In previous studies [1,2] we showed that treatment of mice with Antimonium crudum (Ant-c) 30cH was able to significantly reduce monocyte migration to the infection site after injection of Leishmania (L) amazonensis into the subcutaneous tissue, resulting in clinical improvement. Follow up was performed with an in vitro model, which showed that treatment of co-cultures of RAW 264.7 macrophages and parasites with Ant-c 30cH inhibited two parasite-induced CCL2 peaks 48 and 120 hours after infection together with early inhibition of lysosome activity. These findings explained the results previously obtained in vivo. In turn, treatment with Ant-c 200cH resulted in an early and transitory peak of cell spreading at 48 hours. The coherence between the in vivo and in vitro results indicates that this is a good model to study more thoroughly the mechanisms of action of homeopathic medicines, being the first step to establish correlations between the biological effects and the physical and chemical features of Ant-c 30cH and 200cH.

In the present study, the same experimental model was replicated, through comparison of vehicle (30% cereal alcohol), Ant-c 200cH, Zincum metallicum (Zinc) 200cH and Arsenicum album (Ars) 200cH, to confirm the specificity of Ant-c effects. In addition, Ant-c 200cH was ultra-centrifuged, and only the superficial phase was applied to the culture medium. This procedure intended to separate the heavier particles from the lighter ones suspended in the homeopathic medicine. The physical-chemical profile of the medicines was assessed. Solid contaminants (microparticles) in the suspension were analyzed. Conductivity was assessed through measurement of the electron current induced by a micro-amperimeter (Ryodoraku®) connected to 2 clean electrodes immersed in the samples, prepared immediately before the analysis, diluted in pure water (MilliQ, Millipore®) and filtered in 22-µ filter (Millipore®). Pure water was used as control. The device was calibrated immediately before measurements. The microparticle profile was assessed with a scanning electronic microscope - SEM (JEOL JSM 6510®) coupled to an energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) system to identify the nature of the elements present in each particle. The size and the number of particles were analyzed from the images generated by electronic microscopy with an automatic image analysis system (Metamorph®). For this purpose, all materials used was cleansed through immersion in pure acetone and subjected to 30-minute sonication before insertion into the microscope to avoid secondary contamination. The samples of medicines were subjected to ultra-centrifugation (10000rpm for 60 minutes) to induce particle sedimentation in the bottom of microtubes. 10 microliters of each sample were collected from the bottom of tubes and placed on a copper stub and kept in a closed recipient until the material was fully dry. The samples were directly analyzed with the microscope. Metallization was not necessary, because the analyzed particles had metallic nature.

The biological effects of Ant-c 200cH reproduced the previous ones: spreading and phagocytosis index were significantly higher in the co-cultures treated with Ant-c 200cH compared to vehicle and other, non-specific treatments (Ars 200cH and Zinc 200cH) (p=0.05). However, these results were not exhibited by centrifuged Ant-c 200cH. Analysis of the supernatant after 48-hour incubation revealed increase of the GM-CSF content only in cultures treated with Ant-c 200cH and centrifuged-Ant-c 200cH. No change was observed in the cytokine profile in the cultures treated with Ars 200cH or Zinc 200cH.

Morphological analysis of Ant-c samples on SEM showed that the microparticles in Ant-c 30cH were smaller compared to Ant-c 6cH, most of them having half-moon shape. Curiously, agglomerates of particles were detected in Ant-c 200cH. Contaminant particles suspended in pure water contained Pb, Zn, Ca, Na, Au, Hg, Nb and Si, therefore, not related to any specific biological effect of Ant-c. P was identified only in Ant-c 30cH (6.51%) and Ant-c 200cH (13.56%). This wide-range profile of different microparticles did not change after centrifugation, which indicates that the weight of these particles is not conditioned by the nature of their component elements.

Conductivity was lower in the vehicle (30% alcohol) compared to Ant-c 6, 30 and 200cH (p=0.0001); the conductivity of Ant-c 200cH was the highest (p=0.008). Also Ars 200cH exhibited higher conductivity (p=0.001) compared to the vehicle.

Taken together, these data suggest that the biological effect of Ant-c 200cH on macrophage spreading and phagocytosis might be partially related to the size of the microparticles found in suspension. However, specific effects relative to cytokine production did not depend on microparticle size or content. The changes in conductivity changes exhibited correlation with presence of some elements, such as P, but not with any biological effect.

To summarize, the results point to the relevance of eventual false-positive effects relative to phagocytosis in macrophages treated with homeopathic medicines in vitro, due to the interference of larger sized microparticles. They also points to the specificity of GM-CSF expression after 48-hours of co-culture exposure to Ant-c 200cH, centrifuged or not, which suggests it was independent from microparticle content and conductivity. The physical-chemical features of homeopathic medicines related to their specific biological effects are still unknown. Additional studies are needed in this regard.


This study analyzes the impact of an exogenous, positive income shock on caregivers' subjective well-being in Malawi using panel data from 3,365 households targeted to receive Malawi's Social Cash Transfer Programme that provides unconditional cash to ultra-poor, labour-constrained households. The study consists of a cluster-randomized, longitudinal design. After the baseline survey, half of these village clusters were randomly selected to receive the transfer and a follow-up survey was conducted 17 months later. Utilizing econometric analysis and panel data methods, we find that household income increases from the cash transfer can have substantial subjective well-being gains among caregivers. Households use the cash to improve their families' livelihoods, ensuring provision of their basic needs including food, shelter, and clothing. Reduction of these daily stresses makes caregivers happier about their current situations and gives them hope that the future will continue to get better.


Tripartism, the national-level interaction among representatives of labor, management, and government, occurs infrequently in the United States. Based on the U.S. experience, then, such interactions might seem irrelevant to economic performance and policymaking. The essays in this volume reveal the falsity of that assumption. Contributors from eight industrialized countries examine the changing nature of labor management relations, with a particular focus on the role of tripartism and the decentralization of collective bargaining. The vibrancy of the coordinating mechanisms that help shape employment conditions and labor policy contradicts the traditional belief that an overpowering unilateral decentralizing shift is underway in labor-management interactions. The contributors show that these mechanisms are in fact increasing in the face of intensified pressures, promoting greater flexibility in work organization and working time.


Sustainable Higher Education (SHE) is regarded as one of the most influential medium of facilitating sustainable development movement in the world. SHE assessment approaches are tools or frameworks which assesses the level of sustainability in higher educational institutions. There have not been any comprehensive studies related to the existing sustainable assessment approaches. It is a relevant issue which merits a proper study to evaluate both the strengths and weakness of those SHE assessment approaches. Archival research technique, content analyses as well as interview were utilized to address this objective. Archival research technique was employed to facilitate the investigation of documents and textual materials in the realm of SHE assessment approach from 12 years starting from 1998. Content analyses were utilized as the research technique which quantify and analyzes the meanings and relationships of concepts and finally interview was employed to validate those two techniques. Comprehensiveness, popularity, novelty, conforming Three Bottom Line (TBL) theory and avoiding Subjective Judgment were the main criteria of evaluation. The study has identified 18 popular SHE assessment approaches out of which Sustainability Tracking and Assessment Rating System (STARS) and Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework (CSAF) were found out to have more strength in comparison of other SHE assessment approaches. The finding can be used for the higher educational institutions which aim to assess the level of SHE in their institutions.


Written with a rare combination of analysis and speculation, this comprehensive study of Javanese religion is one of the few books on the religion of a non-Western people which emphasizes variation and conflict in belief as well as similarity and harmony. The reader becomes aware of the intricacy and depth of Javanese spiritual life and the problems of political and social integration reflected in the religion. "The Religion of Java" will interest specialists in Southeast Asia, anthropologists and sociologists concerned with the social analysis of religious belief and ideology, students of comparative religion, and civil servants dealing with governmental policy toward Indonesia and Southeast Asia.


Our proposed system FAMULUS helps students learn to diagnose based on automatic feedback in virtual patient simulations, and it supports instructors in labeling training data. Diagnosing is an exceptionally difficult skill to obtain but vital for many different professions (e.g., medical doctors, teachers). Previous case simulation systems are limited to multiple-choice questions and thus cannot give constructive individualized feedback on a student's diagnostic reasoning process. Given initially only limited data, we leverage a (replaceable) NLP model to both support experts in their further data annotation with automatic suggestions, and we provide automatic feedback for students. We argue that because the central model consistently improves, our interactive approach encourages both students and instructors to recurrently use the tool, and thus accelerate the speed of data creation and annotation. We show results from two user studies on diagnostic reasoning in medicine and teacher education and outline how our system can be extended to further use cases.


A Kirkus Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2017
A Popsugar Best Book of the Year

From the New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse comes an epic new thriller about a race of ageless automatons who have been hiding among us for untold centuries.

In the depths of the Kremlin in 1725, the tsar's loyal mechanician brings to life two astonishingly humanlike mechanical beings. Peter and Elena are a brother and sister possessed with uncanny power and destined to fight an ancient war.

When June Stefanov, a young anthropologist specializing in ancient technology, uncovers a terrible secret concealed in the workings of a three-hundred-year-old mechanical doll, she finds herself in the middle of the hidden war that has raged for centuries. As June plunges deeper into their world, her choices will ultimately determine their fate.

