Abstract The postcranial skeleton of the Lower Permian temnospondyl Trimerorhachis insignis Cope, 1878 is described and figured in detail. Postcranial adaptations for an aquatic existence in T. insignis include the extensive ventral expansion of the interclavicle and clavicles and poorly ossified ends of the endochondral bones. The endochondral postcranial skeleton of T. insignis is paedomorphic through the process of neoteny, retaining an osteologically immature condition throughout morphogenesis. The endochondral postcranial elements display progressive morphological changes that do not stabilize in larger specimens, indicating indeterminate growth, with a correlation between size and degree of ossification. Some postcranial characteristics are present only in later morphogenetic stages of T. insignis. Within the Temnospondyli, the postcranial skeleton of T. insignis is most similar to that of other members of the Dvinosauria. The morphology of the postcranial skeleton of T. insignis is consistent with a phylogenetic position more derived than the basal temnospondyls Balanerpeton woodi and Dendrerpeton acadianum, but less derived than the Euskelia plus Stereospondylomorpha. A sister-taxon relationship between the Dvinosauria and brachyopoids is not supported by postcranial characteristics of T. insignis. Characteristics that develop last in morphogenesis in temnospondyls, and are consequently only present in well-ossified, morphogenetically mature temnospondyls, are absent in T. insignis due to paedomorphosis. Otherwise, the postcranial skeletons of T. insignis and other aquatic temnospondyls are similar to that of terrestrial temnospondyls, supporting the hypothesis that aquatic temnospondyls had terrestrial ancestors and are thus secondarily aquatic.


Because of the rarity of Darier's disease (keratosis follicularis) occurring as an acute, eruptive disease in a mature adult, a case with sudden onset in a 51-year-old white man is reported. Small, pale-gray, smooth papules on the sides of the arms spread to the sides of the chest, abdomen, and legs within a week. With a biopsy examination, histopathologic findings were acanthosis, hyperkeratosis, lacunae, acantholysis, corps ronds, and grains. Topical therapy with 0.05% fluocinonide (Lidex) cream has given marked improvement.


The first aim of the present paper is to compare various subRiemannian structures over the three dimensional sphere S3 originating from different constructions. Namely, we describe the sub-Riemannian geometry of S3 arising through its right action as a Lie group over itself, the one inherited from the natural complex structure of the open unit ball in C2 and the geometry that appears when it is considered as a principal S1−bundle via the Hopf map. The main result of this comparison is that in fact those three structures coincide. We present two bracket generating distributions for the seven dimensional sphere S7 of step 2 with ranks 6 and 4. The second one yields to a sub-Riemannian structure for S7 that is not widely present in the literature until now. One of the distributions can be obtained by considering the CR geometry of S7 inherited from the natural complex structure of the open unit ball in C4. The other one originates from the quaternionic analogous of the Hopf map.


The Ma-Dasgupta real-space renormalization methods allow to study disordered systems which are governed by strong disorder fixed points. After a general introduction to the qualitative ideas and to the quantitative renormalization rules, we describe the explicit exact results that can be obtained in various one-dimensional models, either classical or quantum, either for dynamics or statics. The main part of this dissertation is devoted to statistical physics models, with special attention to (i) the off-equilibrium dynamics of a particle diffusing in a Brownian potential or in a trap landscape, (ii) the coarsening dynamics and the equilibrium of classical disordered spin chains, (iii) the delocalization transition of a random polymer at an interface. The last part of the dissertation deals with two disordered quantum spin chains which exhibit a zero-temperature phase transition as the disorder varies, namely (a) the random antiferromagnetic S=1 spin chain, (b) the random transverse field Ising chain.


Today a widely anticipated clinical trial on chronic Lyme disease from Europe called PLEASE was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The press has given the trial a twenty trumpet salute with a MedPage headline reading "Long-Term Antibiotics Fail Again in Lyme Disease–Focus on Lyme and antibiotics for persistent symptoms called unhelpful." Here's the thing—the findings of the study actually support retreatment. What gives?


This study examined the influence of personalized pop-up advertising and ad placement on ad effects. Moreover, the moderator of product involvement on the influence of personalized pop-up ads was investigated. A 2 (ad type: personalized pop-up vs. non-personalized pop-up ad) × 2 (ad placement: initial webpage vs. middle webpage) experiment was conducted to examine how personalized pop-up advertising impacts ad attitude and recall, and how it interacts with different degrees of product involvement. Total valid experimental data derived from 296 participants showed that (1) Personalized pop-up ads were better than non-personalized pop-up ads in terms of ad attitude and ad recall; (2) There was no significant difference in ad attitude and ad recall of the personalized and non-personalized pop-up ads on the initial or the middle webpage. However, the influence of personalized pop-up ads on ad attitude but not on ad recall was significant for different types of webpage involvement; (3) Contrary to the hypothesis, the personalized ad had a significant effect on ad attitude when individuals had high rather than low product involvement. However, there was no significant difference in ad recall in either the low or high product involvement conditions.


Understanding illness perception is crucial to ensure healthy lifestyles. However, it has been poorly explained to inform effective lifestyle modification of patients with Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (FH) Therefore, we described the illness perception of different clinical categories of FH patients (using the Dutch Lipid Clinic Criteria (DLCC) and investigate its association with sociodemographic and illness-related factors. Illness perception of FH patients varies according to the level of education and the presence of CVD. Patients with 'definite' FH have the highest emotional disturbances. These findings may help clinicians to improve the interventions suitable for FH patients.
Keywords: Familial hypercholesterolaemia; illness perception; DLCC; cardiovascular disease
eISSN 2514-7528 © 2019. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/jabs.v4i13.332


We report the formation and characterization of a cuprous oxide/titanium dioxide (Cu2O/TiO2) nanotube-array coaxial heterogeneous structure, which is supposed to have potential applications in photo-induced water decomposition and organic pollutant degradation. Such structure is formed by coating nano-particles of Cu2O onto titanium dioxide nanotube-array walls via multiple-cycle chemical adsorption plus reduction method (MC-CAR). The practical deposition technique employs a soaking step to separate the adsorption and reduction processes, thus enhancing the controllability of deposition rate and preventing the clogging of nanotube pores. The size of Cu2O nano-particles is adjusted by changing the glucose concentration in the reaction solutions. As a result, compact nano-particle film with sufficiently small crystal sizes is uniformly covered on the tube walls, resulting in the formation of coaxial heterogeneous structure. The detailed synthesis process and the surface morphology, structure, photoelectric properties, and hydrogen evolution ability of the Cu2O/TiO2 nanotube-array with coaxial heterogeneous structure are systematically investigated. The resulting film shows a stable hydrogen production rate of 3.1 mL cm−2 h−1, which can be targeted for energy application in relation with solar energy driven production of hydrogen from water.


by Jeffrey K. Hunter Performance appraisals are conducted by organizations to access how an employee has performed during a past period of time. However it is unknown whether previous research has been performed on the relationship between performance appraisal score growth of workers who have received reviews from the same supervisor for three consecutive years. To determine if a relationship exists with these scores and the length of time a supervisor and worker pair has been together, historical appraisal scores from different organizations were obtained. The null hypothesis expects that there should not be a trend and scores should be evenly distributed between increasing, decreasing or no change trends. After receipt of data from 2 companies and 40 supervisor-worker pairs, chi-square testing showed that the null hypothesis was rejected and that there is a statistically significant relationship between performance appraisal score growth rates between these supervisor worker pairs over a this period for expected outcomes, revealing that there was no performance growth instead of increasing or decreasing. Regression testing showed moderate correlation between the scores and the number of people reporting to a supervisor and strong correlation was shown between the scores and the number of years someone has been a supervisor, with these tests tempered by the small number of observations. It is recommended that this study be repeated across more organizations and determine if score growth is desired to link performance scores to other organizational goals. TRENDING OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL SCORE GROWTH AND THE LONGEVITY OF TIME BETWEEN THE SAME WORKER AND SUPERVISOR by Jeffrey K. Hunter A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the School of Technology University of Central Missouri


In multicellular organisms all cells in one individual have an identical genotype, and yet their bodies consist of many and very different tissues and thus many different cell types. Somehow there must be a difference in how genes are interpreted. So, there must be signals that tell the genes when and where to be active and inactive, respectively. In some instances a specific an expression pattern (active or inactive) is epigenetic; it is established and maintained throughout multiple rounds of cell divisions. In the developing Drosophila embryo, the proper expression pattern of e.g. the homeotic genes Abd-B and Ubx is to be kept active in the posterior part and silenced in the anterior. Properly silenced homeotic genes are crucial for the correct segmentation pattern of the fly and the Polycomb group (Pc-G) proteins are vital for maintaining this type of stable repression. As part of this thesis, Suppressor of zeste 12 (Su(z)12) is characterized as a Drosophila Pc-G gene. Mutations in the gene cause widespread misexpression of several homeotic genes in embryos and larvae. Results show that the silencing of the homeotic genes Abd-B and Ubx, probably is mediated via physical binding of SU(Z)12 to Polycomb Response Elements in the BX-C. Su(z)12 mutations are strong suppressors of position-effect-variegation and the SU(Z)12 protein binds weakly to the heterochromatic centromeric region. These results indicate that SU(Z)12 has a function in heterochromatin-mediated repression, which is an unusual feature for a Pc-G protein. The structure of the Su(z)12 gene was determined and the deduced protein contains a C2-H2 zinc finger domain, several nuclear localization signals, and a region, the VEFS box, with high homology to mammalian and plant homologues. Su(z)12 was originally isolated in a screen for modifiers of the zeste-white interaction and I present results that suggests that this effect is mediated through an interaction between Su(z)12 and zeste. I also show that Su(z)12 interact genetically with other Pc-G mutants and that the SU(Z)12 protein binds more than 100 euchromatic bands on polytene chromosomes. I also present results showing that SU(Z)12 is a subunit of two different E(Z)/ESC embryonic silencing complexes, one 1MDa and one 600 kDa complex, where the larger complex also contains PCL and RPD3. In conclusion, results presented in this thesis show that the recently identified Pc-G gene, Su(z)12, is of vital importance for correct maintenance of silencing of the developmentally important homeotic genes.


