Author McAuley discusses the perception of dialog in the field of Education and argues for a more complex and comprehensive understanding of the term. The discussion identifies two camps of dialogic pedagogy based upon the theories of either Mikhail Bakhtin or Paulo Freire and teases out the differences and commonalties between the two theorists' understanding of dialog. In particular, the author contrasts Bakhtin's socio-psychological aspects of dialog with Freire's socio-political ones. The discussion then moves to a review of practitioner research based in Bakhtin, Freire or a combination of the two in order to show how the theories can work in concert within a dialogic pedagogical stance. The discussion concludes with a consideration that a dialogic pedagogy based in both theorists clarifies the discussion and mutually edifies both educators and student through a more comprehensive understanding of dialogic pedagogy.


Pleckstrin homology (PH) domains are small protein modules of around 120 amino acids found in many proteins involved in cell signalling, cytoskeletal rearrangement and other processes. Although several different protein ligands have been proposed for PH domains, their only clearly demonstrated physiological function to date is to bind membrane phosphoinositides. The PH domain from phospholipase C-delta(1) binds specifically to PtdIns(4,5)P(2) and its headgroup, and has become a valuable tool for studying cellular PtdIns(4,5)P(2) functions. More recent developments have demonstrated that a subset of PH domains recognizes the products of agonist-stimulated phosphoinositide 3-kinases. Fusion of these PH domains to green fluorescent protein has allowed dramatic demonstrations of their independent ability to drive signal-dependent recruitment of their host proteins to the plasma membrane. We discuss the structural basis for this 3-phosphoinoistide recognition and the role that it plays in cellular signalling. PH domains that bind specifically to phosphoinositides comprise only a minority (perhaps 15%) of those known, raising questions as to the physiological role of the remaining 85% of PH domains. Most (if not all) PH domains bind weakly and non-specifically to phosphoinositides. Studies of dynamin-1 have indicated that oligomerization of its PH domain may be important in driving membrane association. We discuss the possibility that membrane targeting by PH domains with low affinity for phosphoinositides could be driven by alteration of their oligomeric state and thus the avidity of their membrane binding.


Temperature and salinity distribution and volume fluxes through the Strait of Istanbul were analysed using long-term monthly time series of temperature-salinity (1996-2010) and current profiles (1999-2010) collected at both ends of the strait. While annual cycle of the upper layer temperature, with minima in February and maxima in August, reflects the influence of air temperature with a near monthly phase shift, annual cycle of the upper layer salinity, with lowest values observed between April to September, is mostly affected by river discharge into the Western Black Sea. The seasonal variations of the lower layer temperature and salinity in the Strait of Istanbul are mostly influenced by flow blockages. Inversely proportional upper and lower layer volume fluxes indicate strong seasonal variations with minimum and maximum values in April and October, respectively. Annual average upper and lower layer volume fluxes calculated from the high resolution dataset are 404 km 3 y -1 and 250 km 3 y -1 at the north end, and 430 km 3 y -1 and 245 km 3 y -1 at the south end of the strait, respectively.


Uninterrupted, annually resolved paleoclimate records are crucial to contextualize the current global change. Such information is particularly relevant for the Europe realm for which weather and climate projections are still very challenging if not virtually impossible. This study presents the first precisely dated, annually resolved, multiregional Arctica islandica chronologies from the North Sea which cover the time interval ad 1040–2010 and contain important information on supra-regional climatic conditions (sea surface temperature (SST), ocean productivity, wind stress). Shell growth varied periodically on timescales of 3–8, 12–16, 28–36, 50–80, and 120–240 years, possibly indicating a close association with the North Atlantic Oscillation, ocean-internal cycles of the North Atlantic controlled by ocean–atmosphere couplings, and the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation. Increased climatic instability, that is, stronger quasi-decadal variability, seems to be linked to the predominance of atmospheric forcings and some significantly decreased insolation phases (e.g. Spörer and Maunder Minima). Increased climatic variability of shorter timescales was also observed during some particularly warm phases or regime shifts (e.g. during the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly' and since c. 1970). More stable climatic conditions, that is, extended warm or cold periods ('Medieval Climate Anomaly', 'Little Ice Age'), however, fell together with a predominance of multi-decadal oceanic cycles. Whether the sunspot number and the higher frequency climate variability are causally linked and which processes and mechanisms are required lie beyond this study.


The study of the injury caused by Pick-up vehicle-teenage cyclist crash is presented in this paper. The vehicle has high frontal part, in order to compare the results with those obtained previously in the sedan and SUV teenage cyclist crash. No variation is executed on the model of the teenage cyclist and the bike. Three different positions are analyzed: front, rear and lateral position. The injury on the cyclist head is examined by HIC criterion, in the way indicated in the rules. Correlation HIC – AIS is used to calculate the lethality of the injuries. A comparison is made between the results of the simulations for Pick up, SUV and sedan, concluding that the injury of the head is more dangerous for Pick-up impact than SUV and the sedan, but only at the maximum speed (50 km/h). This value of the speed can be considered critical, since HIC values are very high for all the three vehicles. The more dangerous injury is the side impact. A further comparison is done between the impact points of the three vehicles concluding that both the shape of the bonnet that the height of the front part must be studied carefully in order to reduce the damage to cyclists and pedestrians. Key-Words: teenage bicyclist, Pick-up impact, severe (AIS4+) injury, HIC, biomechanics


A sentence of the well‐known and widely debated fragment 2.96 of Herodotus' History (c.450 BC) is devoted to the steering system of a baris, a type of Nile cargo boat. According to Herodotus, the rudder passed through the keel of the boat. The axial rudder was known in Egypt from the 6th Dynasty (c.2323–2150 BC) and can be traced through representations and models till the end of the Pharaonic period and beyond; however, no archaeological evidence for this type of rudder had ever been found. The recent excavation of Ship 17 of Thonis‐Heracleion, dated to the Late Period (664–332 BC), reveal numerous parallels between the construction of this boat and Herodotus' description and cast light on the steering system of the baris.


OBJECTIVE
To shed light on nebulized morphine, a new treatment for dyspnea in children with terminal lung disease.

METHODS
A clinical case study was conducted on a patient in a tertiary care medical center.

RESULTS
Nebulized morphine was administered in incremental doses ranging from 2.5 mg to 12.5 mg in a 10-year-old, 20-kg boy with end-stage cystic fibrosis. Before the nebulized morphine treatments were started, a dose of nebulized lidocaine failed to provide the patient with any relief. After each dose of morphine, the following parameters were recorded: visual analog "dyspnea" scores, vital signs, venous blood gases, and blood levels of morphine. The nebulized morphine was found to have a modest effect on the patient's dyspnea, with no significant differences found between the varying doses. Venous carbon dioxide tension levels increased <4 mm Hg for all doses except 12.5 mg, for which there was a 9-mm Hg increase. Systemic blood levels of morphine were <10 ng/mL at all doses. The nebulized morphine did not cause any significant changes in blood pressure or heart rate for doses <12.5 mg.

CONCLUSIONS
Inhaled morphine was associated with a mild, beneficial effect on dyspnea, with minimal differences found between the lowest and highest doses. This "ceiling" effect may be the result of saturation of opioid receptors in the lung, the variable bioavailability of inhaled morphine, or a placebo response. More studies are needed to determine what, if any, the optimum dose of nebulized morphine is for children.


Purpose: To determine the appropriateness of statistical models using the truncated Gaussian distribution and gamma distribution for diffusion signal decay, and to assess the correlation between the parameters obtained from the statistical models and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). Methods: Twenty-nine patients with chronic kidney disease and 21 healthy volunteers were included and classified in four groups according to eGFR (ml/min/1.73 m2): group 1 (90 ≤ eGFR, n = 10), group 2 (eGFR 60–90, n = 15), group 3 (eGFR 30–60, n = 17), and group 4 (eGFR < 30, n = 8). Diffusion-weighted imaging using five b-values (0, 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 s/mm2) was performed. Truncated Gaussian and gamma models were compared for goodness of fit. Area fractions for the diffusion coefficient D < 1.0 × 10−3 mm2/s (Frac < 1.0) and D > 3.0 × 10−3 mm2/s (Frac > 3.0) obtained from the statistical model were compared among four groups. Correlation between proposed parameters and conventional apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) with eGFR was calculated. Results: There was no significant difference in goodness of fit between the truncated Gaussian and gamma models. Frac < 1.0 and Frac > 3.0 showed good correlation with eGFR, as did ADC. Comparison between groups 1 and 2 showed that only Frac < 1.0 in both distribution models had significant differences. Conclusion: Statistical models yield robust interpretation of diffusion magnetic resonance (MR) signals with relevance to histological changes in the kidney. The parameters of the statistical models, particularly Frac < 1.0, strongly correlated with eGFR.


Data collected in run II of the Fermilab Tevatron are searched for indications of new electroweak scale physics. Rather than focusing on particular new physics scenarios, CDF data are analyzed for discrepancies with respect to the standard model prediction. A model-independent approach (Vista) considers the gross features of the data and is sensitive to new large cross section physics. A quasi-model-independent approach (Sleuth) searches for a significant excess of events with large summed transverse momentum and is particularly sensitive to new electroweak scale physics that appears predominantly in one final state. This global search for new physics in over 300 exclusive final states in 927pb-1 of pp collisions at s=1.96TeV reveals no such significant indication of physics beyond the standard model. © 2008 The American Physical Society.


Private labels, also known as store brands, are an important component of competitive strategy among multi-product retailers, as they can increase retailers' power over suppliers in the vertical channel or facilitate horizontal differentiation among retailers. This paper seeks to identify the relative importance of each role, conditional on the location of both private labels and national brands of ice cream in attribute space. We find that retailers' share of the total margin (retail price less production cost) is higher for private labels than national brands when retailers choose to imitate national brands with their own offerings.


