Despite the truth that the agricultural land use planning exercises have so far covered small and fragmented part of the African continent, the involvement of farmers who are among the direct beneficiaries of the outputs have been limited. This work demonstrates the contributions of farmers on the land use planning process for rice production in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania. Analytic hierarchic process (AHP) was used to assign scores of comparative importance of attributes for a suitable land for rice production. Scoring was done by three groups: farmers, extension staff, and joint group comprising both farmers and extension staff. Joint group scores were considered more refined as they were generated by discussions and consensus between the two groups. Results showed that the three groups sequentially ranked the attributes the same. However, the attributes actual scores were different. The farmers' scores were consistently close to the joint group's scores compared to the extension staff group. The closeness suggests superiority and consistence of farmers' perceptions of importance of the identified attributes used for this land use planning exercise. Thus, this study recommends more involvement of farmers in agricultural land use planning process for better and sustainable land use planning outputs.

 Key words: Kilombero Valley, rice, land use planning, Tanzania, Analytic Hierarchic Process.


In private enforcement systems such as the one for patents, remedies perform the "public" function of determining the optimal amount of protection and deterrence. If every patent were properly granted and had just the right scope to incentivize innovation, then strict enforcement and harsh penalties for infringement would be a good idea. But in a world where too many patents are granted, their boundaries are often ambiguous and scope excessive, things are not so simple. The expected likelihood and magnitude of the penalty determines the number of infringement suits and the litigation resources that will be poured into them. As a result, patent remedies are an important policy lever for determining the correct amount of innovation, which is the underlying goal of the patent system. The Federal Trade Commission's new Report entitled "The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition," issued in March, 2011, highlights the importance of fixing the patent notice system.Patents are property rights. An effective property rights regime requires a timely, reliable, cost-effective system for providing notice, as well as the right incentives for responding to notice once it is given. Notice serves essentially the same purpose in the patent system as in our system of land ownership. It is socially wasteful for developers to build, only to find out later that the land belongs to someone else, who is now in a position to extract a very large penalty. Prior to building the developer may have had a competitive choice of parcels, but once construction is completed this market has gone from competitive to bilateral monopoly. For the same reasons it is socially wasteful for entrepreneurs to develop new processes or products, only to find out later that they have fallen within the claims of someone else's patent.While the problem of patent overbreadth and ambiguity are not easily repaired, the law could do much to improve the notice situation, in particular by increasing private burdens to provide adequate and timely notice to reasonably anticipated infringers, just as the real property system does. In the law of real property parties are required to supplement deficiencies in the public notice system by providing more direct types of notice reasonable for the situation. For both infringement injunctions and patent damages the problems of implementing such a requirement are far more manageable than repairing other elements of the patent system. Further, most of the changes could be placed into effect by the courts without new legislation.


The plant-growth promoting bacterium Azospirillum brasilense is able to associate with the microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana. Attachment of A. brasilense increases the metabolic performances of the microalgae. Recent genome analyses have revealed that the A. brasilense Az39 genome contains two complete sets of genes encoding Type VI secretion systems (T6SS), including the T6SS1 that is induced by the indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) phytohormone. The T6SS is a multiprotein machine, widespread in gram-negative bacteria, that delivers protein effectors in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. Here we show that the A. brasilense T6SS is required for Chlorella-Azospirillum synthetic mutualism. Our data demonstrate that the T6SS is an important determinant to promote production of lipids, carbohydrates and photosynthetic pigments by the microalgae. We further show that this is likely due to the role of the T6SS during the attachment stage and for the production of IAA phytohormones. Finally, we demonstrate that the A. brasilense T6SS provides antagonistic activities against a number of plant pathogens such as Agrobacterium, Pectobacterium, Dickeya and Ralstonia species in vitro, suggesting that, in addition to promoting growth, A. brasilense might confer T6SS-dependent bio-control protection to microalgae and plants against bacterial pathogens. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


A year after the primary study that tested the impact of introducing blended learning and guided discovery to help teach computer application to business students, this paper looks into the continued success of using guided discovery and blended learning with learning management system in and out of classrooms to enhance student learning. Particularly, it looks at the successful adaptation and implementation of learning management system as an aid to learning and delivery of a computer application subject to a class that is majorly populated by business students with little or no IT background. This paper tests the continued success to establish whether the success recorded after the first implementation was sustainable or merely influenced by the Hawthorn effect of trialing an innovation. It concludes with final grade measure over a one-year period of implementation of the system, and student responses that strongly support the original approach used by the author.


This article summarizes the findings of the Task Force on Improving Mediation Quality of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution. The Task Force conducted research on the views of lawyers, parties, and mediators by using focus groups, surveys, and interviews. The Task Force used the data to inform its recommendations, recognizing that the subjects' views are not necessarily the best indicator of mediation quality. The findings focus on the following four aspects of mediation that the research subjects said are particularly important: (1) preparation for mediation by mediators and mediation participants, (2) case-by-case customization of the mediation process, (3) careful consideration of any "analytical" assistance that mediators might provide, and (4) mediators' persistence and patience. This article suggests several ways for mediators to continue developing their skills.


The sporangiophores of the fungus Phycomyces are sensitive to light, to gravity, to mechanical stretch, and possibly to a gas. In order to understand the processes by which these stimuli evoke response from the organism, the relationships between these input stimuli, and the output responses of the fungus have beenn studied. The light stimulus was chosen because of its ease of quantification.

To study these responses better than in the past, automated equipment has been developed to improve the precision of observation, the control of the environment, and the collection of data. The heart of this equipment is a tracking system which stabilizes in space the sporangium, which serves as a convenient spherical marker just above the sensing and responding growing zone. Stabilization of this zone makes uniform stimulation relatively easy. Further the automatic system makes possible 6 or more hours of measurement on a single sporangiophore without requiring much operator intervention. After suppression of noise by means of a low pass filter of bandwidth 0.07 Hz, the growth velocity of typically 50 microns/min was measured to a precision of better than 5%. This compares favorably with manual techniques which optimally have a precision of about 20% for the average growth velocity over a 30 sec period.

Use of this machine as well as of conventional experimental techniques on the newly available mutants of Phycomyces has provided a clearer understanding of the stimulus-response system. The effect of light scattering and of absorption of light inside the sporangiore on the response to light has been investigated. These studies have resulted in appreciation of the quantitative effect of the lens focusing of the cell and in an improved action spectrum.

Evidence is presented that a major factor causing phototropism is the cell's natural twist (spiral growth) of about 6°/min in the middle of the growing zone. Each region of the cell locally adapts to the local light intensity. However with the twist of the cell, at one edge of the focused band which is produced by the lens focusing of the cell there will be a continuous entry of dark adapted area into the higher intensity band, thus giving rise to transient positive growth responses in a succession of surface elements. The response to this stimulus is expressed slowly in time and as it is expressed, it is carried around at the twist rate of the cell. This model has successfully explained both our experiments and a number from the literature.

Using the machine, latency and shape of response have been characterized as a function of temperature, stimulus size, level of adaptation and incident light wavelength. Latency is dependent on the logarithm of the absolute adaptation level and there is no wavelength dependence of the stimulus response curve. For larger stimuli the shape of the response changes markedly, with the rising of an early peak in the growth velocity and inhibition of a later second peak.

Study of mutants defective in the chemical pathway from light stimulation to response show a great variety of mutant types implying a relatively large number of biochemical steps from stimulus to response.


Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) usage in the USA has drastically increased in the past 5 years due to age restrictions on conventional cigarettes, aggressive marketing and a perception that e-cigarettes are a healthy alternative. E-cigarettes contain nicotine, water, glycerol, propylene glycol and optional flavouring. On inhalation, the device heats the ingredients into a vapour [1]. While tobacco cigarette smoke is known to cause deleterious effects on the cardiovascular system, angiogenesis and skin capillary perfusion by causing direct injury to blood vessel walls, increased platelet aggregation, microvascular thrombosis [2–4] and inflammation [5], the consequences of e-cigarette vapour exposure on the lung are still largely unexplored [6, 7]. Recently, Lerner et al. [8] reported that vapours produced by e-cigarettes and e-cigarette fluids with flavourings induced toxicity, oxidative stress and inflammatory response in human bronchial airway epithelial cells (H292) and fetal lung fibroblasts (HFL1) as well as mouse lung. Garcia-Arcos et al. [9] showed that the aerosolised nicotine-containing e-cigarette fluid increased airway hyperreactivity, distal airspace enlargement, mucin production, and cytokine and protease expression in mice, implying potential dangers of nicotine inhalation during e-cigarette use. The inflammatory response to e-cigarette use involved increased neutrophil activation and mucus production [10], and decreased mucociliary clearance [11]. In human embryonic and mouse neural stem cells, human pulmonary fibroblasts [12], and skin and lung cells [13], cytotoxicity of e-cigarette vapour was correlated with the number and concentration of chemicals used to flavour the fluids. We recently showed in the skin flap survival model in vivo that nicotine-containing e-cigarette vapour is just as harmful to the microcirculation as tobacco cigarette smoke [4]. Electronic cigarettes are as toxic as tobacco cigarettes and can cause significant lung damage http://ow.ly/qT1l30ig1oR


Several neuropsychiatric conditions, such as addiction, schizophrenia, and depression may arise in part from dysregulated activity of ventral tegmental area dopaminergic (THVTA) neurons, as well as from more global maladaptation in neurocircuit function. However, whether THVTA activity affects large-scale brain-wide function remains unknown. Here, we selectively activated THVTA neurons in transgenic rats and measured resulting changes in whole-brain activity using stimulus-evoked functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Selective optogenetic stimulation of THVTA neurons not only enhanced cerebral blood volume (CBV) signals in striatal target regions in a dopamine receptor dependent fashion, but also engaged many additional anatomically defined regions throughout the brain. In addition, repeated pairing of THVTA neuronal activity with forepaw stimulation, produced an expanded brain-wide sensory representation. These data suggest that modulation of THVTA neurons can impact brain dynamics across many distributed anatomically distinct regions, even those that receive little to no direct THVTA input.


