A common problem faced by modern mobile-device platforms is that thirdparty applications in the marketplace may leak private information without notifying users. Existing approaches adopted by these platforms provide little information on what applications will do with the private information, failing to effectively assist users in deciding whether to install applications and in controlling their privacy. To address this problem, we propose a transparent privacy control approach, where an automatic static analysis reveals to the user how private information is used inside an application. This flow information provides users with better insights, enabling them to determine when to use anonymized instead of real information, or to force script termination when scripts access private information. To further reduce the user burden in controlling privacy, our approach provides a default setting based on an extended information flow analysis that tracks whether private information is obscured before escaping through output channels. We built our approach into TouchDevelop, a novel application-creation environment that allows users to write application scripts on mobile devices, share them in a web bazaar, and install scripts published by other users. To evaluate our approach, we plan to study a portion of published scripts in order to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of information flow analysis. We also plan to carry out a user survey to evaluate the usability of our privacy control and guide our future design.


This study reports a quasi-experiment (N= 374) that examined an underlying mechanism through which narratives can facilitate personalization of risk. The participants were exposed to one of four entertainment clips depicting an at-risk character who either tested positive or negative for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). As predicted, reduction of perceived social distance to an at-risk character resulted in a convergence of perceived self- and character-risk. More importantly, the convergence of risk was driven by an increased perception of self-risk, as opposed to a reduction of character-risk. The observed pattern of risk convergence was much more pronounced in the negative rather than the positive STD test narratives. Furthermore, narrative engagement through identification, parasocial interaction, and perceived realism led to a greater degree of risk convergence, which was mediated by reduction in perceived social distance. The order in which the subjects estimated self- and character-risk did not influence the perceptual gap.


Higher plants utilise developmental plasticity to adapt to changes in the environment, especially to variations in light. Much of this change in growth and development involves the light-mediated regulation of multiple hormone pathways. However, despite considerable progress towards understanding the molecular processes controlling light signalling and hormone activity, regulatory mechanisms preventing exaggerated plant developmental responses are not well understood. Here I report that the PPD regulatory complex has a crucial role in limiting developmental plasticity in Arabidopsis. Reductions in PPD or KIX8/9 gene expression resulted in; tolerance to ABA inhibition of seed germination, hypocotyl elongation, increases in stomata on hypocotyls, cambial cell proliferation and seed weight, and delayed flowering. Transcript profiling and analyses of hormone responses and genetic interactions established PPD modulates developmental plasticity, mainly by a combination of transcriptional activation and repression of genes controlling CRY/PHY light signalling and ABA, auxin, brassinosteroid, cytokinin and gibberellin homeostasis.


This article generalizes Schwinger's mechanism for particles production in the arbitrary finite field volume. McLerran-Venugopolan(MV) model and iterative solution of DGLAP equation in the double leading log approximation for small x gluon distribution function were used to derive the new formula for initial chromofield energy density. This initial chromofield energy is distributed among color neutral clusters or strings of different length. This strings are stretched by receding nucleus. From the proposed mechanism of string fragmentation or color field decay based on exact solution of Dirac equation in the different finite volume, the new formulae for esimated baryon kinetic energy loss and rapidity spectrum of produced partons were derived.


A soundslide documentary on my mother who was a child during the Biafran War. The documentary was her senior thesis at Belmont University.


Abstract. Spatial relations are essential for knowledge representation, yet the scope of a corpus of geospatial terms, such as exists for RDF or OWL, is not yet recognized. A vocabulary of geospatial relations may align with several existing models within RDF and OWL; among which are relation primitives as defined in upper ontology; regional topological relations such as those expressed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GeoSPARQL standard; and mereotopologic relations as are researched in related semantic literature. One semantic area that is theorized among linguists, but not well defined within formal logic are verb-preposition combinations. The objective of this study in-progress is to 1. Define a corpus of spatial relation terms, 2. Place such relation classes within a framework of existing semantic axioms, and 3. To identify the types of spatial relation terms that need more research. To understand and enrich the vocabulary of geospatial feature properties for semantic technology, English language spatial relation predicates were analysed in three standard topographic feature glossaries. Five major classes of spatial relation predicates were identified from the analysis. First, part-whole relations are modelled throughout semantic and linked-data networks. The remaining classes are spatially descriptive and geometric relations; physical processes happening in space; human use of geographic space, such as land use; and spatial preposition spatial relations. These categories are commonly found in the 'real world' and support environmental science based on digital topographical mapping. The hypothesis is that a broad set of spatial relation expressions, form the basis for expanding the range of possible queries for topographical data and mapping applications.


Elemental sulfur residue on grape berries was determined for a Pinot noir vineyard in the Carneros region and a Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard in the Oakville area of Napa County, California. Each vineyard was divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant received two or three wettable sulfur applications prior to bloom, followed by scheduled applications of either elemental sulfur dust, triadimefon (Bayleton), fenarimol (Rubigan), or myclobutanil (Rally) according to label instructions. Residual elemental sulfur levels were determined at two-week intervals (5 sample dates) from the day after final sulfur dusting until harvest using an inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometer (ICP). Immediately after the final dusting, residual sulfur levels were 7.9 and 13.6 µg/g berry weight and decreased rapidly to 3.0 and 2.3 µg/g berry weight for the remainder of the season for Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot noir, respectively. Residues for grape berries which were not dusted were significantly less ( p = 0.05, Duncan's multiple range test) and ranged from 2.5 to 0.2 and 3.1 to 0.5 µg/g berry weight for Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot noir, respectively, for most sample dates. In comparison, 16 other vineyard blocks with differing final sulfur dust applications were sampled at harvest. Residual sulfur levels ranged from 0.9 to 2.7 µg/g berry weight.


Relationships between phosphorus cycling and redox conditions in the sediments of eutrophic Missisquoi Bay, Lake Champlain were investigated over diel and seasonal timescales in three consecutive summers (2007–2009), one of which (2007) did not experience a cyanobacteria bloom for the first time in a decade. Sediment extraction data showed that reactive phosphorus (RP) is strongly correlated to reactive iron (RFe), suggesting that the mobility of a large portion (30–40%) of the total sediment phosphorus pool is associated with nanocrystalline iron oxide minerals that may be influenced by redox conditions. RP concentrations in the top sediments increased throughout 2007 but decreased throughout 2008; calculations indicate that ~ 1 mm of sediment could account for the increased total dissolved phosphorus observed in overlying water. Redox conditions were measured over 24 h in situ within sediment cores and at the sediment–water interface (SWI) at different stages of each season using voltammetry. SWI redox conditions became progressively more reduced across the season and overnight and were significantly more reducing in the presence of a bloom. Soluble RP and cyanobacteria cell counts measured at five depths through the water column strongly correlated with the most reducing conditions at the SWI. Observations suggest that redox controlled nutrient flux between the sediments and the water column is variable over diel and seasonal cycles. Cyanobacteria blooms most significantly affect SWI redox conditions, suggesting that blooms may enhance RP flux from sediments, setting up a positive feedback loop that can propagate and sustain blooms in shallow freshwater systems.


Nabokov argued that a slight resemblance between one insect and another or between an insect and its environment could not be furthered by the function or purpose it served, leading gradually to mimicry. The subtleties of Nabokov's argument against Darwinian gradualism have been missed by most of his readers. He did not critique Darwinism in the same way that Creationists do. Nabokov did believe that natural selection could explain many adaptations and shifts in the direction of evolution, but he did not think it could explain mimicry. He realized there were other forces at work assisting natural selection, which were especially apparent in the case of "mimicry." Recent work in what is called "structural" and "neutral" evolutionary theory supports Nabokov's views, which seem to have been influenced by teleomechanism, a form of theoretical biology derived from Kantian teleology.


This paper explores the combination of multiple concurrent modalities for conveying emotional information in HCI: temperature, vibration and abstract visual displays. Each modality has been studied individually, but can only convey a limited range of emotions within two-dimensional valence-arousal space. This paper is the first to systematically combine multiple modalities to expand the available affective range. Three studies were conducted: Study 1 measured the emotionality of vibrotactile feedback by itself; Study 2 measured the perceived emotional content of three bimodal combinations: vibrotactile + thermal, vibrotactile + visual and visual + thermal. Study 3 then combined all three modalities. Results show that combining modalities increases the available range of emotional states, particularly in the problematic top-right and bottom-left quadrants of the dimensional model. We also provide a novel lookup resource for designers to identify stimuli to convey a range of emotions


Abstract. The influence of glassy states and highly viscous solution phases on the timescale of aerosol particle equilibration with water vapour is examined. In particular, the kinetics of mass transfer of water between the condensed and gas phases has been studied for sucrose solution droplets under conditions above and below the glass transition relative humidity (RH). Above the glass transition, sucrose droplets are shown to equilibrate on a timescale comparable to the change in RH. Below the glass transition, the timescale for mass transfer is shown to be extremely slow, with particles remaining in a state of disequilibrium even after timescales of more than 10 000 s. A phenomenological approach for quantifying the time response of particle size is used to illustrate the influence of the glassy aerosol state on the kinetics of mass transfer of water: the time is estimated for the droplet to reach the halfway point from an initial state towards a disequilibrium state at which the rate of size change decreases below 1 nm every 10 000 s. This half-time increases above 1000 s once the particle can be assumed to have formed a glass. The measurements are shown to be consistent with kinetic simulations of the slow diffusion of water within the particle bulk. When increasing the RH from below to above the glass transition, a particle can return to equilibrium with the gas phase on a timescale of 10's to 100's of seconds, once again forming a solution droplet. This is considerably shorter than the timescale for the size change of the particle when glassy and suggests that the dissolution of the glassy core can proceed rapidly, at least at room temperature. Similar behaviour in the slowing of the mass transfer rate below the glass transition RH is observed for binary aqueous raffinose solution droplets. Mixed component droplets of sucrose/sodium chloride/water also show slow equilibration at low RH, illustrating the importance of understanding the role of the bulk solution viscosity on the rate of mass transfer with the gas phase, even under conditions that may not lead to the formation of a glass.