VELCHEVA, I., E. TOMOVA, D. ARNAUDOVA and A. ARNAUDOV, 2010. Morphological investigation on gills and liver of freshwater fish from dam lake "Studen kladenets". Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 16: 364-368 The histostructure of gills and liver (hepatopancreas) of the bleak (Alburnus alburnus L.), rudd (Scardinus erythrophtalmus L.) and perch (Perca fluviatilis L.) inhabiting the dam "Studen Kladenets" was studied. Histopathological changes were found in the liver (hepatopancreas) and gills of all three investigated fish species. The morphological alterations in the liver were mainly degenerative, but necrotic and hyperemic changes in the parenchyma were also found. Morphological changes in gills are of hypertrophic type, most likely of a compensatory type.


We demonstrate efficient approximate inference for the Dirichlet Diffusion Tree (Neal, 2003), a Bayesian nonparametric prior over tree structures. Although DDTs provide a powerful and elegant approach for modeling hierarchies they haven't seen much use to date. One problem is the computational cost of MCMC inference. We provide the first deterministic approximate inference methods for DDT models and show excellent performance compared to the MCMC alternative. We present message passing algorithms to approximate the Bayesian model evidence for a specific tree. This is used to drive sequential tree building and greedy search to find optimal tree structures, corresponding to hierarchical clusterings of the data. We demonstrate appropriate observation models for continuous and binary data. The empirical performance of our method is very close to the computationally expensive MCMC alternative on a density estimation problem, and significantly outperforms kernel density estimators.


Many local and international stakeholders have independently pursued solutions for electronic surveillance and reporting in African countries resulting in multiple systems of varying effectiveness and minimum interoperability.  CDC lead a developmental process that engaged various partner organizations, including the WHO Regional Office for Africa, to conceptualize a strategy for providing region-wide governance of eSurveillance and the creation of the African Surveillance Informatics Governing Board to address standards, policy, infrastructure, workforce, and resource needs to strengthening surveillance and reporting capacity.


Reporter ion quantification techniques utilizing reagents such as TMT and iTRAQ allow proteomics studies to multiplex up to 11 different samples within a single LC-MS/MS experimental run. In these experiments, peptides derived from different samples are labeled with chemical tags possessing identical mass but differing distributions of heavy isotopes through their structure. Peptides from all samples may then be physically combined prior to LC-MS/MS. Relative quantification of the peptides from each sample is obtained from the liberation of low mass reporter ions alone, as these are the only discernible factor between peptides in the entire LC-MS/MS workflow. When coeluting ions of similar mass to charge ratios are fragmented along with the ions of interest, it is not possible to determine the source of the reporter fragments and quantification is skewed, most often resulting in ratio suppression. One technique for combatting ratio suppression is the selection of MS2 fragment ions that are likely to retain the intact mass tag region by synchronous precursor selection (SPS) and the liberation of the reporter ions from this combination of ions in MS/MS/MS (MS3). In this study we utilize a new post processing tool that can directly assess the accuracy of the SPS system for picking ions for quantification that are truly derived from the peptide of interest. We then apply this tool to the re-analysis of 3 public proteomics datasets. Directly assessing SPS accuracy allows a new measurement of confidence in the quantification values obtained from these reporter ion quantification experiments. Abstract Graphic


The aim of this thesis is to investigate the possibility to form high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Galileo, GPS and Glonas, In particular the thesis study the GPS signal and evaluate its properties for bistatic case. The report is based on the fact that Galileo and GPS are both positioning systems with similar characteristics. The difference is mainly that Galileo System uses a larger number of satellites and a different modulation scheme to improve the efficiency of the system, resulting in a better accuracy. On the topic of GNSS SAR, the report will be described with modes, resolution, geometry and algorithms. It is also explained the Space Surface Bi-static Radar and within two particular cases: parallel and non parallel paths


Frumkin Institute of Electrochemistry, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., Moscow (U.S..% R.) (Received 13 May 1989; in revised form 9 November 1989) ABSTRACT Current-voltage dependences for different tentative bacteriorhodopsin models were studied in order to explain the linearity of this dependence observed in our previous experiments. It is proved that the best correspondence with experiment occurs when the passive proton transport path is assumed to contain many binding sites and the thickness of the widest barrier separating these sites is not more than 1 nm. One of the following two conditions is necessary: (1) electrostatic repulsion of protons in the channel is so strong that not more than one proton can be in the channel at a time; the potential energy of a proton in this channel decreases linearly towards the active site. (2) Electrostatic repulsion between protons in the channel is moderate, and the binding energy of a proton at all channel sites is equal. Under conditions of high channel occupation, single-file effects lead to non-linearity of the current-volt- age characteristics if there is no electrostatic repulsion. INTRODUCTION


We analyze the impacts of removing export subsidies with or without reforms to domestic support and tariffs using a multi-country trade model. Model simulations are designed to assess both the magnitude and the direction of trade in the absence of export subsidies in connection with other domestic distortions and import barriers. Results show that the impacts of export subsidy removal, while significant for some countries and products, are comparatively smaller and are dominated by the much larger trade and welfare distortions imposed by import barriers. Hence, the removal of domestic subsidies, including export subsidies, by themselves may not be sufficient to improve global welfare and expand trade since the welfare gains by the net exporters are far outweighed by the losses of net importers. One implication from these simulations is that export subsidy reform must be combined with market access liberalization in order to benefit exporters and importers and to attract the widest support among WTO members.


This short commentary seeks to begin conceptualisations of heteroactivism, a term used to describe activities that promote heteronormativities as being morally superior to other sexual/gender identities and therefore 'best for society'. It seeks to show how contemporary oppositions to gender and sexual equalities in places that are seen as 'liberated' in terms of sexual and gender rights have moved beyond 'anti-gay' discourses and tactics to something else, that has yet to be named or fully comprehended. In this piece, we offer some starting points of the term 'heteroactivism', including pointing to its ideological and activist work. We then disentangle heteroactivism, nationalism and white supremacy/fascism, contending that these are distinct phenomena that have different relations depending on the context in which they exist. In the final section, we consider how oppositions to sexual and gendered rights exceed, and at times effectively refute, accusations of 'homophobia', 'biphobia' and 'transphobia', illustrating the inherent geographies of these resistances. The commentary concludes by arguing that contemporary sexual/gendered geopolitical landscapes need an examination of heteroactivism.


Nineteen exclosures on sagebrush steppe and shadscale rangelands, varying in age from 18 to 38 years, were sampled for plant species richness, plant composition, indicators of soil erosion, ground cover, vegetative cover, and herb-low shrub layer screening cover. Features within the exclosures were compared with adjacent sites of the same size that were open to grazing by livestock and wildlife. Species richness typically was slightly greater inside exclosures than in adjacent grazed sites (median = 2 more species inside exclosures), but the difference was not significant ( P = 0.16). Similarity of plant community composition between exclosures and adjacent grazed sites ranged from 45% to 82%. Evidences of soil movement, soil pedestals, and soil flow patterns were all more pronounced outside exclosures than inside ( P ≤ 0.02), even though many sites were on flat to mild slopes (median slope = 12%). Meta-analysis of the 19 exclosure sites indicated that grazing exclusion resulted in less bare ground cover compared with adjacent grazed sites ( P ≤ 0.05). The effect of grazing exclusion on visible soil surface cryptogams was significant ( P ≤ 0.05), with generally greater cover inside exclosures. Cryptogam cover differences between grazed sites and exclosures tended to increase with the number of years of grazing exclusion ( r = 0.64, P = 0.046). Pseudoroegneria spicata , a principal livestock forage, averaged greater basal cover inside exclosures than outside on 4 of 10 sites where it occurred, although no exclosure sites had greater P. spicata cover on grazed sites. Meta-analysis of the 10 sites indicated that grazing exclusion resulted in greater P. spicata cover compared with adjacent grazed areas ( P ≤ 0.05). Poa secunda , a short-growing grass that initiates growth early in the spring and is not important livestock forage, averaged greater basal cover outside exclosures on 5 of 15 sites where it occurred. Meta-analysis of the 15 sites indicated a significant treatment effect ( P ≤ 0.05), with greater Poa secunda basal cover outside exclosures. Grazing exclusion resulted in greater screening cover in the herb-low shrub layer (0-0.5 m height; P ≤ 0.05). These results indicate that despite improved livestock grazing management over the past half century, livestock grazing still can limit the potential of native plant communities in sagebrush steppe ecosystems, and that the health of semiarid ecosystems can improve with livestock exclusion in the absence of other disturbances. A few exclosure sites were similar for the measured parameters, suggesting that these sites were ecologically stable and that exclusion of livestock grazing was not sufficient to move succession toward more pristine conditions, at least within the time periods studied. Managed disturbance such as fire or mechanical brush treatments may be necessary to restore herb productivity on these ecologically stable sites.


