This paper derives a method to quantify the impact of biofuel on fuel markets, assuming that these markets are dominated by cartel of oil-rich countries, and that prices in these countries are set to maximize the sum of domestic consumer and producer surplus, leading to a wedge between domestic and international fuel prices. We model this behavior by applying the optimal export tax model (henceforth, the cartel-of-nations model) to the fuel markets. Using data from 2007 to calibrate the model, we show that the introduction of biofuels reduces global fossil fuel consumption and international fuel prices by about 1% and 2%, respectively. We identify large differences between the effects of introducing biofuels using the cartel-of-nations model, in contrast to the competitive or the standard cartel model (henceforth, the cartel-of-firms model). Given that the cartel-of-nations model correctly captures fuel markets, we illustrate that assessing the effect of introducing biofuels under a competitive fuel markets overestimates the reduction in fuel price, and underestimates the reduction of fossil fuel consumption, and therefore the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Similar conclusions are derived with respect to cartel-of-firms model. Finally, we illustrate that a 20% increase in fuel demand more than doubles the impact of biofuels on fuel markets.


The transition from higher education to employment is a challenge, considering persistent graduate unand underemployment. Qualifications are not enough. Graduates (should) develop a 'workplace identity' that improves their chances of being employed. An empirical study shows that achieving employability frequently involves several labour-market states in which personal attributes are utilised but also developed. Most graduates are not prepared for this arduous journey, something both higher education institutions and graduates should attend to.


The purpose of this article is to explore and describe the perceptions of traditional healers
of cervical cancer care. The incidence of cervical cancer, especially among black South
African females, is among the highest in the world. Women report at clinics and hospitals
on a daily basis with advanced stages (stages III and IV) of cervical cancer. Black women
consult traditional healers first, before they consult health-care professionals. Although
cervical cancer survival rates are said to be improving across South Africa, not all women
benefit from the screening programme for early detection of cervical cancer. Traditional
healers perform an indispensable role in the delivery of health care, especially in rural
areas where access to biomedical care is limited. The article is based on a qualitative,
descriptive, and exploratory study. The study population included traditional healers who
were chosen through snowball sampling. Data was collected by means of in-depth interviews.
Data was analysed using Tesch's method. The findings of this study demonstrated
that the traditional health practitioners have good knowledge about cervical cancer care.
This was shown by the knowledge they had of naming the disease, predisposing factors
and causes, of cancer care, symptoms of diseases, diagnostic measures and methods of
treatment. The findings of this study provided valuable information on the perceptions of
traditional healers of cervical cancer care. In view of the knowledge that the traditional
healers possess, this study recommended that there be sharing of knowledge and collaboration
between modern health-care practitioners and traditional healers. Collaboration may
assist in early detection and treatment of cervical cancer, thereby improving the mortality
rate Keywords : Traditional healers, traditional medicine, western medicine, cervical cancer, perceptions. Indilinga Vol. 7 (1) 2008: pp. 103-116


Air-sea interactions have significant impacts on coastal convection and surface fluxes exchange. They are important for the spatial and vertical distributions of air pollutants that affect public health, particularly in densely populated coastal areas. To understand the impacts of air-sea interactions on coastal air quality predictions, sensitivity simulations with different atmosphere-ocean coupling are conducted in this work over southeastern U.S. in July 2010 using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF/Chem). The results show that comparing to WRF/Chem without air-sea interactions, WRF/Chem with a 1-D ocean mixed layer model (WRF/Chem-OML) and WRF/Chem coupled with a 3-D Regional Ocean Modeling System (WRF/Chem-ROMS) predict the domain averaged changes in the sea surface temperature of 0.06°C and 0.94°C, respectively for July average. The simulated differences in the surface concentrations of O3 and PM2.5 between WRF/Chem-ROMS and WRF/Chem can be as large as 17.3 ppb and 7.9 µg m–3, respectively, with the largest changes occurring not only along coast and remote ocean, but also over some inland areas. Extensive validations against observations show that WRF/Chem-ROMS improves the predictions of most cloud and radiative variables, and surface concentrations of some chemical species such as SO2, NO2, maximum 1-h and 8-h O3, SO42–, NH4+, NO3–, and PM10. This illustrates the benefits and needs of using coupled atmosphere-ocean model with advanced model representations of air-sea interactions for regional air quality modeling.


Following Sterling's spectacularly successful launch of its children's classic novels (240,000 books in print to date), comes a dazzling new series: " Classic Starts." The stories are abridged; the quality is complete. "Classic Starts" treats the world's beloved tales (and children) with the respect they deserve--all at an incomparable price. He robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, and had escapades enough to please any adventure-loving child. Now even the youngest readers can have the chance to enter Sherwood Forest with Robin's band of merry men, and meet such unforgettable characters as Friar Tuck, Little John, Allan-a-Dale, the nasty Sheriff of Nottingham, and wicked King John. Every moment of the story is filled with action and excitement.


This qualitative study investigates the use of music therapy for adults with learning disabilities who self-harm. It also considers the role of their care staff in responding to self-harm. Studies in this area acknowledge that self-harm is complex for those engaging in it and their staff teams. Recommendations from studies with staff teams working in this area conclude that staff are asking for more support. Studies show that service-users are requesting access to therapy.
This research project investigates two service-users and their staff teams in detail. Music therapy was offered to the service-users for one year, providing the opportunity to process experiences through language and improvised music. Care staff participated in a monthly group that offered space to explore their experiences of supporting somebody who self-harms. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews administered to participants at the start of the study, and twice more at six-monthly intervals. The interviews were transcribed and analysed within a framework of interpretative phenomenological analysis.
The study investigates a possible correlation between this combined approach and a reduction in self-harming for the service-users and a change in how staff understood self-harm and responded to it. Results support a positive correlation between these interventions and a reduction in incidences of self-harm among service-users, as well as a change in the responses of their care staff. Service-users linked the opportunity to express difficult emotions through music therapy to a reduction in self-harming. Staff teams reported benefits of attending the groups and came to new ways of understanding their service-users.
As a result of this study, music and art therapy groups for the staff teams of adults with learning disabilities are being developed and trialled within the NHS trust in which this study took place. This work is being carried out alongside clinical interventions for service-users, resulting in a systemic approach that attends to service-users and staff teams simultaneously.


1. Daily fluctuations in the plasma concentrations of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and growth hormone (GH) have been studied in six normal males by using a 24 h continuous blood-sampling technique and a highly sensitive and specific radioimmunoassay for TSH. 2. In all subjects the plasma concentrations of the two hormones were increased at night. The TSH concentrations rose approx. 2 h before the onset of sleep but the peak concentration coincided with the GH peak 2 h after the commencement of sleep. In three subjects who slept in the afternoon, additional peaks of GH activity were found and in two cases peaks of TSH activity also occurred. 3. The mean data from all subjects showed a significant circadian variation of TSH secretion with a maximum between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. and a minimum between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.


Traditional treatment of scoping in programming languages considers two opposite semantics: static scoping, where the scope of a binding is a block of program text, and dynamic scoping, where a binding is in effect during the whole reduction of an expression to a value. Static scoping and dynamic scoping are however but two points in the design space of scoping mechanisms. As a result, most proposed language mechanisms that rely on some notion of scoping, such as variable bindings of course, but also more exotic ones like aspects and mixin layers, adopt either one or the other semantics. As it turns out, these two semantics are sometimes too extreme, and a mixture of both is needed. To achieve this, language designers and/or programmers have to resort to ad hoc solutions. We present a general scoping model that simply expresses static and dynamic scoping, and that goes further by allowing fine-grained exploration of the design space of scoping. The model, called scoping strategies, gives precise control over propagation and activation of language mechanisms. While we have already studied it for aspects, we hereby show that the model is not restricted to aspects, by treating in depth its application to the most standard kind of adaptation: variable bindings. We also briefly discuss its application to mixin layers, and program monitoring. We believe that research in programming language constructs can benefit from a more flexible notion of scoping that goes beyond the static/dynamic dichotomy.


Accumulation of photodamaged PSII core proteins enables retrograde signaling via the stress hormone salicylic acid and its signaling components, EDS1 and PAD4. Photodamage of the PSII reaction center (RC) is an inevitable process in an oxygen-rich environment. The damaged PSII RC proteins (Dam-PSII) undergo degradation via the thylakoid membrane-bound FtsH metalloprotease, followed by posttranslational assembly of PSII. While the effect of Dam-PSII on gene regulation is described for cyanobacteria, its role in land plants is largely unknown. In this study, we reveal an intriguing retrograde signaling pathway by using the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) yellow variegated2-9 mutant, which expresses a mutated FtsH2 (FtsH2G267D) metalloprotease, specifically impairing its substrate-unfolding activity. This lesion leads to the perturbation of PSII protein homeostasis (proteostasis) and the accumulation of Dam-PSII. Subsequently, this results in an up-regulation of salicylic acid (SA)-responsive genes, which is abrogated by inactivation of either an SA transporter in the chloroplast envelope membrane or extraplastidic SA signaling components as well as by removal of SA. These results suggest that the stress hormone SA, which is mainly synthesized via the chloroplast isochorismate pathway in response to the impaired PSII proteostasis, mediates the retrograde signaling. These findings reinforce the emerging view of chloroplast function toward plant stress responses and suggest SA as a potential plastid factor mediating retrograde signaling.


