Background: Food borne pathogens are of the main concerns of food producers and consumers and Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus create a lot of problems worldwide. The aim of this study was to evaluate antibacterial effects of monolaurin, sorbic acid and potassium sorbate on S. aureus and E. coli at different pH values and NaCl concentrations. Methods: Micro-well dilution assay was used to determine antimicrobial potency of monolaurin, sorbic acid and potassium sorbate. First, stock solutions of each antimicrobial compounds were prepared and then two-fold dilution method was used to obtain final concentrations of tested antimicrobials. A 96 well microplate was inoculated with different concentrations of antimicrobials and bacterial inoculums (final inoculums was approximately 5×10 5 CFU/ml). After incubation, growth of E. coli and S. aureus were evaluated. Statistical analysis was made by the analysis of variance using SPSS software, version 16.0. Results: The MICs of monolaurin, sorbic acid and potassium sorbate were respectively >4000, >5000, >10000 µg/ml for E. coli, and 128, 1250 and 2500 µg/ml for S. aureus. The results showed that all of these compounds had considerable effect on S. aureus while E. coli was less sensitive. It should be noted that, monolaurin had strong antimicrobial effect on E. coli when used in combination with ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid. Conclusion: According to the results of this study, monolaurin and sorbates can be used effectively as food preservative and growth inhibitor of these food borne pathogens. Using NaCl and/or lower pH values may fortify their bacteriostatic effects.


Ensemble

A) Coat of cream and orange wool gabardine. Approximately knee-length cream wool coat, with rounded neckline. Asymmetrical front opening set to left of center with 5 large circular white ceramic or plastic buttons with bound buttonholes. Long sleeves with orange cuffs buttoning with two matching buttons. Three orange flap pockets - two on right, one on left - with bound slit pocket under flap. Collar, opening, cuffs, and pocket flaps of orange wool gabardine. Lined in cream silk crepe.

Designer's label inside at back collar: "Norell".
Retailer's label at inside right seam: "Esther Wolf / Houston"

B) Dress of bright orange wool gaberdine. Knee-length, with rounded neckline. Sleeveless. Bust darts. Wide straps. Left shoulder with 5 hook-and-eyes closure. Left side zipper at bodice, and second zipper and three hook and eyes at skirt. Skirt slightly gathered at natural waistline. Side seam pockets. Lined in orange silk.

Designer's label at inside skirt lining seam: "Norman Norell / New York"
Union Label near designer's label.
Care label inside at left side seam: "DO NOT USE STEAM IRON"
Small label at inside front neckline: "FRONT"


Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew, by Matthew Biberman. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Pp. xii + 260. Hardcover $89.95. Reviewer: PETER BEREK Matthew Biberman's book on masculinity and anti-Semitism reflects wide reading, imaginative ingenuity, and great ambition. But the book is better at identifying provocative issues than at convincing this reader that its argument hangs together point by point. Early modern English literature is only a starting point for Biberman's argument. For him, representations of Jews both reveal and enable a series of turning points in Western culture. The first turn, from a classical conception of masculinity apparently synonymous with Christian knighthood to modern capitalist bourgeois subjectivity, seems to occur in the brief moment between The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice. Modernity then gives way to postmodernity at Hitler's holocaust, an event that, according to Biberman, empties anti-Semitism of content and makes it a purely aesthetic phenomenon. Biberman asserts that classical masculinity is in conflict with Christianity because of premodern culture's embrace of a gender ideal that excludes women. The "hypermasculine" figure of the Jew-devil offers Christian culture a way of stigmatizing excesses of masculinity by projecting them onto the Jew. As capitalism's more feminized version of manhood emerges at the start of the seventeenth century, a new, more "sensitive" man sees the feminized "Jewsissy" as the floor beneath which he cannot sink, just as the Jew-devil was a ceiling above which hypermasculinity could not rise (the structural metaphor is Biberman's). Yet the spectral presence of the Jew-devil haunts the Jewsissy, and nineteenth-century Gothic makes both available to Nazism. This narrative of Western history is not on its face compelling; one wants evidence and details, which Biberman tries to supply. He does so in chapters that attend to specific, and largely literary, topics. Chapter 1 analyzes medieval and early modern representations of Jews in works such as Chaucer's "Prioress's Tale," the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, The Jew of Malta, and The Merchant of Venice. Chapter 2 talks about Jewish women: Marlowe's Abigail, Shakespeare's Jessica, and (astonishingly) Jonson's Dol Common in The Alchemist. Chapter 3 contrasts Donne and Milton. Donne's masculine poetry evinces "ecstatic discourse offered by a male to a male deity" (5); the more modern Milton heteronormatively acknowledges that a male poet needs a female (and therefore non-Christian, says Biberman) object of devotion. Modern heterosexuality, Biberman says, impedes men's intense identification with Christ and also mutes the demonization of the Jew. Discussing both Milton and Elizabeth Cary, chapter 4 argues that divorce was more available than usually thought in Renaissance England (Biberman cites no new legal or historical evidence). One version of divorce-Mariam's-renounces sexuality. But Milton and Cary's Salome see divorce as a way of changing sex partners, and in this sense links divorce, feminine carnality, and Jewish sinfulness. Thus divorce "secures the Jew-sissy's ascendancy in the cultural imagination" (5). Chapter 5 shifts to the twentieth-century "Milton controversy" and argues that T. S. Eliot's anti-Semitism created Eliot's antipathy to a Milton whose grand style was in fact a polyglot, cosmopolitan Jewish babble rather than the plain speech of laudably Anglican Donne or Herbert. Chapter 6 reads Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula as rewritings of The Merchant of Venice that attempt to materialize the Jewdevil to replace the Jew-sissy. The book ends with a brief discussion of Otto Weininger's 1903 Sex and Character, which Biberman says calls for an elimination of both women and Jews in order to facilitate a reunion of God and God's creation. …


Combine harvesters are the source a large amount of noise in agriculture. Depending on different working conditions, the noise of such machines can have a significant effect on the hearing condition of drivers. Therefore, it is highly important to study the noise signals caused by these machines and find solutions for reducing the produced noise. The present study was carried out is order to obtain the fractal dimension (FD) of the noise signals in Sampo and John Deere combine harvesters in different operational conditions. The noise signals of the combines were recorded with different engine speeds, operational conditions, gear states, and locations. Four methods of direct estimations of the FD of the waveform in the time domain with three sliding windows with lengths of 50, 100, and 200 ms were employed. The results showed that the Fractal Dimension / Sound Pressure Level [dB] in John Deere and Sampo combines varied in the ranges of 1.44/96.8 to 1.57/103.2 and 1.23/92.3 to 1.51/104.1, respectively. The cabins of Sampo and John Deere combines reduced and enhanced these amounts, respectively. With an increase in the length of the sliding windows and the engine speed of the combines, the amount of FD increased. In other words, the size of the suitable window depends on the extraction method of calculating the FD. The results also showed that the type of the gearbox used in the combines could have a tangible effect on the trend of changes in the FD.


Curt Flood in the Media examines the public discourse surrounding Curt Flood (1938-1997), the star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals throughout the sixties. In 1969, Flood was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. At the time, all Major League Baseball players were subject to the reserve clause, which essentially bound a player to work in perpetuity for his original team, unless traded for another player or sold for cash, in which case he worked under the same reserve conditions for the next team. Flood refused the trade on a matter of principle, arguing that Major League Baseball had violated both U.S. antitrust laws and the 13th Amendment's prohibition of involuntary servitude. In a defiant letter to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn asking for his contractual release, Flood infamously wrote, ""after twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes."" Most significantly, Flood appeared on national television with Howard Cosell and described himself as a ""well-paid slave."" Explosive controversy ensued. Khan examines the ways in which the media constructed the case and Flood's persona. By examining the mainstream press, the black press, and primary sources, including Flood's autobiography, Khan exposes the complexities of what it means to be a prominent black American athlete--in 1969 and today.


The rearrangement and expression of human T cell receptor (TCR)-gamma and -delta gene segments in clonal and polyclonal populations of early fetal and postnatal human TCR-gamma/delta thymocytes were examined. The data suggest that the TCR-gamma and -delta loci rearrange in an ordered and coordinated fashion. Initial rearrangements at the TCR-delta locus join V delta 2 to D delta 3, and initial rearrangements at the TCR- gamma locus join downstream V gamma gene segments (V gamma 1.8 and V gamma 2) to upstream J gamma gene segments associated with C gamma 1. These rearrangements are characterized by minimal junctional diversity. At later times there is a switch at the TCR-delta locus such that V delta 1 is joined to upstream D delta gene segments, and a switch at the TCR-gamma locus such that upstream V gamma gene segments are joined to downstream J gamma gene segments associated with C gamma 2. These rearrangements are characterized by extensive junctional diversity. Programmed rearrangement explains in part the origin of discrete subpopulations of peripheral blood TCR-gamma/delta lymphocytes that have been defined in previous studies. In addition, cytokine production by early fetal and postnatal TCR-gamma/delta thymocyte clones was examined. Fetal thymocyte clones produced significant levels of IL-4 and IL-5 following stimulation, whereas postnatal thymocyte clones did not produce these cytokines. Thus, these cell populations may represent functionally distinct subsets as well.


