IMPORTANCE
Antibiotics disrupt human microbiota and have been associated with several pediatric autoimmune diseases. Psoriasis activity has been linked to group A streptococcal and viral infections.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether antibiotic exposure and infections are independently associated with incident psoriasis in children.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
This nested case-control study used data from the Health Improvement Network database, a population-representative electronic health records database from the United Kingdom, from June 27, 1994, through January 15, 2013. Data were analyzed from September 17, 2014, through August 12, 2015. Children aged 1 to 15 years with newly diagnosed psoriasis (n = 845) were compared with age- and sex-matched controls (n = 8450) randomly chosen at the time of psoriasis diagnosis from general practices with at least one case, excluding children with immunodeficiency, inflammatory bowel disease, and juvenile arthritis.

EXPOSURES
Systemic antibacterial prescriptions and infections of the skin and other sites within 2 years before psoriasis diagnosis.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Incident psoriasis as determined by validated diagnostic codes. The association of antibiotic exposure and infections with incident psoriasis was determined by conditional logistic regression, adjusting for confounders.

RESULTS
After adjusting for matching, country, socioeconomic deprivation, outpatient visits, and infections within the past 2 years, antibiotic exposure in the last 2 years was weakly associated with incident psoriasis (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.2; 95% CI, 1.0-1.5). The associations for infections of skin (aOR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.2-1.7) and other sites (aOR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.6) were similar. Untreated nonskin infections (aOR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.3-1.8) but not antibiotic-treated nonskin infections (aOR, 1.1; 95% CI, 0.9-1.4) were associated with psoriasis. Results were similar when using a lifetime exposure window. Different classes of antibiotics and age of first antibiotic exposure were also not associated with psoriasis. The findings did not substantively change when excluding periods of varying length before diagnosis.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Infections are associated with the development of pediatric psoriasis, but antibiotics do not appear to contribute substantially to that risk.


Designing and building the stadium complex for the International Olympic Games 1972 in Munich in only five years, may be characterized as a singular challenge. The futuristic and huge tensile structure, covered with Plexiglas became to be designed by engineers and architects of different fields: Günther Behnisch, Frei Otto, Fritz Leonhardt, Jörg Schlaich, John Hadji Argyris, Klaus Linkwitz with Carl Mertz responsible for the management. Based on written reports and testimonials from witnesses of the process, the paper analyses all phases, starting from the skepticism of many that the most spectacular part, the roof, would be buildable. After Leonhardt/Schlaich also Otto/Bubner became part of the design team. At the start of building the engineers registered that the technical models of the Frei Otto team could not bring exact data for (all) cutting patterns, which was a crucial problem. Both Argyris and Linkwitz delivered feasible computational methods for calculating cable lengths and joint locations. The executed result was criticized by its authors for different reasons, in the same time respecting the unique mutual achievement. The spectacular Olympic stadium complex was much appreciated by visitors, and critics ranked it as one of the most impressive and innovative examples of German architecture.


In this paper, we describe an Augmented Reality Art installation, which reacts to user behaviour using Multimodal analysis of affective signals. The installation features a virtual tree, whose growth is influenced by the perceived emotional response from spectators. The system implements a 'magic mirror' paradigm (using a large-screen display or projection system) and is based on the ARToolkit with extended representations for scene graphs. The system relies on a PAD dimensional model of affect to support the fusion of different affective modalities, while also supporting the representation of affective responses that relate to aesthetic impressions. The influence of affective input on the visual component is achieved by mapping affective data to an L-System governing virtual tree behaviour. We have performed an early evaluation of the system, both from the technical perspective and in terms of user experience. Post-hoc questionnaires were generally consistent with data from multimodal affective processing, and users rated the overall experience as positive and enjoyable, regardless of how proactive they were in their interaction with the installation.


We studied the carrier confinement in tetrapod-shaped colloidal CdTe nanocrystals by means of absorption, photoluminescence, and photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy at room and cryogenic temperatures. The spectra show features characteristic of the tetrapod shape together with a clear dependence on the dominant confinement parameter, i.e., the diameter of the tetrapod arm. Theoretical calculations based on an envelope-function approximation and using the exact tetrapod shape have been performed to assign the observed spectral features. Oscillator strength and size dependence of the transitions energy have been calculated showing a direct correlation between the oscillator strength and the nanocrystal shape.


Climate is a major factor driving wine productivity in the Douro Valley region of Portu- gal because vineyards are generally grown under marginal conditions for agricultural production. Using monthly means of climate variables (daily maximum, minimum and mean temperature, diurnal thermal amplitude and daily precipitation) and the normalised difference vegetation index, we analysed the vegetative cycle of vineyards and the vulnerability of Douro wine production to climate variability and change. A good wine production year reflects high photosynthetic activity during spring followed by reduced greenness during summer. Lower precipitation in March has a positive effect during the growing stage, and higher temperatures during late spring are beneficial for pro- duction. Two linear regression models were developed with the aim of forecasting Douro wine pro- duction at the early (March) and mid-season (July) stages of the vine vegetative cycle. Both models performed well in terms of robustness and reliability. The early season model has the advantage of providing a reliable production scenario immediately after the dormancy stage. All predictors of the mid-season model are meteorological parameters; combined with the very high value (90%) of explained variance, this suggests its usefulness to assess the crucial role of climate in wine produc- tion. Limitations result from the linear nature of the model, and effects due to the increase in CO2 were disregarded. Nevertheless, our results indicate an increase in production from 1956-1985 to 1986-2006 due to changes in the winter precipitation regime. Moreover, 2071-2100 climate scenarios (A2 and B2) are expected to favour an increase in wine production because of the combined effects of tem perature and precipitation in late spring and early summer.


Construction of the Olympic Games 2004 Sailing Center is planned in the Saronikos Gulf, in the area of Agios Kosmas. A multi-disciplinary base-line study was carried out to provide background levels of inorganic and organic pollutants before the construction. Two shallow reefs (water depth 2-3 m) are the predominant features in the area's underwater topography. The reef consists of solid rock formations and pebbles, whereas sandy sediments cover predominantly the remaining seabed. Some pockets of fine-grained sand were identified within the existing marina. Sedimentary heavy metal contents were found to be low, showing only slight heavy metal enrichment, attributed mainly to heavy mineral abundance in the area. A small enrichment for lead could be related to anthropogenic sources. Patterns of low concentrations were observed for organic carbon and organic nitrogen. Conversely, the sediment petroleum hydrocarbon content was found to be relatively high, implying anthropogenic pollution related to ship effluents and increased marine traffic.


Sensor node localization is a crucial aspect of many location-related applications that utilize wireless sensor networks. Among the many studies in the literature, multidimensional scaling-based localization techniques have been proven to be efficient, obtaining high accuracy with lower information requirements. However, when applied to large-scale wireless sensor networks with coverage holes, which are common in many scenarios, such as underground mines, the transmission path can become deviated, degrading the localization performance of this type of connectivity-based technique. Furthermore, in such complex wireless environments, non-line-of-sight reference objects, the presence of obstacles and signal fluctuations change the communication range and make it difficult to obtain an accurate position. In this article, we present a anchor-free localization scheme for large-scale wireless sensor networks called the ranging and multidimensional scaling–based localization scheme. We use ranging and non-line-of-sight error mitigation techniques to estimate accurate distances between each node pair and attempt to find inflection nodes using a novel flooding protocol to correct transmission paths that have become deviated by a coverage hole. Moreover, we replace the singular value decomposition with an iterative maximum gradient descent method to reduce the computational complexity. The results of the simulations and experiments show that our scheme performs well on wireless sensor networks with different coverage holes and is robust to varying network densities.


There has been a study on formalin content analysis on fresh fish of Layang fish species (Decapterus sp.) In traditional market of Singaraja (market Banyuasri and market Anyar). The purpose of this study was to look at the possibility of formalin content in the species of fresh Layang (Decapterus sp.) Qualitatively and if the qualitative test is found, it will be followed by quantitative test. The method used for qualitative test using formalin test kit while qualitative test using spectrophotometer with wavelength 520 nm. Samples were analyzed in the Laboratory of Quality Control and Quality of Fishery Products of Bali Province. The results obtained from the sampling of 3 times in each market, showed that there is no formalin content in fresh fish in both traditional markets Singaraja City.


We have implemented the Gedanken experiment of an individual atom scattering a wave packet of near-resonant light, and measured the associated Wigner time delay as a function of the frequency of the light. In our apparatus, the atom behaves as a two-level system and we have found delays as large as 42 ns at resonance, limited by the lifetime of the excited state. This delay is an important parameter in the problem of collective near-resonant scattering by an ensemble of interacting particles, which is encountered in many areas of physics.