Selenoproteins are an elite group of proteins containing a rare amino acid, selenocysteine (Sec), encoded by the codon, UGA. In eukaryotes, incorporation of Sec requires a Sec insertion sequence (SECIS) element, a stem–loop structure located in the 3'-untranslated regions of selenoprotein mRNAs. Here we report identification of a noncanonical form of SECIS element in Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora canine, single-celled apicomplexan parasites of humans and domestic animals. This SECIS has a GGGA sequence in the SBP2-binding site in place of AUGA previously considered invariant. Using a combination of computational and molecular techniques, we show that Toxoplasma and Neospora possess both canonical and noncanonical SECIS elements. The GGGA-type SECIS element supported Sec insertion in mammalian HEK 293 and NIH 3T3 cells and did so more efficiently than the natural mammalian SECIS elements tested. In addition, mammalian type I and type II SECIS elements mutated into the GGGA forms were functional but manifested decreased Sec insertion efficiency. We carried out computational searches for both AUGA and GGGA forms of SECIS elements in Toxoplasma and detected five selenoprotein genes, including one coding for a previously undescribed selenoprotein, designated SelQ, and two containing the GGGA form of the SECIS element. In contrast, the GGGA-type SECIS elements were not detected in mammals and nematodes. As a practical outcome of the study, we developed pSelExpress1, a vector for convenient expression of selenoproteins in mammalian cells. It contains an SBP2 gene and the most efficient tested SECIS element: an AUGA mutant of the GGGA-type Toxoplasma SelT structure.


How do infants learn so rapidly and with little apparent effort? In 1996, Saffran, Aslin, and Newport reported that 8-month-old human infants could learn the underlying temporal structure of a stream of speech syllables after only 2 min of passive listening. This demonstration of what was called statistical learning, involving no instruction, reinforcement, or feedback, led to dozens of confirmations of this powerful mechanism of implicit learning in a variety of modalities, domains, and species. These findings reveal that infants are not nearly as dependent on explicit forms of instruction as we might have assumed from studies of learning in which children or adults are taught facts such as math or problem solving skills. Instead, at least in some domains, infants soak up the information around them by mere exposure. Learning and development in these domains thus appear to occur automatically and with little active involvement by an instructor (parent or teacher). The details of this statistical learning mechanism are discussed, including how exposure to specific types of information can, under some circumstances, generalize to never-before-observed information, thereby enabling transfer of learning. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1373. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1373 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.


The levels of rot in approximately 2,000 samples of winegrapes harvested from the Central Valley, California, in 2005 and 2006 were determined by hand sorting of berries and by quantitative immunoassays for Botrytis antigens in the expressed juice. The levels of Botrytis were compared with laccase activities in the same juice samples. A Botrytis-genus-specific, monoclonal antibody (BC-12.CA4) was used to quantify Botrytis by a plate-trapped antigen ELISA and by a new immunochromatographic assay (lateral flow device). Standards for immunoassays on juice samples were prepared from hand-picked, carefully sorted, naturally infected and uninfected Chardonnay grapes. Percentage rot was expressed on the basis of weight and number of infected berries. Use of alternate antigen standards including extracts from freeze-dried mycelium from cultures of Botrytis grown on grape juice and dilutions of a specific Botrytis dessert wine were investigated. Laccase activities were determined by an SO2-independent, high-throughput method. There was poor correlation between hand-sort estimates of rot from machine-harvested grapes graded at the test stands at wineries with immunoassays for Botrytis antigens and tests for laccase activities in juice samples. However, better correlation (R2 = 0.7217) was found between laccase and levels of Botrytis-rot in juice samples from selected, carefully sorted hand-picked berries and immunoassays. The level and frequency of laccase in juice samples increased notably toward the end of the harvest season. In 2005 laccase was most commonly found in juice from Chardonnay, Syrah, and Zinfandel grapes and in 2006 in juice from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.


The presence of pore fluid in rock affects both the elastic and inelastic deformation processes, yet laboratory testing is typically performed on dry material even though in situ the rock is often saturated. Techniques were developed for testing fluid‐saturated porous rock under the limiting conditions of drained, undrained, and unjacketed response. Confined compression experiments, both conventional triaxial and plane strain, were performed on water‐saturated Berea sandstone to investigate poroelastic and inelastic behavior. Measured drained response was used to calibrate an elasto‐plastic constitutive model that predicts undrained inelastic deformation. The experimental data show good agreement with the model: dilatant hardening in undrained triaxial and plane strain compression tests under constant mean stress was predicted and observed.


This collection of articles represents the output of the first stage of research on the history of the region of Silesia, conducted under the patronage of the European Science Foundation as part of the project 'Cuius regio. An analysis of the cohesive and disruptive forces determining the attachment and commitment of (groups of) persons to and cohesion within regions'. Silesia, one of the regions analyzed in the project, is an example of a borderland territory whose historical development was substantially influenced by various cultural traditions. The primary goal of the research on the Silesian history was to determine the factors that led to disintegration and subsequent re-creation of the region, for there are arguments indicating that the history of the local community has been – and continues to be – the product of a dynamic process whose course was not determined solely by the factor of its constant existence within the limits demarcated within the 16th-century Kingdom of Bohemia. We are hopeful that the book will inspire a discussion in the academic community on a new dimension of the social history of Silesia, on issues connected with the development of Europe's regions and on universal mechanisms present in the formation of regional social cohesion.


Zirconium
oxide (zirconia, ZrO2) is one of the essential structural ceramics
for industrial applications due to its superb strength and fracture toughness.
ZrO2 has three main polymorphs: cubic, tetragonal, and monoclinic
phase, depending on temperature, type, and concentration of dopants. Stabilized
zirconia with metastable tetragonal phase can transform into monoclinic phase
with ~ 4% volume expansion under an applied external stress. The
tetragonal-to-monoclinic transformation can hinder crack propagations by
generating a compressive stress field near crack field, thereby enhancing
fracture toughness. In addition, other deformation mechanisms such as
dislocation activities, crack deflection, and ferroelastic domain switching can
further enhance its deformability. Bulk ZrO2 is typically prepared
by sintering at high temperatures over a long period of time. Recently,
field-assisted sintering techniques such as flash sintering and spark plasma
sintering have been applied to effectively sinter ZrO2. These
techniques can significantly decrease sintering temperature and time, and more
importantly introduce a large number of defects in the sintered fine grains.

The
miniaturization of sample dimension can alter the mechanical properties of
materials by increasing the surface-to-volume ratio and decreasing the
likelihood of retaining process-induced flaws. The knowledge of mechanical
properties of ZrO2 at micro and nanoscale is critical in that
superelasticity and shape memory effect of ZrO2 can be utilized for
applications of actuation, energy-damping, and energy-harvesting at small scale.
Here, we performed in-situ microcompression tests at various
temperatures inside a scanning electron microscope to examine and compare the mechanical
properties of ZrO2 prepared by flash sintering, spark plasma
sintering, plasma spray, and thermal spray. Detailed microstructural analyses
were conducted by transmission electron microscopy. The unique microstructures
in ZrO2 prepared by field-assisted sintering largely improved their
plasticity. Temperature and processing technique-dependent underlying
deformation mechanisms and fracture behavior of ZrO2 are discussed.


This book offers reflections on how liberation might be experienced by clients as a result of the therapeutic relationship. It explores how power and resistance might be most effectively and ethically understood and utilised in clinical practice with survivors of trauma.

Power, Resistance and Liberation in Therapy with Survivors of Trauma draws together narrative therapy, Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) and liberation psychology approaches. It critically reviews each approach and demonstrates what each contributes to the other as well as how to draw them together in a coherent way. The book presents:

•an original take on CMM through the lenses of power and resistance
•a new way of thinking about resistance in life and therapy, using the metaphor of creativity
•numerous case examples to support strong theory-practice links.
Through the exploration of power, resistance and liberation in therapy, this book presents innovative ways of conceptualising these issues. As such it will be of interest to anyone in the mental health fields of therapy, counselling, social work or critical psychology, regardless of their preferred model. It will also appeal to those interested in a socio-political contextual analysis of complex human experience.

Introducing the Introduction. Introduction. Part I: Therapy, Power, Resistance and Trauma. Therapy and Social Context. Power. Resistance. Understanding Trauma with Respect to Power and Resistance. Part II: Liberation and Therapy: Theory. Liberation Psychology: An Overview. Liberation Psychology: Critical Reflection. Systemic and Narrative Approaches to Liberation. Communication and Constructionist Approaches to Liberation. Drawing the Theory Together. Part III: Liberation and Therapy: Practice. Ways of Working with Power, Resistance and Liberation. The Recovery of Historical Memory. De-ideologising Everyday Experience. Utilising the People's Virtues. Drawing the Practices Together. Part IV: Final Reflections on Theory and Practice. Resistance as Creativity. Therapy that Breaks the Heart. Appendix.