It is difficult to create scenes where multiple avatars are fighting / competing with each other. Manually creating the motions of avatars is time consuming due to the correlation of the movements between the avatars. Capturing the motions of multiple avatars is also difficult as it requires a huge amount of post-processing. In this paper, we propose a new method to generate a realistic scene of avatars densely interacting in a competitive environment. The motions of the avatars are considered to be captured individually, which will increase the easiness of obtaining the data. We propose a new algorithm called the temporal expansion approach which maps the continuous time action plan to a discrete space such that turn-based evaluation methods can be used. As a result, many mature algorithms in game such as the min-max search and α---β pruning can be applied. Using our method, avatars will plan their strategies taking into account the reaction of the opponent. Fighting scenes with multiple avatars are generated to demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm. The proposed method can also be applied to other kinds of continuous activities that require strategy planning such as sport games.


Diabetic rat pregnancies are characterized by altered maternal and fetal Zn metabolism and a higher frequency of fetal malformations. In this study, the effect of varying maternal dietary Zn on pregnancy and fetal outcome and on maternal and fetal trace element status were investigated. Starting on day 0 of gestation, streptozocin-induced diabetic andondiabetic control rats were fed a low-Zn diet (4.5 (μg/g diet), an adequate-Zn diet (24.5 μg/g diet), or a high-Zn diet (500 μg/g diet) throughout gestation. Fetuses were taken by cesarean section on gestation day 20. Fetuses from diabetic dams were smaller, weighed less, and had less calcified skeletons and more malformations than fetuses from control dams. In the controls, maternal dietary Zn had a minor effect on fetal malformation frequency. In contrast, in the diabetic animals, the low-Zn diet had a strong teratogenic effect. In diabetic dams, the adequate- and high-Zn diets improved fetal length and weight more than it did in fetuses from nondiabetic dams. However, supplemental dietary Zn during diabetic pregnancy did not further improve malformation frequencies. Liver and kidney Zn, Cu, and metallothionein concentrations were higher in diabetic dams than in control dams. In contrast, liver Zn, Cu, and metallothionein concentrations in fetuses of diabetic dams were lower than in fetuses from control dams, regardless of maternal dietary Zn intake. These results show that diabetes during pregnancy can amplify the teratogenic effects of a mild maternal Zn deficiency. The results also suggest that the diabetic condition alters Zn and Cu transport across diabetic placentas and/or alters Zn and Cu retention of fetuses from diabetic versus control dams, despite differing levels of maternal dietary Zn intake.


ABSTRACT Pseudomonas chlororaphis Lzh-T5 is a plant growth-promoting rhizobacterium (PGPR) with antimicrobial activity isolated from tomato rhizosphere in the city of Dezhou, Shandong Province, China. Here, the draft genome sequence of P. chlororaphis Lzh-T5 is reported, and several functional genes related to antifungal antibiotics and siderophore biosynthesis have been found in the genome.


Eighty species of marine gammaridean Amphipoda are currently known from Fiji . During a three month period in late 1979. 77 species were collected. and these are described and figured . Keys for the identification of all known Fijian species are included . Fiji appears to share most of its taxa with Hawaii. Indonesia and the Indian Ocean. and few with eastern Polynesia. but this may reflect collecting intensity . Few taxa are shared with New Zealand . Forty percent of Fijian taxa are new to science . Forty-one percent of taxa are currently of endemic status but this figure will undoubtedly be lowered when more Indo-Pacific island groups are explored . Fiji is characterised by a higher percentage of domicolo~ls forms than any other well studied island group . The results of a quantitative survey of amphipods on a transect across a fringing reef in south Viti Levu are given . MYERS. A.A., 1985 . Shallow.water. coral reef and mangrove Amphipoda (Gammaridea) of Fiji . Records of the Australian Museum Supplement 5: 1-143 .


This research was conducted at the field research station and in the Laboratory of Agrotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Halu Oleo, Kendari, Indonesia in 2016. This study aimed to determine the effect of using a variety of Bokashi (compost) fertilizers made from agricultural wastes on the growth and yield of soybean. The study was arranged in a randomized block design (RBD, which consisted of 5 treatments, namely: without Bokashi fertilizer (M0), Bokashi "komba-komba" (Chromolaena odorata)(M1), Bokashi "water hyacinth" (Eichornia crassipes)(M2), Bokashi sago dregs (M3), and Bokashi burned-rice husk (M4). Research data were analyzed using ANOVA and treatment means were compared using Honestly Significant Difference (HSD). The results showed that the application of Bokashi gave a significant effect on almost all variables observed on growth and yield of soybean. Bokashi burned-rice husk (M4) and sago dregs (M3) give the best effect on the growth and yield of soybean, which reached about 3.1 tonnes per hectare, an increase of approximately 30% compared to the treatment of without Bokashi which only reached 2.4 tons per hectare. Key-Words: Agriculture waste, bokashi fertilizer, compost, production, soybean


In this paper, a cross-layer solution for packet size optimization in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is introduced such that the effects of multi-hop routing, the broadcast nature of the physical wireless channel, and the effects of error control techniques are captured. A key result of this paper is that contrary to the conventional wireless networks, in wireless sensor networks, longer packets reduce the collision probability. Consequently, an optimization solution is formalized by using three different objective functions, i.e., packet throughput, energy consumption, and resource utilization. Furthermore, the effects of end-to-end latency and reliability constraints are investigated that may be required by a particular application. As a result, a generic, cross-layer optimization framework is developed to determine the optimal packet size in WSN. This framework is further extended to determine the optimal packet size in underwater and underground sensor networks. From this framework, the optimal packet sizes under various network parameters are determined.


The main issues in this research include: first, what the legal issues and cases are related to the protection of copyright on internet? Second, how is the development of the copyright protection recently? Third, is the collaboration of law and technology as the model of copyright protection on internet? This research was conducted by using the normative legal method. The result of the research showed some conclusions: first, the presence of internet has brought a negative impact on the attitude and behavior of human.  Such negative impact is reflected with the increasing cases of copyright infringement. Therefore, the issue of copyright protection on internet becomes one of crucial issues. Second, recently, the copyright protection on internet can be done through technology approach or legal approach. If these two approaches are conducted separately, then the copyright protection on internet is found very difficult to be realized. To realize the copyright protection, then the model of the collaboration between the technology approach and legal approach becomes something certain. Third, the instrument of the copyright protection in internet collaborates between the technology and legal approach as seen in the regulation in Article 11 and 18 WIPO Internet Treaties and in some other countries such as United States and Indonesia.


Introduction The prevention of disease through vaccination with efficacious and safe vaccines is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions. (1) However, often the markets for vaccines do not generate the most desired outcomes from a public health perspective in terms of product quantity, quality, affordability, programmatic suitability and/or sustainability, particularly when it comes to serving the poorest populations. Economic factors may hinder or delay the clinical development of candidate products as well as prevent manufacturing of licensed vaccines at sufficient scale to respond to these needs. Manufacturers face competing interests when making investment decisions and they perceive demand from developing countries as very uncertain. While the need for and the willingness to adopt new vaccines exist, resources to sustainably fund such products are often missing. Manufacturers thus find this market segment very risky and less attractive. An Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for vaccines aims to make the market for vaccines in developing countries more attractive through a legally binding commitment to purchase vaccines according to predetermined terms. As some of the risks are removed, the vaccine industry is encouraged to increase investments to stimulate the development and manufacture of target products. Different models have been designed to create market-oriented incentives to support the development and introduction of appropriate health technologies for developing countries. Many have remained academic exercises, but the AMC moved from theory to practice with a pilot AMC for pneumococcal vaccines launched in 2009. While it is still early to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of this pilot, this paper discusses lessons learnt on moving from the theoretical concept to implementation. It provides a starting point to inform discussions and encourage debate about the potential applications of the AMC concept to other interventions. The pilot AMC An AMC for vaccines gained public attention with a report by the Center for Global Development in April 2005. (2) The report proposed to create incentives for commercial investments in research, development and manufacturing of vaccines for developing countries through a legally binding pledge by donors to pay a certain price for a new vaccine if it is developed and desired. (2) A pilot AMC for pneumococcal vaccines was announced in February 2007 and formally launched in June 2009 with a joint pledge of 1.5 billion United States dollars (US$) by the Governments of Canada, Italy, Norway, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (3) The key design features and the functioning of the AMC for pneumococcal vaccines are described in Box 1. The GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership created to increase access to immunization in poor countries, and The World Bank co-led the design of the pilot and they implement it together with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO). By placing the AMC on its balance sheet, The World Bank effectively guaranteed US$1.5 billion in AMC funding for the purchase of pneumococcal vaccines. (5) Meanwhile, the GAVI Alliance serves as the secretariat for the AMC and has committed to support eligible countries to purchase the product. Some of the expected benefits of the AMC are outlined here. Box 1. Design and functioning of the Advance Market Commitment for pneumococcal vaccines The pilot Advance Market Commitment (AMC) offers a legally binding commitment to support the market of targeted pneumococcal vaccines with US$1.5 billion of funds for which vaccine manufacturers can bid. Interested manufacturers compete over successive tenders to supply a share of the annual forecasted demand of vaccines (which is expected to increase over time and reach around 200 million doses per year at peak). …


With time, any surgical specialty or procedure invariably undergoes change. New techniques and technologies become available and the next generations of surgeons innovate to modify established methods. The surgical management of retinal detachment has come a long way from the days of Custodis and Schepens. Scleral buckling (SB), which was once the "gold standard" when reattachment of the retina was desired, no longer enjoys the coveted standing of yore. Despite being in use for more than six decades, the many "modifications" of this surgical procedure are rather superficial - although some may argue that the procedure itself is superficial - and the original surgical principles described have remained constant. In this article, we focus on the utility of buckling, the dynamic physical forces at work when a buckle attempts to reattach the retina and the role of SB in this era of microincision surgeries.