At the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, we strongly support our veterinary and graduate students as they prepare for critical roles in veterinary care, public health, emerging infectious diseases and food safety. The school has taken a number of steps to reduce education costs and assist our veterinary students in managing their finances, reducing student debt, and planning for their future economic viability. UC Davis is committed to provide high quality veterinary educational programs at a reasonable cost. We also strive to attract top candidates, promote demographic diversity and provide our students lifelong learning strategies to promote a professional career full of opportunities. Efforts include: Making Education Affordable-The school recently distributed 745 scholarship awards amounting to $2.3 million to DVM and graduate students-an increase of 35 awards and $300,000 from last year. Combined with the school's grant awards, these programs provided a total of $6.5 million to defray rising educational expense. More than 90 percent of our students receive scholarship, fellowship or grant funding, placing UC Davis in the top 10 of most affordable veterinary schools in terms of tuition and fees. View " Investing in the Future " video. Stabilizing Tuition & Fees-We held the line on professional degree/course material fees to keep overall enrollment fees low. The average total net tuition and fees for a California resident student at the school are $30,812 annually and have remained the same for the past three years. UC Davis veterinary student debt at graduation averages $136,894, below the national average of $151,672-due in part to the steps taken by the school to reduce fees and provide more scholarship support. Providing Career Night-We partner with students to support many activities including the highly successful "Career Night Event," which brings in practitioners and industry representatives from throughout the west coast and affords students the chance to build relationships with practitioners and set up future externship, internship, and employment opportunities. Those networking events help ensure that the school's students enjoy an employment rate of 98 percent at one year out from graduation. Facebook album here. Adding Support Services-The school provides student financial aid and scholarship counseling, access to mental health counseling, and access to a Director of Career and Professional Development. The director offers students help in choosing a career path, resume writing, job search strategies and interview techniques. Increasing Support for Student Clubs-By scheduling Continuing Education events in conjunction with various student …


Ateliers have produced the greatest artists of all time - and now that educational model is experiencing a renaissance. These are based on the nineteenth-century model of teaching artists by pairing them with a master artist over a period of years. "Classical Drawing Atelier" is an atelier in a book - and the master is Juliette Aristides, a classically trained artist. Aristides uses the works of works of Old Masters and today's most respected realist artists to demonstrate and teach the principles of realist drawing and painting, taking students step by step through the learning curve yet allowing them to work at their own pace. Unique and inspiring, "Classical Drawing Atelier" is a serious art course for serious art students. Juliette Aristides, whose beautiful art is featured throughout this book, is the founder and director of the Classical Atelier at the Seattle Academy of Fine Arts. She studied with realist master Jacob Collins and at the National Academy of Design.


Density and bulk modulus variations in an acoustic earth are separately recoverable from standard reflection surveys by utilizing the amplitude-versus-offset information present in the observed wave fields. Both earth structure and a variable background velocity can be accounted for by combining the Born and WKBJ approximations, in a "before stack" migration with two output sections, one for density variations and the other for bulk modulus variations. For the inversion, the medium is considered to be composed of a known low-spatial frequency variation (the background) plus an unknown high-spatial frequency variation in bulk modulus and density (the reflectivity). The division between the background and the reflectivity depends upon the frequency content of the source. For constant background parameters, computations are done in the Fourier domain, where the first part of the algorithm includes a frequency shift identical to that in an F-K migration. The modulus and density variations are then determined by observing in a least-squares sense amplitude versus offset wavenumber. For a spatially variable background, WKBJ Green's operators that model the direct wave in a medium with a smoothly varying background are used. A downward continuation with these operators removes the effects of variable velocity from the problem, and, consequently, the remainder of the inversion essentially proceeds as if the background were constant. If the background is strictly depth dependent, the inversion can be expressed in closed form. The method neglects multiples and surface waves and it is restricted to precritical reflections. Density is distinguishable from bulk modulus only if a sufficient range of precritical incident angles is present in the data.


This paper reports on the findings from a series of twenty in-depth, semi-structured interviews that explored how a group of leading Canadian health researchers who are recognized for their excellence in community-engaged Indigenous health research envision enacting an anti-colonial research agenda and the inherent tensions of doing so in institutional settings. Interview transcripts were thematically analyzed in order to explore how the different places that shape community-engaged scholarship (Community spaces, Offices of Research Ethics, and Office of Finance and Administration) 1) produce different, often conflicting understandings of responsibility; 2) how different spaces constrain and shape agency in terms of enacting forms of responsibility in research, and; 3) the role that settler subjectivities have in shaping acts of interpretation that are productive of institutionally mediated forms of responsibility. We organize themes of responsibility, relational ethics, and acts of refusal around the locales through which they are produced and mediated in order to display narratives relating to each site. Specifically, we highlight how relationally negotiated formulations of ethical responsibility, which occur between Indigenous community partners and researchers, can be circumscribed or marginalized by existing institutional structures. By making visible the ways in which conflicting responsibilities emerge and must be negotiated in working toward anti-colonial research relationships, our findings contribute to ongoing conversations regarding Indigenous-settler alliances in health research.


To regulate or not to regulate, that is only part of the question. The purpose of regulation, the enforcement of regulation, and the social acceptance of regulation are the other parts of the question. To address these issues, this paper takes the form of a dialogue between an accounting student and God. This accounting student is an old hippy. She was a trainee with a firm of Chartered Accountants when she was in her early twenties, but didn't finish as she was obviously too young to think that three years isn't her whole life. She has returned to accounting in her fifties, after changing between hundreds of different odd jobs and travelling around half the world. At this moment, she is struggling with an assignment on accounting regulation. Her God, of course, is a She and wants to help. She thinks at least She can talk about regulation in an intelligent way. So, She makes Herself bump into her on her regular morning walk around the lighthouse.


It was found by early workers in atmospheric electricity that, during conditions of steady rain, when the potential gradient at the ground was negative the potential gradient at the top of a high mast was occasionally positive. This indicated the presence of negative space charge in the layer between the two measurements. To further investigate this effect simultaneous recordings were taken of the potential gradient and the precipitation current at the top and bottom of the mast, 21 metres high, situated in a field adjacent to Durham Observatory. Large differences in the values of the precipitation currents at the two levels were found. Due to the concentration of the lines of force on the earthed mast, and so on the upper shielded collector, laboratory experiments were carried out to investigate the charging effects caused when drops splash in a region of high potential gradient. It was found that the differences between the currents could be accounted for by the splashing of drops on the edges of the upper collector. As there is no obvious way of correcting for this effect it would appear that the shielded rain collector of the design used in the present work is unsuitable for measuring the precipitation current in regions of high potential gradient and even in other regions the recorded currents must be considered with caution. Also drops were found to release negative charge to the air in regions of zero potential gradients. The actual reversal of sign of potential gradient between the top and bottom of the mast was only- observed for a number of very short periods, the longest being 4½ minutes, during low potential gradients. But on the majority of recordings the potential gradients did indicate the presence of an excess of negative space charge in the layer below the top of the mast, although on occasions the space charge was positive. The space charge was of the same sign, and varied in the same sense, as the potential gradient recorded at the ground. Considering these points an attempt is made to explain the reversal effect in terms of layers of space charge between the cloud and the ground. The layers being due to the charge on the rain, the charge released when drops splash, and a separation or electrode effect due to the potential gradient of the cloud.


Hydrated lime has been known as an additive for asphalt mixtures from their very beginning. It experienced a strong interest during the 1970s in the USA, when moisture damage and frost became some of the most pressing pavement failure modes of the time. Given its extensive use in the past 40 years in the USA, hydrated lime has been seen to be more than a moisture damage additive: Hydrated lime reduces chemical ageing of the bitumen and stiffens the mastic more than normal mineral filler above room temperature, which can in turn improve the mechanical properties of the mix. Given that all the above properties impact the durability of asphalt mixtures, the use of hydrated lime has a strong influence on asphalt mixture durability. This article reviews the corresponding evidence found in the literature. The field experience from North American State agencies estimate that hydrated lime increases the durability of asphalt mixtures by 2 to 10 years, that is by 20 to 50%. The European experience is not yet as developed as in the USA, but the beneficial effects of hydrated lime on asphalt mixture durability have also been largely reported. The French experience suggest that hydrated lime modified asphalt mixture have a 20-25% longer durability. Similar observations led the Netherlands to specify hydrated lime in porous asphalt. As a result, hydrated lime is being increasingly used in asphalt mixtures in most European countries, in particular Austria, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.


Problem Statement : Many effective instructional strategies, methods, and techniques, which were developed in accordance with constructivist approach, can be used together in social studies lessons. Constructivist education comprises active learning processes. Two active learning approaches are cooperative learning and systematic teaching. Purpose of the Study : The present study was conducted to determine the effect of the cooperative learning method and the systematic teaching and constructivist learning approaches on student achievement and retention in teaching the social studies lesson unit "The Place We Live" in a 4th grade class at the elementary school level. Method : The research was based on pretest-posttest control group experimental design. Accordingly, experiment group 1 received instruction based on the cooperative learning method, experiment group 2 received instruction based on the systematic teaching method, and control groups 1 and 2 were instructed through the constructivist learning approach. A total of 110 students were assigned to the experiment and control groups, and the paired samples t test and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. Findings : The results of the study suggested that the cooperative learning method and the systematic teaching and constructivist learning approaches are effective ways of enhancing students' achievement. Conversely, experiment and control group post test scores were not significantly different from each other. The cooperative learning method and the systematic teaching and constructivist learning approaches (control-1) were found to secure retention of knowledge, but failed to achieve retention of the knowledge among students in control group 2. Conclusion and Recommendations : The study found that cooperative learning and the systematic teaching and constructivist learning approaches were effective in enhancing student achievement and retention in social studies lessons (except for control-2). Based on these results, it is recommended that in order to enhance academic achievement and retention of gains in social studies lessons, the cooperative learning method and systematic teaching can be used in addition to the constructivist learning approach. Moreover, failure of the constructivist learning approach to achieve retention in control group 2 can be based on different reasons. One reason can be the teachers' lack of knowledge about the basic philosophy and steps of constructivist approach. In this context, it is recommended that teachers should have in-service training about the constructivist approach.