Pen and paper puzzles like Sudoku, Futoshiki and Star Battle are hugely popular. Solving such puzzles can be a trivial task for modern AI systems. However, most AI systems solve problems using a form of backtracking, while people try to avoid backtracking as much as possible. This means that existing AI systems do not output explanations about their reasoning that are meaningful to people. We present Demystify, a tool which allows puzzles to be expressed in a high-level constraint programming language and uses MUSes to allow us to produce descriptions of steps in the puzzle solving. We give several improvements to the existing techniques for solving puzzles with MUSes, which allow us to solve a range of significantly more complex puzzles and give higher quality explanations. We demonstrate the effectiveness and generality of Demystify by comparing its results to documented strategies for solving a range of pen and paper puzzles by hand, showing that our technique can find many of the same explanations.


This paper identifies separate and unique pathways to profits among small businesses in South Africa that are exposed to marketing or finance training in a randomized control study. The marketing group achieves greater profits by adopting a growth focus on higher sales, greater investments in stock and materials, and hiring more employees. The finance group achieves similar profit gains but through an efficiency focus on lower costs. Both groups show significantly higher adoption of business practices related to their respective training program. Consistent with a growth focus, marketing/sales skills are significantly more beneficial to firm owners who ex ante have less exposure to different business contexts. In contrast and in line with an efficiency focus, entrepreneurs who have been running more established businesses prior to training benefit significantly more from finance/accounting skills.


This paper provides an overview of the characteristics of a phenothiazine-mylar dosimeter which can be used as an effective solar UVA exposure assessment tool. This dosimeter is sensitive to UVA wavelengths (315–400 nm); its performance has been characterized in a series of tests such as (a) UVA exposure response (dose-response), (b) temperature stability of the response, (c) impact of long term storage, and (d) angular response. There is no effect of long term storage post-exposure and no effect of temperature up to 30 °C. For angles up to 70°, the cosine error of the normalized UVA is less than approximately 0.1. These characterizations have confirmed the reliability and reproducibility of a phenothiazine-mylar combined dosimeter as an effective solar UVA exposure tool for field-based studies of the UVA exposures to population groups.


Wnt signaling ensures proper chromosome segregation and genomic stability in proliferating embryonic stem cells. Genomic instability without Wnt Unlike most cells in the body, embryonic stem cells renew themselves and can differentiate into almost any cell type. Although embryonic stem cells have been proposed to treat a myriad of human diseases, their use is fraught with the risk of the formation of noncancerous tumors called teratomas. The Wnt family of ligands promotes both the self-renewal and differentiation of embryonic stem cells. Augustin et al. either genetically ablated or overexpressed Evi, a protein that transports Wnts through the secretory pathway, in mouse embryonic stem cells, which would be expected to block or enhance the secretion of any of the Wnt family of ligands produced by these cells. Reducing Wnt secretion reduced the incidence of teratoma formation by Evi-deficient embryonic stem cells injected into mice. Furthermore, Wnt secretion ensured that proliferating embryonic stem cells segregated chromosomes properly and did not undergo apoptosis. Thus, enhancing Wnt signaling may prevent genomic instability in embryonic stem cells, which could help advance therapeutic application of stem cells. Wnt signaling plays an important role in the self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells. The secretion of Wnt ligands requires Evi (also known as Wls). Genetically ablating Evi provides an experimental approach to studying the consequence of depleting all redundant Wnt proteins, and overexpressing Evi enables a nonspecific means of increasing Wnt signaling. We generated Evi-deficient and Evi-overexpressing mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to analyze the role of autocrine Wnt production in self-renewal and differentiation. Self-renewal was reduced in Evi-deficient ESCs and increased in Evi-overexpressing ESCs in the absence of leukemia inhibitory factor, which supports the self-renewal of ESCs. The differentiation of ESCs into cardiomyocytes was enhanced when Evi was overexpressed and teratoma formation and growth of Evi-deficient ESCs in vivo were impaired, indicating that autocrine Wnt ligands were necessary for ESC differentiation and survival. ESCs lacking autocrine Wnt signaling had mitotic defects and showed genomic instability. Together, our study demonstrates that autocrine Wnt secretion is important for the survival, chromosomal stability, differentiation, and tumorigenic potential of ESCs.


This paper specifically concerns an aspect of the central place given to dialogue in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Though understanding is presented as the unquestioned achievement of dialogue, there is scant attention to a prior question: 'What draws us into dialogue in the first place?' Gadamer's treatment of dialogical understanding as an event tends to obscure the necessary pre-conditions of its emergence. He correctly assumes that texts, artworks, literature speaks directly to us, even disarm us by their address. Yet, what disposes us to listen? Even if we hear nothing in a dialogical claim, what impels us to listen again or more closely to what might be being said? The paper attempts to answer this question and throw light on this, an obscurer aspect of Gadamer's thinking. We will argue in the vein of philosophical hermeneutics and seek an answer to the question its approach to dialogical understanding supposes but seems neither to ask nor answer. Our central argument is that within the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, the importance of dialogical exchange lies not in what is transmitted between interlocutors but in the respective hermeneutic effects of that exchange. In dialogue there is no literal ex-change of 'hermeneutic content' between one speaker and another. We shall argue that it is not what is literally exchanged that matters but, rather, what participation in that exchange can unexpectedly bring about within the understanding of each speaker and often contrary to their willing and doing.


We present a near-infrared (NIR) photometric variability study of the TMR-1 system, a Class I protobinary located in the Taurus molecular cloud. Our aim is to confirm NIR variability for the candidate protoplanet, TMR-1C, located at a separation of about 10 �� (∼1000 AU) from the protobinary. We conducted a photometric monitoring campaign between October 2011 and January 2012 using the CFHT/WIRCam imager. We were able to obtain 44 epochs of observations in each of the H and Ks filters, resulting in high-quality photometry with uncertainties of less than one-tenth of a magnitude. The shortest time difference between two epochs is ∼14 min, and the longest is ∼4 months. Based on the final accuracy of our observations, we do not find any strong evidence of short-term NIR variability at amplitudes of ≥0.15–0.2 mag for TMR-1C or TMR-1AB. Our present observations, however, have reconfirmed the large-amplitude long-term variations in the NIR emission for TMR-1C, which were observed between 1998 and 2002, and have also shown that no particular correlation exists between the brightness and the color changes. The object TMR-1C became brighter in the H band by ∼1.8 mag between 1998 and 2002, and then fainter again by ∼0.7 mag between 2002 and 2011. In contrast, TMR-1C became continually brighter in the Ks band in the period between 1998 and 2011. The (H − Ks) color for TMR-1C shows large variations, from a red value of 1.3 ± 0.07 and 1.6 ± 0.05 mag in 1998 and 2000, to a much bluer color of –0.1 ± 0.5 mag in 2002, and then again a red color of 1.1 ± 0.08 mag in 2011. The difference in the variability trends observed in the H and Ks bands suggests the presence of more than one origin for the observed variations. The observed variability from 1998 to 2011 suggests that TMR-1C becomes fainter when it gets redder, as expected from variable extinction, while the brightening observed in the Ks band could be due to physical variations in the inner disk structure of TMR-1C. We have argued in favor of TMR-1C being a young stellar object (YSO), rather than a faint background star passing behind some foreground material. There may exist short-term NIR variations at an amplitude level lower than our detection limit (∼0.2 mag), which would be consistent with the YSO hypothesis. If the observed long-term variability is due to foreground extinction, then we would expect simultaneous brightening/dimming in the H and Ks bands, which we do not find to be the case. Variable foreground extinction is also expected to occur over a large spatial scale; we monitored several other objects within 4 � × 4 � of the TMR-1 system, and found only two objects which show long-term variations, indicating that this is not a large-scale effect. The NIR colors for TMR-1C obtained using the high-precision photometry from 1998, 2000, and 2011 observations are similar to the protostars in Taurus, suggesting that it could be a faint dusty Class I source. This object is thus a strong candidate YSO, but final confirmation as a protoplanet remains elusive and requires further investigation. Our study has also revealed two new variable sources in the vicinity of TMR-1AB that show long-term variations of ∼1–2 mag in the NIR colors between 2002 and 2011. The proper motions measured for TMR-1AB and TMR-1C are –40,+58 mas/yr and –22,+ 5m as/yr, respectively, with an uncertainty of ∼31 mas/yr. A larger baseline of 20 years or more is required to confidently confirm the physical association of TMR-1AB and C.


: Many patients with low back pain demonstrate pelvic symptomatology attributable to lower sacral nerve root compression. Lower sacral nerve root compression has been identified as a cause of pelvic pain and pelvic organ dysfunction. Pelvic symptomatology secondary to lower sacral nerve root compression is given. Lower sacral nerve root compression is most commonly the result of lumbosacral disc lesion. A case of low back pain accompanied with pelvic symptomatology is presented along with its response to distractive manipulation. chiropractic treatment may be an effective means of treating pelvic disorders secondary to lower sacral nerve root compression provided that the underlying disc lesion is dealt with, although further study is needed.