Background: Models of dynamical systems described by ordinary differential equations often contains a number of parameters to be determined by time-series measurements and non-linear regression. A necessary condition for successful non-linear regression is that parameters are identifiable. One usually distinguish between practical identifiability and structural identifiability. The former concerns to what extent the system is sufficiently perturbed and if uncertainty (noise) in measurements makes estimating parameters a feasible task while the latter is a property of the parametrized equations of the dynamical systems model. A model is structurally identifiable if its parameters can be uniquely determined under the assumption of perfect knowledge of the set of measured variables. Standard models in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are usually structurally identifiable since years of use and development have decontaminated the area of nonidentifiable models. However, with the advent of quantitative systems pharmacology and efforts to increase the level of mechanistic detail in PK/PD models, novel and unexplored parametrized systems of ordinary differential equations appears. Hence, there is need for easy-to-use and efficient methods to decide structural identifiability of a proposed parametrized models prior to the application of numerical fitting and non-linear regression procedures.

Aim: To extend an existing highly efficient probabilistic method for structural identifiability analysis to include parametrized initial conditions and to provide an easy-to-use implementation in Mathematica to facilitate the use of identifiability analysis in systems pharmacology.

Methods: We describe the implementation of a recent probabilistic semi-numerical method for testing local structural identifiability based on computing the rank of a numerically instantiated Jacobian matrix (observability/identifiability matrix). To obtain this, parameters and initial conditions are specialized to random integer numbers, inputs are specialized to truncated random integer coefficient power series, and the corresponding output of a state space system is computed in terms of a truncated power series, which then is utilized to indirectly calculate the elements of the Jacobian matrix. To reduce the memory requirements and increase the speed of the computations all operations are done modulo a large prime number.

Results: A target mediated drug disposition model, a dose-response-time model, and four signaling pathway models (Ras, JAK-STAT, MAP Kinase Cascade, and NF-kB) have been analyzed with respect to structural identifiability.

Conclusion: Structural identifiability analysis can be carried out on a standard desktop computer on dynamical system models in the order of hundred parameters and equally many state variables.


What is a "mental illness"? What is an "illness"? What does the description and classification of "mental illnesses" actually involve, and is the description of "new" mental illnesses description of actually existing entities, or the creation of them?  "Solastalgia" is a neologism, invented by the Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht, to give greater meaning and clarity to psychological distres s caused by environmental change (Albrecht et al 2007) The concept received some coverage in the international mass media in late 2007 (Thompson, 2007) Much of this described solastalgia as "a new concept in mental illness", a description endorsed by Albrecht himself. The doctor and former British Foreign Secretary, Lord Owen, has coined the phrase "hubris syndrome" to describe the mindset of prime ministers and presidents whose behaviour is characterised by reckless, hubristic belief in their own rightness. This paper uses both the concept of solastalgia and the related concepts Albrecht posited of psychoterratic and somaterratic illnesses and hubris syndrome as a starting point to explore issues around the meaning of mental illness, and what it means to describe and classify mental illness. These issues illustrated tensions between natural and social philosophy, with the nature and status of psychiatry as a scientific, "value-free" enterprise or a humanistic, "value-laden" one discussed. Should "the distress caused by environmental change" be deemed a mental illness? Could it thereby included in catalogues of mental illnesses such as DSM-IV and ICD-10? The process whereby the psychiatric establishment defines and categorises mental illness is described , and as well as examining whether solastalgia and hubris syndrome meets these criteria, those criteria are compare d to more critical views of psychiatry and the nature of mental illness.  The approaches of Szasz, Boorse, Fulford, Canguilhem and other thinkers to issues related to mental illness are discussed. Finally it is suggested that the language of mental illness is increasingly used for rhetorical purposes, and that caution should be exercised in extending the label of illness to the phenomena of solastalgia and hubris syndrome.


Streptomycin varying in potency from 100 to 500 units/mg. has been administered to 14 dogs intravenously, intramuscularly, and orally in amounts of 100,000 to 420,000 units. High blood levels of streptomycin were observed after parenteral administration and 23 to 65 per cent was excreted in the urine of normal dogs. After 4 or 5 hours only small amounts were detected in the blood. The maintenance of blood levels was no better with intramuscular than with intravenous administration. Following the oral administration of as much as 420,000 units of streptomycin, it could not be detected in the plasma, but up to 3.9 per cent was recovered from the urine.


We have examined and compared the effects of mutating Y41 and H155 in the iron superoxide dismutase (SOD) from the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus (Ss). These two neighboring residues in the active site are known to have crucial functions in structurally related SODs from different sources. The metal analysis indicates a slightly lower iron content after either Y41F or H155Q replacement, without any significant substitution of iron for manganese. The specific activity of SsSOD referred to the iron content is 17-fold reduced in the Y41F mutant, whereas it is less than 2-fold reduced by the H155Q mutation. The noticeable pH dependence of the activity of SsSOD and H155Q-SsSOD, due to the ionization of Y41 (pK 8.4), is lost in Y41F-SsSOD. After H155Q and even more after the Y41F substitution, the archaeal enzyme acquires a moderate sensitivity to sodium azide inhibition. The hydrogen peroxide inactivation of SsSOD is significantly increased after H155Q replacement; however, both mutants are insensitive to the modification of residue 41 by phenylmethanesulfonyl fluoride. Heat inactivation studies showed that the high stability of SsSOD is reduced by the H155Q mutation; however, upon the addition of SDS, a much faster inactivation kinetics is observed both with wild-type and mutant SsSOD forms. The detergent is also required to follow thermal denaturation of the archaeal enzyme by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy; these studies gave information about the effect of mutations and modification on flexibility and compactness of the protein structure. The crystal structure of Y41F mutant revealed an uninterrupted hydrogen bond network including three solvent molecules connecting the iron-ligating hydroxide ion via H155 with F41 and H37, which is not present in structures of the corresponding mutant SODs from other sources. These data suggest that Y41 and H155 are important for the structural and functional properties of SsSOD; in particular, Y41 seems to be a powerful regulator of the activity of SsSOD, whereas H155 is apparently involved in the organization of the active site of the enzyme.


An important feature of living cells is their capacity to maintain the integrity of their hereditary material, the DNA. DNA can be damaged by a variety of physical and chemical agents, among which ultraviolet radiation (UV), ion1z1ng radiation and chemical carcinogens as 4-nitroquinoline-1-oxide (4NQO). Most organisms, including man, are able to repair damaged DNA. The DNA repair processes play a very important role, which is demonstrated by the inherited skin disease xeroderma pigmentosum (XP). This disease is manifested primarily by cellular atrophy, pigmentation abnormalities and malignancies in the sun-exposed areas of the skin. Some of the affected individuals also have neurological complications. Cells derived from most XP patients are abnormally sensitive to UV, which is ascribed to the fact that these cells show a reduced unscheduled DNA synthesis after UV-irradiation and appear to be deficient in the excision of pyrimidine dimers from their DNA. Cultured cells from another group of XP patients show a normal excision repair, but are thought to have a defect in a process associated with the circumvention of lesions present in the DNA during replication (postreplication repair). These are designated as XP variants. The clinical heterogeneity observed in this disease suggested the possibility of differences in the nature of the genetic defects in different patients (genetic heterogeneity). Genetic heterogeneity can be studied with the aid of complementation analysis, by fusion of cells derived from different patients. In several combinations the presence of the genomes of two patients in a hybrid binuclear cell resulted in a normal level of DNA repair,/ suggesting that these patients have a mutation at different sites in the genome. Excision repair-defective XP cell strains have now been classified in 7 complementation groups


OBJECTIVE
Pathological gambling is a disabling disorder experienced by approximately 1%-2% of adults and for which there are few empirically validated treatments. The authors examined the efficacy and tolerability of the opioid antagonist nalmefene in the treatment of adults with pathological gambling.

METHOD
A 16-week, randomized, dose-ranging, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted at 15 outpatient treatment centers across the United States between March 2002 and April 2003. Two hundred seven persons with DSM-IV pathological gambling were randomly assigned to receive nalmefene (25 mg/day, 50 mg/day, or 100 mg/day) or placebo. Scores on the primary outcome measure (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale Modified for Pathological Gambling) were analyzed by using a linear mixed-effects model.

RESULTS
Estimated regression coefficients showed that the 25 mg/day and 50 mg/day nalmefene groups had significantly different scores on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale Modified for Pathological Gambling, compared to the placebo group. A total of 59.2% of the subjects who received 25 mg/day of nalmefene were rated as "much improved" or "very much improved" at the last evaluation, compared to 34.0% of those who received placebo. Adverse experiences included nausea, dizziness, and insomnia.