In an effort to overcome limitations of reward-driven feature learning in deep reinforcement learning (RL) from images, we propose decoupling representation learning from policy learning. To this end, we introduce a new unsupervised learning (UL) task, called Augmented Temporal Contrast (ATC), which trains a convolutional encoder to associate pairs of observations separated by a short time difference, under image augmentations and using a contrastive loss. In online RL experiments, we show that training the encoder exclusively using ATC matches or outperforms end-to-end RL in most environments. Additionally, we benchmark several leading UL algorithms by pre-training encoders on expert demonstrations and using them, with weights frozen, in RL agents; we find that agents using ATC-trained encoders outperform all others. We also train multi-task encoders on data from multiple environments and show generalization to different downstream RL tasks. Finally, we ablate components of ATC, and introduce a new data augmentation to enable replay of (compressed) latent images from pre-trained encoders when RL requires augmentation. Our experiments span visually diverse RL benchmarks in DeepMind Control, DeepMind Lab, and Atari, and our complete code is available at this https URL.


The ground state of frustrated (antiferromagnetic) triangular molecular magnets is characterized by two total-spin S = 1/2 doublets with opposite chirality. According to a group theory analysis [M. Trif et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 217201 (2008)], an external electric field can efficiently couple these two chiral spin states, even when the spin-orbit interaction (SOI) is absent. The strength of this coupling, d, is determined by an off-diagonalmatrix element of the dipole operator, which can be calculated by ab initio methods [M. F. Islam et al., Phys. Rev. B 82, 155446 (2010)]. In this work, we propose that Coulomb-blockade transport experiments in the cotunneling regime can provide a direct way to determine the spin-electric coupling strength. Indeed, an electric field generates a d-dependent splitting of the ground-state manifold, which can be detected in the inelastic cotunneling conductance. Our theoretical analysis is supported by master-equation calculations of quantum transport in the cotunneling regime. We employ a Hubbard-model approach to elucidate the relationship between the Hubbard parameters t and U, and the spin-electric coupling constant d. This allows us to predict the regime in which the coupling constant d can be extracted from experiment.


Mama Might Be Better Off Dead is an unsettling, profound look at the human face of health care. Both disturbing and illuminating, it immerses readers in the lives of four generations of a poor, African-American family beset with the devastating illnesses that are all too common in America's inner-cities. The story takes place in North Lawndale, a neighborhood that lies in the shadows of Chicago's Loop. Although surrounded by some of the city's finest medical facilities, North Lawndale is one of the sickest, most medically underserved communities in the country. Headed by Jackie Banes, who oversees the care of a diabetic grandmother, a husband on kidney dialysis, an ailing father, and three children, the Banes family contends with countless medical crises. From visits to emergency rooms and dialysis units, to trials with home care, to struggles for Medicaid eligibility, Abraham chronicles their access (or lack of access) to medical care. Told sympathetically but without sentimentality, their story reveals an inadequate health care system that is further undermined by the direct and indirect effects of poverty. When people are poor, they become sick easily. When people are sick, their families quickly become poorer. Embedded in the family narrative is a lucid analysis of the gaps, inconsistencies, and inequalities the poor face when they seek health care. This book reveals what health care policies crafted in Washington, D. C. or state capitals look like when they hit the street. It shows how Medicaid and Medicare work and don't work, the Catch-22s of hospital financing in the inner city, the racial politics of organ transplants, the failure of childhood immunization programs, the vexed issues of individual responsibility and institutional paternalism. One observer puts it this way: "Show me the poor woman who finds a way to get everything she's entitled to in the system, and I'll show you a woman who could run General Motors." Abraham deftly weaves these themes together to make a persuasive case for health care reform while unflinchingly presenting the complexities that will make true reform as difficult as it is necessary. Mama Might Be Better Off Dead is a book with the power to change the way health care is understood in America. For those seeking to learn what our current system of health care promises and what it delivers, it offers a place for the debate to begin.


Since the mid 1980s lapwing numbers have continually been in decline, with several reasons for this decline. Factors included that of post-war intensification, land drainage, increased use of pesticides, climate change, and predation, however the biggest factor is thought to be that of the loss of mixed farming across the UK. Traditionally many farms in England had a mixture of both crops and livestock but as technology and machinery evolved so did farming. This technology and machinery has allowed farming to become more intensified. In order to maximise their financial income, farmers in England now, in general opt, either to stock farm or to grow crops. This has created a loss of mixed farming and has had a detrimental effect upon lapwing population numbers and breeding success across the UK. The intension of this research was to monitor two farms in Lancashire, one of which is purely a dairy farm the other is a mixed farm. The two farms were monitored over a six month period to assess lapwing chick success rate on the two farms. The farms chosen were both known to have lapwing present on them at the time of the research. The findings of the research were apparent. Cobble Hey farm has been entered into a countryside stewardship scheme since 2006 and manages a previous hay meadow in an environmentally sensitive way to provide a natural habitat favoured by lapwings. The RSPB have monitored this field through volunteers since the scheme began and data has been collected, however there are gaps in this data as some years no data has been collected due to the lack of volunteers. Park Lane farm is not entered into any scheme although through discussion the farmers at Park Lane farm tried to and remain sensitive to lapwings and their nests were possible. The main focus for both farmers is to make a sustainable living from their land. More studies across the two sites over a greater period of time would need to be conducted to see if the data collected shows the same trends over time. The longer the sites are study the more reliable the data collected would be. This research discovered that there is still a decline in lapwing population numbers and suggested that there is no real impact in terms of whether the farm is entered into a stewardship scheme or not. There could be several reasons for the lack of improvement in numbers such as not enough farmers and landowners partaking in these schemes in order to encourage a growth in lapwing numbers, or other factors as previously mentioned are causing the lapwings a real issue in their recovery. From interviews with the owners of both farms, it became apparent that both farmers ideally would be keen to farm in such a manner that would assist in the recovery of lapwing population numbers. However in the current tough economic climate the financial rewards offered through agri-environmental schemes are just not big enough to compensate them, in terms of managing their land in a different way in order to create ideal habitats for lapwing to breed.


In the Object Oriented Programming course TD4100 at NTNU there is a need to get an improved overview of the learning challenges of the students. A better understanding of how the students work, and how they handle the weekly programming exercises, could enable further improvements of both the exercises and the course. A design science approach was used to implement a Learning Analytics system to be used in TDT4100 and similar courses. The aim was to create a visualisation of the students' progress through exercises, by collecting snapshots of the source code being written. Several metrics were extracted from the snapshots to enable an expression for progress to be created. An experiment was conducted with voluntary students in TDT4100 to assess the proposed progress metric. The results indicated that the progress of students when completing exercises can be measured. The results also indicate that visualising the progress metric over time enables identification of areas of breakdowns. Inspecting the students' source code at these areas was shown to aid in identifying the challenges of the students. The implemented system worked according to specifications and enabled research into how students progressed through exercises. The system was flexible and several extensions were successfully made through iterations of development and evaluation. The results of the thesis is seen as a starting point for further research into the challenges of the students in TDT4100.


A new isostructural family of layered coordination networks (CNs) based on rare earth elements and mixed ligands was hydrothermally synthesized and fully characterized. The set of compounds with the general formula [REE(Salicylate)(Succinate)(0.5)(H2O)] (with REE = Ho or Y) belong to the monoclinic P2(1)/c space group. Top-down methods were implemented in order to obtain nano-sized CN particles for potential application in thin film fabrication. The solid state photoluminescence (SSPL) of the Eu, Tb and Eu/Tb doped samples was explored in terms of excitation/emission spectra, lifetime values and quantification of light emission by the CIE chromaticity calculation. Measurement of the triplet state energy of the ligand at low temperature was carried out by analysing the SSPL of the Y-based compound; energy transfer pathways were studied. According to the high performance of the Tb-doped compound as a green emitter, thermal and chemical sensing assays were carried out.


The dinoflagellate cyst genus Epiplosphaera Klement 1960 and its species have been studied in material from the Oxfordian and Kimmeridgian of Poland. The taxonomic history of the genus is summarized and the morphology is discussed. The type species Epiplosphaera bireticulata differs from other representatives of the genus in having high septa which are dissected distally. Additional septa in E. bireticulata form a second reticulum inside the parasutural septa. Epiplosphaera reticulata differs from the other species by having low spines and low, smooth septa. The septa form a second reticulum within the parasutures, as in the case with E. bireticulata. Epiplosphaera areolata has high spines, but almost no reticulum or parasutures. Epiplosphaera reticulospinosa is intermediate between E. bireticulata and E. areolata. It has a mixture of both high and low septa between the spines. Epiplosphaera gochtii has low spines and few, low septa between some of the spines. Epiplosphaera ornata is regarded as a junior synonym of E. gochtii.