The Clockwork Dynasty interweaves past and present, exploring a race of beings designed to live by ironclad principles, yet constantly searching for meaning. Richly-imagined and heart-pounding, Daniel H. Wilson's novel combines exquisitely drawn characters with visionary technology—and riveting action.


An Evaluation of the Implementation of a CALL Program in a Pilot Curriculum at the Provo LDS Missionary Training Center Amberly P. Betteridge Center for Language Studies, BYU Master of Arts The current study examines the implementation of one computer-assisted language learning program (CALL) called Technology Assisted Language Learning (TALL) in a pilot language curriculum at the LDS Missionary Training Center. Because CALL implementation is determined in large part by how successfully users are able to use the computer program to learn language, a primary purpose of this study was to investigate which implementation issues affected the language learning success of the missionaries that used TALL in the pilot curriculum. A survey was, therefore, designed and administered to 86 missionaries from French, Spanish, German, and Mandarin language areas in order to determine which CALL user characteristics were predictive of TALL user success. Through a regression analysis , this study found that the most highly predictive factors on TALL user success were (a) a high indication of pro-activity on the part of the learners in figuring out how to use TALL to their advantage, (b) a high indication of goal-orientation in approaching TALL use with a specific purpose in mind, and (c) a high indication of interaction with the TALL program through frequent use of the electronic glossary feature, the "listen to your voice" feature, and the strategy of repeating out loud the words and phrases encountered while working on TALL. The missionary survey was also analyzed descriptively, and results from this analysis revealed that missionaries in the pilot curriculum felt that more training on how to use TALL effectively would have helped them to be more successful. Focus groups with the missionaries were also conducted in order to better understand their experiences with the TALL program. The analysis of these focus groups revealed that although many missionaries reported liking TALL, there were many who did not sufficiently understand how to successfully use it within the pilot curriculum; a lack of training seemed to be a big contributor to this lack of user success. Additionally, focus groups found that missionaries believed the TALL listening activities to be the most helpful TALL activities. A teacher survey was also designed and administered to the 19 teachers who taught missionaries in the pilot curriculum. Results of the teacher survey revealed a desire for more formal training on how to train missionaries to use the TALL program effectively. In conclusion and based on evidence in the literature and from this study, suggestions are provided for more effective teacher and learner training on TALL.


"50 Biggest Website Mistakes" is for you if: * You want to improve the appearance of your website * You want your website to convert more visitors into buyers * You want to get visitors to stay longer on your site * You want to have a better understanding of what your webmaster should be doing for you * You want to learn some of the trick of the trace that will set your site apart from your competition. This book was written to help people get more success out of their website and online business. The information comes from the combined efforts of Frank Deardurff III and Bret Ridgway, who together have well over 25 years of online marketing experience and have an established presence in the online marketing community. Youll find that the information contained in the book can quickly become your Checklist for your online business -- either for yourself or your marketing assistant.


We consider the decision‐making problem of dynamically scheduling the production of a single make‐to stock (MTS) product in connection with the product's concurrent sales in a spot market and a long‐term supply channel. The spot market is run by a business to business (B2B) online exchange, whereas the long‐term channel is established by a structured contract. The product's price in the spot market is exogenous, evolves as a continuous time Markov chain, and affects demand, which arrives sequentially as a Markov‐modulated Poisson process (MMPP). The manufacturer is obliged to fulfill demand in the long‐term channel, but is able to rein in sales in the spot market. This is a significant strategic decision for a manufacturer in entering a favorable contract. The profitability of the contract must be evaluated by optimal performance. The current problem, therefore, arises as a prerequisite to exploring contracting strategies. We reveal that the optimal strategy of coordinating production and sales is structured by the spot price dependent on the base stock and sell‐down thresholds. Moreover, we can exploit the structural properties of the optimal strategy to conceive an efficient algorithm. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010


Objective: To establish the effect of fresh maca (Lepidum meyenil walp) on the sportsmen physical performance at high altitude. Design: Comparative, prospective, and experimental study. Materials and Methods: Ten high altitude sportsmen constituted the sample. We first measured the maximum oxygen consumption under physical activity. Then they received 1500 mg of fresh maca daily during 60 days and a second evaluation was performed under similar conditions. The maximum oxygen intake and performance were determined and subjects were monitored for a 30 days period. Dosage of transaminases ALAT, ASAT, and serum creatinine were done during each evaluation. Results: In basal conditions the velocity average in the treadmill was 15,46 km/h and the maximum oxygen intake average was 52,32 mL/kg/min. In the second evaluation following the fresh maca consume the average of the maximum velocity raised to 16,89 km/h and the maximum oxygen intake was 57,75 mL/kg/min, which means a 10,3% increase in physical performance. In all cases, the ALAT, ASAT, and serum creatinine values were normal. Conclusions: Fresh maca revealed energizing properties that increase the sportsmen physical performance at high altitude.


A case of Rasmussen encephalitis in a 8 year old child is reported here who presented with recurrent focal seizures and progressive weakness of left half of body. EEG showed electrical features of epilepsy. MRI brain showed cortical atrophy of one brain hemisphere. On the basis of clinical and radiological evidence, diagnosis of Rasmussen encephalitis was made which is a rare neurological disorder of childhood.


Digital preservation addresses the storage, maintenance, accessibility, and technical integrity of digital materials over the long term. Preservation metadata is the information required to perform these tasks. Given the volume of these journals and high labor cost of manual metadata entry, automated metadata extraction is necessary. Document layout analysis is a process of partitioning document images into hierarchically structured and labeled homogeneous physical regions. Descriptive metadata such as bibliographic information can then be extracted from these segmented and labeled regions using OCR. While numerous algorithms have been proposed for document layout analysis, most of them require manually specified rules or models. In this paper, we first define the hierarchical 2D layout model of document pages as a set of attributed hidden semiMarkov Models (HSMM). Each attributed HSMM represents the projection profile of the character bounding boxes in a physical region on either the X or Y axis. We then describe a Bayesian-based method to learn 2D layout models from the unstructured and labeled physical regions in a set of training pages. We compare the zoning and labeling performance of the learned HSMM-based model, a learned baseline model, and two rule-based systems on 69 test pages and show that the HSMM-based model has the best overall performance, and comparable or better performance for individual fields.


This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The mainstay of treatment generally considered for early stage cervical cancer below International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage IIa1 is surgery. The standard treatment for patients from FIGO stage Ia2 to IIa1 cervical cancer who do not wish to preserve fertility is radical hysterectomy with pelvic lymph node dissection [1,2]. During radical hysterectomy, the risk of ureter injury is increased [3,4]. IRIS U-kit (Stryker, Kalamazoo, MI, USA) is a lighted ureteral stent comprising a 6 F translucent ureteral sheath for the bilateral ureters, with optical fibers inserted into the ureteral sheath, and a device for light source. It is placed in the bilateral ureters using cystoscopic approach. It enables the visualization of the bilateral ureter lining during surgery. L10 AIM light source (Stryker) was used in this case. It can generate heat exceeding 41°C at the tip of the optic fiber. However, the optic fiber is placed in the ureteral sheath, which keeps it from coming into direct contact with the tissue. We report a case report of robot assisted single-site radical hysterectomy by inserting lighted ureteral stent for cervical cancer treatment. A 41-year-old woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer FIGO stage Ib1 underwent robot assisted single-site modified radical hysterectomy (type II) with insertion of lighted ureteral stent. da Vinci Xi Surgical system (Intuitive Surgical, Sunnyvale, CA, USA) platform was used for the surgery. After routine surgical draping, using the cystoscopic approach, ureteral sheath was inserted 20 cm into each ureteral opening. Optic fibers of the IRIS U-kit (Stryker) was inserted into the ureteral sheath. Subsequently, the cystoscope was removed. After installing the lighted ureteral stent, robot docking of the da Vinci Xi surgical system (Intuitive Surgical) was performed followed by radical hysterectomy. Both ureters were fully visualized during the surgery. Total operation time was 105 minutes and time taken for lighted ureteral stent insertion was 7 minutes. There was no immediate or delayed side effect. Lighted ureteral stent insertion in robot assisted singlesite radical hysterectomy for cervical cancer treatment is a safe and feasible option and helps to overcome the limitaCase report of lighted ureteral stent insertion with robotic single-site radical hysterectomy in early cervical cancer treatment


OBJECTIVE To obtain clinically applicable data on the effects of regular human insulin and the LysB28, ProB29-human insulin analogue (lispro) on the correction of incidental hyperglycemia. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The insulins were compared in a non-clamped randomized crossover study of 27 male IDDM patients. Hyperglycemia was induced by the withdrawal of the normal evening dose of insulin; the next morning patients fasted and received a single dose of study insulin according to a dosing nomogram. Blood glucose concentration and GR (a measure of glucose corrected for differences in administered insulin dose: GR = glucose concentration × BMI × insulin dose−1) were followed for 4 h. RESULTS The time courses of blood glucose concentration and GR were significantly different after regular insulin in comparison with lispro (multiple analysis of variance, P < 0.001). At t = 120 min, glucose concentrations had decreased 1.4 mmol/l more with lispro than with regular insulin (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.6–2.3, P = 0.002). Similarly, GR had decreased 4.4 mol · kg · IU−1 · m−5 more with lispro than with regular insulin (95% CI 2.6–6.2, P < 0.001). The overall difference in glucose values was 0.87 mmol/l (lispro < regular insulin, P = 0.036), and the overall difference in GR values was 1.96 mol · kg · IU−1 · m−5 (lispro < regular insulin, P = NS). Unexpectedly, the intrinsic variability of GR was higher for lispro than for regular insulin. CONCLUSIONS The more rapid action of lispro is an advantage in the correction of hyperglycemia, even though actual differences in glucose concentrations are smaller than suggested by previous clamped studies.


