Many cities need to build compact wastewater treatment plants because of lack of land. This paper discusses compact treatment methods. An enhanced primary treatment process based on coarse media filtration is analysed. A high-rate secondary wastewater treatment process has specifically been investigated, consisting of a highly loaded moving bed biofilm reactor directly followed by a coagulation and floc separation step. The objective with this high-rate process is to meet secondary treatment effluent standards at a minimum use of chemicals, minimum sludge production and minimum footprint. It is demonstrated that the biofilm in the bioreactor mainly deals with the soluble organic matter while coagulation deals with the colloidal matter. The bioreactor may, therefore, be designed based on the soluble COD loading only, resulting in a very compact plant when a compact biomass/floc separation reactor (i.e. flotation or direct filtration) is used. The paper reports specifically on the coagulant choice in flotation and filter run time in direct filtration.


A newly discovered pre-Variscan cover–basement relationship in NE Sardinia is defined by differences in structural and metamorphic histories. The oldest metamorphic fabrics in the basement are absent from a series of metaplutons that are inferred to be comagmatic with metavolcanic rocks in the cover. Cover and basement are further distinguished by contrasting metapelite compositions. Superimposed metamorphism is represented by pre-Variscan garnet and Variscan plagioclase porphyroblasts that appear in the field as a 'mixed' garnet + albite zone. In situ U–Pb zircon dating of meta-igneous rocks from cover and basement by laser-ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry gives ages of 458 ± 7 Ma for the Tanaunella orthogneiss, 456 ± 14 Ma for the Lodè orthogneiss, and 474 ± 13 Ma for the Lula porphyroid. The internal Sardinian Variscides thus incorporate a mid-Ordovician magmatic belt developed upon an older basement; correlation is proposed with a tectonostratigraphic domain that is at present exposed in the Alps. Within the mid-Ordovician peri-Gondwanan realm, the internal Sardinian Variscides appear to have developed along an active margin, whereas the foreland correlates with the Ibero-Aquitaine domain and is related to the evolution of a passive margin during rifting and detachment of Avalonia to form the Rheic Ocean.


Various pathogens causing mastitis in dairy cattle are of serious concern due to their increasing antibacterial resistance and potential transmission to other cows, calves, and the environment, especially through the milking process. Therefore, alternative approaches to antimicrobial usage in the treatment or control of mastitis in dairy cattle are severely needed. The antibacterial effect of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs) is known to be significant for various pathogens, but there is only limited information about the activity of MCFAs on mastitis-causing pathogens. Moreover, no evidence about the antimicrobial effects of palm oils rich in MCFAs, such as coconut, palm kernel, and tucuma oil, can be found in the current literature. The aim of this study was to evaluate the in vitro antibacterial effect of palm oils rich in MCFAs, after cleavage by an exogenous lipase from Mucor javanicus, on bovine mastitis-causing strains (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus agalactiae, Streptococcus dysgalactiae, and Streptococcus uberis) by the broth microdilution method. All tested palm oils exerted antibacterial activity against eight tested bacterial strains in the range of 64–8192 µl/ml with Str. agalactiae being the most sensitive and S. aureus being the most resistant species. The results of the present study demonstrate that palm oils rich in MCFAs can serve as an alternative to the predominantly used predip and postdip procedures in bovine mastitis control, but further in vivo studies are needed to confirm the findings for their possible applications.


A user-friendly single-event distributed reservoir inflow forecasting model for the ungauged Batu Dam Catchment is presented. The Batu Dam Catchment located in the Gombak District, Selangor Darul Ehsan, approximately 20 km north of Kuala Lumpur, is a 50.7 km2 tropical forested rural catchment. The model consists of five sub-models, namely the physical data input sub-model, the rainfall data input and excess rainfall computation sub-model, the rainfall runoff simulation sub-model, the baseflow volume computation sub-model and the reservoir water level increment simulation sub-model. The whole formulation of model was set up using the MapBasic and MapInfo Geographical Information System package. The catchment was delimitated based on the finite element concept. The rainfall losses in the catchment were assumed to be consistent throughout an event and uniform over the entire catchment. The catchment losses rate concept developed was assumed to be dependent on catchment antecedent soil moisture condition (catchment wetness index) and weighted average rainfall intensity. A catchment wetness index was formulated empirically based on the net total rainfall volume retained in the catchment cumulated from a five-day period prior to the simulated event following the 5-day Antecedent Precipitation Index (API5) approach. This catchment losses rate works in conjunction with the areal reduction factor to compute excess rainfall. With excess rainfall as input, the rainfall runoff simulation sub-model was developed based on the one dimensional Saint-Venant equations with kinematic wave approximation and solved using the finite element standard Galerkin's residual method, and incorporating Manning's equation. The spurious oscillatory behaviour of the simulated direct runoff hydrographs when approximated by the standard Galerkin's residual method can be suppressed by using a one minute time increment based on investigations taking into consideration the Courant condition. An empirical equation for computating baseflow volume for reservoir water level increment simulation was developed based on the five previous day approach similar to that in the API5. The reservoir water level increment sub-model is used to simulate the reservoir water level increment, by considering all the other inflows and outflows of the reservoir.
Historical rainfall events from 1989 to 2001 were used for model parameter calibration and model verification purposes. One hundred and forty cases selected were divided into thirteen groups according to their weighted average rainfall intensities. Cases from each group were then further sub-divided randomly into two separate sets in order to form two sets of cases. One set was used for the calibration of the unknown parameter, catchment losses rate. The Catchment Losses Rate-Catchment Wetness Index-Weighted Average Rainfall Intensity (LWRI) curves were proposed. Seven LWRI curves were finalized and selected, and were programmed into the model for model verification and forecasting purposes. The accuracy of Manning's coefficients used in model parameter calibration was confirmed by extending the 24-hour simulation period of the selected calibration cases to 48 hours. The 0.400 and 0.040 Manning's coefficients for overland and channels were confirmed to be accurate. This was supported with statistical tests on the simulated increment and the respective measured increment, where a very strong 0.9799 correlation coefficient from the correlation analysis, a relatively small mean absolute error that does not exceed 1.47 cm at 95% level of confidence from the single mean t-test, and not enough evidence to support that the means and the variances of simulated increments and measured increments are different through the paired t-test and the F-distribution variance ratio test respectively.
The other set of cases was used for LWRI curves verification and model verification purposes. The LWRI curves were found to be accurate in determining catchment losses rates. The model was verified to be able to simulate the reservoir water level increment accurately. This was supported by the results of the statistical tests carried out on the simulated and the respective measured increments. A very strong 0.9799 correlation coefficient from the correlation analysis, a relatively small mean of absolute error not exceeding 2.20 cm at 95% level of confidence from the single mean t-test, and not enough evidence to support the means and the variances between the simulated increment and the measured increment are different from the paired t-test and the F-distribution variance ratio test.
The model was evaluated by comparing it with the rational method. Results of statistical tests show the model performing much better than the rational method. The respective correlation coefficient and mean of absolute error for the rational method were found to be 0.8602 and does not exceed 12.58 cm at 95% level of confidence, respectively, while the paired t-test shows that there is not enough evidence to support that the simulated increment and the measured increment are the same. The computed Theil's coefficients for the model and the rational method, which are 0.062 and 0.266 respectively, also show that the model is more reliable compared to the rational method.
From the sensitivity analyses, the impact of changing Manning's Coefficient of overland on the simulated direct runoff hydrograph, as well as the reservoir water level increment, is higher than the impacts of changing Manning's Coefficient of the channels. The study reveals that more caution and effort should be emphasized in deciding Manning's coefficient of overland than that of channels. The results also show that the impact decreases with increasing rainfall intensity. The impact of catchment wetness index on the catchment losses rate and the corresponding reservoir water level increment was found can be moderately high, but is case dependent.


The rich and diverse aspect of nanomaterials for energy conversion and storage has been the research topic for many researchers. Photovoltaic solar cells for the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity can be grouped under three generations. One approach targets solar cells that can deliver a solar-to-electrical conversion efficiency well beyond the single-junction Schokley-Queisser limit of 32% using multi-layers of a graded series of light absorbers. One exciting possibility is a multiple exciton generation (MEG) solar cell. MEG refers to the process where a high energy photon can produce more than one electron-hole pair per absorbed photon. In another key development, the design of inverted polymer solar cells with high solar-conversion efficiency has been reported. Carbon-dots are superior in terms of high aqueous solubility, robust chemical inertness, easy functionalization, high resistance to photobleaching, low toxicity and good biocompatibility.


Danen et al. (page 515) show that β1 and β3 integrins direct different types of motility, despite binding fibronectin with similar efficiencies. Cells expressing β1 integrin move in a random manner, whereas cells with β3 integrin expression move in a persistent fashion. The proteins control cell migration by altering the activities of the Rho GTPases RhoA and Rac, which in turn control three aspects of motility: lamellipodia formation; cytoskeletal polarization; and the dynamics of cell matrix adhesions.

Figure

Migration is less persistent with β1 integrin (top) than with β3 integrin (bottom).

The types of integrins expressed and their relative abundance change during dynamic processes such as wound healing and development. To understand the function of these shifts, Danen et al. studied GE11 cells that lack β1 and express trace amounts of β3. Previous work demonstrated these cells don't migrate well in a wound-healing assay.