CONCLUSIONS
Subjects who received nalmefene had a statistically significant reduction in severity of pathological gambling. Low-dose nalmefene (25 mg/day) appeared efficacious and was associated with few adverse events. Higher doses (50 mg/day and 100 mg/day) resulted in intolerable side effects.


A linear quadratic model predictive controller (MPC) can be written as a parametric quadratic optimization problem whose solution is a piecewise affine (PWA) map from the state to the optimal input. While this `explicit solution' can offer several orders of magnitude reduction in online evaluation time in some cases, the primary limitation is that the complexity can grow quickly with problem size. In this paper we introduce a new method based on bilevel optimization that allows the direct approximation of the non-convex receding horizon control law. The ability to approximate the control law directly, rather than first approximating a convex cost function leads to simple control laws and tighter approximation errors than previous approaches. Furthermore, stability conditions also based on bilevel optimization are given that are substantially less conservative than existing statements.


Electromechanical coupling through piezoelectric polymer chains allows the emission of organic molecules in active nanowires to be tuned. This effect is evidenced by highly bendable arrays of counter‐ion dye‐doped nanowires made of a poly(vinylidenefluoride) copolymer. A reversible redshift of the dye emission is found upon the application of dynamic stress during highly accurate bending experiments. By density functional theory calculations it is found that these photophysical properties are associated with mechanical stresses applied to electrostatically interacting molecular systems, namely to counterion‐mediated states that involve light‐emitting molecules as well as charged regions of piezoelectric polymer chains. These systems are an electrostatic class of supramolecular functional stress‐sensitive units, which might impart new functionalities in hybrid molecular nanosystems and anisotropic nanostructures for sensing devices and soft robotics.


In this paper, we present the Massive Mobile Multiuser (M3) framework, a software platform designed to enable setup-free, real-time, concurrent interaction with shared public displays through large numbers of personal mobile devices. This work is motivated by the fact that simultaneous interaction of multiple persons with public displays requires either dedicated tracking hardware to detect gestures or touch, or a way for users to interact through their personal mobile devices. The latter option provides more flexibility but also presents a heightened entry barrier as it often requires installation of custom software. To address these issues, M3 enables immediate interaction through the mobile browser without requiring prior setup on the user side, and real-time interaction suitable for fast multiplayer games. We present a detailed analysis of latency sources and findings from two real-world deployments of our framework in public settings with up to 17 concurrent users. Despite a resource-constrained environment and an unpredictable selection of client devices, M3 consistently delivers performance suitable for real-time interaction.


Delirium is an acute disturbance of cognition and attention which fluctuates during the day. The incidence of delirium is high, especially in critically ill and elderly patients. However, the pathophysiology is not fully understood and the diagnosis can be challenging. In clinical practice it can be difficult to distinguish hypoactive delirium (i.e., being drowsy, inactive, withdrawn) from the effects of sedation. The aim of this thesis was to improve our knowledge of reduced levels of consciousness by studying the brain activity and to improve delirium detection in clinical practice. In part I of this thesis, we used 21-channel electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity and network analysis to compare patients with hypoactive delirium and patients recovering from anaesthesia. Reduced functional connectivity and disturbed directed connectivity were found to be associated with the reduced levels of consciousness in both hypoactive delirium and recovery from anaesthesia. However, the topology was different. Hypoactive delirium showed a less intergraded, and therefore efficient network, whereas the recovery from anaesthesia showed a more integrated network. Furthermore, the effects of two different sedatives (midazolam and propofol) were studied. Both showed reduced slowing of the EEG, reduced functional connectivity and loss of the directed connectivity compared to the awake state. No differences were found in the topology. Propofol had a significantly greater reduction of the alpha frequency band functional connectivity and delta band directed connectivity compared to midazolam. Part II describes of the validation of a single channel EEG-based delirium monitor. First, the current clinical practise regarding delirium detection was evaluated. Delirium experts evaluated video-recorded cognitive assessments of postsurgical elderly patients. There was a considerable amount of disagreement (21%) between the experts, which indicate the difficulty of delirium detection. Secondly, the sensitivity of the delirium screening tools for routine daily practice by nurses was assessed. In only 50% of the patients the result of a screening tool was documented, and within these cases, the sensitivity was 43%. This indicates the need for an objective tool to detect delirium. Therefore, an EEG-based delirium monitor was developed and validated in postoperative patients. In our validation study we showed that it is possible to distinguish delirious from non-delirious patients using the relative delta power (1-4 Hz). Finally, we showed that it is possible to predict delirium the next day using this simple single-channel EEG recording. However, this final result should be confirmed in a larger study population. We showed that it is possible to detect delirium based on a simple quantitative EEG recording, and early prediction of delirium seems feasible. Since delirium is always a consequence of a physical cause, this EEG-based monitor may allow early detection of this underlying cause, which should be treated. Improved algorithms should be developed to detect delirium distinct from conditions influencing the EEG, such as the effects of sedatives.


It is shown that the lineshapes of inhomogeneously broadened spectra, due to the statistical nature of their formation, exhibit spectral fluctuations. Formulas are obtained that allow one, based on correlation analysis of different realizations of the inhomogeneously broadened line, to reconstruct its homogeneous lineshape and to evaluate the number of centers involved in its formation. The magnitude of these spectral fluctuations is estimated and it is shown that the proposed method can be efficiently used in practice.


Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is the most common genetic disorder of the kidney. The mainly clinical manifestation is progressive cyst formation in bilateral kidneys, impairs normal renal parenchyma, and ultimately results in end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Extra-renal lesions include cystic liver or pancreas, brain aneurysm and cardiovascular defects. Mutations in either PKD1 or PKD2 genes result in the disease, but the former develops more severe clinical phenotypes than the latter. Currently, ADPKD still challenge vast clinicians on account of lacking effective and less side-effect therapy. Intensive study of molecular mechanism of the disease can establish theoretical basis for potential therapeutic targets and guide clinicians to develop new approaches in treatment of this disease. This review will focus on current advances of ADPKD pathogenesis which may benefit the translational therapy and precision medicine for the disease treatment.


This paper provides a chronological account of the evolution of the concept and policy of reproductive health and its initial entry, and subsequent exclusion, from UN declarations. In the 1990s effective lobbying by sexual and reproductive rights activists established reproductive health for all as a UN goal. However, at the Millennium Assembly of 2000 and in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an 'unholy alliance' of the Holy See and a handful of conservative Muslim governments managed to keep reproductive health off the agenda. This was successful political manoeuvring for the short-term, but the alliance fell apart and the power of the theoretical and empirical case in support of reproductive health saw it return to the MDGs in 2005. The moral standing of religious institutions, such as the Holy See, is undermined by such opportunistic, short-term political behaviour and, in particular, the ambiguous legal status of the Holy See at the UN is called into question.


The exceptionally strong and long‐lived Arctic stratospheric polar vortex in 2019/2020 resulted in large transport anomalies throughout the fall‐winter‐spring period from vortex development to breakup. These anomalies are studied using Aura MLS N2O, H2O, and CO long‐lived trace gas data, ACE‐FTS CH4 data, and meteorological and trace gas fields from reanalyses. Anomalies are strongest throughout the winter in the lower through the middle stratosphere (from about 500K through 700K), with record low (high) departures from climatology in N2O and CH4 (H2O). CO shows extreme high anomalies in midwinter through spring down to about 550K. Descent rates, vortex confinement, and trace gas distributions in the preceding months indicate that early winter anomalies in N2O and H2O arose primarily from entrainment of air with already‐anomalous values into the vortex as it developed in fall 2019 followed by descent of those anomalies to lower levels within the vortex. Trace gas anomalies in midwinter through the late vortex breakup in spring 2020 arose primarily from inhibition of mixing between vortex and extravortex air because of the exceptionally strong and persistent vortex. Persistent strong N2O and H2O gradients across the vortex edge demonstrate that air within the vortex and its remnants remained very strongly confined through late April (mid‐May) in the middle (lower) stratosphere. These results are important for understanding the evolution of trace gas distributions, which affects both polar chemical processing and radiative processes related to climate.


"Global capitalism is a precarious system. Relying on the steady flow of goods across the world, trans-national companies such as Wal-Mart and Amazon depend on the work of millions in docks, warehouses and logistics centres to keep their goods moving. This is the global supply chain, and, if the chain is broken, capitalism grinds to a halt. This book looks at case studies across the world to uncover a network of resistance by these workers who, despite their importance, often face vast exploitation and economic violence. Experiencing first hand wildcat strikes, organised blockades and boycotts, the authors explore a diverse range of case studies, from South China dockworkers to the transformation of the port of Piraeus in Greece, and from the Southern California logistics sector, to dock and logistical workers in Chile and unions in Turkey."


The choice of a wind turbine for a given site is a very significant operation. It is advised to make an in-depth study on the characteristics of the aerogenerator and the implantation site before any installation of a wind farm for choosing well the system best adapted to the energy needs. The objective of this study is to sensitize the users of the wind energy on the various problems involved in the aerogenerator installation on any site and to provide a decision-making aid to the judicious choice of the wind system best adapted. The idea is to estimate, for a selected implantation site, the energy production and the operating time of several wind systems. We can thus select the aerogenerator best adapted by making a compromise between a maximum recovery of energy and a high time of production. The influence height of the aerogenerator on energy profitability is also studied. We apply this step to the twenty six Tunisian synoptic sites by implantation scenarios of seven wind systems of various nominal speeds in function of the height.