We present an algorithm STRSAGA for efficiently maintaining a machine learning model over data points that arrive over time, quickly updating the model as new training data is observed. We present a competitive analysis comparing the sub-optimality of the model maintained by STRSAGA with that of an offline algorithm that is given the entire data beforehand, and analyze the risk-competitiveness of STRSAGA under different arrival patterns. Our theoretical and experimental results show that the risk of STRSAGA is comparable to that of offline algorithms on a variety of input arrival patterns, and its experimental performance is significantly better than prior algorithms suited for streaming data, such as SGD and SSVRG.


This paper explores how present value varies over time when the underlying cash flow has a deterministic period. I assume that cash flows are known with certainty and follow a cycle with a long or short period. When the cash flow has a short period, the present value is relatively stable over time because the present value calculation smooths out several cycles. However, when the cash flow has a long period the present value itself develops a long and large cycle. These results are driven by the mathematical definition of the present value and are relevant to the use of present value as a pricing tool in situations where the cash flows of an investment have a long cycle.


Mechanisms of therapeutic action of UV blood irradiation and optimal irradiation scheduling were studied in the course of UV-irradiated blood transfusions capable of correcting lipid peroxidation (LPO) and antioxidant system (AOS) in acute pneumonia (AP) patients. Single and multiple measurements of LPO and AOS parameters (malonic dialdehyde, diene conjugates, red cell resistance to peroxide hemolysis, catalase, superoxide dismutase, cerulloplasmin, plasma total estrogens, progesterone and testosterone) were made in 10 young males with moderate AP and 20 healthy controls. UV blood irradiation in AP is shown to be pathogenetically validated. It works via effective stabilization of LPO as a result of early adequate stimulation of endogenic AOS. Positive changes were also induced in the system of hormonal regulation. It is suggested that hyperestrogenemia plays a compensatory role in AP pathogenesis.


Optical 2D remote sensing techniques such as aerial photographing and satellite imaging have been used in forest inventory for a long time. During the last 15 years, airborne laser scanning (ALS) has been adopted in many countries for the estimation of forest attributes at stand and sub-stand levels. Compared to optical remote sensing data sources, ALS data are particularly well-suited for the estimation of forest attributes related to the physical dimensions of trees due to its 3D information. Similar to ALS, it is possible to derive a 3D forest canopy model based on aerial imagery using digital aerial photogrammetry. In this study, we compared the accuracy and spatial characteristics of 2D satellite and aerial imagery as well as 3D ALS and photogrammetric remote sensing data in the estimation of forest inventory variables using k-NN imputation and 2469 National Forest Inventory (NFI) sample plots in a study area covering approximately 5800 km2. Both 2D data were very close to each other in terms of accuracy, as were both the 3D materials. On the other hand, the difference between the 2D and 3D materials was very clear. The 3D data produce a map where the hotspots of volume, for instance, are much clearer than with 2D remote sensing imagery. The spatial correlation in the map produced with 2D data shows a lower shortrange correlation, but the correlations approach the same level after 200 meters. The difference may be of importance, for instance, when analyzing the efficiency of different sampling designs and when estimating harvesting potential.


In a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem a gambler needs to choose at each round of play one of K arms, each characterized by an unknown reward distribution. Reward realizations are only observed when an arm is selected, and the gambler's objective is to maximize his cumulative expected earnings over some given horizon of play T. To do this, the gambler needs to acquire information about arms (exploration) while simultaneously optimizing immediate rewards (exploitation); the price paid due to this trade off is often referred to as the regret, and the main question is how small can this price be as a function of the horizon length T. This problem has been studied extensively when the reward distributions do not change over time; an assumption that supports a sharp characterization of the regret, yet is often violated in practical settings. In this paper, we focus on a MAB formulation which allows for a broad range of temporal uncertainties in the rewards, while still maintaining mathematical tractability. We fully characterize the (regret) complexity of this class of MAB problems by establishing a direct link between the extent of allowable reward "variation" and the minimal achievable regret, and by establishing a connection between the adversarial and the stochastic MAB frameworks.


Fan out wafer level packaging (FO-WLP) has established itself as a viable technology for high-volume manufacturing, initially, as a way to deal with shrinking die sizes, and later, in reducing package height and costs. Variations of FO-WLP, such as embedded wafer level BGA packaging (eWLB) from Infineon, integrated fanout (InFO) from TSMC and M-Series from Deca Technologies, are now commonplace among semiconductor manufactures. The same benefits that drove FO-WLP adoption, enhanced performance, and lower costs, are now driving the adoption of fan out panel level packaging, (FO-PLP). These benefits accrue from economies inherent in the use of larger rectangular panels instead of smaller round wafers. Unlike FO-WLP, which was developed on industry standard substrate sizes (the legacy of silicon wafers), FO-PLP does not have standard substrate sizes and each competing technology presents its own unique set of challenges and benefits. This paper discusses the process challenges and solutions that were developed to address a market that could not use existing back-end of line (BEOL) technologies the way FO-WLP did. The solutions that have evolved implement a mix of ideas drawn from the printed circuit board (PCB), flat panel and FO-WLP industries. We describe an automated optical inspection techniques meant to replace laser surface analyzers (LSA) as monitoring tools, highresolution optical metrology using a novel illumination technique to control of copper redistribution layer (RDL) uniformity, and process control and feedback through


OBJECTIVESurgical management of thoracic ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) remains challenging because of the anatomical complexity of the thoracic spine and the fragility of the thoracic spinal cord. Several surgical approaches have been described, but it remains unclear which of these is the most effective. The present study describes the microsurgical removal of OPLL in the middle thoracic level via the transthoracic anterolateral approach without spinal fusion, including the surgical outcome and operative tips.METHODSBetween 2002 and 2017, a total of 8 patients with thoracic myelopathy due to OPLL were surgically treated via the transthoracic anterolateral approach without spinal fusion. The surgical techniques are described in detail. Clinical outcome, surgical complications, and the pre- and postoperative thoracic kyphotic angle were assessed.RESULTSThe mean patient age at the time of surgery was 55 years (range 47-77 years). There were 5 women and 3 men. The surgically treated levels were within T3-9. The clinical symptoms and Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) score improved postoperatively in 7 cases, but did not change in 1 case. The mean JOA score increased from 6.4 preoperatively to 7.5 postoperatively (recovery rate 26%). Intraoperative CSF leakage occurred in 4 cases, and was successfully treated with fibrin glue sealing and spinal drainage. The mean follow-up period was 82.6 months (range 15.3-169 months). None of the patients had deterioration of the thoracic kyphotic angle.CONCLUSIONSAnterior decompression is the logical and ideal procedure to treat thoracic myelopathy caused by OPLL on the concave side of the spinal cord; however, this procedure is technically demanding. Microsurgery via the transthoracic anterolateral approach enables direct visualization of the thoracic ventral ossified lesion. The use of microscopic procedures might negate the need for bone grafting or spinal instrumentation.


This cross-sectional, correlational study (N = 402) examined the relationships among select demographics, workplace adaptation, employee affect, and incivility and physical health and job satisfaction. The paper-and-pencil survey battery consisted of nine scales. The hypotheses were tested through correlational, factor analytic, and hierarchical regression analytic procedures. Younger males engaged more frequently in uncivil behavior. After statistically controlling for the demographic variables, high negative affect and low degree of establishing relationships with coworkers and supervisors (adaptation) predicted more incivility. For the physical health model, establishing relationships with coworkers and positive affect positively contributed to perceived physical health, while organizational incivility negatively contributed to the dependent variable. As for the job satisfaction model, establishing relationships with coworkers and supervisors and positive affect positively predicted satisfaction, whereas negative affect and incivility made negative contributions to the regression equation. In all cases, the magnitude of effect ranged from medium to large, supporting the theoretical, empirical, and practical relevance of understanding the detrimental effects of uncivil behaviors on organizational outcomes. HRD researchers and professionals are highlighted as possible means for reducing uncivil workplace behaviors and improving organizational performance.