Submerged Membrane Bioreactor Systems convince clients all around the world with their outstanding effluent quality (outflow is nearly free of all bacteria and germs), the compact design and the opportunity to realize the waste-water-treatment at very limited space. One of the latest developments in the MBR market is a technique with rotating flat-sheet-ultrafiltration-membranes − a unique design which focuses especially on reducing energy and overall operation costs. This system − called VacuumRotationMembrane − consists of trapezoidal membrane plates which are arranged around a hollow shaft. Within this hollow shaft the membrane scouring system is located. The scouring air demand (flow) and the introduction depth of the air is significantly reduced, the key to realize economic MBR-systems. This system has meanwhile been implemented in more than fifty installations world-wide, both in field of municipal waste-water-treatment and various industrial applications, e. g. in meat processing, textile- and beverage-industry, mostly with downstream recycling of the treated waste-water.

One of the biggest installations so far is the municipal waste-water-treatment plant in Hutthurm, a small city in the eastern part of Bavaria. Since mid of 2008 there are 3 membrane-units with nearly 10.000 m² membrane area installed, treating max. throughputs of 220 m³ per hour at minimum water temperatures around 5 °C. As there are big breweries connected to the sewer-system the waste-water-composition is characterized by big variations especially between workdays and weekends. Therefore the design and operation requires special attendance. This special characteristic implicates impacts both on the biological system and the membrane filtration, what leads to temporary deterioration of the biological- and in follow also the membrane-performance. Therefore intensive research- and optimisation time followed after the initial start-up of the system. During this period the quality of the biological system was monitored continuously and the significant correlation between deterioration of the membrane performance and the upcoming of increased SMP's (soluble microbial products) in the supernatant of the mixed liquor was proven. Actually the special meaning of Ca/Na-ratio in the activated sludge, it's variation during different inflow scenarios and the consequences for the membrane-performance is under investigation. First results will be available end of this year.

Since mid of 2009 a waste-water-recycling-plant is installed at a shopping-mall in Jakarta/Indonesia. This plant treats the waste-water of the shopping-complex and a decicated Hyatt-Hotel and produces service-water for the cooling of the air-con-towers. The two membrane units with a total membrane-area of nearly 4.500 m² membrane area are treating the waste-water, up to a quality which is free of particles, bacteria and nearly all viruses. The plant is dimensioned for daily throughput of 2.200 m³. During the meanwhile more than two years of operation-time the plant shows continuously perfect effluent-quality and simple operation. Beside this plant, there are another four MBR-plants established in Indonesia (municipal and industrial), each plant serving both waste-water-treatment and service-water for different purposes.

Nearly all worldwide MBR-installations show, that the special focus and attendance on the biological-process and the overall plant-concept is extremely important for the successful realization of MBR-applications. If the complete process will not be paid deep attention during design, the consequence is always a malfunction of the membranes and therefore of the complete system. Where conventional-treatments systems 'react' only with worse effluent quality, MBR-systems can fail completely. Thus the consideration of the complete and exact plant-lay-out is a matter of extreme importance and must be supported either by the membrane-manufacturer or the project-consultant. During the conference the experience of mentioned plants in this matter will be given.


The recent resurgence in the effectiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques for image, text and signal processing has come with a growing recognition that these techniques are "inscrutable": they can be hard for users to trust because they lack effective means of generating explanations for their outputs. Consequently, there is currently a great deal of research and development addressing this problem, producing a sizeable number of proposed explanation techniques for AI/ML approaches operating on a variety of data modalities. However, a problem that has received less attention is: what modality of explanation to choose for a particular user and task? For example, many techniques attempt to produce visualizations of the workings of an ML model, e.g., so-called "saliency maps" for a deep neural network, but there may be multiple reasons why this mode of explanation might not be appropriate for a user, including: (i) they may be operating at the edge of the network with a device that is not suited to receiving or displaying such a visualization; (ii) it may not be appropriate for security reasons to send them a visualization derived from the source imagery (e.g., if the location of the camera system is sensitive); (iii) this kind of explanation may be "too low level" for that user's needs – they may require something more "causal", for example. One approach that may address all three of these example issues would be to map the explanation from a visualization to a textual rationalization. In this paper we explore this issue of generating explanations in a range of modalities in the context of AI/ML services that operate on multisensor data and show that a "grammar-based" approach that separates atomic explanation-generation and communication actions offers sufficient scope and flexibility to address a set of mission scenarios.


The crises of faith that fractured Reformation Europe also caused crises of individual and collective identity. Structures of feeling as well as structures of belief were transformed; there was a reformation of social emotions as well as a Reformation of faith. As Steven Mullaney shows in The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare, Elizabethan popular drama played a significant role in confronting the uncertainties and unresolved traumas of Elizabethan Protestant England. Shakespeare and his contemporaries-audiences as well as playwrights - reshaped popular drama into a new form of embodied social, critical, and affective thought. Examining a variety of works, from revenge plays to Shakespeare's first history tetralogy and beyond, Mullaney explores how post-Reformation drama not only exposed these faultlines of society on stage but also provoked playgoers in the audience to acknowledge all the differences they shared with one another. He demonstrates that our most lasting works of culture remain powerful largely because of their deep roots in the emotional landscape of their times.


This report discusses the fiscal impacts of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit's (DARTs) transit-oriented development. In 2005, the University of North Texas Center for Economic Development and Research prepared a report for DART in which they estimated the total value of new investment completed, underway or planned near DART LRT stations since 1999. Using only those projects reported to the press, they calculated the total value of the transit-oriented development (TOD) at approximately $3.3 billion. These new investments had had, or will have, significant impacts on local property taxes as well as local and state sales taxes. This report presents the preliminary assessment of the annual revenue streams associated with TOD adjacent to DART LRT stations.


Terahertz physics covers one of the least explored but richest regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Designed for independent learning, this is the first textbook to open up this exciting new area to students of science and engineering. Written in a clear and consistent style, the book focusses on an understanding of fundamental physical principles at terahertz frequencies and their applications. Part I outlines the foundations of terahertz science, starting with the mathematical representation of oscillations before exploring terahertz-frequency light, terahertz phenomena in matter and the terahertz interactions between light and matter. Part II covers components of terahertz technology, from sources of terahertz-frequency radiation, through the manipulation of the radiation, to its detection. Part III deals with applications, including time-domain spectroscopy. Highlighting modern developments and concepts, the book is ideal for self-study. It features precise definitions, clear explanations, instructive illustrations, fully worked examples, numerous exercises and a comprehensive glossary.


Crossed Lines (Dir: Sarah Atkinson) is an original fictional interactive film amalgamating multi-linear plots, a multi-screen viewing environment, an inter- active interface and an interactive story navigation form. It has been exhibited at the Electronic Literature Organisation conference at Washington State University, US; the Digital Interactive Media in Arts and Entertainment conference arts show in Athens; The Interrupt arts show in Providence, US; the EuroITV arts show in Belgium and the International Digital Interactive Storytelling conference in Portugal. This essay reflects upon the creative processes of devising, scripting, directing and authoring the interactive film installation in which the viewer is given control over the flow, pace and ordering of the video-based narratives. The entire production process from script-writing to the final installation took place over a four-year period and involved nine principle cast members, numerous crew personnel, technicians, programmers, various cameras, audio recording equip- ment, cutting edge computer processors, reams of cable and a precariously- soldered telephone. The complexities of undertaking and delivering such a project are reflected upon and discussed within this essay from the first-person perspective of the artist herself.


A health information system (HIS) provides the foundation for the generation of good-quality data, and is a major building block of the health system. It integrates collection, processing, reporting and use of information required for improving effectiveness and efficiency of health services through enhancement of management at all levels within the health system. A robust, integrated information system is thus the foundation for building a successful national healthcare delivery system.
This chapter reviews progress towards strengthening the South African HIS in light of the current health sector policy initiatives which impact on the structure and functioning of the HIS. An overview of persistent challenges and a summary of recent developments to address these are presented, as well as SA's vision for the HIS. The chapter concludes with an overview of proposed steps for future HIS strengthening.


: In this experimental study, diamond turning of single crystal 6H-SiC was performed at a cutting speed of 1 m/sec on an ultra precision diamond turning machine (Moore Nanotech 350 UPL) to elucidate the microscopic origin of ductile-regime machining. Distilled water (pH value 7) was used as a preferred coolant during the course of machining in order to improve the tribological performance. A high magnification scanning electron microscope (SEM) (FIB- FEI Quanta 3D FEG) was used to examine the cutting tool. A surface finish of Ra 9.2 nm, better than any previously reported value on SiC was obtained. Also, tremendously high cutting resistance was offered by SiC resulting in the observation of significant wear marks on the cutting tool just after 1 Km of cutting length. It was found out through a DXR Raman microscope that similar to other classical brittle materials (silicon and germanium etc.) an occurrence of brittle-ductile transition is responsible for the ductile-regime machining of 6H-SiC. It has also been demonstrated that the structural phase transformations associated with the diamond turning of brittle materials which is normally considered as a prerequisite to ductile-regime machining, may not well be realized during machining of polycrystalline materials, yet, ductile-regime exploitation is possible.


This article examines how a politics of speed is manifest in a legal context via a detailed ethnography of the French National Court of Asylum (CNDA). It identifies the temporal, spatial, and organizational ordering techniques that characterize asylum appeals in France and discusses the consequences of these techniques for the way in which the appeal process is experienced by legal decision makers and subjects. It reveals adverse impacts of legal quickening on legal quality, in particular through identifying: 'cracks' in the performance of legal roles like lawyer and judge that begin to appear when law is executed rapidly and repetitively; dwindling opportunities to demonstrate and experience respect between parties; and the 'thinning‐out' of legal process, as heuristics rather than deliberation come to dominate legal reasoning. The article contributes to a burgeoning body of socio‐legal literature on law and time by establishing the negative impact of excessive legal quickening on role performance, respect, and legal quality.