Evidence-based practice (EBP) ensures that clinical health management decisions are based on valid, reliable and relevant evidence determined by sound research and evaluation. It is a key element of both the clinical governance and clinical effectiveness agendas. Clearly, there is a need to provide adequate educational and professional attributes to meet this increasing demand. The aim of this research was to identify and map all UK postgraduate courses that focus on EBP within health- and social-care services. Electronic searching of internet databases and all UK postgraduate electronic prospectuses using the broad term 'evidence based' was undertaken. Course details and prospectuses were obtained and reviewed, where available. In total, 12 postgraduate courses were identified. These could be broadly categorized into two distinct groups: five courses focused on health-care sciences designed for multidisciplinary health professionals and seven targeted clinical specialities. UK universities therefore provide relatively few courses in EBP. Two models of EBP education appear to be developing, which either specifically target EBP as a separate component of the curriculum or integrate into existing subjects. Further evaluation is needed to determine the relative merits of each.


Liquid droplets on patterned hydrophobic substrates are typically observed either in the Wenzel or the Cassie state. Here we show that for droplets of comparable size to the roughness scale an additional local equilibrium state exists, where the droplet is immersed in the texture, but not yet contacts the bottom grooves. Upon evaporation, a droplet in this state enters the Cassie state, opening the possibility of a qualitatively new self-cleaning mechanism. The effect is of generic character and is expected to occur in any hydrophobic capillary wetting situation where a spherical liquid reservoir is involved.


Oxidative stress is increased in diabetes and the overproduction of the ROS (full form ?) in diabetes is a direct consequence of persistent hyperglycemia for the production of inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and interleukin (IL-6) in renal cells, which are the factors responsible for diabetic complications i.e. diabetic nephropathy. The study aimed to predict the development of type 2 diabetic nephropathy due to persistent hyperglycemia induced oxidative stress producing inflammation. Serum levels of inflammatory markers (IL-6 and Tnf-α), antioxidants, [Glutathione reductase (GR) and Glutathione peroxidase (GPx)], plasma malondialdehyde (MDA), fasting blood sugar, urea and creatinine levels were estimated in controls (n=50), controlled diabetes without diabetic nephropathy, T2DM without microvascular complication (n=50, groupI) and T2DM with diabetic nephropathy (n=100, group II). Sample was collected from J.A group of hospitals, GRMC, Gwalior (M.P) and ethical committee has approved this research work. Statistical method was done by using one way Anova utlizing Dunnet T3 test. Serum levels of inflammatory markers (IL-6 and Tnf-α), malondialdehyde, fasting blood sugar, were high in group II as compared to both group I and controls, (P<0.001), with group II having more significant than group I (P<0. 001). Antioxidant enzyme glutathione peroxidase was found to be decreased in both groups of diabetic patients as compared to controls, (P<<0.05), with group II showing significant than group I at (P<0.001). Glutathione reductase was found to be normal range in all the groups. Serum urea and creatinine levels were increased in group II, (P<0.001), but serum levels were within normal range in group I and healthy controls. Results of the present study indicates that inflammatory markers and oxidative stress are increased with decreased antioxidant defense levels in patients with diabetic nephropathy due to hyperglycemia induced oxidative stress.


This article continues an established series of analyses across 48 years of institutional research productivity in supply chain management (SCM) journals, ranking the top 25 schools producing SCM research in 2011–13, in comparison to previous editions of the study. The current results illustrate that a core set of SCM academic institutions consistently retain strong research productivity, ranking in the top 10 across decades. However, there is significant variability in the remaining top 25 in comparison to previous editions, which is corroborated by an analysis of the concentration (i.e., diversity) of authors in the discipline that indicates that a greater number of authors and institutions continue to contribute SCM publications. However, this diversity is concentrated primarily among North American institutions as international institutions are not increasing publication productivity in the established journal set. Ultimately, the combined results provide a benchmark of the current status of the SCM discipline and present insights into its continued maturation.


One of the main bottlenecks when designing a network processing system is very often its memory subsystem. This is mainly due to the state-of-the-art network links operating at very high speeds and to the fact that in order to support advanced quality of service (QoS), a large number of independent queues is desirable. In this paper we analyze the performance bottlenecks of various data memory managers integrated in typical network processing units (NPU). We expose the performance limitations of software implementations utilizing the RISC processing cores typically found in most NPU architectures and we identify the requirements for hardware assisted memory management in order to achieve wire-speed operation at gigabit per second rates. Furthermore, we describe the architecture and performance of a hardware memory manager that fulfills those requirements. This memory manager, although it is implemented in a reconfigurable technology, can provide up to 6.2 Gbit/s of aggregate throughput, while handling 32 K independent queues.


There are no recipes for what the Indians ate in Colonial times, but this cookbook uses period quotations to detail what and how the foodstuffs were prepared. The bulk of the cookbook is devoted to what the European immigrants cooked and what evolved into American cooking. The first colonists from England brought their foodways to America. The basic foods that Americans of European descent ate changed very little from 1600 to 1840. While the major basic foods remained the same, their part in the total diet changed. Americans at the end of the period ate far more beef and chicken than did the first colonists. They used more milk, butter and cream. They also ate more wheat in the form of breads, cakes, cookies, crackers and cereals. The same was true with fruits. Over time the more exotic vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, and numerous root vegetables including both sweet and white potatoes became common vegetables. By the end of this period, many Americans were even eating foods like tomatoes, okra, and sesame, which were unknown to their ancestors. In addition, Americans, like their relatives in Europe, incorporated coffee, tea, and chocolate into their diets as well as more sugar. Along with them came new customs, such as tea time, and, for men, socializing at coffeehouses. Also, distilled beverages, particularly rum, which was often made into a punch with citrus juices, were increasingly used. Basic cooking technology also remained the same throughout the period, and the cookbook gives a sense of how meals were prepared. The open hearth provided the major heat source. As time passed, though, more and more people could afford to have wood-fired brick ovens in their homes. Although the recipes presented here from the first century of colonization come from cookbooks written for people of upper status, by the end of the time period, literacy rates were much higher among men and women. European and American authors published numerous cookbooks that were relatively inexpensive and available, so it is reasonable to assume that those recipes were representative of actual American cookery practices. Many changes occurred to cookbooks and recipes during this period. The recipes became more detailed and more reliant on standard measures, and the recipes were for foods that are less complicated and expensive to prepare. This fact is more a sign that cookbooks were being written for a less wealthy group of readers than that tastes and appetites had changed. The trend toward simple and frugal foods continued up to 1840 and beyond, a sign that readership had expanded as well as an indicator of what the bulk of Americans were eating. As well, recipes that were considered American were developed. All of these recipes are in their original form and have been taken from contemporary published or private cookbooks. The explanations after the recipes give historical information and suggestions if the recipe is vague or if it calls for an unusual ingredient. Dining tips are included as well. Period illustrations complement the recipes.


Introduction: The hand represents 3% of total body surface, but its involvement in severe trauma, such as burns, can lead to serious functional sequelae. The present study describes procedures in the care of patients in the acute phase with burns involving the hands. Methods: 122 patients with thermal burns involving one or both hands were included in the study between August 2011 and July 2014. On initial physical examination, the extent and depth of the lesions were determined; deep and circular burns, with signs and symptoms of inadequate perfusion, had escharotomies performed to avoid the loss of extremity. Burns of partial deep thickness or full thickness on the back of the hands received tangential excision within 5 days after the trauma; partial skin grafting was performed on all patients before the 15th day of the trauma. Results: Men represented the majority of cases (58%). In relation to the burn agent, flammable liquids caused 46.7% of admissions. In 50.8% of the cases, the burns were of partial deep thickness or of total thickness and required an operative procedure. No graft loss was identified in the group. Escharotomies were performed in 12.3% of the patients. Conclusion: The burned hand needs proper local attention and care, along with early excision and skin grafting. ■ ABSTRACT


There is an increasing demand from biosciences to develop new and efficient techniques to assist in the preparation and analysis of biological samples such as cells in suspension. A dielectrophoresis (DEP)-based characterization and measurement technique on biological cells opens up a broader perspective for early diagnosis of diseases. An efficient real-time multiple-cell tracking platform coupled with DEP to capture and quantify the dynamics of cell motion and obtain cell viability information is presented. The procedure for tracking a single DEP-levitated Canola plant protoplast, using the motion-based segmentation algorithm hierarchical adaptive merge split mesh-based technique (HAMSM) for cell identification, has been enhanced for identifying and tracking multiple cells. The tracking technique relies on the deformation of mesh topology that is generated according to the movement of biological cells in a sequence of images that allows the simultaneous extraction of the biological cell from the image and the associated motion characteristics. Preliminary tests were conducted with yeast cells and then applied to a cancerous cell line subjected to DEP fields. Characteristics, such as cell count, velocity and size, were individually extracted from the tracked results of the cell sample. Tests were limited to eight yeast cells and two cancer cells. A performance analysis to assess tracking accuracy, computational effort and processing time was also conducted. The tracking technique employed on model intact cells in DEP fields proved to be accurate, reliable and robust.