The aims of this work were to assess the effects of different stimulus parameters on chromatic sensitivity, with particular emphasis on the effect of retinal illumination, and to investigate aspects of suprathreshold visual performance under mesopic conditions. All investigations were performed using visual psychophysical techniques. Chromatic thresholds were obtained using dynamic luminance contrast noise to isolate responses to colour signals. The effects of stimulus size and spatial distribution were examined in normal trichromats, dichromats and subjects with acquired colour vision deficiency. The chromatic sensitivity of normal trichromats was investigated with reduction in light level. Measurements were also performed to assess the possible involvement of rods in chromatic processing at threshold. Suprathreshold performance in the mesopic range was assessed in terms of the relative contributions of colour and luminance contrast to a measure of stimulus conspicuity and to visual search time. The conspicuity of a stimulus defined by colour and luminance contrast was defined as the value of achromatic contrast of a similar stimulus with an equal perceived conspicuity. An empirical model was developed from an extensive data set of conspicuity matches, to enable prediction of conspicuity for a wide range of coloured stimuli. Visual search performance for both achromatic and coloured stimuli was investigated under mesopic conditions, and results for the coloured stimuli were compared to the measure of stimulus conspiculty combined with an achromatic search time calibration. The results revealed that chromatic sensitivity is dependent on stimulus size, spatial distribution, eccentricity of presentation and level of illumination. These factors are suggested to reflect changes in cone performance and the relative cone contributions to the postreceptoral chromatic channels. Chromatic sensitivity was found to be independent of rod activity in the mesopic range, suggesting separate processing of rod signals and threshold colour signals under mesopic conditions. Measurements of stimulus conspicuity under mesopic conditions revealed individual variations in response to both luminance contrast and chromatic signals indicative of individual differences in gain control of postreceptoral mechanisms. Conspicuity was successfully modelled as a function of photopic contrast, scotopic contrast, chromatic difference to the background and the level of illumination. The nonlinear relationship between search time and luminance contrast was found to change with reduction in light level, reflecting increased contrast thresholds and diminishing effectiveness of unit physical contrast. Mesopic visual search was also found to depend on the photopic contrast, scotopic contrast and chromatic content of the stimulus, but with an apparent greater emphasis on scotopic contrast and reduced emphasis on colour compared to the measure of stimulus conspicuity. Conspicuity was successfully used to predict visual search times, and was found to be an improved indicator of search performance than either photopic or scotopic contrast.


A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) had been on the arms control agenda
since 1954, the subject of intermittent bilateral or trilateral talks that achieved only
partial measures. The end of the Cold War provided renewed public pressure and
political impetus for banning nuclear explosions. This thesis analyses the context and
processes of the multilateral test ban negotiations that opened in the Conference on
Disarmament in 1994.
Combining participant-observation and contemporaneous notes with extensive use of
documentary sources, unpublished materials and interviews, the study explores the
dynamics of the CTBT negotiations in light both of regime theory and post cold war
concepts of multilateralism, highlighting the role of civil society actors as well as
states. Providing historical background and rich detail on the negotiating process
from 1994-1996, the thesis examines the causal factors, strengths and weaknesses of
the outcomes in four key areas: prenegotiations, scope, verification and entry into
force.
Focusing on the strategies and mechanisms by which actors with competing
expectations and interests reached agreement, two types of convergence are explored:
distributive, encompassing both imposed and managed divisions of gains and losses;
and integrative, in which expectations of what would constitute an acceptable
agreement are expanded or changed through cognitive strategies and the shaping of
norms and interests.
The thesis shows that whilst sharing a general objective of a CTBT, governments had
significantly different views on what a test ban should encompass and accomplish,
particularly with respect to broader concepts of nonproliferation and disarmament.
While nuclear interests played a major role in determining a state's expectations and
negotiating posture, other factors were important in reaching convergence. These
included: knowledge and ideas; civil society engagement; norms and regime values;
partnerships and alliances; internal policy cohesion or division; and the level of
domestic and international political attention and support. By choosing to incorporate
transnational civil society as a principal unit of analysis, along with states, the thesis
contributes to a fuller understanding of how governments' calculations of what
constitutes self-interest and security can be influenced and shaped, opening up
alternative solutions for agreement than might have been initially envisaged.


We present a set of modeling, sensitivity analysis, and design optimization methods for photonic crystal structures based on Wannier basis field expansion and efficient matrix analysis techniques. We develop the sensitivity analysis technique to analyze both refractive index perturbations and dielectric boundary shift perturbations. Our modeling method is /spl sim/1000/spl times/ faster than finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) for searching through a large number of similar device designs. We show that our optimization techniques, relying on the efficiency of the modeling and sensitivity analysis methods, enable systematic global and local optimizations of integrated optical components. We show that our design method can be controlled to favor designs without high-energy build-ups, potentially making them more fabrication-error tolerant. We present design examples and verify our designs with FDTD calculations.


A description is given of axicons obtained as a tandem of one diverging lens that has third-order spherical aberration and one perfect converging lens. The asymptotic representation obtained with the help of the nonuniform stationary phase method allows the determination of such principal features of the focal segment as the intensity distribution and the width of the central core along the optical axis. The obtained results are compared with the numerical evaluation of the corresponding diffraction integral. The analyzed system contains four special cases: the doublet of both lenses, the setup of the perfect converging lens placed in the front of the aberrated diverging lens, the setup of the aberrated diverging lens placed in the primary focal plane of the perfect converging lens, and the defocused Galilean telescope. A short discussion of the aberrated-lens bending factor as well as of choice of the most convenient system geometry is also included.


A simple method for the extraction of nematods from soil was developed using commonly available materials. With the method 100 cm soil were spread on 2-ply "Scottie" tissue paper on a sieve consisting of fiberglass screen glued between two PVC pipe sections. The sieve with the soil was placed in a plastic bowl and water was added to just cover the soil. The sieve with soil was incubated for 72 h when nematodes in the water were collected by passing the water through a 38 m screen. Comparisons between this method and a flotation sieving technique indicated that numbers of nematodes extracted by the two techniques were significantly correlated. The bowl method resulted in extraction of higher numbers of Pratylenchus Filipjev larvae of Heterodera glycines Ichinohe and Meloidogyne Goeldi but less numbers of Helicotylenchus Steiner and Hoplolaimus Daday than the flotation technique.


This article was planned to summarize available information's on biotechnological approaches to improve potato. The potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is a major world food crop. It gives an exceptionally high yield and also produces more edible energy and protein per unit area and time than many other crops. The developed countries make the most diversified use of potatoes as food, feed and raw material for processed products, starch and alcohol, while the developing countries are increasingly adopting potato cultivation primarily as a food crop. Potato is propagated by both sexually (using true potato seed) and asexually (vegetatively). Conventional propagation of potato is done vegetatively using seed tubers which ensure uniformity of the crop in terms of growth and yield, but results in degeneration of the crop due to virus infection. The availability of tissue culture technology for rapid multiplication of disease free planting material has facilitated potato seed production to a great extent. Potato is an ideal crop for the introduction of traits using biotechnology. Conventional potato breeding as it is practiced worldwide is an inefficient, slow process that has changed little in the past century. Potato breeding efforts have historically focused on yield, fresh market and processing quality, and storability as well as disease resistance. Genetic variation for these traits in commercial cultivars is low, but related wild species contain many traits not found in cultivars and represent an especially rich source of disease resistance and tuber quality genes. Combining tuber quality traits desired by consumers and processors with the agronomic performance and disease resistance preferred by farmers remains the most significant challenge in potato breeding. Fortunately, the tremendous amount of genetic diversity in wild and cultivated relatives of potato allows for relatively easy identification, isolation, and introduction of new genes for a specific trait using biotechnology. Keywords: Biotech potato, Genetic modification, Biotechnology, True potato seed, Seed tubers


Jean-Luc Godard wrote that 'The cinema is not an art which films life; the cinema is something between art and life' (cited in Roud's, 2010, biography of Godard), an observation particularly true of stop-motion animation. The filmmakers discussed in this essay, Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay, share a fascination with the latent content of found objects; they believe that forgotten toys, discarded tools and other such objects contain echoes of past experiences. Extrapolating Švankmajer's belief that memories are imparted to the objects we touch, the manipulation of his found objects as puppets in his films becomes a means of evoking and repurposing their latent content, just as the Quays develop their dreamlike films from the psychic content they perceive in their armatures. Making a case study of a selection of these animators' short films, this article examines the practice of stop-motion animation against that of kinetic sculpture, unpicking the complexities of the relationship between the inherently static mediums of sculpture and photography – symbolic of a fixed moment in time – and that of stop-motion animation, a temporal pocket in which these fossilized moments are revived once more.


This article offers an examination of the contemporary kitchen: firstly, as an object that continues to draw on the forms established by the Modernists in the early 20th century. Using 'real' kitchens alongside contemporary media representations, the 'signs' of kitchens for their meaning, along with a consideration of the contemporary kitchen as a physical space in relation to some of the prevailing ideas about, and attitudes towards, space in both the economic and cultural realms. The aim was to reveal something of the cultural significance of the contemporary kitchen, not only as a reflection of the dominant ideologies of functionality and efficiency; of productive activity and as 'the heart of the home', but to propose that the contemporary kitchen is significant for its articulation through its appearance, size, materials (as well as in its fixed nature) and in marketing and media representations, of a much wider range of messages and meanings that may include, but are not limited to, the concepts of cultural capital, the spectacle, of gender identity and gender roles, as well as articulating our fears of impermanency, social alienation and even perhaps, homelessness.


Proteins and other macromolecules have coupled dynamics over multiple time scales (from femtosecond to millisecond and beyond) that make resolving molecular dynamics challenging. We present an approach based on periodically decomposing the dynamics of a macromolecule into slow and fast modes based on a scalable coarse-grained normal mode analysis. A Langevin equation is used to propagate the slowest degrees of freedom while minimizing the nearly instantaneous degrees of freedom. We present numerical results showing that time steps of up to 1000 fs can be used, with real speedups of up to 200 times over plain molecular dynamics. We present results of successfully folding the Fip35 mutant of WW domain.