Abstract. Accurate snowfall estimates are important for both weather and climate applications. Ground-based weather radars and space-based satellite sensors are often used as viable alternatives to rain gauges to estimate precipitation in this context. In particular, the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) on board CloudSat is proving to be a useful tool to map snowfall globally, in part due to its high sensitivity to light precipitation and its ability to provide near-global vertical structure. CloudSat snowfall estimates play a particularly important role in the high-latitude regions as other ground-based observations become sparse and passive satellite sensors suffer from inherent limitations. In this paper, snowfall estimates from two observing systems – Swerad, the Swedish national weather radar network, and CloudSat – are compared. Swerad offers a well-calibrated data set of precipitation rates with high spatial and temporal resolution, at very high latitudes. The measurements are anchored to rain gauges and provide valuable insights into the usefulness of CloudSat CPR's snowfall estimates in the polar regions. In total, 7.2 × 105 matchups of CloudSat and Swerad observations from 2008 through 2010 were intercompared, covering all but the summer months (June to September). The intercomparison shows encouraging agreement between the two observing systems despite their different sensitivities and user applications. The best agreement is observed when CloudSat passes close to a Swerad station (46–82 km), where the observational conditions for both systems are comparable. Larger disagreements outside this range suggest that both platforms have difficulty with shallow snow but for different reasons. The correlation between Swerad and CloudSat degrades with increasing distance from the nearest Swerad station, as Swerad's sensitivity decreases as a function of distance. Swerad also tends to overshoot low-level precipitating systems further away from the station, leading to an underestimation of snowfall rate and occasionally to missing precipitation altogether. Several statistical metrics – including the probability of detection, false alarm rate, hit rate, and Pierce's skill score – are calculated. The sensitivity of these metrics to the snowfall rate, as well as to the distance from the nearest radar station, are summarised. This highlights the strengths and the limitations of both observing systems at the lower and upper ends of the snowfall distributions as well as the range of uncertainties that can be expected from these systems in high-latitude regions.


Few expressions of popular culture have been shaped as profoundly by the relationship between commercialism and authenticity as country music has. While its apparent realism, sincerity, and frank depictions of everyday life are country's most obvious stylistic hallmarks, Diane Pecknold demonstrates that commercialism has been just as powerful a cultural narrative in its development. Listeners have long been deeply invested in the "business side" of country. When fans complained in the mid-1950s about elite control of the mass media, or when they expressed their gratitude that the Country Music Hall of Fame served as a physical symbol of the industry's power, they engaged directly with the commercial apparatus surrounding country music, not with particular songs or stars. In The Selling Sound , Pecknold explores how country music's commercialism, widely acknowledged but largely unexamined, has affected the way it is produced, the way it is received by fans and critics, and the way it is valued within the American cultural hierarchy.

Pecknold draws on sources as diverse as radio advertising journals, fan magazines, Hollywood films, and interviews with industry insiders. Her sweeping social history encompasses the genre's early days as an adjunct of radio advertising in the 1920s, the friction between Billboard and more genre-oriented trade papers over generating the rankings that shaped radio play lists, the establishment of the Country Music Association, and the influence of rock 'n' roll on the trend toward single-genre radio stations. Tracing the rise of a large and influential network of country fan clubs, Pecknold highlights the significant promotional responsibilities assumed by club organizers until the early 1970s, when many of their tasks were taken over by professional publicists.


BACKGROUND:
Osteoarthritis is a form of arthritis that features the breakdown and eventual loss of the cartilage of one or more joints. Cartilage is a protein substance that serves as a "cushion" between the bones of the joints. Among the over 100 different types of arthritis conditions, osteoarthritis is the most common, affecting over 25 million people in the United States. Osteoarthritis occurs more frequently as we age. Osteoarthritis is abbreviated as OA or referred to as degenerative arthritis or degenerative joint disease (DJD). Osteoarthritis commonly affects the hands, feet, spine, and large weight-bearing joints, such as the hips and knees. Osteoarthritis usually has no known cause and is referred to as primary osteoarthritis. When the cause of the osteoarthritis is known, the condition is referred to as secondary osteoarthritis.
OBJECTIVE:
The main objective of this study is to evaluate the association between the levels of Interleukin-8 and some antioxidant in patients with OA.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
This study was performed during the period from April 2010 to February 2011, and included 50 patients with OA according to the American College of Rheumatology ACR 1990; their age range from 40-60 years with mean age of 46.66 ± 2.83 years. These patients were matched by age and sex to 25 healthy control subjects with the mean age of 48.32 ± 2.92 years. Blood samples were taken from each individual and separated for the estimation of IL-8 and some antioxidants levels using enzyme – liked immunosorbent assay (ElIZA) technique and colorimetric method. The laboratory tests were done in Teaching Laboratories of the Medical City and the Department of Physiological Chemistry / College of Medicine University of Baghdad.
RESULTS:
The level of IL-8 and Ceruloplasmin (CP) in serum of patients with OA was significantly higher than in serum of healthy control while the level of Glutathione (GSH) and S.uric acid in serum of OA patients was significantly higher than healthy control and there is no significant difference in level of serum albumin between the patients and control.
CONCLUSION:
 It is clear from this study that there is a relationship between the levels of IL-8, CP, GSH, and S.uric acid concentrations and OA while there is no relationship between S.albumin concentration and OA disease.


We have developed a middleware framework for workgroup environments that can support distributed software development and a variety of other application domains requiring document management and change management for distributed projects. The framework enables hypermedia based integration of arbitrary legacy and new information resources available via a range of protocols, nor necessarily known in advance to us as the general framework developers not even to the environment instance designers. The repositories in which such information resides may be dispersed across the Internet and/or an organizational intranet. The framework also permits a range of client models for user and tool interaction, and applies an extensible suite of collaboration services, including but not limited to multi-participant workflow and coordination, to their information retrievals and updates. That is, the framework is interposed between clients, services and repositories thus "middleware". We explain how our framework makes it easy to realize a comprehensive collection of workgroup and workflow features we culled from a requirements survey conducted by NASA.


The delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) is a small and relatively obscure fish that has recently risen to become a major focus of environmental concern in California. It was formally abundant in the low-salinity and freshwater habitats of the northeastern San Francisco Estuary, but is now listed as threatened under the Federal and California State Endangered Species Acts. In the decade following the listings scientific understanding has increased substantially, yet several key aspects of its biology and ecological relationships within the highly urbanized estuary remain uncertain. A key area of controversy centers on impacts to delta smelt associated with exporting large volumes of freshwater from the estuary to supply California's significant agricultural and urban water demands. The lack of appropriate data, however, impedes efforts to resolve these issues and develop sound management and restoration alternatives. Delta smelt has an unusual life history strategy relative to many fishes. Some aspects of its biology are similar to other coastal fishes, particularly salmonids. Smelts in the genus, Hypomesus, occur throughout the Pacific Rim, have variable life history strategies, and are able to adapt rapidly to local environments. By comparison, delta smelt has a tiny geographic range being confined to a thin margin of low salinity habitat in the estuary. It primarily lives only a year, has relatively low fecundity, and pelagic larvae; life history attributes that are unusual when compared with many fishes worldwide. A small proportion of delta smelt lives two years. These individuals are relatively highly fecund but are so few in number that their reproductive contribution only may be of benefit to the population after years of extremely poor spawning success and survival. Provisioning of reproductive effort by these older fish may reflect a bet-hedging tactic to insure population persistence. Overall, the population persists by maximizing growth, survival, and reproductive success on an annual basis despite an array of limiting factors that can occur at specific times and locations. Variability in spawning success and larval survival is induced by climate and other environmental and anthropogenic factors that operate between winter and mid-summer. However, spawning microhabitats with egg deposition have not been discovered. Spawning success appears to be timed to lunar periods within a water temperature range of about 15 to 20°C. Longer spawning seasons in cooler years can produce more cohorts and on average higher numbers of adult delta smelt. Cohorts spaced in time have different probabilities of encountering various sources of mortality, including entrainment in freshwater export operations, pulses of toxic pesticides, food shortages and predation by exotic species. Density dependence may provide an upper limit on the numbers of juvenile delta smelt surviving to the adult stage. This may occur during late summer in years when juvenile abundance is high relative to habitat carrying capacity. Factors defining the carrying capacity for juvenile delta smelt are unknown, but may include a shrinking volume of physically suitable habitat combined with a high density of competing planktivorous fishes during late summer and fall. Understanding the relative importance of anthropogenic effects on the population can be improved through better estimates of abundance and measurements of potentially limiting processes. There is little information on losses of larval delta smelt (less than 20 mm fork length, FL) to the export facilities. Use of a population model suggests that water export operations can impact the abundance of post-larval (about 20 mm FL) delta smelt, but these effects may not reflect on adult abundance due to other processes operating in the intervening period. Effects from changes to the estuarine food web by exotic species and toxic chemicals occur but measuring their influence on population abundance is difficult. Although delta smelt recently performed well enough to meet the current restoration criteria, analyses presented here suggest that there is still a high probability that the population will decline in the near future; the most recent abundance index (2004) is the lowest on record. Overall, the limited distribution, short life span and low reproductive capacity, as well as relatively strict physical and feeding requirements, are indications that delta smelt is at risk to catastrophe in a fluctuating environment. Unfortunately, options for avoiding potential declines through management and restoration are currently limited by large gaps in knowledge. Monitoring of spring water temperatures, however, may provide a useful tool for determining when to reduce entrainment in water export facilities. Actions that target carrying capacity may ultimately provide the most benefit, but it is not clear how that can be achieved given the current state of knowledge, and the limited tools available for restoration. Overall, a better understanding of the life history, habitat requirements, and limiting factors will be essential for developing tools for management and restoration. Therefore, given the implications for managing California water supply and the current state of population abundance, a good investment would be to fill the critical data gaps outlined here through a comprehensive program of research.