Four women have served as Associate Justices on the United States Supreme Court. Since the Court's inception in 1789, 162 individuals have been nominated to serve as Supreme Court Justices. Five nominees, or roughly 3 percent, have been women. To help put this gender dearth in perspective, more men named "Samuel" have served as Supreme Court Justices than women. Thirteen U.S. Presidents have nominated more people to the Supreme Court than the total number of women that have served on the Court. Finally, there are currently more Catholics serving on the Supreme Court than the number of women appointed in the Court's entire history. Women, once thought of as "one-at-a-time-curiosities" on the bench, now constitute nearly one-third of all state and federal judges. Qualified women were available for selection for many years—long before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court, or FWOTSC, as she refers to herself. It was not until a 1980 campaign promise by then-Governor Ronald Reagan to appoint the first female justice to the Supreme Court that a woman broke one of our government's last gender barriers. Presidents prior to that time allowed male members of the Court, among other influences, to stave off appointments of well-qualified women. So, women waited. But now women account for four of the last twelve Supreme Court appointments and five of the past 16 nominees. Clearly, their numbers are increasing. This paper presents the second scholarly ranking of female jurists deserving of a seat on the highest court in the land. The list celebrates eleven judicial way pavers: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Florence Allen, Constance Baker Motley, Shirley Huftstedler, Patricia Wald, Cornelia Kennedy, Harriet Miers and, Belva Lockwood. Each of these women is or was Supreme Court-worthy.


During the last two decades, computer science what are the ability to give to provide to machines in order to give them the ability to understand human behavior. One of them which is an important key to understand human behaviors, is the visual focus of attention (VFOA) of a person, which can be inferred from the gaze direction. The VFOA of a person gives insight about information such as who or what is the interest of a person, who is the target of the person's speech, who the person is listening to. Our interest in this thesis is to study people's VFOA using computer vision techniques. To estimate the VFOA of attention from a computer vision point of view, it is required to track the person's gaze. Because, tracking the eye gaze is impossible on low or mid resolution images, head orientation can be used as a surrogate for the gaze direction. Thus, in this thesis, we investigate in a first step the tracking of people's head orientation, in a second step the recognition of their VFOA from their head orientation. For the head tracking, we consider probabilistic methods based on sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) techniques. The head pose space is discretized into a finite set of poses, and Multi-dimensional Gaussian appearance models are learned for each discrete pose. The discrete head models are embedded into a mixed state particle filter (MSPF) framework to jointly estimate the head location and pose. The evaluation shows that this approach works better than the traditional paradigm in which the head is first tracked then the head pose is estimated. An important contribution of this thesis is the head pose tracking evaluation. As people usually evaluate their head pose tracking methods either qualitatively or with private data, we built a head pose video database using a magnetic field 3D location and orientation tracker. The database was used to evaluate our tracking methods, and was made publicly available to allow other researchers to evaluate and compare their algorithms. Once the head pose is available, the recognition of the VFOA can be done. Two environments are considered to study the VFOA: a meeting room environment and an outdoor environment. In the meeting room environment, people are static. People's VFOAs were studied depending on their locations in the meeting room. The set of VFOAs for a person is discretized into a finite set of targets: the other people attending the meeting, the table, the slide screen, and another VFOA target called un-focused denoting that the person is focusing none of the previous defined VFOAs. The head poses are used as observations and potential VFOA targets as hidden states in a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) or a hidden Markov model (HMM) framework. The parameters of the emission probability distributions were learned by two ways. A first way using head pose training data, and a second way exploiting the geometry of the room and the head and eye-in-head rotations. Maximum a posteriori adaptation (MAP) of the VFOA models was to the input test data to take into account people personal ways of gazing at VFOA targets. In the outdoor environment, people are moving and there is a single VFOA target. The problem in this study is to track multiple people passing and estimate whether or not they were focusing the advertisement. The VFOA is modeled as a GMM having as observations people's head location and pose.


Non-vitamin-K oral anticoagulants (NOACs) have become the standard of care in stroke prevention for individuals with atrial fibrillation (AF). This symposium provided insight into NOACs for primary and secondary stroke prevention based on data from randomized controlled trials, subgroup and post-hoc analyses, and real world studies. The symposium also explored the conundrum of treating patients on a NOAC who have experienced an acute stroke, and highlighted idarucizumab—an antidote specific to dabigatran—that has been incorporated into medical guidelines. NOACs are also being investigated for the secondary prevention of embolic stroke of undetermined source (ESUS). Recent and ongoing trials in this area were discussed.


This study explores the gendered discourse of social-based computer-mediated contexts. Specifically, the critical ethnography explicates the patterns of discourse of both a sports-related (masculine-dominated) chatroom and a female-based (feminine-dominated) chatroom. Through the participant observations, the researcher discovered that traditionally masculine and feminine forms of discourse dominate the chatrooms. Furthermore, the groups constructed and maintained normative forms of behavior. Masculine participants were aggressive, argumentative, and power oriented. While feminine participants sought relationships and intimacy, they were often dominated and overpowered by the aggressive discourse of the masculine members. The findings have significant implications for the construction of gender in cyberspace, the normative behavior of computer-mediated communication, and power and gender in the use of technology.


ABSTRACT While there are many approaches to detecting changes in mean for a univariate time series, the problem of detecting multiple changes in slope has comparatively been ignored. Part of the reason for this is that detecting changes in slope is much more challenging: simple binary segmentation procedures do not work for this problem, while existing dynamic programming methods that work for the change in mean problem cannot be used for detecting changes in slope. We present a novel dynamic programming approach, CPOP, for finding the "best" continuous piecewise linear fit to data under a criterion that measures fit to data using the residual sum of squares, but penalizes complexity based on an L0 penalty on changes in slope. We prove that detecting changes in this manner can lead to consistent estimation of the number of changepoints, and show empirically that using an L0 penalty is more reliable at estimating changepoint locations than using an L1 penalty. Empirically CPOP has good computational properties, and can analyze a time series with 10,000 observations and 100 changes in a few minutes. Our method is used to analyze data on the motion of bacteria, and provides better and more parsimonious fits than two competing approaches. Supplementary material for this article is available online.


The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, launched the "Healthy Communities" initiative in 2010 to explore how the health and community development sectors can collaborate. A regional meeting took place in Las Vegas in January 2012, which led to the formation of the Las Vegas Healthy Communities Coalition (LVHCC), a collective impact initiative with a mission to "foster collaboration and coordination across multiple sectors and stakeholders, to generate healthy outcomes for all Southern Nevadans." This report details the formation and progress of LVHCC, which is still in the early stages of development. Unlike other case studies, which often report on an initiative's success after many years of careful planning and implementation, this study aims to provide a candid look at the challenging and emergent nature of cross-sector collaboration in progress. It is meant to shed light on specific challenges and lessons that have been learned in Las Vegas thus far in order to help other communities that have embarked on their own community collaboratives.


Purpose of the article : Employee turnover is considered to be one of the persisting problems in organizations. This study examines how employee turnover affect employees regarding their future career grow. Paper examines the behaviour inside organizations that leads to turnover and thus transfers to new position in order to improve work conditions, role, and position and even to higher employee status.
 Methodology/methods: The deduction and induction method has revealed seven main causes of employee mobility: remuneration, future certainty, relationships, recognition, communication, corporate culture and expectations. The factors have been statistically tested and analysed in order to validate its impact on employee transfers. The data has been collected in two successive quantitative surveys by means of questionnaire investigation. The surveys were focus on random sample of employees (who had already left their jobs).
 Scientific aim : The aim of the paper is to reveal causes of employee turnover and following ways of mobility of employees to different organizations and sectors. Transfer to different organization/sector is a result of causes of employee turnover depending on the performance and affectivity of each employee.
 Findings: The research validated that knowledge workers who desire personal development do not care about high of salaries but they expect clear vision and performance rise. The revealed outputs allow us to assume that those employees are willing to change their job even to different sector in order to fill their needs to grow.
 Conclusions: The outcomes provide a specification and causes of employees' affectivity. One third of employees leave job after futile attempt to change. Factor analysis revealed two ways of career development. 23% of employees leave organisations because of impossibility to grow. Employees notice necessary tendencies to mobility and universality, which is currently supported by programmes of the European Union.


Abstract. We used WRF-Chem, a regional meteorological model coupled with an aerosol-chemistry component, to simulate various aspects of the dust phenomena over the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea during a typical winter-time dust event that occurred in January 2009. The model predicted that the total amount of emitted dust was 18.3 Tg for the entire dust outburst period and that the two maximum daily rates were ~2.4 Tg day −1 and ~1.5 Tg day −1 , corresponding to two periods with the highest aerosol optical depth that were well captured by ground- and satellite-based observations. The model predicted that the dust plume was thick, extensive, and mixed in a deep boundary layer at an altitude of 3–4 km. Its spatial distribution was modeled to be consistent with typical spatial patterns of dust emissions. We utilized MODIS-Aqua and Solar Village AERONET measurements of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) to evaluate the radiative impact of aerosols. Our results clearly indicated that the presence of dust particles in the atmosphere caused a significant reduction in the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface during the dust event. We also found that dust aerosols have significant impact on the energy and nutrient balances of the Red Sea. Our results showed that the simulated cooling under the dust plume reached 100 W m −2 , which could have profound effects on both the sea surface temperature and circulation. Further analysis of dust generation and its spatial and temporal variability is extremely important for future projections and for better understanding of the climate and ecological history of the Red Sea.


The recent revolution in the field of biotechnology has triggered off another round of controversy between the developed countries of the North and the developing countries of the South concerning access to genetic resources and equitable sharing of its benefits. Developed countries assert ownership claim on associated technologies, while developing countries claim ownership of genetic resources. The heart of the matter however, lies in the application of conflicting conventions and protocols in respect of genetic resources and biotechnology: genetic resources are treated as public goods, while biotechnology is treated as a private good. Developing countries who claim ownership to large reserve of the earth's pool of genetic resource feel that this exposes them to the exploitative tendencies of Multinational Corporations (MNC), that are mainly owned by developed countries of the North. Multinational corporations exploit the advantages as well as the weaknesses in the various conventions to increasingly monopolise the seed and germplasm industry, without due consideration for farmers and developing countries. The paper analyzes these developments and proposes that a better regime of benefit sharing that recognises farmers or indigenous rights alongside patents and plant breeders' rights will go a long way to introducing a more even playing ground that is mutually favourable to both parties.