This thesis investigates when, how and why the misclassification of US mutual funds occurs. Misclassification is defined as the dislocation between the advertised style of a fund and the actual investment style. Using soft clustering (Fuzzy C-means), over 27% of U.S. equity mutual funds are found to be misclassified from their reported S&P styles. This confirms claims from related literature that traditional styles which rely on self disclosure or third party classifications are prone to misclassification. Misclassified funds seem to experience deliberately gaming of style to the ulterior benefit of their fund managers. The bona fide investment style of a mutual fund, relative to all other funds, is more accurately provided by clustering funds over time in a technique called style-by-clustering. Due to high levels of misclassification, traditional styles provide a poor peer group upon which to form a peer benchmark when evaluating performance. Style-by-clustering provides more accurate peer groups due to the resistance of clustering to misclassification. Peer benchmarks formed from soft clusters are discovered to track returns more accurately than their S&P counterparts and so prove to be superior for performance evaluation. Thus, fund managers may be gaming traditional styles to report better performance. Using Fuzzy C-Means to partition funds into style gamers and non-gamers, the returns of style gamers are statistically different and higher than non-gamers over time. This 'smoking gun' is an economic motive for fund managers to deliberately misclassify themselves and is a key finding that explains why misclassification occurs. Style gamers seem to be deliberately misclassifying style to chase higher returns or to take advantage of an inappropriate peer benchmark to report a superior evaluation of performance.


. Entropy is a central concept of statistical mechanics, which is the main branch of physics that underlies econophysics, the application of physics concepts to understand economic phenomena. It enters into econophysics both in an ontological way through the Second Law of Thermodynamics as this drives the world economy from its ecological foundations as solar energy passes through food chains in dissipative process of entropy rising and production fundamentally involving the replacement of lower entropy energy states with higher entropy ones. In contrast the mathematics of entropy as appearing in information theory becomes the basis for modeling financial market dynamics as well as income and wealth distribution dynamics. It also provides the basis for an alternative view of stochastic price equilibria in economics, as well providing a crucial link between econophysics and sociophysics, keeping in mind the essential unity of the various concepts of entropy. "I


Abstract. We critically reassess a conceptual model here, dealing with the potential effect of plant diversity on climate–vegetation feedback, and we provide an improved version adjusted to plant types that prevailed during the African Humid Period (AHP). Our work contributes to the understanding of the timing and abruptness of vegetation decline at the end of the AHP, investigated by various working groups during the past 2 decades using a wide range of model and palaeo-proxy reconstruction approaches. While some studies indicated an abrupt collapse of vegetation at the end of the AHP, others suggested a gradual decline. Claussen et al. (2013) introduced a new aspect in the discussion, proposing that plant diversity in terms of moisture requirements could affect the strength of climate–vegetation feedback. In a conceptual model study, the authors illustrated that high plant diversity could stabilize an ecosystem, whereas a reduction in plant diversity might allow for an abrupt regime shift under gradually changing environmental conditions. In the light of recently published pollen data and the current state of ecological literature, the conceptual model by Claussen et al. (2013) reproduces the main features of different plant types interacting together with climate, but it does not capture the reconstructed diversity of AHP vegetation. Especially tropical gallery forest taxa, indirectly linked to local precipitation, are not appropriately represented. With a new model version adjusted to AHP vegetation, we can simulate a diverse mosaic-like environment as reconstructed from pollen, and we observe a stabilizing effect of high functional diversity on vegetation cover and precipitation. Sensitivity studies with different combinations of plant types highlight the importance of plant composition on system stability, and the stabilizing or destabilizing potential a single plant type may inherit. The model's simplicity limits its application; however, it provides a useful tool to study the roles of real plant types in an ecosystem and their combined climate–vegetation feedback under changing precipitation regimes.


Insertional mutagenesis of Arabidopsis ecotype C24 was used to identify a novel mutant, designated wax2 , that had alterations in both cuticle membrane and cuticular waxes. Arabidopsis mutants with altered cuticle membrane have not been reported previously. Compared with the wild type, the cuticle membrane of wax2 stems weighed 20.2% less, and when viewed using electron microscopy, it was 36.4% thicker, less opaque, and structurally disorganized. The total wax amount on wax2 leaves and stems was reduced by (cid:2) 78% and showed proportional deficiencies in the aldehydes, alkanes, secondary alcohols, and ketones, with increased acids, primary alcohols, and esters. Besides altered cuticle membranes, wax2 displayed postgenital fusion between aerial organs (especially in flower buds), reduced fertility under low humidity, increased epidermal permeability, and a reduction in stomatal index on adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces. Thus, wax2 reveals a potential role for the cuticle as a suppressor of postgenital fusion and epidermal diffusion and as a mediator of both fertility and the development of epidermal architecture (via effects on stomatal index). The cloned WAX2 gene (verified by three independent allelic insertion mutants with identical phenotypes) codes for a predicted 632–amino acid integral membrane protein with a molecular mass of 72.3 kD and a theoretical pI of 8.78. WAX2 has six transmembrane domains, a His-rich diiron binding region at the N-terminal region, and a large soluble C-terminal domain. The N-terminal portion of WAX2 is homologous with members of the sterol desaturase family, whereas the C terminus of WAX2 is most similar to members of the short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase family. WAX2 has 32% identity to CER1, a protein required for wax production but not for cuticle membrane production. Based on these analyses, we predict that WAX2 has a metabolic function associated with both cuticle membrane and wax synthesis. These studies provide new insight into the genetics and biochemistry of plant cuticle production and elucidate new associations between the cuticle and diverse aspects of plant development.


The Interagency Testing Committee (ITC) was established in 1976 under Section 4(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The ITC consists of representatives from 15 member and liaison agencies. The committee recommends chemicals to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator for priority testing consideration and potential rule-making under Section 4(a) of TSCA. Between 1977 and 1983 the ITC conducted five scoring exercises to select existing chemicals for detailed review. These five scoring exercises focused on chemicals of regulatory concern, high-production chemicals, and chemicals recommended by other organizations. In 1986, in preparation for a sixth scoring exercise, we developed new approaches to selecting chemicals for review by the ITC. Expert panels were organized to identify substructures indicative of chemicals with potential to cause adverse health effects or adverse ecological effects. The expert ecological effects panel identified 109 organic chemical substructures that might cause adverse effects to any of eight organism types. These substructures were used to develop a questionnaire which was sent to 86 environmental chemists and toxicologists. Results from this questionnaire were used to reduce the list of substructures identified by the expert panel to 63 substructures with potential to cause adverse ecological effects in one to six organism types. These chemical substructures were used to search a data base of approximately 18 100 discrete organic chemicals. These searches identified about 5200 chemicals which might produce adverse ecological effects. The data base containing 18 100 chemicals was also searched for about 5300 chemicals that were in eleven computer-searchable, environmental-monitoring data bases. These searches identified about 2300 chemicals. The 2300 Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) numbers for chemicals with potential for environmental exposure were compared with the 5200 CAS numbers for chemicals that might produce adverse ecological effects in order to identify matches. Over 100 chemicals were identified that had both the potential to cause adverse ecological effects and the potential for environmental exposure. A scoring system was developed to rank these chemicals. After obtaining available information on domestic production, many of these chemicals were screened by panels of toxicologists, chemists, ecologists, and engineers to select chemicals of environmental concern for detailed review by the ITC.


This paper, at the crossroads of practical and epistemological questions, puts forward a non-standard approach to the study of a set of trust phenomena (trust, trustworthiness, distrust, self-trust, self-distrust...) and their interconnectedness. Two paradigmatic approaches to trust – harmonic and disharmonic – are unpacked and shown to be com-plementary. In contexts where the harmonic view applies, trust phenomena are mutually reinforcing. When the disharmonic view is appropriate, instead, they counterbalance one another. An analysis of Augustine's De fide rerum quae non videntur helps introducing the former. Each view carries its own conception of the role of institutions in trust. For the harmonic approach, institutions are contexts that reinforce trust silently, whereas for the disharmonic view they are salient objects of trust. The need for an over-arching articulation of these limited views is further highlighted by appeal to another distinction, between background and decision-based forms of trust. This paves the way to what is here termed a metaharmonic theory of trust, a theory sensitive to the difference between the contexts where trust phenomena reinforce or counterbalance one another.


The mammalian Na + /H + exchange regulatory factor 1 (NHERF1) is a multi-domain scaffolding protein essential for regulating the intracellular trafficking and macromolecular assembly of transmembrane ion channels and receptors. NHERF1 consists of tandem PDZ-1, 2 domains that interact with the cytoplasmic domains of membrane proteins, and a C-terminal (CT) domain that binds the membrane-cytoskeleton linker protein ezrin. NHERF1 is held in an autoinhibited state through intra-molecular interactions between PDZ2 and the CT domain, which also includes a C-terminal PDZ-binding motif (-SNL). We have determined the structures of the isolated and tandem PDZ2CT domains by high-resolution NMR using small angle X-ray scattering as constraints. The PDZ2CT structure shows weak intramolecular interactions between the largely disordered CT domain and the PDZ ligand binding site. The structure reveals a novel helix-turn-helix subdomain that is allosterically the putative PDZ2 domain by a network of hydrophobic interactions. This helical increases both the stability and the binding affinity of the extended PDZ structure. Using NMR and small angle neutron scattering for joint structure refinement, we demonstrate the release of intramolecular domain-domain interactions in PDZ2CT upon binding to ezrin. Based on the structural information we show that human disease-causing mutations in PDZ2, R153Q and E225K, have significantly reduced protein stability . Loss of NHERF1 expressed in cells could result in failure to assemble membrane complexes that are important for normal physiological functions.