Trends in Use of High-Dose Vitamin D Supplements Exceeding 1000 or 4000 International Units Daily, 1999-2014 Since 2000, there has been an increase in research on possible health benefits of vitamin D. However, a 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM; now the National Academy of Medicine) report concluded that vitamin D was beneficial for bone health but evidence was insufficient for extraskeletal health.1 Several large-scale trials are ongoing to evaluate the effect of vitamin D supplementation on extraskeletal outcomes.2 The IOM report noted possible harm (eg, hypercalcemia, soft tissue or vascular calcification) for intakes above the tolerable upper limit, which is the highest level of intake likely to pose no risk of adverse effects for most adults.1 The recommended dietary allowance for vitamin D is 600 IU/d for adults 70 years or younger and 800 IU/d for those older than 70 years. The tolerable upper limit is 4000 IU/d; beyond this level risk of toxic effects increases.1 Multivitamins typically contain about 400 IU/d; consumption of 1000 IU or more daily likely indicates intentionally seeking supplemental vitamin D. We assessed trends in daily supplemental vitamin D intake of 1000 IU or more and 4000 IU or more from 1999 through 2014.


The NIH Roadmap is a set of bold initiatives aimed at accelerating medical research. These initiatives will address challenges that no single NIH institute could tackle alone, but the agency as a whole must undertake. The Roadmap identifies the most compelling opportunities in three arenas: new pathways to discovery, research teams of the future, and reengineering the clinical research enterprise.


The music topic of "apotheosis" is examined in the context of Liszt9s artistic biography. While the effect of the final apotheosis is familiar as a standard procedure in his symphonic poems, a prominent
 critical strand suggests that the overwhelming effect of the apotheosis may merely conceal a fundamental vacuity. Nietzsche in particular develops an incisive critique of this kind of monumentality, which
 he links with a historiographic model of what he calls "monumental history." Nietzsche9s historical model is probed against an episode from Liszt9s career, in which the apotheosis topic first entered his
 orchestral music: the Cantata for the inauguration of the Bonn Beethoven monument (1845). In this cantata, Liszt chooses a quotation from Beethoven9s "Archduke" Trio for the apotheosis. In this way, the
 cantata pits a musical kind of monumentality against the physical Beethoven movement, not dissimilar from attempts by Schumann and Jean Paul to theorize nineteenth-century monumentality. Moreover, with
 this "secular sanctus" Liszt forges an artistic link between the dead composer and himself. This episode, by means of which Liszt succeeded in consolidating his fame as Beethoven9s rightful heir, turns
 out to be crucial for his subsequent career when he settled in Weimar as a self-consciously great composer (and wrote his symphonic poems). The events surrounding Liszt9s engagement in the Beethoven monument
 are used as an exemplar of a notion of nineteenth-century musical monumentality that thrives on the interplay between the musical structure, the events amid which the performance took place, and the biographical
 background of the (genius-)composer.


Some researchers have proposed that natural selection has given rise in humans to one or more adaptations for altruistically punishing on behalf of other individuals who have been treated unfairly, even when the punisher has no chance of benefiting via reciprocity or benefits to kin. However, empirical support for the altruistic punishment hypothesis depends on results from experiments that are vulnerable to potentially important experimental artefacts. Here, we searched for evidence of altruistic punishment in an experiment that precluded these artefacts. In so doing, we found that victims of unfairness punished transgressors, whereas witnesses of unfairness did not. Furthermore, witnesses' emotional reactions to unfairness were characterized by envy of the unfair individual's selfish gains rather than by moralistic anger towards the unfair behaviour. In a second experiment run independently in two separate samples, we found that previous evidence for altruistic punishment plausibly resulted from affective forecasting error—that is, limitations on humans' abilities to accurately simulate how they would feel in hypothetical situations. Together, these findings suggest that the case for altruistic punishment in humans—a view that has gained increasing attention in the biological and social sciences—has been overstated.


It is very exceptional that a new disease becomes a true pandemic. Since its emergence in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, has spread to nearly all countries of the world in only a few months. However, in different countries, the COVID-19 epidemic takes variable shapes and forms in how it affects communities. Until now, the insights gained on COVID-19 have been largely dominated by the COVID-19 epidemics and the lockdowns in China, Europe and the USA. But this variety of global trajectories is little described, analysed or understood. In only a few months, an enormous amount of scientific evidence on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 has been uncovered (knowns). But important knowledge gaps remain (unknowns). Learning from the variety of ways the COVID-19 epidemic is unfolding across the globe can potentially contribute to solving the COVID-19 puzzle. This paper tries to make sense of this variability—by exploring the important role that context plays in these different COVID-19 epidemics; by comparing COVID-19 epidemics with other respiratory diseases, including other coronaviruses that circulate continuously; and by highlighting the critical unknowns and uncertainties that remain. These unknowns and uncertainties require a deeper understanding of the variable trajectories of COVID-19. Unravelling them will be important for discerning potential future scenarios, such as the first wave in virgin territories still untouched by COVID-19 and for future waves elsewhere.


In order to design an efficient communication scheme and examine the efficiency of any networked control architecture in smart grid applications, we need to characterize statistically its information source, namely the power grid itself. Investigating the statistical properties of power grids has the immediate benefit of providing a natural simulation platform, producing a large number of power grid test cases with realistic topologies, with scalable network size, and with realistic electrical parameter settings. The second benefit is that one can start analyzing the performance of decentralized control algorithms over information networks whose topology matches that of the underlying power network and use network scientific approaches to determine analytically if these architectures would scale well. With these motivations, in this paper we study both the topological and electrical characteristics of power grid networks based on a number of synthetic and real-world power systems. The most interesting discoveries include: the power grid is sparsely connected with obvious small-world properties; its nodal degree distribution can be well fitted by a mixture distribution coming from the sum of a truncated geometric random variable and an irregular discrete random variable; the power grid has very distinctive graph spectral density and its algebraic connectivity scales as a power function of the network size; the line impedance has a heavy-tailed distribution, which can be captured quite accurately by a clipped double Pareto lognormal distribution. Based on the discoveries mentioned above, we propose an algorithm that generates random topology power grids featuring the same topology and electrical characteristics found from the real data.


A strong, negative empirical correlation exists between arrest rates and reported crime rates. While this relationship has often been interpreted as support for the deterrence hypothesis, it is equally consistent with incapacitation effects, and/or a spurious correlation that would be induced by measurement error in reported crime rates. This paper attempts to discriminate between deterrence, incapacitation, and measurement error as explanations for the empirical relationship between arrest rates and crime. Using a modified version of the techniques of Griliches and Hausman (1986) for dealing with measurement error in panel data, this paper first demonstrates that the presence of measurement error does not appear to explain the observed relationship between arrest rates and crime rates. To differentiate between deterrence and incapacitation, the impact of changes in the arrest rate for one crime on the rate of other crimes is examined. In contrast to the effect of increased arrests for one crime on the commission of that crime, where deterrence and incapacitation are indistinguishable, it is demonstrated that these two forces act in opposite directions when looking across crimes. Incapacitation suggests that an increase in the arrest rate for one crime will reduce all crime rates; deterrence predicts that an increase in the arrest rate for one crime will lead to a rise in other crimes as criminals substitute away from the first crime. Empirically, deterrence appears to be the more important factor, particularly for property crimes.


The nature of organic material and the environment in which it is deposited exert a major influence on the extent to which biomacromolecules are preserved in the fossil record. The role of these factors is explored with a particular focus on the cuticle of arthropods and leaves. Preservation of the original chemistry of arthropod cuticles is favoured by their thickness and degree of sclerotization, and the presence of biominerals. Decay and burial in terrestrial as opposed to marine, and anoxic rather than oxygenated conditions, likewise appear to enhance preservation. The most important factor in the long-term preservation of the chemistry of both animal and plant cuticles, however, is diagenetic alteration to an aliphatic composition. This occurs even in amber, which encapsulates the fossil, eliminating almost all external factors. Some plants contain an original decay-resistant macromolecular aliphatic component but this is not the case in arthropods. It appears that the aliphatic components of many plant as well as animal fossils may be the result of diagenetic polymerization. Selective preservation as a result of decay resistance may explain the initial survival of organic materials in sediments, but in many cases longer-term preservation relies on chemical changes. Selective preservation is only a partial explanation for the origin of kerogen.


In today's competitive environment, customers are the most important asset to any company. Therefore companies should understand what the retention and value drivers are for each customer. An approach that can help consider customers' different value dimensions is the value network. This paper aims to introduce a new approach using data mining techniques for mapping and analyzing customers' value network. Besides, this approach is applied in a real case study. This research contributes to develop and implement a methodology to identify and define network entities of a value network in the context of B2B relationships. To conduct this work, we use a combination of methods and techniques designed to analyze customer data-sets (e.g. RFM and customer migration) and to analyze value network. As a result, this paper develops a new strategic network view of customers and discusses how a company can add value to its customers. The proposed approach provides an opportunity for marketing managers to gain a deep understanding of their business customers, the characteristics and structure of their customers' value network. This paper is the first contribution of its kind to focus exclusively on large data-set analytics to analyze value network. This new approach indicates that future research of value network can further gain the data mining tools. In this case study, we identify the value entities of the network and its value flows in the telecommunication organization using the available data in order to show that it can improve the value in the network by continuous monitoring.