Embodied evolution aims at self-sufficient adaptation in robot collectives in their task environment. An open question is how to achieve a good balance of effort over multiple tasks using embodied evolution. Most efforts to date rely on switching between predefined behaviours or on spatial or temporal separation of the tasks to achieve this. The research presented here is part of an effort to enable embodied evolutionary systems to achieve a balanced distribution of effort over multiple tasks without predefined behaviour and without any separation of the tasks. We propose and experimentally evaluate a selection mechanism that introduces a local reproductive advantage to individuals that specialise in underrepresented tasks. The paper shows that an embodied evolution implementation with this mechanism leads to balanced populations of generalist individuals, even when the environment severely penalises generalist behaviour. An extension that combines task-based and purely environmental selection in some cas...


Introduction: It is of utmost importance that patients are able to identify their attending physicians. There is a paucity of data in this area, particularly in teaching hospitals that have protocols for physician and staff communication with patients and their families.  In order to optimize the patient experience, more research is needed on physician performance and patient satisfaction. Little is known about hospitalized patients' ability to identify their attending physician. This paper evaluates the rates of patient identification of their attending physician in surgical and non-surgical specialties. Methods: A total of 15,828 surveys, spanning September 2010 to June 2013, were assessed. This included patient representation from 9 departments within UCLA Health.  Of these, 6,473 interviews were conducted among patients admitted to surgical specialty service lines while 9,355 interviews were conducted among patients admitted to non-surgical specialty service lines. Statistical comparisons were made using the student's t-test and evaluated for variance using the ANOVA test. Results: It was determined that significantly (p<0.001) more patients in surgical specialty service lines were able to positively identify their attending physician than patients admitted to non-surgical specialty service lines; 65.7% and 35.7%, respectively. Conclusions: It is plausible that a greater percentage of surgical specialty patients can identify their attending physician because the attending is often the physician performing the operation. These results suggest that measures should be undertaken in order to improve patient identification of their attending physicians, which may also improve the quality of care and clinical outcomes. Journal of Nature and Science, 1(4):e62, 2015.


Scholars emphasize that poverty in Britain has risen sharply since the late 1970s. Meanwhile in the United States, both official figures and traditional poverty scholars report sharp declines in poverty. We seek to provide a comparison of poverty levels in Britain and the US based on a set of common definitions. We then proceed to ask what factors-demographic, economic, or policy-account for the observed changes in poverty in the two nations and what role could policy play in reducing poverty? We develop a procedure that allows one to trace out the relative impacts of altered demographics, rising wage inequality, work changes, and policy innovations in explaining changing poverty patterns. We find that the forces influencing poverty differ between nations and across absolute and relative poverty measures. Demographic and wage change is a dominant force in both nations. Britain has experienced a dramatic rise in workless households while the US has simultaneously had a sharp fall. These differences had a sizable impact on absolute poverty in both nations and a significant impact on relative poverty in Britain. Government benefits directly reduced relative and absolute poverty considerably in Britain over this period but had little impact in the US. However, changing patterns of benefits and work suggest that policy changes have significantly increased work in the US, particularly among single parents. In Britain, policy changes may have had the reverse effect, reducing work among many groups. The UK government has committed itself to reducing child poverty by half over the next 10 years and to its abolition within 20 years, largely through policy changes designed to make work pay. We conclude that any purely work-based strategy, which doesn't tackle demographics and wage dispersion, may not have a dramatic effect on relative poverty.


An incompletely defined alternative non-homologous end joining pathway (A-NHEJ) frequently functioning as backup has recently been shown to process DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) when canonical cellular DSB repair activities are somehow compromised. While A-NHEJ offers survival advantage for the damaged cell, its propensity for large sequence alterations at the junction and the relatively frequent joining of unrelated DNA ends generates alterations in the genome that can have severe biological consequences. Indeed, evidence accumulates that A-NHEJ is a driver of the chromosomal rearrangements and the overall genomic instability that underpin the development of certain forms of cancer. Features of A-NHEJ causally related to these unfavorable outcomes are the apparent promiscuity in utilized factors and the delayed repair kinetics. The purpose of this review is to briefly summarize recent advances in our understanding regarding the function of A-NHEJ and to review emerging evidence for its role in oncogenic transformation.


This Letter presents distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) fiber lasers for high-temperature operation at 750°C. Thermally regenerated fiber gratings were used as the feedback elements to construct an erbium-doped DBR fiber laser. The output power of the fiber laser can reach 1 mW at all operating temperatures. The output power fluctuation tested at 750°C was 1.06% over a period of 7 hours. The thermal regeneration grating fabrication process opens new possibilities to design and to implement fiber laser sensors for extreme environments.


This report gives the results of a study of the properties of unbound aggregate base materials using both laboratory testing data from full scale field tests in Illinois, Georgia, and Texas, and a model of cross-anisotropic elastic materials to characterize the behavior of the base materials under traffic loads. Using the cross-anisotropic model, the stress distribution in a base course is more realistic than that developed when the aggregate base is considered to be linear and isotropic. The stress distribution based on cross-anisotropic analysis is not only more correct, but it is also more favorable to the unbound aggregate in that significant tensile stresses are found not to occur. The analogy is presented in this report that the response of the aggregate base to the load is as if the stress distribution directly under the wheel load due to anisotropy acts as a moving column under the wheel in which the aggregate essentially produces its own confinement and does not enter into tension. Other findings in this report include the following: (1) The unbound aggregate base material should be modeled as nonlinear and cross-anisotropic to account for stress-sensitivity and the significant differences between vertical and horizontal moduli and Poisson's ratios. (2) The International Center for Aggregates Research (ICAR) laboratory testing protocol is efficient and precise and should be considered as a candidate to model the unbound aggregate base. The protocol uses three stress regimes and ten stress levels within each regime to determine stress sensitivity and cross-anisotropy. A system identification method is used to select the five material properties based on the test results necessary to properly characterize the aggregate base and to satisfy the requirements of elastic work potential theory. (3) The Fast Industrial Process Controls cell is efficient and should be used to characterize unbound aggregate bases. The ratio of the diameter to the specimen height is 1:1. While testing of such sample sizes is discouraged in the literature, improvements made to the IPC cell minimize frictional development between the sample and loading platens resulting in minimal constraint at the sample ends. This is verified in the report based on comparative triaxial testing and finite element analysis. (4) The ICAR testing protocol is an excellent tool for both unbound aggregate characterization and comparative analysis of materials. A compaction study on two very different aggregates (uncrushed river gravel and crushed limestone) was performed in which the aggregates were subjected to impact, kneading gyratory compaction. The difference in the tendency of the compaction techniques to produce varying levels of particle orientation (which affects anisotropy) was evident in the degree of anisotropy measured.


When considering the multiuser SISO interference channel, the allowable rate region is not convex and the maximization of the aggregated rate of all the users by the means of transmission power control becomes inefficient. Hence, a concept of the crystallized rate regions has been proposed, where the time-sharing approach is considered to maximize the sumrate.In this paper, we extend the concept of crystallized rate regions from the simple SISO interference channel case to the MIMO/OFDM interference channel. As a first step, we extend the time-sharing convex hull from the SISO to the MIMO channel case. We provide a non-cooperative game-theoretical approach to study the achievable rate regions, and consider the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism design with a novel cost function. Within this analysis, we also investigate the case of OFDM channels, which can be treated as the special case of MIMO channels when the channel transfer matrices are diagonal. In the second step, we adopt the concept of correlated equilibrium into the case of two-user MIMO/OFDM, and we introduce a regret-matching learning algorithm for the system to converge to the equilibrium state. Moreover, we formulate the linear programming problem to find the aggregated rate of all users and solve it using the Simplex method. Finally, numerical results are provided to confirm our theoretical claims and show the improvement provided by this approach.


The presence of ca. 1.63 Ga monzogranite (the "white quartz monzonite") in the southern Sierra Madre, southeastern Wyoming, is anomalous given its distance from the nearest documented plutons of similar age (central Colorado) and the nearest contemporaneous tectonic margin (New Mexico). It is located immediately south of the Cheyenne belt–a ca. 1.75 Ga Archean-Proterozoic tectonic suture. New geochronological, isotopic, and geochemical data suggest that emplacement of the white quartz monzonite occurred between ca. 1645 and 1628 Ma (main pulse ca. 1628 Ma) and that the white quartz monzonite originated primarily by partial melting of the Big Creek Gneiss, a modified arc complex. There is no evidence that mafic magmas were involved. Open folds of the ca. 1750 Ma regional foliation are cut by undeformed white quartz monzonite. On a regional scale, rocks intruded by the white quartz monzonite have experienced higher pressure and temperature conditions and are migmatitic as compared to the surrounding rocks, suggesting a genetic relationship between the white quartz monzonite and tectonic exhumation. We propose that regional shortening imbricated the Big Creek Gneiss, uplifting the now-exposed high-grade rocks of the Big Creek Gneiss (hanging wall of the thrust and wall rock to the white quartz monzonite) and burying correlative rocks, which partially melted to form the white quartz monzonite. This tectonism is attributed to the ca. 1.65 Ga Mazatzal orogeny, as foreland shortening spread progressively into the Yavapai Province. Mazatzal foreland effects have also been described in the Great Lakes region and have been inferred in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We suggest that the crustal-scale rheologic contrast across the Archean-Proterozoic suture, originally developed along the southern margin of Laurentia, and including the Cheyenne belt, facilitated widespread reactivation of that boundary during the Mazatzal orogeny. This finding emphasizes the degree to which crustal heterogeneities can localize subsequent deformation in accretionary orogens, producing significant crustal melting in the distal foreland–a region not typically associated with orogenic magmatism.