When GE11 cells were transduced with β3 (GEβ3), they formed lamellipodia, had active cofilin, and migrated persistently. Cells transduced with β1 integrin (GEβ1) migrated in a wound healing assay but contained many actin stress fibers, phosphorylated inactive cofilin, and multiple random protrusions rather than a well-organized lamellipod. Inhibition of RhoA—which in its active form promotes stress fiber formation—activated cofilin in GEβ1 cells, restoring persistent migration. By contrast, overexpression of Rac, which supports lamellipodia formation, was not sufficient to promote persistent migration in GEβ1 cells. Thus the problem in GEβ1 cells seems to be too many stress fibers rather than too little lamellipodia formation.

Just how the different β integrins connect to distinct Rho GTPases to control migration is not clear. Switching the intracellular tails between integrins doesn't change their effect on Rho GTPases (Danen et al. 2002. J. Cell Biol. 159:1071–1086), so the researchers think that the signaling differences result from different integrins working with different coreceptors. Syndecans may fit that role—they interact functionally with integrins and they regulate Rho GTPases.


Abstract Fisk and Phillips (2013) motivated the need to constrain trade‐offs among correction parameters for regional phase amplitudes to improve seismic discrimination and magnitude (yield) estimation. Using an empirical Green's function approach to cancel path and site effects, relative spectra of direct regional phases and coda were fit for many thousands of nearby, similar earthquake pairs of different moments, to estimate reliable source corner frequencies and relative moments. Detailed comparisons demonstrated the benefit of using independent measurements of coda and direct phases to provide a large set of corroborated source terms for earthquakes throughout Eurasia. The spectra were subsequently corrected for source terms to estimate more reliable Q , geometric spreading rates, and site effects. Regression analysis was used to estimate geometric spreading rates and to establish a very consistent set of absolute moments. Here, frequency‐dependent Q and site terms are examined for , Sn , , and Pn spectra. Comparisons to independent Q estimates from amplitude tomography exhibit good agreement for many paths. Large discrepancies are shown for higher frequencies, in low Q regions, and/or at the edges of the tomography grid, which significantly impact P / S discrimination. Our frequency‐dependent site terms are compared with independent estimates from coda tomography, showing good agreement (even for and Pn , at many stations) but also some substantial differences.


Abstract. State-of-the-art aerosol-dependent parameterisations describing each heterogeneous ice nucleation mode (contact, immersion, and deposition ice nucleation), as well as homogeneous nucleation, were incorporated into a large eddy simulation model. Several cases representing commonly occurring cloud types were simulated in an effort to understand which ice nucleation modes contribute the most to total concentrations of ice crystals. The cases include a completely idealised warm bubble, semi-idealised deep convection, an orographic cloud, and a stratiform case. Despite clear differences in thermodynamic conditions between the cases, the results are remarkably consistent between the different cloud types. In all the investigated cloud types and under normal aerosol conditions, immersion freezing dominates and contact freezing also contributes significantly. At colder temperatures, deposition nucleation plays only a small role, and homogeneous freezing is important. To some extent, the temporal evolution of the cloud determines the dominant freezing mechanism and hence the subsequent microphysical processes. Precipitation is not correlated with any one ice nucleation mode, instead occurring simultaneously when several nucleation modes are active. Furthermore, large variations in the aerosol concentration do affect the dominant ice nucleation mode; however, they have only a minor influence on the precipitation amount.


Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP)-9 facilitates the migration of T-cells to central nervous system (CNS), while tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1(TIMP-1) inhibits the function of MMP-9. This study aimed to determine the appropriate treatment option for multiple sclerosis (MS). Forty-three relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) patients were randomly divided into two groups of 22 (group A, placebo) and 21 (group B, Saffron pill) individuals. Serum samples were collected from patients' blood before using the Saffron pills/placebo pills and then after 12 months. The serum level of MMP-9 and its inhibitor, as well as TIMP-1, were measured by ELISA kits. MMP-9 serum levels noticeably decreased in patients with MS following 12 months of treatment with Saffron pills (p=0.006) while the changes were not significant before and after 12 months of treatment with placebo pills. Although the levels of TIMP-1 increased significantly after one year treating with Saffron pills (p=0.0002), a considerable difference was not observed before and after taking the placebo pills. The study finding revealed that 12-months treatment with Saffron could have a significant role in reducing the serum level of MMP-9 and increasing the serum level of TIMP-1 in RRMS patients. Therefore, modulating the serum levels of MMP-9 as an important regulator of T cell trafficking to the CNS might be a promising strategy in the treatment of MS patients.


Many wireless communication systems today employ receivers that use channel estimation as an integral part of the receiver chain. Two sides of this problem are studied in this thesis: Impact of channel estimation on low complexity receivers for multi antenna and CDMA systems, and the performance of systems based on superimposed pilots and systems with peak power constraints. First the connection between iterative least squares methods, relying on the finite alphabet properties of the transmitted signal, and the Expectation Maximization (EM) method is explored. A modification to the EM-algorithm known as SAGE, is proposed to be used in order to reduce the computational complexity and increase the performance. These algorithms are extended to cope with coded signals. By utilizing the extended distance between different codewords, significant performance gain can be seen. If a turbo code is employed for error protection, the complexity can be reduced even further by exploiting the iterative nature of the decoder. The last chapter in the first part is devoted to channel parameter estimation in a slotted DS-CDMA system. A near-far resistant estimator based on a large sample approximation to the maximum likelihood estimator is presented. The performance is evaluated by means of numerical simulations, and the estimator is also shown to be asymptotically efficient. In the second part the performance of training based and peak power limited systems is evaluated by means of channel capacity. The performance of MIMO-systems and systems with frequency selective channels are studied when the training is done in the form of SuperImposed Pilots (SIP). The parameters of the SIP scheme are optimized based on the mutual information, and the advantage of using superimposed pilots over conventional pilots is demonstrated for short coherence times. One issue with SIP is that the accuracy of the channel estimate is decreased. A method based on data aided channel estimation is proposed to mitigate this problem, and the proposed algorithm is found to perform close to the noncoherent channel capacity. Finally, the capacity achieving distribution for a Rayleigh fading system with peak power constraint is found. It is shown that a uniform phase and a discrete amplitude distribution is the optimal signalling scheme.


Ravinement surfaces are produced when the sea floor is eroded into a flat surface by the action of waves or tides during a marine transgression. They are preserved in the transgressive deposits as a sharp erosion surface. In a geological cross section across the ancient shoreline, primary ravinement surfaces appear as a subhorizontal line slightly dipping toward the sea. In a cross section, comparing successive ravinement surfaces deformed by tectonic movement allows for the reconstruction of relative tectonic movement. For example, when successive ravinement surfaces are parallel, the entire region has subsided or uplifted uniformly. However, when the lower ravinement surface dips more steeply than the upper ravinement surface, this indicates differential subsidence. We used the reconstruction of tectonic movement derived from ravinement surfaces to reconstruct the shallow subsurface geologic structures of the Osaka Plain, an intra-arc basin in the Japan island arc. For this study, we constructed cross sections from drill hole data extracted from a civil engineering drilling database. Our study revealed that, in different areas of the Osaka Plain, the land had been uplifted and differentially subsided toward the sea; a relatively large uplift occurred near a flexure zone, and the rate of the tilting of an anticline was constant.


The author examines, taking into account the urban-rural divides, the changes and welfare implications of income diversification in Zimbabwe following macroeconomic policy changes and droughts of the early 1990s. Data from two comparable national income, consumption and expenditure surveys in 1990-91 and 1995-96, which straddled a period of economic volatility and natural disasters, show that the percentage of households earning income from private and informal sources grew considerably, while that from government and formal sources declined in the aftermath of the drought and policy changes. The author finds that, in general, rural households tend to have a more diversified portfolio of income compared with their urban counterparts, and the degree of diversification decreases with the level of urbanization. However, there are important differences in the level of diversification within the rural and urban areas depending on wealth: While the relatively better-off households have a more diversified income base in rural areas, it is the poor who pursue multiple income sources in urban areas. A decomposition of changes in welfare indicates that the total contribution of income diversification is large and increased between 1990-91 and 1995-96 in both urban and rural areas. On the other hand, there were significant declines in returns to human and physical capital assets during the same period. The findings suggest that households with a more diversified income base are better able to withstand the unfavorable impacts of the policy and weather shocks. The fact that relatively better-off households have a more diversified income base following the shocks implies that the poor are more vulnerable to economic changes unaccompanied by well-designed safety nets.


Emerging telecommunications technology is enabling individuals or organizations to jointly create "virtual organizations." These organizations can exploit opportunities that require a variety of resources or skills not possessed by any individual member. While most MBA programs discuss the growing importance of new organizational forms, our study shows that simulating virtual organizations not only gives students a chance to experience this environment first-hand but can also create new learning opportunities. Students taking introductory MIS classes at two widely separated MBA programs were divided into teams. Each team was assigned to a local organization and asked to examine their process for approving new information system projects. The organizations were selected in pairs, e.g., two electric utility companies, so that each team in one class had a corresponding team studying a similar organization in the other. By comparing their results, both students and participating organizations received a broader perspective of the issue than would have occurred through a purely local study. Overall student reaction was positive, although more so at "East" University than "West." While technical problems created some early frustrations for West students, there appears to be considerable potential for enhancing virtual links across MBA programs. We offer suggestions for faculty considering incorporating this type of project in the MBA curriculum.