We consider the problem of optimizing a black-box function based on noisy bandit feedback. Kernelized bandit algorithms have shown strong empirical and theoretical performance for this problem. They heavily rely on the assumption that the model is well-specified, however, and can fail without it. Instead, we introduce a \emph{misspecified} kernelized bandit setting where the unknown function can be $\epsilon$--uniformly approximated by a function with a bounded norm in some Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS). We design efficient and practical algorithms whose performance degrades minimally in the presence of model misspecification. Specifically, we present two algorithms based on Gaussian process (GP) methods: an optimistic EC-GP-UCB algorithm that requires knowing the misspecification error, and Phased GP Uncertainty Sampling, an elimination-type algorithm that can adapt to unknown model misspecification. We provide upper bounds on their cumulative regret in terms of $\epsilon$, the time horizon, and the underlying kernel, and we show that our algorithm achieves optimal dependence on $\epsilon$ with no prior knowledge of misspecification. In addition, in a stochastic contextual setting, we show that EC-GP-UCB can be effectively combined with the regret bound balancing strategy and attain similar regret bounds despite not knowing $\epsilon$.


Max Weber and Hannah Arendt are usually read together as theorists of the political, attacking the modern assimilation of politics to economics. They are taken to differ only in how they conceive the political: Weber, as domination, and Arendt, as action. This paper argues that readers have missed relevant differences in their thought because they have not compared Weber's neo-Kantian philosophy of value with Arendt's phenomenological method. Through such a comparison, this paper advances two claims. First, it argues that Arendt, unlike Weber, is a theorist not of the political but rather of the possibility of non-subsumptive relationships between politics and the economic. Second, it argues that Arendt has a more nuanced view of domination than either her admirers or critics admit. Against Weber's charismatic politics of the extraordinary, Arendt thus opens space for a radical democratic critique of political economy, even if she does not always pursue the implications of her insights.


As this year draws to a close, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the progress of Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology Review during 2014.

An increased issue frequency compared with previous years has meant a rise in the number of manuscripts published, from 11 in 2012, to 23 in 2013, and rising to 32 in 2014.

All of the review articles that have appeared in the journal have passed through at least one round of double-blind peer review, with the average time from initial submission to first decision of 26 days. Most papers then undergo minor or major revision and at least one further round of peer review (just four papers were accepted without revision). I then conduct a final review of all papers myself before their final acceptance and publication. The average time from submission to acceptance of published papers in 2014 has been 10 weeks. The support of the journal's peer review board and members of the wider cardiology community who have been called on to review papers in their specialist areas, and the authors who have worked with them to develop and refine their papers, have been integral to the success of the peer-review process.

Three issues of Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology Review are planned next year – to be published in April, August and November 2015. We hope to publish an increasing number of articles online first, to create a steady flow of new, relevant content to the journal's website, www.aerjournal.com.

Thank you for your contribution as readers, reviewers and authors, which has been essential to the success of the journal in 2014. We look forward to your continuing support over the coming year.

Dr Demosthenes Katritsis, Editor-in-Chief


Planar motion is an important and frequently occurring situation in mobile robotics applications. This thesis concerns estimation of ego-motion and pose of a single downwards oriented camera under the assumptions of planar motion and known internal camera parameters. The so called essential matrix (or its uncalibrated counterpart, the fundamental matrix) is frequently used in computer vision applications to compute a reconstruction in 3D of the camera locations and the observed scene. However, if the observed points are expected to lie on a plane - e.g. the ground plane - this makes the determination of these matrices an ill-posed problem. Instead, methods based on homographies are better suited to this situation.One section of this thesis is concerned with the extraction of the camera pose and ego-motion from such homographies. We present both a direct SVD-based method and an iterative method, which both solve this problem. The iterative method is extended to allow simultaneous determination of the camera tilt from several homographies obeying the same planar motion model. This extension improves the robustness of the original method, and it provides consistent tilt estimates for the frames that are used for the estimation. The methods are evaluated using experiments on both real and synthetic data.Another part of the thesis deals with the problem of computing the homographies from point correspondences. By using conventional homography estimation methods for this, the resulting homography is of a too general class and is not guaranteed to be compatible with the planar motion assumption. For this reason, we enforce the planar motion model at the homography estimation stage with the help of a new homography solver using a number of polynomial constraints on the entries of the homography matrix. In addition to giving a homography of the right type, this method uses only \num{2.5} point correspondences instead of the conventional four, which is good \eg{} when used in a RANSAC framework for outlier removal. (Less)


Cleanroom energy benchmarking data shows that chiller plant designs and operating efficiencies varied significantly from cleanroom to cleanroom. While system optimization is critical to the overall energy efficiency of chiller plants, the operating efficiency of chilled water and condenser pumps, along with chiller efficiency and cooling tower efficiency, is a major factor in the overall system efficiency. The design and operating efficiency of water pumps directly affects energy use for such facilities. Figure 1 shows benchmarked HVAC energy end use in a semiconductor cleanroom facility. In this case, the water pumps collectively accounted for 17% of the total energy use. Figure 2 shows the electric power demand of the components in a chiller plant system. Pumps accounted for 18% of the total power demand for the whole chiller plant. It is important to design, select, operate, and control water-pumping systems to achieve high efficiency and to lower life-cycle costs for cleanrooms and their adjacent spaces.


The evidence for the Little Ice Age, the most important fluctuation in global climate in historical times, is most dramatically represented by the advance of mountain glaciers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their retreat since about 1850. The effects on the landscape and the daily life of people have been particularly apparent in Norway and the Alps. This major book places an extensive body of material relating to Europe, in the form of documentary evidence of the history of the glaciers, their portrayal in paintings and maps, and measurements made by scientists and others, within a global perspective. It shows that the glacial history of mountain regions all over the world displays a similar pattern of climatic events. Furthermore, fluctuations on a comparable scale have occurred at intervals of a millennium or two throughout the last ten thousand years since the ice caps of North America and northwest Europe melted away. This is the first scholarly work devoted to the Little Ice Age, by an author whose research experience of the subject has been extensive. This book includes large numbers of maps, diagrams and photographs, many not published elsewhere, and very full bibliographies. It is a definitive work on the subject, and an excellent focus for the work of economic and social historians as well as glaciologists, climatologists, geographers, and specialists in mountain environment.


Discussions about books and ways of reading play an important role in the curriculum for the Swedish secondary school system. In an intervention study based on a series of book discussions of an easy reader novel, I investigated the cooperation between a group of Swedish language learners aged 16 to 19, their teacher in the introduction program for newcomers, and the school librarian. Based on my function as a teacher educator, and drawing on the current research in literature didactics, I planned and carried out six discussions where different reading strategies and methods were used. Using the concept of third space (Gutiérrez, 2008; Skerrett, 2010b) and interpersonal space(Cummins, 2000), I discuss the students'cognitive and emotional responses to the story we shared, and reflect upon the way these discussions have developed. Semi-structured interviews with five students, a teacher, and a school librarian constitute the data for this study. The analysis of the data indicates that the leader of the group discussion is instrumental in helping the participants shift between different perspectives, try out new roles, and transgress different boundaries, thereby offering the group different emotional, cognitive and linguistic challenges.

Keywords: book talks, class room instruction strategies, interpersonal space, third space


INTRODUCTION Amici--because they have a wider perspective, or simply a different perspective--can be of inestimable value to courts in discharging their responsibility that extends beyond the litigants. An amicus can alert the court, as the parties perhaps cannot or would not wish to, that a large issue lurks in an appeal; that a case of seeming insignificance has potentially wide ramifications and will likely have major impact when a ruling is applied in other factual settings; or that a case of obvious major significance could conceivably have wholly unanticipated effects. Amici can sensitize the court--when it may be irrelevant to the litigants, whose objective is to win--to the appropriateness of narrowing or limiting a holding, and with other factual situations in mind they can suggest alternate rationales for achieving results urged by the parties. Judge Judith S. Kaye (1989) (1) The New York State Court of Appeals decides a wide range of significant statewide issues which have long-lasting effects on the citizens of the State of New York. Similar to the United States Supreme Court in the federal arena, the primary function of the Court of Appeals is "declaring and developing an authoritative body of decisional law for the guidance of the lower courts, the bar and the public." (2) During any given year, the court decides appeals involving state and federal constitutional law, administrative law, products liability law, environmental issues, zoning matters, rent cases, criminal cases, and tort issues, among many others. Based on this amount of authority, one would expect that non-parties would choose to advocate before the court if there was any mechanism to influence the decision-making process. In fact, there is such a mechanism available: the amicus curiae brief. Through this form of participation, non-parties to appeals are able to engage the court by submitting briefs as amicus curiae, or as a "friend of the court." (3) As of 1989, however, the court has been notably "friendless." (4) In 1987, the Court of Appeals decided 369 appeals of which only thirty involved amicus briefs. (5) The U.S. Supreme Court, by contrast, consistently decides individual cases in which dozens of amicus briefs are filed. (6) In fact, in 1989, the Court heard one case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, (7) in which more amicus briefs were filed than during the entire term of the New York State Court of Appeals. (8) Over the past fifty years, the federal court system has seen a clear and rapid influx of amicus curiae submissions. (9) Whereas between 1946-1955 the percentage of cases decided with at least one amicus brief was only 23% in the U.S. Supreme Court, that number jumped to over 85% of cases between 1986-1995. (10) The disparity in the number of filings becomes even more surprising considering the Court of Appeals' policy towards amicus briefs. Not only have individual judges encouraged the practice, (11) but the court has expressed interest in amicus filings by amending its rules to enable it, sua sponte, to invite submissions. (12) In December of 1988, the court even added a preamble to its weekly list of new filings which encourages the submission of amicus briefs. (13) Moreover, the court overwhelmingly grants motions for amicus curiae relief. (14) Not everyone would identify the lack of amicus curiae participation in the court as a negative. Perhaps unsurprisingly, judges have not hesitated at expressing their opinions concerning the value of amicus briefs. Judge Posner has lamented that the "vast majority" of amicus curiae briefs "have not assisted the judges," and are "an abuse" of non-party participation. (15) Justice Scalia, in reference to several amicus curiae submissions in one case, noted that "[t]here is no self-interested organization out there devoted to pursuit of the truth in the federal courts." (16) Justice Alito, however, has argued that "an amicus who makes a strong but responsible presentation in support of a party can truly serve as the court's friend. …


World War I is the most important single event in the history of globalization. The war ended the first significant era of increasing economic ties among nations and thereby shaped the economic history of the twentieth century. The war set off both a search for ways to re-create the prewar liberal world economy and attempts to create statist alternatives to it. The collapse of interbank cooperation and expansion of controls on trade, migration, and agriculture meant that economic globalization re-emerged only very slowly over the rest of the twentieth century. Indeed, the long-term effects of World War I lasted until the 1990s. The lesson of this story for the twenty-first century is to check the dangers inherent in a multipolar world, where globalization produces both economic growth and social tensions.


