Building on ethnographic fieldwork among militant, urban youth in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, this article illuminates how young men in the city actively engage in conflict in order to improve their lives and prospects. The article shows how mobilizing is seen as a move toward a reduction of hardship and the possibility of fulfilling one's social potential. Rather than looking at what people see themselves as having to fight against—the last decades of war in Bissau being remarkably void of ideological standpoints and collective visions of dangerous Others (Vigh 2009)—the article looks at the visions of better futures that transcend conflict engagement and wartime suffering for young militiamen. It clarifies the positive prospects that are expected to lie beyond the known horrors of war. Though conflict and warfare may provide strange points of departure for talking about well-being, imaginaries of happiness stand out from a background of hardship and are talked about in both a quite concrete way, as a lack of insecurity, as well as in an abstract way, as realization of social being. However, for most of the people I talk to, happiness remains elusive and evades their desperate attempts to grasp it. It appears, as such, simultaneously to be what life is most profoundly about, as well as the dimension of it that constantly seems to avoid capture.


A holistic basis for achieving ecosystem‐based management is needed to counter the continuing degradation of coral reefs. The high variation in recovery rates of fish, corresponding to fisheries yields, and the ecological complexity of coral reefs have challenged efforts to estimate fisheries sustainability. Yet, estimating stable yields can be determined when biomass, recovery, changes in per area yields and ecological change are evaluated together. Long‐term rates of change in yields and fishable biomass‐yield ratios have been the key missing variables for most coral reef assessments. Calibrating a fishery yield model using independently collected fishable biomass and recovery data produced large confidence intervals driven by high variability in biomass recovery rates that precluded accurate or universal yields for coral reefs. To test the model's predictions, I present changes in Kenyan reef fisheries for >20 years. Here, exceeding yields above 6 tonnes km⁻² year⁻¹ when fishable biomass was ~20 tonnes/km² (~20% of unfished biomass) resulted in a >2.4% annual decline. Therefore, rates of decline fit the mean settings well and model predictions may therefore be used as a benchmark in reefs with mean recovery rates (i.e. r = 0.20–0.25). The mean model settings indicate a maximum sustained yield (MSY) of ~6 tonnes km⁻² year⁻¹ when fishable biomass was ~50 tonnes/km². Variable reported recovery rates indicate that high sustainable yields will depend greatly on maintaining these rates, which can be reduced if productivity declines and management of stocks and functional diversity are ineffective. A number of ecological state‐yield trade‐off occurs as abrupt ecological changes prior to biomass levels that produce MSY.


The aim of this study is to investigate potential impacts of climate change on the seasonality of runoff in a mountainous watershed, located in the Austrian Alps. In order to consider the full range of possible climate variation, hypothetical climate change scenarios were used to force a hydrological model to simulate runoff time series for potential future climate conditions. The variation of runoff seasonality is illustrated with a three-dimensional representation of daily discharge data, directional statistics of annual flood peaks and the analysis of seasonal occurrence of runoff peaks. The results show that changes in temperature and precipitation patterns could have considerable effects on seasonal runoff variability in the investigated watershed. Generally, a possible increase in temperature may cause an increase in seasonal variability of runoff. Further, annual flood peaks are projected to occur throughout the entire year in the investigated Alpine watershed, whereas moderate high flows may increase in winter (December–February).


Adolescence is described by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare as the healthiest period in life. However, adolescent girls differ in that they self-report that their health decreases with age. The aim of this hermeneutical study was to describe the meaning of living conditions in relation to adolescent girls' health. Guided by principles of reflective lifeworld research, 15 interviews with adolescent girls were analysed. The result section consists of four narratives with their existential interpretations illustrating different ways of approaching living conditions and their meaning for health and well-being. The narratives are: Approaching everyday life in a balanced way—feeling harmonious; approaching everyday life with ambiguity—feeling confused; approaching everyday life as an intellectual project—striving for control; approaching everyday life as a struggle—feeling forlorn. In addition, a comprehensive understanding was developed by using the lifeworld dimensions: lived body, lived room, lived time, and lived relations. These dimensions may deepen the understanding of important parts of those living conditions which are meaningful for the girls' health and well-being. By using the dimensions, complex living conditions have been explored and the meaning of different parts clarified. The girls' thoughts and feelings are often ambiguous and sometimes contradictory, depending on the situation. The health of adolescent girls needs to be understood against the background of their experiences of living conditions. One way to support their health and well-being seems to be to supply them with forums where they can talk about their living conditions.


The capture of the narwhal and the ensuing power struggle between the northern and southern districts of Kerube has Lawrence caught in the middle! Backed into a corner by his own trade guild, can the merchant find a way to extricate himself from this delicate situation? And what of the wolf bone from Holo's pack? Can the Wisewolf of Yoitsu manage to keep her rage and frustration in check?


This edited collection provides a valuable overview of Aboriginal demography, with a primary yet not exclusive emphasis upon Canadian research. It provides the reader with much insight not only into the major demographic, sociological, and health trends to characterize Aboriginal peoples, but also some of the most serious conceptual and methodological issues that hinder research of this nature. With additional contributions from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, as well as the circumpolar northern regions of Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, this book also addresses how Aboriginal conditions in these countries may resemble or differ from those in Canada. For this reason, this edited collection is valuable to those who are interested in using demographic, socioeconomic, and epidemiological data as a basis for guiding policy, both in Canada and internationally. The contributions are by and large non-technical in nature and, for this reason, accessible to a wide readership.


We study the performance of conditional asset pricing models in explaining the German cross-section of stock returns. Our test assets are portfolios sorted by size and book-to-market as in the paper by Fama and French (1993). Our results show that the empirical performance of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) can be improved substantially when allowing for time-varying parameters of the stochastic discount factor. A conditional CAPM with the term spread as a conditioning variable is able to explain the cross-section of German stock returns about as well as the Fama-French model. Structural break tests do not indicate parameter instability of the model - whereas the reverse is found for the Fama-French model. Unconditional model specifications however do a better job than conditional ones at capturing time-series predictability of the test portfolio returns.


Two models of the wetting dynamics of a non-volatile liquid are introduced. Both models exhibit a transition between partial and complete wetting regimes. The first model, which can also be viewed as an inhomogeneous surface growth model, is studied in a two-dimensional capillary geometry. For complete wetting the profile of the fluid surface, apart from a precursor film, then assumes a stationary shape, which scales with the system size. A precursor film forms even at the transition, which one can locate analytically, although here it moves only as tchi , where chi approximately=1/2. This first model permits only fluctuations parallel to the wall over which the fluid spreads. Monte Carlo simulations of the second model show that the inclusion of fluctuations perpendicular to the wall can lead to qualitatively new phenomena.


Scanning confocal microscopy is now well developed and applied. As an alternative to a laser spot to be scanned, parallel processing can be obtained when a two-dimensional structure is moved through the focal plane and a series of image sections is recorded. Surface topography is determined by analysis of the normalized intensity of the appropriate image points, i.e., a search of the intensity maximum leads to surface coordinates. With a high numerical aperture of the optical system, the half-width of I(z) is small, and the topography can be calculated with high accuracy. But with a high numerical aperture, only small object fields can be reproduced. As an alternative to the Nipkow disk for parallel processing, high-numerical-aperture microlenses are combined in an array. The reproducible object field is then limited by the size of the array and the number of lens and detector elements.


This Monograph provides the general respiratory physician with a working reference based on the latest literature and expert opinion. The initial chapter provides a contemporaneous global perspective of the epidemiology of occupational and environmental lung diseases in an ever-evolving landscape. The book then goes on to consider specific occupational lung diseases. Each chapter has a clear clinical focus and considers: key questions to ask in the history; appropriate investigations to undertake; differential diagnoses; and management. Controversies or diagnostic conundrums encountered in the clinic are also considered, and further chapters are more broadly centred on the non-workplace environment; specifically, the respiratory symptoms and diseases associated with both the outdoor and indoor environments.


Essential Skills for Management Research provides an authoritative overview of research methodology for both students and professional researchers in management. Based on management research methods course needs, and written by expert academics in the field, this book is informed by the requirements of students, professionals and lecturers in management research.

Essential Skills for Management Research places emphasis on the more practical concerns of management researchers, focusing on the detail of developing and applying particular sets of research skills. In addition, the book gives straight-forward advice on how to:
- develop a systematic methodology
- learn to be a successful writer
- acknowledge the individual in the researcher

Essential Skills for Management Research arose from the growing need to address the practical concerns of students in undertaking research that is relevant to management practice. The book develops tangible skills and will be an invaluable guide for management researchers and students at postgraduate and MBA levels.


Using a host of new technologies, vaccine developers are trying to target the malaria parasite at every stage of its complex life cycle. Researchers now predict that within 5 or 10 years they will have a successful vaccine that will actually save lives. But in malaria vaccine research, the concept of "success" comes with caveats.