The present study was designed to determine the possible therapeutic effects of oral tomato paste lycopene supplementation on clastogenicity induced by hyperglycemia in diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced by streptozotocin (STZ) injection. Twenty eight male Wistar rats were divided into 4 groups (7 rats per group) as follow: 1-The first group served as control. 2-The second was a diabetic (STZ induced) group, 3-The third was a diabetic+lycopene treated group and 4-The fourth was a lycopene treated group. The treatment period was 2 months and the animals were subjected to micronucleus assay. The results of the present study revealed that a significant increase in micronucleus frequency in the diabetic group (STZ-induced) compared to control. However, supplementation with lycopene in STZ-induced diabetic group decreased significantly the incidence of MN frequency and restores the MN range to the normal control. In conclusion, oral tomato paste lycopene supplementation effectively decreases clastogenicity in Streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats through its antioxidant activity.


Abstract. In this paper we propose a new SLAM algorithm that is robust to the changing environment of the countryside. The hardware part consists of two separate machine vision cameras, joined in stereo, and can be supplemented with LiDAR, IMU and GPS. We introduce a method that can be used to reliably calculate the position of a vehicle in natural environments. To estimate the pose and produce a three-dimensional reconstruction we use a stereo camera rig, inertial measurement unit and the global positioning system. While solving the problem of visual odometry in outdoor scenes we faced a number of difficulties, arising from high dynamic range, as well as the presence of a large number of "similar elements", such as leaves, grass, trees and etc. Under these conditions, it becomes difficult to match feature points in image sequences. HOG-based methods, such as SIFT, SURF and others often do not obtain good matching due to noise, lack of a sufficient number of gradients, and the presence of identical domains. Using neighborhood-based detectors such as DAISY often allows to identify the correct matches, but using them is worth it too expensive. These methods are very demanding on the computational resources and prone to drift. We needed a method that is less expensive, but at the same time provides sufficient accuracy in the trajectory estimation. Direct methods, such as optical flow calculating or direct image matching allow us to map point-to-point in these conditions with high reliability. They also have disadvantages that can be eliminated by using an IMU and modern algorithms. To improve the quality of the algorithms, we solve the reconstruction problem for several frames using the Levenberg-Marquardt optimization method for bundle adjustment. Each pass optimizes frames that are directly related to the last one, we use two threads that perform partial and full optimization of the entire trajectory using graphs to significantly increase the performance of the method.


There is concern whether cabbage and beetroot wastes from the Fresh Produce Market are safe for feeding animals given the fact that some will have been discarded at the onset of putrefaction. This study evaluated the effects of sun-drying on microbiological load (E. coli, coliform, yeast and moulds and total bacterial count) in waste vegetables from the fresh produce market, since smallholder farmers tend to use the by-products without processing given the opportunity. Cabbage and beetroot wastes were sun dried to 14% moisture and micro-organisms were enumerated on both wet and dried samples. The results showed that sun drying reduced the level of micro-organisms significantly in both cabbage and beetroot. Although microbial load varied from batch to batch in the wet samples, coliforms were significantly more abundant in wet beetroot than in the dried samples. However, dried beetroot contained significantly more yeast and moulds. Wet cabbage contained more coliform and yeast and moulds compared to sun-dried cabbage. The sun drying process is thus an efficient processing method for resource poor farmers to reduce the microbial load in these animal feed sources and improve their shelf life.


Per Jonas Nordhagen's work on the frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome is of fundamental importance to the study of early medieval art in Italy. This volume brings together for the first time Professor Nordhagen's work on medieval Roman mosaics and fresco painting. The book begins with a section on Mosaics and Techniques, covering the mosaic techniques in use during this period in Rome. The subsequent section, on S. Maria Antiqua, includes the author's papers on the fresco decoration of this church, one of the most important monuments of early medieval art in Italy. There follows a selection of papers on iconography, derived from a study of the subjects treated in the mosaic and fresco cycles of this period. Four subsequent articles deal with various themes involved in studying the art of the early medieval period in Rome, and its links with the art of the British Isles. The author has added supplementary notes to correct mistakes in the earlier articles, and to draw attention to subsequent research on the monuments.


Most of the currently approved human gene therapy protocols depend on genetic modification of autologous cells. We propose an alternate and potentially more cost-effective approach by implanting genetically modified "universal" cell lines to deliver desired gene products to nonautologous recipients. The recombinant allogeneic cells are protected from rejection after implantation by enclosure within immuno-protective alginate-poly-L-lysine-alginate microcapsules. The clinical efficacy of this strategy is now demonstrated by implanting microencapsulated allogeneic myoblasts engineered to secrete mouse growth hormone into the growth hormone-deficient Snell dwarf mice. The treated mutants attained increases in linear growth, body weights, peripheral organ weights, and tibial growth plate thickness significantly greater than those of the untreated controls. Secondary response to the exogenous growth hormone stimulation also resulted in increased fatty acid metabolism during the first month post-implantation. The microcapsules retrieved after about 6 months of implantation appeared intact. The encapsulated myoblasts retained a viability of > 60% and continued to secrete mouse growth hormone. Thus, implantation of nonautologous recombinant cells corrected partially the pleiomorphic effects of a transcription factor mutation in the Snell dwarf mice and the encapsulated cells remained functional for at least 6 months. This simple method of delivery recombinant gene products in vivo is a benign procedure, obviates the need for patient-specific genetic modification, and is amenable to industrial-scale quality control. It should have wide applications in therapies requiring a systemic continuous supply of recombinant gene products.


Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) metabolic imaging of the heart can be undertaken with I23I-labelled fatty acids. Among these, 123I-paraiodophenyl pentadecanoic acid (pIPPA) was used to detect myocardial ischaemia and to study viability. The purpose of this study was to compare the distribution of locally produced 123I-pIPPA (National Accelerator Centre, Faure) with the perfusion tracer 99 mTc-hexakis-2-methoxyisobutyl isonitrile (MIBI) in patients with established transmural infarction. Nine male patients scheduled for resting myocardial perfusion imaging with 99mTc-MIBI were also studied with 123I-plPPA. Tomographic short-axis slices of the left ventricle were used to obtain circumferential profiles for comparison. The percentage uptake index for 123I-pIPPA was higher than that of .9mTc-MIBI in 5 patients, while the opposite pattern was observed in 4 patients. The mean uptake of 123I-plPPA (60.2% i?½ 9.7%) did not differ from the 59.6% i?½ 9.4% obtained for 99 mTc-MIBI. The individual variations in distribution of the tracers are consistent with previous reports. Reduced 123I-pIPPA uptake (less than 99mTc-MIBI uptake) may suggest greater sensitivity to detect residual grey zone ischaemia. Better uptake in scar tissue implies maintained cytosolic uptake, i.e. viability. Different locally produced 123I-labelled fatty acids are now available to study cardiac fatty acid metabolism with SPECT.


Researchers use self-reflection and personal narrative as a lens through which to identify thoughts and feelings about lived experience.  This article uses reflexivity in order to capture, critique and develop small group work practice in clinical legal education.  It draws on the concept of constructivism and queries whether small group work in a clinical setting can truly be a paradigm of student-centred teaching.  At its core, it argues that an authentic student-centred approach is best achieved when power is transferred to clinic students and they are given the opportunity to lead their own group work.


mRNAs harbouring premature translation-termination codons are usually degraded by the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) pathway. Human up-frameshift protein 1 (Hupf1) is an NMD factor that is conserved between yeast and mammals. To isolate cellular complexes that are formed with Hupf1 and to explore the role of cellular proteins in NMD, we generated a HeLa cell line that stably expresses Hupf1 bearing a double-affinity tag (termed Hupf1-2tag). Hupf1-2tag is localized in the cytoplasm similar to the endogenous Hupf1 protein, and the Hupf1-2tag cell line is fully NMD-competent. Using affinity chromatography, Hupf1-2tag-associated proteins were isolated. MS and immunoblotting identified the NMD factors Hupf2 and Hupf3a/b as interaction partners of Hupf1. Size-exclusion chromatography indicates that the NMD factors Hupf1, Hupf2 and the large isoform of Hupf3a might exist in a stable, high-molecular-mass complex of approx. 1.3 MDa. Interestingly, the poly(A)-binding protein was also identified by MS to be associated specifically with Hupf1-2tag. In contrast with the interaction with Hupf2 and Hupf3a/b, the association of poly(A)-binding protein with Hupf1 is highly sensitive to treatment of the isolated complexes with RNase. Components of the exon-exon junction complex or the translational eukaryotic release factor (eRF) 3 were not identified in complexes associated with Hupf1-2tag. We discuss these findings in the context of current models of NMD.


This study examined differences in achievement over Person- Centered Therapy and Rational-Emotive Therapy taught by adjunct computer-assisted instruction tutorials (CAI) and traditional instruction (TI). The Achievement Instrument Over Person-Centered Therapy and Rational-Emotive Therapy was developed by the researcher to measure achievement. Content validity and test-retest reliability were established for the test. Analysis of covariance was utilized to test for differences in achievement gains between the CAI and TI groups. Cumulative university grade point averages and achievement pre-test scores were covariates. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to determine if the distribution of scores following instruction would be more positively skewed for the CAI group than for the TI group. This effect was expected if CAI was more effective than TI for low ability students.