This article addresses the transfer of new product technologies from outside the firm for integration into a new product system as part of a product development effort. Product technology transfer is a key activity in the complex process of new product development and is the fundamental link in the technology supply chain. Product technology transfer too often is dealt with in an ad-hoc fashion. Purposeful management of the product technology transfer process leads to more effective transfers in terms of timeliness, cost, functional performance, and competence building. Better management of product technology transfer gives firms access to a greater variety of new technology options, improves a firm's ability to offer significantly differentiated products, deepens the firm's competitive competencies, and positively influences sustained product development success. The central objective of this article is to gain insight into product technology transfer so that companies can manage this process more successfully and so that researchers can investigate this critical activity further. This article describes the technology supply chain as a unique form of a supply chain that poses a set of managerial challenges and requirements distinguishing it from the more traditional component supply chain. Because a single product technology transfer project is the fundamental piece in the technology supply chain, understanding this piece well is key to leveraging the extended technology supply chain and to improving overall product development performance. This article integrates literatures on new product development, supply chain management, and technology management and builds on organizational theory to present a conceptual model of determinants of product technology transfer success. The core proposition is that product technology transfer effectiveness is greatest when companies carefully match (or ''fit'') the type of technology to be transferred (the ''technology uncertainty'') with the type of relationship between the technology supplier and recipient (the ''interorganizational interaction''). A quite detailed framework characterizing technology uncertainty along the dimensions of technology novelty, complexity, and tacitness is presented to help in assessing the challenges associated with transferring a particular product technology. This article also considers detailed elements characterizing the interorganizational interactions between the technology source and recipient firms. This helps firms consider the appropriate means to facilitate the interfirm process of technology transfer. Overall, this article provides practical insight into characterizing technologies and into improving the product technology transfer process. This article also provides a strong theoretical foundation to aid future research on product technology transfer in the technology supply chain.


Sinorhizobium fredii HH103 produces cyclic beta glucans (CG) composed of 18 to 24 glucose residues without or with 1-phosphoglycerol as the only substituent. The S. fredii HH103-Rifr cgs gene (formerly known as ndvB) was sequenced and mutated with the lacZ-gentamicin resistance cassette. Mutant SVQ562 did not produce CG, was immobile, and grew more slowly in the hypoosmotic GYM medium, but its survival in distilled water was equal to that of HH103-Rifr. Lipopolysaccharides and K-antigen polysaccharides produced by SVQ562 were not apparently altered. SVQ562 overproduced exopolysaccharides (EPS) and its exoA gene was transcribed at higher levels than in HH103-Rifr. In GYM medium, the EPS produced by SVQ562 was of higher molecular weight and carried higher levels of substituents than that produced by HH103-Rifr. The expression of the SVQ562 cgsColon, two colonslacZ fusion was influenced by the pH and the osmolarity of the growth medium. The S. fredii cgs mutants SVQ561 (carrying cgs::Omega) and SVQ562 only formed pseudonodules on Glycine max (determinate nodules) and on Glycyrrhiza uralensis (indeterminate nodules). Although nodulation factors were detected in SVQ561 cultures, none of the cgs mutants induced any macroscopic response in Vigna unguiculata roots. Thus, the nodulation process induced by S. fredii cgs mutants is aborted at earlier stages in V. unguiculata than in Glycine max.


When thinking about traditional Iranian architecture, one imagines extensive ornamental patterns that adorn almost every surface of mosques and other prominent buildings. Yet, many theories of architecture since the beginning of twentieth century have considered ornamentation a superficial and superfluous layer. But, are these ornamental surfaces superficial and can they be removed so easily? This paper uses a qualitative research methodology based on theoretical cross examination and critical analysis to highlight the significance of surface and appearances in architecture and argue that formulating a strategy to adorn architecture is in fact the generating gene of every architectural movement, from Modernism to Postmodernism and even to Parametricism of recent times. By setting up a philosophical and a theoretical discourse about the notion of surface and the various metaphors used in architectural theory, this paper concludes that from the woven walls of first architectural spaces to the clothed walls of modern times, surfaces have played a sacred role in architecture, and rather than being superficial barriers that mask reality, they are indeed the very materials with which architects demarcate space and create new aesthetics.


This paper analyses the physics of the ejector seat shown in the James Bond film Goldfinger . By looking at frames from the film and modelling the ejection mechanism as a piston providing constant force, the motion of the ejected henchman was calculated. The henchman was found to reach a height of 2.37m at the apex of his ejection; a height which would not leave him seriously injured. The force required to eject him was found to be 1,930N, corresponding to a pressure of 8,870Pa. With comparisons to a typical piston from an engine, this was found to be a reasonable pressure and force for a piston to be able to generate.


The closure is an important part of the continuous rigid frame bridge during construction stage. The stress state of girders will change when the closure order adjusted. Therefore, reasonable closure scheme is crucial for whether the stress state to meet the design ideal state. In the actual construction, due to the terrain conditions, construction progress and the limitation of the final closure temperature, it need to adjust the order of the final closure scheme for long span continuous rigid frame. In this paper, we took a longspan continuous rigid frame bridge in Yunnan province as example. The closure plan changes and we do calculation and analysis for two kinds of closure scheme-first side span than middle, first middle span than side span. We got the bridge stress state and construction phase stress state. We analysed the differences between the two kinds of closure scheme. We chosen some stress weak position, those position should be monitored and in real construction should be strengthened monitoring.


Objective There is little information regarding the isolation of antimicrobial-resistant potentially pathogenic bacteria from water and carpets of mosques worldwide. The objective of the present investigation is to determine the bacteriological quality of water and carpets of mosques in Elkhomes city in Libya. Methods Potentially pathogenic bacteria were isolated from water samples (n=44) and dust samples from carpets (n=50) of 50 mosques in Elkhomes city, Libya, using standard bacteriological procedures. Susceptibility of isolated bacteria to antimicrobial agents was determined by the disc-diffusion method. Results Of the water samples examined, 12 (27.3%) were positive for Escherichia coli, 10 (22.7%) for Klebsiella spp., and 15 (34.1%) for other enteric bacteria. Of the dust samples of carpets examined, 6 (12%) were positive for E. coli, 33 (66%) for Klebsiella spp., and 30 (60%) for Staphylococcus spp. Multidrug resistance (MDR, resistance to three or more antimicrobial groups) was found among 48.7% (19/37) and 46.9% (30/64) of the examined enterobacteria from water and carpets, respectively, and among 66.7% (20/30) of Staphylococcus spp. from carpets. In addition, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was isolated from a carpet of one mosque. Conclusion Presence of multidrug-resistant potentially pathogenic bacteria in examined water and carpets indicate that mosques as communal environments may play a role in the spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria in the community and pose a serious health risk to worshipers.


More Than Twenty-five Years of Church Asylum in Germany On August 30, 1983, Cemal Altun, a twenty-three-year-old Turkish asylum seeker, jumped out of a window of a Berlin court building, ending his life. His imminent deportation to a state where he feared political persecution led him to this drastic step. For the Protestant parish of Heiligkreuz (Holy Cross) in Berlin this was a decisive moment. The parish had supported Cemal Altun in his asylum application, and his death had a dramatic effect. Within months, the parish took in three Palestinian families facing deportation to Lebanon. This was the first church asylum incident to occur in Germany. (1) It is now over twenty-five years later and a great deal has changed, including the general context of asylum policy in Europe, the number of asylum seekers in Germany, and the mechanisms both to get rid of them and to prevent others from arriving. Despite these changes, parishes still often face difficult decisions, like those confronting Heiligkreuz when it decided to accord church asylum. When making such a decision, offering immediate and tangible protection--a room, a flat in the parish--is still often the first and most pressing step in protecting people from wrongful deportation and exposure to a dangerous situation. The next steps involve legal assistance, dealing with authorities, and organizing daily life, including shopping, school attendance, and medical care. Later, public relations and networking need to be managed, information must be provided, fundraising must be engaged in, and religious services and silent vigils must be orchestrated. Ali of this requires the enthusiasm of many--mostly volunteer--supporters. (2) In 1994, the German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum was founded. Since that time, regular evaluations conclude that church asylum remains a crucial means of ensuring refugee protection. Over 80 per cent of the thirty to sixty cases of church asylum that take place annually in Germany achieve a positive result. (3) The year 2007 saw forty-three cases of church asylum. Of these, twenty-one were ongoing cases, three began that year, eighteen were resolved positively, and one was resolved negatively. Church asylum was offered in 2007 by at least twenty-seven Protestant churches, four Catholic parishes, one monastery, and four ecumenical networks. Protection was provided to at least 133 persons, with 74 children among them. Apart from these public cases of church asylum many parishes housed undocumented persons in guest apartments. In addition, there are cases of unpublicized church asylum that are hard to document. (4) What these figures show is that again and again various parishes, sometimes in an ecumenical network, offer church asylum in Germany. "Fortress Europe": Shielding Policies against Refugees To give refugees who turn to parishes or monasteries a new perspective became for the most part more difficult and requires persistence. Frequently it is unavoidable to go through several official channels. In many federal states the right to stay is attached with unrealizable conditions. Moreover, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees often cancels asylum status which it has already granted (the so-called "recall proceedings" or "cancellation proceedings"). These examples illustrate the tendency towards rejecting and expelling refugees. In this respect, Germany shares the asylum policies of neighbouring countries. "Fortress Europe" tries with all its might to seal its borders against migrants (except for highly qualified professionals). Asylum policy participates in this more general exclusionary policy of preventing migration. To give effect to its exclusionary asylum policies, the proponents of "Fortress Europe" adopt three strategies: (5) 1. The living conditions faced by refugees already residing in Europe are made as difficult as possible in order to deter further asylum seeking. …