Studying the lower Shoshone River Basin's (SRB) striped skunk ( Mephitis mephitis ) rabies 6-year epizootic in northwestern Wyoming has produced four didactic lessons. First, physiographic changes by settlers circa 1900 affected its zoogeography by creating a canal system for irrigating crops originating at Buffalo Bill Reservoir (BBR). The resulting landscape changes increased agricultural lands and skunk habitat eightfold between the valley's steep gravel benches. The valley was historically free of skunk rabies until the epizootic's index case in August 1988. Second, human intervention began when the Bighorn County Predator Board (BCPB) proactively implemented rabies trapping surveillance and depopulation programs in 1989. The epizootic's second case occurred in February 1989. From 1990–1993, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services (WS) Wyoming office continued these programs. The epizootic ended in 1993 with over 200 rabid animals diagnosed by the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory (WSVL) from about 1,000 skunks tested. Cooperator agreements began in January 1989 and continued throughout the epizootic for trapping and shooting of potential vectors. Third, WS National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) analyzed the epizootic movements using monthly mean movements and standardized ellipsoids. These analyses demonstrated that rabies dispersed radially from the index case until it reached the Shoshone River. From there, the epizootic spread downstream until stopped by Bighorn Lake (BL) in 1989 and upstream until stopped by BBR in 1992. Fourth, descriptive multivariate movement maps (MMMs) of the epizootic were analogous to fluid wave characteristics describing a swell moving along the surface of a liquid as the "leading edge" and "crest." All rabid animal locations were derived from the first use of global positioning system (GPS) in investigating wildlife disease. These lessons learned should assist others to better understand skunk rabies epizootics.


Gene Flow and Dispersal of the Caddisfly, Neothremma alicia, in the Rocky Mountains of Utah: A Multiscale Analysis Xiaoben Jiang Department of Biology Master of Science We determined genetic variance and gene flow across multiple scales (reaches, tributaries, and catchments) to examine the dispersal ability of the caddisfly, Neothremma alicia in streams along the Wasatch Range in the Rocky Mountains of Utah. Neothremma alicia is one of the most abundant caddisflies in this region. We generated DNA sequence data (mitochondrial COI) from 34 reaches, nested in 15 tributaries distributed across 3 adjacent catchments. We identified 47 haplotypes from a total of 486 individuals. The most abundant haplotype (H1) was found at all sites/reaches and comprised 44% of the total number of individuals sequenced. The remaining rare haplotypes (46) were recently derived from the dominant, H1 haplotype. All of the rare haplotypes were restricted to a single catchment with 81 % restricted to either a single tributary or to two adjacent tributaries. We found the largest FST values among tributaries and the smallest FST values between reaches within tributaries suggesting that dispersal and gene flow is largely confined to within tributaries. This result supports the observation that aerial adults commonly crawl and fly along the stream corridor, especially in deeply incised valleys of mountainous regions. Our analyses show that this population has experienced a bottleneck that may have reduced population genetic variance from many haplotypes to one single dominant haplotype, H1. The rare haplotypes may have diverged since the bottleneck from the H1 haplotype and thus, have not had time to disperse outside their catchment and in most cases outside their specific tributary. Our analyses indicated that the bottleneck took place between 1,000 and 10,000 years ago. Thus, it appears that most rare haplotypes have been unable to colonize outside of the tributary they originated in for around 1,000 years.


Since the early 1990s Australia, through the Australian Health Minister's Advisory Council, began the process of developing a national health system performance framework. This includes service delivery measures for hospitals and has been used as a template for national data collections in mental health services. National performance frameworks have since become part of promoting greater integration of policy making and service delivery across Commonwealth and State jurisdictional health functions. The key focus of this paper is upon inter-governmental processes and routines to develop Australian national performance regimes in the realms of health and mental health care services. It presents initial findings from 26 elite interviews working across the inter-governmental interface, including some data about experiences of service managers. The report provides two contributions to the existing literature on Australia's federal health system and more specifically health governance. Firstly, it presents a literature review of studies and theoretical concepts that have been deployed to examine cross jurisdictional processes of decision making. There is particular attention for the European literature on inter-governmental committee systems. Secondly, the paper presents initial findings from an explorative study of Australia's inter-governmental machinery in the realms of health and mental health care services. This explorative study was based upon an initial 26 elite interviews from respondents working (or having worked in) Australia's inter-governmental machinery, including some respondents from representatives of relevant Commonwealth semi-autonomous bodies. The researcher also observed two inter-governmental committee proceedings although reported data here draws only from interviews. These findings provide a first insight into the inner workings of Australia's inter-governmental health machinery. It is argued that there has been evidence of mutual learning from Australia's National Health Performance initiatives, and, exchanges and recommendations for future research to further investigate and pinpoint the causal processes through which mutual learning occurs are provided.


This paper presents the main achievements of a hydrometallurgical process to recover base and precious metals from waste printed circuit boards (WPCB). The technology comprises a first leaching process performed in a two-step counter current way with sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide for base metals solubilization and a consecutive cross leaching process with thiourea, ferric sulfate and sulfuric acid to extract precious metals. Furthermore, the reach solutions are subjected to cementation procedure with zinc powder to recover the elements of interests as metal powders. The spent solution achieved after cementation of precious metals is partially recycled within the process and the other part is treated by Fenton process and then neutralized with lime. Considering the achieved results at the laboratory level, the entire procedure was simulated using SuperPro Designer software to determine the process economy for an industrial plant. Besides this, the use of this software allows achieving the material balance of a process and the design of the plant. As a result, the process implementation at a larger scale is simulated and the main issues that can result in such a case can be determined and solved.


Much of the power of a computer tutor comes from its ability to assess students. In some domains, including oral reading, assessing the proficiency of a student is a challenging task for a computer. Our approach for assessing student reading proficiency is to use data that a computer tutor collects through its interactions with a student to estimate his performance on a human-administered test of oral reading fluency. A model with data collected from the tutor's speech recognizer output correlated, within-grade, at 0.78 on average with student performance on the fluency test. For assessing students, data from the speech recognizer were more useful than student help-seeking behavior. However, adding help-seeking behavior increased the average within-grade correlation to 0.83. These results show that speech recognition is a powerful source of data about student performance, particularly for reading.


A study was undertaken to investigate the fish species composition and their temporal
and spatial distribution and feeding guilds in the Sg. Pulai seagrass bed. Fish specimens
for the study were collected from April 2002 to June 2003 using the trammel nets of
640m in total length and 1.6 m height. Fishes were sampled from three subtidal Sg.
Pulai seagrass beds namely Tanjung (Tg.) Adang Darat Shoal, Tg. Adang Laut Shoal
and Merambong Shoal. A total of 2371 fish specimens were caught from the three sites
representing 72 species and 37 different families.
Six most dominant fish species comprising of Triacanthus biaculeatus, Arius maculatus,
Arius tenuispinis, Plotosus lineatus, Anodontostoma chacunda and Hi/sa kelee were
selected for the study on feeding guilds. Analysis on the feeding guild showed two
different types of food-based component viz animal and plant origins. Bivalves,
gastropods, crustaceans, copepods and polychaete worms were amongst the major gut
content of the animal-based diets while seagrass fragment made up the sole plant-based section. The animal-based diets were consistently recorded from T. biaculeatus A.
maculatus A. tenuispinis and P. linaetus stomach contents. All the four fish species
showed a carnivorous type of feeding habit. The gut contents of A. chacunda and H.
kelee were comparatively filled up with seagrass fragments, bivalves, gastropods and
copepods, indicating the omnivorous type of feeding mode of the two clupeids species.
These results suggested two major modes of feeding guilds that exist amongst the
seagrass fishes. Throbab analyzed showed the similar results with the RLG values.
In terms of spatial distribution, Tg. Adang Laut Shoal was inhabited by 28 families that
consisted of 43 fish species and 11 of them were inclusive of species from the other study
sites. Tg. Adang Darat Shoal was inhabited by 23 families and 37 different species of
fishes. Four species found here exclusive to this seagrass bed and not recorded from the
other two study sites. The fish caught within Merambong shoal seagrass bed were almost
similar in species to the Tg. Adang Laut and Tg. Adang Darat shoals with the exception
of Dasyatis zugei and Gerres filamentous. A total of 21 families and 28 species of
seagrass fishes were finally recorded in the Merambong Shoal.
The study also revealed that several fish species were exclusively confirmed to one
particular habitat either the vegetated or the non-vegetated sites. The results also
indicated that families Leiognathidae and Engraulidae were consistently been recorded
around the seagrass areas throughout the study period. In addition, the results may also
indicates that other fish families were not permanent dwellers of the Sg. Pulai seagrass
beds and their presence in the study areas could well be due to occasional feeding and
spawning activities.