Title of document: EFFECT OF NOBLE METAL NANOPARTICLES ON ENDOGENOUS AND DIETARY ANTIOXIDANTS AND THEIR COMBINED INTERACTION WITH REACTIVE OXYGEN SPECIES Yuting Zhou, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Y. Martin Lo, Ph.D., Department of Nutrition and Food Science, University of Maryland, College Park In the last decade, nanotechnology has been extensively exploited in a variety of areas because nanoscaled materials provide a wide range of benefits that bulk materials do not possess. In spite of its advent, when applied to consumer related products, the new technology inevitably brings about side effect especially to biological or environment systems. Many have already determined that the damaging effect of nanomaterials in cell lines is caused by oxidative stress as a result of overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The present study aims at evaluating the role of noble metal nanomaterials in the generation and scavenging of ROS. It is noteworthy that the behavior of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, a continuously generated component in biological systems, is adjusted by the mimetic microenvironment. These Ag NPs were found to be capable of inducing production of ROS hydroxyl radicals and oxygen in acidic and alkaline environments, respectively. The Ag NPs were oxidized to ions at pH 4.6 while they have been found to participate in Ag-Ag-Ag cyclic reaction at pH 11. As a promising antimicrobial agent, Ag NPs alone barely scavenge free radicals, but they are found to moderate the scavenging capability of thiol-based antioxidants, essential endogenous antioxidants, due to their formation of Ag-S bond. In addition, Platinum nanoparticles (Pt NPs) have been mostly used as catalysts in many chemical reactions. While recent reports suggest antioxidant activity of Pt NPs due to their peroxidase-like activity, there are limitations in the use of Pt NPs as an antioxidant in scavenging hydroxyl radicals. Alternatively, owing to their ascorbate oxidase-like activity, Pt NPs reduce the antioxidant ability of ascorbic acid, an important antioxidant participating in many biological reactions. In addition, they exert tyrosinase-like activity in catalyzing the oxidation of (-)-Epicatechin, caffeic acid, and resveratrol to form pigment compounds. Therefore, Pt NPs vary in their effect on the antioxidant activity of phenolics against various radicals (DPPH radicals > hydroxyl radicals >superoxide radicals). Our study may provide insights for finding new applications for noble metal nanoparticles and for risk assessment. EFFECT OF NOBLE METAL NANOPARTICLES ON ENDOGENOUS AND DIETARY ANTIOXIDANTS AND THEIR COMBINED INTERACTION WITH REACTIVE OXYGEN SPECIES


Fluorescent silicon carbide was grown using the fast sublimation growth process on low off-axis 6H-SiC substrates. In this case, the morphology of the epilayer and the incorporation of dopants are influenced by the Si/C ratio. Differently converted tantalum foils were introduced into the growth cell in order to change vapor phase stochiometry during the growth. Fluorescent SiC grown using fresh and fully converted tantalum foils contained morphological instabilities leading to lower room temperature photoluminescence intensity while an improved morphology and optical stability was achieved with partly converted tantalum foil. This work reflects the importance of considering the use of Ta foil in sublimation epitaxy regarding the morphological and optical stability in fluorescent silicon carbide.


Photoevaporation of protoplanetary discs by high-energy radiation from the central young stellar object is currently the favourite model to explain the sudden dispersal of discs from the inside out. While several theoretical works have provided a detailed pictured of this process, the direct observational validation is still lacking. Emission lines produced in these slow-moving protoplanetary disc winds may bear the imprint of the wind structure and thus provide a potential diagnostic of the underlying dispersal process. In this paper, we primarily focus on the collisionally excited neutral oxygen line at 6300 angstrom. We compare our models predictions to observational data and demonstrate a thermal origin for the observed blueshifted low-velocity component of this line from protoplanetary discs. Furthermore, our models show that while this line is a clear tell-tale sign of a warm, quasi-neutral disc wind, typical of X-ray photoevaporation, its strong temperature dependence makes it unsuitable to measure detailed wind quantities like mass-loss rate.


Precarity applies to people who, in order to survive, need to work in a low-quality job, which is uncertain, temporary, low-paid, with no prospect of promotion, no security and no contract. In this sense, the precariat is a category related mostly to the secondary segments of the labour market according to the concept of the dual labour market. It is also the universal feature of Post-Fordism and the modern working conditions in which women, more often than men are located in the "worst" segment of the labour market. In this context, it is worth noting that since the beginning of the era of globalisation, women have mostly worked in the sectors more uncertain and unstable e.g., in the service industries and trade. It has been feminisation in a double sense of the word: there have been more and more working women, on the one hand, and on the other hand, women have usually taken the flexible jobs. Most of these jobs are precarious work. Precarity combined with job insecurity and low wages leaves the workforce in this group unable to plan for their future or afford a decent life. This article attempts to prove that the threat of precarity is more probable for women than men. This claim is supported by the OECD and Eurostat data on precarity for Poland and other European countries.


Your resource to passing the Solaris 9 Network Administrator Certification Exam!Join the ranks of readers who have trusted Exam Cram 2 to their certification preparation needs! The Solaris 9 Network Administrator Exam Cram 2 is focused on what you need to know to pass the Solaris 9 Network Administrator exam. The Exam Cram 2 Method of Study provides you with a concise method to learn the exam topics. The book includes tips, exam notes, acronyms and memory joggers in order to help you pass the exam.Included in the Solaris 9 Network Administrator Exam Cram 2: A tear-out "Cram Sheet" for last minute test preparation. Covers the latest release of Solaris, version 9. The PrepLogic Practice Tests, test engine to simulate the testing environment and test your knowledge.Trust in the series that has helped many others achieve certification success - Exam Cram 2.


This paper examines the impact of improvements in marketing skills relative to finance skills among small-scale entrepreneurs. It addresses three important questions: (1) What is the impact of marketing or finance skills on business profits? (2) How do improvements in marketing and finance skills respectively affect different business outcomes? (3) When are increases in marketing relative to finance skills more beneficial? Through a randomized control study of 852 firms in South Africa, the analysis finds significant improvements in profitability from both types of business skills training. However, the pathways to achieve these gains differ substantially between the two groups. The marketing group achieves greater profits by adopting a growth focus on higher sales, greater investments in stock and materials, and hiring more employees. The finance group achieves similar profit gains but through an efficiency focus on lower costs. Both groups show significantly higher adoption of business practices related to their respective training program. Consistent with a growth focus, marketing/sales skills are significantly more beneficial to businesses run by entrepreneurs with ex ante less exposure to different market contexts. In contrast and in line with an efficiency focus, it is the more established businesses prior to training that benefit significantly more from finance/accounting skills.


District Architecture for Networked Editions (DAFNE) is a research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research aiming to develop a prototype of the national infrastructure for electronic publishing in Italy. The project's initial target concerns the scientific and scholarly production in the human and social sciences. The organizational, legal, technical and business aspects of the entire digital publishing pipeline have been analysed. DAFNE system will support the request-offer chain by promoting the integration between the digital library and the electronic publishing districts. In this paper we present the main results of the project's first year of activity. First a quick outlook about the actors, objects and services is presented. Then the functional model is examined bringing out the distinction between information content and digital objects. Afterwards the technical model is described. The system has a distributed architecture, which includes three categories of subsystems: Data Providers (i.e. the publishers), Service Providers and External Services. Data and Service Providers interact according to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Finally DAFNE metadata is discussed. Metadata permeates the whole publishing chain and DAFNE metadata set is based on already defined domain-specific metadata vocabularies. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM) are the main reference standards. Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) and Open Archival Information System (OAIS) are the two other relevant models which complete DAFNE metadata specification.


By use of a wedge-shaped cell providing an absorbing layer tapering in thickness from less than one wavelength of visible light at one end to approximately 20 μm at the other end, we have measured the Lambert absorption coefficient for water in the spectral region between 4000 and 288 cm−1. After proper initial alignment of the cell windows had been established by the observation of interference fringes in the visible, we measured film thicknesses at various positions along the wedge by interferometric methods, employing convenient wavelengths in the infrared. We present the results of the study in graphical and tabular form.


Enhanced cellular uptake and efficient penetration of nanocarriers inside tumors is paramount to successful anti-cancer therapy. While many studies have shown the important role nanoparticle shape plays in cellular uptake, no detailed conclusions on the most efficient drug carrier shape have been drawn at this stage. Here, a series of fructose-based amphiphilic block copolymers poly(1-O-MAFru)-b-PMMA are synthesized via RAFT polymerization. Three different morphologies (spheres, rods and vesicles) are prepared by self-assembly under different processing conditions. The shape effects of fructose-coated nanoparticles on cellular uptake by two breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 cells and MDA-MB-231 cells) in 2D and 3D cell culture models are investigated. The cytotoxicity of corresponding paclitaxel-loaded nanoparticles are tested as well to give a comprehensive comparison between cellular uptake and resulting therapeutic efficacy after drug encapsulation in both cell culture models. Consistent results in 2D models confirm the shape effect of nanoparticles on cellular uptake. Unexpectedly, the shape does influence significantly the cell growth inhibition in 3D multicellular spheroids due to the possible cessation of transcellular delivery of nanoparticles in the apoptotic peripheral cells, caused by faster release of drugs from un-crosslinked micelles. Our results confirm the shape effect of nanoparticles on 2D models can vary from 3D models due to parameters such as spheroid penetration that can now play a pivotal role.