Application of 3D seismic reflection data to igneous systems in sedimentary basins has led to a revolution in the understanding of mafic sill complexes. However, there is considerable uncertainty on how geometries and architecture of sill complexes within the subsurface actually relates to geometries in seismic reflection data. To provide constraints on how sill complexes in seismic data should be interpreted, we present synthetic seismograms generated from a seismic-scale (22 × 0.25 km) outcrop in East Greenland constrained by abundant field data. This study highlights how overlying igneous rocks adversely affect imaging of underlying intrusions and rocks by decreasing seismic amplitude, frequency and making steeply dipping features near-impossible to image. Furthermore, seismic modelling in this study shows that, because of the high impedance contrast between siliciclastic host rock and dolerites, very thin (1–5 m) intrusions should in principle be imaged in reflection seismic data at 3 km depth. However, comparison with actual seismic data with well data shows significant amounts of unimaged sill intrusions, and this is likely due to limited seismic resolution, overburden complexity, inadequate velocity-models, and interference between reflections from closely spaced sills and sill splays. Significant improvements to sill imaging and interpretation could be made by better predicting occurrence and geometry of sill intrusions and including these in velocity models. Supplementary material: A scaled version of the input panel (Fig. 5d) used for seismic modelling (A1), and very high resolution versions of subfigures in Figure 11 (A2–3) are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5607160


A syntactic method is applied to the recognition of Korean characters (Hangul). Since they develop into complex characters by the sequential addition of fundamental characters under positioning rules, there are a large amount of characters and consequently there exist many similar characters. Therefore, the sequential extraction, according to the positioning rules, of fundamental characters composing Korean characters is effective for automatic recognition. As a structural analysis, a production process of fundamental characters is represented by tree grammars, and the extraction algorithm of fundamental characters and the results of computer simulation are described.


To enhance the bleaching efficiency, the activator of tetra acetyl ethylene diamine (TAED) was used in conventional H2O2 bleaching. The H2O2/TAED bleaching system can accelerate the reaction rate and shorten bleaching time at relative low temperature, which can reduce the production cost. In this research, the process with hydrogen peroxide activated by TAED bleaching of Populus nigra chemi-thermo mechanical pulp was optimized. Suitable bleaching conditions were confirmed as follows: pulp consistency 10%, bleaching temperature 70oC, bleaching time 60 min when the charge of H2O2 was 4%, NaOH charge 2%, and molar ratio of TAED to H2O2 0.3. The pulp brightness gain reached 23.6% ISO with the optimized bleaching conditions. FTIR analysis indicated that the H2O2/TAED bleaching system can decrease carbonyl group further than that of conventional H2O2 bleaching, which contributed to the higher bleaching efficiency and final brightness. The H2O2/TAED bleaching had stronger oxidation ability on lignin than that of H2O2 bleaching.


Sexual psychopath statutes, under which courts committed individuals charged with or convicted of certain crimes, typically sex offenses, to psychiatric institutions, proliferated in the United States between the late 1930s and early 1960s. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia enacted versions of these statutes in response to a sex-crime panic that swept the nation after a wave of publicity about violent sex crimes committed against children. While the statutes varied widely in terms of the crimes that triggered the laws' application and in their definitions of sexual psychopathy, they were almost always applied to men convicted of consensual sodomy and were used to commit homosexual men to institutions. However, in 1955 -- only four years after the rush to enact sexual psychopath laws ended -- the American Law Institute (ALI) voted to exclude consensual sodomy from its Model Penal Code (MPC), indicating that consensual sodomy was not a criminal matter. Therefore, in a very short period, a group of influential legal thinkers had moved consensual homosexual activity from a sign of possible pathology to a legally benign, albeit still immoral, practice. The MPC, a model criminal statute aimed at stimulating penal law reform throughout the United States, became highly influential in legislative efforts to revise state criminal codes, leading twenty-two states to repeal their sodomy statutes by 1978. This article explains how American law evolved from the widespread implementation of sexual psychopath statutes to the decriminalization of sodomy, arguing that this shift emerged out of debates around sexual psychopath laws and Alfred Kinsey's reports on male and female sexual behavior, which questioned many of the assumptions underlying both sexual psychopath statutes and criminal code provisions on consensual sodomy. State commissions evaluating sexual psychopath laws relied on Kinsey's data to argue that the statutory schemes were not based on scientific evidence and therefore needed to be amended or repealed. The majority of their reports commented on the inappropriateness of including consensual sodomy under the umbrella of psychopathy, thereby separating homosexuality not just from pedophilia but also from violence. Several commissions also questioned whether consensual sodomy should be criminalized at all. The sexual psychopath commission reports influenced the ALI's decision to decriminalize sodomy, presaging and contributing to a significant change in American criminal law, as members of the MPC committee drew upon the commission debates in their arguments for the decriminalization of consensual sodomy. The state commission reports, by providing a forum for politicians and lawyers to develop and express a reformist viewpoint, created a discourse in favor of changing criminal laws on consensual sodomy. This thus article identifies the missing link between a legal regime that characterized homosexuality as psychopathy and one that adjudicated consensual homosexual sodomy as noncriminal conduct.


Cost partitioning is a general method for admissibly summing up heuristic estimates for optimal state-space search. Most cost partitioning algorithms can optimize the resulting cost-partitioned heuristic for a specific state. Since computing a new cost-partitioned heuristic for each evaluated state is usually too expensive in practice, the strongest planners based on cost partitioning over abstraction heuristics precompute a set of cost-partitioned heuristics before the search and maximize over their estimates during the search. This makes state evaluations very fast, but since there is no better termination criterion than a time limit, it requires a long precomputation phase, even for the simplest planning tasks. A prototypical example for this is the Scorpion planner which computes saturated cost partitionings over abstraction heuristics offline before the search. Using Scorpion as a case study, we show that by incrementally extending the set of cost-partitioned heuristics online during the search, we drastically speed up the planning process and even often solve more tasks.


Abstract Objective: To present disparities in consumption of vegetables and fruits in Europe and to discuss how educational level, region and level of consumption influence the variation. Design: A review of selected studies from 1985 to 1997. Setting/subjects: 33 studies (13 dietary surveys, nine household budget surveys and 11 health behaviour surveys) representing 15 European countries were selected based on criteria developed as part of the study. Association between educational level and consumption of vegetables and fruits was registered for each study and common conclusions were identified. Results: In the majority of the studies, with the exception of a few in southern and eastern Europe, consumption of vegetables and fruits was more common among those with higher education. The results suggest that in regions where consumption of vegetables and fruits is more common, the lower social classes tend to consume more of these than the higher social classes. Conclusions: The differences in the patterns of disparities in vegetable and fruit consumption between regions, as well as within populations, need to be considered when efforts to improve nutrition and health are planned.


This MPhil thesis is an enquiry into the reception history of the Shepherd of Hermas, aiming to a better understanding of the earliest circulation of the Shepherd as authoritative text in early Christianity. Specifically, it hypothesizes and tries to document the perhaps obvious but nevertheless understudied link between the alleged scriptural status of the Shepherd with some early Patristic authors and its apocalyptic character. To that end, this thesis gathers an investigation of how its apparent scriptural character during Antiquity was dealt with in the recent bibliography on the New Testament canon, an analysis of Hermas' earliest Patristic reception (by the means of a thorough assessment of Irenaeus of Lyon and Clement of Alexandria), and a reconsideration of its apocalyptic character, as the possible source of its authority. Overall, this research is proposed as shedding light on our understanding of how and why Hermas was authoritative in the earliest Christian centuries, which in turn would be relevant for the larger question of the circulation of authoritative texts in early Christianity. In particular, this research opens new ways for better addressing questions pertaining to the circulation and authority of early Christian nonNT works in Late Antiquity.


The complex nature of survey data changes the distributions of statistics associated with logistic regression models. The variances in the traditional logistic regression models are generally too small, leading to overly liberal tests. Roberts, Rao, Kumar (1987) provide a method for constructing approximate tests when a separate estimator for the covariance matrix is available. I apply this method with some modifications and the variance estimator described in Fisher et al (1993) to the CPS Survey split panel data.


This thesis is concerned with the role of university administrators and the work they carry out in relation to disability. In a context of disability discrimination legislation and a developing culture of 'consumerism', administrators in the United Kingdom are increasingly charged with undertaking activities that relate to the 'support' of students who disclose a disability. Although there is a developing body of research that relates to the work of administrators in general, their work in relation to disability remains largely unexplored. As such, empirical enquiry is overdue. The fieldwork for this study was undertaken in an English university. An ethnographic research design employing observation, interview and the collection of organisational texts is described. The ethical challenges invited by ethnographic research are also discussed in detail. As the study context was my workplace, I consider methodological and epistemological issues that arise when undertaking research in a 'familiar' setting. Analysis draws upon readings of Foucault, and his thesis on discourse and power, and the work of Douglas, and her discussion of boundary maintenance and ritual. The thesis makes a number of original contributions to knowledge. First, it shows how administrators are involved in the surveillance of disabilities and the circulation of 'expert' knowledge. It also shows how administrators seek to protect against ambiguous disability classifications and the 'non-disclosure' of disability. Second, in respect of Foucault's thesis on panopticism, it shows how the texts, practices, and material/spatial contexts of administration serve to constitute the subjectivities of those who work in or make use of the administrative service. Third, the thesis shows how administrators strive to perform 'talk' that is not injurious or offensive to people with disabilities. Using Douglas' thesis, a role for ritual in regards to the performance of 'acceptable' speech and the avoidance of 'talk' that is taboo is posited. Fourth, it shows that administrators are obliged to follow rules (for instance, the law'), yet they are also incited to work on their 'selves' in respect of 'moral' disability standpoints, and in their facilitation of a 'consumerist' student ethic. Summing up, it considers in detail the epistemic character of ethnographic research.