beddage without detriment to the service they are able to give. For example, Dr. Gordon Mills at Central Middlesex Hospital has reduced geriatric beds by 17% since his appointment six years ago, while markedly increasing the activity of the department and eliminating the previously considerable waiting list. While I fully accept Dr. Boyd's important point that an arbitrarily imposed bed reduction may cripple an active geriatric service, this does not, in my view, prove that in Greenwich 178 beds is below the "critical number of beds . . . with which a high-turnover/no-waiting-list service can be given." It seems to me likely that had Dr. Boyd been provided with only 179 beds when he was appointed he would not have taken on those extra long-stay patients "to help out other agencies under stress." He would have cut his coat according to his cloth and, I believe, would have established an active service, just as he did with 200 beds. The stimulating paper by Dr. T. D. O'Brien and his colleagues (3 November, p. 277) also prompts me to reply to a number of earlier comments on our paver to the effect that our new department at this hospital, which had quickly reached a highturnover/no-waiting-list situation, would inevitably "silt up" when the effect of the bonus of initial empty beds had been dissipated. Dr. O'Brien and his colleagues describe a 17-year experience in Oldham, where the geriatric department has steadily become more active-a powerful counterblast to those who gloomily prophesy silting up for active departments and whose views are in any case challenged by Dr. P. W. Hutton (23 December 1972, p. 730) and by Dr. E. Woodford-Williams (27 January, p. 232). May I assist in the further eclipse of these pessimistic forebodings by reporting that, three years after opening, the Northwick Park geriatric service has still to silt up, and may I also extend the information on my previous department (Enfield and Tottenham Groups), which has yet to silt up after a total period of 11 years, turnover remaining between six and seven admissions/ bed/year.-I am, etc., H. M. HODKINSON Geriatric Department, Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, Middx


The following research focuses on trade union organisations, and in particular trade union officialdom in Egypt. The study examines the extent to which trade union officials at the various levels of the trade union hierarchy are reacting to reforms instigated by structural adjustment policies. The adoption of structural adjustment and economic reform measures as proposed by the World Bank and IMF have resulted in the government's withdrawal of some of the benefits and privileges it accorded to workers. Public sector workers are particularly affected by these changes, thereby posing a challenge to trade union officialdom, since the bulk of trade union membership is within the public sector. Trade union officials are reacting to the reform measures by trying to balance their role as representatives of workers' interests and their role in administering state policy. Whereas in the past these two roles were reconcilable, however, with liberalisation of the economy and the adoption of structural adjustment measures that is no longer tenable. Trade unionism has been weakened by the incorporation of union officials within government corporate structures, making it more difficult for trade union officialdom to challenge the reform measures adopted by the government. Rather, trade union officials are opting for `co-operation' both with the government and with management in enterprises, to the cost of workers. In enterprises, trade union officials emphasise that the interests of work and workers are inseparable. At the level of the confederation and general unions, union officials present themselves as working to keep workers' rights, but also as partners with the government in its drive for growth. By so doing trade union officials are de-politicising trade unionism, and instead focus on economic gains. Union officials are redefining their role away from workers. Trade union action at the various levels is not based on what workers want or demand, but rather on what trade union officials want, in the belief that workers do not truly know their interests. As a result, trade union action has promoted the interests of union officials rather than that of the workers. Trade unionism has become in a sense a shell without a content. However, there is evidence that there are pressures to democratise trade unionism and make it more responsive to worker demands. These pressures are from within the worker base, from trade union officials particularly at the enterprise level who are affilited to political parties, and from external forces like the Islamists. However these forces have their limitations, particularly in the face of institutionalised sectors that are capable of reproducing themselves and promoting their interests.


ABSTRACT Participation in decision-making has successively developed into a guiding principle at both EU and national level. However, diverse perspectives exist on what the role of different interests in participative processes should be, and the legal rules regarding participation varies between different sectors; from clearly defined to virtually non-existent requirements. This may have adverse effects on the legitimacy of decisions and decision-making. This paper reviews the role of participation in the planning process in relation to natural resource development in Sweden, as guided by EU and international law. Based on the notion of effective participation, the study illustrates the potential clashes that may result from different conceptions of participation, for instance, at various levels of governance, as well as from disparate principles for implementation in different sectors.


We explore the detectability of M2 tidal tilt in the western part of the United States, using seismic velocity data from 40 stations in the EarthScope Transportable Array (TA) network. We augment these data with data from two additional stations both collocated at the Piñon Flats Observatory (PFO) in southern California (networks TA and Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology [IRIS] International Deployment of Accelerometers [IDA]). We find a good agreement between the acceleration-tilt derived from the TA seismic data with the theoretical model (body Earth and ocean loading for M2). These results are also consistent with prior studies using borehole tiltmeters operated at PFO (Wyatt and Berger, 1980; Wyatt et al., 1982). We find statistically significant M2 tilt anomaly responses that correlate with large lateral variations in rock properties in Yellowstone National Park, which stem from volcanic sources in the region. We also examined deviations in the M2 tidal tilt mode in regions with other geological features including the Cascades volcanic range and a large plutonic body located in Idaho and eastern Oregon. Of these, only the Cascadia data show evidence of lateral variances of elastic properties, similar to that of the Yellowstone Caldera (YC). We conclude that tilt measurements from seismic noise data can successfully identify relatively large structural changes in elastic properties of the crustal Earth (e.g., the YC) and significant change in the elastic properties (e.g., Cascadia subduction zone). But, when the features are smaller and/or have a more muted variation in the elastic properties (e.g., the plutonic body in Idaho and eastern Oregon), the induced changes in the tilt values are too small to be detected using TA data.


The patenting of software has increased significantly. Regardless of any personal bias as to the existence of software patents, it is a trend that is unlikely to end anytime soon. As a result, the open source movement may be threatened by the proliferation of non-meritorious or overly broad patents. Peer-to-Patent provides a means for mitigating the limitations that may be placed upon the open source community by software patents, as the program allows the open source community to participate in the peer review of pending patent applications. Members of the open source community are knowledgeable, interested parties with a unique stake in the software patent debate and thus are capable of making a significant contribution to improving the current system.


This Article serves as the first law review essay to engage the feminist debates regarding sex work and human rights in the African context. The Article surveys "antiprostitution" and "pro-sex-worker" feminist arguments and activities in sub-Saharan Africa; explores the debate surrounding the legal frameworks of legalization, decriminalization, prohibition, and abolition of prostitution in a number of African countries including Senegal, where prostitution is legal and regulated, and South Africa where prostitution remains illegal despite civil society advocacy for decriminalization; and calls for the empowerment of African sex workers by arguing for a human rights-based transformation in African governments' legal and policy posture towards sex work.


Recent studies show that graph convolutional network (GCN) often performs worse for low-degree nodes, exhibiting the so-called structural unfairness for graphs with long-tailed degree distributions prevalent in the real world. Graph contrastive learning (GCL), which marries the power of GCN and contrastive learning, has emerged as a promising self-supervised approach for learning node representations. How does GCL behave in terms of structural fairness? Surprisingly, we find that representations obtained by GCL methods are already fairer to degree bias than those learned by GCN. We theoretically show that this fairness stems from intra-community concentration and inter-community scatter properties of GCL, resulting in a much clear community structure to drive low-degree nodes away from the community boundary. Based on our theoretical analysis, we further devise a novel graph augmentation method, called GRAph contrastive learning for DEgree bias (GRADE), which applies different strategies to low- and high-degree nodes. Extensive experiments on various benchmarks and evaluation protocols validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


BACKGROUND
People with intellectual disabilities have a high risk of osteoporosis and fractures, which could partly be as a result of vitamin D deficiency.

AIMS
To compare the serum vitamin D (25(OH)D) levels of 155 patients with intellectual disabilities under psychiatric care and 192 controls, investigate potential risk factors for vitamin D deficiency in people with intellectual disabilities and assess available treatments.

METHOD
Cross-sectional observational study followed by treatment evaluation. Results Almost twice as many patients with intellectual disabilities had vitamin D deficiency (25(OH)D <50 nmol/l) compared with controls (77.3% v. 39.6%, P<0.0001). In the intellectual disabilities group, winter season (P<0.0001), dark skin pigmentation (P<0.0001), impaired mobility (P = 0.002) and obesity (P = 0.001) were independently associated with lower serum 25(OH)D. In most patients, 800 IU colecalciferol daily normalised 25(OH)D levels.

CONCLUSIONS
Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent in people with intellectual disabilities, partly because of insufficient exposure to sunlight. Screening and treatment strategies, aiming to reduce these patients' high fracture risk, should be introduced. Similar strategies may be required in other psychiatric populations at risk for fractures and with a tendency to spend excessive time indoors.


A three span, skewed, reinforced concrete slab bridge was field tested to destruction by the authors. Before the actual destructive test, nondestructive tests were performed to determine the condition of the bridge. The tests were a truck load test and modal analysis. The truck load test consisted of mounting about 30 instruments under the bridge and monitoring deflection under truck loads. The recorded deflections were compared with analytical FEM predictions. It was possible to determine that there was damage to the shoulders of the bridge, even though this damage was, at the time, hidden by a layer as asphalt. The modal analysis consisted of dividing the bridge deck into a fine grid. Accelerometers were placed at some of the grid points and the grid points were then struck with an impact hammer. Using the recorded accelerometer data, it was possible to determine the vibrational mode shapes of the bridge. These shapes could then be compared with those obtained from theoretical models to find damage to the shoulders of the bridge.


