Africa is working toward the goal of creating a common currency that would serve as a symbol of African unity. The advantages of a common currency include lower transaction costs, increased stability, and greater insulation of central banks from pressures to provide monetary financing. Disadvantages relate to asymmetries among countries, especially in their terms of trade and in the degree of fiscal discipline. More disciplined countries will not want to form a union with countries whose excessive spending puts upward pressure on the central bank's monetary expansion. In The Monetary Geography of Africa , Paul Masson and Catherine Pattillo review the history of monetary arrangements on the continent and analyze the current situation and prospects for further integration. They apply lessons from both experience and theory that lead to a number of conclusions. To begin with, West Africa faces a major problem because Nigeria has both asymmetric terms of trade --it is a large oil exporter while its potential partners are oil importers --and most important, large fiscal imbalances. Secondly, a monetary union among all eastern or southern African countries seems infeasible at this stage, since a number of countries suffer from the effects of civil conflicts and drought and are far from achieving the macroeconomic stability of South Africa. Lastly, the plan by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to create a common currency seems to be generally compatible with other initiatives that could contribute to greater regional solidarity. However, economic gains would likely favor Kenya, which, unlike the other two countries, has substantial exports to its neighbors, and this may constrain the political will needed to proceed. A more promising strategy for monetary integration would be to build on existing monetary unions --the CFA franc zone in western and central Africa and the Common Monetary Area in southern Africa. Masson and Pattillo argue that the goal of a creating a single African currency is probably beyond reach. Economic realities suggest that grand new projects for African monetary unions are unlikely to be successful. More important for Africa's economic well-being will be to attack the more fundamental problems of corruption and governance.


ATRAP has made many important improvements since CERN's Antiproton Decelerator (AD) was restarted in 2006. These include substantial increases in the number of positrons (e+) and antiprotons (Pbars) used to make antihydrogen (Hbar) atoms, a new technique for loading electrons (e−) that are used to cool Pbars and e+, implementation of a completely new, larger and more robust apparatus in our second experimental zone and the inclusion of a quadrupole Ioffe trap intended to trap the coldest Hbar atoms produced. Using this new apparatus we have produced large numbers of Hbar atoms within a Penning trap that is located within this quadrupole Ioffe trap using a new technique which shows promise for producing even colder atoms. These observed Hbar atoms resolve a debate about whether positrons and antiprotons can be brought together to form atoms within the divergent magnetic fields of a quadrupole Ioffe trap.


The statue of North Carolina Supreme Court Judge Thomas Ruffin that stands in a shadowy alcove at the entrance of a state court building in Raleigh was erected in 1915, toward the conclusion of a period of memorialization in the American South that was intended to reinforce in the public's imagination a coherent story of American history that began with the Founding Fathers, continued through Robert E. Lee and the narrative of the "Lost Cause," and worked to evoke "old family heritage, Anglo-Saxon supremacy, and military and political heroism." Although Ruffin's authorship of State v. Mann (1829), a case well known in its time (and now) for the stridency of the rhetoric with which Ruffin upholds the "power of the master," is nowhere mentioned in the documentation surrounding the creation and dedication of the statue, that connection would have been inescapable to a white audience, which would have been largely sympathetic. But an emancipationist counternarrative, which was never really silenced, survives as a reminder of the strength and resilience of generations of Americans committed to equal justice under the Constitution. A recognition of this counternarrative has the potential to change the way we view Ruffin's statue: the statement of the fixed and irrefutable power of law that it was no doubt intended to make unfolds into a conversation about the uses of law by the powerful. Such a shift of perspective, in turn, invites us into a broader reconsideration of our ways of navigating the contested terrain of public commemorative art.


Wastewater collection system on military installations require periodic maintenance and repair, and occasionally upgrading. Deterioration of wastewater systems enables the entry of extraneous water (termed Infiltration and Inflow or I/I) into sanitary sewer collection systems. This imposes a significant problem by overloading the both the wastewater collection system and treatment plants reducing the capacity and capability of sewer systems to transport and treat domestic and industrial wastewaters. Proper selection of rehabilitation techniques and allocation of repair dollars in the most cost-effective manner is a problem for utility personnel. Therefore, USACERL initiated a research project to mitigate I/I problems in US Army installations' sewer systems. A standard procedure for sewer system evaluation was formulated along with a software package designed specifically for Army I/I studies and applications. The U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (USACERL), working with Planning & Development Applications (Belmot, MA), developed a dynamic infrastructure management tool called the Sewer Inventory and Maintenance Management System for Infiltration and Inflow Control (SIMMS-IIC). Data is entered into SIMMS-IIC and processed and the effectiveness of each can be compared until an optimal solution is found. Demonstrations for the software capabilities were conducted at a Southern US installation to introduce it to the user community. Discussions of USACERL experience with the project, applicability and benefits to municipal and private systems, and particular user input for the program will be part of the project presentation.


Retinal Müller cells are major producers of inflammatory and angiogenic cytokines which contribute to diabetic retinopathy (DR). Over-activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway has been shown to play an important pathogenic role in DR. However, the roles of Müller cell-derived Wnt/β-catenin signaling in retinal neovascularization (NV) and DR remain undefined. In the present study, mice with conditional β-catenin knockout (KO) in Müller cells were generated and subjected to oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) and streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes. Wnt signaling was evaluated by measuring levels of β-catenin and expression of its target genes using immunoblotting. Retinal vascular permeability was measured using Evans blue as a tracer. Retinal NV was visualized by angiography and quantified by counting pre-retinal nuclei. Retinal pericyte loss was evaluated using retinal trypsin digestion. Electroretinography was performed to examine visual function. No abnormalities were detected in the β-catenin KO mice under normal conditions. In OIR, retinal levels of β-catenin and VEGF were significantly lower in the β-catenin KO mice than in littermate controls. The KO mice also had decreased retinal NV and vascular leakage in the OIR model. In the STZ-induced diabetic model, disruption of β-catenin in Müller cells attenuated over-expression of inflammatory cytokines and ameliorated pericyte dropout in the retina. These findings suggest that Wnt signaling activation in Müller cells contributes to retinal NV, vascular leakage and inflammation and represents a potential therapeutic target for DR.


We present the experimental observation of generation of vector dark-soliton pulse trains with terahertz repetition rates in the normal dispersion regime of an optical fiber. The polarization solitons build up from induced cross-phase modulation instability of two orthogonal pumps in a highly birefringent fiber.


In spite of reduction of rejection rates and improvement in short‐term survival post–kidney transplantation, modest progress has occurred in long‐term graft attrition over the years. Timely identification of molecular events that precede clinical and histopathological changes might help in early intervention and thereby increase the graft half‐life. Evolution of "omics" tools has enabled systemic investigation of the influence of the whole genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome and microbiome on transplant function and survival. In this omics era, systemic approaches, in‐depth clinical phenotyping and use of strict validation methods are the key for further understanding the complex mechanisms associated with graft function. Systems biology is an interdisciplinary holistic approach that focuses on complex and dynamic interactions within biological systems. The complexity of the human kidney transplant is unlikely to be captured by a reductionist approach. It appears essential to integrate multi‐omics data that can elucidate the multidimensional and multilayered regulation of the underlying heterogeneous and complex kidney transplant model. Herein, we discuss studies that focus on genetic biomarkers, emerging technologies and systems biology approaches, which should increase the ability to discover biomarkers, understand mechanisms and stratify patients and responses post–kidney transplantation.


Detailed studies on oxidation and reduction of complex polysaccharides were studied. Low molecular weight glucan like dextran has been oxidized using different quantities of sodium hypochlorite and the number of glucose units oxidized has been analyzed using potentiometric titrations. Different factors such as the quantity of sodium hypochlorite, reaction duration, isolation have been comprehensively studied. The oxidized product has been analyzed by Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1HNMR), Carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance (13C NMR), Infra-Red (IR) and Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC). Similarly low molecular weight dextran has been hydrogenated using different quantities sodium borohydride and percentage reduction was calculated using reducing sugar content.


This paper seeks to assess the current status and future prospects for private pension management in Continental Europe, with a particular focus on the nature of competition among managers of pension assets. It is shown that the pension fund sectors in Continental Europe are relatively small and the industry to date has tended to be oligopolistic and segmented on a national basis. Similar comments apply to the investment fund and life insurance sectors also. This situation has tended to lead to higher prices and lower returns than could otherwise be obtained. Regulatory, fiscal and demand-side differences are at the time of writing holding back a Pan European asset management market, despite three years of EMU. Nevertheless, future pressures are likely to induce greater competition, notably on a cross border basis. These include not only evolving effects of EMU itself but also the indirect effects on asset management via banking, EU Directives and the further pressures for pension reform. JEL classification: G22, G23


For the last decade, the passive radiometer incorporated in the Cassini RADAR has recorded the 2.2 cm wavelength thermal emission from Titan's seas. In this paper, we analyze the radiometry observations collected from February 2007 to January 2015 over one of these seas, Ligeia Mare, with the goal of providing constraints on its composition, bathymetry, and dynamics. In light of the depth profile obtained by Mastrogiuseppe et al. (2014) and of a two‐layer model, we find that the dielectric constant of the sea liquid is <1.8, and its loss tangent is <3.6−2.1+4.3×10−5 . Both results point to a composition dominated by liquid methane rather than ethane. A high methane concentration suggests that Ligeia Mare is primarily fed by methane‐rich precipitation and/or ethane has been removed from it (e.g., by crustal interaction). Our result on the dielectric constant of the seafloor is less constraining <2.9−0.9+0.9 , but we favor a scenario where the floor of Ligeia Mare is covered by a sludge of compacted and possibly nitrile‐rich organic material formed by the deposition of photochemical haze or by rain washing of the nearby shores. We use these results to produce a low‐resolution bathymetry map of the sea. We also estimate the temperature variation of the bulk sea between February 2007 and July 2013 to be <2 K, which provides a constraint on its net evaporative cooling currently being explored in ocean circulation models. Lastly, we suggest a lag in the summer warming of the northern polar terrains.


