Struts2 is the latest manifestation of the popular Struts Java web application framework. Like its predecessor, its goals are to make web application development faster, easier and more productive than ever before. Despite new languages and new techniques, the action-base MVC framework is still a viable and effective option for modern web application development. Within this book you will find everything you need to get up and running using Struts2 - from the architecture and configuration, to implementing actions and the supporting infrastructure such as validation and internationalization. Above all else, it focuses on the practical - with plenty of code and productivity tips to get you started using Struts2 today.


Predictive analysis of social media data has attracted considerable attention from the research community as well as the business world because of the essential and actionable information it can provide. Over the years, extensive experimentation and analysis for insights have been carried out using Twitter data in various domains such as healthcare, public health, politics, social sciences, and demographics. In this chapter, we discuss techniques, approaches and state-of-the-art applications of predictive analysis of Twitter data. Specifically, we present fine-grained analysis involving aspects such as sentiment, emotion, and the use of domain knowledge in the coarse-grained analysis of Twitter data for making decisions and taking actions, and relate a few success stories.


Abstract : In practice, organizations with their own information technology infrastructure normally log or otherwise monitor network information at boundary routers and similar network devices that are log-capable. However, not all organizations opt to log local system information, such as an employee's organization-owned workstation activity. This research explores one approach to logging pertinent local system information using multithreading and free software designed for such logging purposes as well as utilities that come with the Microsoft Windows 7 Operating System. Research focuses on file downloads on the local system and combines the aforementioned pieces of software into an event logging suite. The event logging suite consists of four different sensors and utilizes multithreading in an attempt to effectively capture as many pertinent events as possible, with the ultimate goal of capturing 100% of the events in chronological order of actual occurrence. Specifically, the event logging suite increases the number of processes and thus threads that two of the four sensors, Windows NETSTAT and tasklist utilities respectively, in the suite execute in order to determine the optimal settings for the two sensors. To add some realism to the experiments, this research implements three different system loads to simulate user activity on the system while a scripted file-download scenario executes and the logging suite actively captures events. Ultimately, the performance accuracies of the NETSTAT and tasklist sensors across numerous tests show that while the sensors can capture above 85% of the expected number of events, neither are capable of consistently achieving this accuracy, even under a low system load.


Background : Environmentally acquired asbestos-related diseases (ARDs) are of concern globally. In South Africa, there is widespread contamination of the environment due to historical asbestos mining operations that were poorly regulated. Although the law makes provision for the compensation of occupationally acquired ARDs, compensation for environmentally acquired ARDs is only available through the Asbestos Relief Trust (ART) and Kgalagadi Relief Trust, both of which are administered by the ART. This study assessed ARDs and compensation outcomes of environmental claims submitted to the Trusts. Methods : The personal details, medical diagnoses, and exposure information of all environmental claims considered by the Trusts from their inception in 2003 to April 2010 were used to calculate the numbers and proportions of ARDs and compensation awards. Results : There were 146 environmental claimants of whom 35 (23.9%) had fibrotic pleural disease, 1 (0.7%) had lung cancer, and 77 (52.7%) had malignant mesothelioma. 53 (36.3%) claimants were compensated: 20 with fibrotic pleural disease and 33 with mesothelioma. Of the 93 (63.7%) claimants who were not compensated, 33 had no ARDs, 18 had fibrotic pleural disease, 1 had lung cancer, and 44 had mesothelioma. In addition to having ARDs, those that were compensated had qualifying domestic (33; 62.2%) or neighbourhood (20; 37.8%) exposures to asbestos. Most of the claimants who were not compensated had ARDs but their exposures did not meet the Trusts' exposure criteria. Conclusions : This study demonstrates the environmental impact of asbestos mining on the burden of ARDs. Mesothelioma was the most common disease diagnosed, but most cases were not compensated. This highlights that there is little redress for individuals with environmentally acquired ARDs in South Africa. To stop this ARD epidemic, there is a need for the rehabilitation of abandoned asbestos mines and the environment. These issues may not be unique to South Africa as many countries continue to mine and use asbestos.


The study investigates how a multinational corporation (MNC) can promote the absorptive capacity of its subsidiaries. The focus is on what drives the MNC subsidiary's ability to absorb marketing strategies that are initiated by the MNC parent, as well as how the subsidiary enacts on this absorptive capacity in order to compete in its focal market. The dual embeddedness of MNC subsidiaries plays a key role in this investigation, as subsidiaries belong to the MNC network and are simultaneously embedded in their host country environment. We argue that subsidiary absorptive capacity is formed as a purposeful response to this dual embeddedness. An analysis of marketing strategy absorptions undertaken by 213 subsidiaries reveals that MNCs can assist their subsidiaries to compete in competitive and dynamic focal markets by forming specific organizational mechanisms that are conducive to the development of subsidiary absorptive capacity. The findings hold important theoretical and practical implications.


The militia was a key institution in Georgian England, and arguably one that was very characteristic of its age. A 'militia' is an informal military organisation made up of part-time civilians rather than professionals. As an island, Britain had historically relied on forces of this type for home defence, but threats of a French invasion during the Seven Years War (1756-63) highlighted that the militia had fallen into disrepair and prompted calls for its revival.

In this important new study, Matthew McCormack re-examines the debates on the militia, and argues that this military reform was informed and driven by concerns about politics, nationalism, and gender. The militia tells us a great deal about the political culture of the eighteenth century, which was suspicious of professional armies and executive power, and which placed great emphasis on the liberties and masculine attributes of the ordinary citizen. Its advocates even suggested that mass military service would prompt a reinvigoration of English masculinity.

The Militia Act passed into law in 1757. From this date until the New Militia's slow demise after the Napoleonic Wars, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England considers civilian men's experience of military service. How was the militia 'embodied' - both in the contemporary sense of assembling for service, and also as a gendered bodily experience? Chapters explore questions such as physical training, masculine honour, material culture, self-identity, and citizenship. As such, the volume's interdisciplinary approaches offer new perspectives on the history of war.


During these past five years, the Internet phenomenon has been marked by a tremendous growth of users and a hugely mass of information. Since then, Internet has been inevitable for the information specialists and the network of networks is full of advantages : a lower cost communication medium, user-friendly, a world wide mean of communication and exchange and mostly an openly way of putting dynamically information for all. Because of its very different nature, searching information on the Internet becomes ever harder. The user has to be familiar with index search, in order to find the right information. But the unbelievable growth of information sources available on the Internet makes these tools more and more inefficient. Actually, a new generation of index search has sprung off. These tools relieve the user with the repetitive commands due to the online browsing. These tools are called >. We propose in this article to show how can we use an intelligent agent to create and to hold a virtual library active.


On-chip caches represent a sizeable fraction of the total power consumption of microprocessors. Although large caches can significantly improve performance, they have the potential to increase power consumption. As feature sizes shrink, the dominant component of this power loss will be leakage. In our previous work we have shown how the drowsy circuit - a simple, state-preserving, low-leakage circuit that relies on voltage scaling for leakage reduction - can be used to reduce the total energy consumption of data caches by more than 50%. In this paper, we extend the architectural control mechanism of the drowsy cache to reduce leakage power consumption of instruction caches without significant impact on execution time. Our results show that data and instruction caches require different control strategies for efficient execution. To enable drowsy instruction caches, we propose a technique called cache sub-bank prediction which is used to selectively wake up only the necessary parts of the instruction cache, while allowing most of the cache to stay in a low leakage drowsy mode. This prediction technique reduces the negative performance impact by 76% compared to the no-prediction policy. Our technique works well even with small predictor sizes and enables an 86% reduction of leakage energy in a 64 K byte instruction cache.


Received: November 2015, Accepted: January 2016 Background: The quality of clinical services is one of the main concerns around the world. Clinical governance as a new approach to improving the quality of care provided by the health care system plays a major role in the provision of higher quality health care services. The success of this approach depends on the existence of a strong and suitable organizational culture. The aim of this study was modeling the relationship between organizational culture, clinical governance, and organizational performance. Materials and Methods: The purpose of this study is practical and its data collection is descriptive, but as a result it is an empirical study. This study was a correlative study based on structural equation modeling (SEM). The statistical population of this study consisted of all managers, supervisors, educational and clinical supervisors, and nurses of Tamin Ejtemaee (social security) hospitals in Mazandaran Province, Iran. Due to the limitation of the study, all individuals in the target population were selected as the study subjects. Thus, 124 questionnaires were distributed among them, and, 113 questionnaires were received. Data analysis was performed using SPSS and LISREL software. For data analysis, the Pearson correlation coefficient test and confirmatory factor analysis were used for precise measurement of the model. Results: The results show that there is a significant and positive relationship between the components (P < 0.01). The role of organizational culture in establishing clinical governance estimation is desirable and the results have identified its relationship with organizational performance. Conclusions: With the improvement of organizational culture, the establishment of clinical governance will increase and it will achieve optimal performance by continuation and localization.