This work tests the suitability of statistical downscaling (SD) approaches to generate local seasonal forecasts of daily maximum temperature and precipitation for a set of selected stations in Senegal for the July–August–September season during the period 1979–2000. Two‐month lead raw daily maximum temperature and precipitation from the five models included in the ENSEMBLES seasonal hindcast are compared against the corresponding downscaled predictions, which are obtained by applying the analog technique based on two different types of predictors: the direct surface variables and a combination of appropriate upper‐air variables. Beyond correcting the large biases of the low‐resolution raw model outputs, SD is found to add noteworthy value in terms of forecast association (as measured by interannual correlation), providing thus suitable (i.e. calibrated) predictions at the local‐scale needed for practical applications, which means a clear advantage for the end‐users of seasonal forecasts over the area of study. Moreover, a recommendation on the adequacy of surface (large‐scale) predictors for SD of maximum temperature (precipitation) is also given.


In this article, we performed an analysis of the dependability of an elementary yet critical robot component, i.e., the joint-level actuation subsystem. We consider robot actuators that implement the VSA paradigm, i.e., ability to change the effective transmission stiffness during motion to achieve high performance while constantly keeping injury risks by accidental impacts with humans below a given threshold. Without attempting a comprehensive review of different existing design approaches to VSA,we focused on the analysis of three different arrangements of agonistic/antagonistic actuation mechanisms for pHRI applications. Several aspects of their performance, safety, and dependability have been considered to get an indicative, though certainly not exhaustive, comparison of these alternatives. According to our results, the simple AA arrangement is more reliable (due to the simplicity of its mechanical implementation) if FM is not used. Proper FM actions can make other designs perform equally well as the simple AA concerning reliability and can perform better for steerability. Simulations of impacts in failed states (where FMis not used by a worst-case assumption) also show that the different designs have comparable safety properties. Although overall results for the bidirectional arrangements are somewhat superior, especially in terms of steerability (if FM is applied), we do not extrapolate any general claim in this regard. Indeed, many factors influence the results of similar studies, and each case should be considered in detail and very carefully. The scope of the study can become quite broad, and many of the theoretical and technical issues presented here (e.g., fault detection, supervisory control, and safety-related systems) will require further separated investigations. One of the purposes of this work was to explore and further promote dependability studies in robotics, as a means of addressing concerns in safety-critical robotic systems for physical interactions with humans. In this sense, a robot for pHRI applications is a unique benchmark for improving the state of art of fault tolerant design as well as in developing tools to master performance, dependability, and safety issues of a robotic structure.


Application of sequence stratigraphy to fine-grained lithologies has previously been hindered by the difficulty of identifying distinct facies shifts within mudrocks. Three cores from Lincoln, Pottawatomie and Pontotoc Counties in Oklahoma and two outcrops at the Hunton Anticline Quarry in Murray County, OK record both proximal and distal regions of the Arkoma Basin. Handheld X-ray fluorescence data and gamma-ray profiles together with lithological descriptions can be used to develop sequence-stratigraphic interpretations. Stratigraphic successions that are challenging to correlate based on gamma-ray (GR) profiles alone can be correlated accurately by utilizing surfaces that are recognized within chemostratigraphic profiles. Within the Arkoma Basin, Oklahoma, the chemostratigraphic profile of the Woodford Shale is interpreted within a sequence-stratigraphic framework using the following general criteria. The Lowstand Systems Tract (LST) is defined by increasing concentrations of Ti, Zr, Al and K as well as high levels of Mo and V. The Transgressive Systems Tract (TST) is defined by declining concentrations of Ti and Zr, although Al and K may remain elevated; Mo and V also show general declines. The Highstand Systems Tract (HST) is defined by increasing concentrations of Ti, Zr, Al and K, but is distinguished from the LST by low levels of Mo and V. Supplementary material: Chemofacies profiles are available at http://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.2849599.


Nanostructured Materials and Nanotechnology. Multi-Scale Agglomerates Synthesis by Homogeneous Precipitation (M.K. Mekki Berrada, F. Gruy, T. Kuntzsch, M.Cournil). Characterization and Properties of Calcium Silicate Hydrates Nanocomposites (S.C. Mojumdar, L. Raki). Grain Growth Of Sol-Gel Derived Tin Oxide Nanoparticles And The Effects Of Platinum Doping (Y. Tang, M.R. DeGuire). Nanotechnology for Neutralization of Terrorist Explosives (A.W. Apblett, B.P. Kiran, S. Malka, N.F. Materer, A. Piquette). Chemical-Solution Deposition Of Hafnia Films On Self-Assembled Molecular Monolayers: Part I - Film Characterization (M.Z. Hu, A.C. DeBaillie, Y. Wei, G.E. Jellison). Chemical-Solution Deposition Of Hafnia Films On Self-Assembled Molecular Monolayers: Part II - Precipitation Behavior In Bulk Solutions (M.Z. Hu, A.C. DeBaillie, Y. Wei, G.E. Jellison). Co-Precipitation Synthesis of Nano-Sized Yttrium Aluminium Garnet (YAG) Powders (J. He, A. Bell). Growth of Tube-like B-N Compounds by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) (L. Guo, R.N. Singh, H.J. Kleebe). Incorporation of Nano Materials in Random Hole Optical Fibers (N.J. Manjooran, G.R. Pickrell). High Shear Casting of Nanoparticulate TiO2 (N. Venugopal, R.A. Haber, S.M. Augustine, R.D. Skala). Preparation Of ZrO2 Nanoparticles And Nanostructured Coatings Via Modified Emulsion Precipitation (J. Shi, H. Verweij). Dye Sensitised Solar Cells: A Comparative Study Using Different Nanocrystalline-Titania (C.S. Karthikeyan, M. Thelakkatb, M. Willert-Poradaa). Synthesis and Densification Studies of Nanocrystalline Titanium Dioxide Ceramics (S. Qiu, S.J. Kalita). Molecular Routes to One Dimensional Nanostructures (S. Mathur, H. Shen). Synthesis of Silicon Carbide Nanowires from a Mixture of CaCO3 and Si Powders (M. Bechelany, D. Cornu, F. Chassagneux, S. Bernard, F. Cauwet, L. Mollet, P. Miele). Preliminary Results of Activated Sintering Mechanism and Grain Boundary Prewetting/Premelting in Nickel-Doped Tungsten (V.K. Gupta, D.H. Yoon, J. Luo, H.M. Meyer III). Nanostructured Biomaterials. Increased Osteoblast Functions on Nanophase Hydroxyapatite Coatings on Titanium (M. Sato, M.A. Sambityo, A. Aslani, N.M. Kalkhoran, E.B. Slamovich, T.J. Webster). Complementary Fungus-Derived Micro-Porosity in Nano Materials (N.J. Manjooran, G.R. Pickrell). Formation of Apatite Coatings on Chemically Bonded Ceramics (L. Hermansson, H. Engqvist). Development of Aqueous Sol-Gel Method for Synthesis of Nanostructured SiO2-BaO Powder for use in Dental Composite Resins (N.N. Ghosh). Interaction of DNA with Nano-structured Beta-Gallia-Rutile Surfaces (N. Empie, D. Edwards). Chemically Bonded Nano-Size Bioceramics Based on Ca-Aluminates (H. Engqvist, L. Hermansson). Biologically Derived Nano and Micro Porous Materials (G.R. Pickrell, N.J. Manjooran). Nanoindentation and Scanning Probe Microscopy. Investigations of Ceramics and Ferroelectric Materials by Atomic Force Acoustic Microscopy (W. Arnold). Separation of Lattice Structural Effects and Electronic Contributions to Physical Properties with Nanotechnology (S. Li, Y.Y. Tay, C.Q. Sun). Coupling of Magnetic Order, Ferroelectricity, and Lattice Strain in Multiferroic Rare Earth Manganites (B. Lorenz, C.R. dela Cruz, F. Yen, Y.Q. Wang, Y.Y. Sun, C.W. Chu).


The authors analyze the relationship between orphan status, household wealth, and child school enrollment using data collected in the 1990s from 28 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and one country in Southeast Asia. The findings point to considerable diversity-so much so that generalizations are not possible. While there are some examples of large differentials in enrollment by orphan status, in the majority of cases the orphan enrollment gap is dwarfed by the gap between children from richer and poorer households. In some cases, even non-orphaned children from the top of the wealth distribution have low enrollments, pointing to fundamental issues in the supply or demand for schooling that are a constraint to higher enrollments of all children. The gap in enrollment between female and male orphans is not much different than the gap between girls and boys with living parents, suggesting that female orphans are not disproportionately affected in terms of their enrollment in most countries. These diverse findings demonstrate that the extent to which orphans are under-enrolled relative to other children is country-specific, at least in part because the correlation between orphan status and poverty is not consistent across countries. Social protection and schooling policies need to assess the specific country situation before considering mitigation measures.