The submicron-level orthogonal cutting process of silicon has been investigated by the finite element approach, and the effects of tool edge radius on cutting force, cutting stress, temperature and chip formation were investigated. The results indicate that increasing the tool edge radius causes a significant increase in thrust force and a decrease in chip thickness. A hydrostatic pressure (∼15 GPa) is generated in the cutting region, which is sufficiently high to cause phase transformations in silicon. The volume of the material under high pressure increases with the edge radius. Temperature rise occurs intensively near the tool–chip interface while the highest cutting temperature (∼300 °C) is far lower than the necessary temperature for activating dislocations in silicon. As the edge radius is beyond a critical value (∼200 nm), the primary high-temperature zone shifts from the rake face side to the flank face side, causing a transition in the tool wear pattern from crater wear to flank wear. The simulation results from the present study could successfully explain existing experimental phenomena, and are helpful for optimizing tool geometry design in silicon machining.


Abstract. Electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), in which a sinusoidal test voltage or current is applied to the sample under test to measure its impedance over a suitable frequency range, is a powerful technique to investigate the electrical properties of a large variety of materials. In practice, the measured impedance spectra, usually fitted with an equivalent electrical model, represent an electrical fingerprint of the sample providing an insight into its properties and behavior. EIS is used in a broad range of applications as a quick and easily automated technique to characterize solid, liquid, semiliquid, organic as well as inorganic materials. This paper presents an updated review of EIS main implementations and applications.


Dreaming is a universal human experience. Despite this universality, dreams are easily forgotten and home dream recall frequency varies considerably among individuals and within one individual from night to night. Investigation into the dream recall process remains a core issue in the field of dream research. Studies suggest that dream recall can be affected by presleep conditions and that presleep suggestions can influence dream content. This single-subject A/B experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that dream recall would be enhanced using presleep self-suggestion. The results showed no increase in dream recall during the self-suggestion period. More research needs to be done before this question can be answered with any degree of confidence.


Aerosol properties were measured during an air- borne campaign experiment that took place in July 2006 in West Africa within the framework of the African Mon- soon Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA). The goal of the present study was to determine the main microphysical processes that affect the aerosols during the passage of a mesoscale convective system (MCS) over the region of Ni- amey in Niger. A significant change in the aerosol pro- files measured before and after the passage of the MCS was found in a layer located between 1300 and 3000 m, where the aerosol concentration drastically decreased after the passage of the MCS. Concurrently, a significant increase in the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) fraction was also observed dur- ing the post-MCS period in the same layer. Moreover, the results of the elemental composition analyses of individual particles collected in this layer after the MCS passage have shown higher contributions of sulfate, nitrate and chloride to the total aerosol mass. A mesoscale atmospheric model with on-line dust parameterization and Lagrangian backtra- jectories was used to interpret the impact of the MCS on the aerosol properties. The results of the simulation show that the MCS 1) generates dust particles at the surface in the gust front of the system and washout of particles during the sys- tem precipitation, 2) modifies the aerosol mixing state (in- tensive aerosol property) through cloud processing, and 3) enhances CCN activity of particles through coating by solu- ble material.


Here I report data to support a tumor suppressor role of the Cl 2 gene. Indeed, I detected a drastic reduction, of Cl 2 gene expression in almost all thyroid carcinomas analyzed, with respect to normal thyroid, with the lowest expression levels observed in the follicular variants of papillary carcinomas. Loss of heterozygosity and CpG hypermethylation at the second exon likely accounts for Cl 2 downregulation in thyroid carcinomas. A drastic reduction in Cl 2 expression, with respect to normal counterpart tissues, was also observed in breast, colon and ovarian carcinomas. The restoration of Cl 2 expression in two human thyroid anaplastic carcinoma cell lines leads to the suppression of the malignant phenotype associated with a higher susceptibility to apoptosis.
The development of thyroid adenomas and ovarian carcinomas in Cl knock-out mice validates the tumor suppressor role of Cl 2 gene. Finally, transgenic mice for RET/PTC1 oncogene crossed with the Cl 2 knock-out mice developed much more aggressive thyroid carcinomas compared with those observed in the single mutant RET/PTC 1 mice.
Therefore, these results taken together indicate Cl 2 as a putative tumor suppressor gene in the process of human thyroid carcinogenesis.


Despite advances in transactions technologies, paper currency still constitutes a notable percentage of the money supply in most countries. For example, it constitutes roughly 10% of the US Federal Reserve's main monetary aggregate, M2. Yet, it has important drawbacks. First, it can help facilitate activity in the underground (tax-evading) and illegal economy. Second, its existence creates the artifact of the zero bound on the nominal interest rate. On the other hand, the enduring popularity of paper currency generates many benefits, including substantial seigniorage revenue. This paper explores some of the issues associated with phasing out paper currency, especially large-denomination notes.


The need to efficiently calculate first- and higher-order derivatives of increasingly complex models expressed in Python has stressed or exceeded the capabilities of available tools. In this work, we explore techniques from the field of automatic differentiation (AD) that can give researchers expressive power, performance and strong usability. These include source-code transformation (SCT), flexible gradient surgery, efficient in-place array operations, and higher-order derivatives. We implement and demonstrate these ideas in the Tangent software library for Python, the first AD framework for a dynamic language that uses SCT.


This paper outlines a project to study the dynamic loading of ice-axes. The principle aim of the research was to increase the understanding of the state of stress experienced by an ice-axe in normal use. A climber's overarm swing technique, as employed in technical 'ice-climbing', was studied using a high speed video system. A typical swing was found to have an impact velocity of 90 ms-1 at a pick impact of 20° to the normal. A test rig was constructed to replicate the dynamic loading of a selection of 'technical axe' heads. A 2 mm thick photoelastic coating was bonded to each of the pick faces and impact events recorded using a reflection polariscope and a high speed video running at 2000 frames per second. The observed fringe patterns were used to make a qualitative comparison between picks with different tooth designs - saw-toothed, 6 mm and 45 mm semi-circular toothed and plain picks. It was found that the loading was predominantly in-plane bending in-plane bending. Improvements in strength performance could most effectively be achieved by widening and not thickening of the pick. However, the loading is unlikely to be that in which might be a combination of out of plane bending and torsion. It was concluded, therefore, that a study needs to be carried out to look at the loading regime in realistic conditions.


Objectives: To explore the patterns and determinants of reattendance among initial attendees at an organised breast cancer screening programme. Setting: Swiss mammography screening pilot programme, based on first-round enrolment in 1993-1995. Methods: Data on socio-demographic features, health preventive behaviour and history, prior screening round and referring physicians' attributes were collected at initial attendance. First-round attendees (n=4162) were followed prospectively through next screening round. Determinants of reattendance were identified by multivariate logistic regression. Results: Reattendance rate was high (80%). Women most likely to reattend were urban, Swiss residents with a true-negative first-round screening result. The more intensive the initial recruitment efforts, the lesser were the odds of reattendance. Mammography screening prior to screening enrolment increased reattendance. Having a gynaecologist, a female and a younger doctor as a referring physician was positively associated with reattendance. Conclusion: Mammography screening attendance is not only influenced by women-related factors but also by structural factors, and thus requires a global approach. For strategies aimed at improving performances of organised cancer screening programmes, understanding and quantification of determinants of (re)attendance are key elements to consider.


Objective: Total anomalous pulmonary venous return is an uncommon cyanotic congenital heart defect. Echocardiography is the initial diagnostic tool. Complimentary non-invasive modalities like cardiac computerized tomographic angiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging have replaced the need for cardiac catheterization in difficult cases. This study aimed to determine the accuracy of echocardiography in diagnosing total anomalous pulmonary venous return, and to determine the factors that may decrease its sensitivity. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted at the Aga Khan University Hospital Karachi, Pakistan from January 2010 to August 2016. All patients who were diagnosed with Total anomalous pulmonary venous return on echocardiography and had subsequent confirmation either on cardiac CT angiography or surgery were included. The diagnostic accuracy of echocardiography was expressed as sensitivity. Previously described taxonomy was used to define diagnostic error. Univariate and multivariate analysis were done by logistic regression OR (95% CI) were reported to identify factors causing the diagnostic error. Results: High diagnostic sensitivity (81%) was found in isolated total anomalous pulmonary venous return and low (27%) in heterotaxy and mixed (20%) varieties. Poor acoustic windows and right isomerism were found to be significant factors responsible for the diagnostic error on multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Echocardiography can diagnose isolated total anomalous pulmonary venous return with high accuracy. Use of additional modalities may be required for a complete diagnosis in cases with mixed variety, heterotaxy and poor acoustic windows.


Aim To optimise the education of medical students in the emergency department (ED). Methods Fourth year medical students, undertaking an emergency medicine rotation in a major trauma centre as part of an acute care programme, were prospectively surveyed over one year. Electronic questionnaire feedback provided a focus for interventions which were implemented as part of plan-do-study-act cycles. There were two interventions over three subsequent cohorts. Cohort A was our control group. Cohort B received a structured, formal induction to the ED. Cohort C were assigned a specialist emergency medicine trainee mentor. The project was led by a medical student undertaking an undergraduate BSc working in collaboration with an emergency medicine consultant and specialist trainee, all of whom passionate about leading improvement in medical education. Results Thirty eight of 48 fourth year medical students gave feedback on their ED rotation during the 2016–2017 academic year. The number of students citing 'a lack of knowledge of where to go within the department and what to do in each part'decreased from 7/15 (46.7%) in cohort A to 0/12 in cohort B. The number of students who were 'unsure as who best to approach'decreased from 9/27 (33.3%) in cohort A and B combined, to 2/11 (18.2%) in cohort C. The number of students citing any problem in their ED rotation decreased from 13/15 (86.7%) in cohort A to 5/12 (41.7%) in cohort B and 5/11 (45.5%) in cohort C. Conclusion Providing medical students in the ED with a structured, formal induction and by assigning ED mentors results in sustained improvement in feedback and can be used as a model to optimise medical education. The low-cost nature of the interventions and the ready availability of trainees, also wanting to contribute to their own teaching portfolios, makes this model easily replicable across all types of EDs.