Shareholder complaints put pressure on publicly listed firms, yet firms rarely directly address the actual issues raised in these complaints. The authors examine whether firms respond in an alternative way by altering advertising investments in an effort to ward off the financial damage associated with shareholder complaints. By analyzing a unique data set of shareholder complaints submitted to S&P 1500 firms between 2001 and 2016, supplemented with qualitative interviews of executives of publicly listed firms, the authors document that firms increase advertising investments following shareholder complaints and that such an advertising investment response mitigates a postcomplaint decline in firm value. Furthermore, results suggest that firms are more likely to increase advertising investments when shareholder complaints are submitted by institutional investors, pertain to nonfinancial concerns, and relate to topics that receive high media attention. The findings provide new insights on how firms address stock market adversities with advertising investments and inform managers about the effectiveness of such a response.


Studies from North-America indicate that large wood is one of the key factors of pristine stream ecosystems in temperate forested ecoregions, which influences channel morphology across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, and which has been successfully used in stream restoration. In contrast to North America, the relevance of large wood has long been overlooked in Central Europe. Transferability of the results of North American studies is limited, because land-use pressure is especially high in Central Europe and the natural setting as well as the restoration objectives differ from North America. The main objective of the thesis is to help develop a Central European perspective on the significance of large wood in streams and rivers and its use in stream restoration. Four studies are compiled in this thesis:
1. Potential natural state of Central European streams in respect to the amount and distribution of large wood: As a first step to describe the potential natural state of streams in respect to large wood, the results of nine investigations were summarized, in which the amount of large wood present in Central European reference sections was quantified (n = 34). Although these reference sections are among the most natural stream sections and in a "near-natural" condition according to Central European standards, the volume of large wood is low compared to other temperate forested ecoregions (factor 3). The data reveal that the current large wood standing stock is considerably less than the potential amount of large wood. However, the range of volumes found in the study streams can be regarded as the minimum volume of large wood that should be present in a "near-natural" Central European stream.
2. Influence of large wood (single large fallen trees) on channel morphology: The morphological effect of single large fallen trees, which are increasingly used in stream restoration projects, was investigated in six short channel sections in Central Europe. The results show that the single large fallen trees significantly increased structural diversity at almost all spatial scales, particularly in terms of pool volume and cross-section complexity. Furthermore, large wood increased variability of some cross-section parameters, which is of special importance, because habitat diversity is assumed to increase with cross-section variability. Moreover, some rare habitat types are clearly associated with the large fallen trees. These results indicate that single large fallen trees significantly enhance channel morphology within one to several years along a stretch of several tens of meters.
3. Quantification of the potential use and the simulation of the effects of large wood in restoration projects: The potential use and effects of large wood in Central European streams was quantified to assess, if large wood recruitment (passive restoration) and placement (active restoration) are suitable methods to restore a considerable part of the streams and rivers. Large wood recruitment is suited for only a small percentage of the streams and rivers, but total length of these channel reaches is high compared to the length of the reaches restored so far. The potential use of active restoration is much higher. About one fifth of the streams and rivers investigated can be restored by the placement of large wood, if the land uses pasture and grassland do not restrict the use of large wood.
4. Review of restoration projects in which large wood has been used so far: A mail survey on restoration projects in which large wood has been already used revealed the following aspects: Most stream managers used fixed wood structures to initiate natural channel dynamics. Failure rate of these structures is low, and preliminary monitoring results indicate that the hydromorphological status improved rapidly in most projects. However, there is potential for improvement from an ecological and economical point of view. The size and the potential effect of some wood structures on stream hydraulics and morphology is low and can be increased without inferring with local restrictions. Furthermore, in most of the cases, complex natural shaped wood structures could have been used instead of bare cylindrical logs to benefit from positive side effects. The data on the restoration projects investigated indicate that costs can be markedly reduced and positive side effects are to be expected, if wood structures without additional anchoring are used. Therefore, it is highly recommended to use such soft engineering methods in future projects whenever possible.


Kahneman and Tversky (1979) first demonstrated that when individuals decide whether or not to accept a gamble, potential losses receive more weight than possible gains in the decision. This phenomenon is referred to as loss aversion. We investigated how loss aversion in risky financial decisions is influenced by sudden changes to wealth, employing both behavioral and neurobiological measures. We implemented an fMRI experimental paradigm, based on that employed by Tom et al. (2007). There are two treatments, called RANDOM and CONTINGENT. In RANDOM, the baseline setting, the changes to wealth, referred to as wealth shocks in economics, are independent of the actual choices participants make. Under CONTINGENT, we induce the belief that the changes in income are a consequence of subjects' own decisions. The magnitudes and sequence of the shocks to wealth are identical between the CONTINGENT and RANDOM treatments. We investigated whether more loss aversion existed in one treatment than another. The behavioral results showed significantly greater loss aversion in CONTINGENT compared to RANDOM after a negative wealth shock. No differences were observed in the response to positive shocks. The fMRI results revealed a neural loss aversion network, comprising the bilateral striatum, amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that was common to the CONTINGENT and RANDOM tasks. However, the ventral prefrontal cortex, primary somatosensory cortex and superior occipital cortex, showed greater activation in response to a negative change in wealth due to individual's own decisions than when the change was exogenous. These results indicate that striatum activation correlates with loss aversion independently of the source of the shock, and that the ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) codes the experimental manipulation of agency in one's actions influencing loss aversion.


Simple, intuitive, and scalable to large problems, k-means clustering is perhaps the most frequently-used technique for unsupervised learning. However, global optimization of the k-means objective function is challenging, as the clustering algorithm is highly sensitive to its initial value. Exploiting the connection between k-means and Bayesian clustering, we explore the benefits of stochastic optimization to address this issue. Our "no-means" algorithm has provably superior mixing time to a natural Gibbs sampler with auxiliary cluster centroids. Yet, it retains the same computational complexity as the original k-means approach. Comparisons on two benchmark datasets indicate that stochastic search usually produces more homogeneous clusters than the steepest descent algorithm employed by k-means. Our no-means method objective function has multiple modes which are not too far apart.


Open-endedness, a longstanding cornerstone of artificial life research, is the ability of systems to generate potentially unbounded ontologies of increasing novelty and complexity. Engineering generative systems displaying at least some degree of this ability is a goal with clear applications to procedural content generation in games. The Paired Open-Ended Trailblazer (POET) algorithm, heretofore explored only in a biped walking domain, is a coevolutionary system that simultaneously generates environments and agents that can solve them. This paper introduces a POET-Inspired Neuroevolutionary System for KreativitY (PINSKY) in games, which co-generates levels for multiple video games and agents that play them. This system leverages the General Video Game Artificial Intelligence (GVGAI) framework to enable co-generation of levels and agents for the 2D Atari-style games Zelda and Solar Fox. Results demonstrate the ability of PINSKY to generate curricula of game levels, opening up a promising new avenue for research at the intersection of procedural content generation and artificial life. At the same time, results in these challenging game domains highlight the limitations of the current algorithm and opportunities for improvement.


In this paper we conduct a systematic comparison of confidence intervals around estimated probabilities of default (PD) using several analytical approaches as well as parametric and nonparametric bootstrap methods. We do so for two different PD estimation methods, cohort and duration (intensity), with 22 years of credit ratings data. We find that the bootstrapped intervals for the duration based estimates are relatively tight when compared to either analytic or bootstrapped intervals around the less efficient cohort estimator. We show how the large differences between the point estimates and confidence intervals of these two estimators are consistent with non-Markovian migration behavior. Surprisingly, even with these relatively tight confidence intervals, it is impossible to distinguish notch-level PDs for investment grade ratings, e.g. a PDAA- from a PDA+. However, once the speculative grade barrier is crossed, we are able to distinguish quite cleanly notch-level estimated PDs. Conditioning on the state of the business cycle helps: it is easier to distinguish adjacent PDs in recessions than in expansions.


Tensors are data structures indexed along three or more dimensions. Tensors have found increasing use in domains such as data mining and recommender systems where dimensions can have enormous length and are resultingly very sparse. The canonical polyadic decomposition (CPD) is the most popular tensor factorization for discovering latent features and is most commonly found via the method of alternating least squares (CPD-ALS). Factoring large, sparse tensors is a computationally challenging task which can no longer be done in the memory of a typical workstation. State of the art methods for distributed memory systems have focused on decomposing the tensor in a one-dimensional (1D) fashion that prohibitively requires the dense matrix factors to be fully replicated on each node. To that effect, we present DMS, a novel distributed CPD-ALS algorithm. DMS utilizes a 3D decomposition that avoids complete factor replication and communication. DMS has a hybrid MPI+OpenMP implementation that utilizes multicore architectures with a low memory footprint. We theoretically evaluate DMS against leading CPD-ALS methods and experimentally compare them across a variety of datasets. Our 3D decomposition reduces communication volume by 74% on average and is over 35x faster than state of the art MPI code on a tensor with 1.7 billion nonzeros.