Abstract Even though natural phenomena do not abide to borders, Finland has traditionally been considered an alkali-silica reaction (ASR) free country. This is due to exceptional quality of the mostly course crystalline igneous rocks. However, during the last few years dozens of cases of ASR have been reported. The scope of this study was to study the occurrence of ASR, and to find out the initiation time of the reaction in resent investigations of Finnish concrete structures. ASR is found occurring all over Finland. The reacting aggregates consist of rock types, which are considered relatively stable or low reacting in literature.


This article is about how experiential knowledge that the craftsmen gains in a direct physical interaction with a responding material can be transformed and utilized in the use of digital technologies. The article presents an experiment with a 3D interactive and dynamic system to create ceramics from the human voice and thus how digital technology makes new possibilities in ceramic craft. 3D digital shape is created using simple geometric rules and is output to a 3D printer to make ceramic objects. The system demonstrates the close connection between digital technology and craft practice.


Under the Medicare home health prospective payment system, agencies could make large profits by targeting the 10th therapy visit. The objective of this study is to examine the influence of market competition on home health agencies' targeting the 10th therapy visit. This article uses changes in competition rates within each market over time to examine whether home health agencies were more likely to target the 10th visit under greater competition. No significant associations were found between competition and agencies' targeting behavior on average, but competition effects on targeting behavior were significantly greater for freestanding agencies that were likely to be in relatively financially disadvantageous positions. These findings suggest that competition might increase financially unstable agencies' 10th-visit targeting behavior, potentially leading to unnecessary Medicare spending.


This paper begins with a brief discussion of a class of polynomial Riemann hypotheses, which leads to the consideration of sequences of orthogonal polynomials and 3-term recursions. The discussion further leads to higher order polynomial recursions, including 4-term recursions where orthogonality is lost. Nevertheless, we show that classical results on the nature of zeros of real orthogonal polynomials (i. e., that the zeros of $p_n$ are real and those of $p_{n+1}$ interleave those of $p_n$) may be extended to polynomial sequences satisfying certain 4-term recursions. We identify specific polynomial sequences satisfying higher order recursions that should also satisfy this classical result. As with the 3-term recursions, the 4-term recursions give rise naturally to a linear functional. In the case of 3-term recursions the zeros fall nicely into place when it is known that the functional is positive, but in the case of our 4-term recursions, we show that the functional can be positive even when there are non-real zeros among some of the polynomials. It is interesting, however, that for our 4-term recursions positivity is guaranteed when a certain real parameter $C$ satisfies $C\ge 3$, and this is exactly the condition of our result that guarantees the zeros have the aforementioned interleaving property. We conjecture the condition $C\ge 3$ is also necessary. Next we used a classical determinant criterion to find exactly when the associated linear functional is positive, and we found that the Hankel determinants $\Delta_n$ formed from the sequence of moments of the functional when $C = 3$ give rise to the initial values of the integer sequence $1, 3, 26, 646, 45885, \cdots,$ of Alternating Sign Matrices (ASMs) with vertical symmetry. This spurred an intense interest in these moments, and we give 9 diverse characterizations of this sequence of moments. We then specify these Hankel determinants as Macdonald-type integrals. We also provide an an infinite class of integer sequences, each sequence of which gives the Hankel determinants $\Delta_n$ of the moments. Finally we show that certain $n$-tuples of non-intersecting lattice paths are evaluated by a related class of special Hankel determinants. This class includes the $\Delta_n$. At the same time, ASMs with vertical symmetry can readily be identified with certain $n$-tuples of osculating paths. These two lattice path models appear as a natural bridge from the ASMs with vertical symmetry to Hankel determinants.


Chagan Lake serves as an irrigation storage reservoir for the Qianguo Irrigation Area and an important ecological barrier in western Jilin. The coupled TUFLOW-FV and Aquatic Ecodynamic (AED2) models were used to simulate the hydrodynamic and water quality of Chagan Lake, and propose the water diversion scheme that could improve the water quality to reach Grade III and maintain the ecological water level. The simulation results showed a satisfactory agreement with observations. The total carrying loads of NH 3 -N, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) for Chagan Lake were 1,147.6, 3,686.2 and 100.8 t from May to October. The range of the minimum amounts of water diversion to keep the water quality as Grade III and maintain the maximum ecological water level of 131.5 m for TN, TP were separately [32.60, 49.84, 57.19, 63.70, 70.91], [117.25, 135.26, 168.17, 190.65, 218.32] million m 3 and the corresponding reduction amounts of farmland drainage for TN, TP were separately [4.03, 0, 0, 0, 0], [73.08, 61.88, 50.23, 40.94, 31.98] million m 3 under the rainfall guarantee rates of 10%, 20%, 50%, 75%, 90%, respectively. The simulation results provide a scientific basis for the water quality improvement and ecological water supplement required for the interconnected river–lake system network (IRLSN) in Western Jilin Province.


This article describes methods of sound synthesis based on auditory distortion products, often called combination tones. In 1856, Helmholtz was the first to identify sum and difference tones as products of auditory distortion. Today this phenomenon is well studied in the context of otoacoustic emissions, and the "distortion" is understood as a product of what is termed the cochlear amplifier. These tones have had a rich history in the music of improvisers and drone artists. Until now, the use of distortion tones in technological music has largely been rudimentary and dependent on very high amplitudes in order for the distortion products to be heard by audiences. Discussed here are synthesis methods to render these tones more easily audible and lend them the dynamic properties of traditional acoustic sound, thus making auditory distortion a practical domain for sound synthesis. An adaptation of single-sideband synthesis is particularly effective for capturing the dynamic properties of audio inputs in real time. Also presented is an analytic solution for matching up to four harmonics of a target spectrum. Most interestingly, the spatial imagery produced by these techniques is very distinctive, and over loudspeakers the normal assumptions of spatial hearing do not apply. Audio examples are provided that illustrate the discussion.


This article aims to contribute to debates about the current orthodoxy in relation to involving young people as participants in social research. This article will reflect on the increasing trend of including young people to greater degrees in social science research and questions whether 'user involvement' necessarily benefits the users or produces 'better' research. The dilemmas encountered in establishing and working with a Young People's Advisory Group for a research project on young people's experiences of violence in their intimate relationships are discussed in a way that illustrates the complexity of achieving benefits both for the young people and for the research.


Abstract. Tropospheric ozone profiles have been retrieved from the new ground-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center TROPospheric OZone DIfferential Absorption Lidar (GSFC TROPOZ DIAL) in Greenbelt, MD (38.99° N, 76.84° W, 57 m a.s.l.), from 400 m to 12 km a.g.l. Current atmospheric satellite instruments cannot peer through the optically thick stratospheric ozone layer to remotely sense boundary layer tropospheric ozone. In order to monitor this lower ozone more effectively, the Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet) has been developed, which currently consists of five stations across the US. The GSFC TROPOZ DIAL is based on the DIAL technique, which currently detects two wavelengths, 289 and 299 nm, with multiple receivers. The transmitted wavelengths are generated by focusing the output of a quadrupled Nd:YAG laser beam (266 nm) into a pair of Raman cells, filled with high-pressure hydrogen and deuterium, using helium as buffer gas. With the knowledge of the ozone absorption coefficient at these two wavelengths, the range-resolved number density can be derived. An interesting atmospheric case study involving the stratospheric–tropospheric exchange (STE) of ozone is shown, to emphasize the regional importance of this instrument as well as to assess the validation and calibration of data. There was a low amount of aerosol aloft, and an iterative aerosol correction has been performed on the retrieved data, which resulted in less than a 3 ppb correction to the final ozone concentration. The retrieval yields an uncertainty of 16–19% from 0 to 1.5 km, 10–18% from 1.5 to 3 km, and 11–25% from 3 to 12 km according to the relevant aerosol concentration aloft. There are currently surface ozone measurements hourly and ozonesonde launches occasionally, but this system will be the first to make routine tropospheric ozone profile measurements in the Baltimore–Washington, D.C. area.


This article draws on research into evaluation and on the tacit practices used in an evaluation agency to develop an approach to initiating new evaluators into evaluation planning processes. Using these two sources as a base, this article suggests that it is possible to conceptualize evaluation as a series of knowledge-based practices. These knowledge-based practices form the resources of 'communities of practice', i.e. a group of practising evaluators. In that this conceptualization refers to any job, work or occupation, beginning to be an evaluator, just like beginning any job or work, requires the 'novice' to be inducted or socialized into the 'community of practice'. Understanding evaluation activity in this way should provide the basis for some enabling 'tools' for thinking about an evaluation design. The learning as an outcome of 'process use' is, in fact, the way we might prompt access to a reservoir of experiential and other knowledge in order for evaluations to be carried out by new evaluators, within the normative frame of a group of evaluators. In essence, it involves a process of reflexive questioning during which key procedural dimensions of an evaluation are addressed, leading to an accelerated induction into key aspects of evaluation design. It enables initial planning to occur and an evaluation to 'get off the ground'. RUFDATA is the acronym given to questions which consolidate this reflexive process. To that extent, the approach is a 'meta-evaluative' tool. It outlines RUFDATA as an example of such an approach and demonstrates its use by a 'mini case study'.