Erik Lundberg (2014): A Pluralist State? Civil Society Organizations' Access to the Swedish Policy Process 1964-2009. Örebro Studies in Political Science 38 Including civil society organizations in the policy process is a distinctive trait of democratic governance. But, while being highly valuable from a democratic point of view, not all civil society organizations are represented in the policy process. This dissertation draws attention to the role of the government in shaping the representation of civil society organizations in the Swedish government consultation referred to as the 'remiss procedure'. The overall aim is to increase empirical and theoretical understanding of civil society organizations' access to the national Swedish policy process. Drawing on various empirical data sources, it analyzes how access has changed during the second half of the 20th century, the factors influencing access, and the significance of the access provided by the government. The results are based on four empirical studies, and show that the government has encouraged an increasing number and more diverse types of civil society organizations to be represented in the remiss procedure. In addition, organizations with plenty of resources, such as labor and business organizations, are not overrepresented. However, access is slightly skewed in favor of civil society organizations with an insider position within other access points at national government level, which is consistent with a privileged pluralistic pattern of interest representation. In addition, civil society organizations seem to be invited into an arena for political influence of less relevance. Theoretically, the dissertation moves beyond the neo-corporatist perspective that dominated Swedish research during the second half of the 20th century by drawing attention to five different theoretical lenses: pluralism, neo-corporatism, political opportunity structures, policy network theory, and resource exchange theory. It concludes that a variety of theories are needed for access to be understood.


In 1814 Basil Montagu, by now an extremely busy member of the Chancery bar took up residence at 25 Bedford Square in fashionable Bloomsbury. Together with his wife, large family and servants he continued to live at this address for the next 20 years or so. On Sundays Mrs Montagu often reigned over a salon that attracted prominent literary figures amongst whom were several long-standing friends of her husband. At the time of their marriage in 1808 Montagu had already been married twice before; his wife had been a widow for about six years and was bringing up her daughter who would one day as Mrs Proctor have her own salon frequented by a new generation of poets and authors. Montagu's chambers were at 10 New Square; his practice was mainly concerned with insolvency matters, serving as a Commissioner in Bankruptcy at the Guildhall. He was a prolific writer on commercial law but is best remembered, if at all, for his many books on bankruptcy and for a lengthy series of law reports. He also wrote numerous pamphlets on contemporary topics such as Catholic and Jewish emancipation. Additionally he published a book of essays one of which dealt with the general principles of law reform and a best selling philosophical anthology. If Bedford Square reflects Montagu's commitment to literature, then New Square represents his professional dedication; sometimes these two segments of his life came together; he acted as junior counsel for Shelley in the proceedings brought by the poet after his wife's death to obtain custody of their children; on at least one occasion Coleridge arrived at chambers to discuss Montagu's Francis Bacon project; urgent steps were taken by him and Bryan Waller Proctor, his step-son in law, to rescue Hazlitt from imprisonment for debt. In this article little attention is given to Montagu's legal career, his role as founder of the Legal & General Insurance Company, or to his work after 1836 as the first Accountant-General in Bankruptcy. Instead it concentrates on his literary activities and private life so often clouded by tragedy. It is suggested that when Montagu died at Boulogne in 1851 he was living there in exile fearful of arrest for debt at home resulting from involvement with the financial disaster of his principal publisher, William Pickering. His death does not end the story that must continue with the hunt, still in progress, for his voluminous papers, manuscripts and other documents together with reminiscences about him. Our research indicates that notwithstanding a belief that much of this material is lost this is by no means the case.


Developing new technology for artistic practice requires other methods than classical problem solving. Some of the challenges involved in the development of new musical instruments have affinities to the realm of wicked problems. Wicked problems are hard to define and have many different solutions that are good or bad (not true or false). The body of possible solutions to a wicked problem can be called a design space and exploring that space must be the objective of a design process. In this paper we present effective methods of iterative design and participatory design that we have used in a project developed in collaboration between the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and the University College of Opera, both in Stockholm. The methods are outlined, and examples are given of how they have been applied in specific situations. The focus lies on prototyping and evaluation with user participation. By creating and acting out scenarios with the user, and thus asking the questions through a prototype and receiving the answers through practice and exploration, we removed the bottleneck represented by language and allowed communication beyond verbalizing. Doing this, even so-called tacit knowledge could be activated and brought into the development process.


Context: Retrospective case series, database study and literature review. Forty case reports are described. Objective: To report a possible association between fluoroquinolones and uveitis. Materials and Methods: Spontaneous reports from the National Registry of Drug-Induced Ocular Side effects, World Health Organization, and Food and Drug Administration were collected on uveitis associated with systemic fluoroquinolone therapy. A literature review was performed using keywords "uveitis", "fluoroquinolones", and each individual fluoroquinolone name. Additional case reports were collected from the practices of six uveitis subspecialists and one neuro-ophthalmologist. Main Outcome Measures: Data garnered from the reports include the type of fluoroquinolone, age, gender, adverse drug reaction (ADR), dosage, duration of therapy until onset of uveitis, concomitant drugs, systemic disease, dechallenge and rechallenge data. Results: A total of 40 case reports of uveitis associated with fluoroquinolones were identified including 12 men, 27 women, and 1 case in which the gender was not specified. The median age was 54 years. Dosage varied between the different fluoroquinolone drugs, with the median dosage within the range recommended in the package insert for each different fluoroquinolone. Median time from beginning of therapy to appearance of the ADR was 13 days (range 0–20 days). Thirteen patients were 60 years or older, and one patient was taking systemic anti-inflammatory steroids. There were five positive dechallenge case reports. Discussion: According to World Health Organization criteria, the relationship between fluoroquinolone therapy and uveitis is "possible". Causality assessments are based on the time relationship of drug administration, uveitis development, and dechallenge data. Conclusions: Clinicians should be aware of a possible bilateral fluoroquinolone-associated uveitis, particularly the finding of iris transillumination and pigment dispersion.


Restorative and responsive justice can be a strategy of social work practice that builds democracy bottom-up by seeing families as building blocks of democracy and fonts of democratic sentiment. At the same time, because families are sites of the worst kinds of tyranny and the worst kinds of neglect, a rule of law is needed that imposes public human rights obligations on families. The republican ideal is that this rule of law that constrains people in families should come from the people. Restorative and responsive justice has a strategy for the justice of the people to bubble up into the justice of the law and for the justice of the law to filter down into the justice of the people. The role of the social worker is to be a bridge across which both those democratic impulses are enabled to flow. The empowering side of the social work role fits the first side of the duality where the will of families bubble up; the coercive side of the social work role fits the second where the justice of the law filters down.


Since its publication fifty years ago, this work has established itself as a classic. It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises. In 1974 this book was revised and expanded, and since then it has continued to burnish Rudolf Arnheim's reputation as a groundbreaking theoretician in the fields of art and psychology.


Renal subcapsular abscess is a very rare entity that is defined by a suppurative process localized to a space between the renal capsule and the renal parenchyma. The pathogenesis and aetiology of this entity remain speculative. To our knowledge, only five cases have been reported in the English literature. We describe a 74-year old woman with renal subcapsular abscess treated with laparoscopic removal and do a review of the literature.


The overall aim of this paper is to present some ideas on how a sustainable urban transportation system might be realised, aiming at a realisation without major loss of transportation capacity and personal mobility in comparison with the present car-based system. Along the road, it also looks at what characterises such a system. In a sustainability perspective, it is not enough to consider only the tech-nical and physical aspects of a transportation systemsustainability has also social, economic, etc. dimensions. Thus, the paper compares the performance of different transportation systems in terms of some of the economic and social aspects. Here, a key point is that comparisons between different urban transport system must differentiate between different social groups. For example, the group of car users will have some particular disadvantages when they have to switch to another mode of transport for part of their mobility. Other groups may achieve large improvements in their personal mobility. The presentation pays particular attention to the use of a personal rapid transit system. The key features and technical characteristics of such a system will be presented. An outline is given of an implementation study being performed for the city of Leipzig, Germany, as a back-casting scenario futures study. Sustainability is closely associated with the issues of efficiency and sufficiency of natural resource use. Some essential aspects of this use can be described in terms of energy and material use. Therefore, some results of comparative studies of the energy and material balances of different urban transit systems are presented. These studies show that a personal rapid transit system can perform very well in this respect and thus is a strong alternative for sustainable cities.


Student dropout at higher education institutions in South Africa is an aspect that is receiving increasing attention from the various role-players who have an interest in this aspect due to the negative influence it has on students, higher education institutions, and the economy of the country. Higher education institutions that offer agriculture as a course of study also have to deal with this problem. Approximately one quarter of the students who are admitted at most agricultural training institutions are forced to discontinue their studies or do so voluntarily. Most of these cessations of study occur during or near the end of the first year of study. The cessation of studies is not the only negative aspect. The low pass rate of students at higher education institutions in South Africa is also alarming. The main object of this study was to ascertain why students discontinued their studies and why they took longer than the minimum time allowed to complete their studies. In order to substantiate this theory, an attempt was made to obtain both an international and a national perspective of the student dropout rate in general, as well as to determine what factors were responsible or contributed to successful completion of their studies by students. A background perspective of agricultural education in South Africa was included. The literature reviews are supplemented by a qualitative investigation of students who discontinued their studies specifically at agricultural higher education institutions. A case study approach was employed, in which an in-depth interview strategy was utilised to obtain descriptive and illustrative data. The study demonstrated that dropout rates can be attributed mainly to academic and/or social factors. These factors prevented adequate integration, which is essential to successful studies, from occurring. Various academic factors may be the reason for inadequate academic integration, of which the most important were unclear objectives, a lack of motivation, wrong academic expectations, a misconception of hard work, as well as a lack of the necessary explanatory knowledge in the agricultural study field. New students' academic adjustment appeared to be the most problematic factor. It appeared that new students were insufficiently prepared to make the adjustment, and in fact, less prepared for this step than was generally the case in the past. Ineffective social integration was the result of too little student participation in social activities or the absence of adequate opportunities for social activities at agricultural training institutions. Unbalanced and unhealthy social activities were often the major factors that contributed to student dropout. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that non-academic factors such as inadequate accommodation or financial problems were not significant causative factors for student dropout, but rather non-academic factors such as unbalanced or unhealthy social activities and poor time management. After the probable causes for student dropout had been established, a theoretical framework was created that could offer possible explanation for the student dropout rates at agricultural training institutions. The framework was created to establish student dropout from a longitudinal perspective, and not only to explain the phenomenon as a result of what had occurred during the time that the student was at the institution. The framework was therefore designed to explain student dropout against the background of the student, together with various factors that were related to students or the institution and which were responsible for inadequate integration. From this framework it was possible to develop individual models for specific agricultural training institutions or for one specific institution in respect of the dropout phenomenon.