Background and Purpose— Complicated (irregular or ulcerated) carotid plaques have proven to be independent predictors of stroke. We analyzed the frequency and location of plaque irregularities in a large cohort of patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease and the relation with severity of stenosis, cardiovascular risk factors, and symptomatology. Methods— Multidetector CT angiography images from 406 patients were evaluated. Plaque surface morphology was classified as smooth, irregular, or ulcerated. The location of the ulceration was defined as proximal or distal to the point of maximum stenosis. Results— Atherosclerotic plaques with an open lumen were present in 448 carotid arteries; these plaques were classified as: smooth, 276 (62%); irregular, 99 (22%); and ulcerated, 73 (16%). Sixty-two (69%) of the ulcerations were located proximal to the point of maximum luminal stenosis. Complicated plaques were significantly (P<0.001) more common in carotid arteries with stenosis >30% than in those with stenosis <30%. There is an association between complicated plaques and hypercholesterolemia (OR, 3.0) and a trend toward an association with smoking (OR, 1.9). Complicated plaques are more often present in the symptomatic carotid artery than in the contralateral asymptomatic carotid artery; however, this is fully attributed to a significantly higher degree of stenosis in the symptomatic arteries. Conclusions— Multidetector CT angiography allows the classification of atherosclerotic carotid plaque surface. Complicated plaques are frequent in atherosclerotic carotid disease, especially with higher stenosis degree. Ulcerations are mostly located in the proximal part of the atherosclerotic plaque. Hypercholesterolemia and smoking are related with the presence of complicated plaques.


This thesis analyses the lives of the 332 Swing rioters from the southern counties of England who were transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1831 for crimes of machine breaking. Along with the much smaller number of rioters transported to New South Wales, they represented one of the largest groups transported to the Australian colonies for a common crime and were certainly the largest group ever transported from England to the Australian colonies for a crime of social or political protest.
This thesis explores a number of themes.
First, it considers the causes of the Swing riots and the significant impact that the disturbances had on the newly elected Whig Government. In particular, it considers the impetus those considerations gave to the development of a colonial policy that would encourage the assisted emigration of many of the unemployed rural workers of southern England to the colonies.
Second, despite their involvement in the Swing riots, the machine breakers (as they were commonly called) were not driven by a political agenda. They were overwhelmingly conservative by nature and poverty was the primary driver behind their actions. Their collective actions in the machine breaking episodes owed more to custom and tradition than to social revolution. 'Although this non-political conservatism was demonstrated by their post - emancipation lack of interest in political issues, their willingness to engage in collective action and other means of protest during their time as convicts demonstrated a continuation of the attitudes and values that they developed as rural workers in traditional England.
Third, it analyses the impact of Transportation and Assignment on a group of men who ordinarily would never have been subject to those systems and concludes that the process did not brutalise them. This finding is subject to a proviso that the machine breakers were such valuable workers in the colony that they were probably better treated than the typical convict who would have been assigned to a rural master at that time.
Fourth, it analyses the impact that the injection of this relatively large group of skilled agricultural workers and tradesmen had on the colony of Van Diemen's Land itself, and in particular on relations between the Van Diemen's Land Company and Lieutenant Governor Arthur.
Fifth, where possible, it traces the subsequent lives of the machine breakers after they received their freedom from 1836 onwards. The accepted orthodoxy is that most of the machine breakers remained in the colony as farm workers and small tenant farmers. In fact, possibly up to fifty returned to England, and possibly as many as another hundred and fifty left the island colony, many of whom started new lives in the recently established colony of Port Phillip. Some became quite wealthy by the standards of the time, and many others became small landowners or successful business operators. Another interesting thread is that many of the machine breakers were eventually joined in the colonies by members of their family or by close relatives or fellow villagers. This is primarily due to the machine breakers sending back written reports about life in the colonies and as a phenomenon is known as chain migration.
Finally, the thesis analyses the place of the machine breakers in convict history. During the nineteenth century, they unwittingly played a part in the debate about the merits of Transportation, and their experiences were relied upon heavily by Arthur in his support of the system. During the twentieth century, they were held up as evidence that many transported convicts were not petty criminals but in fact were social protesters. This view was common until more rigorous historical work established otherwise, and it is now clear that the machine breakers form a discrete group. They now appear as a relatively conservative, law abiding group of men whose offences nevertheless were a form of social protest.


Microbial ecology as a scientific field is fundamentally driven by technological advance. The past decade's revolution in DNA sequencing cost and throughput has made it possible for most research groups to map microbial community composition in environments of interest. However, the computational and statistical methodology required to analyse this kind of data is often not part of the biologist training. In this review, we give a historical perspective on the use of sequencing data in microbial ecology and restate the current need for this method; but also highlight the major caveats with standard practices for handling these data, from sample collection and library preparation to statistical analysis. Further, we outline the main new analytical tools that have been developed in the past few years to bypass these caveats, as well as highlight the major requirements of common statistical practices and the extent to which they are applicable to microbial data. Besides delving into the meaning of select alpha- and beta-diversity measures, we give special consideration to techniques for finding the main drivers of community dissimilarity and for interaction network construction. While every project design has specific needs, this review should serve as a starting point for considering what options are available.


We present simulations of low-mass planet–disc interactions in inviscid three-dimensional discs. We show that a wind-driven laminar accretion flow through the surface layers of the disc does not significantly modify the migration torque experienced by embedded planets. More importantly, we find that 3D effects lead to a dramatic change in the behaviour of the dynamical corotation torque compared to earlier 2D theory and simulations. Although it was previously shown that the dynamical corotation torque could act to slow and essentially stall the inward migration of a low-mass planet, our results in 3D show that the dynamical corotation torque has the complete opposite effect and speeds up inward migration. Our numerical experiments implicate buoyancy resonances as the cause. These have two effects: (i) they exert a direct torque on the planet, whose magnitude relative to the Lindblad torque is measured in our simulations to be small; (ii) they torque the gas librating on horseshoe orbits in the corotation region and drive evolution of its vortensity, leading to the negative dynamical corotation torque. This indicates that at low turbulent viscosity, the detailed vertical thermal structure of the protoplanetary disc plays an important role in determining the migration behaviour of embedded planets. If this result holds up under a more refined treatment of disc thermal evolution, then it has important implications for understanding the formation and early evolution of planetary systems.


Addiction has seen to be an illness that not only affects the individual but the holistic well-being of the family. Primary caregivers form an integral part of the family system. The caregivers take on roles that might stagnate their own development and coping methods, which if used, could affect the entire family system. There are in-conclusive research on the effect of the coping method of the primary caregiver on the well-being of himself/herself and the family system as a whole. The aim of the research was to quantitatively, through making use of Orford's Coping questionnaire, explore the different coping methods employed by the primary caregiver of an adult substance dependent and thereafter to qualitatively, through utilizing a narrative approach, explore the experience of the different means of coping. The study design was a mixed method study. Quantitative research was the dominant approach followed by qualitative research. The population was the primary caregivers of adult substance dependents who have sought treatment and who resided in the Mitchell's Plain area. Eighty participants completed the coping questionnaire and four narratives were done. Quantitative research results was analyzed using SPSS and the qualitative research was analyzed by making use of narrative analysis whereby the interview was analyzed Labov and Waletzky's structural model of narrative. The theoretical framework from which the researcher addressed this study was collaboration between the family systems theory and the disease model of addiction. Quantitative findings indicated that there more caregivers make use of tolerant coping than engaged and withdrawal coping. There is a distinction between the coping methods that males and females make use of. Qualitative findings indicated that there is no 'correct' way of coping with being the caregiver of a substance dependant. Caregivers take on coping methods that they are comfortable with.


Service learning—where students perform work for a community partner in a manner that enhances course content—is a well-established tradition in academia, with many reported benefits. But is service learning technically feasible in a 100% online course format, where students will never have the opportunity to meet the community partner face-to-face? Evaluating two experimental courses taught by the authors, it is demonstrated that extreme e-service learning (XE-SL)—i.e., service learning where both the instruction and the service occur 100% online—can work, although the benefits and challenges are notably different from a traditional service learning (T-SL) format. Based on these experiences, best practices and lessons learned are provided to assist others endeavoring to incorporate the value of service learning online.


If we picked out the words most frequently used at the Health-care and social media Doctors 2.0 congress, 'Participatory Medicine' would stand out for sure together with 'community' and 'empowerment', building up a cluster of words around the concept of the evolving and more active role of the patient in medicine through social media and e-health tools. But what exactly is Participatory Medicine? And what are concrete and current examples of its implementation in Europe?

As defined by Gilles Frydman (Gilles, also at Doctors 2.0, is a pioneer of medical online communities and founder in 1995, of the Association of Cancer Online Resources, http://www.acor.org/), Participatory Medicine refers to a movement in which networked patients shift from being 'mere passengers to responsible drivers of their health'. (http://participatorymedicine.org/)

While online social media are very powerful tools for enabling this shift, they are by no means the only ones. Indeed the concept itself of Participatory Medicine precedes, and is not limited to, social media online, as it encompasses a cooperative model of health care that encourages and expects active involvement by all connected parties (patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, researchers, policy makers) as integral to the full continuum of care.

One innovative example of Participatory Medicine which relies on, but is not limited to, social media is the recently launched 'Cancercontribution', a project of collaborative intelligence based at the Villejuif Cancer Campus Pole Citoyen in Paris (http://www.cancercontribution.fr/). As the needs of society are constantly evolving due to the aging population, demographic changes, and a capillary diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies, the aim of Cancercontribution is to be proactive in this regard and provide a platform that, by involving first and foremost patients, caregivers and citizens, develops new participatory guidelines and political proposals to anticipate these changes.

Cancercontribution stimulates debates on sensible topics, such as opening up the news about a cancer diagnosis, working with cancer, the patients' role in clinical trials, side effects of treatments, and so on. The platform invites the users-patients to express their opinions, following the formal principle that each opinion is given the same weight as the others.