This essay reviews theory and research regarding the "Michelangelo phenomenon," which describes the manner in which close partners shape one another's dispositions, values, and behavioral tendencies. Individuals are more likely to exhibit movement toward their ideal selves to the degree that their partners exhibit affirming perception and behavior; exhibiting confidence in the self's capacity and enacting behaviors that elicit key features of the self's ideal. In turn, movement towards the ideal self yields enhanced personal well-being and couple well-being. We review empirical evidence regarding this phenomenon and discuss self and partner variables that contribute to the process.


Background/Context The label long-term English learner (LTEL) is increasingly used to describe students who have been educated in the United States for many years but have not met criteria to be considered proficient in English. Though created to draw awareness to the unique needs of a particular group of students, the LTEL label has acquired strongly negative connotations, with descriptions of LTELs often focusing on students' perceived deficits. Limited empirical analysis of achievement and other outcomes among this group of students has been conducted, and little is known about the impact of the LTEL label on students' educational trajectories. Purpose/Objective This study explores the characteristics and educational trajectories of students considered long-term English learners. In addition, the study explores the costs and benefits associated with the LTEL label. In particular, the author examines how prolonged classification as an English learner impacted students' opportunity to learn and explores whether and how the LTEL label was linked to stigma for students. Research Design Using case study research methods, this study focuses on the experiences of three students in a medium-sized California school district who were considered long-term English learners. Analysis of district-wide, longitudinal data contextualizes the experiences of the three focal students. Findings/Results First, findings provide evidence of the heterogeneity of academic achievement, course placement, and long-term outcomes among students to whom the long-term English learner label is applied. Approximately half of students considered LTELs in the district had met at least some of the criteria necessary to be considered English proficient in at least one year. For instance, one focal student remained an English learner throughout middle school solely because of her scores on the state standardized math test. Meanwhile, 35% of students in the district who were considered LTELs also qualified for special education services because of documented disabilities. Second, findings indicate that there was a loose coupling between the LTEL label and specific services for students in this district. Among the three focal students, all could be considered LTELs, but their course placements and the academic rigor of their courses varied dramatically in high school. Finally, students experienced courses designed exclusively for English learners at the secondary level (but not at the elementary level) as stigmatizing. Conclusions/Recommendations Given the substantial variation among students to whom the Long-Term English Learner label is applied, this research suggests that educators and policymakers should use the LTEL label with caution. For example, "intervention" courses designed for LTELs at the secondary level may need to be reconsidered, taking into account the unique needs of the particular students the courses are intended to serve. Given the stigma that students associate with EL-only courses at the secondary level, the conditions under which such courses can function as empowering rather than stigmatizing spaces represents an important area for future research.


In vertebrates, the primary segmented tissue of the body axis is the paraxial mesoderm, which lies bilaterally to the axial organs, neural tube and notochord. The segmental pattern of the paraxial mesoderm is established during embryogenesis through the production of the somites which are transient embryonic segments giving rise to the vertebrae, the skeletal muscles and the dorsal dermis. Somitogenesis can be subdivided into three major phases (see Fig. 1). First a growth phase during which new paraxial mesoderm cells are produced by a growth zone (epiblast and blastopore margin or primitive streak and later on tail bud) and become organized as two rods of mesenchymal tissue,forming the presomitic mesoderm. Second a patterning phase occuring in the PSM, during which the segmental pattern is established at the molecular level. Third, the somitic boundaries are formed during the morphological segmentation phase. In all vertebrates, all cells of the paraxial mesoderm, during their maturation in the PSM, go successively through these three phases, which are tightly regulated at the spatio-temporal level. The first phase of paraxial mesoderm production falls out of the scope of this review, as it essentially pertains to the gastrulation process. Here, I essentially discuss the segmental patterning phase in vertebrates. Recent data suggest that establishment of the segmental pattern relies on a clock and wavefront mechanism which has been conserved in vertebrates. Furthermore, conservation of this system could extend to invertebrates, suggesting that the clock and wavefront is an ancestral mechanism.


A method for instantaneous measurement of oxygen consumption in an open flow respirometry system is described. During pre-flight warm-up in both sphingids and saturniids, oxygen consumption reaches levels 20 to 70 times resting values. V O O2 required to maintain the thorax at flight temperature by intermittent wing-quivering and fluttering is about one-third the maximum V O O2 during warm-up. The Q 10 of resting V O O2 averages 2·4 in both sphingids and saturniids. At any given thoracic temperature, V O O2 during post flight-cooling exceeds V O O2 at rest. Factorial scope (maximum V O O2 ÷resting V O O2 ) during warm-up is independent of mass and thoracic temperature. In sphingids it averages 39, in saturniids, 43. Absolute metabolic scope in both groups increases with thoracic temperature and is roughly proportional to V O O2 . In saturniids about 49% of the heat produced during warm-up is stored in the thorax; in sphingids the figure is about 73%. The data on metabolic scope, power requirements for flight, Q 10 and body mass are used to develop equations that predict thoracic temperature during flight for both sphingids and saturniids.


This paper concentrates on a new procedure which experimentally recognizes gears and bearings faults of a typical gearbox system using a least square support vector machine (LSSVM). Two wavelet selection criteria Maximum Energy to Shannon Entropy ratio and Maximum Relative Wavelet Energy are used and compared to select an appropriate wavelet for feature extraction. The fault diagnosis method consists of three steps, firstly the six different base wavelets are considered. Out of these six wavelets, the base wavelet is selected based on wavelet selection criterion to extract statistical features from wavelet coefficients of raw vibration signals. Based on wavelet selection criterion, Daubechies wavelet and Meyer are selected as the best base wavelet among the other wavelets considered from the Maximum Relative Energy and Maximum Energy to Shannon Entropy criteria respectively. Finally, the gearbox faults are classified using these statistical features as input to LSSVM technique. The optimal decomposition level of wavelet is selected based on the Maximum Energy to Shannon Entropy ratio criteria. In addition to this, Energy and Shannon Entropy of the wavelet coefficients are used as two new features along with other statistical parameters as input of the classifier. Some kernel functions and multi kernel function as a new method are used with three strategies for multi classification of gearboxes. The results of fault classification demonstrate that the LSSVM identified the fault categories of gearbox more accurately with multi kernel and OAOT strategy.


The United States (US) Bureau of Transportation Statistics conducts a nationwide census of ferry boat operators for the US Department of Transportation and the collected information is used for statistical purposes. The Caltrans Division of Local Assistance has been asked by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to gather data regarding ferry operations under MAP-21, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act. MAP-21 includes a new formula program for ferry boats and ferry terminal facilities eligible under 23 USC 129(c) which authorizes federal participation in toll roads, bridges, tunnels, and ferries. FHWA has asked that Caltrans assure the ferry boat data is current for MAP-21. The Mineta Transportation Institute was contacted by Caltrans to conduct this research. The research team compiled a spreadsheet and accompanying maps that include ferry boats, routes, and operators along with a number of related characteristics including ownership (public or private), daily trip counts, regulation of fares, terminal locations (street address and coordinates), boarding statistics, and route segment lengths. The spreadsheet contains fields that will allow it to be linked in a Geographic Information System to Caltrans Earth software for further analysis. Additionally, where relevant, the report includes a brief description of expansion plans for certain ferry service providers.


We offer a perspective on the making of policy instruments over time. This sheds light on the work that goes into articulating and maintaining instruments as both models and implemented policies, and the social formations that arise therefrom. Drawing on a brief case study of the innovation of emissions trading, we show the role of both functional promises to deliver public-policy outcomes and structural promises concerning new positions for the actors involved. We show how the making of instruments can coincide with the formation of 'instrument constituencies', which consist of entangled practices that cultivate an instrument. Constituencies sustain the instrument and are themselves sustained by the instrument as it persists and expands its realm of validity. We conclude that policy instruments can develop social lives of their own with dynamics that should be taken into account by scholars of innovation in governance.


The wave of acquiring large-scale farmland investments for overseas both by the private and state-owned company after the 2007/2008 food and energy crisis has brought a lot of attention worldwide among scholars, media experts, and activist. Sooner or later this huge wave towards overseas large-scale farmland investment has raised a conflicting debate among scholars and developmental practitioners on its significance. In this study we investigate effectiveness levels of those overseas farmland investors, who acquire land in Ethiopia from 1995-2016, using time series data for said period collected from the databank of Ethiopian investment agency. We applied descriptive and inferential statistical analysis using E-views version-9. Finally, the findings indicate that effectiveness of overseas farmland investments for those projects that possess the license and that got the land is about 67.4 per cent. The regression result indicates as there is a significant relationship between origin of the investor's country (0.0039) and farm land size (0.0000) with a P value less than 5 per cent. The result indicates and also substantiates those who perceive the activity as more of land acquisition that the investors are failed to invest appropriately after they possessed the land. Finally, the findings greatly contribute for policy makers and also for implementing appropriate land investment strategy in the whole.