We rigorously evaluate three state-of-the-art techniques for inducing sparsity in deep neural networks on two large-scale learning tasks: Transformer trained on WMT 2014 English-to-German, and ResNet-50 trained on ImageNet. Across thousands of experiments, we demonstrate that complex techniques (Molchanov et al., 2017; Louizos et al., 2017b) shown to yield high compression rates on smaller datasets perform inconsistently, and that simple magnitude pruning approaches achieve comparable or better results. Additionally, we replicate the experiments performed by (Frankle & Carbin, 2018) and (Liu et al., 2018) at scale and show that unstructured sparse architectures learned through pruning cannot be trained from scratch to the same test set performance as a model trained with joint sparsification and optimization. Together, these results highlight the need for large-scale benchmarks in the field of model compression. We open-source our code, top performing model checkpoints, and results of all hyperparameter configurations to establish rigorous baselines for future work on compression and sparsification.


In his dissent in McCleskey v. Kemp, Justice William Brennan turned a famous phrase that has long resonated with criminal justice reformers. In upholding Georgia's capital sentencing system, the majority expressed concern about Eighth Amendment claims based on statistics revealing racial disparities in the application of the death penalty, fearing that such claims "would open the door to widespread challenges to all aspects of criminal sentencing." Justice Brennan lamented that "on its face, such a statement seems to suggest a fear of too much justice."Disconcertingly, almost everyone seriously involved in debates over the modern administration of death penalty seemingly has a fear of too much capital justice. This essay seeks to explain this practical reality of modern death penalty advocacy in order to spotlight the problems it necessarily creates for any sustained efforts to improve the modern death penalty. By unpacking the fear of too much capital justice among capital punishment's active supporters and ardent opponents, this essay seeks first to expose an enduring disconnect between lay interest and insider advocacy concerning death penalty reform, and second to explain my pessimistic concern that even moderate and modest efforts to improve the modern administration of capital punishment may, more often than not, constitute something of a fool's errand. After discussing these dynamics surrounding modern capital punishment advocacy and reform, this essay closes by admitting uncertainty concerning what enduring lessons should be drawn from my observations for the future of the death penalty in the United States. It may be tempting to conclude simply that it would be far wiser for existing death penalty jurisdictions to try to end, rather than just mend, their modern capital punishment systems. But in an effort to provide a silver lining to what may otherwise seem like a dark story, this essay concludes by noting some unique potential benefits for American criminal justice systems when capital jurisdictions try (and fail) to achieve "too much justice" in their death penalty systems.


The review explores:
• the impact of alcohol education/life-skills programmes in developing school-age children's: knowledge of, and attitudes towards, alcohol; skills (including confidence, assertiveness, resistance skills; decision-making, and ability to stay safe and healthy); and behaviours (particularly related to consumption patterns, including frequency of drinking and episodes of drunkenness)
• which alcohol education/life-skills programmes offer greatest value for money
• the processes that facilitate or inhibit the implementation, sustainability and impact of alcohol education/life-skills programmes.

The review builds on a variety of previous literature reviews, which present a mixed picture of the effectiveness of alcohol education initiatives for school-aged pupils. For full details of these reviews, see Section 2 of the report.

Review findings:
Which programmes have greatest impact on children and young people?
• Previous literature reviews of alcohol education and life-skills programmes present a mixed picture of their effectiveness for school-aged pupils.
• There are difficulties in judging impact due to:
− the challenge of generalising about effective programme ingredients
− issues related to programme fidelity. If fidelity has not been investigated through a thorough process evaluation, it is difficult to ascertain whether outcomes are a result of the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the programme, or of the way in which it has been implemented.
• This review found substantial evidence relating to the positive effects of school-based alcohol education and life-skills programmes on pupils' alcohol related-knowledge.
• Few of the sources specifically measured the impacts on pupils' attitudes. Those that did, have variable and inconclusive findings.
• There is little evidence of the effectiveness of alcohol education and life-skills programmes in improving pupils' alcohol-related decision-making skills.
• There is a degree of evidence of the effectiveness of alcohol education and life-skills programmes in reducing the frequency of alcohol consumption and episodes of drunkenness among school-aged children. There are, however, limitations to several of the research studies cited.

Which programmes are most cost effective?
• Very few studies have investigated the cost benefits of universal school-based alcohol education programmes.
• There is some limited analysis of the costs incurred in running individual programmes, but no evidence as to how these compare to those of alternative programmes.
• World Health Organisation research suggests that school-based alcohol education is not cost effective in reducing alcohol-related harm in any European region. In contrast, alcohol pricing and taxation policy are cost-effective throughout Europe.
• However, some authors hypothesise that with just a very small effect size in reduced alcohol consumption rates among young people as a result of alcohol education programmes, the cost benefits to society could be substantial.
• There is evidence of one targeted residential programme in the USA (ChalleNGe), and of one specialist drug and alcohol service in the UK that have provided substantial cost benefits to individuals and society. These are not universal alcohol education programmes however.

What factors facilitate or inhibit the success of programmes?
• Programmes are not always transferrable from one situation or context to another. There needs to be caution when transferring lessons from effective programmes.
• Effective alcohol education curricula achieve a good balance between: accurate and consistent information giving and knowledge building; skills development; and sensitivity to factors influencing student attitudes and behaviours.
• Effective teaching and learning approaches include those that are interactive rather than didactic. Passive teaching approaches are associated with less favourable results.
• Course delivery by external professionals such as health workers and counsellors can sometimes lead to more positive outcomes than teacher-led delivery, and specialist school staff achieve more positive results than non-specialist teachers.
• There is tentative, but inconclusive, evidence that effective programmes focus on prevention rather than sanction, and on harm-reduction rather than abstinence.
The optimum age for effective exposure is unclear, but seems to be somewhere between the ages of 12 and 14. There is evidence that a series of short-duration interventions delivered through childhood, with booster sessions into adolescence, is an effective approach. Whatever age programmes are introduced, the cognitive expectations and teaching and learning approaches must be age appropriate.
• Parents and families act as critical protective agents for young people. Where families have been included in interventions, results are usually positive.
• In some instances, parental support is lacking. In such instances, schools have an increasingly important role to play in fulfilling a protective role.

Finally, we present the key findings of our review in relation to the degree of evidence of impact for different pupil outcomes, using the following terms: substantial evidence of impact; degree of evidence of impact; only a little evidence of impact. Where we are able to, we comment on apparent facilitators or inhibitors of impact.


In this paper, a cognitive radio network is considered in which the secondary network (SN) consists of a source, a buffer-aided full-duplex decode-and-forward relay, and a destination, underlaid over a primary network (PN). An imperfect self-interference (SI) cancellation is assumed at the secondary relay (SR), such that the SI power is proportional to the transmit power of the SR. For the SN with limited power expenditure, a novel joint mode selection and power allocation policy is proposed to maximize the secondary throughput under the constraints of secondary power consumption and a limited average induced interference power at the primary destination. For delay sensitive SN applications, a statistical delay constraint is imposed in which the queue length at the SR can only exceed a specified threshold with a limited probability. In the two proposed policies, the SN decides optimally when to operate in half duplex mode and/or in full duplex mode, and be silent. To avoid data loss in the SN, buffer is used at the SR for data storage. Simulation results show that, for a given interference threshold and statistical delay constraint, the proposed policy outperforms the non-buffer full-duplex, buffer-aided half-duplex, and non-buffer half-duplex policies in terms of the average secondary throughput, the average secondary delay, and the secondary power expenditure.


[1] Field measurements of hydroxyl (OH) and hydroperoxy (HO2) radicals have been made in the remote Southern Ocean marine boundary layer at the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station in northwestern Tasmania. Measurements were made with a time resolution of 30 s over a period of 4 weeks during austral summer 1999 in the second Southern Ocean Photochemistry Experiment. Laser-induced fluorescence at reduced pressure was used to measure [OH] with an average detection limit at noon of (1.4 ± 0.5) × 105 molecule cm−3 (1σ), for a 2.5 min integration period, and HO2 was measured following its conversion to OH via the addition of NO, with an average detection limit of (5.4 ± 1.7) × 105 molecule cm−3 (1σ). Air masses arriving at Cape Grim originated from the Australian continent, Tasmania, and Southern Ocean/Antarctic regions, the latter ("Baseline" air) characterized by extremely low [NO] allowing a study of the chemistry of the unperturbed background atmosphere. In Baseline air, daytime average maxima for OH and HO2 of 3.5 × 106 molecule cm−3 (0.14 parts per trillion by volume (pptv)) and 2 × 108 molecule cm−3 (8 pptv) were observed, and a very high correlation coefficient (r = 0.95) was observed between the OH concentration and the rate of OH production from ozone photolysis. A steady state expression for OH, assuming production only from ozone photolysis and loss only by reaction with CO and CH4, overestimates the observed daytime maximum concentration in Baseline air by 20%. The HO2 concentration was found to depend upon the square root of the rate of O3 photolysis, as expected at very low concentrations of NO.