The Cancercontribution agenda is based on three very fundamental points:

in chronic diseases, and especially in cancer (where the tendency to chronicisation is only going to increase in the coming decades due to demographic changes and to advances in therapies), patients demand more information than the evidence-based data offered by institutional actors;

An important and unique kind of expertise is brought forward by patients and caregivers' experiences. This resource is unique in that it cannot be produced by classical experimental proceedings;

Expertise can be co-built by an interactive process which involves contributors of different backgrounds, such as patients, professionals, caregivers, politicians, associations, and civil society.

The collaborative expertise that is co-created by this interactive process constitutes ground to identify societal needs and health system's weaknesses, while also leaving room for constantly improving existing practices. All the opinions and data collected are then analysed and elaborated to develop new participatory guidelines and political proposals. Such a 'web laboratory' is thus a tool that facilitates the exercise of citizenship and direct democracy, in so far as it gives space to each person's opinion without the need of mediation through representatives, third parties or other associations.

It is in this regard that Cancercontributuon is a unique example of a laboratory that, while being grounded in the virtual world, goes beyond that to reach out and impact on the real one. As one of the key take-home messages from Doctors 2.0 was the need for an online space where doctors, patients and caregivers can communicate, exchange information, create and co-produce knowledge, the platform created by Cancercontribution can be regarded as one important step in this direction for cancer care in Europe within the framework of Participatory Medicine.


Complete First Certificate is a new course for the 2008 revised FCE exam. Informed by the Cambridge Learner Corpus and providing a complete FCE exam paper specially prepared for publication by Cambridge ESOL, it is the most authentic exam preparation course available. This topic-based course covers every part of the FCE exam in detail, ensuring that students are fully equipped to tackle each part of every paper. In addition, the accompanying free CD-ROM enables students to focus on their own particular areas of difficulty and work at their own pace.


Counter marketing involves the use of commercial marketing techniques to engage young people about harmful health behaviours, and to highlight how the industries producing the products involved in these behaviours have manipulated and targeted them. This study used a counter marketing approach to target youth smokers and nonsmokers from lower SES groups in regional NSW to help change attitudes towards smoking, and contribute towards a reduction in smoking prevalence. Formative research was conducted with young smokers in a local community centre setting, which informed the development of tobacco counter marketing materials and youth engagement activities. Initial process evaluation was also conducted to generate insight on the effect of the counter-marketing program.


The paper presents different strategies for consulting engineering companies in the emergent global economy. It is a common assumption that players can obtain market gain through cross border mergers, acquisitions, or strategic alliances in synchronisation with internal organisation. Many big companies already have considerable international presence, but most of the small and medium-size still operate regional markets. The European market is on the edge of this globalisation. This article discusses corporate strategies and the role of knowledge management in European consulting engineering companies. In doing so, it distinguishes between strategies of super-companies, medium-sized and small companies. Two Danish cases are then presented where knowledge management strategies are intertwined with different responses to globalisation. The first has expanded internationally and has attempted to support this by IT as a lever for virtualisation and accessibility of company knowledge (an export strategy). The second company makes an alliance with a large global player in order to become stronger in its development of local innovative and knowledge intensive solutions (an import strategy).


The article tests whether the personality of candidates – in terms of their Big Five (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness) and Dark triad (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) – is associated with their electoral results. Via a novel dataset based on expert ratings for 122 candidates having competed in 55 recent national elections worldwide, and controlling for several covariates, results show that a better performance at the ballot box is associated with high conscientiousness, openness to experience and psychopathy. Extraversion is negatively associated with better results. Analyses also reveal profile effects; extraversion is linked to worse results especially for incumbents and younger candidates, conscientiousness and narcissism are associated with better results especially for candidates on the right-hand side of the ideological spectrum, and openness is associated with better results for male candidates.


The decades before the Scottish Reformation Parliament of 1560 witnessed the unprecedented use of a range of different media to disseminate the Protestant message and to shape beliefs and attitudes. By placing these works within their historical context, this thesis explores the ways in which various media – academic discourse, courtly entertainments, printed poetry, public performances, preaching and pedagogical tools – were employed by evangelical and Protestant reformers to persuade and/or educate different audiences within sixteenth-century Scottish society. The thematic approach examines not only how the reformist message was packaged, but how the movement itself and its persuasive agenda developed, revealing the ways in which it appealed to ever broader circles of Scottish society. In their efforts to bring about religious change, the reformers capitalised on a number of traditional media, while using different media to address different audiences. Hoping to initiate reform from within Church institutions, the reformers first addressed their appeals to the kingdom's educated elite. When their attempts at reasoned academic discourse met with resistance, they turned their attention to the monarch, James V, and the royal court. Reformers within the court utilised courtly entertainments intended to amuse the royal circle and to influence the young king to oversee the reformation of religion within his realm. When, following James's untimely death in 1542, the throne passed to his infant daughter, the reformers took advantage of the period of uncertainty that accompanied the minority. Through the relatively new technology of print, David Lindsay's poetry and English propaganda presented the reformist message to audiences beyond the kingdom's elite. Lindsay and other reformers also exploited the oral media of religious theatre in public spaces, while preaching was one of the most theologically significant, though under-researched, means of disseminating the reformist message. In addition to works intended to convert, the reformers also recognised the need for literature to edify the already converted. To this end, they produced pedagogical tools for use in individual and group devotions. Through the examination of these various media of persuasion, this study contributes to our understanding of the means by which reformed ideas were disseminated in Scotland, as well as the development of the reformist movement before 1560.


Background
Periodontal diseases are of microbial etiology and are globally causing loss of teeth in adult population. Many severe oral diseases have been recently associated to Herpes viruses, of which Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) and human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) have been indicated in the etiology of periodontal diseases.

Aim
The purpose of the study was to compare the effect of EBV in different types of periodontal diseases namely acute gingivitis, chronic gingivitis, acute and chronic, localized and generalized aggressive (juvenile) periodontitis and apical periodontitis.

Material and Method
70 individuals were included in this study. Supragingival plaque and plaque from two deepest sites of the periodontal pockets were collected then stored at 70° c and prepared for nucleic acid extraction. For EBV detection, DNA were extracted from the plaque samples with the QIAamp DNA mini kit. Q-PCR was performed by targeting the non-polymorphic Epstein-Barr nuclear antigen-1 (EBNA-1) gene using Corbett Research 6000 Q-PCR instrument and Rotor gene 6000 software.

Results
Overall prevalence of EBV in the disease group was 60% (27/45 patients) as compared to only 8% (4/25 people) in the normal population. The mean copy number of EBV DNA was found to be significantly higher in periodontitis (2234 ± 1811.34) when compared to gingivitis (554 ± 537.64, p = .001) and normal patients (370 ± 161.03, p < .001).

Conclusion
Here, we found that the prevalence of EBV as well as copy number of EBV was significantly higher in periodontitis patients as compared to gingivitis patients or normal population.


This apparel manufacturers marketing strategy is built around exploiting its technological capability and engineering know-how-and giving every employee a stake in the outcome. OVERVIEW: Advanced manufacturing technology is often considered only in the context of the direct benefits it provides to manufacturing operations-for example, lower cost, greater efficiency and more consistent quality. Not so for William Epstein, a small South Carolina-based apparel manufacturer. His companies integrate advanced manufacturing technology into virtually every aspect of the business enterprise. Advanced technology not only tempers the design of the manufacturing unit, but also profoundly shapes the business strategy and is heavily exploited for new business development. It even has a fundamental bearing on the corporate capital structure of the firm. Moreover, Epstein employs a variety of novel approaches for motivating the acceptance of new technology into his apparel operations. Apparel-maker Iva Manufacturing has a technology champion for its president. But William (Bill) Epstein is not merely committed to the innovative use of technology He pursues a long-term business strategy in which technology is so thoroughly integrated that even the lowest-ranking machine operator's pay depends upon its proper implementation. This article chronicles Epsteins' assumptions, practices and philosophies with respect to the business role of advanced technology. It traces the processes he has adopted for managing the evaluation, uptake and operation of advanced technology. Its focus is on the managerial processes and not on the details of the adopted technology per se. Iva Manufacturing Company is located in the rural upstate region of South Carolina. Bill Epstein founded Iva in 1953 with an initial investment of $5,000. Epstein's current scope of activity has grown to include a network of six apparel factories throughout the region, as well as two marketing companies, employing some 600 workers and producing some 60,000 garments per week (See Figure 1). Annual revenues are approximately $20 million from women's sportswear, pants, robes, and nightgowns; as well as home furnishings and automotive interiors. The two marketing organizations, New Fashion and Third Generation, sell to a variety of outlets including mail order houses, regional chains, and directly to smaller retailers. Orders are also received from other independent marketing organizations outside the Epstein companies. Depending on the product involved, a garment is produced in one of the six Epstein factories (Iva, Sportswear, Amco, Fair Play, Clark Hill, or Honea Path). The labor pool available in upstate South Carolina is relatively unskilled, and there is no union at any of the six apparel companies. Epstein's personal vigor and capabilities have been the driving influence in the success of his companies. On balance, he views government largely as a constraining factor that adds to the expense and/or complication of operating (e.g., income tax laws, 807 trade policies, Mexican economic support, occupational safety and health regulations, minimum wage laws, plant construction codes and regulations, depreciation rules for capital investment, etc.). He views government social programs as contributing to the deterioration of the "work ethic." He is a strong believer that people, regardless of background, will respond when given the right economic incentive. Epstein knows the technology of apparel manufacturing inside out, having started as a sewing operator at age 16. He attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York City, receiving an associate's degree in industrial engineering in 1953. Prior to 1989, his firm was able to compete on cost, largely due to his genius for work organization and the innovative use of technology-in his words, "By working smarter, not harder." With the adoption of 807 legislation (see "807 Contracting," page 51), he recognized the need to respond in creative ways other than just cost reduction. …