Background We assessed the relationship of body mass index (BMI), smoking, drinking and solid fuel use (r; SFU), and the individual and combined effects of these factors on wheezing symptoms (WS) and on diagnosed asthma (DA). Methods We analysed 175 000 individuals from 51 nationally representative surveys, using self-reports of WS and DA as the measures of asthma. The fixed-effects and random-effects estimates of the pooled ORs between asthma and underweight (BMI <18.5 kg/m2), obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2), smoking, drinking and SFU were reported. Results The pooled risks of all individual risk factors were significantly associated with WS and DA (with the exception of current smoking with DA in women and SFU with DA in both genders). Stronger dose–response relationships were seen in women for smoking amounts and duration; BMI showed stronger quadratic relationships. The combined risks were generally larger in women than in men, with significant risks for underweight (OR=2.73) as well as obese (OR=2.00) smokers for WS (OR=2.13 and OR=1.58 for DA, respectively). The magnitude of the combined effects from low/high BMI, smoking and drinking were also consistently higher among women than among men in WS and DA. SFU among underweight smokers also had positive association with WS (men and women) and DA (women). Conclusions BMI, smoking, drinking and SFU—in combination—are associated with double or triple the risk of development of asthma. These risk factors might help explain the wide variation in asthma burden across countries.


Introduction: This study aimed to investigate the effect of carpet weaving at a proposed workstation on Upper Trapezius (UTr) fatigue during a task cycle. Fatigue in the shoulder is one of the most important precursors for upper limb musculoskeletal disorders. One of the most prevalent musculoskeletal disorders between carpet weavers is disorder of the shoulder region. Methods: This cross-sectional study, included eight females and three males. During an 80-minute cycle of carpet weaving, Electromyography (EMG) signals of right and left UTr were recorded by the surface EMG, continuously. After raw signals were processed, MPF and RMS were considered as EMG amplitude and frequency parameters. Time series model and JASA methods were used to assess and classify the EMG parameter changes during the working time. Results: According to the JASA method, 58%, 16%, 8% and 8% of the participants experienced fatigue, force increase, force decrease and recovery, respectively in the right UTr. Also, 50%, 25%, 8% and 16% of the participants experienced fatigue, force increase, force decrease and recovery, respectively in the left UTr. conclusions: For the major portion of the weavers, dominant status in Left and right UTr was fatigue, at the proposed workstation during a carpet weaving task cycle. The results of the study provide detailed information for optimal design of workstations. Further studies should focus on fatigue in various muscles and time periods for designing an appropriate and ergonomics carpet weaving workstation.


The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, due to receive Royal Assent in November 2003, is part of a major government initiative to combat anti-social behaviour. The bill introduces a number of measures to tackle a range of 'undesirable' behaviour including: - strengthening of existing sanctions of ASBOs and fixed penalties notices and supervision orders; - new powers to deal with premises that are used for drug dealing; - extended powers for tackling ASB in social housing including demoted tenancies and exclusion orders; - develops mechanisms for involving parents of those involved anti-social behaviour, including new powers for schools and LEAs in respect of truancy and exclusion; and - new powers for the police to designate areas where they can disperse groups causing intimidation. The Act employs both civil and criminal measures, and makes many changes to current legislation in such areas as housing, nuisance, youths and parental responsibility, public order controls, drug misuse and firearms. This Special Bulletin will guide the reader through the many changes and discuss what they will mean in practice. All professionals and advisers dealing with social housing, education, crime and youth offending will need a detailed understanding of the Act and its likely impact.


Although a great deal of success has been achieved in the synthesis of dibenzodioxaphosphepin  derivatives during the last few decades with the introduction of hundreds of its six-, and seven-membered ring systems, the search for more practical agronomic pesticides that is readily available and of good activity, remains attractive and important to an agronomic chemist. During the course of the development of synthetic routes to a promising pesticide, a facile preparation for a  nine-membered heterocyclic dibenzodioxaphosphonine compound was discovered. Previously reported compounds consist of six- and seven-membered ring  systems. The pure product was fully characterized by spectroscopic [IR, NMR ( 1 H, 13 C, 31 P) and Mass] analyses. The pure compound possesses a LC50 value of  19.3 μg cm –3 in a brine shrimp lethality assay (BST). The  preliminary field study on the cowpea weevil bioassay shows 51% success. Details of the synthetic  route as well as bioassay results are reported herein. KEYWORDS : Dibenzodioxaphosphonine, candidate, BST, LC 50 .


This article explores the methodological problems of using models from �complexity science� for understanding policy process. The article argues that the problem of complexity is not just a problems for modelling, but needs to be understand as a problem in the world of social policy itself. Highlighting the possibility of describing policy process with complexity science, the article then situates the issues through three scenarios from an ethnographic study of collaboration in social welfare. The article asks, �how do we make connections between these scenarios as part of a policy process?� and suggests there is value in understanding policy process as constituted in communications. Doing so suggests recognising the inherent role of �ignorance� as part of policy process.


The Laplace Transform. The Inverse Laplace Transform. Applications to Differential Equations. Applications to Integral and Difference Equations. Complex Variable Theory. Fourier Series and Integrals. The Complex Inversion Formula. Applications to Boundary-Value Problems. Appendix A: Table of General Properties of Laplace Transforms. Appendix B: Table of Special Laplace Transforms. Appendix C: Table of Special Functions.


The Easy, Visual Introduction to IBM DB2 Version 10.5 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Foreword by Judy Huber, Vice President, Distributed Data Servers and Data Warehousing; Director, IBM Canada Laboratory This book covers everything you need to get productive with the latest version of IBM DB2 and apply it to todays business challenges. It discusses key features introduced in DB2 Versions 10.5, 10.1, and 9.7, including improvements in manageability, integration, security, Big Data support, BLU Acceleration, and cloud computing. DB2 Essentials illuminates key concepts with examples drawn from the authors extensive experience with DB2 in enterprise environments. Raul F. Chong and Clara Liu explain how DB2 has evolved, whats new, and how to choose the right products, editions, and tools. Next, they walk through installation, configuration, security, data access, remote connectivity, and day-to-day administration. Each chapter starts with an illustrative overview to introduce its key concepts using a big picture approach. Clearly explained figures are used extensively, and techniques are presented with intuitive screenshots, diagrams, charts, and tables. Case studies illustrate how theory is applied in real-life environments, and hundreds of review questions help you prepare for IBMs newest DB2 certification exams. Coverage includes Understanding the role of DB2 in Big Data Preparing for and executing a smooth installation or upgrade Understanding the DB2 environment, instances, and databases Configuring client and server connectivity Working with database objects Getting started with BLU Acceleration Implementing security: authentication and authorization Understanding concurrency and locking Maintaining, backing up, and recovering data Using basic SQL in DB2 environments Diagnosing and solving DB2 problems This book is for anyone who plans to work with DB2, including DBAs, system administrators, developers, and consultants. It will be a great resource whether youre upgrading from an older version of DB2, migrating from a competitive database, or learning your first database platform.


After forty years of skyrocketing incarceration rates, there are signs that a new "decarceration era" may be dawning; the prison population has leveled off and even slightly declined. Yet, while each branch of government has taken steps to reduce the prison population, the preceding decades of mass incarceration have empowered interest groups that contributed to the expansion of the prison industry and are now invested in its continued growth. These groups, which include public correctional officers and private prison management, resist decarceration-era policies, and they remain a substantial obstacle to reform.This Article scrutinizes the incentives of these industry stakeholders in the new decarceration era. Drawing on interviews with a wide range of industry actors, it develops a "taxonomy of resistance" to identify how and why these actors resist reform efforts and uncovers understudied parallels between private and public prison stakeholders. This fine-grained analysis grounds the Article's recommendations for changes to compensation and assessment structures to better align industry incentives with decarceration-era goals. Ultimately, the future of the decarceration era is precarious but not doomed. The detailed incentives unearthed by this study demonstrate the significant hurdles facing emerging decarceration policies and the urgent challenge of accounting for, overcoming, and co-opting entrenched prison industry stakeholders.


In this study, a new intelligent control system converter (ICSC) is developed, designed, and introduced in order to harness the hydrokinetic energy of wake induced vibration (WIV) phenomenon and convert it to the electricity. The WIV converter consists of tandem circular cylinders, while the upstream cylinder is stationary and the downstream one is mounted on an elastic structure. ICSC was designed based on the maximizing dynamic response of the downstream cylinder under the WIV phenomenon. Therefore, the structural parameters of the WIV converter, such as position and mass and damping ratios of the converter can be automatically and remotely controlled to maximize the oscillation of the cylinder based on the free stream velocity. The position of the downstream cylinder can be set at a desirable longitudinal and transverse distances in the wake of the upstream cylinder remotely via the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Furthermore, the mass, the spring stiffness, and the damper can be set via a virtual mass-spring-damper mechanism (VMSD) Derakhshandeh et al. In a real-time. ICSC guarantees that all structural parameters are set suitably and appropriately to optimize the power coefficient of the WIV converter.