Today's Internet intrusion detection systems (IDSes) monitor edge networks' DMZs to identify and/or filter malicious flows. While an IDS helps protect the hosts on its local edge network from compromise and denial of service, it cannot alone effectively intervene to halt and reverse the spreading of novel Internet worms. Generation of the worm signatures required by an IDS--the byte patterns sought in monitored traffic to identify worms--today entails non-trivial human labor, and thus significant delay: as network operators detect anomalous behavior, they communicate with one another and manually study packet traces to produce a worm signature. Yet intervention must occur early in an epidemic to halt a worm's spread. In this paper, we describe Autograph, a system that automatically generates signatures for novel Internet worms that propagate using TCP transport. Autograph generates signatures by analyzing the prevalence of portions of flow payloads, and thus uses no knowledge of protocol semantics above the TCP level. It is designed to produce signatures that exhibit high sensitivity (high true positives) and high specificity (low false positives); our evaluation of the system on real DMZ traces validates that it achieves these goals. We extend Autograph to share port scan reports among distributed monitor instances, and using trace-driven simulation, demonstrate the value of this technique in speeding the generation of signatures for novel worms. Our results elucidate the fundamental trade-off between early generation of signatures for novel worms and the specificity of these generated signatures.


Frequently in medieval texts, writers make mention of men who cry, wail, and faint. However, in modern scholarship, these records of men who cry are often overlooked, and masculine mourning is a largely neglected feature. My purpose in this thesis is to explore some of the reasons for male tears and displays of grief in three works of medieval literature. While male mourning appears in hundreds of medieval texts and is a topic worthy of extensive exploration, I have narrowed my focus to three works: Beowulf, The Song of Roland, and Sir Orfeo. Although the three tales are written in different languages and centuries, every narrative includes central male protagonists who mourn. Namely, each story includes a weeping king, masses of weeping subjects, and a hero who learns to experience and display grief throughout the course of the tale. The kings Hrothgar, Charlemagne, and Orfeo emerge in the tales as figures embodying and bearing the grief of their entire people. Rather than being criticized as weak or effeminate rulers, all three of these sorrowful kings are honored by the poets and by their subjects. The mourning of the rulers is shown to be a clear portrayal of their commitment and care for their people and kingdoms. In response to the grief of the kings, the thanes, knights, and subjects publicly weep, demonstrating their loyalty by suffering with their sovereigns. In contrast, the heroic figures—Beowulf, Roland, and Orfeo— initially stand apart emotionally from the kings and other subjects in the texts. They maintain a focus on gaining glory through deeds of prowess, and their concept of suffering only acknowledges physical pain, disregarding emotional pain. However, the three heroes undergo a transformation as they personally encounter suffering and loss. By the end of each poem, the heroes display empathy by mourning, joining their sorrow with that of grief-filled kings and weeping subjects. In these three poems, male demonstrations of grief serve essential social and political roles and are affirmed rather than being demeaned. This thesis is approved for Recommendation to the Graduate Council


The interface mechanism in a tsunami early warning system (TEWS) occurs between receiving tsunami information at the country level and disseminating warning and evacuation orders to the public. Three crucial actions take place during the interface: issuing the warning, disseminating it, and ordering an evacuation. Using two case studies in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, a study was undertaken to understand the nature of the interface mechanism and the social, cultural and political dynamics of its operationalisation. In this article, a comparative analysis of the two case studies is presented, focusing on the role of governance, institutions and people in this interface. The nature of governance, hierarchies and structures influence the interface mechanism and the associated decision-making mechanisms. The institutions who act as key stakeholders are also shaped by the governance structures and hierarchies within it. The efficiency of the institutions is determined by the nature of their human resources and are affected by political factors. The communities are also affected by the overall governance structure, the political dynamics and the institutional factors. The complex relationships between governance, institutions and officers that exist in the two countries affect the communities in different ways. Yet, the overall governance and institutional dynamics of TEWSs lead to a common thread of decisions and actions when operationalising the interface. The results are presented in a framework that illustrates the complex relationships between governance, institutions, officers and communities. The framework provides a basis for future research on how the interface of TEWS can be operationalised to effectively protect communities at risk from tsunami.


The prevention of unnecessary suffering at slaughter is considered to be an imperative and, as such, the majority of animals slaughtered under industrial conditions are stunned prior to slaughter by mechanical, electrical or gas inhalation means. However, many Orthodox Jewish and Muslim communities do not accept pre-slaughter stunning. Those Jewish and Muslim communities that do accept pre-slaughter stunning require that any such stun is fully reversible in order to meet the requirements of their religious laws. Head-only electrical stunning is widely used in sheep, as it is a reversible method of stunning, but in cattle, the stun duration can be so short that the animal may regain consciousness during exsanguination. The concept of using electromagnetic radiation to induce insensibility has been proposed. Early attempts to induce insensibility and death in laboratory species were successful, but the technology to apply the technique to larger animals was not available at that time. More recently, however, technological advances have led to new work in the areas of transcranial magnetic stimulation and microwave irradiation, both of which are potential methods of inducing a recoverable stun in larger species.


This thesis considers management decision making at the ward level in hospitals especially by ward sisters, and the effectiveness of the intervention of a decision support system. Nursing practice theories were related to organisation and management theories in order to conceptualise a decision making framework for nurse manpower planning and deployment at the ward level. Decision and systems theories were explored to understand the concepts of decision making and the realities of power in an organisation. In essence, the hypothesis was concerned with changes in patterns of decision making that could occur with the intervention of a decision support system and that the degree of change would be governed by a set of `difficulty' factors within wards in a hospital. During the course of the study, a classification of ward management decision making was created, together with the development and validation of measuring instruments to test the research hypothesis. The decision support system used was rigorously evaluated to test whether benefits did accrue from its implementation. Quantitative results from sample wards together with qualitative information collected, were used to test this hypothesis and the outcomes postulated were supported by these findings. The main conclusion from this research is that a more rational approach to management decision making is feasible, using information from a decision support system. However, wards and ward sisters that need the most assistance, where the `difficulty' factors in the organisation are highest, benefit the least from this type of system. Organisational reviews are needed on these identified wards, involving managers and doctors, to reduce the levels of un-coordinated activities and disruption.


Angela Merici (1474-1540), like other mystic women such as Catherine of Siena, was considered a "santa viva" - a living saint - by virtue of her mysticism, sacred knowledge, human qualities, and participation in civic life. However, Angela's originality and genius reside above all in the foundation of the Company of St. Ursula. It is there that she put her theology into practice and translated her spiritual ideas and experience into a defined model of religious life for women. "Spirituality, Gender, and the Self in Renaissance Italy" places St. Angela Merici and her Company of St. Ursula in historical and religious context and examines them from a variety of perspectives: institutional, social, spiritual, and cultural. By analyzing Merici's spirituality, the book contributes to two fields of research that have been particularly rich and contentious: women's religious life and early modern Catholicism. The Company of St. Ursula, long mistaken for a charitable or educational confraternity, proposed a form of consecration for women outside the convent, similar to that lived by late medieval women such as the beguines and the tertiaries. Merici's ideal of spiritual life - inward-looking, a-institutional, democratic, public, and transcendent - codified into a religious rule the "irregular" features of the female approach to the sacred. It offered women the possibility of living beyond the limits imposed on them. Furthermore, Merici's spirituality is compared with a vast array of religious practices promoted by important religious thinkers of her time, such as Battista da Crema, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Ignatius Loyola. The book seeks to understand the historical significance of spirituality by linking religious models with relevant aspects of Renaissance society and culture. In particular, the author examines the forms of relationship with God and perfection in relation to a Renaissance notion of the "self" and in connection with gender concepts. Methodologically, the application of historical, literary, cultural, and anthropological concepts to the subject leads to a rich cross-fertilization of theoretical approaches.


Automatic KB completion for commonsense knowledge graphs (e.g., ATOMIC and ConceptNet) poses unique challenges compared to the much studied conventional knowledge bases (e.g., Freebase). Commonsense knowledge graphs use free-form text to represent nodes, resulting in orders of magnitude more nodes compared to conventional KBs ( ∼18x more nodes in ATOMIC compared to Freebase (FB15K-237)). Importantly, this implies significantly sparser graph structures — a major challenge for existing KB completion methods that assume densely connected graphs over a relatively smaller set of nodes.In this paper, we present novel KB completion models that can address these challenges by exploiting the structural and semantic context of nodes. Specifically, we investigate two key ideas: (1) learning from local graph structure, using graph convolutional networks and automatic graph densification and (2) transfer learning from pre-trained language models to knowledge graphs for enhanced contextual representation of knowledge. We describe our method to incorporate information from both these sources in a joint model and provide the first empirical results for KB completion on ATOMIC and evaluation with ranking metrics on ConceptNet. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of language model representations in boosting link prediction performance and the advantages of learning from local graph structure (+1.5 points in MRR for ConceptNet) when training on subgraphs for computational efficiency. Further analysis on model predictions shines light on the types of commonsense knowledge that language models capture well.


OBJECTIVE
To review the chemistry, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, efficacy, tolerability, dosing, and role of the Osmotic-controlled Release Oral delivery System (OROS) hydromorphone extended-release (ER) tablets.