No tort reform has more potential to improve the quality of medical care and to reduce the frequency of patient injuries than exclusive hospital enterprise liability. Hospital enterprise liability would make hospitals liable for all patient injuries occurring in the hospital that are the product of provider negligence, regardless of the independent contractor status of the providers. In its "exclusive" form, enterprise liability would also eliminate the personal liability of individual physicians and nurses. Exclusive hospital enterprise liability has the potential to revive the dormant deterrent power of tort law. The reasons are simple. Unlike individual physicians, hospitals are experience-rated repeat players who have the vantage point and the resources needed to recognize and implement systematic improvements in the process of delivering health care. Adoption of enterprise liability would align the incentives of tort law with the goals of modern patient safety advocates who emphasize the need to shift our focus from the blaming of individual wrongdoers to the design of systems that anticipate and prevent human error. Exclusive enterprise liability would also reduce the disruption caused by the insurance cycle, spare high-risk specialists from shouldering a disproportionate share of health care's liability costs, reduce litigation costs that arise in multi-defendant lawsuits, and dampen the extraordinary anger of practicing physicians. The time has come to adopt hospital enterprise liability.


Cass Sunstein has long argued that judicial minimalism promotes democracy. According to Sunstein's view, a court can encourage the political branches of government to address an issue by using doctrines such as vagueness, nondelegation, and desuetude. Although much has been written about minimalism, very little has been said about the democracy-promotion thesis in particular. Yet it is one of the central claims of contemporary minimalism. This article attempts to remedy the deficiency. It argues that minimalism does not promote democracy because minimalist decisions lack the depth necessary to trigger democratic deliberation. The argument occurs in three steps. First, the article undertakes a detailed examination of the notions of narrowness and shallowness, the central components of judicial minimalism. It offers a unique interpretation of both ideas, and shows, among other things, how a decision can be both narrow and deep - an assertion repeatedly made by Sunstein but never explained in detail. Second, the article discusses the deliberative account of democracy, and shows how a minimalist decision could be thought to spur democratic activity in this sense. Third, the article constructs a simple model of deliberation for evaluating the democracy-promotion thesis. As the model shows, deliberation often requires the production of highly abstract reasons, whereas shallow decisions avoid such reasons because they generate disagreement and increase the risk of judicial error. The article concludes that minimalism does not promote democracy. Deeply justified decisions can promote democracy, however, and do not necessarily show disrespect for those who disagree, as Sunstein suggests.


This paper reviews our recent progress of GaN-based high brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Firstly, by adopting chemical wet etching patterned sapphire substrates in GaN-based LEDs, not only could increase the extraction quantum efficiency, but also improve the internal quantum efficiency. Secondly, we present a high light-extraction 465-nm GaN-based vertical light-emitting diode structure with double diffuse surfaces. The external quantum efficiency was demonstrated to be about 40%. The high performance LED was achieved mainly due to the strong guided-light scattering efficiency while employing double diffuse surfaces


Every year in France, between 600 and 700 women ask to give birth «secretly» in a maternity unit. This study, conducted in 83 of the country's 100 departements, collected administrative information on 835 such deliveries from July 2007 to July 2009, along with the socio-demographic characteristics of 739 of the women concerned and information on the context of their pregnancies. At the time of birth, 10% of women requesting a secret delivery indicate their name on the child's birth certificate, thereby establishing filiation, 13% record it in the child's hospital file, while 29% leave it in a sealed envelope so that, if several other conditions are met, the child will later be able to learn his/her birthmother's identity. Three main birthmother «profiles» were identified: «young women dependent on their parents» (25% of the women), «independent women» (25%) and «women living alone in precarious conditions» (15%). Very young women «abandoned» by their partner and in a precarious situation are thus not the only ones to give birth in secret, though such women are over-represented. In the two-month period following delivery, during which birthmothers have the legal right to reclaim the child, 14% choose to do so. The women who most frequently change their minds are those who were obliged to abandon it under family pressure or due to economic constraints. Women who have acquired economic independence or are living with a partner less frequently give birth in secret; birthmothers in this category appear more determined and less frequently change their mind.


Graphical displays play a pivotal role in understanding data sets and disseminating results. For meta-analysis, they are instrumental in presenting findings from multiple studies. This report presents guidance to authors wishing to submit graphical displays as part of their meta-analysis to a clinical cardiology journal, such as Heart. When using graphical displays for meta-analysis, we recommend the following: Use a flow diagram to describe the number of studies returned from the initial search, the inclusion/exclusion criteria applied and the final number of studies used in the meta-analysis. Present results from the meta-analysis using a figure that incorporates a forest plot and underlying (tabulated) statistics, including test for heterogeneity. Use displays such as funnel plot (minimum 10 studies) and Galbraith plot to visually present distribution of effect sizes or associations in order to evaluate small-study effects and publication bias). For meta-regression, the bubble plot is a useful display for assessing associations by study-level factors. Final checks on graphs, such as appropriate use of axis scale, line pattern, text size and graph resolution, should always be performed.


Aim: To study the outcome of a cohort of patients with atlantoaxial instability (AAI) treated with a combination of C1-C2 transarticular screws and C1 lateral mass fixation. Background: Several surgical techniques have been described for stabilization of the atlantoaxial complex. Each technique differs in its biomechanical properties, advantages, and disadvantages. In this series, we describe our experience with a combined four-point fixation technique that combines C1-C2 transarticular screws with C1 lateral mass fixation for AAI. Materials and methods: We present a single-center retrospective case series of 30 patients who were surgically treated for AAI over one decade. All patients presented with symptoms and signs of AAI and consequently underwent extensive clinical and radiological evaluation prior to surgery. The median follow-up of our cohort was 8.3 months (3–143) with three patients lost to follow-up. Pre and postoperative symptoms were compared, including the visual analog scale (VAS) scores for neck and C2 radicular pain. All patients' preand postoperative lateral dynamic cervical radiographs were evaluated and the posterior atlantodental interval (PADI) was measured. Ranawat functional disability score was used for pre and postoperative evaluation. Results: Of the 30 patients, 8 were male and 22 female. The mean age was 60.4 years (18-78 years). The median hospital stay following surgery was 5 days (2–25 days). The mean preoperative VAS score for neck pain was 6.3 vs 4.3 at the first postoperative review (p ≤ 0.001) on paired comparison. Ranawat scores were available for 26 out of 30 patients. The scores improved following surgery in 8/26 (30.7%) patients, did not change in 17 (65.4%) patients, and deteriorated in only one patient (3.8%). Like the VAS score, improvement in Ranawat score following surgery was significant (p = 0.02). ORIGINAL ARTICLE 1,4,6,7Consultant, 2,3Neurosurgery Registrar, 5Neuroradiology Registrar 1-5,7Department of Neurosurgery, John Radcliffe Hospital Oxford, UK 6Academic Neurosurgery Unit, St George's, University of London London, UK Corresponding Author: Murtuza Sikander, Consultant Department of Neurosurgery, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford UK, Phone: +441865234860, e-mail: murtuza.sikander@ouh. nhs.uk 10.5005/jp-j urnals-10039-1105 Complications in this series included two unilateral intraoperative vertebral artery injuries associated with placement of C1-C2 transarticular screws, another patient had worsening C2 pain following surgery, and three patients had numbness in the C2 distribution following the procedure. Radiologically, two patients had suboptimal unilateral C2 screw placement despite satisfactory intraoperative fluoroscopic imaging. There were no infections and no implant failure. Conclusion: The addition of C1 lateral mass screws to C1-C2 transarticular screw fixation for the treatment of AAI is an effective and safe procedure worthy of note. Our results and experience prove that this method is extremely beneficial where decompression of the posterior elements of C1 is required and may obviate the need of additional posterior wiring traditionally described. Further studies are necessary to look at the longterm fusion rates and compare them with other procedures.