It is commonly believed that multipath hurts various audio processing algorithms. At odds with this belief, we show that multipath in fact helps sound source separation, even with very simple propagation models. Unlike most existing methods, we neither ignore the room impulse responses, nor we attempt to estimate them fully. We rather assume to know the positions of a few virtual microphones generated by echoes and we show how this gives us enough spatial diversity to get a performance boost over the anechoic case. We show improvements for two standard algorithms-one that uses only magnitudes of the transfer functions, and one that also uses the phases. Concretely, we show that multi-channel non-negative matrix factorization aided with a small number of echoes beats the vanilla variant of the same algorithm, and that with magnitude information only, echoes enable separation where it was previously impossible.


Background: Never smokers comprise a substantial proportion of patients with COPD. Their characteristics and possible risk factors in this population are not yet well defined. Methods: We analyzed data from 14 countries that participated in the international, population-based Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study. Participants were aged ≥ 40 years and completed postbronchodilator spirometry testing plus questionnaires about respiratory symptoms, health status, and exposure to COPD risk factors. A diagnosis of COPD was based on the postbronchodilator FEV1/FVC ratio, according to current GOLD (Global Initiative for Obstructive Lung Disease) guidelines. In addition to this, the lower limit of normal (LLN) was evaluated as an alternative threshold for the FEV1/FVC ratio. Results: Among 4,291 never smokers, 6.6% met criteria for mild (GOLD stage I) COPD, and 5.6% met criteria for moderate to very severe (GOLD stage II+) COPD. Although never smokers were less likely to have COPD and had less severe COPD than ever smokers, never smokers nonetheless comprised 23.3% (240/1,031) of those classified with GOLD stage II+ COPD. This proportion was similar, 20.5% (171/832), even when the LLN was used as a threshold for the FEV1/FVC ratio. Predictors of COPD in never smokers include age, education, occupational exposure, childhood respiratory diseases, and BMI alterations. Conclusion: This multicenter international study confirms previous evidence that never smokers comprise a substantial proportion of individuals with COPD. Our data suggest that, in addition to increased age, a prior diagnosis of asthma and, among women, lower education levels are associated with an increased risk for COPD among never smokers.


Individual fitness varies with the quality of the habitat occupied. Variation in habitat quality is difficult to assess, particularly in heterogeneous habitats where quality may differ within a single patch. Individuals are expected to select habitat to maximize fitness so patterns of habitat selection should reveal habitat quality. Linking fitness with habitat selection patterns may identify high quality habitat. The central US subspecies of Bell's Vireo (Vireo belli bellii) is a scrub breeding Neotropical migrant songbird declining throughout its range. We estimated two measures of fitness, productivity and adult annual survival, in eight populations of Bell's Vireos in central Missouri. We investigated if vireos selected territories to maximize fitness by modeling the relationship between territory settlement order, habitat quality, and territory productivity. We then used our estimates of productivity and survival to model the finite rate of population growth (λ). Productivity of territories was best predicted by the order of territory settlement. Productivity was also related to the percent cover and edge density of woody vegetation within territory boundaries. However, none of the habitat characteristics we measured predicted territory settlement order. Overall, our study sites appear to be experiencing negative population growth (λ = 0.76), but there was a great deal of variation between study sites (λ = 0.31 1.05). It is unlikely our sites represent the proportion of high versus low quality sites within the region but they suggest that a λ~ 1 is possible for the regional population depending on the proportion of high versus low quality sites.


Abstract Wild animals have a special importance in Colombian rural contexts, where access to other sources of protein is limited. In rural communities, fishing and hunting provide food and generate income for household subsistence. In general, an important portion of the animals harvested is consumed within the family, and the remaining surplus is traded to acquire other subsistence foods and goods. Under the Colombian legal framework, harvesting animals from the wild (fishing and hunting) for subsistence purposes is allowed without restrictions on harvested amounts, if limited to family consumption. However, the trade of wild fish and wild meat, even in small amounts, is subject to a license, permit, or authorization. Regulations for the commercial use of wild fish, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, are clear and simple to comply with. On the other hand, the commercial use of wild meat, regulated under the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, remains illegal in practice, due to the complex requirements and the caveats in the regulatory framework. The reasons for these differences in the legal requirements to obtain a commercial permit for wild fish and wild meat are based on institutional differences and not on the sustainability of the practice. Considering the relevance of both hunting and fishing for rural livelihoods, it is important to question whether the current legal framework offers guarantees for the sustainable use of these resources in the future. Our analysis shows that the contrasting regulatory approaches between fish and wild meat use, as well as the discrepancies in the arguments to justify commercial fishing while prohibiting wild meat trade, have concrete consequences for local livelihoods. Moreover, instead of guaranteeing sustainability, bans on wild meat trade lead to more underground distribution channels and, potentially, also to increased pressure on fish stocks. Integrated management options need to be encouraged at the local level and promoted through integrated policy and regulatory frameworks for both resources and their habitats. Improved valuation and monitoring systems for subsistence and small-scale fish and wildmeat trade should also be integrated in the regulatory system to ensure sustainability for the future.


Rapid detection of live pathogens is of paramount importance to ensure food safety. At present, nucleic acid-based polymerase chain reaction and antibody-based lateral flow assays are the primary methods of choice for rapid detection, but these are prone to interference from inhibitors, and resident microbes. Moreover, the positive results may neither assure virulence potential nor viability of the analyte. In contrast, the mammalian cell-based assay detects pathogen interaction with the host cells and is responsive to only live pathogens, but the short shelf-life of the mammalian cells is the major impediment for its widespread application. An innovative approach to prolong the shelf-life of mammalian cells by using formalin was undertaken. Formalin (4% formaldehyde)-fixed human ileocecal adenocarcinoma cell line, HCT-8 on 24-well tissue culture plates was used for the capture of viable pathogens while an antibody was used for specific detection. The specificity of the Mammalian Cell-based ImmunoAssay (MaCIA) was validated with Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis and Typhimurium as model pathogens and further confirmed against a panel of 15 S. Enteritidis strains, 8 S. Typhimurium, 11 other Salmonella serovars, and 14 non-Salmonella spp. The total detection time (sample-to-result) of MaCIA with artificially inoculated ground chicken, eggs, milk, and cake mix at 1–10 CFU/25 g was 16–21 h using a traditional enrichment set up but the detection time was shortened to 10–12 h using direct on-cell (MaCIA) enrichment. Formalin-fixed stable cell monolayers in MaCIA provide longer shelf-life (at least 14 weeks) for possible point-of-need deployment and multi-sample testing on a single plate.


Why do humanitarian principles, human rights and other 'rules' espoused by aid organisations apparently fail to influence the reality of assistance delivery, whilst reality does not dint these objectives? Not breaking the rules, not playing the game investigates the international assistance given in countries at war. Presenting evidence from Sierra Leone, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Sudan, it finds that appeal to a morality based on rights and principles allows aid staff to justify their operational weaknesses by blaming or discrediting others. The terminology used casts political and military activity as illegitimate, forestalling dialogue, limiting aid organisations' perception of the contexts in which they work, and ultimately questioning the sincerity of the assistance. The book concludes that people in countries at war are not 'breaking the rules' of assistance – as assistance is not meaningfully 'ruled' by rights or principles – they are more fundamentally 'not playing the game'.


Although the chalk hills form the most striking feature of Dorsetshire, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, they do not occupy the whole of the surface of those counties. Several other strata or mineral beds there occur, the general arrangement of which it is the purpose of this communication briefly to illustrate. The chalk hills which appear on the south eastern-coast of the Isle of Wight traverse the interior of that district in a line nearly due west to the Needles; they are, interrupted by the sea, and by the alluvial deposits on the eastern side of Studland Bay; but reappear at Corfe Castle, and on the coast at Lulworth, from which last place they may be observed passing towards Weymouth, still preserving their original direction, having left to the south of them nearly the whole of the Isle of Purbeck. The breadth of this range of chalk is not very considerable, for the entire coast from Christchurch Bay to Poole lies to the North of it. The dip of the strata varies from N.E. to S.E. but the point of the compass, towards which they all tend, is the east.* The outline of these hills, is characterized by gradual and successive swellings and depressions of the ground; they also offer natural scoops or semi-circular excavations on their acclivities. Though covered with a short grass, they may be called naked, being entirely destitute of timber. They rise to a greater absolute elevation than the other beds by which they are


This study analyzes the profitability of fruit juice processing using data from Kudors Fruit Juice Limited at Kasoa in Ghana. The cost involved in fruit juice processing (which includes the capital cost and the operating cost) was obtained from the Company. This study compares the profitability of blend (i.e. fruit juice made up of pineapple and mango blend) with that of pineapple juice alone. The viability of the project was determined using the discounted measures of project worth: Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR), Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). The empirical results reveal that pineapple juice processing had a BCR of 1.03 which means that going into the pineapple juice processing is profitable. The value of the NPV (GHS11,728.00) and IRR (23%) further confirms that pineapple juice processing is profitable because the NPV is positive and the IRR is greater than the discounted factor (21%). The results also showed that it is more profitable to invest in the blend (pineapple and mango blend) than the pineapple juice alone as it yields a BCR of 1.36 which was greater than the BCR of 1.03 for the pineapple juice only. Furthermore, the value of the NPV (GHS176,831.00) which is greater than the pineapple juice only, suggests that the blend is more profitable even though the IRR for both are the same. Moreover, it is also more likely to recover capital investment earlier in the processing of the blend than when one goes into pineapple juice processing only, because the net cash flow in year 2 (GHS 58,146.00) for the blend is more than triple that of the pineapple juice only (GHS17,826.00).These results have policy implications for the development of Agribusinesses in Ghana.