DATA SOURCE
A MEDLINE/PUBMED search (1986-August 2010) was conducted to identify studies in the English language, with additional references being obtained from their bibliographies.

STUDY SELECTION
All studies of hydromorphone ER were reviewed.

DATA SYNTHESIS
This is the second long-acting hydromorphone formulation to receive approval by the Food and Drug Administration (a twice-daily formulation was approved in September 2004, but was subsequently withdrawn in July 2005). Hydromorphone is a semi-synthetic mu-opioid receptor agonist structurally similar to morphine, hydrocodone, and oxymorphone. OROS ER technology allows once-daily dosing. Clinical trials have focused on the convertibility of (an) other opioid(s) to hydromorphone ER in chronic malignant and nonmalignant pain. This product displays the expected opioid side effects, being comparable to oxycodone controlled-release. Coadministration with ethanol does not produce the degree of "dose-dumping" seen with the former hydromorphone twice-daily product or oxymorphone ER. Hydromorphone ER is indicated for the management of moderate-to-severe pain in opioidtolerant patients requiring continuous, around-the-clock opioid analgesia for an extended period of time. Dosage adjustment is recommended in patients with moderate hepatic impairment (Child-Pugh class B) and moderate renal impairment (creatinine clearance of 30-60 mL/min).

CONCLUSION
Hydromorphone ER is the newest oral opioid to enter a crowded marketplace now totaling 15 different Schedule 2 opioids (including tapentadol), and tramadol, available in oral, parenteral, rectal, transdermal, transmucosal, and intranasal formulations. It does not appear to have any unique assets or liabilities and should be considered as one of many oral opioids available for the management of persistent pain of moderate-to-severe intensity.


Purpose To determine how closely institutional review board (IRB) discussions reflect the ethical criteria specified in the Common Rule federal regulations. Method Between November 2006 and July 2009, the authors observed, audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded protocol reviews from 20 IRB meetings at 10 leading academic medical centers. They also reviewed each of the applications discussed to identify the Common Rule criteria—(1) risk minimization, (2) risk/benefit comparison, (3) equitable subject selection, (4) informed consent, (5) data monitoring to ensure safety, (6) privacy protection and confidentiality, and (7) protection of vulnerable subjects—that were both relevant to the study and not adequately addressed in the application. They then determined if the IRB addressed each of the relevant and not-discussed Common Rule criteria in their discussions. Results IRBs made no mention of many of the Common Rule criteria that required their discussion—In 17/82 (21%) reviews, they failed to address risk minimization; in 52/91 (57%), risk/benefit comparison; in 31/52 (60%), equitable subject selection; in 32/59 (54%), data monitoring; in 13/52 (25%), privacy and confidentiality; and in 7/55 (13%), protection of vulnerable populations. However, they discussed informed consent in 102/104 (98%) reviews and raised questions about, or requested changes about, informed consent for 92/104 (88%) protocols. Conclusions These findings suggest that essential elements of human subjects protection are not implemented uniformly across IRBs. Although not directly addressing this issue, the current proposed changes to the Common Rule offer an opportunity to improve, in general, the effectiveness of IRBs to protect human subjects.


: Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposed in landfill sites decompose under anaerobic conditions and produce gases which mainly contain carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄). Methane has the potential of causing global warming 25 times more than CO₂, and can potentially affect human life and environment. Thus, this research aims to determine MSW generation and the annual CH₄ emissions from the generated waste in Oman over the years 1971-2030. The estimation of total waste generation was performed using existing models, while the CH₄ emissions estimation was performed using the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) default method. It is found that total MSW generation in Oman might be reached 3,089 Gg in the year 2030, which approximately produced 85 Gg of CH₄ emissions in the year 2030


Spinal manual therapy (SMT) is a popular treatment option for low back pain (LBP). The aim of our analysis was to evaluate the effects of manual therapy delivered by general practitioners and ambulatory orthopedic surgeons in routine care on follow up consultations, sick leave, health service utilization and costs for acute LBP compared to matched patients not receiving manual therapy. This is a propensity score matched cohort study based on health claims data. We identified a total of 113.652 adult patients with acute LBP and no coded red flags of whom 21.021 (18%) received SMT by physicians. In the final analysis 17.965 patients in each group could be matched. Balance on patients' coded characteristics, comorbidity and prior health service utilization was achieved. The provision of SMT for acute LBP had no relevant impact on follow up visits and days of sick leave for LBP in the index billing period and the following year. SMT was associated with a higher proportion of imaging studies for LBP (30.6% vs. 23%, SMD: 0.164 [95% CI 0.143–0.185]). SMT did not lead to meaningful savings by replacing other health services for LBP. SMT for acute non-specific LBP in routine care was not clinically meaningful effective to reduce sick leave and reconsultation rates compared to no SMT and did not lead to meaningful savings by replacing other health services from the perspective of health insurance. This does not imply that SMT is ineffective but might reflect a problem with selection of suitable patients and the quality and quantity of SMT in routine care. National Manual Medicine societies should state clearly that imaging is not routinely needed prior to SMT in patients with low suspicion of presence of red flags and monitor the quality of provided services.


The objective of this study aims to comprehend and portray the management opinions of the three Public Service Board (PSB) universities in Indonesia dealing with the good university income generating governance. Furthermore, this study applies epistemological subjectivism, interpretivism paradigm with multi-site design. The findings were analyzed using agency theory perspective. Therefore, the finding results show that the principles of good university income generating governance is law-abiding, academic oriented, accountable, professional, independent and transparent. The emergence of the principle of law-abiding indicate hierarchical relations agency that is purely between the government and the universities in income generation. The principle of academic orientation, accountability, independence and autonomy suggests that the goal synergy of both principal and the agent are the essence of agency relationship. Meanwhile, the professionalism demonstrated that the agent fully realizes which the principal requires certain tasks to be implemented by the agents because agents have the skills required. Yet, independence gained through wide autonomy both on academic as well as non-academic matters. The principle of transparency demonstrates the importance of the information factor in agency relationship. Agent transparency is necessary for the principal due to the difficulty in obtaining information dealing with the headway of the agent itself. Keywords: Good University Governance, Income Generating, Agency Theory


During the development of a C. elegans hermaphrodite, 131 of the 1090 cells generated die due to programmed cell death, an important process conserved throughout the animal kingdom. Although a genetic pathway for programmed cell death has been established in C. elegans, not much is known about the signals that trigger cell death in cells destined to die. One particular cell-death event, the death of the NSM sister cell, occurs about 430 min after the first division of the zygote, just 20 min after its progenitor cell has undergone an asymmetric cell division. The sister of the NSM sister cell, the NSM, however, survives and differentiates into a serotonergic neuron located in the pharynx. Here, I show that the cell-death activator egl-1 is expressed in the NSM sister cell, which is destined to die, but not in the surviving NSM. In addition, using a candidate gene approach, I found that in hlh-2(bx108lf); hlh-3(bc248lf) animals, 30% of the NSM sister cells survive. This observation suggests that the NSM sister cell death is at least partially dependent on the activity of hlh-2 and hlh-3, which code for bHLH transcription factors. These and additional results suggest that egl-1 expression is directly activated in the NSM sister cell by a heterodimer composed of HLH-2 and HLH 3, which binds to a specific cis-regulatory region of the egl-1 locus.
In order to identify additional factors that contribute to the NSM sister cell death, I performed a forward genetic screen. In particular, I screened for mutations that enhance the NSM sister cell survival caused by hlh-2(bx108). This screen resulted in the identification of mutations in at least six genes not previously implicated in this cell-death event. One of these mutations, bc212, is a loss-of-function mutation in the gene dnj-11. dnj-11 codes for a protein with a J domain, which is found in chaperones, as well as two SANT domains, which are implicated in transcriptional regulation. dnj-11 is an essential gene expressed in most if not all cells. Furthermore, it acts in the NSM sister cell death pathway by negatively regulating the activity of the snail-like gene ces-1. dnj-11 is required for the ability of the NSM mother cell to divide asymmetrically. I propose that dnj-11 promotes the death of the NSM sister cell by establishing polarity in the NSM mother cell. Moreover, I present evidence that the snail-like ces-1 gene is involved in establishing polarity in the NSM mother cell as well, revealing a new function of ces-1 in C. elegans.


Myofibroblasts promote tissue contractures during fibrotic diseases. To understand how spontaneous changes in the intracellular calcium concentration, [Ca2+]i, contribute to myofibroblast contraction, we analysed both [Ca2+]i and subcellular contractions. Contractile events were assessed by tracking stress-fibre-linked microbeads and measured by atomic force microscopy. Myofibroblasts exhibit periodic (~100 seconds) [Ca2+]i oscillations that control small (~400 nm) and weak (~100 pN) contractions. Whereas depletion of [Ca2+]i reduces these microcontractions, cell isometric tension is unaffected, as shown by growing cells on deformable substrates. Inhibition of Rho- and ROCK-mediated Ca2+-independent contraction has no effect on microcontractions, but abolishes cell tension. On the basis of this two-level regulation of myofibroblast contraction, we propose a single-cell lock-step model. Rho- and ROCK-dependent isometric tension generates slack in extracellular matrix fibrils, which are then accessible for the low-amplitude and high-frequency contractions mediated by [Ca2+]i. The joint action of both contraction modes can result in macroscopic tissue contractures of ~1 cm per month.