Deep boreholes and seismic refraction data are reviewed and used to constrain the interpretation of gravity anomalies in Norfolk. The sub-Carboniferous rocks range from ? Precambrian to Devonian in age, with the Palaeozoic sediments showing shales, mudstones and siltstones, often steeply dipping and cleaved. Seismic refraction lines show that compressional wave velocities in the sub-Mesozoic floor range from 3.5 to 6.0 km s−1. High velocities (5.6–6.0 km s−1) are found in N and NW Norfolk, low velocities (3.5–4.5 km s−1) in W Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and intermediate velocities in the rest of the area. A broad gravity low is found in W Norfolk, and two interpretive models are considered: either a thick sequence of Palaeozoic sediments, or granitic intrusions in the metamorphic basement. The latter is preferred.


Benchmark models provide a common platform that facilitates comparison of different methods and strategies that can be further validated in a real representation of the power system. Nevertheless, when using RMS test cases, transients present in modern power systems may be neglected. Modern energy conversion systems require an enhanced level of detail in order to properly represent their behavior. Moreover, due to the steady increase of non-synchronous generation, new operation and management strategies need to be tested to ensure power system security. One way to overcome these constraints is to use EMT real-time digital simulations which allows to obtain high precision results in a timeframe suited to a specific study. This work presents an EMT real-time model for integration studies of advanced energy conversion systems that can be flexibly expanded to higher renewable penetration. The model, based on the Simplified Australian 14-Generator test system, has been expanded to represent in an improved way the dynamics of power system components as well as the high penetration of non-synchronous power electronics generation. Transient simulations are undertaken to illustrate system's response due to non-synchronous generation and when faults are applied. This work also addresses the current gap in benchmark models for real-time simulations.


This 1987 report focuses on the implications for tax structure and local government revenues and expenditures of the region's changed economic development map. The study analyzes the variations in sources of revenues, expenditure patterns, tax effort, and tax capacity among the municipalities in the eight counties of the Philadelphia Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area.


Growing research suggests that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be a risk factor for poor cardiovascular health, and yet our understanding of who might be at greatest risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes after trauma is limited. In this study, we conducted the first examination of the individual and synergistic contributions of PTSD symptoms and blood pressure genetics to continuous blood pressure levels. We harnessed the power of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium-PTSD Physical Health Working Group and investigated these associations across 11 studies of 72,224 trauma-exposed individuals of European (n = 70,870) and African (n = 1,354) ancestry. Genetic contributions to blood pressure were modeled via polygenic scores (PGS) for systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) that were derived from a prior trans-ethnic blood pressure genome-wide association study (GWAS). Results of trans-ethnic meta-analyses revealed significant main effects of the PGS on blood pressure levels [SBP: β = 2.83, standard error (SE) = 0.06, p < 1E-20; DBP: β = 1.32, SE = 0.04, p < 1E-20]. Significant main effects of PTSD symptoms were also detected for SBP and DBP in trans-ethnic meta-analyses, though there was significant heterogeneity in these results. When including data from the largest contributing study – United Kingdom Biobank – PTSD symptoms were negatively associated with SBP levels (β = −1.46, SE = 0.44, p = 9.8E-4) and positively associated with DBP levels (β = 0.70, SE = 0.26, p = 8.1E-3). However, when excluding the United Kingdom Biobank cohort in trans-ethnic meta-analyses, there was a nominally significant positive association between PTSD symptoms and SBP levels (β = 2.81, SE = 1.13, p = 0.01); no significant association was observed for DBP (β = 0.43, SE = 0.78, p = 0.58). Blood pressure PGS did not significantly moderate the associations between PTSD symptoms and blood pressure levels in meta-analyses. Additional research is needed to better understand the extent to which PTSD is associated with high blood pressure and how genetic as well as contextual factors may play a role in influencing cardiovascular risk.


The history of feminist engagement with digital technologies highlights one key takeaway: the need to integrate gender justice and economic justice concerns in feminist political action. The vision of the internet as an enabler of the range of social, economic, cultural and political rights of women and gender minorities, individually and collectively, cannot be actualised in the absence of recognition of their right to communicate – to the agency it bestows, and the structures it contains. The history of the right to communicate reveals the contestation between powerful status quoist forces and those who seek transformative, global change for justice and equality


[Introduction]:
in trying to unravel and chart the paths taken, consciously and not-so-consciously, in the continual process of our Becoming- that is, in undertaking the identity work that would seem to be so vital in the contemporary era - it is useful to look at the possibilities resident within new forms of inquiry.
With a concern to make visible previously unmarked relationships of power and dominance, with an
embrace of forms of evidence or 'data' heretofore overlooked or outrightly rejected and derided by
more established research approaches, some of these new forms of (critical) research offer the precise
vehicle for the journey into that most difficult of all research sites: the Self.

This chapter focuses on autoethnography - something of a cross between autobiography and critical
psychoanalysis - as one particularly promising approach to this task. Traditional, theoretical ethnographers are quick to dismiss autoethnography as a self-indulgent, narcissistic 'diary disease' (Geertz, 1988), or excessively subjective, shallow 'textual reflexivity' (Bourdieu & Waquant, 1992), but it is useful to draw upon the work of critical anthropologists whose embrace of the possibilities resident within postcolonial and poststructural developments in their 'discipline' (if that is still an appropriate descriptive term) has opened up powerful modes and techniques of exploring that most
intimate and hidden of anthropological curiosities.
Coming to understand Self is a relational exercise, whereby subjectivities intersect, impact, and rebound in pinball-type ricochets. While there are a number of different perspectives - theoretical and ideological - on the question of how identities form, autoethnographic analysis is congruent with the idea of identity formation as one of progressive repositionings of the Self along a myriad of lines or axes of identity. Each axis is bookended - although not necessarily terminally - by a pair of oppositional points (binary opposites, such as male - female) and by something akin to a form of constant-comparison method, the individual comes to believe and, more importantly, live his or her subjectivity along each of the axes. Some of these axes are more readily accessed than others, for
many reasons, and the process of self-positioning remains in constant motion.

Connecting the present to multiple possible pasts (and the opening up of the possibility of such multiple histories is one of implications of adopting a postmodern view of biography) is an active element in the performance or living out of our subjectivities, and through this self-defining activity the individual is required to engage questions of Self and Other. This is the poststructuralist response to Foucault's position that modernity 'does not liberate man in his own being; it compels him to Jace
the task of producing himself' (Foucault, 1991 p34).

Stories form part of the way in which sense might be made of a seemingly senseless world, and the narrative form allows for the scripting and rehearsal of various fictions of individual and collective subjectivities. Bridget Byrne highlights this feature of contemporary storytelling:

The interest in narratives and the narration of identity signifies a move away from the search for essential, universal or even rational identities and a stress
on the more uncertain and creative processes of construction and fabrication (Byrne, 2003 p 32)

In putting together the plot lines, the action sequences, the character portraits and all of the other
forms and elements that go to making up any narrative or story of interest and quality, the role of the
author is crucial. So, too, in the case of the narrative or story of the Self: this is where the genre of
autobiography takes us. Autobiographical writing tells that story of Self with an authoritative voice,
that of the Subject of the story. But this is where the limits of autobiographical story telling and the
need for deep and critical analysis or understanding of the various processes of becoming the Self butt
up against each other. It must be reiterated: autobiography, while part of the autoethnographic
process, is not the equivalent of autoethnography. One tells a story, the other draws out lessons,
insights and understandings about and for the Subject of that story. One is largely descriptive, the
other largely analytical! One tells, the other enlightens. One is autobiography, the other is autoethnography.


This Article analyzes deepening insolvency, an increasingly influential theory of corporate injury in litigation involving insolvent corporations. The case law presents two versions of deepening insolvency. The first version presents an application of some well-established corporate finance theory: wrongfully-incurred unpayable debt may inflict costs of financial distress on a corporation, including administrative costs of bankruptcy and declines in assets and profits from reputational and other losses. This version fits easily with traditional understandings of corporate injury. The second version presents the amount of the corporation's wrongfully-incurred unpayable debt itself as a measure of the corporation's harm, a notion unsupported in financial economics, inconsistent with traditional understandings of corporate injury, and generally incompatible with the economic functions of corporate injury. I conclude that the second version of the theory is the product either of judicial misunderstanding or a judicial attempt to avoid Supreme Court precedent that prohibits bankruptcy trustees from bringing damages claims on behalf of defrauded creditors. I ask whether it nevertheless makes sense to allow trustees, receivers and creditors' committees to pursue damages claims indirectly on behalf of creditors by recharacterizing wrongfully-incurred unpayable debt as corporate injury. Consistent with existing law, I find good reasons not to allow such claims. Allowing trustees, receivers and creditors' committees to pursue claims for wrongfully-incurred unpayable debt recharacterized as corporate injury does not better compensate victims or better deter wrongdoing than requiring defrauded creditors to bring those claims on their own.