This study deals with deeper analysis of the role of domestic institutional framework in policy making process of developing nations. Grossman-Helpman (1994) model of 'protection for sale' has been used to extract the extent of welfarism in government decisions related to trade policy, i.e., how much the government puts weight on welfare of the society when designing a trade policy. Findings of the study report that it is not about the type of political regime actually, rather it is about the types of political institutions under different constitutional structures, i.e., parliamentary or presidential systems which matters in promoting welfarism in government policies. These findings facilitates in drawing the conclusion that not only the democracy, rather parliamentary natured are welfare-enhancing for developing nations when taking any policy decision. Moreover, the results also support that de jure (constitutional rules) institutions play more imperative role in decision making as compared to the de facto (governance) institutions.


The regulation and control of the bus industry is a long debated topic. Proponents of free competition seek complete relaxation of controls on the grounds that market forces will generate an efficient and effective service. Others seek varying levels of control and government involvement because of perceived imperfections in market forces, and loss in social welfare. This report examines the extent to which variation in the level of regulation affects public transport performance, and any resulting effect on travel patterns. The case-study material comes from five African cities, in the population range 0.4-1.5 million, whose public transport demonstrates a range of regulatory controls and development options. (TRRL)


In a recent paper by Polyakov and Nearing (2003) it was shown experimentally that the sediment transport capacity in a rill is not unique for a given soil type, slope, and flow rate. Indeed, they found that the transport capacity was dependent on whether sediment transport in the rill was occurring under net erosion or net deposition conditions. They concluded that this nonuniqueness in transport capacity is a discrepancy that needs addressing in soil erosion models. Here we postulate that this behavior occurs as a result of defining transport capacity as an model input to distinguish between net erosion and net deposition regimes, instead of determining it as an outcome between the separate but continuous rate processes of deposition and entrainment such as is the case for the multisize class erosion model of Hairsine and Rose (1992a, 1992b). This model is used to reinterpret and reproduce the results of Polyakov and Nearing (2003). The analysis shows that the transport capacity cannot be unique for a soil composed of a range of size classes and that uniqueness only occurs for the exceptional case of single size class soil. Consequently, when used as a model input, the transport capacity concept is deficient in modeling sediment transport of real soils across different flow conditions.


We tested the hypothesis that biotinylation of K12 in histone H4 plays a role in the cellular response to double-strand breaks (DSB) of DNA in human cells. DSB were caused by treating choriocarcinoma JAr cells with etoposide. Biotinylation of K12 in histone H4 decreased by 50% as early as 10-20 min after initiation of treatment with etoposide. Biotinylation returned to initial levels 30-40 min after the addition of etoposide to the medium. Temporal patterns of K12-biotinylation were similar for human lymphoma cells. Phosphorylation of S14 of histone H2B and poly(ADP-ribosylation) of glutamate residues on histone H2A are known markers of DSB in DNA; these modifications increased 10-40 min after alterations in K12-biotinylation occurred. Decreased biotinylation of K12 of histone H4 was specific for DSB but was not detectable in response to single-strand breaks or the formation of thymine dimers. Biotin-deficient choriocarcinoma cells exhibited a 40% decrease in rates of survival in response to etoposide compared with biotin-sufficient controls. These studies suggest that the lack of biotinylation of K12 in histone H4 is an early signaling event in response to DSB.


The aim of this work is to chemically characterize olive tree prunings and use the material in hydrothermal and combustion processes. The influence of the hydrothermal treatment conditions, with and without acid catalyst, of the main fraction of olive tree prunings (stems with a diameter > 1 cm) (temperature 150 to 190ºC, time 0 to 20 minutes after reaching the operation temperature, liquid/solid ratio 6 to 8, and sulphuric acid concentration -0.1 to 0.5%), on the composition of resulting liquid fraction and on the solid yield of resulting solid fraction were studied. A polynomial model was found to reproduce the glucose and arabinose concentration, as well as the experimental results for solid yield with errors less than 20% at worst (< 10-12% in 90-95% of all cases). Good content values of glucose (5.33%) and arabinose (2.76%), and an acceptable value of the solid fraction yield (57.96%) were obtained operating with following values of temperature, time, liquid/solid ratio, and sulfuric acid concentration: 186ºC, 18 min, 7:1, and 0.1%, respectively. With these values are saved, with respect to the use of higher values for operating variables, 2.1% energy, 80% sulfuric acid, and more than 10% of capital facilities. Residual fraction of olive tree prunings (leaves and stems with a diameter < 1 cm) had a heating value of 18699 kJ/kg, a flame temperature of 1207-2234 ºC, and a dew point temperature of combustion gasses of 45-53 ºC.


Most successful object recognition systems rely on binary classification, deciding only if an object is present or not, but not providing information on the actual object location. To perform localization, one can take a sliding window approach, but this strongly increases the computational cost, because the classifier function has to be evaluated over a large set of candidate subwindows. In this paper, we propose a simple yet powerful branch-and-bound scheme that allows efficient maximization of a large class of classifier functions over all possible subimages. It converges to a globally optimal solution typically in sublinear time. We show how our method is applicable to different object detection and retrieval scenarios. The achieved speedup allows the use of classifiers for localization that formerly were considered too slow for this task, such as SVMs with a spatial pyramid kernel or nearest neighbor classifiers based on the chi2-distance. We demonstrate state-of-the-art performance of the resulting systems on the UIUC Cars dataset, the PASCAL VOC 2006 dataset and in the PASCAL VOC 2007 competition.


Background: Gene mutations of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) cause cystic fibrosis, which is associated with profound pulmonary ventilation-perfusion (V A /Q) mismatches. Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV) minimizes V A /Q inequalities. However, chronic hypoxemia-associated lung diseases frequently result in pulmonary hypertension (PH). Aims and objectives: We hypothesized that CFTR may mediate HPV potentially by modulating the response to sphingolipids as mediators of HPV. Methods: HPV and V A /Q mismatch were analyzed in isolated mouse lungs or in vivo . Ca 2+ mobilization, transient receptor potential canonical 6 (TRPC6) translocation to caveolae and the interaction between CFTR and TRPC6 were studied in pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PASMC). The role of CFTR in long-term vascular adaptation to chronic hypoxia was analyzed in CFTR -/- mice. Results: CFTR deficiency diminished HPV, aggravated V A /Q mismatch and partially protected from hypoxic PH. In PASMC, hypoxia caused CFTR/TRPC6 complex formation, while CFTR inhibition attenuated hypoxia-induced TRPC6 translocation to caveolae and Ca 2+ mobilization. Inhibition of neutral sphingomyelinase (nSMase) blocked HPV, while exogenous nSMase caused CFTR-dependent TRPC6 translocation and vasoconstriction. nSMase and hypoxia-induced vasoconstriction, yet not TRPC6 translocation were blocked by inhibition or deficiency of sphingosine kinase 1 (SphK1) or antagonism of S1P receptors 2 and 4 (S1P 2/4 ). S1P and nSMase had synergistic effects on vasoconstriction that involved TRPC6, phospholipase C, and rho kinase. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate a central role of CFTR and sphingolipids in HPV.


The forest fragments or relict forests on the Western slopes of the Andes in northwest Peru and in south-west Ecuador are fragile ecosystems, which were largely continuous at some stage in the past. The importance and uniqueness of these forests as «refuges» and stable habitats roots partly in their complex diversity and their high levels of endemicity. These in turn are the outcome of a complex topography and ecology. In this introductory chapter 12 studies are analysed, which were presented at the Taller sobre Bosques Relictos de la Vertiente Occidental Andina del Norte del Peru y Sur del Ecuador in May 2004 at the X CONABOT, Trujillo-Peru. This helps to consolidate and update our knowledge on these over 20 forests fragments in northern Peru and two previously unknown fragments are presented for the first time: Bosque La Oscurana (Cajamarca) and Kanaris (Lambayeque). Some ideas are exposed on the the relationships between the relict forests, how to analyse their dynamics, how to characterize their structure and how their conservation may be achieved. It is proposed that crucial elements in a conservation of these forests are a) urgently inventorizing them to demonstrate their high diversity b) emphasizing their economic potential with respect to the abundance of phytogenetic ressources c) evaluating their role as catchment areas for the rivers which are the primary source of water for agriculture and urban life on the coast.