The LiNiO2 has been the most widely used cathode material in commercial lithium ion batteries because of its high discharge capacity, low cost and environmentally acceptable properties. However, it is difficult to obtain stoichiometric LiNiO2 by solid-state reaction method at high temperature in air atmosphere. This is due to the instability of trivalent nickel species and disordering of cationic distribution at lithium sites. In this paper, we have synthesized the LiNiO2 cathode material by sol-gel and solid state reaction methods at different temperatures (between 750 oC and 800 oC) for obtaining the sample in good phase formation. The sol-gel synthesis method is mainly used because the chemical reaction is easy and also it requires only a low reaction temperature. Further it yields a high degree of homogeneity compared to the conventional solid state synthesis. The crystal structure, bonding nature and vibrational features of the compound are investigated. The crystalline powders are characterized for their phase identification using x-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). All the samples synthesized by these two methods possessed the α-NaFeO2 structure of the rhombohedral system (space group, 3 R m ) with no evidence of any impurities. The morphological features of the powders are characterized by field effect scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The grain sizes of the samples are found to be approximately 1.5-2 μm. The FT-IR spectroscopic data of LiNiO2 reveal the structure of the oxide lattice constituted by LiO6 and NiO6 octahedra. From this study we conclude that the LiNiO2 synthesized by sol-gel method is structurally stable and it can be used as cathode in lithium ion batteries.


The Republic of Karelia is situated in the northwestern part of Russia and represents approximately 1 %of the country's territory. Forests cover 53 % of the total area, with 70 % of the total forest area availablefor harvesting. The bioenergy sector is relatively significant as it contributes 10 % to the total energy supplyin Karelia, which as a fossil fuel deficient region is highly dependent on imported energy resources fromother regions of the country. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to assess the role and position ofbioenergy in the Republic of Karelia. It was done by exploring the perception of forestry professionalsand forestry students towards bioenergy production in comparison with other forest uses. The role andposition of bioenergy was identified through the assessment of the importance of landscape elements,ranking of adverse environmental effects on surrounding landscapes, input to the local economy andimportance in planning principles. The results indicate that bioenergy production is perceived to have alow negative effect on the surrounding environment but also a low economic input to the local economyof the region. In addition, bioenergy is perceived to have a low influence on planning principles accordingto the opinions of the respondents. Statistically significant differences were found between the opinions ofrespondents with different occupations in regards to the main factors that negatively affect the surroundingenvironment. In general, the respondents indicated that bioenergy production is of moderate importance,although more research is needed in this field.


Enterprise Systems have become the default support systems for business processes in commercial organisations. Their promise of increased efficiency and effectiveness fits well with profit-based strategic objectives, and can be linked directly to customer choice. The last fifteen years have seen extensive implementation of Enterprise Systems in the University sector. While efficiency and effectiveness may be important in this sector, they are not linked directly to customer choice – the concept of a customer is complex, and choices may include many influences which are unaffected by administrative processes. Using one Australian and one Danish University as examples, an analysis of the benefits from using Enterprise Systems in Universities and in supermarkets is undertaken. There are some differences in the nature of those benefits. More importantly, differences in links between those benefits and the effect on customer choice are pronounced, with significant impacts for research and practical implications of Enterprise Systems.


PURPOSE
Lymphedema is a chronic condition that may result from cancer-related surgery. The incidence of lymphedema varies greatly; however, patients remain at risk for life and may experience decreased quality of life and functional capacity. Providing recommendations for an evidence-based guideline for care of cancer treatment-related lymphedema will help to improve outcomes for patients with this chronic condition.

METHODOLOGIC APPROACH
A panel of healthcare professionals with patient representation convened to develop a national clinical practice guideline on prospective surveillance, risk reduction, and conservative treatment of lymphedema. Systematic reviews of the literature were conducted and the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) methodology approach was used to assess the evidence.

FINDINGS
The panel made multiple recommendations for patients who are at risk for or experiencing lymphedema.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Early diagnosis and treatment of lymphedema may mitigate symptoms. This evidence-based guideline supports patients, clinicians, and other healthcare professionals in clinical decision making.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL CAN BE FOUND AT HTTPS
//onf.ons.org/supplementary-material-ons-guidelines-cancer-treatment-related-lymphedema.


The default mode network (DMN) in humans has been suggested to support a variety of cognitive functions and has been implicated in an array of neuropsychological disorders. However, its function(s) remains poorly understood. We show that rats possess a DMN that is broadly similar to the DMNs of nonhuman primates and humans. Our data suggest that, despite the distinct evolutionary paths between rodent and primate brain, a well-organized, intrinsically coherent DMN appears to be a fundamental feature in the mammalian brain whose primary functions might be to integrate multimodal sensory and affective information to guide behavior in anticipation of changing environmental contingencies.


ABSTRACT Paul Gervais (1816–1879) developed an obvious interest for paleohistological researches during the latest phase of his career at the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris (Laboratory of Comparative Anatomy) and produced a collection of thin sections of extant and fossil eggshells, teeth and bone, although he did not published much on the subject. Current curatorial efforts have unveiled remains of this collection which is presented and assessed herewith.


Magnetic charges, or magnetic monopoles, may form in the electronic structure of magnetic materials where ions are deprived of symmetry with respect to spatial inversion. Predicted in 2009, the strange magnetic, pseudoscalars have recently been found different from zero in simulations of electronic structures of some magnetically ordered, orthorhombic, lithium orthophosphates (LiMPO4). We prove that magnetic charges in lithium orthophosphates diffract x-rays tuned in energy to an atomic resonance, and to guide future experiments we calculate appropriate unit-cell structure factors for monoclinic LiCoPO4 and orthorhombic LiNiPO4.


Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to draw from multiple theories of upper echelons, stakeholder, agency, resource-based view and stewardship to establish the extent to which human capital (other than that of the board itself) in service organisations affect board role performance in those service sector firms. Design/methodology/approach - – This study is cross-sectional and correlational. Analyses are conducted using SPSS and Analysis of Moment Structures software on a sample of 128 service firms in Uganda. Findings - – Findings reveal that dimensions of employee safety, entrepreneurial skills, entrepreneurial development, employee welfare and employee relations fit the model of human capital and predict up to 69.1 per cent of the variance in board role performance. The results of this study reveal that board role performance is affected by prior decisions, for example, to invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, targeting employees that augment firm characteristics like existence of appropriate human capital. Essentially, an improvement in the quality of human capital explains positive variances in board role performance. Research limitations/implications - – Cross-sectional data do not allow for testing of the process aspect of the models; however, they provide evidence that the models can stand empirical tests. Additional research should examine the process aspects of human capital and board role performance. Practical implications - – Most companies in developing nations have relied on normative guidelines in prescribing what boards need to enhance performance, probably explaining why some boards have not been successful in their role performance. This research confirms that appropriate human capital, which can be leveraged through CSR ideals of employee safety, recognition, welfare and training in entrepreneurship, consistent with the stakeholder theory, can facilitate the board in the performance of its roles. In the developing country context, organisations' boards could use these findings as a guideline, that is, what to focus on in the context of human capital development in organisations because doing so improves their own role performance. Originality/value - – This study is one of the few that partly account for endogeneity in the study of boards, a methodological concern previously cited in literature (Bascle, 2008; Hamilton and Nickerson, 2003). Empirical associations between board role performance and organisational performance would not be useful unless we are able to grasp the causal mechanisms that lie behind those empirical associations (Hambrick, 2007). Thus, this study contributes to literature that tries to account for variances in board role performance and supports a multi-theoretical approach as a relevant framework in the study of human capital and board role performance.


Normal and adrenalectomized rats treated with cortisone lost 2% of their initial body weight per day, whereas controls gained weight at a rate of 2%/day. Five days of treatment resulted in a 25% reduction in the weights of a number of mixed fiber type muscles, but did not affect the weights of heart or soleus, a muscle consisting of slow-twitch red fibers. Reductions in muscle weights were accompanied by a loss of protein and RNA. Perfused hemicorpus preparations from rats receiving 5 days of treatment released several amino acids in greater amounts than the controls. Protein synthesis in perfused gastrocnemius was reduced 50-60% after 3 or 5 days of steroid treatment. This reduction was due to a loss of RNA and to an inhibition of translation resulting from an impairment in peptide-chain initiation. In contrast, RNA content and initiation were not altered in heart and soleus. Protein degradation in perfused hemicorpus and cathepsin D activity in gastrocnemius were unaffected by cortisone treatment, suggesting that loss of muscle weight and protein content as well as increased amino acid release resulted from the reduction in protein synthesis.


High-resolution crystal structures are reported for apo, holo, and substrate-bound forms of a toxoflavin-degrading metalloenzyme (TflA). In addition, the degradation reaction is shown to be dependent on oxygen, Mn(II), and dithiothreitol in vitro. Despite its low sequence identity with proteins of known structure, TflA is structurally homologous to proteins of the vicinal oxygen chelate superfamily. Like other metalloenzymes in this superfamily, the TflA fold contains four modules that associate to form a metal binding site; however, the fold displays a rare rearrangement of the structural modules indicative of domain permutation. Moreover, unlike the 2-His-1-carboxylate facial triad commonly utilized by vicinal oxygen chelate dioxygenases and other dioxygen-activating non-heme Fe(II) enzymes, the metal center in TflA consists of a 1-His-2-carboxylate facial triad. The substrate-bound complex shows square-pyramidal geometry in which one position is occupied by O5 of toxoflavin. The open coordination site is predicted to be the dioxygen binding site. TflA appears to stabilize the reduced form of toxoflavin through second-sphere interactions. This anionic species is predicted to be the electron source responsible for reductive activation of oxygen to produce a peroxytoxoflavin intermediate.