Index-based agricultural insurance (IBAI) is presented by several development organizations as a highly effective way of mitigating climate change related risks and improving farmer food security. However, critics doubt the effectiveness of the instrument and regard it as a new frontier for capital accumulation. Linking to this debate, this research uses a qualitative design to investigate how IBAI affects the food production and consumption of farmers in the Indian state of Karnataka. It finds that the proposed benefits of the instrument are overestimated. Most of the major issues reported by farmers cannot be addressed by insurance. Moreover, using the alternative concept of food sovereignty, the research suggests that several problems reported by interviewees, such as unstable market prices, unequal land distribution and missing irrigation require political action rather than financial inclusion.


Christopher Van Tilburg, MD is an emergency room physician, ski patrol doctor, emergency wilderness physician, and member of the Hood River Crag Rats, the oldest mountain rescue team in the country. When Dr. Van Tilburg's beeper goes off, the call may take him racing up a mountain peak to rescue an injured hiker, into a blizzard to search for missing skiers, or to a mountain airplane crash scene for body recovery. Dr. Van Tilburg's work requires a unique combination of emergency medicine, survival skills, agility, and extreme sports. In "Mountain Rescue Doctor," Van Tilburg shares personal stories of harrowing and suspenseful rescues and recoveries, including the recent Mount Hood disaster, which claimed the lives of three climbers. "Mountain Rescue Doctor" is an exhilarating tour through the perils of nature and medicine.


Democratic theory presupposes open channels of dialogue, but focuses almost exclusively on matters of institutional design writ large. The philosophy of language explicates linguistic infrastructure, but often avoids exploring the political significance of its findings. In this Article, I draw from the two disciplines to reach new insights about the democracy enhancing qualities of popular constitutional language. Employing examples from the founding era, the struggle for black civil rights, the religious awakening of the last two decades, and the search for gay equality, I present a model of constitutional dialogue that emphasizes common modalities and mobilized vernacular. According to this model, metaphors, metonyms, and other idioms serve as integral features of democratic institution-building. An especially resonant metaphor spreads democratic ideology efficiently and aggressively. The composition helps to create the appearance of political rule as continuous and timeless. It also renders law accountable to the people. By reestablishing the terms of community through this language device in the course of litigation and public debate, ordinary citizens can redirect the very path of higher law. In short, popular language legitimates constitutional regimes and builds support among the people themselves.


The quality of seeds used in the agricultural production process is one of the main factors considered for the development of a crop. This study investigated the effect of vigor level in the performance of six oleraceous species seeds. Commercial seeds of lettuce, eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, rocket, and tomato were subjected to accelerated aging, for 48 and 72 hours, to obtain lots with three vigor levels, resulting in one regular lot and two lots aged for different periods. After that, the seeds were submitted to germination tests, electrical conductivity, seedling emergence in trays, seedling length and dry weight. The effect of accelerated aging becomes stronger when the exposure time of seeds to high air relative humidity and temperature increases. This exposure reduces more emphatically the seed quality for some species, such as lettuce, cauliflower, and rocket, than for others, such as broccoli, tomato and eggplant. Less vigorous seeds, in addition to lower germination and emergence, show delays in the seedling formation process.


Climate change is emerging as the main driver of current and future climate-related risks for small islands. These risks include sea level rise, stronger tropical cyclones, and changing rainfall patterns. While there is now high confidence in the scientific community that the present change in climate is anthropogenic in nature compared to the Earth's geologic history of natural variability, there is a need for more detailed evaluations of the relationships between humans and the climate. As a human activity affected by climate change, tourism is in need of such analyses since current positivist analytical tools are inadequate for evaluating the complexity of such interactions. This paper reviews the literature, scientific frameworks, and methodological epistemologies used to analyse human community relationships to natural environments and their applicability in small island tourism environments that are impacted by climate change in the Philippines. Political ecology emerges as a potent and appropriate framework since climate change adaptation planning processes for island tourism are inherently political. The paper advances the use of political ecology for climate change adaptation to grapple with the equally complex phenomena of island tourism urbanisation and climate change, thereby contributing to the discourse in three research areas.


In 1994, the questionnaire 'Quality of Care from the Patient's Perspective' (QPP) was developed using a conventional factor analytical approach (Wilde et al. 1994). The items and conceptual framework of this questionnaire were derived from a theoretical model, which, in turn, was developed from qualitative patient interviews, using a grounded theory method of analysis (Wilde et al. 1993). The aims of this study were to develop further the dimensionality of the QPP using structural equation modelling combined with advances in factor analysis modelling, and to refine the instrument. This comparatively new methodology extracts more information out of questionnaire data and is considered to be superior to traditional scaling methods. The sample consisted of 611 somatic inpatients from four departments at a Swedish hospital. Data collected with the QPP were explored with the new tool tracing the dimensions postulated in the theoretical model underlying the QPP. A nested factor model was developed fulfilling statistical criteria for adjustment between model and data. The model consists of a general factor and 16 subordinate factors. Most of the original QPP scales were reproduced with the new statistical technique. However, some content changes were made which appear to bring the QPP scales closer to patients' meaning representations of the area. Some changes were also made to the response format, changes which appear to strengthen the psychometric properties of the instrument. The refined QPP will hopefully contribute to a more differentiated picture of quality of care when applied in the field. All scales, items, and response formats of the revised QPP are presented in an appendix.


The subject of occlusion culling of large 3D environments has received substantial contribution. However the major amount of research into the area has focussed on occlusion culling of static scenes using spatial partitioning. The primary aim of all these schemes is to minimize the load on the GPU by reducing the number of primitives to be rendered. We present an efficient algorithm for visibility culling that supports static and dynamic scenes with equal ease with significant performance improvements over existing schemes. For a given camera position the status of the object nodes in an object hierarchy can be seen as a visibility cut, the nodes of which are either outside the view frustum, or hidden or visible. We propose an efficient update scheme of this visibility cut while processing each frame, taking full advantage of the object hierarchy with spatial and temporal coherency. The whole scene walk through is modelled as a discrete event simulation where every change generates an event scheduled for that particular frame. For occlusion culling, we employ occlusion queries which helps the system to be output sensitive. The system supports transparency of entities without a major performance hit. We propose a scheme to select the level of detail of an object based on the results of occlusion queries.


The present study investigated the effect of elevated pCO2 on the development of early stages of the pelagic spawning marine fish Solea senegalensis, Diplodus sargus and Argyrosomus regius. Eggs and larvae were reared under control (pH 8.0, ~570μatm) and two elevated pCO2 conditions (pH 7.8, ~1100μatm; pH 7.6, ~1900μatm) until mouth opening (3 days post-hatching). Egg size did not change with exposure to elevated pCO2, but hatching rate was significantly reduced under high pCO2 for all three species. Survival rate was not affected by exposure to increased pCO2, but growth rate was differently affected across species, with A. regius growing faster in the mid-level pCO2 treatment compared with control conditions. S. senegalensis and A. regius hatched with smaller yolk sacs under increased pCO2 but endogenous reserves of D. sargus were not affected. Otoliths were consistently larger under elevated pCO2 conditions for all the three species. Differences among egg batches and a significant interaction between batch and pCO2 suggest that other factors, such as egg quality, can influence the response to increased pCO2. Overall, the results support the occurrence of a species-specific response to pCO2, but highlight the need for cautious analysis of potential sensitivity of species from unreplicated observations.


The skyrocketing bankruptcy filing rates of recent years are well known. Some commentators and scholars have charged that the cause of the bankruptcy boom has been promiscuous lending by credit card issuers and irrational borrowing by credit card users. Spurred on by high-profits, it is argued that credit card issuers have extended ever-larger amounts of credit to ever-riskier borrowers. In turn, irrational consumers have borrowed ever increasing amounts, generating a downward spiral into bankruptcy. This theory rests on a substantial number of assumptions about the nature of the credit card market and the nature of rational credit card use by consumers. The thesis requires assuming that credit card users are homogenously concerned only about interest rates and not about any other term of the credit card contract, whether benefits, grace periods, or annual fees. In short, for the argument to be plausible, it requires a series of heroic assumptions about persistent profits in a market with low barriers to entry, a failure of competition in a market with all structural indicia of competitiveness, a peculiar and extraordinarily narrow definition of the indicia for measuring competition, and a failure of consumer rationality in a situation where there are strong incentives for consumers to act rationally and to learn over time. Alternatively, it could be argued that the credit card market is competitive and that consumers use credit cards rationally. As this article will show, both credit card issuers and consumers appear to act in a manner consistent with the predictions of economic theory. It is not necessary to rely on implausible assumptions about consumer irrationality or to devise idiosyncratic models of a failure of competition in the credit card market. This article will present voluminous empirical evidence - most of which has heretofore been ignored in the legal literature - demonstrating that the operation of the credit card market and consumer choice is consistent with rational decision-making subject to real-world constraints. Moreover, this suggests that there is some efficiency loss as a result of bankruptcy, and that at least some of the losses of credit card issuers are absorbed by other consumers. Finally the paper suggests some bankruptcy implications of a proper understanding of the nature of the credit card market and rational credit card use by consumers.