The aim of this article is to place forced evictions in their legal-historical context by analysing the rural and urban land tenure measures used during apartheid to limit the nature and duration of black people's tenure. The hypothesis of this article is that the homelessness and extensive housing crisis in present-day South Africa have their origins in the apartheid era, when government's rural and urban land tenure measures, together with private owners' common-law remedies, led to large-scale forced evictions. A renewed appreciation of the legal-historical context of forced evictions should enable the courts to understand the social and historical context of section 26 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and the Prevention of Illegal Evictions from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 18 of 1998. This limited historical study places forced removals and the demolition of homes in the context of apartheid land law. The description and analysis of legislation and case law are limited to the period between 1913 when the Black Land Act was enacted and 1994 which marked the official end of apartheid.


The introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has resulted in a significant decrease in the mortality and morbidity associated with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Several problems are associated with HAART and include high costs of treatments, poor availability of drugs in low-income countries, poor compliance, severe adverse effects and drug resistance. Therefore, the focus of current research is the development of new antiretroviral drugs, improved treatment strategies and the discovery of new drugs derived from plants. Green tea (GT) and its active constituent epigallocatechin gallate (EGCg) have been found to be protective against cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and were found also to have antimicrobial, antimalarial and more importantly antiviral activity. EGCg, in vitro has been shown to inhibit the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) viral enzymes reverse transcriptase and protease, destroy viral particles and interfere with the attachment of gp120 to cellular receptor CD4. The aims of this study were firstly to investigate the in vitro antiretroviral activity of GT and EGCg on the LP-BM5 defective murine leukemia virus (MuLV) that induces a disease in C57BL/6 mice similar to AIDS in humans and secondly to investigate the effects of GT and EGCg on the in vitro cytotoxicity and antiretroviral activity of current antiretroviral drugs zidovudine (AZT), indinavir (IDV), hydroxyurea (HU) and chloroquine (CQ). To achieve the above aims an in vitro model that represents cell-to-cell spreading of the LP-BM5 MuLV was developed. Firstly the presence of the LP-BM5-defective virus in the BM5 cell line was confirmed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to identify viral particles, PCR and RT-PCR were used to determine the presence of viral DNA and RNA respectively and viral infectivity was confirmed in C57BL/10 mice. The cytotoxicity of each drug and combination was evaluated with the MTT assay in the SC-1 cell line, the predominant cell type in the in vitro cell culture model. GT was the least cytotoxic, followed by AZT, IDV, EGCg, HU and CQ. Co-cultures (BM5:SC-1, 1:10000) that represented cell-to-cell transmission of the virus were established. Real time PCR for proviral DNA revealed that IDV, AZT and HU completely suppressed, CQ dose dependently reduced while GT and EGCg had no effect on viral transmission. Findings using AZT and IDV thus validated the use of this in vitro co-culture model for first line screening of new drugs and plant extracts. The effect of GT or EGCg in combination with AZT, IDV, HU or CQ was also evaluated as GT or EGCg could enhance the antiretroviral effects or decrease cellular toxicity of these drugs. For GT with AZT a mix of synergism and antagonism on cell toxicity was observed with little to no effect on the antiretroviral activity of AZT. Antagonism on cell toxicity was observed for GT with IDV, with no effect on the antiretroviral activity of IDV. In contrast EGCg significantly reduced the antiretroviral activity of IDV. A strong antagonistic effect was observed for GT with HU, with GT reducing the antiretroviral effect of HU. For combinations of AZT with EGCg and HU with EGCg a similar effect was observed as for AZT and HU respectively combined with GT. Synergism in cytotoxicity was observed between GT and CQ associated with a significant decrease in viral loads while EGCg combined with CQ had an opposite effect at higher concentrations. In conclusion, the in vitro co-culture model of BM5 and SC-1 cells was successfully used to evaluate combinations of GT and EGCg with AZT, IDV, HU and CQ. Interesting and often contradicting effects were observed, such as seen for IDV in combination with GT and EGCg as well as CQ in combination with GT and EGCg. These effects may be of clinical relevance and further investigation is warranted.


The study's primary purpose is to provide background and analysis on existing realities in Uzbekistan as input into USAID's thinking in respect to the timeliness and appropriateness of local government assistance. This assessment addresses the basic legal institutional framework for subnational government in Uzbekistan. It also describes how the central and respective local government tiers interact in practice and, how, at the municipal level, government is organized and operates, most importantly in respect to budgeting and the delivery of basic urban services. In addition, the assessment examines the role of mahallas (a traditional, neighborhood-based form of community self-governance) which have largely been absorbed into the system of state administration. The authors hope that the report will also serve as an informational resource for other parties interested in improving the effectiveness and responsiveness of local government in Uzbekistan.


I recently read a novel set in an American college in which the author made numerous references to the main characters "googling" for information or having "googled" for all the research on their latest assignment. With the web so readily available, one might raise the question of why a book aimed at medical and public health researchers on recherche bibliographique (bibliographic searching) is needed, and one in French at that? Now that students and researchers have Google, or better yet the recently released beta version of Google Scholar, to find all the public health information on the web, why would anyone need something as old-fashioned as a book on bibliographic searching? Just enter a few keywords into any search engine and you have an unlimited amount of information at your fingertips (meme en francais).

I would argue the need is probably greater now than ever before for a book on organized systematic searching. While huge depositories of information are readily available through a basic computer search, it is not always the best or most complete information. The temptation is to take what is available with just a few clicks on your mouse versus a visit to a library for a book or a journal article, or doing an in-depth and informed search. Researchers in the area of medicine and public health, however, need to be able to locate the most up-to-date, relevant and evidence-based information possible. To obtain this information requires a systematic methodology for attacking the huge amount of health literature and assuring that all the major and important sources are queried in order to obtain the best information

Evelyn Mouillet has written a simple and well-laid-out guide for searching medical and health literature in a straightforward manner. The book begins with a discussion of how to search the basic sources. While basic searching need not be complex, it does require the kind of systematic approach which Mouillet presents in this book. She progresses through the major French-language health resources and then covers international sources (almost exclusively English). Important medical databases such as PubMed are covered with a clear explication of the differences between MEDLINE and PubMed. Also covered are bibliographic management software with emphasis on EndNote. The guide is made even more user-friendly by its inclusion of many illustrations and visual guides that mimic the computer screen during a search.

Is there truly a need for guide such as this in French? Having covered the A to Z language spectrum, where I conducted library training sessions for an Albanian-speaking-only audience via a French interpreter, and having used Vietnamese versions of WHO publications during a library presentation, I welcome any documentation to assist in teaching researchers how to conduct in-depth searching. While the majority of the resources may be in English or use an English interface, it is beneficial for non-Anglophones to have access tools in their maternal language. Basic concepts of Boolean searching are better learnt in one's most conversant language, and my personal observations over ten years of teaching reinforce this belief.

A couple of changes would improve further editions. A stronger chapter devoted to defining the research question would make the book more useful to medical and public health researchers. As a librarian, my most important contacts with researchers are spent defining and probing their research questions, a step which involves breaking the question down into its various components. This vital step helps to determine which resources will be used and the breadth of resources to be searched. An overly broad question can lead to the frustrating situation of bringing up literally tens of thousands of hits. Refining the question allows for a more manageable number of articles, perhaps including the article that has already summarized and evaluated the best information from all those other articles.

I also noticed a definite preference for resources located within France. This ignores the rich resources of Francophone research outside of France, including Belgium, Canada, Switzerland and Francophone Africa, all of which offer relevant, high-quality research. Africa Index Medicus (AIM), for example, is a bibliographic database that indexes many Francophone African journals and reports, often with links to the articles' full text. Sole reliance on the French databases, even with supplementation from PubMed and Embase, almost ensures that researchers will miss relevant research, because research from developing countries may not be indexed by the major databases or there can be significant delays from when the research is published until it appears in the major databases.