The immune‐mediated central nervous system (CNS) demyelinating disorder multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common neurological disease in young adults. One important goal of MS research is to identify strategies that will preserve oligodendrocytes (OLs) in MS lesions. During active myelination and remyelination, OLs synthesize large quantities of membrane proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which may result in ER stress. During ER stress, pancreatic ER kinase (PERK) phosphorylates eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2α (elF2α), which activates the integrated stress response (ISR), resulting in a stress‐resistant state. Previous studies have shown that PERK activity is increased in OLs within the demyelinating lesions of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a model of MS. Moreover, our laboratory has shown that PERK protects OLs from the adverse effects of interferon‐γ, a key mediator of the CNS inflammatory response. Here, we have examined the role of PERK signaling in OLs during development and in response to EAE. We generated OL‐specific PERK knockout (OL‐PERKko/ko) mice that exhibited a lower level of phosphorylated elF2α in the CNS, indicating that the ISR is impaired in the OLs of these mice. Unexpectedly, OL‐PERKko/ko mice develop normally and show no myelination defects. Nevertheless, EAE is exacerbated in these mice, which is correlated with increased OL loss, demyelination, and axonal degeneration. These data indicate that although not needed for developmental myelination, PERK signaling provides protection to OLs against inflammatory demyelination and suggest that the ISR in OLs could be a valuable target for future MS therapeutics. GLIA GLIA 2014;62:680–691


We have been successfully conducted observations of total-electron content (TEC) of the ionosphere by the satellite-ground beacon experiment. An unique dual-band (150/400MHz) digital receiver GNU Radio Beacon Receiver (GRBR) were developed based on the recent digital signal processing technologies. The GRBR receivers were deployed first in Japan, and then in southeast Asia, and other areas. Data from the GRBR network were used for the investigations of variety of ionospheric phenomena. We have found mid-latitude summer nighttime anomaly (MSNA) over Japan, which is summer nighttime TEC enhancement at higher latitudes. Longitudinal "large-scale wave structures (LSWS)" in the low latitude were studied in detail as a source of equatorial Spread-F (ESF) events. Also we were successful to measure the equatorial ionospheric anomaly (EIA) in large latitudinal extent of at most +/-20 degrees in Thailand-west Indonesia region. GRBR was also used for rocket-ground experiment. However, many beacon satellites are now aging, and its number is decreasing. We now have a project to start new satellite-ground beacon experiment with new satellite constellations. One of them is TBEx (Tandem Beacon Explorer), a project by SRI International, to fly a constellation of two 3U cubesats with triband beacon transmitters. Another one is a project of FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 by Taiwan/USA. Well-known mission of COSMIC-2 is GNSS occultation experiment, but the satellites carry triband beacon transmitters. We are now developing the next generation beacon receiver, GRBR2, that should be useful for these new projects. In this presentation we will review achievements with GRBR, and discuss possibility of the new satellite beacon exeperiment.


Whole lives come into focus in this rich and diverse collection, as Desai trains her luminous spotlight on private universes from India to Canada and New England, from Cornwall to Mexico. Her protagonists set out on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or surprisingly back where they started from. Caught up in cycles of hope and disappointment, their lives are ruled by the seasons, or straitjacketed by the conventions of hospitality, friendship and family. In the title story, a beloved dog, black as Satan, brings nothing but disaster; in another, a business man away from home sees his own death; and elsewhere, old relationships stir up buried resentments, issues demand commitment - or escape. And in the final quiet masterpiece, one of Delhi's girls of slender means finds a kind of joy and freedom in a strange rooftop community.


Monodisperse and uniform γ-Fe_2O_3 (maghemite) nanocrystals of variable size were prepared by thermal decomposition of iron pentacarbonyl [Fe(CO)_5] in the presence of surfactants, following controlled oxidation with trimethylamine N -oxide as a mild oxidant. The influence of carboxylic acids with variable alkyl carbon chain lengths on the synthesis of γ-Fe_2O_3 nanocrystals was investigated. The effect of the molar ratios of surfactant to iron precursor was also studied. The nanocrystals were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). XRD showed the particles were highly crystalline at the nanometer scale. The results showed that the size and shape of the nanocrystal is strongly influenced by the decomposition temperature of iron pentacarbonyl and closely related to the length of carbon chain of the capping groups and the molar ratio of surfactant to iron precursor. Following controlled evaporation from nonpolar solvents, self-assembly into two-dimensional arrays could be observed by TEM. It was also found that the distance between the nanocrystals in self-assembled structures matched the length of the capping molecules very well.


We a abstract As members of the generation that straddles the inventions of the personal computer, video games, and the Internet, Gen Xers have a unique perspective on technology—comfortable using digital tools, while being aware of their limitations. Gen X evolved from uncritical optimism about technology to a more nuanced, outcomes-based understanding of its uses and value. This progression mirrors the development of strategies employed by Gen X nonprofit leaders as they have sought to apply technology solutions to challenges of aging and other social purposes. The work of Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) is highlighted as an example of these trends. | key words : Gen X, technology, technology and aging, OATS


Planktonic foraminifera show 30 to 45 percent of the species disappearing during the 300,000 to 400,000 years prior to the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary in continental shelf (El Kef, Tunisia) and epicontinental sea (Brazos River, Texas) sections. Their disappearance appears to be linked to a sea-level regression and global cooling. At the K/T boundary a 26 percent species reduction coincides with the geochemical anomalies at El Kef; their disappearance appears to be a direct consequence of the K/T boundary event. No change is observed at Brazos River. At both El Kef and Brazos River, many species (11 and 33 percent, respectively) disappear shortly after the K/T boundary, and all but one of the Cretaceous survivors terminally decline in relative abundance beginning at the K/T boundary. This pattern of species extinctions clearly shows a significant decline in species diversity during the latest Maastrichtian, followed by a sudden decline in diversity at the K/T boundary, which drastically and permanently altered planktonic foraminiferal communities. The K/T boundary event, however, did not cause instantaneous extinctions of nearly all species, as commonly claimed. Initial recovery of the ecosystem appears to have occurred about 230,000 years after the K/T boundary event, as implied by an increase in carbonate sedimentation, carbon isotope values, and diversification of planktonic foraminifera. Carbon and oxygen isotope records of benthic and planktonic foraminifera at Brazos River reveal remarkable new data with far-reaching implications. For instance, the <5C shift, which characterizes the K/T boundary globally, coincides with the micropaleontologically defined boundary and not with the tsunami deposit of Bourgeois and others (1988), indicating that the latter deposit is independent of the boundary event. Moreover, the <5C shift occurs gradually over thousands of years, and not instantaneously as recorded in deep-sea sections, implying a more gradual and long-term effect than commonly assumed. Furthermore, stable isotopic data unequivocally show the survivorship of many Cretaceous species well into the early Tertiary.


Operational oceanography can be described as the provision of routine oceanographic information needed for decision-making purposes. It is dependent upon sustained research and development through the end-to-end framework of an operational service, from observation collection to delivery mechanisms. The core components of operational oceanographic systems are a multi-platform observation network, a data management system, a data assimilative prediction system, and a dissemination/accessibility system. These are interdependent, necessitating communication and exchange between them, and together provide the mechanism through which a clear picture of ocean conditions, in the past, present, and future, can be seen. Ocean observations play a critical role in all aspects of operational oceanography, not only for assimilation but as part of the research cycle, and for verification and validation of products. Data assimilative prediction systems are advancing at a fast pace, in tandem with improved science and the growth in computing power. To make best use of the system capability these advances would be matched by equivalent advances in operational observation coverage. This synergy between the prediction and observation systems underpins the quality of products available to stakeholders, and justifies the need for sustained ocean observations. In this white paper, the components of an operational oceanographic system are described, highlighting the critical role of ocean observations, and how the operational systems will evolve over the next decade to improve the characterization of ocean conditions, including at finer spatial and temporal scales.


Abstract In recent decades, agencies charged with managing historic structures and sites have found dendroarchaeological studies increasingly valuable, given the ability of such studies to verify (or refute) accepted dates of construction. The Ximénez-Fatio House has well-documented historical and cultural significance for the state of Florida, as it is one of St. Augustine's oldest, best-preserved, and most studied historic properties. According to documentary sources, the two-story coquina-stone main house was reportedly built around 1797–1798, and included a one-story wing of warehouses, giving the house a distinctive "L" shape. Documentary evidence also suggests that a second story was added above the wing sometime between 1830 and 1842. However, after studying the building fabric itself, historical architects now believe the entire wing of the house was remodeled two decades later in the 1850s. Our goals were to: (1) determine the probable construction years for the original house and wing using tree-ring dating techniques, and (2) verify the probable construction year for the remodeling that occurred in the wing section of the house. A total of 74 core samples were extracted from longleaf pine (Pinus palustris P. Miller) timbers used to construct the house. Twenty-six were confidently crossdated both visually and statistically against each other to produce a 185-year floating tree-ring chronology. A statistically significant (p < 0.0001) correlation between our chronology and a longleaf pine chronology from Lake Louise, Georgia, anchors our chronology between 1673 and 1857. No cutting dates were obtained from the main house, but the lack of any tree rings that post-date 1798 supports the 1797 construction date. Furthermore, cutting dates obtained from beams in the first-floor wing revealed that the extensive remodeling of the wing likely occurred in the period 1856 to 1858 soon after the house had been purchased by Louisa Fatio in 1855.


The goal of this project is to design and build a remotely controllable camera system that will be deployed at the Cal Poly Pier located in Avila Beach. The system is composed of a camera and all of its lighting and movement controlling hardware enclosed into a waterproof acrylic tube, allowing it to be lowered underwater. The camera will stream its video feed onto a website where any user will be able to watch a live video stream from the pod. In addition, users with the correct privileges will be able to remotely control of the camera system via the website. Remote users will be able to fully control the movement and lighting of the camera system in order to monitor the local sea life at the pier.


• The size, nature, and significance of the informal sector in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have important implications for how countries are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how policymakers can manage the ensuing socio-economic shocks. • This policy brief discusses how informality complicates the implementation of COVID-19 containment measures. It addresses the question of how policymakers in SSA can effectively fight the pandemic in the context of high informality in a way that minimises the negative economic impact, as well as how they can appropriately support the informal sector through the negative economic shock. • The brief emphasises policy recommendations to avoid blanket lockdowns; tailor lockdowns to accommodate the nature of the informal sector; and minimise the use (or duration) of tailored lockdowns due to their impacts on the livelihoods of informal workers. • To save lives and safeguard livelihoods in the context of high informality, the brief calls for the prioritisation of strategies that enhance sharp behavioural changes at the individual level and promote strong personal responsibility for compliance to the protocols for distancing, hygiene, and the use of face masks. • Tailored support for the informal sector can be provided through informal business associations; reinforced microfinance institutions; and temporary utility subsidies (electricity, water, and local government rents). In brief