With the explosion of broadband Internet connections in the late 80s, new types of applications, called distributed applications, came to light. These applications typically seek to provide a user with remote services that appear to that user as if they were local. For instance, when a user browses the Internet, web pages are downloaded from different servers and are displayed on the screen of the client's computer as if they were directly available on the computer itself. Typically one distinguishes two kinds of actors in such applications: clients, searching for information, and servers, providing the information. Furthermore, there are generally two models of interaction according to which these actors exchange information. In the first model, the client requests specific information and waits until the server replies to it. In the second model, the client registers its interests in some information with a set of servers and is notified when new information is available. Both models have their advantages and disadvantages but the second has obvious asynchrony benefits in a large-scale system in which it is very difficult to know the time taken to answer a request. The second model is usually encapsulated within the celebrated publish/subscribe abstraction. According to this abstraction, clients are either subscribers which express interest in specific information, or publishers which create and send pieces of information usually transmitted in the form of events (e.g., as HTML pages or plain data). The subscriber does not need to know a publisher or to be on-line with it to receive its published events. These properties are sometimes refer to as space and time decoupling respectively. Newsgroups are the most well known example of publish/subscribe system. While indeed appealing, the publish/subscribe abstraction is not easy to implement effectively. There are at least two challenging issues: (1) the representation of the events and (2) their dissemination on a large-scale or in a mobile environment. Events are usually transferred as XML messages or byte arrays. The system must therefore transform events into pieces of software implemented in its underlying language (e.g., Java, C#) before handling them. In addition, the reliable dissemination on a large-scale or in a mobile environment is not trivial, especially as in practice it is necessary to minimize the number of duplicates and parasite events (i.e., events of no interest) to save bandwidth and processing power. We focus in this thesis on devising and implementing algorithms which address the above two issues in publish/subscribe systems implemented in object-oriented languages (e.g., Java, C#) and such that the events that are transferred between the different actors correspond to serialized objects. These systems are also called type-based publish/subscribe systems. We first present techniques to detect events of interest and throw away parasite events. We show that these techniques are of major use for reliably disseminating events either on a large-scale or in a mobile environment without flooding the network. Finally, we illustrate type interoperable rules that let instances of two different types, but still representing the same entity, to be used indistinguishably. Together with the algorithms, we exhibit implementation prototypes and performance measures conducted over them.


This article offers a detailed examination of the content of predictive policing applications. Crime prediction machines are used by governments to shape the moral behavior of police. They serve not only to predict when and where crime is likely to occur, but also to regulate police work. They calculate equivalence ratios, distributing security across the territory based on multiple cost and social justice criteria. Tracing the origins of predictive policing in the Compstat system, this article studies the shift from machines to explore intuitions (where police officers still have control over the machine) to applications removing the reflexive dimension of proactivity, thus turning prediction into the medium for "dosage" metrics of police work quantities. Finally, the article discusses how, driven by a critical movement denouncing the discriminatory biases of predictive machines, developers seek to develop techniques to audit training dataset and ways to calculate the reasonable amount of stop and frisk over the population.


My project explores and compares different forms of gender performance in contemporary art and visual culture according to a perspective centered on photography. Thanks to its attesting power this medium can work as a ready-made. In fact during the 20th century it played a key role in the cultural emancipation of the body which (using a Michel Foucault's expression) has now become «the zero point of the world». Through performance the body proves to be a living material of expression and communication while photography ensures the recording of any ephemeral event that happens in time and space.
My questioning approach considers the gender constructed imagery from the 1990s to the present in order to investigate how photography's strong aura of realism promotes and allows fantasies of transformation. The contemporary fascination with gender (especially for art and fashion) represents a crucial issue in the global context of postmodernity and is manifested in a variety of visual media, from photography to video and film. Moreover the internet along with its digital transmission of images has deeply affected our world (from culture to everyday life) leading to a postmodern preference for performativity over the more traditional and linear forms of narrativity. As a consequence individual borders get redefined by the skin itself which (dissected through instant vision) turns into a ductile material of mutation and hybridation in the service of identity.
My critical assumptions are taken from the most relevant changes occurred in philosophy during the last two decades as a result of the contributions by Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze who developed a cross-disciplinary and comparative approach to interpret the crisis of modernity. They have profoundly influenced feminist studies so that the category of gender has been reassessed in contrast with sex (as a biological connotation) and in relation to history, culture, society. The ideal starting point of my research is the year 1990. I chose it as the approximate historical moment when the intersection of race, class and gender were placed at the forefront of international artistic production concerned with identity, diversity and globalization. Such issues had been explored throughout the 1970s but it was only from the mid-1980s onward that they began to be articulated more consistently. Published in 1990, the book "Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity" by Judith Butler marked an important breakthrough by linking gender to performance as well as investigating the intricate connections between theory and practice, embodiment and representation. It inspired subsequent research in a variety of disciplines, art history included. In the same year Teresa de Lauretis launched the definition of queer theory to challenge the academic perspective in gay and lesbian studies. In the meantime the rise of Third Wave Feminism in the US introduced a racially and sexually inclusive vision over the global situation in order to reflect on subjectivity, new technologies and popular culture in connection with gender representation. These conceptual tools have enabled prolific readings of contemporary cultural production whether fine arts or mass media.
After discussing the appropriate framework of my project and taking into account the postmodern globalization of the visual, I have turned to photography to map gender representation both in art and in fashion. Therefore I have been creating an archive of images around specific topics. I decided to include fashion photography because in the 1990s this genre moved away from the paradigm of an idealized and classical beauty toward a new vernacular allied with lifestyles, art practices, pop and youth culture; as one might expect the dominant narrative modes in fashion photography are now mainly influenced by cinema and snapshot. These strategies originate story lines and interrupted narratives using models' performance to convey a particular imagery where identity issues emerge as an essential part of fashion spectacle. Focusing on the intersections of gender identities with socially and culturally produced identities, my approach intends to underline how the fashion world has turned to current trends in art photography and in some case turned to the artists themselves. The growing fluidity of the categories that distinguish art from fashion photography represents a particularly fruitful moment of visual exchange. Varying over time the dialogue between these two fields has always been vital; nowadays it can be studied as a result of this close relationship between contemporary art world and consumer culture. Due to the saturation of postmodern imagery the feedback between art and fashion has become much more immediate and then increasingly significant for anyone who wants to investigate the construction of gender identity through performance.
In addition to that a lot of magazines founded in the 1990s bridged the worlds of art and fashion because some of their designers and even editors were art-school graduates encouraging innovation. The inclusion of art within such magazines aimed at validating them as a form of art in themselves supporting a dynamic intersection for music, fashion, design and youth culture: an intersection that also contributed to create and spread different gender stereotypes. This general interest in fashion produced many exhibitions of and about fashion itself at major international venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Since then this celebrated success of fashion has been regarded as a typical element of postmodern culture. Owing to that I have also based my analysis on some important exhibitions dealing with gender performance like "Feminin-Masculin" at the Centre Pompidou of Paris (1995), "Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose. Gender performance in photography" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York (1997), "Global Feminisms" at the Brooklyn Museum (2007), "Female Trouble" at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munchen together with the workshops dedicated to "Performance: gender and identity" in June 2005 at the Tate Modern of London. Since 2003 in Italy we have had Gender Bender - an international festival held annually in Bologna - to explore the gender imagery stemming from contemporary culture. In few days this festival offers a series of events ranging from visual arts, performance, cinema, literature to conferences and music.
Being aware that any method of research is neither race nor gender neutral I have traced these critical paths to question gender identity in a multicultural perspective taking account of the political implications too. In fact, if visibility may be equated with exposure, we can also read these images as points of intersection of visibility with social power. Since gender assignations rely so heavily on the visual, the postmodern dismantling of gender certainty through performance has wide-ranging effects that need to be analyzed. In some sense this practice can even contest the dominance of visual within postmodernism.
My visual map in contemporary art and fashion photography includes artists like Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Hellen van Meene, Rineke Dijkstra, Ed Templeton, Ryan McGinley, Anne Daems, Miwa Yanagi, Tracey Moffat, Catherine Opie, Tomoko Sawada, Vanessa Beecroft, Yasumasa Morimura, Collier Schorr among others.