Phage display technology is a common approach for discovery of therapeutic antibodies. Drug candidates are typically isolated in two steps: First, a pool of antibodies is enriched through consecutive rounds of selection on a target antigen, and then individual clones are characterized in a screening procedure. When whole cells are used as targets, as in phenotypic discovery, the output phage pool typically contains thousands of antibodies, binding, in theory, hundreds of different cell surface receptors. Clonal expansion throughout the phage display enrichment process is affected by multiple factors resulting in extremely complex output phage pools where a few antibodies are highly abundant and the majority is very rare. This is a huge challenge in the screening where only a fraction of the antibodies can be tested using a conventional binding analysis, identifying mainly the most abundant clones typically binding only one or a few targets. As the expected number of antibodies and specificities in the pool is much higher, complementing methods, to reach deeper into the pool, are required, called deep mining methods. In this study, four deep mining methods were evaluated: 1) isolation of rare sub-pools of specific antibodies through selection on recombinant proteins predicted to be expressed on the target cells, 2) isolation of a sub-pool enriched for antibodies of unknown specificities through depletion of the primary phage pool on recombinant proteins corresponding to receptors known to generate many binders, 3) isolation of a sub-pool enriched for antibodies through selection on cells blocked with antibodies dominating the primary phage pool, and 4) next-generation sequencing-based analysis of isolated antibody pools followed by antibody gene synthesis and production of rare but enriched clones. We demonstrate that antibodies binding new targets and epitopes, not discovered through screening alone, can be discovered using described deep mining methods. Overall, we demonstrate the complexity of phage pools generated through selection on cells and show that a combination of conventional screening and deep mining methods are needed to fully utilize such pools. Deep mining will be important in future phenotypic antibody drug discovery efforts to increase the diversity of identified antibodies and targets.


Electric Dreams charts the seismic shifts that have transformed the monochrome product world of 1980s consumer electronics into a 21st-century landscape full of shape, colour and variety. It considers the economic and technological imperatives which brought design to the heart of electronic innovation and marketing culture. David Redhead focuses on key companies such as Apple, Nokia and Palm and examines how designers such as Jonathan Ive, Frank Nuovo and IDEO have given form to the innovative technologies that surround us. Based on interviews with designers and commentators and illustrated with a wealth of cutting-edge products, Electric Dreams is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary design, technology and fashion.


Three years after California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SMGA), groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) are now preparing to develop their groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs), the blueprints that will outline each basin's road to sustainability. Successful GSPs will require an effective participatory decision-making process. We tested a participatory process with the Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, a water-limited irrigation district in the Central Valley. First, we worked with district stakeholders to outline the parts of the plan and set measureable objectives for sustainability. The district defined seven management strategies, which the research team evaluated against climate, land use and regulatory uncertainties using a water resources model. Together, we explored model results using customized interactive graphics. We found that the business-as-usual strategy was the most unlikely to meet sustainability objectives; and that a conjunctive use strategy, with winter groundwater recharge and periphery ponds storage, achieved acceptable measures of sustainability under multiple uncertainties, including a hypothetical pumping curtailment. The process developed a shared understanding of the vulnerabilities of the local groundwater situation and proved valuable in evaluating strategies to overcome them.


Background : The World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Canadian Public Health Association have developed the Global Health Professions Student Survey (GHPSS) questionnaire in order to collect data on tobacco use and cessation counselling among health- profession students. The aims of the study were to evaluate the reliability and validity of the GHPSS questionnaire in Italy among health-profession students and to examine the prevalence of tobacco use, knowledge and attitudes to it and tobacco cessation training among students attending Italian medical schools using the standardised GHPSS approach. Methods : Before testing tobacco use prevalence, knowledge and attitudes, and tobacco cessation training, we calculated the Cronbach's alpha to assess the internal validity with the intention of avoiding misleading results. The questionnaire was administered to 100 health-profession students and data were collected in March 2009, during regular class sessions among students of two Italian Schools of Medicine. The original GHPSS instrument was translated into the Italian language and modified by adding three specific questions regarding I) the knowledge about the use of antidepressants, ii) Acetylcholine Receptor Partial Agonists, and iii) counselling techniques used in tobacco cessation programs. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 13.0, statistical software for windows. Results : Cronbach's alpha was higher on 17 items (alpha= 0.872), belonging to section I and IV (respectively: "Tobacco Use Prevalenceu and "Behaviour/Cessationu). The addition, also, of only one more of the others items (section)made the alpha value worse. Cronbach's alpha for section VI for all items together (n. 44 items) was 0.815, which implies that the questionnaire had a very satisfactory internal validity. The prevalence of current smokers was 33%, while only 12% of students declared to be tobacco users. Interestingly, students who were tobacco users were 80% less likely to consider that health professionals needed training on smoking cessation techniques in comparison to non tobacco users. Conclusions : The questionnaire showed excellent reliability properties in the sample studied. In terms of internal consistency and validity, it appears to have an acceptable performance. Given the high prevalence of smokers among medical students, teaching them about the damages related to tobacco use, and how to help them quit smoking or tobacco use, emerged as important issues. Further studies to investigate these important issues, using a standardized method like GHPSS, are needed.


Jewish responses to social issues, like those of any other group, are, in part, a function of the group's interests. As a small minority of the American population, Jews have historically supported laws, policies, and programs that guarantee the rights of individuals and minorities against those of the majority. This would explain, for example, why Jews overwhelmingly support a strong wall of separation, to use Jefferson's phrase, between religion and state; why both acts of Antisemitism and talk of the United States as "a Christian nation" engender an immediate, nervous response in Jews; and why surveys routinely report that Jews as a group are among the most liberal in supporting individual rights and protections. Another factor that undoubtedly affects how Jews respond to social issues is their socioeconomic status. Although the median Jewish household income is higher than that of American households generally, all Jews are definitely not rich; indeed, twenty-two percent report household incomes of less than $25,000 per year, and five percent are below the poverty line. (1) Still, the fact that Jews as a group are relatively well off sometimes leads them, as David Sidorsky pointed out more than thirty years ago, (2) to take stands that other groups in that socioeconomic class take--with poorer groups of Jews taking other positions. At the same time in many ways, it is still the case that, as Milton Himmel-farb famously quipped, "American Jews live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans." (3) That is, although historically members of every other religio-ethnic group that became more prosperous invariably shifted from supporting Democrats to Republicans, Jews, in contrast, stubbornly remain as liberal as they had been when living in poverty. So, for example, even though President George W. Bush has been, by most accounts, the most staunch supporter among American presidents of the State of Israel, only twenty-four percent of American Jews voted for him in 2004. (Ironically, Puerto Ricans, although still among the poorest subgroups in America, have increasingly supported Republicans, against their economic interests, due to their strong Catholic or evangelical faith.) (4) This voting pattern among Jews clearly stems from factors other than group interest. In this essay I will suggest that Jews' positions on social issues stem from their faith commitments about both how to make policy and what that policy should be. That is, they come from Jews' methods of interpretation of their own tradition as well as the content of Jewish conceptions and values as the various groups of American Jews understand and live by them. Thus, Orthodox Jews are the most likely to support the Republican agenda because of their version of Jewish faith, and non-Orthodox Jews, who constitute some ninety percent of the American Jewish community, (5) support Democratic candidates and policies due to their approach to Jewish tradition. After describing how these positions flow from the denominations' diverse understandings of the authority and methods of Judaism, I shall list a number of core Jewish commitments that also influence how Jews respond to issues of social policy. Methods James Packer, in his book, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God, characterizes the varying views of Christians on how to interpret the Bible, as follows: For evangelicals, the final court of appeal is to be found in "Scripture as interpreted by itself'; "Romanists [that is, Roman Catholics], some Anglo-Catholics [that is, Anglicans/Episcopalians], and Orthodox" locate it in "Scripture as interpreted (and in some measure amplified) by official ecclesiastical sources"; and "Liberal Protestants" look to "Scripture as evaluated in terms of extra-biblical principles by individual Christian[s]." (6) Jews who read this will immediately say that scripture cannot be interpreted by itself, that we human beings inevitably bring our own perspectives to any text including scripture, and that one's perspective is shaped by one's own biography, personality, and historical context. …


After a decade of bruising legal battles, the courts and software industry norms largely resolved the costly war over the scope of copyright protection for computer software. By the mid 1990s, freedom to develop interoperable devices, systems, and software triumphed over broad copyright protection for network features of computer software. Copyright peace prevailed throughout the software industry for the next 15 years. But in 2010, Oracle reignited the smoldering embers of that war when it brought suit alleging that Google infringed copyright in the Java application program interface packages (APIs)... This article updates and expands upon an earlier "epitaph" for copyright protection of network features of computer software to address the second API copyright wave. As background, Part I reviews the first wave of API copyright legislation and litigation. Part II examines the Oracle v. Google litigation, tracing the development of Java and Android and the subsequent (and still ongoing) battle over the scope of copyright protection for APIs. Part III critically analyzes the Oracle v. Google decisions. It explains that copyright law's fundamental exclusion of protection for functional features dictates that the labeling conventions and packaging of functions within interface specifications generally fall outside of the scope of copyright protection even as implementing code garners thin copyright protection. This interpretation of copyright law comports with fundamental principles channeling protection among the modes of intellectual property. It also serves the larger goals of intellectual property law and competition policy.