Evelyne Mouillets's book is, however, one of the better books to guide readers in searching for medical and health information that I have read. Hopefully the publisher will come out with a translation, as not only is it an excellent guide to searching, but it would also be useful to have an English version to encourage researchers to explore valuable French-language resources. ■


The stable growth in wireless communications market has engendered the interoperability of various standards in a single broadband frequency range from hundred MHz up to several GHz. This frequency range consists of various wireless applications such as GSM, Bluetooth and WLAN. Therefore, an agile wireless system needs smart RF front-ends for functioning properly in such a crowded spectrum. As a result, the demand for multi-standard RF transceivers which put various wireless and cordless phone standards together in one structure was increased. The demand for multi-standard RF transceivers gives a key role to reconfigurable wideband VCO operation with low-power and low-phase noise characteristics. Besides agility and intelligence, such a communication system (GSM, WLAN, Global Positioning Systems, etc. ) required meeting the requirements of several standards in a cost-effective way. This, when cost and integration are the major concerns, leads to the exploitation of Si-based technologies. In this thesis, an integrated 2.2-5.7GHz Multi-band differential LC VCO for Multi-standard Wireless Communication systems was designed utilizing 0.35μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The topology, which combines the switching inductors and capacitors together in the same circuit, is a novel approach for wideband VCOs. Based on the post layout simulation results, the VCO can be tuned using a DC voltage of 0 to 3.3V for 5 different frequency bands (2.27-2.51 GHz, 2.48-2.78GHz, 3.22-3.53GHz, 3.48-3.91GHz and 4.528-5.7GHz) with a maximum bandwidth of 1.36GHz and a minimum bandwidth of 300MHz. The designed and simulated VCO can generate a differential output power between 0.992 dBm and -6.087 dBm with an average power consumption of 44.21mW including the buffers. The average second and third harmonics level were obtained as -37.21 dBm and -47.6 dBm, respectively. The phase noise between -110.45 and -122.5 dBc/Hz, that was simulated at 1 MHz offset, can be obtained through the frequency of interest. Additionally, the figure of merit (FOM), that includes all important parameters such as the phase noise, the power consumption and the ratio of the operating frequency to the offset frequency, is between -176.48 and -181.16 and comparable or better than the ones with the other current VCOs. The main advantage of this study in comparison with the other VCOs, is covering 5 frequency bands starting from 2.27 up to 5.76 GHz without FOM and area abandonment.


Abstract Introduction: Anemia is prevalent in young women and iron deficiency is one of the leading causes. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of anemia and iron deficiency anemia in high school girls of Bandar Abbas. Methods: In a descriptive cross-sectional study, 200 high school girls were taken up for study after they gave a written consent. Sampling was randomized. The concentration of hemoglobin(HB),hematocrit(HCT),serum iron(SI),serum ferritin(SF) and total iron bonding concentration(TIBC)were measured to determine the prevalence of iron deficiency anemia . Iron deficiency anemia defined as low HB (HB<12g/DLit) plus iron deficiency anemia (SF<12μg/lit). Data were analyzed by SPSS software. Results: Forty one subjects (20/5) had HB<12g/DLit and 28 (14) had HCT<36. SF<12μg/Lit, SI 400μg/DLit were found in 20(46/5), 37(86), and 29 (67/4) of subjects, respectively. Conclusion: According to the results, it is recommended to treat iron deficiency anemia with adequate dietary intake and oral iron supplementation in the study population


"An indispensable work of reference". (Times Literary Supplement). The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory is firmly established as a key work of reference in the complex and varied field of literary criticism. Now in its fifth edition, it remains the most comprehensive and accessible work of its kind, and is invaluable for students, teachers and general readers alike. It gives definitions of technical terms (hamartia, iamb, zeugma) and critical jargon (aporia, binary opposition, intertextuality). It explores literary movements (neoclassism, romanticism, vorticism) and schools of literary theory. It covers genres (elegy, fabliau, pastoral) and literary forms (haiku, ottava rima, sonnet).


The seismic wavefield near an active volcanic vent consists of superimposed signals in a wide range of frequency bands from sources inside and outside the volcano. To characterize the broadband wavefield near Puu Oo, we deployed a profile of three three-component broadband sensors in a 200 m long line about 1.5 km WSW of the active vent. During this period, Puu Oo maintained a constant, but very low level of activity. The digital data logger recorded the wavefield continuously in the frequency band between 0.01 and 40 Hz between June 25 and July 9, 1994. At the same time, local wind conditions along with air temperature and pressure were monitored by a portable digital weather station. On the basis of characteristic elements, such as waveform, spatial coherence between stations, particle motion and power spectra, the wavefield can be divided into three bands. The dominant signals in the frequency band between 0.01 and 0.1 Hz are not coherent among the stations. Their ground velocities correlate with the wind speed. The signals in the 0.1 to 0.5 Hz band are coherent across the profile and most probably represent a superposition of volcanic tremor and microseisms from the Pacific Ocean. Much of the energy above 0.5 Hz can be attributed to activity at the vent. Power spectra from recordings of the transverse components show complex peaks between 0.5 and 3 Hz which vary in amplitude due to site effects and distance. On the other hand, power spectra calculated from the radial components show a clearly periodic pattern of peaks at 1 Hz intervals for some time segments. A further remarkable feature of the power spectra is that they are highly stationary.


Practicing medicine is a social activity. Because doctor-patient interaction requires respect, leadership, and interpersonal skills that extend beyond medical diagnosis and treatment, medical education must incorporate non-clinical competencies. While qualities such as lifelong learning skills, resource management, teamwork skills, and active involvement in leadership and bettering the healthcare system have received little attention in medical academia, these competencies have proven vital for a physician in contemporary society. These non-clinical competencies are, in fact, the traits or components of social competency. Social competency has been an area of interest, particularly with regard to the development of children and adolescents, in the fields of education, psychology, and less commonly, economics. However, traditional Korean residency programs have not paid much attention to social competency due to their closed culture originating from the colonial period. Resident education is still heavily dependent on a patriarchal system based on "family" values. Resident education is concentrated in medical knowledge and skills within specialty departments functioning as a family-like unit. Specialty training has a very narrow, constrained vision without incorporating much education on the social dimension of medical practice. Nevertheless, developing a social competency scheme for resident education was initiated in 2008, when the Korean Medical Association celebrated the centennial of producing licensed physicians. However, the scheme is still under development and not widely used. Korean medical educators must, therefore, recognize the value of social competencies and include them as graduation outcomes of residency training to prepare doctors to meet the challenges of the future.


Insulin-mediated glucose disposal varies widely in apparently healthy human beings, and the more insulin resistant an individual, the more insulin they must secrete in order to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes. However, the combination of insulin resistance and compensatory hyperinsulinemia increases the likelihood that an individual will be hypertensive, and have a dyslipidemia characterized by a high plasma triglyceride (TG) and low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) concentration. These changes increase risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), and in 1988, this cluster of related abnormalities was designated as comprising a syndrome (X). Several other clinical syndromes are now known to be associated with insulin resistance and compensatory hyperinsulinemia. For example, polycystic ovary syndrome appears to be secondary to insulin resistance and compensatory hyperinsulinemia. More recently, studies have shown that the prevalence of insulin resistance/hyperinsulinemia is increased in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and there are reports that certain forms of cancer are more likely to occur in insulin resistant/hyperinsulinemic persons. Finally, there is substantial evidence of an association between insulin resistance/hyperinsulinemia, and sleep disordered breathing. Given the rapid increase in the number of clinical syndromes and abnormalities associated with insulin resistance/hyperinsulinemia, it seems reasonable to suggest that the cluster of these changes related to the defect in insulin action be subsumed under the term of the insulin resistance syndrome. In addition to the identification of additional clinical syndromes related to insulin resistance/hyperinsulinemia, a number of new risk factors have been recognized that would increase CVD risk in these individuals. Thus, in addition to a high TG and a low HDL-C, the atherogenic lipoprotein profile in insulin resistant/hyperinsulinemic individuals also includes the appearance of smaller and denser low density lipoprotein particles, and the enhanced postprandial accumulation of remnant lipoproteins; changes identified as increasing risk of CVD. Elevated plasma concentrations of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) have been shown to be associated with increased CVD, and there is evidence of a significant relationship between PAI-1 and fibrinogen levels and both insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Evidence is also accumulating that sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity is increased in insulin resistant, hyperinsulinemic individuals, and, along with the salt sensitivity associated with insulin resistance/hyperinsulinemia, increases the likelihood that these individuals will develop essential hypertension. The first step in the process of atherogenesis is the binding of mononuclear cells to the endothelium, and mononuclear cells isolated from insulin resistant/hyperinsulinemic individuals adhere with greater avidity. This process is modulated by adhesion molecules produced by endothelial cells, and there is a significant relationship between degree of insulin resistance and the plasma concentration of the several of these adhesion molecules. Further evidence of the relationship between insulin resistance and endothelial dysfunction is the finding that asymmetric dimethylarginine, an endogenous inhibitor of the enzyme nitric oxide synthase, is increased in insulin resistant/hyperinsulinemic individuals. Finally, plasma concentrations of several inflammatory markers are elevated in insulin resistant subjects. It is obvious that the cluster of abnormalities associated with insulin resistance and compensatory hyperinsulinemia contains many well-recognized CVD risk factors, choosing which one, or ones, that are primarily responsible for the accelerated atherogenesis that characterizes this syndrome is not a simple task. Indeed, efforts to try to do so by the use of multiple regression analysis of epidemiological data may be more misleading than helpful.


Crack-seal texture within fracture cements in the Triassic El Alamar Formation, NE Mexico, shows that the fractures opened during precipitation of quartz cements; later, overlapping calcite cements further occluded pore space. Previous workers defined four systematic fracture sets, A (oldest) to D (youngest), with relative timing constrained by crosscutting relationships. Quartz fluid inclusion homogenization temperatures are higher within Set B (148 ± 20°C) than in Set C (105 ± 12°C). These data and previous burial history modelling are consistent with Set C forming during exhumation. Fluid inclusions in Set C quartz have higher salinity than those in Set B (22.9 v. 14.2 wt% NaCl equivalent, respectively), and Set C quartz cement is more enriched in 18O (20.2 v. 18.7‰ VSMOW). Under most assumptions about the true temperature during fracture opening, the burial duration, the amount of cement precipitated and fluid-flow patterns, it appears that the fracture fluid became depleted in 18O and enriched in 13C. This isotopic evolution, combined with increasing salinity, suggests that throughout fracture opening there was a gravity-driven influx of fluid from upsection Jurassic evaporites, which form a regional décollement. Fracture opening amid downward fluid motion suggests that fracturing was driven by external stresses such as tectonic stretching or unloading, rather than increases in fluid pressure.