One of the most significant characteristics of the modern administrative state is almost never talked about — in many respects, the formal structure governing how administrative law works has not changed that much in two decades. Unlike past eras of radical upheaval, the key institutions, statutes, and doctrines that survived and emerged in the 1980s and early '90s remain remarkably intact today. Given this repose, it is tempting to think that there also will not be major changes in the future. But is that so? Introducing a new framework for visualizing the interconnected way in which change occurs in administrative law, this article submits that the equilibrium that defines administrative law today is too precarious to be permanent. While the last two decades have been stable, at least three dynamics are poised to change today's balance: Partisan Escalation, Regulatory Competence, and New Protectionism.


OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS In a longitudinal collaboration with engineers and human factors specialists at an electronics manufacturer, five engineering design tools were adapted to include human factors. The tools, many with required human factors targets, were integrated at each stage of assembly design to increase the proactive application of human factors. This article describes the process of adapting the five tools within the collaborating organization. Findings suggest 12 key features of human factors tools, most importantly that they "fit" with engineering processes, language, and tools; directly address business goals and influence key metrics; and are quantifiable and can demonstrate change. To be effective in an engineering design environment, it is suggested that human factors specialists increase their understanding of their organization's design process, learn which tools are commonly used in engineering, focus on important metrics for the business goals, and incorporate human factors into engineering-based tools and work-system design practices in their organizations. TECHNICAL ABSTRACT Rationale: Design engineers use diverse tools in design, but few incorporate human factors, even though optimizing human performance can further improve operational performance. There is a need for practical tools to help engineers integrate human factors into production design processes. Purpose: This article demonstrates how five engineering design tools were adapted to include human factors and were integrated into design processes within the case study organization. It also provides features of an effective human factors tool and recommendations for practitioners. Method: A longitudinal collaboration with engineers and human factors specialists in a large electronics manufacturing organization allowed in vivo adaptation and testing of various tools in an action research methodology. Qualitative data were recorded from multiple sources, then transcribed and analyzed over a 3-year period. Results: The adapted tools integrated into each stage of the design process included the human factors process failure mode effects analysis, human factors design for assembly, human factors design for fixtures, workstation efficiency evaluator, and human factors kaizens. Each tool had a unique participatory development process; 12 features are recommended for effective human factors tools based on the findings herein. Most importantly, tools should "fit" with existing engineering processes, language, and tools; directly address business goals and influence key metrics; and be quantifiable and demonstrate change. Conclusions: Engineers and management responded positively to the five tools adapted for human factors because they were designed to help improve assembly design and achieve their business goals. Several of the human factors tools became required targets within the design process, ensuring that human factors considerations are built into all future design processes. Adapting engineering tools, rather than using human factors tools, required a shift for human factors specialists, who needed to expand their knowledge of engineering processes, tools, techniques, language, metrics, and goals.


Previous studies showed that homocysteine, a thrombo-atherogenic and atherogenic agent, inhibits an endothelial thrombomodulin-protein C anticoagulant pathway. We examined whether homocysteine might affect another endothelial anticoagulant mechanism; i.e., heparin-like glycosaminoglycan-antithrombin III interactions. Incubations of porcine aortic endothelial cell cultures with homocysteine reduced the amount of antithrombin III bound to the cell surface in a dose- and time-dependent fashion. The inhibitory effect was observed at a homocysteine concentration as low as 0.1 mM, and the maximal suppression occurred at 1 mM of homocysteine after 24 h. In contrast with a marked reduction in the maximal antithrombin III binding capacity (approximately 30% of control), the radioactivity of [35S]sulfate incorporated into heparan sulfate on the cell surface was minimally (< 15%) reduced. The cells remained viable after homocysteine treatment. Although neither net negative charge nor proportion in total glycosaminoglycans of cell surface heparan sulfate was altered by homocysteine treatment, a substantial reduction in antithrombin III binding capacity of heparan sulfate isolated from homocysteine-treated endothelial cells was found using both affinity chromatography and dot blot assay techniques. The antithrombin III binding activity of endothelial cells decreased after preincubation with 1 mM homocysteine, cysteine, or 2-mercaptoethanol; no reduction in binding activity was observed after preincubation with the same concentration of methionine, alanine, or valine. This sulfhydryl effect may be caused by generation of hydrogen peroxide, as incubation of catalase, but not superoxide dismutase, with homocysteine-treated endothelial cells prevented this reduction, whereas copper augmented the inhibitory effects of the metabolite. Thus, our data suggest that the inhibited expression of anticoagulant heparan sulfate may contribute to the thrombogenic property resulting from the homocysteine-induced endothelial cell perturbation, mediated by generation of hydrogen peroxide through alteration of the redox potential.


PURPOSE OF REVIEW Headache disorders attributed to low and high intracranial pressure are commonly encountered in specialty headache practices and may occur more frequently than realized. While the headaches resulting from intracranial pressure disorders have what are conventionally thought of as defining characteristics, a substantial minority of patients do not manifest the "typical" features. Moreover, patients with intracranial pressure disorders may also have a preexisting primary headache disorder. Heightening the complexity of the presentation, the headaches of intracranial pressure disorders can resemble the phenotype of a primary disorder. Lastly, patients with so-called intracranial "hypotension" often have normal CSF pressure and neuroimaging studies. Thus, a high index of suspicion is needed. The published literature has inherent bias as many types of specialists evaluate and treat these conditions. This article reviews the key points to emphasize the history, examination, and laboratory evaluation of patients with intracranial pressure disorders from a neurologist's perspective. RECENT FINDINGS Lumbar puncture opening pressure in patients with spontaneous intracranial hypotension was low enough to meet diagnostic criteria (⩽60 mm CSF) in only 34% of patients in one study. Most patients had an opening pressure in the low normal to normal range, and 5% had an opening pressure of 200 mm CSF or more. Diskogenic microspurs are a common cause of this syndrome. The Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Treatment Trial found that most participants had a headache phenotype resembling migraine or tension-type headache. No "typical" or characteristic headache phenotype was found, and headache-related disability was severe at baseline. Headache disability did not correlate with the lumbar puncture opening pressure at baseline or at the 6-month primary outcome period. Although participants who were randomly assigned to acetazolamide had a lower mean CSF opening pressure at 6 months, headache disability in that group was similar to the group who received placebo. SUMMARY Significant overlap is seen in the symptoms of high and low CSF pressure disorders and in those of primary headache disorders. Neurologists are frequently challenged by patients with headaches who lack the typical clinical signs or imaging features of the pseudotumor cerebri syndrome or spontaneous intracranial hypotension. Even when characteristic symptoms and signs are initially present, the typical features of both syndromes tend to lessen or resolve over time; consider these diagnoses in patients with long-standing "chronic migraine" who do not improve with conventional headache treatment. While the diagnostic criteria for pseudotumor cerebri syndrome accurately identify most patients with the disorder, at least 25% of patients with spontaneous intracranial hypotension have normal imaging and over half have a normal lumbar puncture opening pressure. Detailed history taking will often give clues that suggest a CSF pressure disorder. That said, misdiagnosis can lead to significant patient morbidity and inappropriate therapy.


In our earlier research we have synthesized series of substituted 3,5-diphenyl-4,5-dihydro-pyrazole-1-carbothioic acid benzylideneamide derivatives and evaluated for their anti-inflammatory activity. In the recent years, pyrazole derivatives are proved for their varied pharmacological effects ranging from antimicrobial activity to anti-cancer effects. In this study, we have hypothesized the efficiency of our earlier synthesized anti-inflammatory diphenyl-pyrazole derivatives for their potential in inhibition of Aurora kinase protein, through molecular docking studies. Molecular docking simulation studies are performed using Glide XP module of Schrodinger Suite and ligand binding energies are also calculated. Molecular docking studies of the selected compounds against Aurora kinase revealed superior docking scores ranging from -8.273 (compound 8) to -5.641 (compound 2) and also provided insight of binding conformations of the ligands in Aurora kinase protein environment. Additionally, molecular property and Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion (ADME) predictor analysis is also performed for the dataset ligands, which further provided the probable explanation for the binding potentials.


In these new essays, a group of experienced ethnographers, a literary critic, and a historian of anthropology, all known for advanced analytic work on ethnographic writing, place ethnography at the center of a new intersection of social history, interpretive anthropology, travel writing, discourse theory, and textual criticism. The authors analyze classic examples of cultural description, from Goethe and Catlin to Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, and Le Roy Ladurie, showing the persistence of allegorial patterns and rhetorical tropes. They assess recent experimental trends and explore the functions of orality, ethnicity, and power in ethnographic composition."Writing Culture" argues that ethnography is in the midst of a political and epistemological crisis: Western writers no longer portray non-Western peoples with unchallenged authority; the process of cultural representation is now inescapably contingent, historical, and contestable. The essays in this volume help us imagine a fully dialectical ethnography acting powerfully in the postmodern world system. They challenge all writers in the humanities and social sciences to rethink the poetics and politics of cultural invention.


W hen Rep Henry Waxman (D, Calif) retires from the House of Representatives later this year, he will leave behind an impressive list of accomplishments. Waxman, who is completing his 20th term in Congress, has had a hand in near ly every major piece of health legislation in the past 40 years. He has helped expand the Medicaid system, created the Children's Health Insurance Program, enacted nursing home reforms, facilitated the growth of the generic drug industry, and created incentives for drug companies to study rare diseases. Waxman has also developed a reputation as a watchdog in Congress, holding notable hearings on tobacco industry tactics and the politicization of science. Rep Waxman spoke to JAMA recently about his health policy work.