ABSTRACT Actualistic studies of shell taphonomy in the marine subfossil record have found alteration in shell color to be a highly useful taphonomic indicator; however, the viability of shell discoloration for this purpose in the more profoundly altered material of the deep-time fossil record has not been explored. We investigated the relationship between the shell discoloration of Ordovician brachiopods and their taphonomic state to determine what information discoloration could provide about the conditions under which the shells were preserved. We examined 1033 specimens of Vinlandostrophia and Hebertella from type-Cincinnatian outcrops in southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky, using a sampling design that allowed us to test the taphonomic significance of shell color in multiple stratigraphic units and across a wide geographic area. For each specimen, taphonomic data were recorded and multivariate analyses of the taphonomic attributes performed. Our results demonstrate that fossil shell discoloration is strongly related to overall taphonomic state, with darker colors associated with evidence of shell degradation. Further analyses suggest that shell color may be related to the incorporation of sulfide minerals and organic matter. Darker colors may reflect a higher residence time in the taphonomically active zone, in environments with slow sedimentation rates or multiple burial and exhumation cycles. Alternatively, darker colors may be indicative of environments with higher probabilities of discoloration, related to sediment and pore-water geochemistry. The strong correlation between shell discoloration and other indicators of taphonomic damage is evidence that discoloration reflects a taphonomic pathway from pristine to degraded shells, and may be a useful addition to taphofacies models.


This article is a brief discussion into the role of design when branding for social media. It talks about some of the problems of branding today and how communication is changing the relationship between companies and consumers. In the context of branding for social media it understands how design strategy can help brands better engage with their clients and improve their overall experience. Brands must be visionary and embrace the different realms of potential that awaits them with Design. Two examples are given and their approach on how Design can help in the overall brand's social media strategy.


The cytidine-5'-triphosphate (CTP) synthase (EC 18.104.22.168) gene (pyrG) was cloned and sequenced from the thermophilic bacterium Anoxybacillus gonensis G2 (Ago). The gene is 1590 bp in length and encodes a protein of 530 amino acids, with a molecular mass of 59.5 kDa. The amino acid sequence of CTP synthase shares approximately 90%-94% similarity to Bacillus sp., and it belongs to the triad glutamine amidotransferases, which utilize a Cys-His-Glu triad for activity. Multiple sequence alignments revealed that the enzyme includes conserved amino acids responsible for catalytic activity and the binding of a divalent metal ion (Mg+2). AgoCTP synthase (AgoG2CTPs) was overproduced in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) pLysS as recombinant and purified by nickel affinity chromatography. Its biochemical characterization showed that the enzyme had maximal activity at pH 9.0-10.0 and 65 °C. Km, Vmax, and kcat were found to be approximately 12.415 mM, 0.381 U/L, and 0.762 s-1 at 65 °C, respectively. CTP synthase promotes the formation of CTP in dividing cells and is a recognized target for anticancer and antibacterial drugs. The results obtained from this study can be improved upon with the use of different species and substrates.


Introduction: Pregnant women increasingly expect to be involved in decisions about their care in collaboration with their clinicians. This involves a of sharing information, knowledge, experience and values, by both the woman and the clinician in order to make decisions together. Shared decision making is especially pertinent in the management of pain in labour where there are many options available, with varying degrees of evidence and acceptability. Pregnancy and childbirth is a context in which the appropriateness of shared decision making has been yet to be thoroughly investigated. Objectives The key objectives of this research are as follows:. • To carry out a systematic literature review covering women's experience of labour and of pain relief in labour;, • To ascertain the views and expectations of various groups of women and professionals using qualitative methodology in order to develop appropriate decision support;, • To develop the most appropriate decision support for choice of pain relief in labour in order to assist women in the decision making process. Methods A qualitative approach was used to gain an in-depth perspective of the experience of women and professionals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with women at various stages of their pregnancy and during their post natal period, whilst focus groups were undertaken with obstetricians, anaesthetists, delivery suite and community midwives. Data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the principles of the constant comparison method. My analysis was informed by my relativist approach to my work, understanding that there are multiple realities which need to be examined to gain a full understanding of shared decision making in this context. The themes that emerged were used to identify the issues that were important to the two groups. Results: The three3 key result areas were identified were::1. Discordance between expectations and realities Discordance was identified between what women expected in areas such as how painful and how long labour would be, as well as in what support would be provided for example. There was also discordance between what the professionals said they told women and the information women wanted;;. 2. Information Despite the information provision professionals still felt that women were generally unprepared for labour. This ill preparation pointed to information that did not answer questions women were asking, was presented at times when women were not receptive and in a format that was not appropriate;;. 3. Values At no point in pregnancy were women routinely asked what was important to them regarding their labour in relation to pain relief. Understanding a woman's values would allow a midwife to offer options of pain relief and support that were congruent with these values, thus helping the woman achieve the birth she hoped for. Discussion The information needs of both women and professional's needs to be recognised to ensure that woman have access to sufficient detail to enable them to engage in decision making. The information should be delivered in a format and at a time which is acceptable to the women and which translates into knowledge. During the antenatal preparation of women it is important for midwives to support women in clarifying what is important them – their values. Clarification of a woman's values will enable the healthcare professionals to discuss options that fit with women's values and ensure they receive the support they desire during labour. I propose that during pregnancy we need to ensure women are fully informed about their options, the risks and benefits and are clear of their values, but do make a decision antenatally – merely express a preference. This model of antenatal preparation would ensure that a woman was making decisions during labour in reaction to the level of pain she was experiencing based on her knowledge and how these choices related to her values. Women also need to be made aware antenatally that during labour there are elements of unpredictability and events may rapidly become of a more urgent clinical nature. At times of an emerging urgent clinical situation midwives and clinical staff are in a better position to recommend a course of action rather than deliberate options with the woman. Conclusion To support women and healthcare professionals in engaging in shared decision making the following recommendations needs to be considered. The maternity service needs to refine its information provision including the risks and benefits of each option. Provision needs to be made for those women who require enough information to allow them to make informed decision as well as those who require a greater depth of information. Support needs to be developed for midwives and women to allow them to develop new skills to allow engagement in shared decision making. Developing skills for shared decision making early in pregnancy will equip women to make the many decisions they face during pregnancy and once their baby is born. A critical examination of antenatal education provision needs to undertaken to ensure information is being provided at a time and in a format that is both appropriate and accessible to a wide range of women. Responsibility for preparation needs to be made explicit and suitable resources of information accessed and shared. Finally there needs to be a review of the current birth plan, to assess it's suitability as a tool for assessment of knowledge, clarification of values and communication to support shared decision making. In conclusion the most appropriate way of supporting women is to ensure that, at the beginning of pregnancy, midwives start to prepare women to make decisions by giving them the skills necessary to be involved in shared decision making. This preparation needs to be underpinned by appropriate information delivered in an accessible manner and informed by what is important to the woman.


In this modeling study, the uses of nitrogen (77.3 K), probe molecule of choice for decades, and argon, opted as alternative in the 2015 IUPAC report on adsorptive characterization, as probe molecules for geometric surface area determination are compared. Graphene sheets possessing slit-shaped pores with varying size (width) are chosen as model porous solids, and different methods for the determination of specific surface areas are investigated. The BET method, which is the most commonly applied analysis, is compared to the Langmuir and relatively recently proposed ESW (excess sorption work) method. We show that either using argon or nitrogen as adsorptive, the physical meaningfulness of adsorption-derived surface areas highly depends on the pore size. When less than two full layers of adsorbate molecules can be formed within slitlike pores of a graphitic material (Dpore < 5.8 Å for Ar/N2), adsorption-derived surface areas are about half that of the geometric surface area. Between two and four layers (6.8 < Dpore < 12.8 Å), adsorption surface areas can be significantly larger (up to 75%) than the geometric surface area because monolayer-multilayer formation and pore filling cannot be distinguished. For four or more layers of adsorbate molecules (Dpore > 12.8 Å), adsorption-derived surface areas are comparable to their geometrically accessible counterparts. Note that for the Langmuir method this only holds if pore-filling effects are excluded during determination. This occurs in activated carbon materials as well. In the literature, this indistinguishability issue has been largely overlooked, and erroneous claims of materials with extremely large surface areas have been made. Both the BET and Langmuir areas, for Dpore > 12.8 Å, correspond to geometric surface areas, whereas the ESW method yields significantly lower values. For the 6.8 Å < Dpore < 12.8 Å range, all methods erroneously overestimate the specific surface area. For the energetically homogeneous graphene sheets, differences between argon and nitrogen for the assessment of surface areas are minor.


In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps -- as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces. Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer) -- including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online -- and offline life -- and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play -- and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space -- what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.