As part of the Geotechnology research team at NUI Maynooth we were involved in the preparation
and running of various activities in the Summer School on Computer Science for school children aged between
12 to 18 years old. Since year 2009 we have been constantly developing, testing, and deploying some geospatial
software applications which were used by the children for activities in the summer school programme. The high
level goal of this development was to help school children become more familiar GPS devices and computerbased
Location-based services (LBS) technologies which are now playing such a crucial role in today's Internet
connected society. The software applications were used as part of games and tasks for the children. In our paper
we shall describe how these games have evolve during these years, the educational aspects and benefits of the
game and how both the software components and devices were developed. Overall, children participating in the
summerschool provided their comments in the form of a survey. They felt that there were now more aware about
possibilities in geoinformatics available with "ordinary off the shelf devices". Different issues related with webbased
maps (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Bing Maps, etc) were introduced and we explained the differences
between them. Most importantly in case of geo-technologies we felt that the activities helped the children become
aware that that computing and positioning happens everywhere and is not tied with the desk and the desktop
computer.We summarise our experiences gained in these last three years and discuss the educational gains of this
type of game-based approach to location-based technologies to schoolchildren. All of our software is developed
using free and open-source components meaning that it can be deployed by any school or educational facility with
minimum cost. A smartphone-based version of the software has also been developed.


This paper describes a project carried out by the first author, an academic in special education, with the other authors, teachers of students with severe disabilities. It aimed to explore the application of the New South Wales (NSW) model of pedagogy, derived from authentic pedagogy, to the education of students with severe intellectual disabilities. The project was directed at students with severe intellectual disability who were unable to use spoken language for receptive and/or expressive communication and who were being taught augmentative and alternative means of communication. The group analysed and reframed the development of communication skills in relation to the elements of deep knowledge, deep understanding and higher order thinking, which are components of the dimension of intellectual quality in the NSW model. This analysis is presented here as an example of the way the authentic pedagogy framework can be applied to teach cognitive skills that are usually assumed by teachers of normally developing students.


Study question
Can a counseling tool be developed for women desiring elective oocyte cryopreservation to predict the likelihood of live birth based on age and number of oocytes frozen?

Summary answer
Using data from ICSI cycles of a population of women with uncompromised ovarian reserve, an evidence-based counseling tool was created to guide women and their physicians regarding the number of oocytes needed to freeze for future family-building goals.

What is known already
Elective oocyte cryopreservation is increasing in popularity as more women delay family building. By undertaking elective oocyte freezing at a younger age, women hope to optimize their likelihood of successful live birth(s) using their thawed oocytes at a future date. Questions often arise in clinical practice regarding the number of cryopreserved oocytes sufficient to achieve live birth(s) and whether or not additional stimulation cycles are likely to result in a meaningful increase in the likelihood of live birth. As relatively few women who have electively cryopreserved oocytes have returned to use them, available data for counseling patients wishing to undergo fertility preservation are limited.

Study design, size, duration
A model was developed to determine the proportion of mature oocytes that fertilize and then form blastocysts as a function of age, using women with presumably normal ovarian reserve based on standard testing who underwent ICSI cycles in our program from January, 2011 through March, 2015 (n = 520). These included couples diagnosed exclusively with male-factor and/or tubal-factor infertility, as well as cycles utilizing egg donation. Age-specific probabilities of euploidy were estimated from 14 500 PGS embryo results from an external testing laboratory. Assuming survival of thawed oocytes at 95% for women <36 y and for egg donors, and 85% for women ≥36 y, and 60% live birth rate per transferred euploid blastocyst, probabilities of having at least one, two or three live birth(s) were calculated.

Participants/materials, setting, method
First fresh male-factor and/or tubal-factor only autologous ICSI cycles (n = 466) were analyzed using Poisson regression to calculate the probability that a mature oocyte will become a blastocyst based on age. Egg donation cycles (n = 54) were analyzed and incorporated into the model separately. The proportion of blastocysts expected to be euploid was determined using PGS results of embryos analyzed via array comparative genomic hybridization. A counseling tool was developed to predict the likelihood of live birth, based on individual patient age and number of mature oocytes.

Main results and the role of chance
This study provides an evidence-based model to predict the probability of a woman having at least one, two or three live birth(s) based on her age at egg retrieval and the number of mature oocytes frozen. The model is derived from a surrogate population of ICSI patients with uncompromised ovarian reserve. A user-friendly counseling tool was designed using the model to help guide physicians and patients.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION
The data used to develop the prediction model are, of necessity, retrospective and not based on patients who have returned to use their cryopreserved oocytes. The assumptions used to create the model, albeit reasonable and data-driven, vary by study and will likely vary by center. Centers are therefore encouraged to consider their own blastocyst formation and thaw survival rates when counseling patients.

Limitations, reasons for caution
Our model will provide a counseling resource that may help inform women desiring elective fertility preservation regarding their likelihood of live birth(s), how many cycles to undergo, and when additional cycles would bring diminishing returns.

Study funding/competing interests
None.

Trial registration number
Not applicable.


This paper studies liberalized grain markets in Madagascar and examines how property rights are protected and contracts are enforced among agricultural traders. We find that the incidence of theft and breach of contract is low and that the losses resulting from such instances are small. This, however, does not result from reliance on legal institutions actual recourse to police and courts is fairly rare, except in cases of theft but from traders' reluctance to expose themselves to opportunism. As a result, Malagasy grain trade resembles a flea market, with little or no forward contracting and high transactions costs. The dominant contract enforcement mechanism is trust-based relationships. Trust is established primarily through repeated interaction with little role for referral by other traders. Information on bad clients does not circulate widely, hence severely limiting group punishments for non payment.


Turbulent jet diffusion flames and flame lift-off have been the topic of a great deal of research due to its complexity in combining both turbulent flow and combustion. The mechanisms controlling flame lift-off however, are not yet properly understood and is still an active field of research. In this report, experimental studies of lift-off characteristics for oxy-fuel combustion with methane have been conducted for oxygen concentrations ranging from 34% to 50%. Three different fuel nozzles were used, with diameters of of 2mm, 4mm and 5mm. In addition to oxy-fuel combustion, experiments were carried out in air, and oxygen enriched air, as a reference case. The goal has been to observe how oxy-fuel flames differ from regular diffusion flames burning in air with regards to lift-off. Lift-off heights and velocities were found to be strongly dependent on oxygen concentration, with increasing concentration causing shorter lift-off heights and higher lift-off velocities. It was also discovered that the combustion chamber wall temperature seemed to have a great impact on flame stability. Higher wall temperatures had a stabilizing effect on the flame, probably due to lower heat loss and higher burning velocities. Results from the air cases were compared to data from other studies, and were found to deviate some, most likely due to the presence of co-flow.


Biphasic bioceramic nanopowders of hydroxyapatite (HA) and β-tricalcium phosphate (TCP) were prepared from shells of the sea snail Cerithium vulgatum (Bruguiere, 1792) using a novel chemical method. Calcination of the powders produced was carried out at varying temperatures, specifically at 400°C and 800°C, in air for 4 hours. When compared to the conventional hydrothermal transformation method, this chemical method is very simple, economic, due to the fact that it needs inexpensive and safe equipment, because the transformation of the aragonite and calcite of the shells into the calcium phosphate phases takes place at 80°C under the atmospheric pressure. The powders produced were determined using infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The features of the powders produced along with the fact of their biological origin qualify these powders for further consideration and experimentation to fabricate nanoceramic biomaterials.


The actions of neonicotinoid insecticides on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in the terminal abdominal ganglion neurons of the American cockroach were investigated using whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology. Neonicotinoids possessing a nitromethylene group showed higher agonist affinity than the corresponding nitroimine analogues, whereas compounds with an acyclic guanidine moiety showed greater agonist efficacy than the corresponding cyclic compounds. Imidacloprid showed the lowest agonist efficacy of all neonicotinoids and low concentrations of imidacloprid attenuated acetylcholine-induced currents. However, such blocking actions were minimal with other neonicotinoids. The diverse actions of neonicotinoids on nAChRs, combined with target accessibility based on hydrophobicity, appears to account for their insecticidal potency on cockroaches measured in the presence of metabolic inhibitors. © Pesticide Science Society of Japan


This research work is aimed at understanding the electronic properties of Bi(110) nanostructures. This study chiefly uses Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STS) and Non Contact Atomic Force Microscope (NCAFM) to investigate the geometric and electronic structure of Bi(110) islands on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) substrate. STM measurements are the primary focus of the thesis which involves imaging the bismuth islands and study of its atomic structure. STM images of the Bi(110) islands reveal a 'wedding cake' profile of the bismuth islands that show paired layers on top of a base. I(V) (Current vs voltage) data was acquired via STS techniques and its first derivative was compared to DFT calculations. The comparison implied the presence of a dead wetting layer which was present only underneath the bismuth islands. We observed bilayer damped oscillations in the surface energy that were responsible for the stability of paired layers in Bi(110) islands. Interesting Moiré pattern arising out of misorientation between the substrate and the overlayer are also observed in STM images on some bismuth islands. Bright features pertaining to enhanced LDOS (local density of states) were observed on the perimeter of the bismuth islands and stripes in the STM images and STS dI/dV maps which appear at energies around the Fermi level. The bright features which we termed as 'bright beaches (BB)' are also observed on grain boundaries and defects that suggest that they are related to termination of the chain of bismuth atoms. The Bi(110) islands and stripes were observed to form preferred widths with a well defined periodicity. This peculiar phenomenon was attributed to a lateral quantum size effect (QSE) that results from a Fermi wave vector with appropriate shifts in Fermi energy. The widths of the islands prefer to adjust themselves at the nodes of this in-plane Fermi wavelength. NaCl deposited on a HOPG substrate forms cross shaped islands which were used as spacers to limit the interaction between the bismuth films and the underlying HOPG substrate. The NaCl islands are transparent to the flow of tunneling current and allow STS measurements. The LDOS of Bi/HOPG was very similar to the LDOS of Bi deposited on NaCl/HOPG which suggests that the wetting layer underneath the bismuth islands plays an important role in decoupling the film from the underlying substrate.