The ascidian Ciona intestinalis is an excellent model system for studying developmental biology due to the simplicity of its embryogenesis and genomics. The Ciona tadpole larva is composed of only 2600 cells and possesses the basic body plan of chordates. The 117-Mbp-long euchromatic genome encodes approximately 320 core transcription factors and 125 major signal transduction molecules, the expression profiles of which have been described at the single-cell level in Ciona embryos. Not only the function of developmentally relevant genes can be explored by means of suppressed and/or ectopic expression, but also a convenient electroporation method of reporter gene constructs has been developed to identify cis-regulatory modules. High throughput and genome-wide approaches can be used to uncover gene regulatory networks involved in cell specification and differentiation. Transposon-mediated transgenesis also provides a new strategy for elucidating the mechanisms of gene expression and function. These and other advantages of the Ciona system recommend future developmental biology studies with this model.

Key Concepts:

The Ciona tadpole larva represents the basic and most simplified chordate body plan, and its embryogenesis is well characterised.

The Ciona intestinalis genome has been decoded. The 117-Mbp euchromatic genome, which is packaged into 14 pairs of chromosomes, contains 15 254 genes including ∼320 core TF genes and 125 major signalling molecule genes.

Most of these developmentally relevant genes have been chromosomally mapped.

The spatial and temporal expression profiles of these developmentally relevant genes have been elucidated.

Gene function can be easily studied by suppressed and/or ectopic expression.

A convenient electroporation method allows quantitative and qualitative examination of cis-regulatory modules responsible for gene expression.

The regulatory networks of TF and signalling molecule genes that establish the blueprint of the chordate body plan have been uncovered.

The short generation time allows forward genetics of Ciona, a first for a marine invertebrate.

Transgenic lines have been established using Minos transposons to reveal gene function and expression.

Keywords:

ascidian;
Ciona intestinalis;
tadpole larvae;
basic chordate body plan;
decoded genome;
transcriptomics;
forward genetics;
transcription factors;
cell–cell signalling molecules;
cis-regulatory modules;
gene regulatory network


This study contributes to the theoretical discussions about the influence of education-entertainment programming on consumers of the genre. Data from the end-line evaluation of an EE program produced by the BBC World Service Trust in India, Jasoos (Detective) Vijay, is used. The analysis focused on 834 sexually active young men, the key demographic target audience for the program. Using structural equation modeling techniques, an initial knowledge, attitudes, and practices model is examined. Adding self-efficacy and interpersonal discussion improve this model. Not only is interpersonal discussion important, but the target others with whom that discussion occurs are also important for predicting behavior change. Implications for EE theory and programs are explored.


The use of images and other visual data in qualitative research projects poses new ethical challenges, particularly in the context of participatory research projects that engage research participants in conducting fieldwork. Little is known about how research participants deal with the ethical challenges involved in conducting fieldwork, or whether they succeed in making balanced ethical judgments in collecting images of identifiable people and places. This study aims to increase our understanding of these ethical challenges. From an inductive analysis of interview data generated from nine participants recently involved in a photovoice research project we conclude that raising awareness about ethical aspects of conducting visual research increases research participants' sensitivity toward ethical issues related to privacy, anonymity, and confidentiality of research subjects. However, personal reasons (e.g., cultural, emotional) and cautions about potential ethical dilemmas also prompt avoidance behavior. While ethics sessions may empower participants by equipping them with the knowledge of research ethics, ethics sessions may also have an unintentional impact on research.


In the years between the two world wars, the enormous vogue of "things Mexican" reached its peak. Along with the popular appeal of its folkloric and pictorialist traditions, Mexican culture played a significant role in the formation of modernism in the United States. Mexico and American Modernism analyzes the complex social, intellectual, and artistic ramifications of interactions between avant-garde American artists and Mexico during this critical period. In this insightful book, Ellen G. Landau looks beyond the well-known European influences on modernism. Instead, she probes the lesser-known yet powerful connections to Mexico and Mexican art that can be seen in the work of four acclaimed mid-century American artists: Philip Guston (1913-1980), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), and Jackson Pollock (1912-1956). Landau details how these artists' relationships with the Mexican muralists, expatriate Surrealists, and leftist political activists of the 1930s and 1940s affected the direction of their art. Her analysis of this aesthetic cross-fertilization provides an important new framework for understanding the emergence of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School as a whole.


Abstract : The right software architecture is essential for a software-intensive system to meet its functional requirements as well as its quality requirements that govern real-time performance, reliability, maintainability, and a host of other quality attributes. Because an architecture comprises the earliest, most important, and most far-reaching design decisions, it is important for an acquisition organization to exercise its oversight prerogatives with respect to software architecture. Having the right software architecture documentation is a prerequisite for managing and guiding a software development effort and conducting in situ software architecture evaluations. Conducting an architecture evaluation to determine the software architecture's fitness for purpose is one of the most powerful, technical risk mitigation strategies available to a program office. This report provides an example reference standard for a Software Architecture Document (SAD). An acquisition organization can use this standard to contractually acquire the documentation needed for communicating the software architecture design and conducting software architecture evaluations. The example used in this report is drawn from an actual SAD written by a major U.S. Department of Defense contractor in a weapon system acquisition. The intent of this report is to provide an example for other acquisition efforts to use (and adapt as appropriate) in their own procurements.


A high-fidelity digital representation of (part of) the human body is a key enabler for integrating humans in a digital twin. Among different parts of human body, building the model of the hand can be a challenging task due to the posture deviations among collected scans. In this article, we proposed a posture invariant statistical shape model (SSM) of the human hand based on 59 3D scans of human hands. First, the 3D scans were spatially aligned using a Möbius sphere-based algorithm. An articulated skeleton, which contains 20 bone segments and 16 joints, was embedded for each 3D scan. Then, all scans were aligned to the same posture using the skeleton and the linear blend skinning (LBS) algorithm. Three methods, i.e., principal component analysis (PCA), kernel-PCA (KPCA) with different kernel functions, and independent component analysis (ICA), were evaluated in the construction of the SSMs regarding the compactness, the generalization ability, and the specificity. The PCA-based SSM was selected, where 20 principal components were used as parameters for the model. Results of the leave-one-out validation indicate that the proposed model was able to fit a given 3D scan of the human hand at an accuracy of 1.21 ± 0.14 mm. Experiment results also indicated that the proposed SSM outperforms the SSM that was built on the scans without posture correction. It is concluded that the proposed posture correction approach can effectively improve the accuracy of the hand SSM and therefore enables its wide usage in human-integrated digital twin applications.


Newer critical treatments of Redburn argue that its significance lies in its critique of antebellum slavery, most saliently in chapter 31, in which Wellingborough Redburn, the first-person narrator, offers an ekphrastic depiction of the Nelson Monument in Liverpool, England. This monument contains an especially significant detail: the four naked, chained male figures at the base of the pedestal. Redburn tells us that he can never look at their "swarthy limbs and manacles, without being involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place." The abjection of the figures is significant for understanding not only issues of race and slavery but also the queer aspects of Redburn: the vulnerability of younger males in the grip of more powerful, older males. This essay examines the connections between Melville's striking thematization of race and his representation of gender and same-sex sexuality. Race discourse here functions as a coded means of expressing and negotiating the difficulties of same-sex desire, informed by Melville's awareness of the sodomitical shipboard practices that he, throughout his work, suggested with alternate slyness and horror.


In order to understand the molecular mechanics involved in the adhesion of a bimaterial interface bond, a Raman microprobe shear apparatus has been designed and fabricated. The apparatus is fabricated to perform a pure shear experiment on a bimaterial interface produced by the vapor deposition of a thin film of ice on a cold metallic substrate under a controlled temperature, humidity, and vapor-flow rate environment. The textures of four metal surfaces (titanium, copper, aluminum, stainless steel) and one polymer surface have been investigated with the use of the scanning electron micrograph. The shear experiment is optically coupled to a Raman microprobe at the 180° and 135° scattering geometry. The Raman spectra provide in situ information regarding the molecular structure and vibrational modes at the bimaterial interface before and after the shearing event. The results indicate that the adhesive bonds are formed primarily by the interaction of oxygen atoms in the ice lattice with the atoms of the solid surface. A solid, which displays good lattice matching with ice, shows good adhesive strength. The adhesive strength is found to be proportional to the extent of mechanical interlocking and inversely proportional to the contact angle of the water droplet. An activation energy analysis of the adhesive strength shows that the failure of the ice/metal bond is rate sensitive while the ice/polymer bond is relatively insensitive to the strain rate. The failure of the ice/metal bond is cohesive while the failure of the ice/polymer bond is interfacial. The structure of the ice layers on metals is polycrystalline, which is marginally influenced by the crystalline structure of the substrate and shows increased ordering in vibrational modes. The sheared ice has a larger number of defects as reflected by the increase in the half-power bandwidth of the Raman peaks.