Importance Melanoma-associated retinopathy (MAR) is a paraneoplastic syndrome in which antiretinal antibodies crossreact with retinal ON-bipolar cells, resulting in night blindness and progressive visual field loss. Current therapeutic options include cytoreductive surgery in combination with immunoglobulin, corticosteroids, or plasmapheresis, but their effectiveness is limited and may be contraindicated, given the possible protective role of circulating autoantibodies against metastatic spread. We report 3-year follow-up of the first case (to our knowledge) of MAR treated with intravitreal long-acting steroid implants. Objective To report on a patient with MAR who was treated with intravitreal fluocinolone acetonide implants in the absence of systemic immunosuppression. Design, Setting, and Participants This is a 3-year follow-up of a 73-year-old woman with a history of surgical excision of a malignant melanoma of the left pinna who presented with visual symptoms of shimmering and nyctalopia. Fundus examination, fundus autofluorescence, and optical coherence tomography were normal, with no evidence of cystoid macular edema. Automated perimetry showed a reduction in visual field and full-field electroretinography (ERG) demonstrated findings consistent with generalized ON-bipolar cell dysfunction, typical of MAR. The patient was treated with bilateral fluocinolone acetonide intravitreal implants. Main Outcomes and Measures Visual acuity, visual field, and electroretinography testing for 3 years after treatment. Results Visual fields improved in this 73-year-old patient from 20/30 (Snellen measured as 6/9) OD and 20/16 (6/5) OS at baseline to 20/20 OU within 1 week of treatment. Detailed electroretinography monitoring indicated characteristic abnormalities that partly resolved after treatment, consistent with improved inner retinal ON-bipolar cell function. Bilateral cataracts developed approximately 2 years after injection; cataract surgery was performed uneventfully. At 3 years posttreatment, the patient remained visually stable and in systemic disease remission, with best-corrected visual acuity remaining at 20/20 OU. Conclusions and Relevance We report what is, to our knowledge, the first case of MAR treated with intravitreal slow-release corticosteroid implants, which shows improvements in visual symptoms, visual fields, and retinal function. Sustained-release intraocular steroid implants may offer an effective and safe alternative to systemic immunosuppression in MAR, although results from 1 case should be generalized with abundant caution.


Slate is a traditional stone product that has long been used for roofing widely around the world. The presence of iron sulphides is one of the most significant factors affecting roofing slate resistance to weathering and, therefore, the quality of slates and their use in construction. Iron sulphide oxidation is the main process of roofing slate degradation. Qualitative and quantitative analyses to determine iron sulphides in roofing slates are usually conducted using transmitted and reflected light microscopy, and X-ray diffraction techniques. However, this paper presents X-ray computed micro-tomography as a new laboratory method in this field, which also allows for 3D visualization and analysis of iron sulphide distribution in roofing slates. It also discusses some technical limits of this technique and tomographic scan interpretation pitfalls. The results obtained by tomographic observations were subsequently verified by optical microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, as well as energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analyses. Spanish slate from the Ordovician Luarca Formation and Culm slate from the Moravice Formation in the Czech Republic are both characterized by low to extremely low iron sulphide content, and for this reason were selected for this study.


All systems are subject to aging and, given that, to the deterioration of their performances and ultimately to failure. Preventive maintenance actions attempt to restore the performances of a system or to keep them at an acceptable level, preventing its failure. In the literature, many models can be found that seek to embody the impact of the imperfect maintenance. Some of them focus on the concept of effective age: the effect of a maintenance action is expressed by means of a reduction in a fictitious age of the system. The effective age describes the present condition of the system and it is different from the calendar age, the time elapsed since the system was new. Classical models of this type (Kijima et at. (1988), Martorell et al. (1999), Doyen & Gaudoin, (2004)) assume maintenance brings a restoration proportional to either the age of the system before the maintenance, or the increase of age since the previous maintenance action. However, none of these models are fully satisfactory. In particular, they suppose independence between the efficiency of the maintenance action and the periods between interventions. Therefore, the resulting state of the system after maintenance is different for any modification in the maintenance period. Clavareau & Labeau (2009) and Labeau and Segovia (2011) introduced two new concepts: the maintenance elasticity: for limited delays in the realization of the preventive maintenance action the resulting degradation level of the system is the same; the inescapability of aging: even if a system is regularly and properly preventively maintained, its performance will unavoidably tend to decrease as a result of aging. This paper, deals with the modeling of the inescapability of aging, and its relation with the expected gain in mean residual lifetime brought by maintenance. We consider the natural variability of the problem in terms of the maintenance epochs, in the scheduling of the maintenance, and the resulting state of this maintenance.


Abstract This paper uses bilateral trade data for OECD countries at the 3-digit industry level to investigate the geography of intra-industry trade (IIT). IIT diminishes with distance and much of the existing empirical literature suggests that this is an inherent characteristic of such trade, arguing that trade in sectors intensive in IIT is choked off rapidly by distance. We show that the dependence of IIT on geography arises not because of any inherent feature of the effects of distance on such trade, but because of the spatial structure of countries' supply and demand characteristics; close countries do a lot of IIT because they have similar economic structures.


IMPORTANCE
In 2006, New York began excluding patients with cardiogenic shock from the publicly reported percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) risk-adjusted mortality analyses.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the effects of the New York shock-exclusion policy change on rates of revascularization and mortality for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) complicated by cardiogenic shock.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
This study used several comprehensive statewide hospitalization databases to identify patients with AMI and shock from January 1, 2002, through December 31, 2012, in New York and a series of comparator states (Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Jersey from January 1, 2002, through December 31, 2012, and California from January 1, 2003, through December 31, 2011). Data analysis was performed from October 1, 2015, to March 15, 2016.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
A difference-in-differences approach was used to evaluate whether the likelihood of receiving PCI and surviving to discharge differed after the policy change in New York in 2006 compared with comparator states that did not enact such a change.

RESULTS
Among 45 977 patients with AMI and cardiogenic shock (11 298 in New York), 21 974 (47.8%) underwent PCI. The mean (SD) age of the patients was 69.7 (13.2) years, and 18 139 (39.5%) were female. After adjusting for patient factors, patients in New York were significantly more likely to undergo PCI after the public reporting policy changes than they were previously (adjusted relative risk [aRR], 1.28; 95% CI, 1.19-1.37; P < .001) compared with a 9% increase in comparator states during the same period (aRR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.05-1.13; P < .001; interaction P < .001). Nevertheless, rates of PCI remained lower in New York compared with comparator states throughout the study period. The adjusted risk of in-hospital death among patients in New York with AMI and shock decreased significantly faster after the policy change (aRR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.72-0.81; P < .001) compared with comparator states (aRR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.87-0.94; P < .001; interaction P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The exclusion of patients with ongoing cardiogenic shock from New York PCI public reports in 2006 was associated with a significant increase in the use of PCI for cardiogenic shock and a concomitant decrease in in-hospital mortality, exceeding simultaneously observed trends in the comparator states. However, rates of PCI for AMI and shock were lower in New York throughout the study. Alterations in policies related to reporting mortality outcomes after cardiovascular procedures may have significant implications for physician behavior and the public health.


Vehicles increasingly include features that rely on hi-tech sensors and recording; however, little is known of public attitudes toward such recording. We use two studies, an online survey (n=349) and an interview-based study (n=15), to examine perceptions of vehicle-based sensing and recording. We focus on: 1) how vehicle-based recording and sensing may differ from perceptions of current recording; 2) factors that impact comfort with vehicle-based recording for hypothetical drivers versus bystanders; and 3) perceptions of potential privacy-preserving techniques. We find that vehicle-based recording challenges current mental models of recording awareness. Comfort tends to depend on perceived benefits, which can vary by stakeholder type. Perceived privacy in spaces near cars can also impact comfort and reflect mental models of private spaces as well as the range of potentially sensitive activities people perform in and near cars. Privacy-preserving techniques may increase perceived comfort but may require addressing trust and usability issues.


Abstract The Hallaçlar kaolinite deposit of the Uşak Province (western Turkey) is hosted by dacite, andesite and siliceous materials of the Miocene Karaboldere volcanites. Mineralogical zonation, such as the prevalence of kaolinite at the centre of the deposit, coexisting with silica polymorphs such as quartz and cristobalite along with feldspar and hornblende, and a relative increase of smectite, illite, chlorite, and Fe-oxide/-hydroxide phases outward and upward, demonstrate that hydrothermal-alteration processes resulted in kaolinization. Micromorphologically, kaolinite occurs as pseudohexagonal blocky kaolinite with coarse-grained quartz in microfractures, and the presence of relatively fine-grained vermiform kaolinite that edges volcanic materials indicates that kaolinite developed in several phases coexisting with goethite, lepidocrocite, hematite, pyrite, jarosite, alunite, and gypsum/anhydrite with smectite in fractures. The highly crystallized Hallaçlar kaolinite is identified by: (1) sharp reflections at 7.23 and 3.57 Å, with triplet and doublet non-basal reflections; (2) sharp infrared spectral bands at 3687, 3651 and 3620 cm−1; (3) well defined, pseudohexagonal and hexagonal kaolinite crystal growth; (4) a chemical index of weathering of 98.6−100; and (5) SiO2/Al2O3 ratios between 1.04 and 1.45. Enrichment of Sr and depletion of Rb + Ba, Ti, and HREE relative to LREE, with a distinct negative Eu anomaly, are responses to the fractionation of feldspar and hornblende by the hydrothermal fluid; these results are also supported by the O- and H-isotopic character and formation temperatures of the Hallaçlar kaolinite and smectite; namely, 134.1−83.4ºC and 65.6ºC, respectively. The negative d34S (−20.7%) value of gypsum/anhydrite reflects its formation from geothermal-water-derived sulphur. Under the influence of a tectonically controlled hydrothermal process, feldspar, hornblende and volcanic glass were altered, resulting in the conservation of Al and depletion of Si, Na, Ca, K, Mg and Fe in an open hydrological system such that formation of kaolinite in the central part of the deposit under acidic conditions and development of smectite and illite upward and outward under basic conditions were favoured.