In this article, the author argues that the exploration of alternative forms of research representation can result in new possibilities for making meaning in educational research. Narrative inquiry as a methodology has become established as an approach in education but remains contested in many ways. How we come to an understanding of such research findings and in particular how the issues of voice and representation are resolved are subject to much debate. Here, the author proposes that using fictive methods of representation of research, particularly poetry, can have implications for the ways in which meaning is made and therefore the possible meanings that can be made. Further, this article argues that the poetic form allows for the inclusion of many voices and stories in a non-hierarchical manner, making the author's influence explicit without it being dominant. Researchers have argued for poetic representations of research data as a means to evoke the participants' experience whilst making the author's influence explicit; here, it is argued that poetry can be utilized to provide a fuller representation of the research, placing the voice of the participants, the researcher and the literature on an equal level within the whole story of the research project. This article first details narrative inquiry as a methodological approach and its particular application to educational research before discussing the issues surrounding voice and representation. Subsequently, fictive forms of representation are explored as a means of addressing these issues.


A general exchangeable model is introduced to study gene survival in populations whose size changes without density dependence. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of fixation (that is the proportion of one of the types tending to 1 with probability 1) are obtained. These are then applied to the Wright–Fisher model, the Moran model, and conditioned branching-process models. For the Wright–Fisher model it is shown that certain fixation is equivalent to certain extinction of one of the types, but that this is not the case for the Moran model.


The effect of detrimental conditions on bacterial motility in Escherichia coli was investigated. Expression profiling of mutant E. coli strains by DNA arrays and analysis of phenotypic traits demonstrated that motility and low-pH resistance are coordinately regulated. Analysis of transcriptional fusions suggests that bacterial motility in response to an acidic environment is mediated via the control by H-NS of flhDC expression. Moreover, the results suggested that the presence of an extended mRNA 5' end and DNA topology are required in this process. Finally, the presence of a similar regulatory region in several Gram-negative bacteria implies that this mechanism is largely conserved.


Background: Since the development of biotechnologies such as array-based hybridization, massive amounts of gene expression profiles are quickly accumulating. How to utilize these huge amounts of data has become a major challenge in the post-genomic research era. One approach utilizes a Bayesian network, a graphical model that has been applied toward inferring genetic regulatory networks from microarray experiments. However, a user-friendly system that can display and analyze various gene networks from microarray experimental datasets is now needed. Results: In this paper, we have developed a novel system to construct and analyze various gene networks from microarray datasets. Three aspects characterize the major contributions of this paper. (1) Five Bayesian network algorithm codes were developed and written to construct gene networks of the yeast cell cycle using the information from four different microarray datasets. (2) A gene network analyzing system, GNAnalyzer, consisting of several user-friendly interfaces was implemented. GNAnalyzer is capable of running Bayesian algorithms, constructing gene networks, and analyzing the performance of each network algorithm simultaneously. (3) The system utilizes both the powerful processing ability of MatLab and the dynamic interfaces of LabVIEW in a single platform. Conclusions: This is the first time of this kind of design to be applied in bioinformatics. The system is designed to be extendible. Our next goal is to apply this technique to other real biomedical applications, such as human cancer classification and prognostic prediction.


As the world now knows, Barack Obama has made history as our first African-American president. With black-and-white illustrations throughout, this biography is perfect for primary graders looking for a longer, fuller life story than is found in the author's bestselling beginning reader Barack Obama: United States President.


This tutorial paper explores the mechanics of protecting computer-stored information from unauthorized use or modification. It concentrates on those architectural structures-whether hardware or software-that are necessary to support information protection. The paper develops in three main sections. Section I describes desired functions, design principles, and examples of elementary protection and authentication mechanisms. Any reader familiar with computers should find the first section to be reasonably accessible. Section II requires some familiarity with descriptor-based computer architecture. It examines in depth the principles of modern protection architectures and the relation between capability systems and access control list systems, and ends with a brief analysts of protected subsystems and protected objects. The reader who is dismayed by either the prerequisites or the level of detail in the second section may wish to skip to Section III, which reviews the state of the art and current research projects and provides suggestions for further reading.


The popular iconography of insight casts a thinker as he or she uncoils from a Rodin pose and a bulb that lights a world hitherto hidden. By and large, these features of folk mythology capture and guide how psychologists conduct research on insight: Mental processes — some of which may be unconscious — transform an inceptive abstract representation of the world until it prescribes a fruitful solution to a problem. Yet thinking and problem solving outside the laboratory involve interacting with external resources, and through this interactivity with a material world, solutions are distilled. Still, laboratory work on problem solving pays scant and largely indifferent attention to interactivity: Sometimes problems are presented as riddles or static graphical or diagrammatic images, or sometimes they are accompanied by artefacts that can be manipulated (and sometimes interactivity is possible for some problems but not others within a set of problems over which performance is indiscriminately amalgamated). The research methodology — and indifference to the central role of interactivity in thinking — follows from a deep-seated commitment to mentalism and methodological individualism. However, a thinker is an embodied creature embedded in a physical world: The materiality of external resources and artefacts through which problems manifest themselves inevitably determines a set of action affordances. From a systemic perspective, thinking is traceable along a contingent spatio-temporal itinerary wrought by interactivity and evidenced by changes in the world.


This paper tackles the difficult and often not openly discussed This paper tackles the difficult and often not openly discussed topic of access and equity in higher education for people with mental health difficulties. Recent legislative and policy developments in mental health, disability, anti-discrimination and education mean that all students who disclose a mental health condition can expect fair and equitable treatment. However the findings of an exploratory study at an Australian university reveal that just under two thirds of the 54 students who reported mental health difficulties did not disclose this to staff due to fears of discrimination at university and in future employment. Students who did disclose felt supported when staff displayed a respectful attitude and provided appropriate advice and useful strategies for them to remain engaged in university studies when experiencing mental health difficulties.


BACKGROUND
The long-term effect of a low-protein diet on the progression of chronic kidney disease is unknown. We evaluated effects of protein restriction on kidney failure and all-cause mortality during extended follow-up of the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease Study.

METHODS
Study A was a randomized controlled trial from 1989 to 1993 of 585 patients with predominantly nondiabetic kidney disease and a moderate decrease in glomerular filtration rate (25 to 55 mL/min/1.73 m(2) [0.42 to 0.92 mL/s/1.73 m(2)]) assigned to a low- versus usual-protein diet (0.58 versus 1.3 g/kg/d). We used registries to ascertain the development of kidney failure (initiation of dialysis therapy or transplantation) or a composite of kidney failure and all-cause mortality through December 31, 2000. We used Cox regression models and intention-to-treat principles to compute hazard ratios for the low- versus usual-protein diet, adjusted for baseline glomerular filtration rate and other factors previously associated with the rate of decrease in glomerular filtration rate. We estimated hazard ratios for the entire follow-up period and then, in time-dependent analyses, separately for 2 consecutive 6-year periods of follow-up.

RESULTS
Kidney failure and the composite outcome occurred in 327 (56%) and 380 patients (65%), respectively. After adjustment for baseline factors, hazard ratios were 0.89 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.71 to 1.12) and 0.88 (95% CI, 0.71 to 1.08), respectively. Adjusted hazard ratios for both outcomes were lower during the first 6 years (0.68; 95% CI, 0.51 to 0.93 and 0.66; 95% CI, 0.50 to 0.87, respectively) than afterward (1.27; 95% CI, 0.90 to 1.80 and 1.29; 95% CI, 0.94 to 1.78; interaction P = 0.008 and 0.002, respectively). Limitations include lack of data for dietary intake and clinical conditions after conclusion of the trial.

CONCLUSION
The efficacy of a 2- to 3-year intervention of dietary protein restriction on progression of nondiabetic kidney disease remains inconclusive. Future studies should include a longer duration of intervention and follow-up.


The resources that are directed towards the care of liver transplant recipients are substantial. Approximately 100 million dollars are spent on the hospitalization of the 400–500 children in the United States who undergo liver transplantation each year. Using length of stay as a surrogate marker for hospital resource use, we sought to identify factors that impact length of stay and assess the trends of hospitalization after liver transplantation for a representative population of pediatric liver transplant recipients. The study population was comprised of 956 patients who underwent primary liver transplantation between 1995 and 2003 and survived at least 90 days. Data were retrieved from the Studies of Pediatric Liver Transplantation data registry. The primary outcome was the length of initial hospitalization after liver transplantation. Independent variables were age, gender, race, pediatric end‐stage liver disease score (PELD), year of transplantation, organ type, primary disease, length of operation, and insurance status. The mean and standard deviation of length of stay after liver transplantation was 24.0 ± 24.5 days. Multivariate analyses showed that increased hospital stay was associated with infants less than 1 year of age, fulminant liver failure, receiving a technical variant organ from a cadaveric donor, government insurance, and transplant era (before 1999 vs. 1999 or later). Decreasing height z‐scores and increasing length of operation were also associated with increased hospital stay. In conclusion, these parameters accounted for only 11% of the total variance, suggesting that post‐transplant complications and course account for much of the variability of resource use in the immediate post‐transplant period. (Liver Transpl 2004;10:1011–1017.)


We use speckle photography to measure the motion of a rough body. We show experimental results for lateral and longitudinal motions. The output of our experiments is a direct display of the motion path. Our methods are based upon a mixture of concepts from speckle photography and from holography.