The objective of this article is to analyse what were the principal contributory factors in bringing about the almost total disappearance of Somali piracy in the last two years and to discover the lessons we have learnt so as to ascertain whether these can be applied in the struggle against piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. In doing so, we shall study the four elements considered critical: the greater effectiveness of an international military presence, the role of protection measures (in particular, the boarding of armed security personnel), the changes in Somalia's domestic situation and the implementation of programmes put in place by various multilateral organisations designed to strengthen the capacities of the countries in the region. The conclusion reached is that some of the measures could be applied in the Gulf of Guinea but only with considerable difficulty, one example being the possibility of international military deployment or carrying private security teams on board. Nevertheless, in areas such as regional cooperation, strengthening the capacity of countries in the region or improving governance, much remains to be done in order to bring about a more secure maritime environment.


More than two centuries ago in his Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus famously issued his dire prediction that mankind was doomed to survival at a subsistence level. His concept of population growth expanding to absorb the available food supply has been roundly contradicted by history, thanks in part to a declining birth rate in rich countries. However, economics is still the "dismal science", as the underlying idea of natural resource scarcity impinging on the prospects for progress remains a cornerstone of modern economics. In the case of agriculture, the proposition is that more people or richer people increase the demand for food and given the constraint on arable land, this means that food becomes scarce. In economics, price is taken as the paramount indicator of scarcity. Yet, as we demonstrate with data stretching back to 1650, real prices of most food products, the price of food relative to those of other goods, have fallen dramatically. For example, in 2008 the real price of wheat was only 4% of its 1650 level, while corresponding ratio for the price of sugar was less than 0.05%. There are exceptions to the dominance of declining trend, particularly meat products in recent centuries, but for most periods and most products the trend is distinctly towards lower prices. What is missing in the "dismal science" that explains the failure of the Malthusian prediction? We follow the suggestion in Schumpeter's The Theory of Economic Development that the answer lies in understanding the process of economic development. In particular, he contrasts the analysis of economic development to that of the equilibrium analysis of a stationary state implicit in the analysis of Malthus and other classical economists. This implies technical change is assured under capitalism, but it is discontinuous and its nature, location and extent are uncertain. We argue that this implies all inputs to production are subject to augmentation in their productivity, natural resources no less than capital or labour. The tendency toward declining real prices of food products can then be taken as evidence that technological change has augmented the productivity of land in food production to a greater extent than the average augmentation of all inputs utilised in production finished goods generally.


This paper examines the impact of food scares on marketing margins in the US beef and pork industry. We analyze how market stresses induced by different food recalls and disease outbreaks affect price margins and the extent of price transmission at the slaughter-to-wholesale and wholesale-to-retail levels. We use monthly data for the period 1986–2008. The results indicate that marketing margins are differentially affected by Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) recalls and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreaks at different levels of the beef and pork marketing chain, although the effects are generally quite modest. Only BSE discoveries in the United States considerably affect marketing margins in the beef industry, specifically at the wholesale-to-retail level, as well as the extent of price transmission at the bottom of the beef and pork marketing channel. We also find that food safety incidents have minor cross-industry and cross-country effects on marketing margins.


Wired, wireless, and mobile networks are converging to an all IP heterogeneous network with immense complexity. The underlying access network technologies have a high variance of characteristics. The diversity of multi-mode devices is growing rapidly. These factors have a significant impact on the services running on top of this broad range of different access network technologies. To develop next generation services and solutions for next generation heterogeneous networks, researchers need an adequate environment. This paper presents a "mini" mobile network operator testbed which emulates next generation networks, and enables researchers to design, implement and deploy future services and technologies. The testbed has been used broadly by different research institutions since it became operational back in May 2003


We explore the effect of charge carrier doping on ferroelectricity using density functional calculations and phenomenological modeling. By considering a prototypical ferroelectric material, BaTiO(3), we demonstrate that ferroelectric displacements are sustained up to the critical concentration of 0.11 electron per unit cell volume. This result is consistent with experimental observations and reveals that the ferroelectric phase and conductivity can coexist. Our investigations show that the ferroelectric instability requires only a short-range portion of the Coulomb force with an interaction range of the order of the lattice constant. These results provide a new insight into the origin of ferroelectricity in displacive ferroelectrics and open opportunities for using doped ferroelectrics in novel electronic devices.


Selenium, an essential trace element, is important to human health. Recently, supra-nutritional selenium intake was shown to be associated with an increased risk of type II diabetes and may therefore affect cardiovascular-disease risk, though the underpinning mechanisms are not clear. Some cancer studies reported that high selenium doses cause apoptosis through the induction of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response. Because ER stress is also involved in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance and endothelial dysfunction (ED), which are implicated in the development of atherosclerosis, we hypothesised that supra-nutritional selenium intake could cause diabetes and ED through ER stress. The Eahy.926 endothelial-cell line or human umbilical-vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were treated with varying doses of selenite in the presence or absence of the chemical chaperone, 4-phenylbutryic acid (PBA), which inhibits ER stress. ER-stress activation was evaluated by qPCR. Apoptosis was assessed by flow cytometry, western blot and caspase 3/7 colorimetric assay. To assess endothelial function, we evaluated nitric-oxide (NO) release and eNOS activation. In contrast to physiological concentrations of selenite, high doses enhanced mRNA expression of pro-apoptotic ER-stress markers e.g. activating transcription factor-4 and C/EBP homologous protein. High selenite doses also significantly decreased cell viability and increased apoptosis. Interestingly, these effects were significantly prevented in the presence of PBA, implicating ER-stress. Furthermore, we observed that ER stress induced by high selenite decreased NO production, indicating ED. Overall, we show that supra-nutritional selenium doses activate ER-stress-mediated apoptosis in the endothelium, reducing the bioavailability of NO and causing ED, a hallmark of cardiovascular disease.


We propose an algorithm that simultaneously extracts disparities and alpha matting information given a stereo image pair. Our method divides the reference image into a set of overlapping, partially transparent color segments. Each segment pixel is assigned an alpha value and color. The disparity inside the segment is modeled via a plane. The goodness of alphas, colors and disparity planes is measured by a new energy function. Its basic idea is to use the three parameters for generating artificial views representing the left and right images. If alphas, colors and disparity planes are correct, these artificial images should be very similar to the real ones. For generating the artificial right view, we warp all pixels of the left into the geometry of the right image using the disparity planes. We introduce the assumption of constant solidity in order to correctly model how pixels' alpha values are affected by the warping operation. Experimental results on the Middlebury set show that our algorithm gives good results in comparison to the state-of-the-art in stereo matching.


Are living organisms -- as Descartes argued -- just machines? Or is the nature of life such that it can never be fully explained by mechanistic models? In this thought-provoking and controversial book, eminent geophysicist Walter M. Elsasser argues that the behavior of living organisms cannot be reduced to physico-chemical causality. Suggesting that molecular biology today is at the same point as Newtonian physics on the eve of the quantum revolution, Elsasser lays the foundation for a theoretical biology that points the way toward a natural philosophy of organic life. Explicitly repudiating "vitalism" (the notion that the laws of nature need to be modified when applied to living organisms), Elsasser argues instead that the structural complexity of even a single living cell is"transcomputational" -- that is, beyond the power of any imaginable system to compute. Beginning from this insight, Elsasser leads the reader through a step-by-step process that ultimately arrives at the conclusion that living and non-living matter are separated by "a no-man's land of irrationality". Trained in Germany as a physicist, Elsasser first pondered the implications of quantum mechanics for biology as early as 1951. The more closely he studied the inherent complexity of life, the more skeptical he became of the reductionist view of organisms as tiny machines. "An organism", he concluded, "is a source of causal chains which cannot be traced beyond a terminal point because they are lost in the unfathomable complexity of the organism". Like the physicist who works within the bounds of an unfathomable universe, Elsasser argues, the biologist must seek answers within a system that is no less unfathomable.


Arthritis is a recognized complication of untreated coeliac disease. Symptoms and signs usually respond to the institution of a gluten-free diet. We report a case of occult coeliac disease presenting as a monoarthritis. Severe and progressive erosive damage has occurred in his talo-navicular joint despite a response to the institution of a gluten-free diet.


As the number of mobile users proliferates, there is an ever increasing demand for Internet mobility support to meet the applications' need. Although years of research on IP mobility support has produced a rich literature of solutions, few of them are widely adopted. Concerns regarding the existing solutions range from inexible communication models to weak security measures. Furthermore, these solutions are based on the assumption that a mobile node is always connected to the infrastructure, and its movement only results in dierent connecting points. In reality, however, mobility often leads to intermittent connectivity (e.g., vehicles on the road) or opportunistic ad hoc connectivity among a set of mobile nodes. In this paper, we align mobility support with the data-centric nature of applications in Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture and provide a new perspective on mobility support that addresses the weakness in the existing IP mobility solutions as well as utilizes lessons learned.