One of the most popular program models in criminal justice today is that popularized by Hawaii Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE). HOPE and other programs like it grow out of research suggesting that the most effective way to prevent violations of conditions of supervision is to more accurately detect them, respond to them immediately, and impose consistent and predictable sanctions for every detected violation. Proponents of these programs assert that they not only change behavior for the better, but that they increase the legitimacy of probation by addressing violations as they occur. Even if program compliance rates are as high as supporters claim, serious questions remain about whether these programs, while advancing compliance, may undermine the larger goal of promoting desistance from crime. Anecdotal evidence suggests that both the conditions and sanctions imposed on program participants are often significantly more severe than the model itself requires, and are sometimes at odds with encouraging behavior that is known to foster desistance. This Essay argues that system actors have an obligation to consider the purpose of correctional intervention when evaluating program "success."


We report on a study of the sliding friction of elastomeric surfaces patterned with ridges and channels (and unstructured flat controls), against both smooth and roughened spherical indenters. Against the smooth spherical indenter, all of the structured surfaces have highly reduced sliding friction due to the reduction in actual area of contact. Against roughened spherical indenters, however, the sliding force for structured samples can be up to 50% greater than that of an unstructured flat control. The mechanism of enhanced friction against a rough surface is due to a combination of increased actual area of contact, interlocking between roughness and the surface structure, and attendant dynamic instabilities that dissipate energy.


In this thesis autocatalytic reactions in a diffusion cell are considered. Cubic autocatalytic reactions have proved a useful test-bed for examining static and dynamic stability of chemical systems. Various extensions and aspects of this model are considered such as mixed quadratic-cubic reactions, the effect of a precursor chemical, a circularly symmetric cell and delay feedback control. For all of these models, the Galerkin method is used to approximate the spatial structure of the reactant and autocatalyst concentrations. Ordinary differential equations are then obtained as an approximation to the governing partial differential equations and analyzed to obtain semi-analytical results for the reaction-diffusion cell. Singularity theory is used to determine the regions of parameter space in which the different types of steady-state diagram occur. The region of parameter space in which Hopf bifurcations can occur is found by a local stability analysis of the semi-analytical model. In chapter 2 mixed quadratic and cubic reactions are considered. The effect of varying the relative importance of the quadratic and cubic reaction terms and the diffusion coefficient of the two species are examined in detail with much additional complexity, involving bifurcation patterns and stability, found. In chapter 3 the effect of a precursor chemical is examined. The reactant is supplied by two mechanisms, diffusion via the cell boundaries and decay of an abundant precursor chemical present in the reactor. The effect of varying the relative importance of iii the precursor chemical is examined in detail. In chapter 4 a circularly symmetric reaction diffusion cell or annulus is considered. This allows geometric effects, such as varying the width of the annulus, to be examined. This is one of the first studies to consider reactions in a circularly symmetric annulus. In chapter 5 feedback control with delay is examined by varying the boundary reservoir concentrations in response to the concentrations in the centre of the reactor. The effect of varying the strength of the feedback and the delay are both considered. This study illustrates that feedback control can modify the stability of the system, in terms of stabilizing and destabilizing regions of parameter space. A new technique for finding the regions of parameter space is used in the case of delay, as expressions for the degenerate Hopf points can not be obtained. For each of the models considered steady-state profiles, bifurcation diagrams, parameter space stability maps and limit-cycle dynamics are drawn. The numerical solutions of the governing partial differential equations are also obtained for comparison, and show the usefulness and accuracy of the semi-analytical results. The methods used here have a general applicability and can be used to develop semi-analytical solutions to other chemical systems for which diffusion is important.


Introduction Cam morphology is a strong risk factor for the development of hip pain and osteoarthritis. It is increasingly thought to develop in association with intense physical activity during youth; however, the aetiology remains uncertain. The study aim was to characterise the effect of physical activity on morphological hip development during adolescence. Methods Cross-sectional study of individuals aged 9–18 years recruited from Southampton Football Club Academy (103 male) with an age-matched control population (52 males and 55 females). Assessments included questionnaires and 3 Tesla MRI of both hips. Alpha angle, epiphyseal extension and epiphyseal tilt were measured on radial images. Results Alpha angle and epiphyseal extension increased most rapidly between ages 12 and 14 years. Soft-tissue hypertrophy at the femoral head-neck junction preceded osseous cam morphology and was first evident at age 10 years. The greatest increase and highest absolute values of alpha angle and epiphyseal extension were colocalised at 1 o'clock. Maximum alpha angles were 6.7 degrees greater in males than females (p=0.005). Compared with individuals who play no regular sport, alpha angles were 4.0 degrees higher in individuals who play sport for a school or club (p=0.041) and 7.7 degrees higher in individuals competing at a national or international level (p=0.035). There was no association with leg dominance . Conclusions Sporting activity during adolescence is strongly associated with the development of cam morphology secondary to epiphyseal hypertrophy and extension with a dose-response relationship. Males participating in competitive sport are at particularly elevated risk of developing cam morphology and secondary hip pathology.


The main goal of this paper is to examine practical experience in good governance at a local level by discussing the initiative called Participatory Budgeting (PB). The paper seeks to map challenges, choices and decisive factors that can be distinguished in the PB preparation process by presenting a case study of the City of Tartu. It focuses specifically on the fears, barriers and arguments of the local politicians and officials involved in the preparation process. The study reveals that political confrontation, financial constraints, composing the PB decision-making body as well as overcoming the problem of extra workloads can become major challenges in the process of preparing for PB.


Abstract. Fusion welding is common in steel pipeline construction in fossil-fuel power generation plants. Steel pipes in service carry steam at high temperature and pressure, undergoing creep during years of service; their integrity is critical for the safe operation of a plant. The high-grade martensitic P92 steel is suitable for plant pipes for its enhanced creep strength. P92 steel pipes are usually joined together with a similar weld metal. Martensitic pipes are sometimes joined to austenitic steel pipes using nickel based weld consumables. Welding involves severe thermal cycles, inducing residual stresses in the welded structure, which, without post weld heat treatment (PWHT), can be detrimental to the integrity of the pipes. Welding residual stresses can be numerically simulated by applying the finite element (FE) method in Abaqus. The simulation consists of a thermal analysis, determining the temperature history of the FE model, followed by a sequentially-coupled structural analysis, predicting residual stresses from the temperature history. In this paper, the FE thermal analysis of the arc welding of a typical P92 pipe is presented. The two parts of the P92 steel pipe are joined together using a dissimilar material, made of Inconel weld consumables, producing a multi-pass butt weld from 36 circumferential weld beads. Following the generation of the FE model, the FE mesh is controlled using Model Change in Abaqus to activate the weld elements for each bead at a time corresponding to weld deposition. The thermal analysis is simulated by applying a distributed heat flux to the model, the accuracy of which is judged by considering the fusion zones in both the parent pipe as well as the deposited weld metal. For realistic fusion zones, the heat flux must be prescribed in the deposited weld pass and also the adjacent pipe elements. The FE thermal results are validated by comparing experimental temperatures measured by five thermocouples on the pipe outside surface with the FE temperature history at corresponding nodal points.


Uncontrolled transboundary transfer of hazardous wastes was recognized as a major environmental problem in the mid-1980s. The international community responded by elaborating pertinent international agreements. Treaties are now in place at the global and regional levels, and additional ones are being negotiated. Despite their common aim of protecting the environment against the ill-effects of hazardous wastes, they often differ in stringency as well as scope and membership. The book analyses the key treaties and other international legal rules on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes. It identifies inconsistencies, gaps, and overlaps, and proposes ways to build a comprehensive global regulatory system for the management of hazardous wastes by harmonizing relevant international legal rules.


ABSTRACT DHCR24/seladin-1, a crucial enzyme in sterol synthesis, is of lower abundance in brain areas affected by Alzheimer's disease. While high levels of DHCR24/seladin-1 exert antiapoptotic function by conferring resistance against oxidative stress, the molecular mechanism for this protective effect is not fully understood. Here we show that DHCR24/seladin-1 expression is up-regulated in an acute response and down-regulated in a chronic response to oxidative stress. High levels of DHCR24/seladin-1 were associated with elevated cholesterol concentrations and a general increase in cholesterol biosynthesis upon oxidative stress exposure in neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells. DHCR24/seladin-1 overexpression conferred resistance to oxidative stress in a cholesterol-dependent manner. Mutating the reductase activity within DHCR24/seladin-1 abolished this protective effect. Conversely, DHCR24/seladin-1 levels diminished upon chronic exposure to oxidative stress. Low levels of DHCR24/seladin-1 were associated with reduced p53 levels, independent of DHCR24 activity and cholesterol concentrations. Additionally, ablation of DHCR24/seladin-1 prevented apoptosis of primary neurons in a p53-dependent manner and reduced the response of critical p53 targets due to deficient stabilization of p53 and therefore elevated p53 ubiquitination and degradation. Our findings reveal a dual capacity of DHCR24/seladin-1, which appears to be involved in two mechanistically independent prosurvival effects, exerting an acute response and a chronic response to oxidative stress.


The dramatic rates new digital content becomes available has brought collaborative ltering systems in the epicenter of computer science research in the last decade. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for rating prediction utilizing concepts from the eld of Bayesian nonparametrics. The basic concept that underlies our approach is that each user rates a presented item based on the latent genres of the item and the latent interests of the user. Each item may belong to more than one genre, and each user may belong to more than one latent interest class. The number of existing latent genres and interests are not known beforehand, but should be inferred in a data-driven fashion. We devise a novel hierarchical factor analysis model to formulate our approach under these assumptions. We impose suitable priors over the allocation of items into genres, and users into interests; specically, we utilize a novel scheme which comprises two coupled Indian buet process priors that allow the number of latent classes (genres/interests) to be automatically inferred. We experiment on a large set of real ratings data, and show that our approach outperforms four common baselines, including two very competitive state-of-the-art approaches.