The reduced O(3)-oe model with an O(3) ! O(2) symmetry breaking potential is considered with an additional Skyrmionic term, i. e. a totally antisymmetric quartic term in the field derivatives. This Skyrme term does not affect the classical static equations of motion which, however, allow an unstable sphaleron solution. Quantum fluctuations around the static classical solution are considered for the determination of the rate of thermally induced transitions between topologically distinct vacua mediated by the sphaleron. The main technical effect of the Skyrme term is to produce an extra measure factor in one of the fluctuation path integrals which is therefore evaluated using a measure-modified Fourier-Matsubara decomposition (this being one of the few cases permitting this explicit calculation). The resulting transition rate is valid in a temperature region different from that of the original Skyrme-less model, and the crossover from transitions dominated by thermal fluctuations to those dominated by tunneling at the lower limit of this range depends on the strength of the Skyrme coupling.


The development of the axial skeleton is a complex process, consisting of segmentation and differentiation of somites and ossification of the vertebrae. The autosomal recessive skeletal fusion with sterility (sks) mutation of the mouse causes skeletal malformations due to fusion of the vertebrae and ribs, but the underlying defects of vertebral formation during embryonic development have not yet been elucidated. For the present study, we examined the skeletal phenotypes of sks/sks mice during embryonic development and the chromosomal localization of the sks locus. Multiple defects of the axial skeleton, including fusion of vertebrae and fusion and bifurcation of ribs, were observed in adult and neonatal sks/sks mice. In addition, we also found polydactyly and delayed skull ossification in the sks/sks mice. Morphological defects, including disorganized vertebral arches and fusions and bifurcations of the axial skeletal elements, were observed during embryonic development at embryonic day 12.5 (E12.5) and E14.5. However, no morphological abnormality was observed at E11.5, indicating that defects of the axial skeleton are caused by malformation of the cartilaginous vertebra and ribs at an early developmental stage after formation and segmentation of the somites. By linkage analysis, the sks locus was mapped to an 8-Mb region of chromosome 4 between D4Mit331 and D4Mit199. Since no gene has already been identified as a cause of malformation of the vertebra and ribs in this region, the gene responsible for sks is suggested to be a novel gene essential for the cartilaginous vertebra and ribs.


In April 2008, Tiger Brands partnered with UK-based Symphony Environmental to introduce biodegradable packaging to its flagship brand, Albany breads. It caused an uproar among members of the South African Plastics Recylcing Organisation (SAPRO) who consider the inclusion of biodegradable additives into products that are extensively recycled to be a major threat to the industry. The Advertising Standards Authority of SA (ASA) subsequently ruled that Tiger Brand's claim that its Albany bread product's biodegradable bag packaging was unsubstantiated and misleading to consumers - and it was asked to withdraw the claim with immediate effect. At the time of going to press, this ruling had just been overturned.
The debate continues ... below are contrasting opinions from both sides. Where do you stand on recycling?


OBJECTIVE Previous studies have demonstrated that mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD) develop insulin resistance with proinflammatory macrophage infiltration into white adipose tissue. Concomitantly, adipocytes undergo programmed cell death with the loss of the adipocyte-specific lipid droplet protein perilipin, and the dead/dying adipocytes are surrounded by macrophages that are organized into crown-like structures. This study investigated whether adipocyte cell death provides the driving signal for macrophage inflammation or if inflammation induces adipocyte cell death. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Two knockout mouse models were used: granulocyte/monocyte-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF)–null mice that are protected against HFD-induced adipose tissue inflammation and cyclophilin D (CyP-D)–null mice that are protected against adipocyte cell death. Mice were fed for 4–14 weeks with a 60% HFD, and different markers of cell death and inflammation were analyzed. RESULTS HFD induced a normal extent of adipocyte cell death in GM-CSF–null mice, despite a marked reduction in adipose tissue inflammation. Similarly, depletion of macrophages by clodronate treatment prevented HFD-induced adipose tissue inflammation without any affect on adipocyte cell death. However, CyP-D deficiency strongly protected adipocytes from HFD-induced cell death, without affecting adipose tissue inflammation. CONCLUSIONS These data demonstrate that HFD-induced adipocyte cell death is an intrinsic cellular response that is CyP-D dependent but is independent of macrophage infiltration/activation.


Given three points O, G, I , we give a simple construction by paperfolding for a triangle having these points as circumcenter, centroid, and incenter. If two further points H and N are defined by OH = 3OG = 2ON, we prove that this procedure is successful if and only if I lies inside the circle on GH as diameter and differs from N . This locus for I is also independently derived from a famous paper of Euler, by complementing his calculations and properly discussing the reality of the roots of an algebraic equation of degree 3.


This paper uses a UK panel study dataset, to investigate effects of stressful 'life events' on mental health. Various events – including poverty, unemployment, and illness – increase the risk of depression. There may be delayed effects of a stressful event: many people experience a slow recovery from depression. This paper reports evidence that in 'General Health Questionnaire' GHQ-12, feeling 'worthless' shows the slowest recovery after a harmful event: up to about nine years. Evidence in this paper is reported as charts, showing gradual recovery from traumatic events; and regression analysis. These charts are broadly consistent with regression results.
Keywords: Depression; life events; slow recovery; GHQ-12; worthlessness


Lack of sustainability considerations in product development can lead to unintended consequences that are costly in the long run, and difficult to solve. Furthermore, the sustainability performance of a solution is predominately determined by decisions in the early phases of the design process, in which requirements are formed and which plays an essential role to guide and constrain innovation. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore possibilities to address previously identified research gaps regarding i) the importance and challenges to integrate sustainability aspects into design requirements, and ii)the need of a strategic approach based on a full socio-ecological sustainability perspective to select which sustainability criteria to integrate. The aim is to investigate how the influence of sustainability aspects on traditional design variables may be modelled using systems thinking, e.g., System Dynamics modelling, as previous research has pointed out this as an area for future research. Against this background this paper explores the potential of a systems thinking perspective within requirements development, and how it can be applied, to favour a strategic sustainability perspective in product development. A conceptual literature review covering systems engineering, requirements engineering and systems dynamics, was conducted to analyse which phase in the requirements development that could benefit from systems thinking to promote a strategic integration of sustainability criteria into the requirement list. The results point towards the domain between stakeholder requirements and functional requirements, to allow building of a shared understanding the full design decision context that can be cascaded through the requirement levels. Furthermore, a systems analysis model can clarify which requirements that are involved in trade-offs and how. In addition, more detailed requirements imply less space for innovation. One outcome of the paper is a simplified causal loop diagram, showing how a systems' modelling approach can help identify both traditional trade-offs between strategically identified leading sustainability criteria and traditional design requirements. Potential incentives for sustainable design decisions were identified. Future research will focus on improving and testing the suggested approach and investigate how sustainability criteria indicators can be linked to design value drivers


UNLABELLED
AIMS (I): To investigate the effects of study characteristics on the reported success rates of secondary root canal treatment (2 degrees RCT or root canal retreatment); and (ii) to investigate the effects of clinical factors on the success of 2 degrees RCT.

METHODOLOGY
Longitudinal human clinical studies investigating outcome of 2 degrees RCT which were published upto the end of 2006 were identified electronically (MEDLINE and Cochrane database 1966-2006 Dec, week 4). Four journals (Dental Traumatology, International Endodontic Journal, Journal of Endodontics, Oral Surgery Oral Medicine Oral Pathology Endodontics Radiology), bibliographies of all relevant papers and review articles were hand-searched. Two reviewers (Y-LN, KG) independently assessed and selected the studies based on specified inclusion criteria and extracted the data onto a pre-designed proforma, independently. The criteria were: (i) Clinical studies on 2 degrees RCT; (ii) Stratified analyses available for 2 degrees RCT where 1 degrees RCT data included; (iii) Sample size given and larger than 10; (iv) At least 6-month post-operative review; (v) Success based on clinical and/or radiographic criteria (strict = absence of apical radiolucency; loose = reduction in size of radiolucency); and (vi) Overall success rate given or could be calculated from the raw data. Three strands of evidence or analyses were used to triangulate a consensus view. The reported findings from individual studies, including those excluded for quantitative analysis, were utilized for the intuitive synthesis which constituted the first strand of evidence. Secondly, the pooled weighted success rates by each study characteristic and potential prognostic factor were estimated using the random effect model. Thirdly, the effects of study characteristics and prognostic factors (expressed as odds ratios) on success rates were estimated using fixed and random effects meta-analysis with DerSimonean and Laird's methods. Meta-regression models were used to explore potential sources of statistical heterogeneity. Study characteristics considered in the meta-regression analyses were: decade of publication, study-specific criteria for success (radiographic, combined radiographic & clinical), unit of outcome measure (tooth, root), duration after treatment when assessing success ('at least 4 years' or '<4 years'), geographic location of the study (North American, Scandinavian, other countries), and qualification of the operator (undergraduate students, postgraduate students, general dental practitioners, specialist or mixed group).