GoLive CS2 is more than just a simple Web authoring tool: As part of Adobe's updated Creative Suite 2, it's a key component of an overall Web workflow that lets you work seamlessly among all of your graphics applications to create spectacular Web sites. This info-packed guide lets users get right down to doing by focusing on just the GoLive features they're mostly like to use and showcasing each in stand-alone tipsi¾–complete with a relevant hint or two and a graphic example. In this fashion, you learn just what you need to know, exploring the program in a way that makes sense to you. Before you know it, you'll be importing layered Photoshop files into GoLive, creating PDF files from within the GoLive environment, and using the visual layout grid and Cascading Style Sheets to turn out fluid, beautiful Web pages. Also covered are all of GoLive CS2's new features: enhanced live rendering, mobile CSS support, Visual CVG-Tiny authoring and more.


Article history Received 27 Sep 2015 Accepted 29 Nov 2015 Introduction: Recent medical and health care improvement caused a remarkable increase in humans' life expand and subsequent increase in aging population. Beside life expectancy, quality of life is at the same importance, so the study aimed to explore the relation between quality of life and lifestyle among older adults in Yazd. Methods: The cross-sectional study was carried out on 270 elderly people over 60 years old. A cluster random sampling was used to recruit the participant from 10 selected clusters in the Yazd city with at least 27 participants from each cluster. Short Form Health Survey (SF-12) and Iranian Elderly Lifestyle Questionnaire was used for data collection. Data analyzed with descriptive frequency distribution and also χ2, and Pearson correlation coefficient tests using SPSS software. Results: The mean score of quality of life was 69.06 ± 20.97 (range 0-100) and the mean score of lifestyle was 161.91±13.95 (range 42-211). Quality of life and lifestyle had statistically significant relation with age, sex, education level, marriage status, retirement status, having job, income source, digestive problems, depression, joint pain, osteoporosis, hypertension, fall and sleep disorder. There was also a direct association between lifestyle and quality of life. Conclusion: Results indicated that most of the participants are at a desirable level of lifestyle and quality of life. However quality of life is in relation with some demographic factors and chronic conditions that must be addressed in interventional programs aimed at increasing the quality of life among aging population.


This study was performed to gain more knowledge about the behaviour and habitat use of Haflinger mares, free-ranging in a low-productivity dune area. Detailed data on these animals' time budgets were collected over a full year, through the focal animal observation technique. On average the Haflinger horses spent 68 % of the daytime grazing, 18 % resting and 8 % walking. Seasonal features influenced horses' behaviour, mainly through a change in grazing time. Shorter grazing time in summer allowed the animals to rest longer than during the other seasons. We suggest that especially the decreased forage quality and quantity of the grazed habitats in the non- growing season account for the increased grazing time in autumn and winter. In all four seasons the horses preferred grazing in the grassy habitat. However, habitat use showed seasonal variation. Grey dunes were grazed more inten- sively in winter and spring, compared to summer and autumn. The contribution of roughage, scrub and woodland to the habitat use was low over the entire year. For several response variables the observed variation could be partly explained by the differences between individual animals.


The actual consequences analysis derived from the study of a system's life cycle, improving the simplistic approach of the decision making by partial aspects. The LCA has become a powerful and widely-used tool that allows the professionals to take action in a sustainable way. The work group carried out an LCA normally takes advantage of their knowledge and abilities to obtain a more or less reliable result. The working group's efforts haven't been until now systematically and normally guide themselves by experience, logic and intuition. It's pertinent that this effort is oriented by using Project Management. Project Management is the application of knowledge, ability, tools and techniques to the activities of the project to satisfy its requirements. An LCA study can be considered as a project, a temporal effort made for a unique result. With the Project Management vision, the elaboration of an LCA is faster, easier and successful. We have developed a guide for the elaboration of an LCA following the guidelines of ISO 14040 and Project Management, we have named it as: Life Cycle Assessment projects by process groups. Our point of view emerges from relating the matrix of the LCA phases (Goal and scope, Life cycle inventory, Life cycle impact assessment and Interpretation) and the process groups (initiating processes, planning processes, executing processes, controlling processes and closing processes). With that, we provide to the work group some guidelines to make an LCA as a project where we balance the scope, time, costs, quality, resources and risks.


Personal retirement accounts are becoming an increasingly important form of retirement saving. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the paper considers the effect of this change on the assets of recent retirees and persons who are approaching retirement. Much of the analysis is based on comparisons of younger and older cohorts with different lengths of exposure to personal retirement saving programs. The findings suggest that personal retirement saving has already added substantially to the personal financial assets of older families. Projections imply that the personal financial assets of the cohort that will attain age 76 in 28 years will be almost twice as large as the personal financial assets of the cohort that attained age 76 in 1991. The results indicate also that to date there" has been little replacement of employer-provided pension saving with personal retirement saving. Together with evidence that personal financial saving is unrelated to changes in home equity, the results suggest that personal retirement saving will lead to an important increase in the overall wealth of the elderly.


In a broad sense, international criminology can be described as the set of activities related to crime prevention and control, coming from the academia, public and private institutions and agencies, to join efforts to debate and publish and make policies, addressed to a global audience beyond a single country. This process of internationalization of criminology, started since its beginnings as a science, at the end of the 19th century through important congresses and meetings developed in Europe, where public officials and academics met. In the 21st century we can talk of a global or globalized criminology around the world, expressed also via websites on the Internet. Together with international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of war and, to a lesser extent, aggression as crime against peace), transnational crimes (corruption, financial crime, terrorism, organized crime, and its different modalities of illegal trafficking, cyber-attacks, and crimes against the environment), as well as crimes of abuse of (political and economic) power (enforced disappearances, summary executions, torture) are the subject matter of international criminology. However, the concept of international criminology is elastic and welcomes any international approach to other topics, traditionally thought domestically; in any case from the international perspective the social-political dimension of criminality appears as a much more relevant issue than the criminal's personality (and treatment) and protection of victims and the community become the focus of interest.
 Within the internationalization of criminology there are at least two trends that deserve further analysis. The first one is how to balance the cultural differences among all the countries and the myriad of interests involved in the construction of an international criminology. Some criticism is heard in the sense that international criminology is influenced by American or Anglo-Saxon views. From this perspective it is observed a risk of producing academic, legal, and policy criminological transplants without considering the cultural and socioeconomic context of every country and the voices of their inhabitants. The second trend refers to the role of international criminology in relation with the increasingly diffuse borders between police, intelligence agencies, and military forces; crime control and war; or internal and external security. Even though international crimes have always been a core topic, war and political and economic abuse of power across borders have been quite forgotten in the agendas of both national and international criminology. Today there are different forms of cooperation among countries in conflict situations, (e.g., terrorism, border controls, and the so-called refugee crisis) where the military, intelligence agencies, police forces, and private corporations of different countries work together, providing international criminology new topics for critical reflection and action.


The marketing development of the electric vehicle market can be considered as a key element of innovative changes in the national economy. Object of research is the development of the electric vehicle market. The purpose of this article is the theoretical substantiation and development of guidelines for determining the rating of countries by the level of development of this market as a determining factor in the innovative development of the national economy. In the study, expert survey methods, logical generalization and comparison of results, statistical analysis and graphical presentation of results were used. The study conducted a marketing analysis of sales and production of electric cars, government programs to stimulate them, existing rating indicators of countries for the development of the electric vehicle market, and based on the results, a method for determining the integrated rating indicator of national economy innovativeness was developed. The article established that in countries that are world economic leaders, the growing interest of consumers and manufacturers of cars to electric vehicles, which is actively supported by government programs and incentives. It is proposed to use a integrated indicator of innovative development of the national economy, which are directly related to the market of electric vehicles. This indicator consists of the following factors: share of investments in the development of branches related to the national production of electric vehicles; level of growth of electric transport in the country's total fleet; the share of electric vehicles in total number of cars produced in the country; level of increase in the amount of electricity produced based on RES in total; infrastructure development; level of state support for the market. The use of these integrated factors in marketing analysis will determine the level of the world leader in the country, its innovative development.


In January 1999, the maximum axle weight increased from IN to 11.5t for the
assessmenot f highway bridges and structures. At the samet ime, the maximum vehicle
weight also increased from 38t to 44t. Highway authorities are urgently searching for a
more refined assessmenmt ethod to predict the behaviour of masonry arch bridges.
LUSAS finite element analysis was used to study the behaviour of masonry arch
bridges. Load versus deflection curves and collapse loads are given for some of the full
and large scale arches previously tested to collapse. A parametric study was also
performed to determine the influence of the arch material properties and the load
dispersal angle: the arch tensile strength and the load dispersal angle were found to
have the most significant influence on the collapse load predictions.
Repeatability tests were carried out by building three nominally identical large scale
arch bridges in the laboratory and testing them to collapse. The first, second and third
arches collapsed at 2lkNm', 16kNm', and 25kNm 1 respectively. Finite element
analysis predicted a range of 18kNm' to 39kNm 1 for the same arches. This led to an
examination of a statistical, risk based, approach to bridge assessment.
Two novel risk assessment programs were developed by integrating Monte Carlo
simulation with the MEXE and the mechanism methods. Statistical information about
the predicted collapse load and allowable axle load is given. These risk assessment
tools are offered for incorporation within routine assessmenmt ethods. Their principal
benefit lies in providing engineers with a feel for the reliability of their analyses.
A modification has been made to the mechanism method by considering arch
deflection. A mechanism prediction is accurate only when all the forces and their
positions are accurately located. The modified mechanism method was used to analyse
some of the full scale arch bridges, previously tested to collapse, which revealed that
arch deflections had a significant influence on the collapse load prediction.