Existing flip-flop selection and test generation methods for partial scan designs assume the use of a separate scan clock. With a separate clock for the scan operation, the states of the non-scan flip-flops can be frozen during the scan operation and any state can be scanned into the scan register without affecting the states of the non-scan flip-flops. Under this assumption, test vectors can be efficiently generated by a sequential circuit test generator. However, this requirement results in the need for multiple clock trees and poses problems in the routing of clock signals that, in general, are subject to a tight constraint on clock skew. In this paper, we lift this assumption and address the problems of test generation, scan flip-flop selection and ordering of scan registers for partial scan designs that use the system clock for the scan operation. An existing test generation algorithm is modified to incorporate the scan-shifting concept for such designs. This modified test generation scheme also implicitly compacts the test vectors and results in significantly reduction in the length of test vectors as shown by our experimental results on ISCAS89 benchmark circuits. The test vectors generated by this method can be applied at speed and thus can also detect delay faults. We show that cycle breaking remains to be an effective heuristic for scan flip-flop selection for our test generation method. The ordering of scan flip-flops in the scan chain affects the final fault coverage for the new test generation method. We formulate the ordering problem as a combinatorial optimization problem. Experimental results on test generation and ordering of scan flip-flops are presented to show the effectiveness of our approach.


Saffron is considered as a valuable produce by producers and traders. Unfortunately, the use of its floral by products like petal which have proven to be antioxidant, antimicrobial and nutritional value is limited. In order to investigate the application of saffron petal extracts as an ameliorative on postharvest and processing quality of fresh-cut 'Crimson Sweet' watermelon, a completely randomized designed investigation was done on watermelon cubes with 1cm diameter (1±0.5 gram mean weight). Prepared watermelon cubes were divided into four groups and treated with saffron petal extract (10 % V/V) for 10 minutes, UV irradiation (maximum wavelength 253.4 nm and 15W) for 5 minutes, 10 minutes of saffron petal extract then UV irradiation for 5 minutes and control. After the application of treatments, fresh-cut watermelon cubes were stored at 5±0.5 oC for 14 days. Sampling and observation of the studied characteristics (physiological loss in weight, soluble solid content, lycopene, microbial load and color quality (Chroma Hue)) was done every two days to find the trend of changes during the retention period. The results of experiment showed that petal extract of saffron could not decrease weight loss but it was significantly effective in lowering microbial load and increasing color quality, and prevention of lycopene degradation (P≤5%). Although treatment of UV+SPE had better efficiency to suppress microbial load significantly (P≤5%).


Everyone is in favor of "high education standards" and "fair testing" of student achievement, but there is little agreement as to what these terms actually mean. High Stakes looks at how testing affects critical decisions for American students. As more and more tests are introduced into the country's schools, it becomes increasingly important to know how those tests are used--and misused--in assessing children's performance and achievements. High Stakes focuses on how testing is used in schools to make decisions about tracking and placement, promotion and retention, and awarding or withholding high school diplomas. This book sorts out the controversies that emerge when a test score can open or close gates on a student's educational pathway. The expert panel: Proposes how to judge the appropriateness of a test. Explores how to make tests reliable, valid, and fair. Puts forward strategies and practices to promote proper test use. Recommends how decisionmakers in education should--and should not--use test results. The book discusses common misuses of testing, their political and social context, what happens when test issues are taken to court, special student populations, social promotion, and more. High Stakes will be of interest to anyone concerned about the long-term implications for individual students of picking up that Number 2 pencil: policymakers, education administrators, test designers, teachers, and parents.


A novel hybrid nanoporous network was easily fabricated by the one-step Heck reaction of octavinylsilsesquioxane with dibromothiophene. FTIR, solid state CP-MAS-NMR (13C and 29Si), and elemental analysis indicate that a thiophene unit has been successfully introduced into the silsesquioxane-based network. The Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) measurement shows that this hybrid network possesses a high surface area of 915 m2 g−1, a large pore volume of 1.61 cm3 g−1, and unique hierarchical pores, i.e. uniform micropores and continuous multimodal mesopores. Remarkably, it displays an ultrahigh adsorption capability of 1402 mg g−1 for Rhodamine B, and 862 mg g−1 for Methylene Blue, which are among the highest values compared with other reported adsorbents. It also shows a good removal capability of toxic heavy metal ions from wastewater. More importantly, it could remove multiple pollutants efficiently from wastewater by simple filtration and possesses excellent regeneration performance.


Abstract. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), particularly benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), are toxic compounds emitted from various anthropogenic sources. Understanding the BaP concentrations, dynamics and decomposition in soil is required to assess the critical loads of BaP in urban environments. This study is the first attempt to evaluate all major input and output components of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) balance and to calculate the permissible load on the urban environment in different land-use zones in the Eastern district of Moscow. BaP contamination of the snow cover in the Eastern district of Moscow was related to daily BaP fallout from the atmosphere. In 2010, the mean content of the pollutant in the snow dust was 1942 ng g−1, whereas the average intensity of its fallout was 7.13 ng m−2 per day. Across the territory, BaP winter fallout intensities varied from 0.3 to 1100 ng m−2 per day. The average BaP content in the surface (0–10 cm) soil horizons was 409 ng g−1, which is 83 times higher than the local background value and 20 times higher than the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) accepted in Russia. The variations in soil and snow BaP concentrations among different land-use zones were examined. A significant contribution of BaP from the atmosphere to urban soils was identified. Based on the measurements of BaP atmospheric fallout and BaP reserves in the soils, the critical loads of BaP for the land-use zones in the Eastern district were calculated for different values of degradation intensity and different exposure times. It was established that at an annual degradation intensity of 1–10 %, ecologically safe BaP levels in the soils of all land-use zones, excluding the agricultural zone, will only be reached after many decades or centuries.


Venture capital investments spread all over the world during the last few decades. Until then, they were considered only as an American phenomenon. Countries worldwide are interested in attracting venture capital investments because of their undisputable effects on the economy. The effects of the investments are visible through the impact on innovation, creation of new companies, jobs, economic growth, corporate governance and etc. Venture capital is a subset of Private equity focused on start-up companies and companies having difficulties in attracting necessary capital. It represents an equity investment made for the launch, early development, or expansion of a business. The countries of former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - FYROM, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia) are part of the Central and Eastern Europe countries and represent relatively a new market for venture capitalists. They moved from the planned economies to a free market system in the 90s of 20 century. As well as other countries in the World, these countries are also interested in attracting venture capital because of the proven impact on economic growth. Despite the presence of Venture capital and Private equity funds in this region for more than twenty years, the venture capital and private equity market in the countries of former Yugoslavia is underdeveloped compared to other countries of CEE. Indeed, the venture capital investments are so small for some countries of former Yugoslavia that the data about venture capital investment are published jointly. The objective of this paper is to examine and analyze the development of Venture Capital market in countries o former Yugoslavia. The research is both qualitative and quantitative, and involves an identification, analysis and comparison of PE/VC investments data for selected countries. The time frame for this research is between 2007 and 2014. The total volume of venture capital investments per year, the number of companies invested and the ratio of PE investments to the gross domestic product (GDP) will be used to demonstrate the existence of the venture capital market in countries of former Yugoslavia. The data necessary for the current research were taken from the yearbook of EVCA/PEREP Analytics for 2014 for Baltics and Ex-Y. "PEREP Analytics" is a centralized, non-commercial pan-European private equity database. The "PEREP Analytics" statistics platform monitors the development of private equity and venture capital in 25 European countries.


Neurodegenerative diseases are the most frequent cause of dementia, representing a burden for public health systems (especially in middle and middle-high income countries). Although most research on this issue is concentrated in first-world centers, growing efforts in South America are affording important breakthroughs. This emerging agenda poses new challenges for the region but also new opportu-nities for the field. This book aims to integrate the community of experts across the globe and the region, and to establish new challenges and developments for future investigation. We present research focused on neurodegenerative research in South America. We introduce studies assessing the interplay among genetic, neural, and behavioral dimensions of these diseases, as well as articles on vulnerability factors, comparisons of findings from various countries, and works promoting multicenter and collaborative networking. More generally, our book covers a broad scope of human-research approaches (behavioral assessment, neuroimaging, electromagnetic techniques, brain connectivity, peripheral measures), animal methodologies (genetics, epigenetics, proteomics, metabolomics, other molecular biology tools), species (all human and non-human animals, sporadic, and genetic versions), and article types (original research, review, and opinion papers). Through this wide-ranging proposal, we hope to introduce a fresh approach to the challenges and opportunities of research on neurodegeneration in South America.


Release of tethered spinal cord by sectioning of the filum terminale carries a risk of injuring neighboring motor and sensory nerve roots involved in bowel and bladder control. Therefore, intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring techniques have been developed to prevent neurological complications postoperatively. We performed a retrospective chart review of 63 patients who had undergone tethered cord release. We excluded adult patients, those lost to follow-up and patients with either a myelomeningocele and/or lipoma. This limited our study to 25 pediatric patients, aged 4 months to 12 years, who underwent tethered cord release for either a thickened filum terminale and/or a low-lying conus. For intraoperative monitoring, we utilized electrical stimulation of the filum terminale, lumbosacral nerve roots and electromyography recordings. Ventral nerve roots were identified and their electrical thresholds obtained. The mean was 0.32 V, the mode 0.1 V and the range 0.05– 1.0 V. These values were compared to electrical thresholds obtained by stimulation of the filum terminale. The mean was 26.1 V, the mode 20.0 V and the range 8–100 V. In over 70% of patients, muscle activation via the filum required 100 times the voltage needed to activate a motor root. This motor root to filum threshold of 1:100 was useful in identifying the filum. Clinical outcome showed no significant worsening with respect to bowel and bladder control or pain and motor indices. Significant bowel and bladder improvement was seen in 4 out of 25 patients, motor improvement in 9 out of 25 patients and improvement of pain in 4 out of 25 patients. Three patients developed postoperative urinary tract infections, but no cerebrospinal fluid leaks or pseudomeningoceles were encountered. These results suggest that patients with a thickened filum or low-lying conus can safely undergo tethered cord release. Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring provides a helpful adjunct to distinguish nerve roots from the filum. A ratio, rather than an absolute number, is beneficial in distinguishing motor roots from the filum and eliminates variability due to patients' individual differences in electrical thresholds.