While there has been an abundance of empirical research on the subject of mergers and acquisitions, little research exists on a closely related topic—voluntary corporate selloffs. This study examines the effect on shareholder wealth of the announcement by management of an investment decision to voluntarily sell part of its operations to another firm. Positive abnormal returns are found to occur on the announcement date. However, it is found that such selloffs generally occur after a period of abnormally negative returns, suggesting the announcement is preceded by the release of negative information about the firm.


A user can be represented as what he/she does along the history. A common way to deal with the user modeling problem is to manually extract all kinds of aggregated features over the heterogeneous behaviors, which may fail to fully represent the data itself due to limited human instinct. Recent works usually use RNN-based methods to give an overall embedding of a behavior sequence, which then could be exploited by the downstream applications. However, this can only preserve very limited information, or aggregated memories of a person. When a downstream application requires to facilitate the modeled user features, it may lose the integrity of the specific highly correlated behavior of the user, and introduce noises derived from unrelated behaviors. This paper proposes an attention based user behavior modeling framework called ATRank, which we mainly use for recommendation tasks. Heterogeneous user behaviors are considered in our model that we project all types of behaviors into multiple latent semantic spaces, where influence can be made among the behaviors via self-attention. Downstream applications then can use the user behavior vectors via vanilla attention. Experiments show that ATRank can achieve better performance and faster training process. We further explore ATRank to use one unified model to predict different types of user behaviors at the same time, showing a comparable performance with the highly optimized individual models.


This study evaluated the behavior of an anaerobic expanded granular sludge bed system using different methylparaben (MPB) concentrations. The assay was conducted for 268 days and was divided into seven stages of operation, which included the starting stage and subsequent stages where the MPB concentration was increased. The inoculum that was used was a mixture of anaerobic granular sludge with flocculent active sludge that contained 21.7 g/L of total suspended solids and 17.4 g/L of volatile suspended solids, resulting in an organic content of approximately 80%. The MPB removals after applying concentrations of 300 mg/L, 500 mg/L and 1,000 mg/L during the different stages and adding glucose to the influent were 94±2.4%, 84±5.8% and 88±7.4%, respectively. For phases without glucose, the results were 97.4±0.4%, 96±1.6% and 98.2±0.3%, respectively. The results showed a high pollutant removal and good progress in terms of the physical and biological characteristics of the granular biomass, which showed no change in the presence of the compound or a concentration increase.


Are home computers are an important input in the educational production function? To address this question, we conduct a field experiment involving the provision of free computers to schoolchildren for home use. Low-income children attending middle and high schools in 15 schools in California were randomly selected to receive free computers and followed over the school year. The results indicate that the experiment substantially increased computer ownership and total computer use among the schoolchildren with no substitution away from use at school or other locations outside the home. We find no evidence that the home computers improved educational outcomes for the treatment group. From detailed administrative data provided by the schools and a follow-up survey, we find no evidence of positive effects on a comprehensive set of outcomes such as grades, test scores, credits, attendance, school enrollment, computer skills, and college aspirations. The estimates also do not indicate that the effects of home computers on educational outcomes are instead negative. Our estimates are precise enough to rule out even modestly-sized positive or negative impacts. The lack of a positive net effect on educational outcomes may be due to displacement from non-educational uses such as for games, social networking, and entertainment. We find evidence that total hours of computer use for games and social networking increases substantially with having a home computer, and increases more than total hours of computer use for schoolwork.


There is growing evidence from across the arts and health field that suggests that participatory arts programmes can contribute to health improvement, emotional resilience and social reintegration, among vulnerable and excluded groups including criminal justice populations. This report presents a three-year research project funded by the BIG Lottery Fund that completed in 2013. The project was a collaboration between Superact Community Interest Company and the University of the West of England, Bristol. It used mixed methods to investigate a participatory music programme delivered to young people in justice settings by Superact.

The research was conducted within a range of custody and community based youth justice settings. These included Young Offender Institutions, Juvenile Secure Units and Prisons, Secure Children's Homes and Youth Offending Teams. Ethnographic research explored responses and perceptions of Superact's music programme, focusing on links between music and health, wellbeing, behaviour and social inclusion. Data collection included participant observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups across eight sites and fifteen programes. As well as examining in depth the responses and views of young people who took part, the research explored the perceptions of stakeholders including prison staff and musicians. A key objective of the research was to pilot conventional validated health, wellbeing and social inclusion questionnaires with this population, partly to establish baseline scores and also to explore the feasibility of measuring these indicators with a transient and 'hard-to-reach' population.

The research has yielded valuable insight into the perspectives and attitudes of young people in justice settings, in relation to music and their identification with it, and participatory music programming. The research reveals the effects of group dynamics, institutional systems, behavioural factors and population transience on delivery of programmes across these settings. Perhaps inevitably, the high degree of transience of the population impacted on programme attendance and participation, limiting what could be drawn from the quantitative data. However, while the baseline questionnaire data reveal no significant findings with respect to health, wellbeing and social inclusion indicators, the qualitative findings reveal a myriad of themes that underlie the process of programme delivery and the value of music to individuals. These data reveal significant affordances offered by music making for young people and illustrate programme and contextual factors necessary for these affordances to be realised. Essentially, creative music making has the potential to engage even 'hard to reach' young people, delivering positive learning experiences and enabling them to forge new identities. Active engagement in arts programmes of this kind can deliver life-changing benefits for some individuals; certainly, for the majority of participants in this study, the programme was valuable in helping them cope with difficult circumstances, including custody, and to consider how music could help them look positively towards the future. Team-building, group dynamics and creativity were key factors underlining successful programme delivery and effective engagement of young people.

In conclusion, we argue that participatory music programmes provide opportunities to young people to engage alternative skills and competencies that are not routinely afforded them via conventional education and training programmes. Moreover, music provides a medium that enables young people to engage their life experiences in creative ways, to identify positively with music, to draw on knowledge and experiences, and to engage with their peer group. An important feature of programmes delivered by professional musicians is that they have the skills and experience to garner respect from young people, particularly groups that are difficult to engage and present with challenging attitudes and behaviours. We believe that music programmes that take this approach are a major asset to youth justice organisations, especially since they are located outside the system and therefore command respect and credibility from young people.


Summary Introduction: The introduction of health information technology into clinical settings is associated with unintended negative consequences, some with the potential to lead to error and patient harm. As adoption rates soar, the impact of these hazards will increase. Objective: Over the last decade, unintended consequences have received great attention in the medical informatics literature, and this paper seeks to identify the major themes that have emerged. Results: Rich typologies of the causes of unintended consequences have been developed, along with a number of explanatory frameworks based on socio-technical systems theory. We however still have only limited data on the frequency and impact of these events, as most studies rely on data sets from incident reporting or patient chart reviews, rather than undertaking detailed observational studies. Such data are increasingly needed as more organizations implement health information technologies. When outcome studies have been done in different organizations, they reveal different outcomes for identical systems. From a theoretical perspective, recent advances in the emerging discipline of implementation science have much to offer in explaining the origin, and variability, of unintended consequences. Conclusion: The dynamic nature of health care service organizations, and the rapid development and adoption of health information technologies means that unintended consequences are unlikely to disappear, and we therefore must commit to developing robust systems to detect and manage them.


This study characterized perceptions of agricultural leadership programs in colleges of agriculture, food, life, human, or environmental sciences at 1862 land-grant institutions. Objectives included describing the need for programs, studying evolution within the discipline, discussing faculty recommendations for future development, and examining why programs are relevant. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis, which included open and axial coding. A total of 26 academic agricultural leadership programs were identified, and a telephone interview was completed by 19 agricultural leadership faculty members. Results of the study indicated agricultural leadership was historically founded under the umbrella of agricultural and extension education but also evolved from a need in industry. The discipline evolved because the academic subject matter was broadly appealing to students and, and its growth was also spurred by the popularity of community and rural leadership development programs. To improve agricultural leadership programs, faculty surveyed recommended collaborative efforts across the discipline to establish a unified vision and a national professional organization. Throughout the interviews, themes emerged related to the relevancy of agricultural leadership programs in higher education: (1) The agricultural leadership discipline creates leaders through developing "human capital," and (2) graduates promote industry growth through their political, policy, and public influence. Future recommendations for research included identifying perceptions of agricultural leadership beyond the scope of 1862 land-grant institutions.