Air leakage in braking pipes is a commonly encountered mechanical defect on trains. A severe air leakage will lead to braking issues and therefore decrease the reliability and cause train delays or stranding. However, air leakage is difficult to be detected via visual inspection and therefore most air leakage defects are run to fail. In this research we present a framework that not only can detect air leakages but also predicts the severity of air leakages so that action plans can be determined based on the severity level. The proposed contextual anomaly detection method detects air leakages based on the on/off logs of a compressor. Air leakage causes failure in the context when the compressor idle time is short than the compressor run time, that is, the speed of air consumption is faster than air generation. In our method the logistic regression classifier is adopted to model two different classes of compressor behavior for each train separately. The logistic regression classifier defines the boundary separating the two classes under normal situations and models the distribution of the compressor idle time and run time separately using logistic functions. The air leakage anomaly is further detected in the context that when a compressor idle time is erroneously classified as a compressor run time. To distinguish anomalies from outliers and detect anomalies based on the severity degree, a density-based clustering method with a dynamic density threshold is developed for anomaly detection. The results have demonstrated that most air leakages can be detected one to four weeks before the braking failure and therefore can be prevented in time. Most importantly, the contextual anomaly detection method can pre-filter anomaly candidates and therefore avoid generating false alarms. To facilitate the decisionmaking process, the logistic function built on the compressor run time is further used together with the duration of an air leakage to model the severity of the air leakage. By building the prediction model on the severity, the remaining useful life of the air braking pipe until it reaches a certain level of severity can be estimated.


In view of the increasing cost of education the persistent phenomenon of school dropout has become a constant worry to all stakeholders. The focus of this paper was to assess the trend of basic school dropout in Amansie West, a predominantly rural district in Ghana and to further determine the main causes and policy implications of the phenomenon in the district. Analysis of the data revealed a downward trend in the dropout rates. At the primary school level, the dropout rate reduced from 5.4 percent in 1998/99 to 4.5 percent in the year 2000/01. At the Junior Secondary School (JSS) level, the dropout rate also reduced from 9.7 percent in 1998/99 to 6.7 percent in 2000/01. This trend was attributed to the diversification of the income sources of parents, which enabled them to earn more income to take care of their wards in school. Further analysis of data gathered revealed that about 45.4% of the parents of school dropouts in the district were extremely poor with annual incomes less than ¢600,000. The views of all stakeholders of education in the district confirmed that the causes of basic school dropout were mainly poverty related. In view of the strong inverse relationship between rates of school dropout and income levels it is recommended that pro-poor programmes be initiated and implemented in order to increase enrolment and retention of children in school for the ultimate benefits of public investment in education to be derived. Keywords : basic education, dropout, poverty, enrolment, retention Journal Of Science And Technology Vol. 25 (1) 2005: 67-76


Workers in the photogravure printing industry were studied concerning exposure of toluene. The study included determination of exposure with personal air sampling and with direct reading physical instruments and determination of the concentration in alveolar air. Uptake of toluene in the body was ascertained with a direct and an indirect method. The physiological work load was determined with pulmonary ventilation measurements, and the toluene concentration in the blood was determined. The results showed that there was no appreciable difference between exposure determined with personal air sampling and with stationary direct reading physical instruments. The study also showed that alveolar air sampling during exposure can be used when the uptake of toluene is being estimated. The alveolar air concentrations after the end of exposure reflected the uptake during exposure, but the correlation to the concentration in the inspiratory air was low. The results also showed a correlation between the concentration in alveolar air and the concentration in blood. Estimations made showed that the uptake in the body was of such a magnitude that there could be a risk of central nervous disturbances. No change in the uptake of toluene, as the percentage of the given amount, could be seen, neither during a day`s exposure nor from day to day during a week. The authors recommend measurements of alveolar air concentrations as a method for biologically monitoring toluene uptake.


This article discusses (verbal) relative clauses in the Bantu languages spoken in South Africa. The first part of the article offers a comparison of the relative clause formation strategies in Sotho, Tsonga, Nguni and Venda. An interesting difference between these language groups concerns the syntactic position and the agreement properties of the relative marker. Whereas the relative markers in Sotho, Tsonga and Venda are clause-initial elements, which express agreement with the head noun, the relative markers in the Nguni languages are relative concords, which are prefixed to the verb and agree with the subject of the relative clause. The second part of the article addresses this difference and shows that there is a historical relation between these two types of relative constructions. It is argued that earlier forms of Nguni employed relative markers similar to those used in present-day Sotho and Tsonga. In Nguni, these relative markers underwent a grammaticalisation process which turned them into relative concords. A detailed analysis of the syntactic conditions for, and the properties of, this grammaticalisation process leads to a hypothesis about the reasons why relative concords have developed in Nguni, but not (to the same extent) in Tsonga, Sotho and Venda.


ABSTRACT The effect of surface preparations on the atmospheric (continuous NaCl salt fog) corrosion resistance of bare (uncoated) linear friction stir lap welded magnesium (Mg) alloy AZ31B-H24 joints was investigated. The surface preparations evaluated included as-received (as-welded for the weld zones), mechanically abraded and acid-cleaned. Electrochemical potentiodynamic polarisation, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy measurements were made to elucidate the link between the surface preparation and the relative corrosion resistance observed across the microstructural zones of the joints. Heavy metal surface contamination of the as-received material, rather than the air-formed oxide or differences in alloy grain size resulting from variations in thermo-mechanical processing history, was found to be the controlling factor affecting the corrosion mode observed and, in turn, the relative corrosion resistance across the joint. Removal of the heavy metal contamination changed the corrosion mode from pit-like to filament-like, which in turn homogenised the corrosion resistance across the joint in the continuous salt fog exposure.


The major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a region of high gene density, contains a large number of genes relevant to the immune response, belonging to different multigenic families. We studied the genomic organization and polymorphism of a set of genes in the MHC class I region containing the tripartite motif (TRIM), consisting of a RING domain, B-box and coiled coil region, and a B30.2-like domain. A cluster of seven genes at 6p21.33 and two related family members telomeric of the cluster were characterized. All MHC-encoded TRIM-B30.2 genes showed moderate levels of polymorphism, affecting predominantly the RING and B-box domains. In terms of structure, the genes varied by the loss of partial and, in some cases, complete domains. They were strongly conserved in exons 2, 3 and 4, which form the coiled-coil region. The last exon, encoding the B30.2-like domain, is shared with the otherwise unrelated butyrophilin-like (BTN) genes, located 4.3 Mb telomeric of the TRIM-B30.2 cluster. The data are consistent with multiple, ancient duplications giving rise to a set of related genes.


The aim of my thesis is to investigate workers' reactions to transnational market reform
in a Soviet-era factory in the Republic of Moldova. The thesis finds that there are
varying, blurred responses of contestation and consent to market modernisation in the
context of one factory, the Rezina Cement Plant of Egrafal Group Ltd., one of
Moldova's first major European transnational-corporate (TNC) private enterprises.
Language plays a critical role in workers' responses, since language is important to
Egrafal Ltd.'s goal of market integration and capitalist labour reform. However,
corporate language expectations frequently clash with the language that was previously
embedded in Moldova's industrial workscape. As a result, the thesis argues that workers
adopt, resist or modify factory reforms through what I call linguistic styles or situational
performative modes linked with ideas of modernity, markets and mutuality. The thesis
goes on to argue that employees' spatial status location in the plant, irrespective of job
skill and income, corresponds to employees' differing linguistic modalities and differing
tendencies towards protest and accommodation in response to factory restructuring.
Workers in the top strata of the factory's Administration Building speak multiple
languages, long for cosmopolitan lifestyles and benefit from high integration into
corporate-market structures. Many achieved job mobility in the plant since socialism
and now accommodate to capitalism and corporate styles through linguistic codeswitching. The middle strata of ethno-linguistic minorities in Administration's
laboratory and the lower strata on the shop floor lack corporate-backed linguistic capital
and are on the fringe of modernisation; both are highly job insecure and protest
capitalist change by way of what appears to be traditional language usage, but is in fact
a contemporary response to liberal-economic change. This finding leads the study to
conclude that workers' fragmented linguistic-based reactions to market reform do not
entail real protectionist collectivism, as Polanyi would have envisioned (Polanyi 1944,
150), nor enduring moral-economic protest along the lines of E.P. Thompson (1971).
This is for the very reason of workers' competing modernist longings and job insecurity
– alienating workers from each other whilst drawing them back to local ties – which
effectively keeps workers in perpetual oscillation between markets and mutuality.