This article argues that pre-colonial indigenous knowledge placed restrictions on the use of certain animals and perceived them as sacred. This policy was often successful as several species of wildlife are to be found "in many black African areas" today. Communities with chiefs worked together to ensure preservation of sacred animals. Such sacred animals had mythological connotations attached to them – with the purpose of preservation of such fauna. The article deals with the mythic animals among the indigenous Sotho- Tswana group of South Africa and expounds their roles and how they were perceived by the community under study throughout history in a dynamic manner. The article proposes the defiance of some colonial-time interpretations of mythic animals as "superstitious" and "a belief in magic". It contends that journeying back to the colonial and apartheid era by retelling, reinterpreting and redefining mythic animals showing the history in a changing historical manner will be a step towards a dynamic study of socio-environmental history of sacred animals. The approach of the article is multi-disciplinary drawing from religion, environment, history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and Africanist genre to show that, mythic animalistic history is not a closed official document as received in the frontier but is dynamic.


UNLABELLED
The continuous time conjunctive Bayesian network (CT-CBN) is a graphical model for analyzing the waiting time process of the accumulation of genetic changes (mutations). CT-CBN models have been successfully used in several biological applications such as HIV drug resistance development and genetic progression of cancer. However, current approaches for parameter estimation and network structure learning of CBNs can only deal with a small number of mutations (<20). Here, we address this limitation by presenting an efficient and accurate approximate inference algorithm using a Monte Carlo expectation-maximization algorithm based on importance sampling. The new method can now be used for a large number of mutations, up to one thousand, an increase by two orders of magnitude. In simulation studies, we present the accuracy as well as the running time efficiency of the new inference method and compare it with a MLE method, expectation-maximization, and discrete time CBN model, i.e. a first-order approximation of the CT-CBN model. We also study the application of the new model on HIV drug resistance datasets for the combination therapy with zidovudine plus lamivudine (AZT + 3TC) as well as under no treatment, both extracted from the Swiss HIV Cohort Study database.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION
The proposed method is implemented as an R package available at https://github.com/cbg-ethz/MC-CBN CONTACT: firstname.lastname@example.com

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


Objective The aim of this study was to report the utility and false-negative rates of sentinel lymph node (SLN) mapping during surgical staging of women with high-grade, apparent uterine-confined endometrial cancer. Methods This was a single-institution study performed at a high-volume academic center. From December 2012 to December 2015, women with high-grade endometrial cancer (grade 3 endometrioid, serous, clear cell, and carcinosarcoma) underwent SLN mapping via cervical injection followed by robot-assisted total laparoscopic hysterectomy and completion lymphadenectomy. Ultrastaging of SLNs was performed in patients with tumors with any degree of myoinvasion. Patient demographics, SLN test characteristics, treatment, and recurrence outcomes were prospectively evaluated for analysis. Results Fifty-two patients with high-grade histologic findings underwent SLN mapping followed by completion lymphadenectomy. The median patient age was 64 years, and median body mass index was 31.8 kg/m2. Most patients had either serous (46%) or grade 3 endometrioid histology (27%) on preoperative biopsy. Nine patients had nodal metastases, 7 of whom had metastases identified in SLNs. No low-volume nodal metastases were identified on ultrastaging. Two patients had false-negative SLN mapping (22%). After a median follow-up of 15.6 months, 14 recurrences (27%) were diagnosed; all were distant or multisite relapses. Sentinel lymph node mapping did not impact the choice of adjuvant therapy or recurrence risk in node-positive patients. Conclusions Sentinel lymph node detection of metastases in patients with high-grade endometrial cancer is high, but false-negative results were encountered. More research is needed to determine whether SLN mapping can safely replace systemic lymphadenectomy in women with high-risk histologic findings.


On noncrusting, poorly drained soils, yield differences between corn (Zea mays L.) grown following corn and following soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] can be much greater when no-till rather than moldboard plowing practices are used. We conducted this experiment to determine whether differences in previous crop, surface residue cover, or a combination of both contribute to yield differences when no-till corn follows corn or soybean. Corn was grown without tillage in 1991 and 1992 on a tile-drained Kokomo silly clay loam (fine, mixed, mesic Typic Argiaquolls), following either corn or soybean. On half of the plots, residues were switched, so that the previous crop was corn but surface residue was soybean, and vice versa. On other plots, residue was left undisturbed. Plots with corn residue cover showed slightly lower spring soil temperatures in both years, and in 1992 showed slower early development of corn plants, than did plots covered with soybean residue. In both years, however, final plant height, grain yield, and stalk mass were greater where corn followed soybean, regardless of residue cover (P < 0.05). These differences appeared greater in 1991, a dry year, than in 1992, a more favorable year for corn production. Corn following corn showed more barren stalks and fewer kernels per ear than corn following soybean in the dry year, 1991 (P<0.05). Nutrient concentrations in ear leaves of corn plants were all above sufficiency levels, were unaffected by surface residue, and were inconsistently affected by previous crop. Results indicate that lower yields of no-till corn following corn rather than soybean are due more to previous crop than surface residue influences.


The kinetics of uptake and release of fluorescently labeled lysozyme by/from spherical oxidized starch polymer microgel particles (diameter 10–20 μm) was investigated using confocal laser scanning microscopy. Both the protein and the microgel have a pH dependent charge; in the pH range 3–9, the protein (pI ≈ 10) is positive and the gel is negative. Uptake was monitored at different protein concentrations, pH values and ionic strengths. Lysozyme release was triggered by changing the pH and salt concentration and measured during enzymatic degradation of the gel by α-amylase. The release is of importance for potential use of the microgel in gastro-intestine drug delivery applications, while amylase-induced protein release is relevant for antimicrobial applications. To analyze the uptake and release kinetics we used a model based on diffusion, taking into account equilibrium exchange between protein bound to the gel matrix and free protein in the gel. For the uptake process the time-dependent evolution of the protein concentration profile in the gel phase and the medium was computed numerically. The calculated concentration profiles closely resemble the experimentally found profiles. In the case of high affinity between protein and the gel network (at low pH and low ionic strength), the initial uptake rate equals the limiting flux of protein at the gel–solution interface, completely determined by the rate of diffusion in the medium. The diffusion coefficient of free protein in the gel, Dp,g, was found to be on the order of 10−11 m2s−1, about one order of magnitude lower than the diffusion coefficient of lysozyme in bulk solution. Release experiments were carried out with zero protein concentration in the medium, for which approximate analytic release equations are available. The experimental release curves obtained at pH 7 yielded estimated values for the concentration ratio R of bound and free protein in the gel and, related to this ratio, the effective diffusion coefficient of lysozyme in the gel, Deff. These values are extremely dependent on the ionic strength, ranging from ca. 1000 and 10−14 m2s−1 at 0.025 M NaCl to 50 and 2 × 10−12 m2s−1 at 0.05 M, respectively. The results are in line with our earlier absorption and FRAP (fluorescence recovery after photobleaching) studies, showing a sharply decreasing affinity and increasing overall exchange rate with increasing ionic strength. Amylase completely breaks down the oxidized starch microgel, while releasing the embedded protein into solution.


This project set out to design, build and monitor a pilot trial of the self-cleaning ninety series Forsta Screen filter using polished seawater as the feedwater. The trial's task was to investigate if a five micron self cleaning screen filter can be an effective technology when used near the end of the seawater pretreatment stream found in a conventional seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant. To assess the performance of the screen filter several key parameters were identified including backwash frequency, silt density index testing, turbidity, and pressure. The project originated from the desalination industry's desire to look for alternative fine filtration technologies away from the commonly used cartridge filters. This project also outlines the scalability of the filter in an industrial setting with comparisons to the cartridge filters found at the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant (PSDP).

 The design required the filter to treat seawater from the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant, with the testing to occur at the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination Australia (NCEDA) in Rockingham, Western Australia. The trial was to last up to 6 weeks during the teaching period. The project faced several unexpected issues in implementing the design over the semester and unfortunately could not fulfill the requirement to conduct the pilot trial within this time. However preliminary testing was completed which confirmed the effective operation of the filter system. Primary objectives for the test were to see if the system design fulfilled its function and verify if certain parameters were attainable in regards to pressure, flow rate, and backwash cycle. The feedwater was brackish groundwater. Results showed: the filter system operated effectively; attained a system flow rate of 5 kiloliters per hour; attained the minimum system back pressure of 40 PSI; and successful automation of the backwash cycle and system.

Further work is anticipated to be carried out after the semester to gain closure on the project.