ABSTRACT The conventional wisdom among many analysts and policy-makers is that India's central government has followed a fairly consistent internal security policy by deploying an "iron first in a velvet glove" that attacks irreconcilable armed groups, while holding open the door to mainstream politics for moderates. This article argues that this wisdom is incorrect. It instead offers a more political explanation of government strategy, showing that Delhi cares much more about some kinds of groups and conflicts than others, leading to a diverse pattern of strategies toward armed actors. Central government strategy is driven by varying political resolve for crackdowns and varying political space for either deal-making or neglect. Rather than a shared general approach, there is a far more selective and complex pattern of strategy. The paper examines both counterinsurgent conflicts and the murkier realm of private armies and armed political parties that blend "normal" politics with violence.


This unique textbook provides an accessible introduction to Einstein's general theory of relativity, a subject of breathtaking beauty and supreme importance in physics. With his trademark blend of wit and incisiveness, A. Zee guides readers from the fundamentals of Newtonian mechanics to the most exciting frontiers of research today, including de Sitter and anti-de Sitter spacetimes, Kaluza-Klein theory, and brane worlds. Unlike other books on Einstein gravity, this book emphasizes the action principle and group theory as guides in constructing physical theories. Zee treats various topics in a spiral style that is easy on beginners, and includes anecdotes from the history of physics that will appeal to students and experts alike. He takes a friendly approach to the required mathematics, yet does not shy away from more advanced mathematical topics such as differential forms. The extensive discussion of black holes includes rotating and extremal black holes and Hawking radiation. The ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students, Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell also provides an essential resource for professional physicists and is accessible to anyone familiar with classical mechanics and electromagnetism. It features numerous exercises as well as detailed appendices covering a multitude of topics not readily found elsewhere.

 Provides an accessible introduction to Einstein's general theory of relativity

 Guides readers from Newtonian mechanics to the frontiers of modern research

 Emphasizes symmetry and the Einstein-Hilbert action

 Covers topics not found in standard textbooks on Einstein gravity

 Includes interesting historical asides

 Features numerous exercises and detailed appendices

 Ideal for students, physicists, and scientifically minded lay readers

 Solutions manual (available only to teachers)


We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. Using a unique data set of approximately 24 million firms in nearly 100 countries in 1999 and 2004, we find suggestive evidence that international financial integration has been associated with higher levels of entrepreneurial activity. Our results are robust to using various proxies for entrepreneurial activity such as entry, size, and skewness of the firm-size distribution; controlling for level of economic development, regulation, institutional constraints, and other variables that might affect the business environment; and using different empirical specifications. We further explore various channels through which international financial integration can affect entrepreneurship (a foreign direct investment channel and a capital/credit availability channel) and provide consistent evidence to support our results.


Many keyword queries issued to Web search engines target information about real world entities, and interpreting these queries over Web knowledge bases can allow a search system to provide exact answers to keyword queries. Such an ability provides a useful service to end users, as their information need can be directly addressed and they need not scour textual results for the desired information. However, not all keyword queries can be addressed by even the most comprehensive knowledge base, and therefore equally important is the problem of recognizing when a reference knowledge base is not capable of modelling the keyword query's intention. This may be due to lack of coverage of the knowledge base or lack of expressiveness in the underlying query representation formalism. This thesis presents an approach to computing structured representations of keyword queries over a reference knowledge base. Keyword queries are annotated with occurrences of semantic constructs by learning a sequential labelling model from an annotated Web query log. Frequent query structures are then mined from the query log and are used along with the annotations to map keyword queries into a structured representation over the vocabulary of a reference knowledge base. The proposed approach exploits coarse linguistic structure in keyword queries, and combines it with rich structured query representations of information needs. As an intermediate representation formalism, a novel query language is proposed that blends keyword search with structured query processing over large Web knowledge bases. The formalism for structured keyword queries combines the flexibility of keyword search with the expressiveness of structures queries. A solution to the resulting disambiguation problem caused by introducing keywords as primitives in a structured query language is presented. Expressions in our proposed language are rewritten using the vocabulary of the knowledge base, and different possible rewritings are ranked based on their syntactic relationship to the keywords in the query as well as their semantic coherence in the underlying knowledge base. The problem of ranking knowledge base entities returned as a query result is also explored from the perspective of personalized result ranking. User interest models based on entity types are learned from a Web search session by cross referencing clicks on URLs with known entity homepages. The user interest model is then used to effectively rerank answer lists for a given user. A methodology for evaluating entity-based search engines is also proposed and empirically evaluated.


Abstract Fulgurites are a naturally occurring glass formed when sand, rock, or soil is struck by atmospheric electrical discharges (lightning). The aim of this paper is to provide insights into the conditions occurring in rocks during the lightning strike. Rock fulgurites collected from Mt. Mottarone, Baveno (Piedmont, Italy) have been investigated to assess the mineralogical and compositional changes occurring in granite due to a lightning strike. X-ray powder diffraction showed that the samples represent the dominant granitic rock type of the Baveno massif, the so-called "Pink Baveno." Fulgurite coats the surface of the granite as a brown-black, glassy to very fine-grained porous layer. Powder diffraction data for the fulgurite reveal the presence of cristobalite and quartz crystals in a glass matrix, suggesting that temperature exceeded ~1700 °C at near atmospheric conditions, assuming thermodynamic equilibrium. Electron probe microanalysis of the glass revealed that it is mainly composed of SiO2 and Al2O3 and that it has a porosity of 5–7 area% in the studied zones. The presence of the amorphous phase indicates that the abrupt electrical (Joule) heating of the rock surface yielded high temperatures, producing a thin melt layer on the surface, which then cooled adiabatically. Idealized physical model was developed to simulate the effects of Joule heating and subsequent thermal conduction close to the rock surface during and after a lightning strike. The quantity of organic matter in the glass, obtained via Elemental Analyzer, suggests that rapid quenching of the melt trapped NOx and COx gases produced during heating. Raman spectroscopy revealed the presence of polyaromatic hydrocarbon molecules, which, combined with the Elemental Analyzer data, suggest that organic matter was pyrolyzed at around 300–350 °C and then trapped in the glass matrix of the studied rock fulgurites.


Background: As social and built environment factors have been shown to be associated with physical activity, dietary patterns, and obesity in the general population, they likely also influence these health behaviors among cancer survivors and thereby impact survivorship outcomes. Methods: Enhancing the rich, individual-level survey and medical record data from 4,505 breast cancer survivors in the Pathways Study, a prospective cohort drawn from Kaiser Permanente Northern California, we geocoded baseline residential addresses and appended social and built environment data. With multinomial logistic models, we examined associations between neighborhood characteristics and body mass index and whether neighborhood factors explained racial/ethnic/nativity disparities in overweight/obesity. Results: Low neighborhood socioeconomic status, high minority composition, high traffic density, high prevalence of commuting by car, and a higher number of fast food restaurants were independently associated with higher odds of overweight or obesity. The higher odds of overweight among African Americans, U.S.-born Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, and foreign-born Hispanics and the higher odds of obesity among African Americans and U.S.-born Hispanics, compared with non-Hispanic whites, remained significant, although somewhat attenuated, when accounting for social and built environment features. Conclusions: Addressing aspects of neighborhood environments may help breast cancer survivors maintain a healthy body weight. Impact: Further research in this area, such as incorporating data on individuals' perceptions and use of their neighborhood environments, is needed to ultimately inform multilevel interventions that would ameliorate such disparities and improve outcomes for breast cancer survivors, regardless of their social status (e.g., race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, nativity). Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 26(4); 505–15. ©2017 AACR. See all the articles in this CEBP Focus section, "Geospatial Approaches to Cancer Control and Population Sciences."


The explosive growth in digital data and its growing role in real-time decision support motivate the design of high-performance database management systems (DBMSs). Meanwhile, slowdown in supply voltage scaling has stymied improvements in core performance and ushered an era of power-limited chips. These developments motivate the design of DBMS accelerators that (a) maximize utility by accelerating the dominant operations, and (b) provide flexibility in the choice of DBMS, data layout, and data types. We study data analytics workloads on contemporary in-memory databases and find hash index lookups to be the largest single contributor to the overall execution time. The critical path in hash index lookups consists of ALU-intensive key hashing followed by pointer chasing through a node list. Based on these observations, we introduce Widx, an on-chip accelerator for database hash index lookups, which achieves both high performance and flexibility by (1) decoupling key hashing from the list traversal, and (2) processing multiple keys in parallel on a set of programmable walker units. Widx reduces design cost and complexity through its tight integration with a conventional core, thus eliminating the need for a dedicated TLB and cache. An evaluation of Widx on a set of modern data analytics workloads (TPC-H, TPC-DS) using full-system simulation shows an average speedup of 3.1× over an aggressive OoO core on bulk hash table operations, while reducing the OoO core energy by 83%.