A method is proposed for determining the skewness of the weft thread relative to the warp thread of textile fabrics, using the Fraunhofer diffraction pattern, which can be obtained either by an instrumental method on the appropriate apparatus or by a calculational method using digital microphotography of the sample by means of a two-dimensional Fourier-transformation program. The digital image of the diffraction pattern is analyzed by means of a special computer program that constructs an angular diagram of the intensity distribution of the diffraction maxima. The size of the angle of interest between the weft thread and the warp thread of the test sample is judged from the angle measured between the directions to the maxima in this diagram.


For a two week period during the Joint European Torus 2012 experimental campaign, the same high confinement plasma was repeated 151 times. The dataset was analysed to produce a probability density function (pdf) for the waiting times between edge-localized plasma instabilities (ELMs). The result was entirely unexpected. Instead of a smooth single peaked pdf, a succession of 4–5 sharp maxima and minima uniformly separated by 7–8 ms intervals was found. Here we explore the causes of this newly observed phenomenon, and conclude that it is either due to a naturally occurring self-organized plasma phenomenon or an interaction between the plasma and a real-time control system. If the maxima are a result of 'resonant' frequencies at which ELMs can be triggered more easily, then future ELM control techniques can, and probably will, use them. Either way, these results demand a deeper understanding of the ELM process.


Dung's argumentation frameworks are adopted in a variety of applications, from argument-mining, to intelligence analysis and legal reasoning. Despite this broad spectrum of already existing applications, the mostly adopted solver—in virtue of its simplicity—is far from being comparable to the current state-of-the-art solvers. On the other hand, most of the current state-of-the-art solvers are far too complicated to be deployed in real-world settings. In this paper we provide and extensive description of jArgSemSAT, a Java re-implementation of ArgSemSAT. ArgSemSAT represents the best single solver for argumentation semantics with the highest level of computational complexity. We show that jArgSemSAT can be easily integrated in existing argumentation systems (1) as an off-the-shelf, standalone, library; (2) as a Tweety compatible library; and (3) as a fast and robust web service freely available on the Web. Our large experimental analysis shows that despite being written in Java, jArgSemSAT would have scored in most of the cases among the three bests solvers for the two semantics with highest computational complexity "Stable and Preferred" in the last competition on computational models of argumentation.


A diffusion flame, supported by a one-step chemical reaction, is initiated along the horizontal axis between a fuel occupying the upper half-plane and an oxidizer below. Simultaneously, a vortex of circulation Γ is established at the origin. As time progresses the flame is extended and "wound up" by the vortex flow field. The effect of distortion of the flame is locally described by the time-dependent straining of a one-dimensional flame. The rate of chemical reaction is represented by the characteristic chemical reaction time, tch, of the system. The combustion field then consists of a totally reacted core region and an external flame region consisting of a pair of spiral arms extending off at large radii toward their original positions. The presence of the vortex increases the rate of fuel consumption of the flame. For large values of Γ/D, the augmentation of fuel consumption due to the vortex is proportional to ρΓ2/3D1/3, and is a function of t/tch which approaches a constant value as t → ∞. The growth of the fuel consumption rate from zero to its steady value for large times is governed by the time scale tch. If the products of combustion occupy more volume than the original reactants, then the spiral flame will appear as an unsteady volume dilitation for times on the order of the chemical time. An unsteady volume dilitation acts as an acoustic source, so the interaction of a vortex and a diffusion flame is shown to result in the generation of a pressure pulse; the peak pressure occurring after a delay proportional to the chemical time, and the strength of the pulse proportional to Γ2/3D1/3 and inversely proportional to √tch. These results are valid for hypergolic reaction systems in which the reactant temperature does not significantly effect the rates of the chemical reactions. For systems described as having "large activation energy", the rates are strongly temperature dependent and another description is appropriate. For these systems, a vortex established on an already ignited flame exhibits, in addition to the features described above, an extinct core of unburned reactants if the circulation of the vortex is large. The results provide the fundamental structure for the mechanism of combustion instability proposed by Rogers and Marble in 1956.


The isothermal crystallization behavior of a segmented copolymer constituted by hard blocks of polyglycolide and soft segments derived from the copolymerization of glycolide and trimethylene carbonate was investigated. This polymer has applied relevance because it is one of the most widely used for bioabsorbable surgical sutures. Calorimetric, optical microscopy, and infrared techniques were combined to understand the thermal properties and the different factors that influence the crystallization process. Basically, only the hard blocks crystallized, although certain processing conditions allowed performing an additional crystallization associated with small lamellar domains of the soft segment. Crystallization from both the melt and the glass state rendered positive spherulites with a fibrillar texture. The observed unusual sign of birefringence was a consequence of the close packing structure of polyglycolide, which was also corroborated by electron diffraction patterns. Crystallization was characterized by an athermal nucleation, which allowed accurate estimation of the secondary nucleation parameter by using the calorimetric data only. Significant differences in the Avrami exponent (from 2.32 to 1.45) were found between the cold and hot isothermal crystallizations. The stronger geometric constraints observed in the crystallization from the glass state were also corroborated by FTIR analyses. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010


Autoclaved aerated concrete is a modern construction material that gains its popularity especially due to its thermal insulation performance resulting from low volume weight and porous structure with sufficient mechanical strength. Nowadays, there are attempts to use this material for thermal insulation purposes and to replace current systems, which have many disadvantages, mainly concerning durability. The key for improvement of thermal insulation properties is therefore obtaining a material based on autoclaved aerated concrete with extremely low volume weight (below 200 kg∙m) ensuring good thermal isolation properties, but with sufficient mechanical properties to allow easy manipulation. This material can be prepared by foaming very fine powder materials such as silica fume or very finely ground sand. This paper deals with the possibilities of preparation and summarizes the basic requirements for successful preparation of such a material.


The Editors and Publisher of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM) have retracted the following article: Mold JW, Lawler F, Schauf KJ, Aspy CB. Does patient assessment of the quality of the primary care they receive predict subsequent outcomes? An Oklahoma Physicians Resource/Research Network (OKPRN) study. J Am Board Fam Med 2011;24:511–23. We would like to state that this situation is because of a number of honest mistakes in the data analyses that were identified by the authors. Because of the extensive corrections in the article, this version is retracted, and a corrected version is available online. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes to readers of JABFM. (doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2012.04.120112.)


The paper investigates the interdependence and conditional correlations between futures contracts and their underlying assets, both for stock and bond markets, and the impact of the interdependence and conditional correlations on VaR forecasts. The paper finds evidence of volatility spillovers from spot (futures) to futures (spot) markets, and time-varying conditional correlations between futures and their underlying assets. It also finds evidence that the DCC model of Engle (2002) provides slightly better VaR forecasts as compared with the CCC model of Bollerslev (1990) and the BEKK model of Engle and Kroner (1995).


A homolog of the multiple-stress-responsive transcription factor sigmaB of Bacillus subtilis was predicted from the DNA sequence analysis of a region of the Staphylococcus aureus chromosome. A hybrid between the coding sequence of the first 11 amino acids of the gene 10 leader peptide of phage T7 (T7.Tag) and the putative sigB gene of S. aureus was constructed and cloned into Escherichia coli BL21(DE3)pLysS for overexpression from a T7 promoter. A homogeneous preparation of the overproduced protein was obtained by affinity chromatography with a T7.Tag monoclonal antibody coupled to agarose. The amino-terminal amino acid sequence of the first 22 residues of the purified protein matched that deduced from the nucleotide sequence. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of the purified protein, designated sigmaSB, indicated that it migrated as an approximately 39-kDa polypeptide. Promoter-specific transcription from the B. subtilis sigmaB-dependent PB promoter of the sigB operon was stimulated by sigmaSB in a concentration-dependent fashion when reconstituted with the S. aureus core RNA polymerase (RNAP). Specific transcript from the predicted sigmaB-dependent PB promoter of the sigB operon of S. aureus was obtained by the reconstituted RNAP in a runoff transcription reaction. The sar operon of S. aureus contains three promoter elements (P1, P2, and P3) and is known to partly control the synthesis of a number of extracellular toxins and several cell wall proteins. Our in vitro studies revealed that transcription from the P1 promoter is dependent on the primary sigma factor sigmaSA, while that of the P3 promoter is dependent on sigmaSB. As determined by primer extension studies, the 5' end of the sigmaSB-initiated mRNA synthesized in vitro from the sar P3 promoter is in agreement with the 5' end of the cellular RNA.


Three-dimensional geometric morphometric techniques have been widely used in quantitative comparisons of craniofacial morphology in humans and nonhuman primates. However, few anatomical landmarks can actually be defined on the neurocranium. In this study, an alternative method is proposed for defining semi-landmarks on neurocranial surfaces for use in detailed analysis of cranial shape. Specifically, midsagittal, nuchal, and temporal lines were approximated using Bezier curves and equally spaced points along each of the curves were defined as semi-landmarks. The shortest paths connecting pairs of anatomical landmarks as well as semi-landmarks were then calculated in order to represent the surface morphology between landmarks using equally spaced points along the paths. To evaluate the efficacy of this method, the previously outlined technique was used in morphological analysis of sexual dimorphism in modern Japanese crania. The study sample comprised 22 specimens that were used to generate 110 anatomical semi-landmarks, which were used in geometric morphometric analysis. Although variations due to sexual dimorphism in human crania are very small, differences could be identified using the proposed landmark placement, which demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed method.