Master all 642-845 exam topics with the official study guide Assess your knowledge with chapter-opening quizzes Review key concepts with foundation summaries Practice with hundreds of exam questions on the CD-ROMAmir Ranjbar, CCIE® No. 8669CCNP ONT Official Exam Certification Guide is a best of breed Cisco® exam study guide that focuses specifically on the objectives for the Optimizing Converged Cisco Networks exam (642-845 ONT). Successfully passing the ONT 642-845 exam certifies that you have the knowledge and skills necessary to optimize and apply effective QoS techniques for converged networks.CCNP ONT Official Exam Certification Guide follows a logical organization of the CCNP® ONT exam objectives. Material is presented in a concise manner, focusing on increasing your retention and recall of exam topics. You can organize your exam preparation through the use of the consistent features in these chapters. "Do I Know This Already?" quizzes open each chapter and allow you to decide how much time you need to spend on each section. Exam topic lists and concise Foundation Summary information make referencing easy and give you a quick refresher whenever you need it. Challenging chapter-ending review questions help you assess your knowledge and reinforce key concepts.The companion CD-ROM contains a powerful testing engine that allows you to focus on individual topic areas or take complete, timed exams. The assessment engine also tracks your performance and provides feedback on a topic-by-topic basis, presenting question-by-question remediation to the text. Well regarded for its level of detail, assessment features, and challenging review questions and exercises, this book helps you master the concepts and techniques that can enable you to succeed on the exam the first time.Amir Ranjbar, CCIE® No. 8669, is a certified Cisco instructor and an internetworking consultant. He conducts Cisco official courses such as BCMSN, BSCI, ONT, CVOICE, BGP, and MPLS for Global Knowledge, the largest Cisco training partner. Amir has a bachelor's degree in computing and information science and a master's degree in knowledge-based systems from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.The official study guide helps you master all the topics on the CCNP ONT exam, including Implementing a voice-over-IP (VoIP) network Implementing QoS on converged networks Specific IP QoS mechanisms for implementing the DiffServ QoS model AutoQoS Wireless security Basic wireless managementCompanion CD-ROMThe CD-ROM contains an electronic copy of the book and more than 200 practice questions for the ONT exam, which are all available in study mode, test mode, and flash card format.This volume is part of the Exam Certification Guide Series from Cisco Press®. Books in this series provide officially developed exam preparation materials that offer assessment, review, and practice to help Cisco Career Certification candidates identify weaknesses, concentrate their study efforts, and enhance their confidence as exam day nears.Category: Cisco CertificationCovers: ONT Exam 642-845


Due to their simplicity, viruses require the assistance of host factors for various aspects of their replication cycle. This study investigated the interaction of one of the two non-structural replicase proteins of rubella virus (RUBV), P150, with cell proteins. RUBV forms replication complexes for replicating its RNA in association with membranes of endosomes and lysosomes; the thusly modified endosomes/lysosomes are termed cytopathic vacuoles or CPVs. In the first study, a RUBV expressing a FLAG epitope-tagged P150 was used to co-immunoprecipitate putative interacting cell proteins from an infected cell lysate fraction enriched for CPVs using differential centrifugation. However, the only interacting protein identified was the companion RUBV replicase protein P90. Thus, cell proteins do not bind with either sufficient affinity or in stoichiometric amounts to be detected by this method and may not be a component of the virus holoenzyme. In the second study, a proline-rich region within P150 with three PxxPxR consensus SH3 domain-binding motifs was investigated for its ability to bind cell proteins. Substitution mutations (to alanine) of the two prolines were made in each of these motifs with the finding that mutations in the first two motifs led to lower viral titers and a small plaque phenotype with reversion to the wt sequence within one passage. Mutations in the third motif had a wt phenotype and did not revert. However, these mutations did not affect viral RNA synthesis, suggesting that the importance of these motifs is in a later stage of viral life cycle, e.g. virion assembly and release. To extend these findings, the proline hinge region with either the wt or mutant sequence was expressed as a GST-fusion in human cells. Pulldown experiments revealed specific binding with human p32 protein (gC1qR), which was previously shown to interact with the RUBV capsid protein. Binding of p32 with P150 was confirmed. The function of p32 in the RUBV replication cycle is unclear, but could involve virion assembly and release or induction of apoptosis. INDEX WORDS: Rubella virus, Proteomics, SH3 domain, Protein-protein interaction, Cytopathic vacuole, Virus replication, P32 INVESTIGATION OF INTERACTIONS OF THE RUBELLA VIRUS P150 REPLICASE PROTEIN WITH HOST CELL PROTEINS IN INFECTED CELLS


This paper presents a case study of large- and small-scale irrigators negotiating for access to water from Nduruma River in the Pangani River Basin, Tanzania. The paper shows that despite the existence of a formal statutory water permit system, all users need to conform to the existing local rules in order to secure access to water. The spatial geography of Nduruma is such that smallholder farmers are located upstream and downstream, while large-scale irrigators are in the midstream part of the sub-catchment. There is not enough water in the river to satisfy all demands. The majority of the smallholder farmers currently access water under local arrangements, but large-scale irrigators have obtained state-issued water use permits. To access water the estates adopt a variety of strategies: they try to claim water access by adhering to state water law; they engage with the downstream smallholder farmers and negotiate rotational allocation; and/or they band with downstream farmers to secure more water from upstream farmers. Estates that were successful in securing their water access were those that engaged with the local system and negotiated a fair rotational water-sharing arrangement. By adopting this strategy, the estates not only avoid conflict with the poor downstream farmers but also gain social reputation, increasing chances of cooperative behaviours from the farmers towards their hydraulic infrastructure investments. Cooperative behaviours by the estates may also be due to their dependence on local labour. We further find diverging perspectives on the implementation of the state water use permits – not only between the local and state forms of water governance, but also between the differing administrative levels of government. The local governments are more likely to spend their limited resources on 'keeping the peace' rather than on enforcing the water law. At the larger catchment scale, however, the anonymity between users makes it more difficult to initiate and maintain cooperative arrangements.


National assessments have indicated that a large number of students in the United States are underperforming in writing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012; Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). Accordingly, there is a clear need for research to identify appropriate interventions targeting writing. One intervention that has received empirical support is performance feedback (Van Houten et al., 1974, 1975, 1979). However, few performance feedback studies have explicitly targeted generalization. The primary purpose of the current study was to examine the extent to which 116 third-grade students, randomly assigned to a generalization programming (n = 39), performance feedback (n = 38), or practice-only condition (n = 39), demonstrated gains in writing fluency and were able to demonstrate stimulus and response generalization. It was hypothesized that (a) students in both intervention conditions would significantly outperform the practice-only condition in writing fluency growth and (b) students in the generalization programming condition would demonstrate stronger performance on measures of stimulus and response generalization as a result of explicit programming tactics targeting generalized skills along the sequence of the Instructional Hierarchy (Haring & Eaton, 1978). There was mixed support for the hypotheses, as students in the performance feedback condition demonstrated statistically significant greater writing fluency growth in comparison to both the practice-only and generalization programming conditions. In comparison to students assigned to practice-only or performance feedback conditions, students assigned to the generalization programming condition demonstrated significantly greater performance on a measure of response generalization; however, there were no differences between the conditions on a measure of stimulus generalization.


A new crangonid genus and species, Pseudopontophilus serratus n. gen., n. sp., is established from the southwestern Pacific. The new genus is closely related to Pontophilus Leach, 1817 and Parapontophilus Christoffersen, 1988 in having at least one pair of lateral teeth on the rostrum and a postorbital suture on the carapace. It is distinguished from both Pontophilus and Parapontophilus in the completely loss of exopod on the first pereopod and the less reduced second pereopod. Considerable variation in the number of median spines on the carapace, which not appear to be correlated with either size or sex, is found in this new species.


This chapter focuses on how leaders of new right-wing populist parties are portrayed in the mass media. More so than their established counterparts, new parties depend on the media for their electoral breakthrough. From a theoretical perspective, we expect prominence, populism, and authoritativeness of the party leaders' media appearance to be essential for their electoral fortunes. We used systematic content analyses of 17 Dutch media outlets during the eight weeks prior to the 2006 national elections ( n = 1,001) and compared the appearances of four right-wing populist and seven mainstream party leaders. This chapter makes two contributions to the existing literature: First, we develop valid and reliable indicators of authoritativeness and populism and apply them to a systematic content analysis. Second, we show that more successful right-wing populist leaders were more prominent during the election campaign and that the most successful right-wing populist leader also appears more authoritative in the news.


The idea of food security has been circulating for a long time and the right to adequate food and to be free from hunger has been repeatedly affirmed and reaffirmed in a number of documents adopted by the United Nations. Despite the enormous efforts in the past decades by various international organisations, government and non-government organisations, unfortunately, today there are still more than 800 million people throughout the world, most of them in developing countries, who do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. Among the 800 million, more than 30 percent are from India and China. It is these poor people who have great difficulty in obtaining an adequate food for basic human requirements and who need to be helped by the public grain distribution systems administered by the governments. However, various recent reports demonstrate that the public distribution systems in India and China do not seem to have properly ensured the food security of the poor. In this paper, we highlight and compare major features of the public grain distribution systems in these two most populous countries and investigate how the public grain distribution systems can be most effectively used to ensure the food security of the poor.


In this thesis I investigated selective pressures that could shape the ecology and evolution of the malaria parasite and its mosquito host. I used the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium chabaudi, laboratory mice and the lab adapted malaria vector Anopheles stephensi.