The experiment was aimed to evaluate the effects of dietary inclusion of fermented apple pomace (FAP) in lamb diet on physicochemical and lipid oxidation of meat during storage at 4 °C. Twenty-four crossbred sheep were randomly assigned to two experimental diets with or without 11% (dry matter basis) FAP for 56 d. The lambs were then slaughtered, and the longissimus dorsi muscle was removed 24 hours after slaughter to measure meat quality. The inclusion of FAP in the diet of sheep did not change lightness and redness of meat, but greater yellowness was observed with increased storage time. Diet did not have any influence on the pH, water-holding capacity (WHC), drip loss (DL) and shear force of meat. Storage time increased yellowness and tenderization of meat. Oxidation of lipids in stored meat from sheep that were fed FAP was lower than that in the control group. It is concluded that the use of fermented apple pomace in the diet of sheep decreased meat oxidation during storage, without affecting other quality characteristics of the meat. Keywords: Diet, fermented, longissimus dorsi , sheep, storage


A hybrid molecular mechanics–molecular dynamics (MM–MD) method is proposed to calculate the Young's modulus of polymers at various temperature. It overcomes the limitation that MD is restricted to extremely high strain rates. A case study based on poly-methyl-methacrylate demonstrates that, contrary to previous MD studies, the method is able to accurately reproduce the effect of temperature on the Young's modulus in close agreement with experimental data. The method can also predict a more clear transition between the glassy and rubbery states than previous MD studies.


Wrightia tinctoria (Roxb.) R.Br. (WT) has been reported to exhibit number of therapeutic uses such as astringent, stomachic, febrifuge, skin diseases and tonic in India. The objective of the present study was to investigate the immunomodulatory activity of the bark extracts of WT using delayed type hypersensitivity reaction and carbon clearance assay. Powdered dried barks of WT were extracted with petroleum ether 60 80°C (PEWT), alcohol (ALWT) and aqueous alcohol (AQWT) (60% water + 40% ethanol) successively. PEWT and ALWT extracts (200,400mg/kg, p.o) produced a significant increase in delayed type hypersensitivity in response to sheep red blood cells (SRBC). PEWT showed better activity than ALWT in delayed type hypersensitivity response. ALWT (200 and 400mg/kg, p.o) in dose dependent manner have shown significantly increase in the phagocytic activity. The above results reveal that ALWT possesses immunostimulant activity in carbon clearance assay whereas PEWT and ALWT showed immunomodulatory activity in delayed type hypersensitivity model.


OBJECTIVES
This preliminary study examined sensory processing and its relationship to occupational performance in children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) to guide research and evidence-based practice.

METHOD
Fifteen school-aged boys with full-mutation FXS were assessed with three occupational performance measures (School Function Assessment, Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, play duration) and three sensory processing measures (Sensory Profile, Tactile Defensiveness and Discrimination Test-Revised, Sensory Approach-Avoidance Rating). Data were analyzed using partial correlation procedures.

RESULTS
Several significant correlations were found, independent of effects of age and IQ. Avoidance of sensory experiences (internally controlled) was associated with lower levels of school participation, self-care, and play. Aversion to touch from externally controlled sources was associated with a trend toward greater independence in self-care--opposite of expectations.

CONCLUSION
This study links sensory processing vulnerabilities with individual differences in occupational performance and supports a dynamic view of self-organizing systems. Children's uses of avoidant versus independent behaviors may reflect different self-regulatory or coping strategies that potentially mediate the relationship between sensory processing deficits and occupational behaviors and warrant further investigation.


Benefiting from the authors' many years of teaching undergraduate and graduate students and practitioners, here is a clear, comprehensive, practice-oriented text for public budgeting courses. Rather than presenting each budgeting concern in mind-numbing detail, the book offers a commonsensical view of public budgeting and its importance to current and future public managers. The text is designed to show readers how managers relate to budgeting and how their actions make a difference in the operation and performance of public organizations. The book covers the historical development of public budgeting, sources of public revenues, revenue management, budgeting processes and formats, operating techniques, politics within public budgeting, and more. "Budgeting for Public Managers" is concise, clearly written, well illustrated, and grounded in the real-world concerns of public managers. Each chapter concludes with a helpful list of additional reading and resources for readers who want to dig deeper into budgeting practice and application.


Money managers are rewarded for increasing the value of assets under management, and predominantly so in the mutual fund industry. This gives the manager an implicit incentive to exploit the well-documented positive fund-flows to relative-performance relationship by manipulating her risk exposure. In a dynamic portfolio choice framework, we show that as the year-end approaches, the ensuing convexities in the manager's objective induce her to closely mimic the index, relative to which her performance is evaluated, when the fund's year-to-date return is sufficiently high. As her relative performance falls behind, she chooses to deviate from the index by either increasing or decreasing the volatility of her portfolio. The maximum deviation is achieved at a critical level of underperformance. It may be optimal for the manager to reach such deviation via selling the risky asset despite its positive risk premium. Under multiple sources of risk, with both systematic and idiosyncratic risks present, we show that optimal managerial risk shifting may not necessarily involve taking on any idiosyncratic risk. Costs of misaligned incentives to investors resulting from the manager's policy are economically significant. We then demonstrate how a simple risk management practice that accounts for benchmarking can ameliorate the adverse effects of managerial incentives.


Inflation can grease the wheels of the labor market by relaxing downward wage rigidity but it can also increase uncertainty and have a negative sand effect. This paper studies the grease effect of inflation by looking at whether the interaction between inflation and labor market regulations affects how employment responds to changes in output. The results show that in industrial countries with highly regulated labor markets, the grease effect of inflation dominates the sand effect. In the case of developing countries, we rarely find a significant effect of inflation on labor market regulations and provide evidence indicating that this could be due to the presence of a large informal sector and limited enforcement of de jure labor market regulations.


This thesis has discussed the concept of decision support system in organization
that are interactive, flexible, and adaptable computer-based information system. Usually
from the scenarios at Teratai College making decision to punish students it takes times
to produce the desired result. One of the major problems was to get the correct
information with those processes of making decision in order to have a result. It was
difficult to make the decision based on the subjects that have been done if there is no
guideline to be followed. These problems may lead to the ineffectiveness result of action
that should be produced. Therefore with this study attempt to find a solution how a portal
may help to assist the staff in getting the decision. The project objective is to develop a
web based DSS to the staff of Teratai College. The decision making process in this
module using forward chaining methods. It based on the rules to achieve the goals. The
goals are to produce a compound and suggestion to the decision. Decision support
system appear well suited to problems of this nature as it can help facilitate problem
solving flows and aid decision maker in addressing unstructured or semi-structured
decision. DSS combined the intellectual resources of individuals with the capabilities of
the computer to improve the quality of decisions. Thus the decision support system is a
useful tools selection for principle and resident staff at Teratai College to make decision.


A method for local magneto-optical Kerr effect imaging based on a home-made scanning near-field optical microscope working in reflection mode is presented. Shear force detection is carried out by using a symmetric piezoelectric bimorph sensor, which provides an easy way not only for probe-surface distance control but also for imaging. Polarization-preserving fiber probes used as a local optical detector are fabricated with a heating-pulling technique and the probes' polarization properties are measured. Shear force topographic and near-field magneto-optical images of magneto-optical disk taken with the proposed method are shown.


Painting serves as a medium to satisfy artist's sense of perception and provides space to portray his own imagination. The researcher here reveals an attempt by Raza Bukhari to capture the fusion of two culture's, western cartoon character fitting in the eastern Persian miniature, or somewhere western subject adorned with Persian motif, creating contemporary approach in the traditional manner of miniature painting, which helps him to produce the visual copy of his expression and display his inner most thoughts. Observing two different tastes on one canvas brings the observer to discover the hidden messages of the visual, to effectuate the need this paper is going to focus the imagery and symbolism used by Raza Bukhari to express the human psychology of adopting foreign culture, and fitting themselves in that. His masterly skills of using opaque colour for creating a painting and the use of cat hair brush, accompanied with other techniques further modifies and helps in delivering the essence of painting.


This article introduces a protest news framing cycle and presents the results of a longitudinal analysis of news attention and framing of protest movements. To identify the frame-changing dynamic occurring over time, a content analysis of the news coverage of Occupy Wall Street was conducted on 228 articles and 37 editorials in The New York Times from the start of the protest in September 2011 until long after the protest had subsided in July 2014. The article identifies longitudinal changes in news frames about the economic substance of the protest and the ensuing conflict between protesters and city officials during the occupation. Findings suggest that conflict had a significant impact on the number of news stories about the protest. Further, the results demonstrate how news framing opportunities changed as the movement reached different stages of the news attention cycle. As the movement grew, journalists focused on the movement's economic grievances, including economic inequality, bank bailouts, and foreclosures. As the movement peaked, news attention shifted to the intensifying conflict between city officials and protesters.


Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2009.; Includes bibliographical
 references. Basal levels of active, nuclear localized and tyrosine phosphorylated Stat5 are
 present in healthy human breast epithelia. In contrast, Stat5 is frequently inactivated during
 breast cancer progression, a finding that correlates with loss of histological differentiation
 and poor patient prognosis. Identifying the mechanisms underlying Stat5 inactivation could
 provide novel targets for breast cancer therapy. Because total Stat5 protein remains
 detectable in an unphosphorylated form in a majority of breast cancers a hypothesis was formed
 that inactivation of Stat5 during breast cancer progression is the result of disregulated
 tyrosine phosphatase activity. Supporting this hypothesis, an experiment performed in human
 breast cancer cells using the tyrosine phosphatase inhibitor pervanadate revealed significant
 tyrosine phosphatase regulation of prolactin-induced phosphotyrosine-Stat5. Very little is
 known about tyrosine phosphatase regulation of Stat5 activation in human breast cancer. To
 explore this potential mechanism for Stat5 inactivation during breast cancer progression five
 candidate tyrosine phosphatases were chosen for investigation based on 1) reported regulation
 of Stat5 activity in non-breast cells and tissues, 2) modulation of Jak2/Stat5 homologue
 signaling in lower organisms, or 3) the ability to regulate Stat5 in in vitro overexpression
 systems and phosphatase assays. The five candidates were the classical tyrosine phosphatases
 PTP1B, TC-PTP, SHP1, and SHP2, and the dual-specificity phosphatase VHR. Lentiviral-mediated
 shRNA methodology allowed specific examination of the candidates in the context of human
 breast cancer. The results of these studies revealed enhanced and sustained prolactin-induced
 Stat5 tyrosine phosphorylation exclusively in response to PTP1B suppression; an effect that
 was mimicked by parallel enhanced and sustained prolactin-induced tyrosine phosphorylation of
 the upstream Stat5 tyrosine kinase, Jak2. The effect of PTP1B knockdown on Stat5 was found in
 both T47D and MCF7 cells and resulted in increased Stat5 reporter gene activity. Furthermore,
 PTP1B knockdown enhanced the prolactin-induced Stat5 sensitivity of breast cancer cells by
 reducing EC50 almost three fold, from 7.2 nM to 2.5 nM. Last, immunohistochemical analysis
 revealed a highly significant negative correlation between levels of phosphotyrosine-Stat5 and
 PTP1B in clinical breast cancer specimens. Collectively, these data implicate upregulation or
 activation of PTP1B as an important mechanism behind the suppression of Prolactin/Jak2/Stat5
 signaling in breast cancer.


Preterm delivery is the single largest cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity. At present, there is no effective long-term treatment for uncomplicated preterm labour. Recent basic and clinical research suggests that oxytocin antagonists provide promise for the future. The current review outlines the clinical aspects of preterm labour and the problems with current pharmacological management. The rationale for administration of oxytocin antagonists is outlined, and the chemistry, biology and efficacy in vitro for patented oxytocin antagonists is assessed. The implications of the use of oxytocin antagonists, such as tocolytic agents, are considered and it is suggested that more specific inhibitors may be more efficacious.


An advanced, general purpose GaAs/lnGaP HBT process has been developed at GEC Marconi Materials Technology Ltd. (GMMT). A range of digital and analogue circuit functions has been successfully implemented, demonstrating the capability of the process to provide high linearity and broadband circuits for communications applications. IP3-P1dB figures of up to 11.3dB have been measured and high density, high speed digital circuits have also been demonstrated with frequency divider toggle rates of over 16GHz. GMMT are also developing a variant of the process with improved breakdown voltage specifically for power applications. This paper gives an overview of the process technology and of demonstrated circuit performance. Results of accelerated lifetests are also presented.


The explicit costs of raising a child have grown over the past several decades. Less well understood are the implicit costs of having a child, and how they have changed over time. In this paper we use longitudinal administrative data from over 70,000 individuals in the Synthetic SIPP Beta to examine the earnings gap between mothers and non-mothers over the lifecycle and between cohorts. We observe women who never have children beginning to out earn women who will have children during their 20s. Gaps increase monotonically over the lifecycle, and decrease monotonically between cohorts from age 26 onwards. In our oldest cohort, lifetime gaps approach $350,000 by age 62. Cumulative labor market experience profiles show similar patterns, with experience gaps between mothers and non-mothers generally increasing over the lifecycle and decreasing between cohorts. We decompose this cumulative gap in earnings (up to age 43) into portions attributable to time spent out of the labor force, differing levels of education, years of marriage and a number of demographic controls. We find that this gap between mothers and non-mothers declines from around $220,000 for women born in the late 1940s to around $160,000 for women born in the late 1960s. Over 80% of the change in this gap can be explained by variables in our model, with changes in labor force participation by far the best explanation for the declining gap. Comparing our oldest cohort as they approach retirement to the projected lifecycle behavior of the 1965 cohort, we find that the earnings gap is estimated to drop from $350,000 (observed) to $282,000 (expected) and that the experience gap drops from 3.7 to 2.1 years. We also explore the intensive margin costs of having a child. A decomposition of earnings gaps between mothers of one child and mothers of two children also controls for age at first birth. Here, we find a decline in the gap from around $78,000 for our oldest cohorts to around $37,000 for our youngest cohorts. Our model explains a smaller share of the intensive margin decline. Changes in absences from the labor market again explain a large amount of the decline, while differences in age at first birth widen the gap.


Mutations in the HER2 kinase domain have been identified in human clinical lung cancer specimens. Here we demonstrate that inducible expression of the most common HER2 mutant (HER2YVMA) in mouse lung epithelium causes invasive adenosquamous carcinomas restricted to proximal and distal bronchioles. Continuous expression of HER2YVMA is essential for tumor maintenance, suggesting a key role for HER2 in lung adenosquamous tumorigenesis. Preclinical studies assessing the in vivo effect of erlotinib, trastuzumab, BIBW2992, and/or rapamycin on HER2YVMA transgenic mice or H1781 xenografts with documented tumor burden revealed that the combination of BIBW2992 and rapamycin is the most effective treatment paradigm causing significant tumor shrinkage. Immunohistochemical analysis of lung tumors treated with BIBW2992 and rapamycin combination revealed decreased phosphorylation levels for proteins in both upstream and downstream arms of MAPK and Akt/mTOR signaling axes, indicating inhibition of these pathways. Based on these findings, clinical testing of the BIBW2992/rapamycin combination in non-small cell lung cancer patients with tumors expressing HER2 mutations is warranted.


Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have risen rapidly in recent months. This was driven in large part by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia, although other factors, such as export bans, have also contributed to rising prices. Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the increase occurring since February (see Figure 1). There is wide variation across products, with real maize prices increasing by only 11 percent, and rice prices declining by 13 percent. The price of crude oil and natural gas has also risen substantially, and the weighted average price of fertilizer has doubled. With these changes in global prices, many developing countries and their development partners are concerned about the implications for economic stability, food security, and poverty.


In addition to the requirement of a tax benefit or advantage, the application of most modern general anti-avoidance rules turns on two elements: a so-called "subjective element" which considers the purpose for which the transaction or arrangement resulting in the tax benefit or advantage was undertaken or arranged; and an "objective element" which considers the object or purpose of the relevant provisions to determine if the tax benefit resulting from the transaction or arrangement is or is not consistent with this object or purpose.

Although these two elements are present in most modern GAARs, the function of each element within these rules and the relationship between them is often poorly understood. Other unresolved issues concern the roles of artificiality and economic substance in the application of these rules, and the relationship, if any, between these concepts and the "subjective" and "objectives" elements of the rules. A final set of issues involves the uncertainty that GAARs may engender, the ability of judges to apply these rules and principles in a coherent and consistent manner, and the compatibility of these rules and principles with the rule of law.

This essay addresses these issues by reflecting on Tim Edgar's article "Building a Better GAAR". Part 1I considers the rationale for a general anti-avoidance rule or principle, arguing that it not only represents a useful policy response to the harmful consequences of tax avoidance (the consequentialist argument that Professor Edgar espoused), but that it may also be justified on the non-consequentialist grounds that it protects the integrity of the provisions at issue and thereby upholds the rule of law. Part III builds on this analysis to consider the design of a general anti-avoidance rule or principle, arguing that it should be codified in the form of an explicit rule, should include subjective and objective elements like the purpose and misuse or abuse requirements in the Canadian GAAR, and should be informed by concepts of artificiality and economic substance which apply respectively to the subjective and objective elements of the rule. Part IV concludes.


The use of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data in a one-dimensional variational scheme is examined to retrieve cloud parameters and atmospheric profiles. The variational scheme used TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder radiance data for retrieval. The AVHRR data were used in the partly cloudy and cloudy cases to provide initial guesses for cloud parameters in the iterative scheme, to detect the presence of cirrus clouds, and to determine the sea surface temperature used in retrieval. Sensitivity tests showed that the error in the initial guesses of cloud parameters has substantial impact on the accuracy of the retrieved fields; this sensitivity increases with increased cloudiness. Cloud parameters deduced from AVHRR data are nearly optimal, in terms of maximizing the efficiency of convergence, as the initial guesses for the retrieval scheme. In the absence of cirrus cloud, a retrieval procedure incorporating AVHRR initial guesses produced temperature and humidity profiles for partly cloudy cases that are about as accurate as those for clear cases. In both cases the maximum improvement made in the retrieval procedure over background error was about 0.2 K in the temperature profile, and 0.05 (in logarithm of mixing ratio) in the humidity profile. For partly cloudy cases, best retrieval results were obtained for a low cloud top, or a middle cloud top but with small cloud fraction. Cirrus cloud remains a problem, as its presence generally degrades the quality of retrieval.