It is hard to find a definition of gill health in the literature although there is a lot of information on changes to gill structure as a result of infectious and non-infectious challenge. How these changes relate to overall fish health is sometimes not clear. Interaction between the gill, the fish, and a range of anticipated changes in the environment will have a currently unknown effect on marine health and aquaculture production. To a degree, fish will likely be able to ameliorate certain changes, such as compensating for slightly elevated carbon dioxide; however, these actions may come at the cost of compromising other functions such as osmoregulation. Compensation will also depend on gill epithelial health and other environmental factors like external nitrogen and ammonia sources which can rise depending on the direction future culture and levels of eutrophication take. Fish can also remodel gill structure in response to salinity, hypoxia, or acidification but it appears that increased temperatures may be associated with increased pathology observable in the gill, and certain fishes may be more susceptible to change. There is a need for more targeted research into climate change-specific gill physiology and a need to recognise gill health as being a key component of food security and not just fish health.


Abstract Ophthalmosauridae is a clade of derived thunniform ichthyosaurs that are best known from Callovian (late Middle Jurassic) to Cenomanian-aged (Late Cretaceous) deposits in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Ophthalmosaurids arose prior to the Early–Middle Jurassic boundary, however, very little is known about their diversity and distribution in the earliest phase of their evolutionary history during the Aalenian–Bathonian (Middle Jurassic) interval. Here we describe new diagnostic ophthalmosaurid material from the Early Bajocian (Middle Jurassic) of Alaska. The specimen, UAMES 3411, is a partial disarticulated skull that was discovered in the Middle Jurassic Tuxedni Formation, which was deposited in shallow marine settings outboard of the then-accreting Wrangellia composite terrane. The new material is significant in that it is the first Jurassic ichthyosaur described from Alaska, one of the oldest ophthalmosaurids known and the only Middle Jurassic ophthalmosaurid described from the Northern Hemisphere. The new material adds to a rapidly growing data set on ophthalmosaurid diversity and suggests that the clade was geographically widespread by the Early Bajocian, very early in its evolutionary history.


The Only Complete Technical Primer for MDM Planners, Architects, and ImplementersCompanies moving toward flexible SOA architectures often face difficult information management and integration challenges. The master data they rely on is often stored and managed in ways that are redundant, inconsistent, inaccessible, non-standardized, and poorly governed. Using Master Data Management (MDM), organizations can regain control of their master data, improve corresponding business processes, and maximize its value in SOA environments.Enterprise Master Data Management provides an authoritative, vendor-independent MDM technical reference for practitioners: architects, technical analysts, consultants, solution designers, and senior IT decisionmakers. Written by the IBM data management innovators who are pioneering MDM, this book systematically introduces MDMs key concepts and technical themes, explains its business case, and illuminates how it interrelates with and enables SOA.Drawing on their experience with cutting-edge projects, the authors introduce MDM patterns, blueprints, solutions, and best practices published nowhere elseeverything you need to establish a consistent, manageable set of master data, and use it for competitive advantage.Coverage includesHow MDM and SOA complement each otherUsing the MDM Reference Architecture to position and design MDM solutions within an enterpriseAssessing the value and risks to master data and applying the right security controlsUsing PIM-MDM and CDI-MDM Solution Blueprints to address industry-specific information management challengesExplaining MDM patterns as enablers to accelerate consistent MDM deploymentsIncorporating MDM solutions into existing IT landscapes via MDM Integration BlueprintsLeveraging master data as an enterprise assetbringing people, processes, and technology together with MDM and data governanceBest practices in MDM deployment, including data warehouse and SAP integration


Mobile robots such as Aldebaran's humanoid Pepper currently find their way into society. Many research projects already try to match humanoid robots with humans by letting them assist, e.g., in geriatric care or simply for purposes of keeping company or entertainment. However, many of these projects deal with acceptance issues that come with a new type of interaction between humans and robots. These issues partly originate from different types of robot locomotion, limited human-like behaviour as well as limited functionalities in general. At the same time, animal-type robots—quadrupeds such as Boston Dynamic's WildCat—and underactuated robots are on the rise and present social scientists with new challenges such as the concept of uncanny valley. The possible positive aspects of the unusual cooperations and interactions, however, are mostly pushed into the background. This paper describes an approach of a project at a research institution in Germany that aims at developing a setting of human–robot-interaction and collaboration that engages the designated users in the whole process.


Despite the establishment of the important role of nitric oxide (NO) on apoptosis, a molecular- level understanding of the origin of its dichotomous pro- and anti-apoptotic effects has been elusive. We propose a new mathematical model for simulating the effects of nitric oxide (NO) on apoptosis. The new model integrates mitochondria-dependent apoptotic pathways with NO-related reactions, to gain insights into the regulatory effect of the reactive NO species N2O3, non-heme iron nitrosyl species (FeLnNO), and peroxynitrite (ONOO−). The biochemical pathways of apoptosis coupled with NO-related reactions are described by ordinary differential equations using mass-action kinetics. In the absence of NO, the model predicts either cell survival or apoptosis (a bistable behavior) with shifts in the onset time of apoptotic response depending on the strength of extracellular stimuli. Computations demonstrate that the relative concentrations of anti- and pro-apoptotic reactive NO species, and their interplay with glutathione, determine the net anti- or pro-apoptotic effects at long time points. Interestingly, transient effects on apoptosis are also observed in these simulations, the duration of which may reach up to hours, despite the eventual convergence to an anti-apoptotic state. Our computations point to the importance of precise timing of NO production and external stimulation in determining the eventual pro- or anti-apoptotic role of NO.


'I often walked along the shore, and one day I saw something in the sand. I went over to look at it more carefully ...It was a footprint - the footprint of a man!' In 1659 Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on a small island off the coast of South America. After fifteen years alone, he suddenly learns that there is another person on the island. But will this man be a friend - or an enemy?


Since 1995, Machine to Machine (M2M) networks are spreading very quickly. These technologies allow both wired and wireless system communicating with other devices of the same type. Regardless of the type of machine or data, information usually is distributed in the same way, from a machine to a network, and then through a gateway to a system where it can be reviewed. This type of communications require new protocols and optimizations to minimize the energy consumption of the devices of the network to extent their battery life-times. The M2M network considered in this work is composed of a group of devices that are collecting data and, periodically, transmit this data to a coordinator upon request. Once each device is able to transmit the information correctly, passes into a sleep mode for saving energy. Generally, the use of random access protocols such as Aloha provides good results due to its low complexity. On the contrary, its performance is degraded drastically when the data traffic load increases or the number of devices is huge, which is the case in dense M2M networks. For that reason, new versions of the Aloha protocol were developed, such as Slotted-Aloha, which doubles the throughput of classical Aloha. Based on Slotted-Aloha, a new access protocol called Successive Interference Cancellation Frame Slotted Aloha (SICFSA) has been proposed in recent works. In SICFSA, the transmitter devices send multiple copies (replicas) of a data packet in different time slots. Each data packet indicates the time slots where the other replicas are transmitted. At the receiver side, i.e., the coordinator, it tries to recover the data from the transmitters by means of a Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) algorithm. In order to successfully decode the transmitted packets, the coordinator has to identify the time-slots free of collisions. In this way, this information can be reused in the time-slots with collisions to decode data packets that have collided in the access to the channel. This work evaluates, by means of computer-based simulations using MATLAB and C, the delay and energy performance of a data-collection M2M network that uses SICFSA. The performance of SICFSA is compared with the one of conventional FSA. Results show that SICFSA outperforms FSA in about 50% in terms of delay and coordinator energy consumption, and in terms of devices energy consumption outperforms FSA in about 5%.


"Is That a Fish in Your Ear?" by David Bellos asks: how do we really make ourselves understood to other people? This funny, wise and life-affirming language book shows how, from puns to poetry, news bulletins to the Bible, Asterix to Swedish films, translation is at the heart of everything we do - and makes us who we are. Selected by "The New York Times" as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011. "A wonderful, witty book ...richly original, endlessly fascinating ...for anyone interested in words". ("Economist", Books of the Year). "A scintillating bouillabaisse ...spiced with good and provocative things". ("Literary Review"). "Dazzlingly inventive". ("The New York Times"). "Clear and lively...There is nothing quite like it". ("Spectator").


The impact of agricultural intensification and fertilizer inputs on stream water quality were examined at different catchment scales for an area of mixed land use in Devon, England. Storm events were the main mechanism of sediment and solute transfer, with ammonium, phosphate, and suspended sediment mobilized in surface runoff and nitrate transfered in throughflow. Surface runoff from heavily grazed permanent pasture was 53% of the total rainfall input and delivered 0.5kgha_1 phosphorus, l ^ k g h a - 1 nitrogen and 0.5kgha -1 suspended sediment. For ungrazed land with intact vegetation cover, surface runoff was only 7% of the rainfall input. This significantly reduced sediment and solute delivery. An annual input of 260 tonnes NOa-N, 3 tonnes NrU-N, 2 tonnes PO4-P and 640 tonnes suspended sediment was recorded from the 46km2 catchment to Slapton Ley, a 0.8km2 freshwater lake. Although over 80% of this input "occured in' winter it was less critical for lake eutrophication than the 20% delivered in summer when nutrient export from the lake is minimal.