A popular version of history trumpets the United States as a diverse "nation of immigrants," welcome to all. The truth, however, is that local communities have a long history of ambivalence toward new arrivals and minorities. Persistent patterns of segregation by race and income still exist in housing and schools, along with a growing emphasis on rapid metropolitan development (sprawl) that encourages upwardly mobile families to abandon older communities and their problems. This dual pattern is becoming increasingly important as America grows more diverse than ever and economic inequality increases. Two recent trends compel new attention to these issues. First, the geography of race and class represents a crucial litmus test for the new "regionalism" uthe political movement to address the linked fortunes of cities and suburbs. Second, housing has all but disappeared as a major social policy issue over the past two decades. This timely book shows how unequal housing choices and sprawling development create an unequal geography of opportunity. It emerges from a project sponsored by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University in collaboration with the Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Brookings Institution. The contributors upolicy analysts, political observers, social scientists, and urban planners udocument key patterns, their consequences, and how we can respond, taking a hard look at both successes and failures of the past. Place still matters, perhaps more than ever. High levels of segregation shape education and job opportunity, crime and insecurity, and long-term economic prospects. These problems cannot be addressed effectively if society assumes that segregation will take care of itself. Contributors include William Apgar (Harvard University), Judith Bell (PolicyLink), Angela Glover Blackwell (PolicyLink), Allegra Calder (Harvard), Karen Chapple (Cal-Berkeley), Camille Charles (Penn), Mary Cunningham (Urban Institute), Casey Dawkins (Virginia Tech), Stephanie DeLuca (Johns Hopkins), John Goering (CUNY), Edward Goetz (U. of Minnesota), Bruce Katz (Brookings), Barbara Lukermann (U. of Minnesota), Gerrit Knaap (U. of Maryland), Arthur Nelson (Virginia Tech), Rolf Pendall (Cornell), Susan J. Popkin (Urban Institute), James Rosenbaum (Northwestern), Stephen L. Ross (U. of Connecticut), Mara Sidney (Rutgers), Phillip Tegeler (Poverty and Race Research Action Council), Tammy Tuck (Northwestern), Margery Austin Turner (Urban Institute), William Julius Wilson (Harvard).


BACKGROUND
Cost-effectiveness analysis involves the comparison of the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of a new technology, which is more costly than existing alternatives, with the cost-effectiveness threshold. This indicates whether or not the health expected to be gained from its use exceeds the health expected to be lost elsewhere as other health-care activities are displaced. The threshold therefore represents the additional cost that has to be imposed on the system to forgo 1 quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) of health through displacement. There are no empirical estimates of the cost-effectiveness threshold used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

OBJECTIVES
(1) To provide a conceptual framework to define the cost-effectiveness threshold and to provide the basis for its empirical estimation. (2) Using programme budgeting data for the English NHS, to estimate the relationship between changes in overall NHS expenditure and changes in mortality. (3) To extend this mortality measure of the health effects of a change in expenditure to life-years and to QALYs by estimating the quality-of-life (QoL) associated with effects on years of life and the additional direct impact on QoL itself. (4) To present the best estimate of the cost-effectiveness threshold for policy purposes.

METHODS
Earlier econometric analysis estimated the relationship between differences in primary care trust (PCT) spending, across programme budget categories (PBCs), and associated disease-specific mortality. This research is extended in several ways including estimating the impact of marginal increases or decreases in overall NHS expenditure on spending in each of the 23 PBCs. Further stages of work link the econometrics to broader health effects in terms of QALYs.

RESULTS
The most relevant 'central' threshold is estimated to be £12,936 per QALY (2008 expenditure, 2008-10 mortality). Uncertainty analysis indicates that the probability that the threshold is < £20,000 per QALY is 0.89 and the probability that it is < £30,000 per QALY is 0.97. Additional 'structural' uncertainty suggests, on balance, that the central or best estimate is, if anything, likely to be an overestimate. The health effects of changes in expenditure are greater when PCTs are under more financial pressure and are more likely to be disinvesting than investing. This indicates that the central estimate of the threshold is likely to be an overestimate for all technologies which impose net costs on the NHS and the appropriate threshold to apply should be lower for technologies which have a greater impact on NHS costs.

LIMITATIONS
The central estimate is based on identifying a preferred analysis at each stage based on the analysis that made the best use of available information, whether or not the assumptions required appeared more reasonable than the other alternatives available, and which provided a more complete picture of the likely health effects of a change in expenditure. However, the limitation of currently available data means that there is substantial uncertainty associated with the estimate of the overall threshold.

CONCLUSIONS
The methods go some way to providing an empirical estimate of the scale of opportunity costs the NHS faces when considering whether or not the health benefits associated with new technologies are greater than the health that is likely to be lost elsewhere in the NHS. Priorities for future research include estimating the threshold for subsequent waves of expenditure and outcome data, for example by utilising expenditure and outcomes available at the level of Clinical Commissioning Groups as well as additional data collected on QoL and updated estimates of incidence (by age and gender) and duration of disease. Nonetheless, the study also starts to make the other NHS patients, who ultimately bear the opportunity costs of such decisions, less abstract and more 'known' in social decisions.

FUNDING
The National Institute for Health Research-Medical Research Council Methodology Research Programme.


Speech is an elementary source of human interaction. The quality and intelligibility of speech signals during communication are generally degraded by the surrounding noise. Corrupted speech signals need therefore to be enhanced to improve quality and intelligibility. In the field of speech processing, much effort has been devoted to develop speech enhancement techniques in order to restore the speech signal by reducing the amount of disturbing noise. This thesis focuses on a single channel speech enhancement technique that performs noise reduction by spectral subtraction based on minimum statistics. Minimum statistics means that the power spectrum of the non-stationary noise signal is estimated by finding the minimum values of a smoothed power spectrum of the noisy speech signal and, thus, circumvents the speech activity detection problem. The performance of the spectral subtraction method is evaluated using single channel speech data and for a wide range of noise types with various noise levels. This evaluation is used in order to find optimum method parameter values, thereby improving this algorithm to make it more appropriate for speech communication purposes. The system is implemented in MATLAB and validated by considering different performance measure and for different Signal to Noise Ratio Improvement (SNRI) and Spectral Distortion (SD). The SNRI and SD were calculated for different filter bank settings such as different number of subbands and for different decimation and interpolation ratios. The method provides efficient speech enhancement in terms of SNRI and SD performance measures.


Abu Dhabi and Doha have evolved rapidly in the twentieth century due to the investment of oil and gas revenues. The fast economic growth resulted in an extensive period of urbanization. The various urban dynamics had a great impact with regards to new housing typologies during the last few decades. Doha's housing market is studied in comparison with Abu Dhabi's market considering their population growth rates, real estate market conditions, socio-cultural characteristics, and political approaches. The study is focused on the period from 2004 to 2013 where rapid urban development took place in both cities. The comparative assessment is based on three key aspects: housing typologies, housing distribution, in addition to housing supply and demand. The paper highlights that the urban growth in both cities is initiated via government investments, especially in the real estate market. This is reflected in the case of very similar housing dynamics in both cities. A gradual replacement of low-rise residential villas by high-rise residential towers (apartments/ penthouses) is currently observed in both cities.


A 77-year-old man presented complaining of generalized edema for 1 week. He had hypertension and polycystic kidney disease (PKD), which was diagnosed 45 years ago. Blood and urine tests showed low serum albumin (2.3 g/dL) and severe proteinuria (6.38 g/day). Abdominal computed tomography revealed multiple cysts with thin wall calcification in the left kidney, and several cysts in the right kidney and the liver (Fig. 1). Ultrasonography-guided percutaneous renal biopsy for the right kidney revealed focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (Fig. 2). The patient was prescribed diuretics, an angiotensin receptor blocker, aspirin, statin, a β blocker, and an aldosterone antagonist. One month after starting the medicines, he showed improved symptoms and laboratory findings (serum albumin, 3.2 g/dL; urine albumin excretion, 654.8 mg/g creatinine), which further improved after another 3 months (serum albumin, 3.8 g/dL; urine albumin excretion, 128.4 mg/g creatinine). Nephrotic syndrome is a rare coincidence in atypical PKD. Percutaneous renal biopsy can be performed in selected patients.


A large class of machine learning techniques requires the solution of optimization problems involving spectral functions of parametric matrices, e.g. log-determinant and nuclear norm. Unfortunately, computing the gradient of a spectral function is generally of cubic complexity, as such gradient descent methods are rather expensive for optimizing objectives involving the spectral function. Thus, one naturally turns to stochastic gradient methods in hope that they will provide a way to reduce or altogether avoid the computation of full gradients. However, here a new challenge appears: there is no straightforward way to compute unbiased stochastic gradients for spectral functions. In this paper, we develop unbiased stochastic gradients for spectral-sums, an important subclass of spectral functions. Our unbiased stochastic gradients are based on combining randomized trace estimators with stochastic truncation of the Chebyshev expansions. A careful design of the truncation distribution allows us to offer distributions that are variance-optimal, which is crucial for fast and stable convergence of stochastic gradient methods. We further leverage our proposed stochastic gradients to devise stochastic methods for objective functions involving spectral-sums, and rigorously analyze their convergence rate. The utility of our methods is demonstrated in numerical experiments.