The ability to identify mobile apps in network traffic has significant implications in many domains, including traffic management, malware detection, and maintaining user privacy. App identification methods in the literature typically use deep packet inspection (DPI) and analyze HTTP headers to extract app fingerprints. However, these methods cannot be used if HTTP traffic is encrypted. We investigate whether Android apps can be identified from their launch-time network traffic using only TCP/IP headers. We first capture network traffic of 86,109 app launches by repeatedly running 1,595 apps on 4 distinct Android devices. We then use supervised learning methods used previously in the web page identification literature, to identify the apps that generated the traffic. We find that: (i) popular Android apps can be identified with 88% accuracy, by using the packet sizes of the first 64 packets they generate, when the learning methods are trained and tested on the data collected from same device; (ii) when the data from an unseen device (but similar operating system/vendor) is used for testing, the apps can be identified with 67% accuracy; (iii) the app identification accuracy does not drop significantly even if the training data are stale by several days, and (iv) the accuracy does drop quite significantly if the operating system/vendor is very different. We discuss the implications of our findings as well as open issues.


Aliphatic long-chain polyesters (ALCPEs) were synthesized using the ring-opening metathesis copolymerization of ambrettolide and cis-cyclooctene followed by exhaustive hydrogenation, yielding saturated ALCPEs with methylene-to-ester ratios (M/E) varying from 15 to 223 and ∞ (polyethylene), of which the ester groups were pseudo randomly distributed over the backbone of the polymer. The melting temperature of these ALCPEs showed an inverse proportional trend with respect to the amount of ester groups in the polymer structure, ranging from 132.1 °C (M/E = ∞) to 91.5 °C (M/E = 15), of which the former is comparable to the melting temperature of high-density polyethylene. The crystallinity and the orthorhombic unit cell of the polymers did not significantly change with increasing M/E. Solid-state NMR was used to show the uniform partitioning of the ester groups over the crystalline and amorphous phase. Even though the lamellar thickness showed a decrease with increasing amount of ester groups, this did only pa...


The discovery of the gravitational-wave (GW) source GW150914 with the Advanced LIGO detectors provides the first observational evidence for the existence of binary black hole (BH) systems that inspiral and merge within the age of the universe. Such BH mergers have been predicted in two main types of formation models, involving isolated binaries in galactic fields or dynamical interactions in young and old dense stellar environments. The measured masses robustly demonstrate that relatively "heavy" BHs ( 25  M) can form in nature. This discovery implies relatively weak massive-star winds and thus the formation of GW150914 in an environment with a metallicity lower than about 1/2 of the solar value. The rate of binary-BH (BBH) mergers inferred from the observation of GW150914 is consistent with the higher end of rate predictions ( 1  Gpc yr) from both types of formation models. The low measured redshift (z 0.1  ) of GW150914 and the low inferred metallicity of the stellar progenitor imply either BBH formation in a low-mass galaxy in the local universe and a prompt merger, or formation at high redshift with a time delay between formation and merger of several Gyr. This discovery motivates further studies of binary-BH formation astrophysics. It also has implications for future detections and studies by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, and GW detectors in space.


Virtuousness in organizations involves individuals and teams being resilient, or bouncing back from setbacks in ways that allow them to adapt and grow. In two studies, we focus on emotional carrying capacity (ECC), wherein relationship partners express more of their emotions, express both positive and negative emotions, and do so constructively, as a source of resilience in individuals and in teams. Study 1's findings indicate that ECC is positively related to individual resilience and that ECC mediates the link between relationship closeness and individual resilience. Study 2's findings indicate a similar pattern for resilience at the team level: ECC is positively related to team resilience and mediates the connection between trust and team resilience. Together, these studies provide insight into how emotional expression in relationships is a key mechanism in explaining resilience, a foundational element for the pursuit of long-term virtuousness for individuals and for teams.


Background and Objective: one of the major causes of child mortality is road traffic injuries. Police-assistant students are the students, who receive education on basic and simple contents of road traffic incidents. This study was conducted in order to investigate the performance of police-assistant male students comparing with the other students in Hamadan, concerning the prevention of road traffic injuries. Methods: In this cross-sectional study two groups of boy-students in twelve schools including 184 police-assistant students in six schools and 184 non- police-assistant students in other six schools were selected randomly. In order to collect data a researcher-made questionnaire was used. Data analysis was done using SPSS 16 and chi-square test. Results : The mean and standard deviation of knowledge in the police-assistant group were 0.686 and 0.178 respectively and were 0.718 and 0.15 respectively in the other students group, showing there was no significant difference between the two groups regarding knowledge. There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of the eleven behavioral items, expected from police-assistant students. Conclusion: There was no significant difference in the knowledge and even the behavioral items of those students who helped traffic police in comparison to those who did not help the traffic police and more proper training is necessary to improve the level of knowledge and performance of police-assistant students.


This is a new interpretation of late nineteenth and early twentieth century educational policy in the United States. Chapter-length studies of leading reformers argue that their reservations about economic growth best explain the changes they promoted.


In Red-necked Grebes Podiceps grisegena breeding on fish-ponds in SE Poland, mates contributed equal parental effort as long as the young were brooded on the parent's back. Later, when the young were able to swim on theirown but still depended on their parents for food (13-35 d after hatching), in 46% of pairs one of the adults deserted the family. Both sexes were involved in offspring desertion (10 females and 6 males in 16 sexed pairs). Duration of post-hatching parental care did not differ between pairs where one parent deserted and pairs where both mates remained with chicks until independence. If a parent deserted, the remaining adult compensated for the absence of the mate by increasing the foraging effort. Time spent caring for young increased with brood size. Broods that hatched later in the season suffered desertion by one parent at an earlier age than those hatched earlier. Deserters did not re-nest within the same season. Benefits associated with an early timing of moult may be the primary reason for the early abandonment of breeding activities.


The Human Genome Project has facilitated the sequencing of many species, yet the current Sanger method is too expensive, labor intensive and time consuming to accomplish medical resequencing of human genomes en masse. Of the 'next-generation' technologies, cyclic reversible termination (CRT) is a promising method with the goal of producing accurate sequence information at a fraction of the cost and effort. The foundation of this approach is the reversible terminator (RT), its chemical and biological properties of which directly impact the performance of the sequencing technology. Here, we have discovered a novel paradigm in RT chemistry, the attachment of a photocleavable, 2-nitrobenzyl group to the N6-position of 2′-deoxyadenosine triphosphate (dATP), which, upon incorporation, terminates DNA synthesis. The 3′-OH group of the N6-(2-nitrobenzyl)-dATP remains unblocked, providing favorable incorporation and termination properties for several commercially available DNA polymerases while maintaining good discrimination against mismatch incorporations. Upon removal of the 2-nitrobenzyl group with UV light, the natural nucleotide is restored without molecular scarring. A five-base experiment, illustrating the exquisite, stepwise addition through a homopolymer repeat, demonstrates the applicability of the N6-(2-nitrobenzyl)-dATP as an ideal RT for CRT sequencing.


A variational framework is introduced to describe how a surface bends when it is subject to local constraints on its geometry. This framework is applied to describe the patterns of a folded sheet of paper. The unstretchability of paper implies a constraint on the surface metric; bending is penalized by an energy quadratic in mean curvature. The local Lagrange multipliers enforcing the constraint are identified with a conserved tangential stress that couples to the extrinsic curvature of the sheet. The framework is illustrated by examining the deformation of a flat sheet into a generalized cone.


This research project aimed to understand why some undergraduates cope better than others with stress. It adopted a positive psychology approach and a mixed methods research orientation which consisted of a quantitative and a qualitative element. The quantitative element included two studies. Study 1 assessed the contribution of psychological strengths and personality to stress levels, academic performance (assessed by Grade Point Average), and subjective well-being (SWB) using a sample of 306 undergraduates. Study 2 examined adjustment to university five months into the academic year, comparing this with the baseline data from Study 1 (N = 192). Hierarchical multiple regressions showed that across both studies strengths of optimism, self-efficacy, and positive affectivity were predictive of greater SWB. Stressor exposure had a negative relationship with strengths and SWB in both studies, as did emotion and avoidance coping. At time 1, emotional stability was positively associated with SWB, and extraversion was positively associated with SWB at time 2. In Study 1, lower stressor exposure and higher self-control were predictive of higher Grade Point Average (GPA). GPA was not significantly associated with the variables in Study 2. Self-efficacy, positive affect, and GPA significantly decreased over time; academic alienation significantly increased over time. In a follow-up qualitative study of 11 undergraduates using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the transition, academic assessments, finances, employment, and housemate difficulty emerged as significant sources of stress. Strategies of social support, preparation, planning, positive reappraisal, and acceptance helped students cope with stress. Psychological strengths of self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and self-control facilitated adjustment and ability to cope. A positive psychology intervention was conducted, in which the Three Good Things exercise was applied to enhance SWB and reduce perceived stress (PS). The experimental and control group consisted of 63 and 49 first year undergraduates respectively. Mixed MANOVAs found no main effect of the intervention; however, SWB and PS levels significantly changed over time. Analysis with a PS cut-off showed undergraduates higher in stress had lower SWB over time. The changes in SWB and PS likely reflect heightened emotional reaction to the transition to university. Individual differences in strengths of optimism, self-efficacy, and positive affectivity, and differences in application of coping strategies and strength congruent behaviour are factors which help explain why some undergraduates cope better than others with stress. The results contribute to a limited body of knowledge on how strengths may facilitate coping, how stress affects SWB, and the utility of qualitative methods for positive psychology. The research also provides important recommendations for applying the Three Good Things exercise and is one of the first studies in the area.


