analysed for packed cell volume, red blood cell count, haemoglobin values, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration (MCHC) and white blood cell count. There was a statistically significant effect of dry period and lactation on blood parameters except MCV and white blood cell count .


Scanned ion beam therapy of lung tumors is severely limited in its clinical applicability by intrafractional organ motion, interference effects between beam and tumor motion (interplay) as well as interfractional anatomic changes. To compensate for dose deterioration by intrafractional motion, motion mitigation techniques, such as gating have been developed. The latter confines the irradiation to a predetermined breathing state, usually the stable end-exhale phase. However, optimization of the treatment parameters is needed to further improve target dose coverage and normal tissue sparing.
The aim of the study presented in this dissertation was to determine treatment planning parameters that permit to recover good target coverage and homogeneity during a full course of lung tumor treatments. For 9 lung tumor patients from MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC), a total of 70 weekly time-resolved computed tomography (4DCT) datasets were available, which depict the evolution of the patient anatomy over the several fractions of the treatment. Using the GSI in-house treatment planning system (TPS) TRiP4D, 4D simulations were performed on each weekly 4DCT for each patient using gating and optimization of a single treatment plan based on a planning CT acquired prior to treatment. It was found that using a large beam spot size, a short gating window (GW), additional margins and multiple fields permitted to obtain the best results, yielding an average target coverage (V95) of 96.5%. Two motion mitigation techniques, one approximating the rescanning process (multiple irradiations of the target with a fraction of the planned dose) and one combining the latter and gating, were then compared to gating. Both did neither show an improvement in target dose coverage nor in normal tissue sparing. Finally, the total dose delivered to each patient in a simulation of a fractioned treatment was calculated and clinical requirements in terms of target coverage and normal tissue sparing were considered. The results showed that the total V95 obtained for the entire course of the treatment was similar to the one obtained for the planning CT, which shows that interfractional variability was successfully compensated. For 4 patients out of 9, V95 > 95% was thus obtained for both the planning CT and the total dose target coverage. For the rest of the cohort, a slight modification of the contours or dose reduction should permit to obtain a better clinical treatment plan that could be delivered over the course of the treatment.
In the presented study, intrafractional motion occuring during the treatment of lung tumors was efficiently mitigated using optimized treatment planning parameters and gating, while interfractional variability showed the largest impact on dose delivery. Nevertheless, this variability was efficiently mitigated, as shown by target dose coverage obtained at the end of the treatment which was very close to the one obtained for the planning CT.


Abstract. Automated identification of high-level structures in unorganized point cloud of indoor spaces Indoor space is an important aspect of scene analysis that provides essential information for many applications, such as building digitization, indoor navigation and evacuation route planning. In addition, detection of repetition and regularities in the organization indoor environments, such as rooms, can be used to provide a contextual relationship in the reconstruction phase. However, retrieving high-level information is a challenging task due to the unorganized nature of the raw data, poor-quality of the input data that are in many cases contaminated with noise and outliers. in point benefit from the apparent regularities and strong contextual relationships in façades. The main observation exploited in this paper is the fact that building indoor is generally constituted by a set of basic shapes repeated several times in regular layouts. Building elements can be considered as similar if they share a set of features and elements in an idealized layout exhibiting some regularities. Starting from this main assumption a recursive adaptive partitioning of the indoor point cloud is carried out to automatically derive a flexible and hierarchical 3D representation of the building space. The presented methodology is tested on a synthetic dataset with Gaussian noise. The reconstructed pattern shows a close correspondence with the synthetic one showing the viability of the proposed approach.


From different seismic observations we infer the energy supplied per unit of time by turbulent convection to the acoustic modes of α Centauri A (HD 128620), a star that is similar but not identical to the Sun. The inferred rates of energy supplied to the modes (i.e. mode excitation rates) are found to be significantly higher than in the Sun. They are compared with those computed with an excitation model that includes two sources of driving, the Reynolds stress contribution and the advection of entropy fluctuations. The model also uses a closure model, the Closure Model with Plumes (CMP hereafter), that takes the asymmetry between the up- and down-flows (i.e. the granules and plumes, respectively) into account. Different prescriptions for the eddy-time correlation function are also compared to observational data. Calculations based on a Gaussian eddy-time correlation underestimate excitation rates compared with the values derived from observations for α Centauri A. On the other hand, calculations based on a Lorentzian eddy-time correlation lie within the observational error bars. This confirms results in the solar case. Compared to the helioseismic data, those obtained for α Centauri A constitute an additional support for our model of excitation. We show that mode masses must be computed taking turbulent pressure into account. Finally, we emphasize the need for more accurate seismic measurements in order to distinguish between the CMP closure model and the quasi-normal approximation in the case of α Centauri A, as well as to confirm or not the need to include the excitation by the entropy fluctuations.


This article explores potential treaty defenses and valuation defenses for host States to mitigate or temporarily excuse non-performance of obligations owed to investors during economic emergencies, arising from the host State's good faith performance of obligations under the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Defenses under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), such as the lex posterior rule of application of treaties in Article 30 or treaty interpretation in Article 31, are of limited utility for avoiding primary breaches of the investment treaty, since these defenses considerably depend upon the host State's a priori notification of ICESCR obligations to investors at the time of the establishment of the investment. Lacking these revisions to the due diligence process, it is submitted that a host State can advance a more pragmatic defense by proposing equitable adjustments in the valuation of compensation, taking into account the host State's good faith performance of ICESCR obligations. Adjustments are justifiable and appropriate, since tribunals tend to accept an unrealistic definition of the "fair market value" standard, based on market assumptions of perfect competition, for pre-crisis valuations of investments. The bloating of the pre-crisis valuation of an investment thus tends to increase its ultimate differential with the post-crisis valuation of an investment, leading to damage assessments beyond what parties could ordinarily have foreseen from the investment contract. While tribunals have predominantly referred to "compensation" within the general law of international responsibility, they have problematically neglected the counterpart practice of equitable adjustment within this legal regime.