Abstract Social networks have become popular communication and interaction environments recently. As digital environments, so as ecosystems, they have potential in terms of networked learning as they fulfill some roles such as mediating an environment for digital identity formation and providing social and emotional presence. Based on this phenomenon, the importance of identity formation as a sociological and psychological process was explained throughout this study. Following that, social networks as digital social ecosystems and learning environments in which self-actualization, self-presentation, and self-disclosure of the individuals were discussed and their necessity as well as their potential for social and emotional presence was explained to better understand social networks. Besides, social networks and "Facebook" as a case were examined. Within this perspective, the purpose of this study was to explore online social networks with an emphasis on learning; to put forward its educational premises; and to analyze digital identity formation, social presence, and emotional presence in social networks.


Standard Fama-French and Carhart models produce economically and statistically significant nonzero alphas, even for passive benchmark indices such as the S&P 500 and Russell 2000. We find that these alphas primarily arise from the disproportionate weight that the Fama-French factors place on small value stocks, which have performed well, and from the CRSP value-weighted market index, which is historically a downward-biased benchmark for U.S. stocks due to the inclusion of other types of securities such as closed-end funds. We propose small methodological changes to the Fama-French factors to eliminate the nonzero alphas, and we also propose factor models based on common and tradable benchmark indices. Both kinds of alternative models improve performance evaluation of actively managed portfolios with the index-based models exhibiting the best performance.


Abstract Previously, we showed that blueberry (BB) supplementation reversed the deleterious effects of aging on motor behavior and neuronal signaling in senescent rodents. We now report that BB-fed (from 4 months of age) APP+PS1 transgenic mice showed no deficits in Y-maze performance (at 12 months of age) with no alterations in amyloid beta burden. It appeared that the protective mechanisms are derived from BB-induced enhancement of memory-associated neuronal signaling (e.g. extracellular signal-regulated kinase) and alterations in neutral sphingomyelin-specific phospholipase C activity. Thus, our data indicate for the first time that it may be possible to overcome genetic predispositions to Alzheimer disease through diet.


We developed mesoporous silica nanoparticle (MSN) as a multifunctional vehicle for enzyme delivery. Enhanced transmembrane delivery of a superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzyme embedded in MSN was demonstrated. Conjugation of the cell-penetrating peptide derived from the human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV) transactivator protein (TAT) to mesoporous silica nanoparticle is shown to be an effective way to enhance transmembrane delivery of nanoparticles for intracellular and molecular therapy. Cu,Zn-superoxide dismutase (SOD) is a key antioxidant enzyme that detoxifies intracellular reactive oxygen species, ROS, thereby protecting cells from oxidative damage. In this study, we fused a human Cu,Zn-SOD gene with TAT in a bacterial expression vector to produce a genetic in-frame His-tagged TAT-SOD fusion protein. The His-tagged TAT-SOD fusion protein was expressed in E. coli using IPTG induction and purified using FMSN-Ni-NTA. The purified TAT-SOD was conjugated to FITC-MSN forming FMSN-TAT-SOD. The effectiveness of FMSN-TAT-SOD as an agent against ROS was investigated, which included the level of ROS and apoptosis after free radicals induction and functional recovery after ROS damage. Confocal microscopy on live unfixed cells and flow cytometry analysis showed characteristic nonendosomal distribution of FMSN-TAT-SOD. Results suggested that FMSN-TAT-SOD may provide a strategy for the therapeutic delivery of antioxidant enzymes that protect cells from ROS damage.


Objectives To assess the relationship of C-reactive protein (CRP) to clinical outcome and mortality in adults with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) associated with congenital heart disease (CHD-PAH). Background Approximately 5–10% of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) develop PAH, which in turn is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. Although CRP is known to predict outcome in idiopathic PAH, little is known regarding its prognostic value in CHD-PAH. Methods We obtained and analysed 1936 CRP values in a total of 225 adults with CHD-PAH (median age at study entry 34.0 years (27.0–41.7); 32.9% male, 35% with Down syndrome), performed over a 12-year period. High CRP values related to infection or blood transfusions were excluded from the analysis. Results During a median follow-up of 4.8 years (1149 patients-years), 50 patients died. The median CRP concentration on the last assessment was 5.0 mg/L (IQR 2.0–10.0), higher in deceased patients compared with survivors (11.5 mg/L (6.0–23.0) vs 4.0 mg/L (1.5–8.0), p<0.0001). Following univariate Cox regression analysis, CRP emerged as a strong predictor of mortality (HR 1.18; 95% CI 1.11 to 1.26, p<0.0001) and remained significant after adjustment for age, presence of Down syndrome and advanced PAH therapy. Survival–receiver–operator characteristic analysis identified an optimal cut-off value of 10 mg/L. Patients with CRP >10 mg/L had more than a threefold increased risk of death (HR 3.63, 95% CI 2.07 to 6.38, p<0.0001). Conclusions Serum CRP is a simple but powerful marker of mortality in CHD-PAH patients and should be incorporated in the risk stratification and routine assessment of these patients.


Essentials of Geographic Information Systems integrates key concepts behind the technology with practical concerns and real-world applications. Recognizing that many potential GIS users are nonspecialists or may only need a few maps, this book is designed to be accessible, pragmatic, and concise. Essentials of Geographic Information Systems also illustrates how GIS is used to ask questions, inform choices, and guide policy. From the melting of the polar ice caps to privacy issues associated with mapping, this book provides a gentle, yet substantive, introduction to the use and application of digital maps, mapping, and GIS.


The main purpose of this study is to identify the large-cap mutual funds in the Morningstar 500 that are efficient or inefficient as determined by data envelopment analysis (DEA). The second purpose is to identify the financial variables that differ significantly between efficient and inefficient funds and determine the nature of these relationships. There are identified input/output and profile variables that are significantly different between the DEA performance-efficient and inefficient large-cap mutual funds. The variables associated with efficient funds are relatively conservative in nature, not aggressive, consistent with a characterization of the investment style of large-cap DEA performance-efficient funds as predominantly value rather than growth.


Enhanced reductive dehalogenation is an attractive in situ treatment technology for chlorinated contaminants. The process includes two acid-forming microbial reactions: fermentation of an organic substrate resulting in short-chain fatty acids, and dehalogenation resulting in hydrochloric acid. The accumulation of acids and the resulting drop of groundwater pH are controlled by the mass and distribution of chlorinated solvents in the source zone, type of electron donor, alternative terminal electron acceptors available and presence of soil mineral phases able to buffer the pH (such as carbonates). Groundwater acidification may reduce or halt microbial activity, and thus dehalogenation, significantly increasing the time and costs required to remediate the aquifer. In previous work a detailed geochemical and groundwater flow simulator able to model the fermentation-dechlorination reactions and associated pH change was developed. The model accounts for the main processes influencing microbial activity and groundwater pH, including the groundwater composition, the electron donor used and soil mineral phase interactions. In this study, the model was applied to investigate how spatial variability occurring at the field scale affects dechlorination rates, groundwater pH and ultimately the remediation efficiency. Numerical simulations were conducted to examine the influence of heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity on the distribution of the injected, fermentable substrate and on the accumulation/dilution of the acidic products of reductive dehalogenation. The influence of the geometry of the DNAPL source zone was studied, as well as the spatial distribution of soil minerals. The results of this study showed that the heterogeneous distribution of the soil properties have a potentially large effect on the remediation efficiency. For examples, zones of high hydraulic conductivity can prevent the accumulation of acids and alleviate the problem of groundwater acidification. The conclusions drawn and insights gained from this modeling study will be useful to design improved in-situ enhanced dehalogenation remediation schemes.


X-ray fluorescence techniques have been applied for the analysis of portland cement for the past 20 or more years. During this time, applications have been developed primarily with wavelength spectrometers. In the past several years, development of solid state detectors has allowed energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence to detect and measure all the elements of interest in portland cement. Determination by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence displays excellent precision, but a linear calibration of intensity versus concentration for many elements exhibits significant deviation from a straight line. Particle size effects that could cause errors in the calibration were minimized through fine grinding. The remaining factors responsible for nonlinear calibrations relate to interelement effects, which are usually considered as absorption and enhancement. The purpose of this investigation is to determine the interelement effects in portland cement and demonstrate the quantitative capabilities of energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence using certified National Bureau of Standards (NBS) portland cements as standard. An additional purpose is to demonstrate the application of empirical calculations for interelement effects in obtaining quantitative results utilizing Portland Cement Association check specimens as unknowns. Interelement effects in X-ray fluorescence are well documented with various techniques utilized. Many of these programs are complex and correct all elements for the presence of all other elements and require a large number of standards. The approach used by the author is an exponential model based on intensities of the interferring elements. Linear least squares fit of uncorrected intensities displayed absolute errors of 0.6% for alumina and silicon oxide to 1.0% for calcium oxide. Average deviations obtained following interelement corrections ranged from a low of 0.007% for potassium oxide to a high of 0.19% for calcium oxide. Analysis of each specimen consumed 200 s. The accuracy obtained by this method is well within the limits expected by the industry and the precision possible by alternate procedures.