Context: In recent times, many organizations have started using agile software development methodologies instead of using traditional methodologies. The main reason for this shift is the ability of agile approaches to cope with changes in the requirements, customer satisfaction and assurance of on-time delivery of quality products [19]. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a software development methodology that is considered to be one of the most prominent practices of eXtreme Programming (XP) (an agile methodology) [1][9][10]. Test-list in TDD is considered as a temporary repository in which test items are stored and later by using those items test cases are developed. Requirements Traceability is also a major problem in agile development mainly because of lack of formal requirements specification and frequent requirements change. Objectives: This study explores the utilization of test-list and possibility of using test-list for requirements traceability in TDD. This study describes concept of test-list, its formation and exploring its utilization in TDD. Methods for implementing requirements traceability in and identification of possibility of utilizing test-list for requirements traceability in TDD is also explored. Methods: Methods used in this study are systematic literature review, surveys and interviews. Systematic literature review was done using seven electronic databases, including Inspec, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Springer, Science Direct and Scopus. Studies were selected on the bases of preliminary, basic and advanced developed criteria. Survey was conducted using online questionnaire from TDD practitioners. Findings from literature review and surveys were used to develop interview questionnaires. Interviews were conducted from the same practitioners that were involved in surveys. Results: Based on the findings of literature review, questionnaire and interviews, we obtained TDD practices for test-list development and requirements traceability. Analysis was performed on results of SLR and questionnaire and possibility of using test-list for requirements traceability was identified. Based on the analysis of literature review and surveys, interview questionnaire were developed to further investigate the area of interest. We have found that in literature there is no defined method to develop test-list. and survey participants also confirms it. Majority of survey participants create test-list temporarily and informal. On question of whether test-list can be use for requirements traceability around 70% of participants are agree for its use. Interview respondents also confirm the findings of survey. Conclusions: Literature has not provided any test-list development method and practitioners also have no clear guideline to develop test-list prior to Test development. Systematic literature review and practitioner's survey and interviews confirm it. Literature is also silent for any specific requirements change management or requirements traceability method in TDD. We identified requirements traceability practices in agile and management through literature and survey. After analysis of gathered data we found TDD lacks in test-list formalization, none of the study focuses on requirements traceability in TDD. In this study our contribution is exploration of test-list creation and utilization through literature and state of the practice; after practitioners feedback we also explored that test-list can be used for requirements traceability.


As business modeling becomes mainstream, every year more and more companies and government agencies are creating models of their businesses. But creating good business models is not a simple endeavor. Business modeling requires new skills.

Written by two business modeling experts, this book shows you how to make your business modeling efforts successful. It provides in-depth coverage of each of the four distinct business modeling disciplines, helping you master them all and understand how to effectively combine them. It also details best practices for working with subject matter experts. And it shows how to develop models, and then analyze, simulate, and deploy them. This is essential, authoritative information that will put you miles ahead of everyone who continues to approach business modeling haphazardly.

* Provides in-depth coverage of the four business modeling disciplines: process modeling, motivation modeling, organization modeling, and rules modeling.
* Offers guidance on how to work effectively with subject matter experts and how to run business modeling workshops.
* Details today's best practices for building effective business models, and describes common mistakes that should be avoided.
* Describes standards for each business modeling discipline.
* Explains how to analyze, simulate, and deploy business models.
* Includes examples both from the authors' work with clients and from a single running example that spans the book.


Joseph Stiglitz described the current Argentine sovereign debt crisis as "America throwing a bomb into the global economic system." And yet, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to tackle only one head of this massive hydra. Presented with numerous issues arising from the controversy, the Court granted certiorari only on the issue of whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) blocked Argentina's creditors from obtaining discovery of Argentina's worldwide financial transactions. Justice Scalia, writing for the Court, concluded that because the FSIA says nothing on its face about discovery — it says nothing about discovery.But the majority did not grapple with the worldwide nature of the discovery granted. It assumed, without deciding, that worldwide discovery in aid of enforcement of a judgment is usually appropriate. This prompted Justice Ginsburg to dissent. Justice Ginsburg wrote that U.S. courts should not assume that the "sky may be the limit" for post-judgment discovery, especially given that other countries typically have far more limited document production. For Justice Ginsburg, discovery in aid of enforcement of a judgment is presumptively about U.S. courts looking to U.S. law about assets in the United States.The split in the Court reflects deep confusion and disagreement among U.S. courts on the role of discovery in an era of worldwide hunts for assets to satisfy unpaid judgments and arbitral awards. Courts have struggled to define the limits of worldwide enforcement discovery for one overriding reason: U.S. courts — following the Supreme Court's lead — have applied tests and concepts developed for pretrial discovery to the very different world of post-judgment enforcement discovery. Post-judgment enforcement discovery differs in its purposes, its presumptions, and its problems. This Article grapples with each and proposes new approaches to tackling two obstacles to enforcement discovery — restrictions on discovery and on execution.


Background Delusions relating to the body, a ready source of information about the immediate experiences of psychotic patients, have not been systematically studied. We attempted an account of the phenomena, looking for differences between diagnostic groupings in the type and lateralisation of such phenomena, and for evidence of localisation. Method Somatic delusions elicited at interview with 550 Research Diagnostic Criteria-diagnosed psychotic patients were categorised according to content, and the results were compared across diagnostic groupings. Results Significant differences were demonstrated, both at the level of individual delusions and in the nature and overall pattern of such delusions. There were also differences between diagnostic groups in the choice of body parts involved. Among male patients there were significant differences in laterality between the groups, with schizophrenic subjects locating abnormal phenomena principally on the left and depressive subjects on the right. A provisional taxonomy of bodily delusions was developed. Conclusion Phenomenological differences between the psychoses were demonstrated and the results offer some support for current hypotheses of localisation of brain dysfunction in the psychotic illnesses.


As the interdisciplinary field of materials design expands, pressing environmental, social and economic crises mean that the impacts of materials are more clearly perceived (Drazin 2015). This presents a challenge to activate materials towards positive change. Design practices that are relational, place based and deeply attuned to justice and the Earth are needed (Escobar 2017). What might such practices look like within the field of materials design? And how might they be informed by textiles practice? To address these questions, this paper presents and reflects upon a recent study into the development of harakeke (Phormium Tenax/New Zealand Flax) based nonwovens. The aim of the study was to support the re-establishment of harakeke based industry in Aotearoa New Zealand, which recent research suggests could address a range of environmental, social and economic problems specific to the region (McGruddy 2006). The approach taken drew on notions of place-based design and textile thinking, and was underpinned by a collaboration between university based design researchers, an agricultural and a forestry/ biomaterials research institute, an independent designer and an expert in traditional harakeke weaving. An initial review of materials design, research and developments that are predicated on regionally specific resources and knowledge was undertaken. Processing trials were conducted that brought together knowledge from indigenous harakeke weaving practice, fine art practices, industrially based fibre processing techniques and biopolymer processing. The resulting new materials were qualitatively evaluated using emergent models of experiential characterization (Camere and Karana 2018), which showed potential for the materials to be developed towards applications including architectural surfaces and packaging.


Abstract. Many scientists have begun to refer to the earth surface environment from the upper canopy to the depths of bedrock as the critical zone (CZ). Identification of the CZ as an integral object worthy of study implicitly posits that the study of the whole earth surface will provide benefits that do not arise when studying the individual parts. To study the CZ, however, requires prioritizing among the measurements that can be made – and we do not generally agree on the priorities. Currently, the Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory (SSHCZO) is expanding from a small original focus area (0.08 km2, Shale Hills catchment), to a larger watershed (164 km2, Shavers Creek watershed) and is grappling with the prioritization. This effort is an expansion from a monolithologic first-order forested catchment to a watershed that encompasses several lithologies (shale, sandstone, limestone) and land use types (forest, agriculture). The goal of the project remains the same: to understand water, energy, gas, solute, and sediment (WEGSS) fluxes that are occurring today in the context of the record of those fluxes over geologic time as recorded in soil profiles, the sedimentary record, and landscape morphology. Given the small size of the Shale Hills catchment, the original design incorporated measurement of as many parameters as possible at high temporal and spatial density. In the larger Shavers Creek watershed, however, we must focus the measurements. We describe a strategy of data collection and modeling based on a geomorphological and land use framework that builds on the hillslope as the basic unit. Interpolation and extrapolation beyond specific sites relies on geophysical surveying, remote sensing, geomorphic analysis, the study of natural integrators such as streams, groundwaters or air, and application of a suite of CZ models. We hypothesize that measurements of a few important variables at strategic locations within a geomorphological framework will allow development of predictive models of CZ behavior. In turn, the measurements and models will reveal how the larger watershed will respond to perturbations both now and into the future.