What is the voter's attitude towards the neoliberalist impregnation of the leading political parties in Germany? The question of the preconditions of active political involvement and participation overlaps with sovereignty itself, in the sense of empowerment on a democratic basis, not only in its structure but based on values that would not contradict its course. Either the observed decrease both of party membership and voter participation is due to a postdemocratic change in the sense of simulative democracy caused by depoliticization in the core of subjectivity (as Bluhdorn suggests). The possibility of an apathetic sovereign and a growing distance between expert-driven politics and a less organized people (as Crouch suggests) remains. Or, the public has probably understood the market-driven message of neoliberal politics presenting itself as of no alternative and thus reacts to it with active abandonment and alienation, even more: indifference. The latter case, however, does not imply a total lack of political interest (as several surveys at least in Germany show) but rather makes a strong case for cluelessness and deference to the given economic circumstances. In any case, both lines of argument cast a shadow on the future of political involvement and dedication. This paper discusses a possible approach to investigate the matter by analyzing the programs of Germany political parties in order to show the above mentioned impregnation and formulating the required parts of such research. In fact, a qualitative instrument to measure the depth of neoliberal attitude in the citizen's mindset is required, as the existing formats to research political attitudes do not provide such an instrument. This is partly due to the lack of a concept that covers the cornerstones of the neoliberal ideology. Within this paper the frst conceptual steps towards such an instrument (N-Scale) are taken, mainly focusing on which questions defnitely should be part of it. Overall the necessity to conduct further research on this matter reveals itself with regard to the shifting understanding of democracy that is expressed, e.g., in contemporary terms like »market-conform democracy«.


Background: It has been reported that African-Americans (AA) have a higher prevalence of overall malignancy compared to Caucasians, in the United States, yet the incidence of thyroid malignancy is half. The aim of this study is to assess the rate of malignant versus benign thyroid disease in AA from an urban-based hospital with an academic setting. Our study analyzed the AA population with respect to fine needle aspiration (FNA) of thyroid lesions, in correlation with final surgical pathology. This is the first study of its kind to our knowledge. Design: We retrospectively reviewed thyroid FNA cytology between January 2005 and February 2011. Consecutive FNA specimens with corresponding follow-up surgical pathology were included. The patients were categorized as African- American (AA) and Non-African-American (NAA), which included Caucasians (C), Hispanics (H), and Others (O). The FNA results were classified using the latest edition of The Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology (TBS-Thy) and the follow-up surgical pathology was used for the final categorization. Results: We studied 258 cases: 144 AA (56%) and 114 NAA [43 C (17%), 3 H (1%), and 68 O (28%)]. The average age for AA was 51 years (range 20 – 88) and for NAA was 53 years (range 25 – 86). There were more females than males in the AA versus the NAA group (85 vs. 75%). The incidence of thyroid lesions in the FNA specimens was similar between these two populations. The distribution of benign versus malignant diagnosis on follow-up surgical pathology was examined across TBS-Thy class. Conclusion: Our data suggest that distribution of benign versus malignant lesions in the thyroid FNA of AA versus NAA, with follow-up surgical pathology, is comparable for TBS-Thy classes, non-diagnostic (I), benign (II), suspicious for malignancy (V), and malignant (VI) in AA versus NAA.


Abstract The need for accurate nuclear data represents a permanent challenge to improve the calculation tools used in reactor physics. Uranium-235 is one of the most important isotopes, and its related nuclear data need to be known with a high degree of accuracy. In this context, many studies have been undertaken to improve the fission yields of 235U for the main fission products in spent fuels. For a few years, an increasing interest has been observed for high-conversion light water reactors, for better use of the fuel and for nonproliferation considerations. These concepts are based on a low moderation ratio (˜0.9) and the use of highly enriched mixed oxide fuels (>8%). Because of a neutron flux much harder than in pressurized water reactors, calculations require a good knowledge of nuclear data in the epithermal range to accurately predict the fuel depletion with burnup. In particular, the energy dependence of the fission yields must be considered, because of the existence of fluctuations of the fragment fission yields in the resonances of 235U(n,f). Unfortunately, the fluctuations are incorrectly taken into account in calculation codes because of the rough energy description in the usual nuclear data libraries. In this paper, integral experiments are presented for the identification and the quantification of this effect in an almost 1/E neutron spectrum. The experiments consist of the irradiation of 235U samples in the MINERVE reactor (CEA Cadarache), first in a mostly thermal neutron spectrum and second in a mostly epithermal one. Measurements of some abundant fission products are realized with gamma-ray spectrometry and show fluctuations of the 235U cumulative fission yields between the two experiments. Results are interpreted with the multimodal random neck rupture model as a variation of 5% of the weight ratio w1/w2 between the standard I and standard II fission modes, and compared with the differential experiments.


In this paper, the capacity region of Low Density Signature Multiple Access Channel (LDS-MAC) is calculated through information theoretic analysis. LDS Code Division Multiple Access (LDS-CDMA) uses spreading sequences of low density for spreading the data symbols in time domain. This technique benefits from a less complex Multiuser Detector (MUD) compared to conventional CDMA with optimum MUD; while keeping the performance close to the single user scenario for up to 200% loaded conditions. Also evaluated is the effect of different factors on the capacity of LDS MAC.