Many robotic systems achieve position sensing through the use of optical encoders that specify the position of a joint to a certain resolution. Encoders effectively quantize joint space coordinates and introduce position measurement error in the process. This error propagates to operational space coordinates, limiting end-effector position and orientation resolution, and also to joint and operational space coordinate derivatives, manifesting as noise that can vitiate the signal. In this paper, we characterize encoder error in a robotic system. Given encoder specifications, robot kinematics, and discrete transfer functions mapping coordinates to their derivatives, we describe the propagation of quantization error on joint space coordinates to operational space coordinates, joint space coordinate derivatives, and operational space coordinate derivatives. We establish two results for quantization error. The first is a general result useful for establishing worst-case bounds. The second models each quantization as independent additive pseudo quantization noise (PQN) for which stochastic metrics on the error are determined. Experimental data gathered from a Phantom Premium robot/haptic device supports the analytical results.


Business processes and information systems mutually affect each other in non-trivial ways. Frequently, the business process design and the information system design are not well aligned. This means that business processes are designed without taking the information system impact into account, and vice versa. Missing alignment at design time often results in quality problems at runtime, such as large response times of information systems, large process execution times, overloaded information systems or interrupted processes. Aligning business process quality and information system quality at design time requires to
solve the following problems (P). Business process quality and information system quality have to be characterized. P1: In contrast to information system quality, which is specified in the ISO/IEC 9126 standard, for example, there is no common and comprehensive understanding of business process quality. P2: Beyond that, current business process
modeling notations do not aim to represent quality aspects. The impact of a business process on the quality of an information system, and vice versa, is unknown at design
time. P3: The mutual impact between business processes and information systems must be predicted at design time.
In this thesis, the Business Process Quality Reference-Model (BPQRM), a quality model for business processes, is introduced. The model allows for a comprehensive characterization of business process quality (P1). The BPQRM is applied successfully in a case study to
identify potential for process quality improvement in practice. Based on the BPQRM an existing process modeling notation is extended by model elements to represent quality
aspects (P2). Simulation is a powerful means to predict the impact of a business process on the quality of an information system, and vice versa, at design time. This thesis proposes two simulation approaches to predict the mutual impact between business processes and information systems, in terms of performance (P3). The approach Business
IT Impact Simulation (BIIS) defines interfaces between the business process simulation and the information system simulation. Performance-relevant information is exchanged
via the interfaces between both simulations. Using business process simulation and information system simulation in isolation, workload burstiness is not adequately reflected.
This is especially true for occasional, volatile peak loads. Workload burstiness can significantly affect the performance of business processes and information systems. The approach Integrated Business IT Impact Simulation (IntBIIS) for the integration of business processes and information systems in a single simulation allows for reflecting workload burstiness correctly. The simulation approaches support the comparison of design alternatives and the verification of a certain design against requirements. A case study confirms the feasibility in practice and the acceptance from practitioners' point of
view.


Like most IT-related phenomena, also the growth of event data complies with Moore's Law. Similar to the number of transistors on chips, the capacity of hard disks, and the computing power of computers, the digital universe is growing exponentially and roughly doubling every 2 years. Although this is not a new phenomenon, suddenly many organizations realize that increasing amounts of "Big Data" (in the broadest sense of the word) need to be used intelligently in order to compete with other organizations in terms of efficiency, speed and service. However, the goal is not to collect as much data as possible. The real challenge is to turn event data into valuable insights. Only process mining techniques directly relate event data to end-to-end business processes. Existing business process modeling approaches generating piles of process models are typically disconnected from the real processes and information systems. Data-oriented analysis techniques (e.g., data mining and machines learning) typically focus on simple classification, clustering, regression, or rule-learning problems. This keynote paper provides pointers to recent developments in process mining thereby clearly showing that process mining provides a natural link between processes and data on the one hand and performance and compliance on the other hand. Keywords: Process Mining, Process Discovery, Conformance Checking, Business Process Management.


Pressure Ulcers (PUs) severely impair patient quality of life and account for a high percentage of annual healthcare costs. Lumbar sympathectomy has previously been used for the treatment of chronic leg ulcers. It is still unclear, however, whether lumbar sympathectomy accelerates wound healing in sacrococcygeal skin, a high-risk area for PUs in mostly bedridden patients. Thirty-six Sprague Dawley rats were randomly assigned to the lumbar sympathectomised group, the sham-operated group, and the blank control group. Two wounds were generated in the sacrococcygeal skin of each rat 2 w after modelling. The expression of dopamine β-hydroxylase (DβH) and Norepinephrine (NE) in sacrococcygeal skin were detected by immunohistochemistry and western blotting. The wounds were photographed and measured with Image-Pro Plus v 6.0 software. Then, the wounds were cut and observed by haematoxylin and eosin staining for re-epithelialization and Masson's Trichrome staining for collagen fibres on d 3, 7, and 21 post-wounding. DβH and NE expression in sacrococcygeal skin were reduced 2 w after sympathectomy. Lumbar sympathectomy accelerated sacrococcygeal wound contraction (p<0.05). There were no statistical differences among groups in the scores of reepithelialisation. The integrated optical densities of stained collagen were increased after sympathectomy in sacrococcygeal wounds (p ≤ 0.001). In conclusion, lumbar sympathectomy accelerates sacrococcygeal wound healing in rats. Lumbar sympathectomy may be beneficial for the healing of PUs in the sacrococcygeal region.


Measures of bird song that capture aspects of motor performance, such as consistency, have become a major focus in understanding sexual selection on song. Despite accumulating evidence that consistency is related to reproductive success in many species, the relative importance of male–male interactions and female–male interactions is still unclear. We studied the function and flexibility of song consistency and song rate in common yellowthroat warblers (Geothlypis trichas). A previous study of this population found that song consistency—measured as the amount of variability within a bout of songs—was positively correlated with the likelihood of siring extrapair young. In this study, we conducted two experiments aimed at testing (1) the role of song consistency and rate in mediating male–male and male–female interactions and (2) whether song effort is flexibly adjusted to changes in social context. In the first experiment, we simulated a male territorial intrusion with song playbacks that varied in consistency and rate; focal males responded aggressively to playbacks, but their response did not differ with playback consistency or rate. In the second experiment, we presented focal males with a taxidermic female mount and female vocalizations; focal males approached the speaker, but continued to sing and did not perform the aggressive rattle vocalization observed during male encounters. Immediately after the simulated female encounter, focal males increased in song consistency. Taken together, our results are most consistent with the hypothesis that song consistency in common yellowthroats is primarily a female-directed signal that is actively adjusted in response to rapidly changing social conditions.


Steganography is the art of inconspicuously hiding data within data. Steganography's goal in general is to hide data well enough that unintended recipients do not suspect the steganographic medium of containing hidden data. The software and links mentioned in this article are just a sample of the steganography tools currently available. As privacy concerns continue to develop along with the digital communication domain, steganography will undoubtedly play a growing role in society. For this reason, it is important that we are aware of digital steganography technology and its implications. Equally important are the ethical concerns of using steganography and steganalysis. Steganography enhances rather than replaces encryption. Messages are not secure simply by virtue of being hidden.


Critical Psychiatry outlines the history of a group of thinkers that has come to be known as the anti-psychiatry movement. Though it has been called a movement, the individual thinkers' and authors' ideas were often in conflict but what they share is a critical perspective on psychiatry as a discipline and institutionalised modes of care.
The current crisis in mental health services means that it is time to examine once again the key themes of critical psychiatry. The excesses of the 1960s radicalism have meant that these themes - with an emphasis on the individual dignity of all those involved in mental health services - have been lost. These need to be rediscovered as part of a solution to current difficulties but also as the starting point for a new model of service provision.
Critical Psychiatry is a history of ideas. It provides a critical evaluation of key thinkers and the application of their work to contemporary mental health service settings


Thematic paths are a central aspect of urban policies for cultural heritage valorization. In fact, thematic paths are central spatial features for structuring the image of a historical landscape. Hence, this study proposes the cultural paths assessment tool (PAST) as a methodological framework for individuating a network of routes connecting cultural heritage components and for assessing their usefulness. Usefulness is herein defined as the potential of a street network to support the meaningful experience of a historical urban landscape. PAST combines space syntax techniques, a geographic information system, and a qualitative analysis within a multi-criteria analysis framework for addressing four aspects of connecting cultural heritage components, including: (i) the individuation of relevant assets; (ii) the identification of the sub-network of most central street segments; (iii) the definition of the street network of thematic routes; (iv) the assessment of the usefulness of thematic paths, according to the criteria of usability, imageability, and accessibility. The proposed methodology, applied to the historical district of Marina in the city of Cagliari in Italy, supports planning and design processes in two ways: (1) by identifying street segments and squares comprising a network of thematic routes; (2) by individuating high-leverage interventions for improving the usefulness of thematic routes. Consequently, the proposed study addresses the need to establish methodologies and analytic tools that support decision making processes for conserving, managing, and valorizing historic urban landscapes.