The construction of a confidence interval for a binomial parameter is a basic analysis in statistical inference. Most introductory statistics textbook authors present the binomial confidence interval based on the asymptotic normality of the sample proportion and estimating the standard error - the Wald method. For the one sample binomial confidence interval the Clopper-Pearson exact method has been regarded as definitive as it eliminates both overshoot and zero width intervals. The Clopper-Pearson exact method is the most conservative and is unquestionably a better alternative to the Wald method. Other viable alternatives include Wilson's Score, the Agresti-Coull method, and the Borkowf SAIFS-z.


The analysis of influence of institutional factors on development of technologies is carried out. The generating role of institutions in technological progress is proved. The general logic of an institutionalization of new technological way is presented on an example of nanotechnologies.Institutes are the "weak link" of the concepts and theories of the evolution of technology and technological structures. Most modern theorists of evolutionary economics are focused mainly on the study of the dynamics and forms of scientific and technological progress, especially the mechanisms of nucleation and diffusion of large "clusters" of innovation.In their turn, the institutional economists have concentrated on the analysis of factors and ways to minimize the transaction costs sustained interaction of agents and their organizations "in the high-tech world with a huge degree of specialization and division of labor other than impersonal exchange" (North 1997).In their works only relate to the institutional structure and infrastructure of innovative development, although, as noted by Nelson (2002), the concept of national and regional innovation systems is institutional in nature just on this fact is rarely emphasizes the attention of scientists. As a result, institutional forms and mechanisms of technological evolution is very poorly understood, and their analysis is based on very general ideas about the institutes and institutions.


Unseeded annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) is an important component of golf greens in many regions of Canada and the United States. Although this turfgrass species has desirable playing attributes, it suffers from susceptibility to environmental and biological stresses including subfreezing temperatures and snow molds. In this study, we compared 29 genotypes collected from golf greens located in Quebec and Ontario for their resistance to pink snow mold (SM). Plants were inoculated with Microdochium nivale [(Fries) Samuels & Hallett], causal agent of SM, and incubated under controlled conditions. High levels of variation in SM resistance were detected within the collection and between genotypes. Analysis of the relationship between climatic parameters at the sites of origin and SM susceptibility revealed that level of resistance was positively correlated to the duration of snow cover. Genetic diversity within the Poa collection was estimated using the sequence related amplifi ed polymorphism (SRAP) technique. The UPGMA (unweighted-pair group method arithmetic average) dendrogram yielded two main clusters that differed markedly in their proportion of SM-resistant genotypes. Our results show that SM disease is a major selection pressure for the generation of genetic diversity among annual bluegrass biotypes that evolved on golf greens in northern climates. SRAP polymorphisms between bulked genotypes with contrasting resistance to SM were identifi ed and could be used as markers for SM resistance in annual bluegrass.


Spontaneous co-verbal gestures are one means for speakers to align with each other and coordinate their interaction. In this chapter we review current empirical findings of this phenomenon and propose two kinds of partner-specific adaptations of gesturing in dialogue: Automatic alignment that occurs through priming via sensorimotor resonances and direct perception-action-links, while strategic adaptations result from flexible production choices based on recipient design and grounding. Both mechanisms are suggested to work to some degree independently and simultaneously, possibly affecting different features of the same gesture. An integrated process models of speech-gesture production and understanding is proposed that explains these adaptation mechanisms and how they may work together.


The industrial solvents xylene, styrene, trichloroethylene and methylchloroform administered to rabbits caused a positional nystagmus and disturbances in the nystagmus response to rotatory acceleration. The positional nystagmus had a beat direction the opposite to positional alcohol nystagmus, which was in similar experiments elicited by methanol, ethanol and propanol. The three alcohols needed a ten times higher blood concentration to cause a nystagmus than the solvents did.


Due to increasing waste production and disposal problems arising from synthetic polymer production, there is a critical need to substitute materials with biodegradable and renewable resources. Attempts to use laccases as a catalyst to enhance the catalytic properties of enzymes have shown them to be a promising solution for bark depolymerization. In this study, eight different fungal strains were tested for laccase enzyme production during submerged fermentation (SF), and the Pleurotus species were shown to be the best producers among the competing fungal strains. P. pulmonarius mainly produces laccase enzyme in production medium (PM) at initial conditions of pH 5.5 and 30 °C. Bark depolymerization was conducted in SF and we identified polyphenols/polyaromatic compounds after four weeks when the PM was induced with 50 mg per 100 mL of each bark during the lag-phase. During SF where honey was used as a natural mediator substitute (NMS) in the PM, laccase activities were about 1.5 times higher than those found in comparable cultures without honey in the PM. These samples were analyzed by GC-MS/MS. The laccase enzyme was purified using UNO® sphere Q-1 anion exchange chromatography and the molecular weight was determined to be ∼50 kDa on 10% SDS-PAGE. The laccase kinetic parameters Vmax, Km, and turnover number (Kcat) were found to be 76.9 μM min−1, 909 μM and 739 min−1, respectively, from a Lineweaver–Burk plot. Furthermore, laccases are suitable for biotechnological applications that transform bark biomass into high value bark biopolymers/biochemicals. The differences observed among the identified aromatic compound MS/MS profiles were due to the utilization of two different bark species. Py-GC-MS analysis of bark showed differing effects of fungal activity on bark composition. Polyphenolics were separated in reverse-phase mode using HPLC with a pinnacle DB Biphenyl, C18 column, and UV detector. Two recognition wavelengths of 290 and 340 nm were selected to improve the separation of each single compound in monofloral honey and bark-fermented samples. This study is novel because it replaces natural mediators (NM) with monofloral honey in PM and bark materials impregnated with honey, and studies the effects of fungi-derived laccases on bark biopolymers.


This paper considers the problem of joint maneuvering target tracking and classification. Based on recently proposed Monte Carlo techniques, a multiple model (MM) particle filter and a mixture Kalman filter (MKF) are designed for two-class identification of air targets: commercial and military aircraft. The classification task is carried out by processing radar measurements only, no class (feature) measurements are used. A speed likelihood function for each class is defined using a priori information about speed constraints. Class-dependent speed likelihoods are calculated through the state estimates of each class-dependent tracker. They are combined with the kinematic measurement likelihoods in order to improve the process of classification. The two designed estimators are compared and evaluated over a rather complex target trajectory. The results are demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed scheme for the incorporation of an additional speed information. Both filters illustrate the opportunity of the particle filtering and MKF to incorporate constraints in a natural way, providing reliable tracking and correct classification.


The author is a graduate student affiliated with Addis Ababa University and the University of Bergen, who is currently concentrating on ethnoarchaeological studies in Ethiopia. He has carried out ethnographic field work on iron smelting traditions in West Ethiopia among the Oromo. Mr. Burka has also worked on reconstructing iron smelting techniques and traditions that had a long heritage in that region but declined from regular use over four decades ago. In this field report, he describes his direct observations of methods and traditions of ore mining and treatment, charcoal making, clay extraction, tuyere making, furnace construction, and smelting. This ethnoarchaeological study should provide highly valuable data for other researchers to use in formulating ethnographic analogies for use in archaeological investigations of iron production activities at other sites in Africa and the Americas.


Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) is mutated in colon cancers. During normal development, APC proteins are essential negative regulators of Wnt signaling and have cytoskeletal functions. Many functions have been proposed for APC proteins, but these have often rested on dominant-negative or partial loss-of-function approaches. Thus, despite intense interest in APC, significant questions remain about its full range of cellular functions and about how mutations in the gene affect these. We isolated six new alleles of Drosophila APC2. Two resemble the truncation alleles found in human tumors and one is a protein null. We generated ovaries and embryos null for both APC2 and APC1, and assessed the consequences of total loss of APC function, allowing us to test several previous hypotheses. Surprisingly, although complete loss of APC1 and APC2 resulted in strong activation of Wingless signaling, it did not substantially alter cell viability, cadherin-based adhesion, spindle morphology, orientation or selection of division plane, as predicted from previous studies. We also tested the hypothesis that truncated APC proteins found in tumors are dominant negative. Two mutant proteins have dominant effects on cytoskeletal regulation, affecting Wnt-independent nuclear retention in syncytial embryos. However, they do not have dominant-negative effects on Wnt signaling.


ABSTRACT Interprofessional education is seen as a vehicle to facilitate collaborative practice and, therefore, address the complex health needs of populations. A number of concerns have, however, been raised with the implementation of interprofessional education. The three core concerns raised in the literature and addressed in the article include the lack of an explicit framework, challenges operationalising interprofessional education and practice, and the lack of critical mass in terms of human resources to drive activities related to interprofessional education and practice. This article aims to present lessons learnt when attempting to overcome the main challenges and implementing interprofessional education activities in a resource-constrained higher education setting in South Africa. Boyer's model of scholarship, which incorporates research, teaching integration, and application, was used to address the challenge of a lack of a framework in which to conceptualise the activities of interprofressional education. In addition, a scaffolding approach to teaching activities within a curriculum was used to operationalise interprofessional education and practice. Faculty development initiatives were additionally used to develop a critical mass that focused on driving interprofessional education. Lessons learnt highlighted that if a conceptual model is agreed upon by all, it allows for a more focused approach, and both human and financial resources may be channelled towards a common goal which may assist resource-constrained institutions in successfully implementing interprofessional activities.


One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.