This paper describes a two year undergraduate education program in software engineering. This program is designed around the principle of exploratory learning, whereby the students are trained to build knowledge by themselves and actively search for solutions to the problems they experience. In addition to the essential aspects of software engineering: managing complexity of large, changing systems and the ability to work in teams; the program also aims to prepare the students for working in a field of rapidly changing conditions and constraints. This paper describes how these high level goals have been implemented in an actual curriculum. At the core of the program is a set of project courses which are conducted as role playing games in order to simulate the conditions in an industrial environment. Two years worth of students have graduated from the program now, and the paper summarizes the main lessons learned as well as a follow-up survey of experiences from some of the organizations who hired the students. >


Face stimuli challenge the infant's immature visual processing system's capacity to differentiate stimuli that differ in subtle ways. Experiments I to 4 investigated infants' preference for the human face between birth and 3 months of age when contrasted with four control stimuli. A visual preference technique was used because it does not call upon the participant's ability to speak. A spontaneous preference for a photographic representation of the human face was observed at birth for three out of four conditions. At 3 months of age, a preference for the human face was observed in two conditions. However, at I month of age, no preferences were observed. Findings did not support the view that the selectivity of the infant's responses to faces increases with exposure to faces and narrowing of the perceptual window (Nelson, 2001). Experiment 5 examined infants' ability to discriminate specific exemplars of the human face category, namely the mother's face, between I and 9 months of age. A preference for the mother's face was observed at I month. A tendency to prefer the stranger's face was observed at 3 months. No preference was observed at 6 and 9 months, thus suggesting that the visual preference procedure is not suitable for measuring recognition at these ages. Premature birth is associated with brain injury, which can lead to visual and intellectual deficits. Experiment 6 investigated general intelligence as well as face processing in school-aged children born prematurely and at term. Results indicated that premature children displayed levels within the normal range of intelligence. Furthermore, no long-term visual deficits were observed as performance levels for the discrimination of facial emotions were comparable between groups. Only premature children displayed an inversion effect, thereby demonstrating an adult-like face processing system.


ABSTRACT This article suggests that there is a growing disconnect between the practice of community policing and the scientific examination and evaluation of the concept. Specifically, it is suggested that there is little empirical evidence available regarding the effectiveness of community policing initiatives and that, as a result, concerns have been raised regarding the development of these programs. The major challenges to developing community policing programs are reviewed and a therapeutic jurisprudence model is proposed as guidance for the development of future programs. Since the mid 1980's policing organizations throughout the world have attempted to develop and implement various alternative community-based programs including community-oriented policing, neighborhood-oriented policing, and problem-oriented policing (Oliver, 1998). Although these programs vary in terms of their approach, they tend to share the common theme. That is, attempting to develop an effective working relationship between the police and the community with regard to the detection and prevention of crime. Karp (1998, pp. 13-14), for example, suggests that these approaches are based on a community justice philosophy that refers to, "all variants of crime prevention and justice activities that explicitly include the community in their processes and set the enhancement of community quality of life as an explicit goal." In addition to sharing this common overarching theme, community policing programs also tend share a number of guiding principles. First, these programs agree that the effectiveness of policing can be enhanced by the active participation of citizens. Specifically, it is believed that these programs will allow community members to become additional "eyes and ears" for the police and, in turn, aid in the prevention and detection of crime. Second, these programs are united in the belief that effective community-policing programs can positively impact community perceptions of crime. For example, police agencies today recognize that community perceptions (or beliefs) about crime rates are just as important as the actual crime rates when evaluating fear of crime. As such, community policing programs acknowledge that encouraging a more active collaboration between the police and a community is likely to culminate in community members feeling safer--even if actual crime rates do not decrease significantly. Finally, community policing programs also tend to be guided by the principle that policing today should be viewed as a vital component of a more holistic social justice approach to crime. In other words, community policing programs represent a modern-day belief that the police are part of a larger picture with regard to the issue of crime and should not be viewed as a separate entity from other justice agencies such as community-based programs, the courts, and corrections. Although these early community policing programs initially received very positive responses, researchers as well as practitioners have increasingly begun to question their actual effectiveness. Fielding (1995, p.1) goes so far as to argue that the bulk of recent "studies on community policing have been preoccupied with one thing--does it work." Unfortunately, Fielding goes on to suggest that the results of this research indicate that community policing programs have not been very effective to date due to a number of theoretical and organizational problems (Rosenbaum, 1988). Foremost of these problems is the theoretical debate over the definition of community. Goldstein (1990), for example, suggests that the ineffectiveness of a number of community policing programs can be traced back to the inherent difficulty in trying to define exactly what a community is. Similarly, it has been suggested that the failure of many of these programs is due to the fact that they continue to employ "old" policing practices rather than innovative approaches. …


This book presents the most recent state of the art in mobile positioning and tracking techniques. This book discusses mobile positioning solutions applied on top of current wireless communication networks. In addition, the authors introduce advanced and novel topics such as localization in heterogeneous and cooperative networks, providing a unified treatment of the topic for researchers and industry professionals alike. Furthermore, the book focuses on application areas of positioning, basics of wireless communications for positioning, data fusion and filtering techniques, fundamentals of tracking, error mitigation techniques, positioning systems and technologies, and cooperative mobile positioning systems. Key Features: Covers the state of the art of satellite- and terrestrial-based positioning systems, spanning from outdoor to indoor environments and from wide area networks to short-range networks Discusses a whole range of topics related to mobile positioning: from fundamentals of positioning to the description of a wide spectrum of mobility models for tracking, from details on data fusion and filtering techniques to error mitigation techniques (including aspects of signal processing) Provides a solid bridge between research and industry envisaging a potential implementation of the presented solutions Fills the gap between positioning and communication systems, showing how features of communication systems can be used for positioning purposes and how the retrieved location information can be used to enhance the performance of wireless networks. Includes an accompanying website This book will be a valuable guide for advanced students studying related courses. Professionals and practitioners in the field of positioning and mobile technologies, and software and service developers will also find this book of interest.


A convenient and accurate technique for measuring the birefringence of liquid crystals at discrete wavelengths or as a continuous function of wavelength in the ultraviolet, visible, or infrared spectral regions is described. The method is based on determination of the phase differences which occur when monochromatic polarized light propagates through a medium with an anisotropic refractive index. Birefringence measurements at 0.6328 μm for two liquid crystal materials, BDH-E7 and ZLI-1132, and a continuous birefringence spectrum of ZLI-1132 from 2 to 16 μm are reported. Additionally, a liquid crystal based phase retardation plate which can be voltage tuned and calibrated to provide any degree of phase shift from 0 to 2π over a wide wavelength range (0.4–16 μm) is discussed.


The purpose of the reinsurance industry is to provide insurance for primary insurers. Primary insurers have fairly standardised policies, whereas those of reinsurers are often less so, more internationally oriented and likely to cover very large risks. There is little doubt that primary insurance policies, as well as an insurance market based on fixed premiums, would be difficult to sustain over the long run without reinsurance. Reinsurance enables portfolio diversification by the primary insurer in order to avoid the kinds of devastating losses that could threaten its survival (Kopf 1929; Golding 1930; Doherty & Smetters 2005; James et al. 2014; Borsheid & Haueter 2012).This paper discusses the emergency of the Swedish life reinsurance market from the mid 19th century and describe the development until the 2010s. In the wake of the founding of the first joint stock corporations in the middle of the 1850s, insurers set rather limited risk maximums and signed reciprocal treaties with mainly foreign insurers to limit their risks. During the following six decades the life reinsurance was handled by individual corporations but in 1914 a commonly owned life reinsurance company was organised to deal with the issue for reinsurance for the entire market. This continued until the end of the 1980s when most of the individual insurers preferred to set up their own corporations for dealing with the issue of life reinsurance and Sweden Re was transformed into a completely different organisation.


To facilitate the settlement of new immigrants, immigrant service organizations provide a range of services and opportunities for both formal and informal learning. These organizations, however, also act as liminal spaces in which the women who access their services may renegotiate identities, create new knowledge and forge new conceptions of community. The purpose of this article is to present an analysis of the data from two organizations which were sites for a larger research project designed to explore the formal and informal learning processes in immigrant service organizations. The data for this study was collected through client interviews and participant observation of formal and informal learning activities at two immigrant service organization that provide settlement, educational and support programs and services for immigrant women.


We present the results of an inelastic neutron scattering study of a crystalline polymorph of SiO2 (a-quartz), and a number of silicate glasses (pure silica, SiO2, and three glasses in the alkali silicate series (K,Li)2Si2O5). We demonstrate the presence of the Boson peak in the inelastic spectra of both the crystalline and amorphous materials and argue that it arises simply from the dispersion characteristics of transverse acoustic modes. Furthermore, we investigate the role of the lower-energy floppy modes in the inelastic spectra, and show that they are controlled by chemical effects.


This paper uses administrative data from projects for which an application was made to CORFO's (Chile's main development agency) Seed Capital Program (SCP) during the 2008-12 period. This paper analyzes the likely impact of the program-which is a subsidy provided to new, innovative firms-on Start, Growth, and Survival. The projects are supported by sponsors in the application process. Results of our analysis indicate that, controlling for observed characteristics, projects that received the subsidy had a 9.5 percentage point higher probability of starting to sell. Among created firms, subsidized (Treated) firms showed a 17 percentage point higher probability of significant Growth (in sales) and a similar effect on Survival. The analysis also examined a change in the program rules in 2011, whereby sponsors were paid based on performance instead of fixed fees, as it was before 2011. For projects affected by the policy change, results indicate no overall association of the program with the probability of Start and a positive correlation with Growth and Survival. These results could be a consequence of sponsors making better project selections for funding. The change in rules would suggest that the program contributes more to the Growth and Survival of new firms than to their Start, which would take place anyway. The data available for this study did not make it possible to fully control for potential selection biases, and thus the results may overestimate the impact of the program. This calls to suggest to improve data collection standards to help identify the true effect of this type of program.