Foucault's concept of 'pastoral power' describes an important technique for constituting obedient subjects. Derived from his analysis of the Christian pastorate, he saw pastoral power as a prelude to contemporary technologies of governing 'beyond the State', where 'experts' shepherd self-governing subjects. However, the specific practices of modern pastorate have been little developed. This papers examines the relational practices of pastoral power associated with the government of medicine use within the English healthcare system. The study shows how multiple pastors align their complimentary and variegated practices to conduct behaviours, but also how pastors compete for legitimacy, and face resistance through the mobilisation of alternate discourses and the strategic exploitation of pastoral competition. The paper offers a dynamic view of the modern pastorate within the contemporary assemblages of power.


With the development and improvement of high throughput experimental technologies, massive amount of biological data including genomic sequences and optical-maps have been collected for various species. Comparative techniques play a central role in investigating the adaptive significance of organismal traits and revealing evolutionary relations among organisms by comparing these biological data. This dissertation presents two efficient comparative analysis' tools used in comparative genomics and comparative optical-map study, respectively.
A complete genome sequence of an organism can be viewed as its ultimate genetic map, in the sense that the heritable information are encoded within the DNA and the order of nucleotides along chromosomes is known. Comparative genomics can be applied to find functional sites by comparing genetic maps. Comparing vertebrate genomes requires efficient cross-species sequence alignment programs. The first tool introduced in this thesis is COMBAT (Clean Ordered Mer-Based Alignment Tool), a new mer-based method which can search rapidly for highly similar translated genomic sequences using the stable-marriage algorithm (SM) as an alignment filter. In experiments COMBAT is applied to comparative analysis between yeast genomes, and between the human genome and the recently published bovine genome. The homologous blocks identified by COMBAT are comparable with the alignments produced by BLASTP and BLASTZ.
When genetic maps are not available, other genomic maps, including optical-maps, can be constructed. An optical map is an ordered enumeration of the restriction sites along with the estimated lengths of the restriction fragments between consecutive restriction sites. CAPO (Comparative Analysis and Phylogeny with Optical-Maps), introduced as a second technique in this thesis, is a tool for inferring phylogeny based on pairwise optical map comparison and bipartite graph matching. CAPO combines the stable matching algorithm with either the Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Averaging (UPGMA) or the Neighbor-Joining (NJ) method for constructing phylogenetic trees. This new algorithm is capable of constructing phylogenetic trees in logarithmic steps and performs well in practice. Using optical maps constructed in silico and in vivo, our work shows that both UPGMA-flavored trees and the NJ-flavored trees produced by CAPO share substantial overlapping tree topology and are biologically meaningful.


This dissertation asks how the nineteenth century woman journalist emerged as a meaningful cultural and professional identity. As a cultural history it begins by considering the partisan newspaper as a cultural formation that, given its changing relations of production, came to position itself as independent and partisan simultaneously. Rearticulated as a paper of the people, its readership was revisioned as a family. The weekend edition became the location of new representational practices that were both entertaining and enlightening that materially effected this change in its identity and mission. As the public sphere was feminized by a multitude of reform initiatives and the private sphere was publicized and regimented through new domestic technologies and practices, the woman's page emerged as a space within the newspaper that helped to make sense of these changing relations, even as it altered them, while situating the newspaper within domestic relations. Within this cultural formation, the woman journalist emerged as a product of these conditions, even as she re-produced them. Using the journalism of two women journalists, Kit Coleman and Faith Fenton, as case studies, it argues that the format of the woman's page was a crucial site where these conditions coalesced, creating the conditions within which they could forge for themselves a professional identity. The woman's page spoke especially to the family's moral head of household in a highly personal voice that articulated the shifting relations between the public and private sphere. By constructing a knowing and authoritative voice through a series of gendered practices the woman journalist developed a highly intimate and personalized relationship with her readers that turned the woman's page into a domesticated space within the larger newspaper. This space was transformed, however, through her travels and social explorations which helped to broaden her journalistic authority using sensational techniques from the new journalism that were carefully negotiated within regimes of gender that were produced in part by the woman's page itself. These women had to negotiate continually the shifting intersections of journalism and gender, producing a journalistic practice that was historically contingent and was both the product of and produced a new gendered identity for women at the close of the century.


Abstract. Census data are widely available in many countries and are useful in describing socio-economic structures in a map at an administrative unit level. Multiple variables in census data can be investigated, however, selecting a large number of variables often leads to confusion and makes it difficult to discern which should be considered. Correlation analysis is often applied to measure the degree of association of a pair of variables, while a correlation matrix is used to summarize relationships amongst multiple variables at the same time. Although both provide important metrics, the spatial configuration of the data is not taken into account. For the purpose of mapping, it is often of interest to highlight the correlative relationship between a pair of variables across space in order to deal with any spatial heterogeneity hidden in the data. In this sense, geographically weighted correlation and partial correlation analyses have been proposed to map spatial variations of correlations in a spatial data set. The geographically weighted approach uses a moving-window kernel running across geographical space and calculates a statistical model or summary statistic with distance-decayed weighted data. The critical issue of mapping such correlation relationships amongst multiple variables is the large number of resultant maps produced. If we are interested in correlations amongst 100 variables, the correlation matrix has the dimension of 100 by 100, while 4,950 correlation maps are produced when we investigate local correlation relationships. Furthermore, the degree of scale (localness) which is an important parameter to understand the local correlative relationship should be explored. To this end, the purpose of this study is to build an interactive mapping system for visualizing spatial variations of correlative relationships amongst multivariate variables in big census data. This system is built on Shiny in R and an R package for calculating the geographically weighted correlation and partial correlation coefficients across multiple variables (https://github.com/naru-T/GWpcor) is implemented behind this system for analyses. We use the national census data set for 2005 with 204 variables regarding socio-economic structures in 23 wards in Tokyo with 3,134 administrative units as a case study. The system implements geographically weighted correlation and partial correlation analyses with varying scale parameters and produces an interactive spatial surface of the correlation coefficient. We demonstrate how our interactive mapping system enables users to achieve quick visualization of correlative relationships amongst multivariate census data which can be selected and changed easily from pull-down lists (Figure 1). Such a user-friendly interactive mapping system proposed in this study will help those who need to understand the spatial relationships of the data that is being mapped. This study is supported by ROIS-DS-JOINT (006RP2018).


According to a recent study more than 90 percent of water treatment plants utilizing chloramination for distribution system residuals indicate a certain level of dissatisfaction toward the process performance. One factor that may lead to such dissatisfaction is the inadequacy of mixing when ammonia is added to chlorinated water. If mixing is not instantaneous and uniform, the actual chlorine to ammonia nitrogen molar ratio will become variable at a micro-level, even though the overall ratio at the macro-level is close to the desired 1:1 ratio. Because of the non-uniform mixing, certain portions of the mixture might have a molar ratio exceeding the stoichiometric ratio of 1:1. In such instances, certain unintended reactions (e.g. breakpoint type of chlorine chemistry) can occur. This will lead to the resultant monochloramine concentration being significantly less than the stoichiometric concentration, based upon the calculation using the overall molar ratio. Other factors, such as pH variation in the micro environment, could also affect the final chemical composition of the chloramination process. In this study, the effect of mixing was studied by conducting breakpoint chlorination experiments under different levels of mixing, represented by the average velocity gradient, G in s −1 . A unique way of plotting breakpoint chlorination curve was utilized to analyze the data, which allowed a clear delineation if the monochloramine formation was according to the stoichiometry. A quantitative comparison between experimental data and stoichiometry can clearly indicate the impact of non-uniform mixing. The experimental data showed that as the G value increased from 35 to 500 s −1 , the monochloramine formation increased from 75 to 87 percent of the stoichiometric value. The location of the breakpoint, correspondingly, increased from a molar ratio of 1.25 to 1.75. Comparison of 40 s −1 (50 rpm) and 300 s −1 (200 rpm) experimental data was conducted and a breakpoint curve was plotted imposing one over the other. It has been observed from previous literature that in ideal conditions, breakpoint occurs at chlorine to ammonia nitrogen molar ratio of 1.5:1, and the peak of monochloramine is expected at a molar ratio of 1:1. Hence, breakpoint curve was plotted at mixing speed of 50 and 200 rpm, indicating free chlorine, monochloramine, dichloramine, trichloramine, and total chlorine concentration at contact time of 45 minutes. Few studies were found in literature on mixing effects in chloramination. Data from a previous study was re-analyzed and compared with the current study, and a similar trend was observed. In another case study, the design G value for a modern water treatment plant in metropolitan Boston was found to be 800 s −1 , which was higher than the maximum G value used in this study (500 s −1 ), and is likely to be more than sufficient. In conclusion, when chlorine and ammonia are combined to produce monochloramine, the degree of mixing indeed has significant impact on the performance of the chloramination process, and therefore must be a critical consideration in its design and operation.