CdTe is a well known and widely used binary compound for optoelectronic applications. In this study, we propose the thinnest, free standing monolayer of CdTe which has a tetragonal-PbO (α-PbO) symmetry. The structural, electronic, vibrational and strain dependent properties are investigated by means of first principles calculations based on density functional theory. Our results demonstrate that monolayer α-CdTe is a dynamically stable and mechanically flexible material. It is found that the thinnest monolayer crystal of CdTe is a semiconductor with a direct band gap of 1.95 eV, which corresponds to red light in the visible spectrum. Moreover, it is found that the band gap can be tunable under biaxial strain. With its strain-controllable direct band gap within the visible spectrum, the stable α-phase of monolayer CdTe is a suitable candidate for optoelectronic device applications.


PURPOSE
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has witnessed an increase in use in recent times in rheumatological conditions and is expected to have impact on the quality of life (QOL). We had planned to conduct this study to investigate the extent of use of CAM and its effect on QOL of patients at a tertiary care center.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Ethics committee approval was obtained. Sixty patients suffering from osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were enrolled as per the selection criteria, after obtaining their informed consent. Each patient was interviewed for CAM use/non-use, and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) (modified) index for QOL was recorded by the study personnel.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
The normality was checked by using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Descriptive statistics was performed and Mann-Whitney U-test was used to compare the QOL of CAM users and non-users.

RESULTS
Of the 60 patients enrolled with OA (10) and RA (50), 58% (35/60) used CAM. Ayurveda and massage therapy were the commonest [80% (28/35)], followed by yoga asana [34% (12/35)] and homoeopathy [20% (7/35)]. It was observed that combinations of therapies were used too. Nearly half [49% (17/35)] of the CAM users were on self-prescribed medication and 71% (25/35) of them did not inform the physician of CAM use. The QOL of CAM users (WOMAC score: 56.31 ± 6.82) was better than that of CAM non-users (WOMAC score: 60.16 ± 4.02) (P value 0.01).

CONCLUSION
Patients with RA frequently used CAM and QOL improvised with CAM use. We observed that self-administration of CAM was common and this was not informed to the treating physician.


Scaling processes are increasingly understood to be the result of nonlinear dynamic mechanisms repeating scale after scale from large to small scales leading to nonclassical resolution dependencies. This means that the statistical properties systematically vary in strong, power‐law ways with the resolution. When present in geophysical and remotely sensed fields, it implies that when classical (single‐scale) remote sensing algorithms are used to determine surrogates of various geophysical fields, they can at most be correct at the unique (and subjective) calibration resolution. Scaling analysis and modeling techniques were applied to MODIS TERRA Bands 1 through 7 and to the standard derived vegetation and soil moisture indices in order to quantitatively characterize the wide range of scaling of these fields. The scaling exponents we found are not so large; however, they act across wide scale ranges and imply large effects. For example, for the statistics near the mean, the MODIS (500‐m) resolution would be biased by a factor of ∼1.52 when compared with similar results from an "ideal" sensor at 1‐mm resolution. Applying the standard index algorithms on lower and lower resolution satellite data, we obtained indices with significantly different statistical properties than if the same algorithm was used at the finest resolution and then degraded to an intermediate value (a difference of a factor ∼1.54). This shows that the algorithms can, at best, be accurate at the unique calibration scale and this points to the need to develop resolution‐independent algorithms based on the scaling exponents.


We present Bioconda (https://bioconda.github.io), a distribution of bioinformatics software for the lightweight, multiplatform and language-agnostic package manager Conda. Currently, Bioconda offers a collection of over 3000 software packages, which is continuously maintained, updated, and extended by a growing global community of more than 200 contributors. Bioconda improves analysis reproducibility by allowing users to define isolated environments with defined software versions, all of which are easily installed and managed without administrative privileges.


During the World Expo Shanghai, there were one hundred fuel-cell sight-seeing cars in operation at the Expo Site. The sight-seeing cars were not allowed to drive out of the Expo Site, and the stationary hydrogen refueling station was not permitted to build at the Expo Site for the sake of safety. A flexible solution to refuel the cars was the application of mobile hydrogen refueling stations. To better understand the hazards and risks associated with the mobile hydrogen refueling stations, a risk analysis was preformed to improve the safety of the operations. The risks to the station personnel and to the public were discussed separately. Results show that the stationary risks of the mobile stations to the personnel and refueling customers are lower than the risk acceptance criteria over an order of magnitude, so occupational risks and risks to customers are completely acceptable. The third party risks can be acceptable as long as the appropriate mitigation measures are implemented, especially well designed parking area and operation time. Leak from boosters is the main risk contributor to the stationary risks because of its highest failure rates according to the generic data and its worst harm effects based on the consequence evaluations. As for the road risks of the mobile stations, they can be acceptable as long as the appropriate mitigation measures are implemented, especially well-designed moving path and transportation time.


Anderson Road Quarry (ARQ) originally comprised two small quarries operated by independent companies. However, in 1997, the Hong Kong Government signed a contract with a joint venture between the two companies, KWP Quarry Co. Ltd, to form a platform for future land use and to create a stable and unobtrusive quarry face. On completion, the face was 1.5 km long and 210 m high. Such a massive slope needed to be divided into manageable portions both for registration and the assessment of stability necessary to demonstrate that it meets current safety standards. The assessments of the ARQ face demonstrate the value of an initial walkover prior to detailed mapping for selection of those discontinuities that are directly relevant to stability for subsequent measurement. An on-site review of the results of the kinematic analysis is also essential to confirm that they reflect reality. The identification of loose surface rock and overhangs, the likely results of blasting and inadequate initial scaling, and the identification of seepage, possibly forewarning of potential high cleft water pressures, are all essential observations. The ability of benches, particularly those established with vegetation, to contain falling blocks from above is also a major consideration.


Wastewater heat recovery is currently an underutilized technology that could be part of solving the climate crisis. A large portion of the heat that leaves a building in the form of wastewater is potentially recoverable for pre-heating domestic hot water or other service water systems. While there are several different approaches to wastewater heat recovery, this project focused on creating detailed, integrated building models for wastewater heat recovery heat pump systems. EnergyPlus models were developed featuring inputs and assumptions corresponding to manufacturers' specifications, performance lab test data and feedback from engineering consultants. EnergyPlus's supervisory control Energy Management System objects were heavily relied upon to overcome modelling challenges. The developed EnergyPlus model was integrated into U.S. Department of Energy New Construction Reference Building models for various climate zones and building types to assess potential energy use, energy cost and greenhouse gas emission reductions.


This article examines youth assessment of the quality and success of languages provision. The discussion draws on data collected from students and graduates of Victoria's 16 secondary Turkish programs in large-scale surveys (n=858) and follow-up interviews (n=177). Surveys revealed that upper secondary Turkish classrooms serve predominantly Australian-born Turkish students. Nine out of ten respondents rated their English language and literacy skills considerably higher than Turkish despite regular Turkish exposure beyond school, an average of four years of Turkish study, and a positive orientation toward Turkish maintenance in Australia. Thematic interview analyses indicated that informants found classes beneficial in expanding contexts and purposes of Turkish use, improving Turkish fluency and understanding, broadening cultural knowledge, deepening communication with family, creating a sense of belonging to the larger Turkish community, and helping students prepare for the comprehensive language exam. Across all sites, student motivation and learning were adversely affected by increasingly heterogeneous class composition and a lack of a cohesive Turkish-as-a-second-language curriculum. Youth recommendations included redesigning the curriculum to teach Turkish language and literacy skills systematically, emphasizing literacy development throughout the program, parallel teaching of Turkish and English writing styles, enhancing professional development, improving school outreach, and establishing prerequisites to prolong student participation.


This thesis investigates the proposals of a number of psychological and computational accounts of focusing and pronoun interpretation in view of obtaining experimental evidence for the questions raised by the accounts. Four distinct but related studies were conducted with the aim of bringing together various frameworks as a step towards developing an integrated model of the processes of comprehension. Experiments 1-3 in Chapter 2 show that thematic role and surface position focusing take precedence over the salience from naming, but that naming effects are seen in the absence of thematic role focusing. Experiments 4-5 in Chapter 3 show the effect of clause subordination in certain complex sentences, with main clauses being more prominent than subordinate ones. Experiments 6-8 in Chapter 3 show that this effect may not be generalised to different types of complex sentences, however. Experiments 9-18 in Chapter 4 show that animacy has a strong effect on prominence, overriding thematic role and surface position effects. The presence of these latter two effects is crucially dependent on the pattern of animacy. Experiments 19-21 in Chapter 5 show the effects of grammatical parallelism, in which the features of both the anaphor and the antecedent have an influence, which overlays structural focusing. These results show that a variety of constraints can complete in determining the accessibility of discourse referents. The structural, semantic, and pragmatic discourse context in which referents are introduced and the attributes of the cue used to re-access them have a role. The findings are discussed in terms of an activation-based framework, whereby pronoun resolution is determined by the relative activation of the potential antecedents in the mental representation of the discourse. They suggest a dynamic model of focusing in which an antecedent's features establish and update the focus, and in which certain linguistic elements may trigger the current focus to be modified.