RESULTS
Of the 40 papers identified, 17 studies published between 1961 and 2005 were included; none were published in 2006. The majority of studies were retrospective (n = 12) and only five prospective. The pooled weighted success rate of 2 degrees RCT judged by complete healing was 76.7% (95% CI 73.6%, 89.6%) and by incomplete healing, 77.2% (95% CI 61.1%, 88.1%). The success rates by 'decade of publication' and 'geographic location of study' were not significantly different at the 5% level. Eighteen clinical factors had been investigated in various combinations in previous studies. The most frequently and thoroughly investigated were 'periapical status' (n = 13), 'size of lesion' (n = 7), and 'apical extent of RF' (n = 5) which were found to be significant prognostic factors. The effect of different aspects of primary treatment history and re-treatment procedures has been poorly tested.

CONCLUSIONS
The pooled estimated success rate of secondary root canal treatment was 77%. The presence of pre-operative periapical lesion, apical extent of root filling and quality of coronal restoration proved significant prognostic factors with concurrence between all three strands of evidence whilst the effects of 1 degrees RCT history and 2 degrees RCT protocol have been poorly investigated.


This study focuses on a peripheral port city, Porto, during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and examines its connections to the territories of the Portuguese expansion through the consumption of exotic commodities. It covers a period where their diffusion has been mostly observed within court circles and when most European countries did not have contact with such areas. The main sources used are the donations of benefactors to the local Misericordia, a confraternity that connected city dwellers with their deceased relatives in Asia and Brazil, and also received donations from persons who had never travelled overseas. Provincial elites and nonprivileged intermediate groups could acquire exotic commodities, demonstrating that not only the idea of a top-down diffusion must be revised, but also attention must be drawn to the use of those commodities in the self-fashioning of the identities of the less rich and powerful.


BACKGROUND
Travel-associated health risks need to be balanced against the positive opportunities associated with interregional travel. As the perceived and real spectrum of health risks related to international travel increase both quantitatively and qualitatively, the need for more discriminating tools in clinical assessment for the purpose of mitigation, public health management, and research are needed. One group of international travelers identified as having increased risk of poor travel-related health outcomes are those who travel with the specific intent of visiting friends or relatives (VFR travelers). Due to variations in defining VFR travel in the health context there are issues in applying this designation uniformly from multiple perspectives. This article supports the standardization of VFR traveler definitions based on objective criteria and provides illustrations of the application of this definition through an illustrated approach to risk assessment based on these criteria and the differentials in the determinants of health between source and destination regions.

METHODS
A working group was established by the Migration Health Sub-committee, International Society for Travel Medicine to assess the literature on VFR travel and health, review an evidence-based approach to managing health risk related to travel, and to propose criteria-based definition for VFR travel. The new definition of a VFR is a traveler whose primary purpose of travel is to visit friends or relatives where there is a gradient of epidemiological risk between home and destination.

RESULTS
A case scenario discussion of VFR travel defined by criteria and risk assessment based on differential determinants of health is presented in this article.

DISCUSSION
The goal of this article is to encourage discussion on travel health evaluation for the most "at risk" populations and to standardize the application of clinical, public health, and research approaches to defining VFR travelers in a risk management context.


Despite the spread of cost-driven outsourcing practices, academic research cautions that suppliers' cost advantage may weaken manufacturers' bargaining positions in negotiating outsourcing agreements, thereby hurting their profitability. In this study, we attempt to further understand the strategic impact of low-cost outsourcing on manufacturers' profitability by investigating the contractual form of outsourcing agreements and the industry structure of the upstream supply market. We consider a two-tier supply chain system, consisting of two competing manufacturers, who have the option to produce in-house or to outsource to an upstream supplier with lower cost. To reach an outsourcing agreement, each manufacturer engages in bilateral negotiation with her supplier, who may be an exclusive supplier or a common supplier serving both manufacturers. Our analysis shows that wholesale-price contracts always mitigate the competition between manufacturers regardless of whether they compete with price or quantity. In contrast, two-part tariffs intensify the competition when the manufacturers compete with quantity, but soften it when they compete with price. As a result, when outsourcing with two-part tariffs, the manufacturers may earn lower profits than they would from in-house production, although the suppliers are more cost efficient. This suggests that managers have to be wary about the downside of using coordinating contracts such as two-part tariffs when pursuing low-cost outsourcing strategies. Our analysis also sheds some light on the profitability of using an exclusive supplier for outsourcing. When outsourcing with wholesale-price contracts, the competing manufacturers are better off outsourcing to an exclusive supplier. However, when outsourcing with two-part tariffs, the manufacturers may earn higher profits by outsourcing to a common supplier than to an exclusive one when the manufacturers' bargaining power is sufficiently strong (weak) under quantity (price) competition.


Hydractiniid hydroids display a range of morphological variation from sheet-like forms (i.e. closely spaced polyps with high rates of stolon branching) to runner-like forms (i.e. widely spaced polyps with low rates of stolon branching), thus exemplifying the patterns of heterochrony found in many colonial animals. A sheet-like and a runner-like inbred line of Podocoryne carnea were produced to investigate this heterochronic variation further. Selection on colony morphology at the time of the initiation of medusa production resulted in dramatic differences by the F5 and F6 generations. Compared with colonies of the sheet-like inbred line, runner-like colonies exhibited smaller sizes at the initiation of medusa production, more irregular colony shapes and diminished stolon development relative to polyp development. In addition to these differences in colony morphology, runner-like colonies also exhibited larger medusae and a greater amount of gastrovascular flow to the peripheral stolons. To assess differences in the metabolic capacity underlying this variaton in flow, the redox state of the polyp epitheliomuscular cells was measured using the fluorescence of NAD(P)H. In response to feeding-induced changes in gastrovascular flow, runner-like colonies show greater redox variation than sheet-like ones, plausibly corresponding to the greater amounts of flow generated by the former colonies relative to the latter. Perturbing the system with dilute solutions of 2,4-dinitrophenol similarly indicates that runner-like colonies contain more functionally oxidizable NAD(P)H. The correlation between gastrovascular flow and morphological differences supports the hypothesis that the former mediates the timing of colony development, perhaps in concert with the observed variation in the redox state of polyp epitheliomuscular cells.


The Google IPO raised the question of whether Dutch auctions are preferable to the traditional bookbuilding method of financing. Some argue that Dutch auctions make public offerings more efficient in terms of price discovery by leaving less money on the table. They further argue that Dutch auctions are more fair, since underwriters do not allocate securities to preferred clients, thereby allowing for a more equitable allocation among institutional and retail investors. I suggest that the Dutch auction is not necessarily more fair and may in fact lead to less efficient capital markets. I argue that reform of the current system is unnecessary because of capital market composition and, in particular, the means by which a majority of retail shareholders invest in securities.


Prokaryotes can modulate gene expression in response to changes in external osmolarity through a two-component phosphorelay signaling system that involves a transmembrane histidine kinase called EnvZ. EnvZ also has phosphatase activity, and so it can both phosphorylate and dephosphorylate a transcription factor called OmpR. Qin et al. report that the presence of DNA fragments corresponding to the promoter regions of OmpR-regulated genes caused a reduction in the apparent phosphatase activity of EnvZ in vitro. Biochemical analysis of complexes formed in vitro suggests that DNA binds to phosphorylated OmpR and sequesters it from phosphatase action of EnvZ. This finding offers an alternative for earlier results interpreted to show that EnvZ kinase activity can be enhanced by DNA and leaves open the question of how the dual enzymatic activity of EnvZ is regulated in vivo. L. Qin, T. Yoshida, M. Inouye, The critical role of DNA in the equilibrium between OmpR and phosphorylated OmpR mediated by EnvZ in Escherichia coli. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 98: 908-913 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The aim of this analysis was to compare levels of risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) in men and women aged 25-64 years between German-speaking MONICA collaborating centres, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Augsburg - the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)(Au), Bremen - FRG (Br), Heidelberg - FRG (He), and Vaud/Fribourg - Switzerland (CH, with a German-speaking minority). Prevalence of cigarette smoking in men showed little variation in four centres (34 to 40%) and was higher in BR men (49%), while it varied from 17% (GDR) to 33% (BR) in women. Mean total serum cholesterol values (mmol/L) were highest in GDR and CH men (both 6.2) and GDR women (6.1), and lowest in both He men (5.7) and He women (5.6). The proportion with cholesterol values greater than or equal to 6.7 mmol/L was largest in CH men (34%) and smallest in FRG (He) women (17%), while lowering the cut-off point from 6.7 to 6.5 mmol/L raised the prevalence of hypercholesterolaemia in all centres by 5 to 10%. Mean values (mmHg) of blood pressure (BP) were highest in both GDR men (140/88) and women (138/86), as was the prevalence of hypertensive BP values. In all centres, women aged 25-34 had BP values approximately 12/5 mmHg lower than age-matched men, but BP values similar to men at age 55-64, which indicates that age-parallel increase in BP was steeper in women than men.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


This paper introduces an attribute selection task as a way to characterize the inherent meaning of property-denoting adjectives in adjective-noun phrases, such as e.g. hot in hot summer denoting the attribute temperature, rather than taste. We formulate this task in a vector space model that represents adjectives and nouns as vectors in a semantic space defined over possible attributes. The vectors incorporate latent semantic information obtained from two variants of LDA topic models. Our LDA models outperform previous approaches on a small set of 10 attributes with considerable gains on sparse representations, which highlights the strong smoothing power of LDA models. For the first time, we extend the attribute selection task to a new data set with more than 200 classes. We observe that large-scale attribute selection is a hard problem, but a subset of attributes performs robustly on the large scale as well. Again, the LDA models outperform the VSM baseline.