 Key theory underpinning much of this work is the virulence trade-off hypothesis, where virulence (harm to host) is thought to be an unavoidable consequence of the parasites effort to optimise fitness. Implicit in this theory is that virulence is an intrinsic parasite trait, so that a virulent parasite would be relatively virulent in all host types. Using four genetically distinct P. chabaudi clones and four distinct host strains I found for the most part, this assumption to be true; the virulence phenotype of each of the four parasites was the same across the four host strains tested. I further used these genetically distinct P. chabaudi clones along with candidate malaria vaccine AMA-1 to study 1) vaccine efficacy against single and mixed clone infections and 2) the potential selective effects of vaccination. I found that vaccination reduced parasite density in a strain specific manner and that diversity at loci other than the target antigen influenced vaccine efficacy. In both naive and vaccinated hosts, selection for increased virulence was observed in mixed genotype infections, but in no case did vaccination enhance this selective pressure. As Plasmodium evolution is intricately linked to vector population dynamics, I explored environmental conditions that may influence Anopheles fitness. Specifically, I investigated whether the amount of food Anopheles parents experienced influenced the success of their offspring. I found that the food level of both parents and offspring were important in Anopheles fitness. In particular, daughters from parents reared in low food conditions produced more eggs that daughters from parents reared in high food conditions.

 In sum, my results indicate that the within-host environment of the malaria parasite can act as a selective agent. In addition, the environmental conditions experienced by Anopheles larvae could impact vector population dynamics. Altering the within-host environment of the parasite or the environment of its vector could dramatically alter the ecology and evolution of the malaria parasite.


Objective: The aim of this study was to determine risk factors associated with breast cancer in the National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Methodology: A case control study was conducted from July 2009 to June 2010, on 262 biopsy proven cases of breast cancer from National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital and 262 matched controls of acute diseases from Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Religion, residential status and age (±2 years) were matched. Statistical analysis was carried out using conditional logistic regression, odds ratios, chi-square and t- test with SPSS software (V-17). Results: Multivariate analysis showed that higher education (OR=1.72), personal income (OR=5.71), history of induced abortion (OR= 20.62), history of breast feeding (OR= 7.91), OCP users (OR= 1.47), current smokers (OR=6.78), personal history of breast disease (OR=10.99), family history of breast cancer (OR=3.85) and family history of other cancer (OR=2.21) were risk factors for breast cancer. Furthermore, having menarche at an early age (OR=0.35), giving birth to an early age (OR= 0.35), early menopause (OR= 0.22), longer duration of breast feeding (OR=0.30), parity of 2 and more (OR=0.29) and regular physical activity (OR=0.58) were shown to be protective factors. Conclusion: Physical inactivity, being menopause, positive family history of breast cancer and history of induced abortion were found important risk factors. Longer duration of breast feeding should be encouraged for its protective effect. Study revealed that the women who have one or more of the above risk factors should be given special attention for breast cancer prevention DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jdmc.v22i1.15628 J Dhaka Medical College, Vol. 22, No. 1, April, 2013, Page 61-66


This report presents the results from six case studies of food losses and waste in primary production in the Nordic region. The product groups studied were carrots, onions, cereal (wheat or rye), green peas, field peas, and cultivated fish (rainbow trout or char). We used different methods to study the side flows: questionnaires, in-field measurements and interviews. Instead of the term "food losses and waste" we use the term "side flows".
The side flow ranged from 4 % to 31 % for vegetables, cereals and pulses and most of the side flow for occurs after harvest, e.g. when sorting and storing the products. The main reason for side flow is quality issues. Weather conditions and diseases have a major impact on the quality of the products. We cannot draw many conclusions on side flow amounts for fish based on the results. The reasons for fish side flow are mainly diseases and predators.


Mild Therapeutic Hypothermia (TH) or Targeted Temperature Management (Nunnally et al.,
2011) is defined as an intentional reduction of a patient's core temperature to 32°C–34°C (89.6-
93.2° F) following ventricular fibrillation (V-Fib) sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) with return of
spontaneous circula-tion (ROSC), and who remain unconscious, for the purposes of limiting
neurologic reperfusion injury (Polderman, & Herold, 2009). Mild TH is a highly valuable post
cardiac arrest procedure that can result in preservation of neurologic function and reduction of
the inflammatory effects of neurologic reperfusion syndrome following cardiac arrest. This
procedure requires specific educational preparation in order to perform the procedure and
anticipate the potential complications that might occur during nursing care. TH involves the use
of specialized equipment, systematic education, and a team approach to be effective.
Educational needs should be addressed in a variety of presentations over time to provide staff
with the knowledge and confidence to care for these patients. The purpose of this project was to
develop an educational program for critical care and emergency department nurses caring for
patients undergoing TH. Development was guided by review of the literature, theoretical
framework, assessment of need, and reevaluation of learning. This program development project
highlights the role of the CNS in identifying, teaching, an


ABSTRACT Background Recent reviews conclude that aphasia intervention is effective. However, replication and implementation require detailed reporting of intervention is and a specification of participant profiles. To date, reviews concentrate more on efficacy than on intervention reporting quality. Aims The aim of this project is to review the descriptions of aphasia interventions and participants appearing in recent systematic reviews of aphasia intervention effectiveness. The relationship between the quality of these descriptions and the robustness of research design is explored, and the replicability of aphasia interventions is evaluated. Methods and Procedures The scope of our search was an analysis of the aphasia intervention studies included in the and EBRSR 2018 systematic reviews, and in the RCSLT 2014 literature synthesis. Intervention descriptions published separately from the intervention study (i.e. published online, in clinical tools, or a separate trial protocols) were not included. The criteria for inclusion were that participants had aphasia, the intervention involved language and/or communication, and included the following research designs: Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT), comparison or control, crossover design, case series. Exclusion criteria included non-SLT interventions, studies involving fewer than four participants, conference abstracts, studies not available in English. Studies were evaluated for completeness of intervention description using the TIDieR Checklist. Additionally, we rated the quality of patient and intervention description, with particular reference to replicability. Outcomes and Results Ninety-three studies were included. Only 14 studies (15%) had >50 participants. Fifty-six studies (60%) did not select participants with a specific aphasia profile, and a further 10 studies only described participants as non-fluent. Across the studies, an average of eight (of 12) TIDieR checklist items were given but information on where, tailoring, modification and fidelity items was rarely available. Studies that evaluated general aphasia intervention approaches tended to use RCT designs, whereas more specific intervention studies were more likely to use case series designs. Conclusions : Group studies were generally under-powered and there was a paucity of research looking at specific aphasia interventions for specific aphasia profiles. There was a trade-off between the robustness of the design and the level of specificity of the intervention described. While the TIDieR framework is a useful guide to information which should be included in an intervention study, it is insufficiently sensitive for assessing replicability. We consider possible solutions to the challenges of making large-scale trials more useful for determining effective aphasia intervention.


In Essential App Engine, Adriaan de Jonge shows Java developers how to rapidly build complex, productionquality, performance-driven cloud applications with Google App Engine. Using a start-to-finish case study and extensive Java example code, De Jonge covers the entire lifecycle, from application design and data modeling through security, testing, and deployment. De Jonge introduces breakthrough techniques for creating applications that respond within two seconds, even on cold startup, and allow server responses in hundreds of milliseconds or less throughout the rest of the session. He also demonstrates how to avoid common mistakes that can dramatically reduce cloud application performance and scalability. He thoroughly covers state-of-the-art user interface development and shows how to make the most of Google App Engines extensive set of APIs. Coverage includes Setting up a development environment that makes it easy to continually address performanceUnderstanding the anatomy of a Google App Engine applicationMaking the right technical setup and design choices for each new applicationEfficiently modeling data for App Engines NoSQL data storageRecognizing when to avoid OR-mapping and pass datastore entities directly to HTML templatesFinding alternatives to frameworks and libraries that impair App Engine performanceUsing JavaScript and AJAX on the client side of your cloud applicationsImproving browser performance and reducing resource consumption via better use of HTML5 and CSS3Taking advantage of key App Engine APIs: datastore, blobstore, mail, task scheduling, memory caching, URL retrieval, and messagingSecuring cloud-based Web applications with Google Accounts, OpenID, and OAuthImproving your cloud development, quality assurance, and deployment processesTargeting, marketing, and selling cloud solutions, from planning to payment handling


Both a landmark text and reference book, Steven Vogel's "Life in Moving Fluids" has also played a catalytic role in research involving the applications of fluid mechanics to biology. In this revised edition, Vogel continues to combine humor and clear explanations as he addresses biologists and general readers interested in biological fluid mechanics, offering updates on the field over the last dozen years and expanding the coverage of the biological literature. His discussion of the relationship between fluid flow and biological design now includes sections on jet propulsion, biological pumps, swimming, blood flow, and surface waves, and on acceleration reaction and Murray's law. This edition contains an extensive bibliography for readers interested in designing their own experiments.


Because the pulmonary vascular resistance is very elevated at birth, severe tricuspid regurgitation is poorly tolerated and even life-threatening in the newborn. The etiology may be tricuspid valve papillary muscle rupture or the more ominous Ebstein's anomaly, with its associated dysfunctional right ventricle. After the diagnosis is established and the patient is supported with prostaglandin infusion and nitric oxide, definitive surgical management is undertaken with the expectation of excellent outcomes for isolated tricuspid valve regurgitation. For neonates with Ebstein's anomaly, therapy is tailored to the severity of the malformation and the degree of right ventricular outflow tract obstruction, assessed in the context of declining pulmonary vascular resistance. The surgical approach may involve ligation of a patent ductus arteriosus, placement of a systemic to pulmonary shunt, establishment of functional tricuspid atresia, or tricuspid valve repair. With the application of these various approaches, the outlook for neonatal Ebstein's anomaly has improved remarkably.