AIM
To examine evolution in activities of daily living (ADL) in patients with multiple sclerosis spasticity during long-term use of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC):cannabidiol (CBD) oromucosal spray.

METHODS
Functional impairment was assessed retrospectively (prior to start of treatment) and at the present moment using a 16-item ADL survey; results were compared. A control group without add-on THC:CBD oromucosal spray was included to investigate possible recall bias.

RESULTS
ADL was maintained or slightly improved with THC:CBD oromucosal spray across treatment time (mean 31.9 months) including significant improvement in 'standing up' (p < 0.05) and trends in other items. Significant improvements (p < 0.01) with THC:CBD oromucosal spray were observed in several multiple sclerosis spasticity-related symptoms. Overall, 96.9% of patients using THC:CBD oromucosal spray had a positive global impression of change during treatment.

CONCLUSION
In this pilot study, THC:CBD oromucosal spray maintained or improved aspects of daily functioning. Further study in a larger trial is warranted.


AIMS
Before proceeding with the introduction of an overdose fatality prevention programme including teaching in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and distribution of naloxone, a pre-launch study of treatment and community samples of injecting drug misusers has been undertaken to establish (i) the extent of witnessing overdoses, (ii) the acceptability of naloxone distribution and training; and (iii) the likely impact of such measures.

DESIGN AND SETTING
Structured interview of two samples: (a) a community sample of injecting drug misusers recruited by selected privileged access interviewers (PAI) and interviewed by them in community settings and (b) a treatment sample of opiate addicts recruited from our methadone maintenance clinic (interviewed by in-house research staff).

PARTICIPANTS
(a) Three hundred and twelve injecting drug misusers with a history of having injected and currently still using injectable drugs; and (b) 142 opiate addicts in treatment at our local catchment area methadone maintenance clinic in South London.

FINDINGS
History of personal overdose was found with 38% of the community sample and 55% of the treatment sample--mainly involving opiates and in the company of friends. Most (54% and 92%, respectively) had witnessed at least one overdose (again mostly involving opiates), of whom a third had witnessed a fatal overdose. Only a few (35%) already knew of the existence and effects of naloxone. After explanation to the treatment sample, 70% considered naloxone distribution to be a good proposal. Of the 13% opposed to the proposal, half thought it may lead them to use more drugs. Eighty-nine per cent of those who had witnessed an overdose fatality would have administered naloxone if it had been available. We estimate that at least two-thirds of witnessed overdose fatalities could be prevented by administration of home-based supplies of naloxone.

CONCLUSIONS
Substantial proportions of both community and treatment samples of drug misusers have witnessed an overdose death which could have been prevented through prior training in resuscitation techniques and administration of home-based supplies of naloxone. Such a new approach would be supported by most drug misusers. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that it is appropriate to proceed to a carefully constructed trial of naloxone distribution.


LiDAR point cloud analysis is a core task for 3D computer vision, especially for autonomous driving. However, due to the severe sparsity and noise interference in the single sweep LiDAR point cloud, the accurate semantic segmentation is non-trivial to achieve. In this paper, we propose a novel sparse LiDAR point cloud semantic segmentation framework assisted by learned contextual shape priors. In practice, an initial semantic segmentation (SS) of a single sweep point cloud can be achieved by any appealing network and then flows into the semantic scene completion (SSC) module as the input. By merging multiple frames in the LiDAR sequence as supervision, the optimized SSC module has learned the contextual shape priors from sequential LiDAR data, completing the sparse single sweep point cloud to the dense one. Thus, it inherently improves SS optimization through fully end-to-end training. Besides, a Point-Voxel Interaction (PVI) module is proposed to further enhance the knowledge fusion between SS and SSC tasks, i.e., promoting the interaction of incomplete local geometry of point cloud and complete voxel-wise global structure. Furthermore, the auxiliary SSC and PVI modules can be discarded during inference without extra burden for SS. Extensive experiments confirm that our JS3C-Net achieves superior performance on both SemanticKITTI and SemanticPOSS benchmarks, i.e., 4% and 3% improvement correspondingly.


type="main"> We investigate a major turning point in mortality trends at adult ages that occurred for many low-mortality countries in the late 1960s or early 1970s. We analyze patterns of total and cause-specific mortality over the past 60 years using data from the Human Mortality Database and the World Health Organization. We focus on four broad categories of causes of death: heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, smoking-related cancers, and all other cancers. We use a two-slope regression model to assess the timing and magnitude of turning points in mortality trends over this era, making separate analyses by sex, age, and cause of death. The age pattern of temporal changes is given particular attention. Our results demonstrate convincingly that period-based factors were very significant in the onset of the "cardiovascular revolution" in the years around 1970. In general, although cohort processes cannot be ruled out as a driver of mortality change in recent decades (especially for mortality due to smoking-related cancers), the evidence reviewed here suggests that period factors have been the dominant force behind the mortality trends of high-income countries during this era.


Abstract.
 Estimates of wildlife population viability through measurements of contaminant stressors, such as water mercury concentrations, were modified with variables specific to New York's Adirondack Park to develop a wildlife criterion value for the Common Loon (Gavia immer). Biotic and abiotic samples were collected for mercury analysis on 44 Adirondack lakes over a 2-year period (2003 to 2004). From 1998 to 2007, Common Loon blood samples were collected for mercury analysis from the 44 lakes, loon feather samples from 40 lakes, and nonviable eggs from 29 lakes. It was determined that 2.00 ng Hg/L or less in the water was small enough to prevent male Adirondack Common Loons from accumulating mercury in levels high enough to impact reproductive success and behavior, while a water sample of 1.69 ng Hg/L or less was small enough to not cause impacts to female Common Loons. These wildlife criterion values are greater than the wildlife criterion value of 1.30 ng Hg/L applied to avian species by the Great Lakes Water Quality Initiative. The Common Loon-based wildlife criterion value provides a valuable estimate of the mercury thresholds associated with biotic impacts due to mercury contamination in aquatic ecosystems, enabling legislators to integrate these standards into policies that better protect environmental quality. Based on the water samples collected, it was estimated that the wildlife criterion value accurately predicted the protection of 61% of female and 73% of male Adirondack loons. More rigorous sampling of the abiotic compartment over a wider temporal and spatial scale is necessary to fully understand how water quality parameters relate to Common Loon reproductive success.


We propose the new method of tool use with a tool-body assimilation model based on body babbling and a neurodynamical system for robots to use tools. Almost all existing studies for robots to use tools require predetermined motions and tool features; the motion patterns are limited and the robots cannot use novel tools. Other studies fully search for all available parameters for novel tools, but this leads to massive amounts of calculations. To solve these problems, we took the following approach: we used a humanoid robot model to generate random motions based on human body babbling. These rich motion experiences were used to train recurrent and deep neural networks for modeling a body image. Tool features were self-organized in parametric bias, modulating the body image according to the tool in use. Finally, we designed a neural network for the robot to generate motion only from the target image. Experiments were conducted with multiple tools for manipulating a cylindrical target object. The results show that the tool-body assimilation model is capable of motion generation.


An efficient sampling algorithm for image scanning is proposed, suitable to represent "interesting" objects, defined as a set of spatially close measured values that springs out from a background noise (as in applied geophysics in the process of anomaly detection). This method generates a map of pixels randomly distributed in the plane and able to cover all the image with a reduced number of points with respect to a regular scanning. Simulation results show that a saving factor of about 50% is obtained without information loss. This result can be proved also by using a simplified model of the sampling mechanism. The algorithm is able to detect the presence of an object emerging from a low energy background and to adapt the sampling interval to the shape of the detected object. In this way, all of the interesting objects are well represented and can be adequately reconstructed, while the roughly sampling in the background produces an imperfect reconstruction. Simulation results show that the method is feasible with good performances and moderate complexity.


Doveweed is an aggressive, naturalized summer annual weed that rapidly invades warm-season turfgrass species, especially in residential lawns, and few herbicides can effectively control it. Because of these challenges, a well-designed management strategy is necessary for doveweed control. This 4-page fact sheet describes identification, growth requirements, chemical control and cultural practices. Written by Ramon G. Leon and Bryan Unruh, and published by the UF Department of Agronomy, June 2015.