Common themes in current leisure research include topics regarding opportunities and availability of recreation programs, stigma, negotiating barriers and constraints, and physical and psychological accessibility of recreation for women, people of color, low socio-economic groups, families, or other disenfranchised groups. Theories, research, and examples presented within the reviewed disability texts have relevance to issues of inclusion for all disciplines of leisure research, not just those dealing with disabling conditions. Research that directly or indirectly addresses related topics of race, culture, gender, class, religion, and ethnicity can be enhanced by the information provided in both the reviewed texts.


From 1976 to 1986, six cases of cardiac sarcoidosis have been documented by myocardial biopsy in three of five instances; on examination of the explanted heart after transplantation in two, and at autopsy in one patient. Right ventricular end-diastolic pressure was elevated in all four patients with right ventricular involvement with sarcoidosis. Of three patients treated with steroids, improvement in ventricular function and decrease in arrhythmia occurred in two, whereas failure to respond led to transplantation in the other patient. Two further patients have undergone heart transplantation, one for resistant ventricular arrhythmia and the other for congestive heart failure. No recurrence of sarcoidosis has occurred in the grafts. Because two of five patients had sarcoidosis diagnosed on gross examination, a negative endomyocardial biopsy does not exclude the diagnosis of myocardial sarcoidosis, which should therefore be pursued in the setting of unexplained heart failure, conduction abnormalities, and ventricular arrhythmia, particularly when right ventricular end-diastolic pressure is raised. Steroids may result in improvement in some patients even in the presence of severe morphological damage. Heart transplantation may be performed without increased risk of recurrence of sarcoidosis.


Human motion estimation is a topic receiving high attention during the last decades. There is a vast range of applications that employ human motion tracking, while the industry is continuously offering novel motion tracking systems, which are opening new paths compared to traditionally used passive cameras. Motion tracking algorithms, in their general form, estimate the skeletal structure of the human body and consider it as a set of joints and limbs. However, human motion tracking systems usually work on a single sensor basis, hypothesizing on occluded parts. We hereby present a methodology for fusing information from multiple sensors (Microsoft's Kinect sensors were utilized in this work) based on a series of factors that can alleviate from the problem of occlusion or noisy estimates of 3D joints' positions.


As in Sweden in general, the municipality owns a large share of the rental multi-family housing stock through itsi housing companies. At present tenants are offered the possibility to buy the houses or the real estate units, from the municipal housing companies, in the form of tenant-owners associations. This extensive process of conversion of tenure will have major influence on the Stockholm housing market, also in respects such as the relationships between residents and between residents and the societyis institutions. The aim of our study is to analyze whether social capital, here in forms of trust and reciprocal norms as well as the resulting collective action and conflicts, changes with conversing tenure. Our hypothesis is that changes will occur and that the tenure form etenant-owneris associationi will imply residentsi stronger participation in decision processes than in rental tenure, which in turn should increase the social capital among residents. On the other hand, factors like increased mobility, due to the opportunity to sell the apartment, or conflicts that may occur between residents who choose to continue renting their apartment and the tenant-owneris association- can lead to a negative influence on social capital. The data are collected through telephone interviews with residents at two occasions: spring 2008 and spring 2010. Ten buildings in five suburban neighborhoods are chosen for the study, five of which will be, as is indicated right now, owned by tenant-owners associations and five that will continue to be owned by the municipal housing companies. This paper analyzes the results of 350 interviews during spring 2008. Methods used are cross tabulations with Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests, factor and regression analyses. Results indicate that residents forming tenant-owners associations in order to buy their dwellings have more trust in neighbors in the neighborhood and politicians at local and municipality levels but less trust in the housing company and the neighborhood police than residents that will continue renting their dwellings. Also indicated are local versions of social capital that do not seem to be related to the conversion process.


This report presents a draft code of Australian contract law, the Australian Law of Contract (ALC) and draft Explanatory Memorandum, formulated in response to the Attorney-General's Discussion Paper to Explore the Scope for Reforming Australian Contract Law, released on 22 March 2012. The ALC codifies the general rules of contract law, that is, the rules that apply to all contracts and proposed contracts. It replaces case law with a legislative text that simplifies and modernizes the law, and harmonizes it with the laws of other nations. Although for the most part the ALC restates existing Australian law in simplified form, it proposes some 15 reforms that would modernize the existing law and bring it into line with the laws of Australia's major trading partners. We suggest that the draft ALC could tangibly advance further consideration of codification as a desirable reform of Australian contract law. It would have the benefit of shifting the current debate about codification from an abstract level to one about a specific draft code. We believe that enacting the ALC would greatly increase the accessibility of contract law to ordinary Australians and reduce the cost of legal services, especially to business.


Recently, increasing numbers of users have adopted microblogging services as their main information source. However, most of them find themselves drowning in the millions of posts produced by other users every day. To cope with this, identifying a set of the most influential people is paramount. Moreover, finding a set of related influential users to expand the coverage of one particular topic is required in real world scenarios. Most of the existing algorithms in this area focus on topology-related methods such as PageRank. These methods mine link structures to find the expected influential rank of users. However, because they ignore the interaction data, these methods turn out to be less effective in social networks. In reality, a variety of topics exist within the information diffusing through the network. Because they have different interests, users play different roles in the diffusion of information related to different topics. As a result, distinguishing influential leaders according to different topics is also worthy of research. In this paper, we propose a multi-topic influence diffusion model (MTID) based on traces acquired from historic information. We decompose the influential scores of users into two parts: the direct influence determined by information propagation along the link structure and indirect influence that extends beyond the restrictions of direct follower relationships. To model the network from a multi-topical viewpoint, we introduce topic pools, each of which represents a particular topic information source. Then, we extract the topic distributions from the traces of tweets, determining the influence propagation probability and content generation probability. In the network, we adopt multiple ground nodes representing topic pools to connect every user through bidirectional links. Based on this multi-topical view of the network, we further introduce the topic-dependent rank (TD-Rank) algorithm to identify the multi-topic influential users. Our algorithm not only effectively overcomes the shortages of PageRank but also effectively produces a measure of topic-related rank. Extensive experiments on a Weibo dataset show that our model is both effective and robust.


Growth is often stimulated when C3 plants, including trees, are exposed to elevated CO2, although evidence from the literature suggests that the responsiveness of trees to CO2 varies, depending on species. This paper explores some of the cellular mechanisms which underlie increased growth, using both the authors' own data and information from the literature. Mechanisms include photosynthetic fixation of CO2 and the role of Rubisco, the link between carbon fixation and growth, in particular, how increased carbon is thought to influence the process of plant cell expansion and cell production and finally the consequences of cellular effects for the growth and development of whole plants. Data are presented for the growth and development of hybrid poplars in elevated CO2, following both field (open-top chambers) and laboratory experiments which suggest that this type of tree with indeterminate, rapid growth may be favoured by the CO2 concentrations of the next century.


Longitudinal data from two Dutch-Italian bilinguals show that third person subject pronouns are not acquired before the age of 3;1 and that the usage of these pronouns does not always converge with the monolingual target. This paper accounts for this acquisitional delay by integrating Muller and Hulk (2001) and Serratrice et al.'s (2004) core insights on crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition with a global maturational view as proposed in Van Kampen (2004). As for the observed bilinguals' difficulty in anaphora resolution, we speculate on the existence of an economy principle that might be part of the Language Acquisition Device and guide children's choices in cases of ambiguity in language.


A cohort of 289 children with febrile convulsions who had been randomised in early childhood to either intermittent prophylaxis (diazepam at fever) or no prophylaxis (diazepam at seizures) was followed up 12 years later. The study focused on the occurrence of epilepsy and on neurological, motor, intellectual, cognitive, and scholastic achievements in the cohort. At follow up the two groups were of almost identical age (14.0 v 14.1 years), body weight (58.2 v 57.2 kg), height (168.2 v 167.7 cm), and head circumference (55.9 v 56.2 cm). The occurrence of epilepsy (0.7% v 0.8%), neurological examination, fine and gross motor development on the Stott motor test, intellectual performance on the Wechsler intelligence scale for children verbal IQ (105 v 105), performance IQ (114 v 111), and full scale IQ (110 v 108), cognitive abilities on a neuropsychological test battery, including short and long term, auditory and visual memory, visuomotor tempo, computer reaction time, reading test, and scholastic achievement were also very similar. Children with simple and complex febrile convulsions had the same benign outcome. The long term prognosis in terms of subsequent epilepsy, neurological, motor, intellectual, cognitive, and scholastic ability was not influenced by the type of treatment applied in early childhood. Preventing new febrile convulsions appears no better in the long run than abbreviating them.