Background Several systematic reviews suggest that intermittent pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) chemotherapy is effective, but intensity (daily versus intermittent) and duration of rifampicin use (intensive phase only versus both phases) have not been distinguished. In addition, the various outcomes (success, failure, relapse, and default) have only selectively been evaluated. Methods We conducted a meta-analysis of proportions using all four outcomes as multi-category proportions to examine the effectiveness of WHO category 1 TB treatment regimens. Database searches of studies reporting treatment outcomes of HIV negative subjects were included and stratified by intensity of therapy and duration of rifampicin therapy. Using a bias-adjusted statistical model, we pooled proportions of the four treatment outcome categories using a method that handles multi-category proportions. Results A total of 27 studies comprising of 48 data sets with 10,624 participants were studied. Overall, treatment success was similar among patients treated with intermittent (I/I) (88%) (95% CI, 81–92) and daily (D/D) (90%) (95% CI, 84–95) regimens. Default was significantly less with I/I (0%) (95% CI, 0–2) compared to D/D regimens (5%) (95% CI, 1–9). Nevertheless, I/I relapse rates (7%) (95% CI, 3–11) were higher than D/D relapse rates (1%) (95% CI, 0–3). Conclusion Treatment regimens that are offered completely intermittently versus completely daily are associated with a trade-off between treatment relapse and treatment default. There is a possibility that I/I regimens can be improved by increasing treatment duration, and this needs to be urgently addressed by future studies.


Evaluating Accountable Care Organizations is difficult because there is a great deal of heterogeneity in terms of their reimbursement incentives and other programmatic features. We examine how variation in reimbursement incentives and administration among two Medicaid managed care plans impacts utilization and spending. We use a quasi-experimental approach exploiting the timing and county-specific implementation of Medicaid managed care mandates in two contiguous regions of Kentucky. We find large differences in the relative success of each plan in reducing utilization and spending that are likely driven by important differences in plan design. The plan that capitated primary care physicians and contracted out many administrative responsibilities to an experienced managed care organization achieved significant reductions in outpatient and professional utilization. The plan that opted for a fee-for-service reimbursement scheme with a group withhold and handled administration internally saw a much more modest reduction in outpatient utilization and an increase in professional utilization.


This study seeks to enhance the understanding of ASEAN's external preferential trade agreements (PTA) in context of the recent growth of economic regionalism in East Asia. First, the paper compares the content of ASEAN's five plurilateral PTAs with China, Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand with the status quo of ASEAN's internal economic integration. In a second step, the paper compares ASEAN's plurilateral agreements and ASEAN's internal integration with the content of six bilateral PTAs that individual ASEAN member states have concluded with Japan. The empirical findings demonstrate that the ambition of ASEAN's five plurilateral agreements finds its upper limits in the substantive content of ASEAN's internal economic integration. Within these limits, the coverage and depth of commitments varies considerably in correlation with the intensity of trade between ASEAN and the respective external partner. Moreover, the comparison shows that bilateral PTAs between six individual ASEAN member states and Japan go significantly beyond the status quo of ASEAN's internal integration and exceed the coverage and depth of ASEAN's external plurilateral PTAs. The author contends that the coverage and depth of ASEAN member states' plurilateral PTAs is limited by the structural heterogeneity of the signatories and, as a result, a relatively high diversity of policy preferences. Bilateral PTAs between ASEAN member states and the same external partners result in deeper commitments than the plurilateral accords, because of both a higher common denominator among the parties to the agreements and the free-rider problem that persists in plurilateral negotiation settings. Moreover, it is argued that the coverage and depth of the agreements is a function of the intensity of trade among the parties: high trade intensity results in deeper and more comprehensive agreements that tackle 21st century trade issues, whereas low trade intensity results in shallow agreements that aim to reduce first-generation trade barriers. These hypotheses, which are fully verified by the empirical findings of this study, allow for important conclusions about the role of ASEAN member states - collectively and individually - in current and future economic integration initiatives such as ASEAN 6, the TPP, or EU-ASEAN PTA negotiations.


SANIMAS ( Sanitasi oleh Masyarakat ) or Sanitation by Community is a nation-wide sanitation program for urban poor settlements in Indonesia and has already been implemented since 2003. Population density in urban settlement range between 600 to more than 1000 people per square km, which provides no room for proper sanitation infrastructures. The decentralized, communal, community-managed and cluster wise approach to solve sanitation problems in such high density has many types of challenges: technical, environmental, social and financial. Therefore there is the need to have concerted efforts for a careful yet reliable, high quality standard design, good supervision, sustainable operation and maintenance, as well as for continual monitoring and improvements. In the past, water and sanitation facilities in urban poor settlements were built for quantity and appearance not for quality and performance. As a result most of the infrastructures collapse and disfunction only a couple of months after the construction has been handed over to the community. Leaking or bottomless septic tanks are usually the reality and lack of maintenance is a common problem as no community committee is assigned to oversee or monitor the facilities. As a national program, SANIMAS is implemented in more than 70 urban poor community clusters or approximately 8,000-10,000 people every year which previously identified as unserved population. It is implemented in sequences of activities and accomplished only by good team work, guided by standardized steps. All team members, coordinators, field facilitators, technical team, relevant government officers and community committees must build and maintain good coordination and communication. Several capacity building packages are designed for and delivered to different groups to ensure that implementation steps are understood by the relevant team members. Various training modules are developed and delivered to technical teams, senior facilitators, field facilitators and community committees. Each training aims at communicating the minimum standard activities required to accomplish the program. To ensure that facilities serve their function in a sustainable way, a monthly community participatory monitoring has been designed. That way technical, environmental, financial and institutional aspect is mainly monitored by the community in assistance of team members. The monitoring results are used as inputs for improvement, local policy development and strategy. This paper shows that through the decentralised sanitation approach, a sustainable sanitation service for the poor is possible.


Abstract An experimental study is performed to investigate the natural convection heat transfer characteristics and the solidification of the molten metal pool concurrently with forced convective boiling of the overlying coolant to simulate a severe accident in a nuclear power plant. The relationship between the Nusselt number (Nu) and the Rayleigh number (Ra) in the molten metal pool region is determined and compared with the correlations in the literature and experimental data with subcooled water. Given the same Ra condition, the present experimental results for Nu of the liquid metal pool with coolant boiling are found to be higher than those predicted by the existing correlations or measured from the experiment with subcooled boiling. To quantify the observed effect of the external cooling on the natural convection heat transfer rate from the molten pool, it is proposed to include an additional dimensionless group characterizing the temperature gradients in the molten pool and in the external coolant region. Starting from the Globe and Dropkin correlation, engineering correlations are developed for the enhancement of heat transfer in the molten metal pool when cooled by an overlying coolant. The new correlations for predicting natural convection heat transfer are applicable to low-Prandtl-number (Pr) materials that are heated from below and solidified by the external coolant above. Results from this study may be used to modify the current model in severe accident analysis codes.


Cary Grant is one of studio-era Hollywood's most enduring stars. He commonly represents a personification of Hollywood's perfect romantic hero: the ideal tall, dark and handsome leading man. Grant's image in popular culture is so consistently represented as charming, elegant and romantic that it has almost become monosemic. This thesis argues for a layered and complex conception of Grant's star persona by examining three films starring Cary Grant made between 1940 and 1942, Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941), Penny Serenade (George Stevens, 1941) and The Talk of the Town (George Stevens, 1942). Attending to both the films and the extratextual discourse surrounding Grant at the time of the films' release, I establish an alternative reading of Grant's image in this period. When Grant first achieved stardom in the late 1930s as an actor in screwball comedies, he was more closely aligned with non-traditional masculinity than elegance and sophistication. In this thesis, I contend that Grant's star text affected the traditional conventions of genre and narrative in the three films under discussion. I draw on star theory, gender theory and close textual analysis to examine Grant's early star persona, arguing that it brings a playfulness and ambiguity to the films, disrupting dominant definitions of acceptable masculinity.


ABSTRACT Consider a travel corridor with a multimodal transport system (highway and railway) that connects continuous residential locations to the city center. All commuters travel along the corridor from home to work in the morning peak hour. The spatial dynamics of the traffic congestion on both transportation systems are determined by the trip-timing condition. The flow dynamics on the highway will be considered by applying the Lighthill–Whitham–Richards model. A time–distance road pricing scheme is applied to achieve the system optimal condition. The urban population is assumed to be located continuously along the corridor. This study aims to find the optimal urban population density distribution leading to optimal transportation system performance, with a basic assumption that it follows some given distribution pattern. The problem is eventually formulated into a mathematical program with complementarity constraints and an efficient solution algorithm is applied. Finally, numerical examples are applied to test the validity of the model formulation.


A comparison of samples from a translucent green iceberg with a core from the Ronne Ice Shelf revealed an excellent agreement in isotopic composition, crystal structure, and incorporated sediment particles. Marine shelf ice which constitutes the basal portion of some ice shelves is considered to be the source of green icebergs. It most likely results from "ice pump" processes which produce large amounts of ice platelets in the water column beneath ice shelves. These subsequently accumulate and become compacted into bubble-free, desalinated ice. Iceberg and drift-buoy trajectories indicate that green icebergs observed in the Weddell Sea originate from the Amery Ice Shelf rather than from the Ronne Ice Shelf, although the latter ice shelf is also a potential source.


Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788. By Pauline Maier. (New York: Simon 8c Schuster, 2010. Pp. 590. Cloth, $30.00.)Reviewed by Terry BoutonIn Ratification, Pauline Maier writes to address a surprising gap in Revolutionary-era scholarship: how the various states ratified the federal Constitution. Given the historical significance of ratification, Maier laments, we still do not know much about how the process of ratification unfolded. Maier's focus, however, is not really on process. Instead, she presents ideas and rhetoric. Her book is successful in reporting the arguments for and against the Constitution in newspapers and at the state ratification conventions. Those who want to understand the stakes involved in the ratification process, how the Federalists managed to get the Constitution ratified, and why the "Antifederalists" lost will need to look elsewhere. This is a book about what some (usually elite) people said and how they said it, not process or meaning.Maier bases her book almost entirely on the magnificent volumes in the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. This collection is the real star of the book, along with its primary editor John P. Kaminski, who has assembled such a comprehensive and wonderfully edited compilation.Maier's strength is in using those volumes to show how the arguments in the ratification debates unfolded over time. Presenting the ratification arguments is nothing new. Maier's contribution is in showing how rhetoric repeated and changed as state after state debated the Constitution. The most interesting part is how delegates and writers in different states recycled the same basic points, but often refined them based on what seemed effective (or ineffective) in prior states and how they repackaged arguments for audiences in their own states. To this end, the book reads as an evolving set of talking points used by each side as the debate progressed from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts to Virginia to New York (the states that form the core of the book). We also see changes in strat- egy and intensity depending on whether a state rushed ratification, as in Pennsylvania, or was one of the last holdouts, as in New York. By showing this change over time, Maier offers some important context for understanding the debates.Unfortunately, that is about the only context we get. Maier largely ignores parts of the story that would provide readers with a clearer understanding of the significance of the debates and why the process unfolded as it did. In part, it is a choice of economy: This is a long book and Maier's focus is on words, not actions. That said, she misses much that would help inform our understanding of the debates. She offers only glimpses into the Federalists' masterful and at times ruthless organizing strategy and its machinations, vote counting, and arm twisting. As Maier ironically demonstrates, this pre-convention gamesmanship was far more important than the debates at the state conventions in shaping the con- test. Indeed, the matter was nearly always decided before the delegates ever took their seats. She notes that in the case of New York, "Oratory and argument seemed to have accomplished little except to fill time while entertaining some spectators and alienating others" (348). One would think that the Federalist upper hand in organizing and publication as well as prior knowledge of victory or defeat shaped the subsequent debates in fundamental ways from the very outset. Maier, however, does not really consider why the debate was so limited from the start or analyze much of the change over time that she describes. …


Contemporary research often relates driving under the influence (DUI) to alcohol addiction and young drunk drivers, in particular, to social deviance. Based on qualitative interviews with 25 convicted drunk drivers, this article studies the relationship between drinking and DUI. The article focuses on three different categories of drunk drivers. In the first, drunk drivers consider addiction to be the main cause of DUI. In the second, they position themselves within subcultural groups often engaged in using illicit drugs, alcohol, and DUI. Both of these categories agree with conceptions of DUI as resulting from alcoholism or social deviance. However, the interviews also revealed a third type of relationship between drinking and DUI. Interviewees in this third category rejected the other two relationships by dissociating themselves from alcoholism and social deviance. Instead, they described themselves and their relationship between drinking and DUI as normal. The article thus concludes that while some drunk drivers view themselves in line with popular conceptions of DUI, others distance themselves from these associations so as to present themselves as normal.


Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia Current assessments of residential building energy demand focus mainly on their operational aspect, notably in terms of space heating and cooling. The embodied energy of buildings and the transport energy consumption of their occupants are typically overlooked. Recent studies have shown that these two energy demands can represent more than half of the life cycle energy of a building over 50 years. This study presents a holistic method which takes into account energy requirements at the building scale, i.e. the embodied and operational energy of the building and its refurbishment, and at the city scale, i.e. the embodied energy of nearby infrastructures (roads, power lines, etc.) and the transport energy (direct and indirect) of its users. This method has been implemented through the development of a software tool which allows the rapid analysis of the life cycle energy demand of buildings at different scales. A case study, located near Melbourne, Australia, confirms that each of the embodied, operational and transport requirements are nearly equally important. Embodied and transport energy consumption represent on average 63% of the life cycle energy requirements. By integrating these three energy flows, the developed method and software tool provide building designers, planners and decision makers with a powerful means to effectively reduce the overall energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions associated with residential buildings. Conference theme: Buildings and energy Keywords: Life cycle energy analysis – Embodied energy – Operational energy –Transport energy


Feature models are widely used to encode the configurations of a software product line in terms of mandatory, optional and exclusive features as well as propositional constraints over the features. Numerous computationally expensive procedures have been developed to model check, test, configure, debug, or compute relevant information of feature models. In this paper we explore the possible improvement of relying on the enumeration of all configurations when performing automated analysis operations. We tackle the challenge of how to scale the existing enumeration techniques by relying on distributed computing. We show that the use of distributed computing techniques might offer practical solutions to previously unsolvable problems and opens new perspectives for the automated analysis of software product lines.


A learning task is sequential if its data samples become available over time. Kernel adaptive filters (KAF) are sequential learning algorithms. There are two main challenges in KAF: (1) the lack of an effective method to determine the kernel-sizes in the online learning context; (2) how to tune the step-size parameter. We propose a framework for online prediction using KAF which does not require a predefined set of kernel-sizes; rather, the kernel-sizes are both created and updated in an online sequential way. Further, to improve convergence time, we propose an online technique to optimize the step-size parameter. The framework is tested on two real-world data sets, i.e., internet traffic and foreign exchange market. Results show that, without any specific hyperparameter tuning, our proposal converges faster to relatively low values of mean squared error and achieves better accuracy.


Crisis management (CM) organizations regularly face the challenge to assess the potential impact of a change in their socio-technical setup. No matter if a new software, a new tool, a simple workflow or a broader organizational structure become available, CM organizations need to estimate the potential added value under a high degree of uncertainty. In general, the more reliable information about the new solution is available, the more informed the decisions are. One promising way in assessing the potential impact of new CM solutions can be found through its application in an as realistic as possible and an as secure as necessary setup. However, such artificial scenarios like simulation exercises hold the risk of measuring the performance of the solution itself rather than its contribution to the CM operation. In this paper we review the state of the art in measuring crisis management performance, discuss the results in the context of performance measurement in general and present a performance measurement approach supporting a structured assessment of innovative CM solutions applied within collaborative demonstration project.


Day trading is difficult. The path is fraught with risk. But a pot of gold awaits those who learn their lessons well. After four decades in the markets as a trader, analyst, author, educator, and system developer, Jacob Bernstein sets down a comprehensive guide to the art of day trading. You will learn:* New day trading methods* Order entry strategies* How to avoid costly errors when using electronic trading platforms* Detailed strategies to maximize profits With this book, readers will have the complete guide they need to profit from this risky but exciting field. Trading profits are just a day away.


The creative application and development of an ePortfolio as a pedagogic innovation in learning and teaching in higher education lies in strategies acquired by students to select authentic evidence to document achievements and skills as a graduate. Many educators use ePortfolios as a learning tool and through the introduction of reflection, or reflective practice activities the ePortfolio has the potential to be a powerful tool for all learners. This paper reports the pedagogic and technological undertaking of ePortfolio development for creative and performing arts students at four tertiary institutions in Australia. It explores how the artist perceives her/himself and the choice of evidence selected to showcase development, thus highlighting aspects of artistic identity versus professional career identity. ePortfolio development involves reflection, organisation and critical thinking by students developing a learning 'story' that accurately represents skills learnt and competencies developed during tertiary study. The creation of an ePortfolio often relies on a student's ability to collect, reflect and select material that is appropriate; and to exercise the management of their knowledge in such a way that contributes to linking pedagogy and technology. It can also involve students exploring their known ICT skills and, at times, extending these beyond their expectation. This paper will review literature, in addition to reporting initial experiences of academics and students where the ePortfolio has been implemented into curriculum for creative and performing arts degree programs. Results show ePortfolios allowed students to achieve a demonstration of artistic capabilities and revealed that students have increased their ability to plan, implement and assess their learning reflectively; and to understand documentation relevant to Arts careers. Students developed a greater competency in their educational beliefs, pedagogical skills, University generic attributes, technological expertise and ability to address employment parameters required by employer groups and such professional bodies.


The free-space propagation of paraxial, partially coherent stationary fields can be described in a simple and intuitive way through the use of the Wigner function. In this context, this function plays the role of a generalized radiance that is constant along straight lines or rays. The effect of diffraction by transverse planar opaque obstacles or apertures is considered here for this representation, and a simple analytic approximate formula is given for the case when the incident field is quasi-homogeneous, at least in the neighborhood of the obstacle's edges. In this result, diffraction is accounted for by including rays emanating from the obstacle's edges.